a sweet and pure college student she was literally the most innocent and genuine person I've ever known viciously attacked in her own home what I saw was just absolutely horrific I mean this sh went through hell who would have a reason to want to kill this girl police are desperate to find the killer before he strikes again it's Panic there is somebody capable of doing what they did to Missy out there and we don't have them but a dark trail of evidence he actually wound up weeping kind of in a f
etal position this is bizarre this is strange leads them to a suspect this was someone hiding in plain sight they could have never imagined no one would have known that not anybody [Music] the City of Arlington is the home of two professional sports teams and a major amusement park there's something for everybody and if you can't find something to do then you've got a problem but in early April 1994 this this idilic community was rocked to its core 911 and it started when police received a 911 c
all from the Holly Park apartment complex woke up 3:30 in the morning smelling smoke I walk into my living room there's so much smoke that I can't see it's Panic there's a fire we need to get out residents quickly evacuate the building as firefighters arrive to battle The Blaze you're totally helpless you just sit there and watch everything go up in Flames still think about it just how close I came to D firefighters track the fire to its source an apartment on the second floor once inside they m
ake a horrific [Music] Discovery far Fighters discovered a body in the [Music] bedroom this was not just someone falling asleep in bed smoking this was something more homicide investigators are quickly summoned and try to make sense of the devastating scene I was informed of what the fire department had found and what they reported we had a body inside of a a burning home detective Stanton and I make entry into the apartment the fire is out but there's still a lot of damage virtually everything
has got like a coating of this black nasty soot Fire Marshals could actually smell the gasoline and were able to see poor patterns this was an intentionally set fire the trail of Destruction leads all the way to the bed what I saw was just absolutely horrific I've seen bad crime scenes and I've seen crime scenes involving people that were burnt in fires this was uh elevated a young lady who you could see even with the smoke damage and the burn damage you could still see that this was a victim of
a very brutal sexual assault the body was laying on her back on the bed the positioning is consistent with sexual assault she had trauma to her face as though she had been physically assaulted clearly there was a puncture Mark in the middle of her chest this child went through went through hell it was like nothing I've ever seen you know who would do something something as horrible as this a lot of evidence was destroyed simply because of the fire damage but we found what we believe might have
been the murder weapon there was a knife in the sink but fire damage to the knife has robbed investigators of the forensic evidence needed to link it to the killer had that fire not been set we probably would have had light and prce no tell them what we would have had investigators collect the knife for testing and managed to salvage some papers that survived the Inferno for detectives the most important goal is to identify their victim we found out that that apartment was in fact leased and occ
upied by one one occupant identified as Missy grall 19-year-old college student from Burleson I can remember standing on the lawn and I said there's Missy's car but she's not out here with us she was not accounted for so we had a general idea who our victim was but that was not confirmed this body was so distorted that they had to use a forensic odontologist to confirm Missi as the victim once we've identified the victim is Missy grall we talked to her family and Burleson and it's gut-wrenching
Missy's mother was devastated I had a daughter myself that sort of hits home as investigators meet with Missy's family word of her death spreads through the small community when I heard the news my heart just dropped Missy was so innocent and so pure and such an honest Soul she was so much fun very friendly nurturing she would have given anything to help anybody she was literally the most genuine person I've ever known we were very active in church she and I both were Missy was very strong in he
r faith very moral she was always the person to do the right thing always in high school her strength went beyond her faith Missy was very focused she was a very hard worker that's how she was so successful in school she was in the high school band she played the French horn and she was amazing at it even as a teenager Missy had a Clear Vision of what she wanted and the drive to get it she wanted to go to the University of Texas at Arlington and she wanted to get her own apartment but she didn't
want to burden her mother financially so Missy was working to support herself to afford to be able to go to to school but even though she wanted to stand on her own Missy's heart stayed close to home she probably spoke with her mom every day on the phone Missy and her mother were very close they were a team in life and treasured each other you cannot describe the pain that Missy's mother went through but I'll let her know I really need you you're you're going to help me find who did this to Mis
