Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
La Crosse is a very beautiful community. It's a college community. A lot of tourism with the Mississippi River. There is minimal amount of crime, so in a situation where you have a homicide, it's rare.
May 24th, 2010, starting out was the same as any other day. I had got up at about quarter to seven.
I got a phone call. It was from the school.
Mom was supposed to be teaching that day.
She enjoyed her job as a teacher. She was outgoing, fun-loving.
A great mom. I called my mom's cell phone and there was no answer.
So I called my dad's phone and he didn't answer.
I knew my father was supposed to be working. I did not know my father had not shown up for work.
I got in the vehicle and headed out there. Drive up the road to the house.
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Chapter 2: What happened on May 24th, 2010, in the Koula household?
Dennis and Myrna Kula were found yesterday morning by their son. What?
Both of them? Somebody shot mom and dad in the head?
What I see is devastating.
My parents, Dennis and Myrna Kula, were murdered in their own home. Do something like that.
Does this look like a burglary gone bad or an assassination to you? It was an assassination.
I'm going to throw a couple tough questions at you now, okay? All right.
Tell me how it happened. One of the questions that came to our mind was why. Why someone would want to kill them. This was somebody that was lying in wait for them, prepared to execute them. When lead investigator John Christopherson arrived at the Cola household on May 24th, 2010, his mind was spinning.
What in the heck could have happened in a situation where two people are dead because this is an affluent neighborhood and crime is very limited in this part of the county. Standing outside the house in the yellow hat was son Eric Cola, who had discovered the chilling death scene.
I just don't understand why they're like this. Just great people. And now they're... Now they're gone.
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Chapter 3: Who discovered the bodies of Dennis and Myrna Koula?
She especially liked teaching junior high. She was outgoing, fun-loving.
She loved Christmas because of the expression on everybody's faces when they opened presents.
You would always want to talk about anything. Anything going on in your life.
Talk about the kids. The morning of May 24th, Myrna was scheduled to work at nearby West Salem Middle School. When she didn't show, Eric received a call from a concerned school secretary.
I called my mom's cell phone and there was no answer there. Well, that's weird, I'm gonna call my dad. So I called my dad's phone and he didn't answer.
Dennis should have been on his way to work at the pharmacy.
Oh, boy, we have a car accident or what's going on? He said, well, you know, it just doesn't sound like them. Something's not right.
Eric's wife, Christine, was at home with him that morning.
He said, I'll run out there and see, you know, what's going on.
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Chapter 4: What evidence suggested the murders were planned?
I see a purse that is undisturbed, a computer sitting out. He's struck that so many valuables have been left untouched. I see credit cards and cash in closets and in dresser drawers that are undisturbed. I see jewelry boxes that haven't been touched. And something else catches his eye, the dresser drawers.
An individual who's going to burglarize a place is going to open up the top drawer, shuffle through it, close the drawer, and then look into the second drawer. If you look at this, they're indicating that they go to the bottom drawer first, pull it out, shuffle through it, then pull out the next drawer, and so forth, going up. Who does that? Nobody that I know of.
And the kids, Eric and Cindy, go into the residence and they're telling us that there's nothing stolen from the residence. Who would have any motive to kill the Colas? At this point, we don't know. There's nobody that stands out. Investigators would not have to speculate long.
Just days after Dennis and Myrna are found dead in their home, a neighbor, Steve Burgess, a president at a local bank, provides the first lead in the case. Steve Burgess came forward to the Sheriff's Department stating that he had been receiving threats, and they were distinctly death threats.
Burgess is suggesting there may be a case of mistaken identity, that someone out to kill him killed the Colas instead? Yes. But how could such a fatal mistake have been made? Easily, if the killer used the internet. In fact, when you Google Earth Steve Burgess's address, the zoom into the house goes to the Colas house, not to Steve Burgess's house.
Yes, and now we've got a lot of work to do because whoever committed this homicide certainly has a jump on us.
It has all the markings of a hit, I've been told.
Eric Cola and Cindy Cowell had been turned into orphans in the same instant. It's been said that you and your father were best friends. Is that true?
Yes, we were. I still can't believe they're gone.
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