sy because she knew her daughter better than probably anybody Missy's mother tells detectives what she knows of Missy's activities on the last night of her life well Missy worked these late hours as a food server she would always let her mother know that I'm home I'm safe on the night of Miss's murder she' called her mother late at night when she got home she finished her father phone call with her mom and then dispatch getting a phone call then the apartment's on fire establishing kind of a win
dow as to when the actual murder would have occurred police determined that Missy had been killed sometime between midnight and 3:30 a.m. it's not much for detectives to go on but when they arrive back in Arlington they have an unexpected lead waiting once the victim's name had been released one of our officers came forward and said I took a report listing your victim a week prior to the death Missy grall filed a police report on a guy that's staying with Missy who stole from her and I'm thinkin
g that very well could be our killer we need to find this person we need to talk to them we need to get them in here as soon as possible coming up detectives track a dangerous suspect this individual made threats against her and soon uncover a lead they never expected it caught my attention immediately something is very suspicious here that puts them face to face with Miss's attacker I said you killed Missy rubal let's start talking about this Arlington police detectives are searching for the ki
ller of Texas college student Missy grubba they've learned that the 19-year-old co-ed filed a police report a week before her death Missy had reported A co-worker took her tip jars over $1,000 worth of tips Missy took the semester off in order to save more money so all of her tip money was being hoarded so she could go back next semester to college the police report describes how Missy named a Charles Johnson as the potential thief and that he had been staying with her before her money disappear
ed detectives speak to Missy's friends to find out more about Charles and his relationship to [Music] Missy Charles was a coworker and apparently was someone that she thought was a friend of hers she socialized with co-workers typically after work young people she worked with that's her her Crowd Charles Johnson at that time we are told was homeless and so Missy being the very generous individual that she is allows him to come stay with her in fact she even gave him a key to her apartment Missy
was very kind-hearted and I think that it was very easy for some people to take advantage of kind-hearted people people talking with her friends there was a common theme about missing she was not only incredibly sweet but incredibly naive too pure to see the bad in people as an investigator and that scares me because I see someone who is easily victimized only days after Charles moved in Missy discovers she has been played Missy finds out one day that about $1,000 has gone from her tip job well
the only person that could have done that was Charles Johnson enraged Missy confronts Charles about the theft and kicks him out of her home something else that was very important from everything that I learned about Missy was she will also stand up for what's right so Missy immediately calls the police Missy filed a police report and a theft charge warrant was issued for Charles's arrest here's some motive right here this is retaliation for getting me in trouble and so he's immediately on our ra
dar we want to see this guy we want to talk to him problem is we didn't know where he was at it's hard to find somebody who was basically homeless and we had detectives that were assigned to find him while police search for Johnson Miss's autopsy report comes in it confirms investigators belief that the fire is not what killed her the autopsy findings demonstrated she was dead before the fire started she should have inhaled some smoke we should have seen some soot we should have seen some carbon
monoxide in her blood that's not the case here at all she had a bruise of her left eye and an injury on the brow Ridge that uh would be consistently with being struck by a fist or another object injuries directed that show that the as salant wanted to feel in control and dominant the Fatal Stab Wound of the chest was the actual cause of death but it went completely through her heart and damaged her left lung and it was a massive internal bleeding the autopsy also confirms detective's worst susp
icions the attack was sexual in nature she had been forcibly penetrated this was a rape homicide by a very aggressive perpetrator though the fire destroyed physical evidence at the scene the medical examiner immediately notifies detectives of a major Discovery we did a search of the Body for any Remnant evidence that wasn't destroyed by the fire Seaman was recovered that could be analyzed for DNA forensic evidence and physical evidence is great you got to have it it leads you to your killer so t
hat seen was a forensic link to the suspect the Seaman is sent for DNA analysis hoping it will point to the killer but detectives make a calculated decision not to make the information public the fact that she was sexually assaulted was not public it was not released and the reason for that is because it's what we call guilt knowledge evidence and it's knowledge that is only known by the person who did the crime you never reveal that cuz that can lead you to that suspect to identify him that's v
ery powerful evidence other evidence is piling up too among the documents collected from Miss's apartment detectives discover a treasure Trove of personal letters these were letters from someone named Ivan via the nature of the letters indicated some type of relationship between this individual and Missy grall we don't know if it was romantic or not but some type of close personal relationship so that's important we needed to find out who this individual was detectives do a background check on I
van and they're alarmed by what they uncover Ivan was a wretched sex offender and I just set the hairs on the back of my neck up yeah this is the sort of individual that we're looking for let's go find Ivan right away [Music] detectives investigating the rape and murder of Missy grba have found letters in the victim's apartment that reveal she was having a relationship with Ivan via a young man with a dark past he was in fact flagged as a sex offender and so he he's immediately on our radar cuz
we know that Missy was sexually assaulted [Music] detectives examine the letters between Missy and Ivan and discover that they had a tumultuous relationship the context of those letters looked like a a conflict of two young adults trying to make something work in a relationship that is filled with confusion the conflict centered around how far Missy would allow the relationship to go physically Missy was very moral it was an admirable thing in our faith to remain pure until we were married it's
something that Missy took very seriously the letters suggest that Ivan and Missy may have come too close to crossing the line apparently there might have been times where they went a little further than Missy was comfortable with you could tell that she was upset about that Missy's friends knew that she was not one to Back Down Under Pressure if she felt like she was being taken advantage of then she would stand up for herself and I admired that about her so much bottom line is we need to bring
Ivan in we need to talk to him because he was in fact in some level of a relationship with Missy time of her death two days after Missy's murder detectives bring Ivan in for an interview he claims that he and Missy were working through their issues in a kind and loving way Ivan told me that he cared for Missy and he wanted a relationship with her he certainly did want to have that relationship go a step further but Missy was convicted to her beliefs and to her faith they were also battling with
the fact that he had this crime over his head Ivan tells detectives he was home alone asleep the night Missy was murdered that's not an acceptable Alibi for myself for detective Stanton but was it really possible this young man could have committed such a horrible crime when you start talking about the personality of who you're looking for you got to be careful if you start picturing this person as this evil Predator you may miss the actual killer that's why you have to follow the evidence the f
act that we had Seaman from the crime scene means we have forensic evidence that would either connect him or exclude him detectives ask Ivan to provide DNA samples but until those test results are revealed detectives do not have grounds to hold Ivan in custody in 1994 those tests usually took anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks while waiting for results on DNA tests for Ivan and searching for Missy's former co-worker Charles Johnson detectives continue their investigation by canvasing Miss's friends at t
he restaurant and learn something that adds another suspect to the list although this time this suspect could be at the very top the name Jeffrey Smith came up her work Associates told us that Jeffrey Smith was an employee there who Missy reported and got him in trouble at work what we were being told is that really upset him it angered him restaurant staff tell the detectives that Jeffrey had threatened to kill Missy during an outburst and he was fired a few weeks later after getting into a fig
ht with a manager what we are being told is this individual was hot-tempered and he had made threats against her so we're putting all this together and thinking yeah we really need to talk to this guy but who could imagine a coworker committing such a horrendous crime detectives speak with another employee at the restaurant who knows Jeffrey well his girlfriend Kristen agreed to come in to speak with Detective stain and I visibly nervous Kristen paints a troubling picture of her boyfriend Kriste
n told us that they were living together but she also shared that she was concerned with his personality he was very volatile she was afraid of him and she did not feel safe being there with him she was going to move out and move back with her parents in Denton but it wasn't just fear for What Jeffrey might do that was causing Christen to leave him it was a fear of what he'd already done what Kristen wanted us to know and she was very open about it was she actually suspected that Jeff was involv
ed in the murder of this detectives investigating the murder of 19-year-old Missy guba are interviewing Christen Waller a young woman who believes her boyfriend Jeffrey Smith could be the killer she just basically said this is what my belief is so I asked why what how did she formulate that told us night of Miss's murder Jeff did not come to the apartment and he didn't come back all night so she didn't know where he was at she also knew the conflict between her and him so she's putting all this
together and she actually believed that Jeff was with Missy on that night and that he committed this crime Kristen gives detectives the phone number for where Jeff is staying a background check shows the 22-year-old has has no criminal history but detectives are still suspicious we know that he had made some threats against missing and his whereabouts are unknown on the night of her death so we needed to talk to him I called Jeff Smith after speaking with Christen and he actually was cooperative
and agreed to come to the police department in the interview room detectives are struck by Jeff's demeanor Jeff Smith was smiling and on shaline just really not taking the entire situation that serious or ask him what was your relationship like with Miss gual his story was she was infatuated with him and a a matter of fact her infatuation is what created the problems and the conflict between him and Kristen Kristen's telling us no I'm moving out because the guy scares me to death Jeff also has
a conflicting account of his Alibi he gave us this excuse that he was with Kristen we already had information that he was not when detectives suggest Jeff is lying to them about his Alibi he laughs them off I've seen this type of Personality before he's narcissistic he's cocky he's arrogant and I certainly wasn't going to take anything that he said at face value despite their concerns about Jeff detectives have no evidence to connect him to Miss's murder and are forced to let him go but before h
e leaves they ask him for a DNA sample and to their surprise he agrees he did give us the samples that we needed for a forensic analysis they would certainly connect or exclude him from the murder then 4 days after Miss's murder detective Lenor gets a frantic call from Kristen about Jeffrey Smith he had abducted Kristen earlier in the morning physically abducted her and drove off with her from her parents home in Denton Kristen tells detective Lenor that Jeff was distraught and held her in an ap
artment for 8 hours threatening to kill her if she tried to leave Christen telling us the motive was that Jeff just didn't want her to leave him he released her safely a little later that day but now she didn't know where he was at she was definitely afraid of him she contacted the Denton police department and ended up getting a a warrant for his arrest for kidnapping he became a fugitive you've got this guy who a Loose Cannon and there was a level of urgency to find him we put out a national br
oadcast along with that warrant that he is also a suspect and a murder investigation with Kristen safely at her parents' house and police in several States searching for Jeff detectives in Arlington find their murder investigation in a holding pattern as far as Jeff Smith we do have his hair his blood in his saliva for DNA they would certainly connect or exclude him from the murder DNA testing is still underway but Days Later investigators do get an important update date from the lab they were a
ble to type the blood from the seen and they knew they were looking for someone with with a certain type of blood Jeff did not match the blood type from the SE in addition to Jeffrey Smith Ivan via is also ruled out because of his blood type leaving Charles Johnson as The only active suspect for Missy's murder and Charles is still at large that that is incredibly frustrating because there is somebody capable of doing what they did to Missy out there and we don't have them as the weeks pass with
the case unsolved Missy's family and friends grow more and more concerned it was very disheartening for a lot of us we just watch the news and and would hang on to anything that they would mention about it it made all of us wonder why it happened to Missy it was just [Music] devastating then a month into the investigation detectives get a tip from an unexpected Source I got a call out of the blue from uh Miss grubo she want to let me know that she recalled a conversation that she had uh with mis
sing [Music] it was so incredibly bizarre and I just thought something is very suspicious here detectives hunting the killer of college student Missy grba have just received a lead that is turned up the heat on a Case going cold the victim's mother recalls a detail from the days just before Miss's death Missy's mom is providing information about how Missy had talked about this guy Louise he was 32y old man who had come over to the apartment and the main thing that Mrs gual remembers is is that h
e talked to her all night long till in the early morning hours but then they got involved in a pillow fight at the time Mrs grba thought little of the playful incident but she suggests maybe Louise could help the in investigation with information about Missy detectives have a different view this is bizarre this is strange a 32-year-old man had a pillow fight with her it caught my attention immediately investigators ask how Missy knew Louise Louise worked with Missy and he lived at the Holly Park
Apartments she had done some babysitting for Louise's baby at the apartment complex detectives first stop the restaurant where Missy and Louise both worked Luis isn't there but the manager tells them Luis is a model employee he was an Army veteran I learned that about him no criminal history matter of fact management gave him an award for a heroic act he actually stopped up robbery the detectives ask workers what they knew about Louis's relationship with Missy co-workers described lisis as a fr
iend sometimes after work they might enjoy a beer together detectives also hear something that catches them offu a work associate relayed to us that Lewis made the comment and these were his words is I hope they catch that son of a [ __ ] that killed and raped Missy the fact that she was sexually assaulted no one should have known that that was never released he might have just been speculating but the fact that it was said really really alarmed me investigators have uncovered yet another suspic
ious coworker in Missy's life one that she saw every day detectives asked the manager for Louis's phone number told him I was investigating the death of Missy gual and that his name had surfaced from her babysitting his son and Lis agreed to come see me he was relaxed he was polite pleasant regular clean-cut [Music] guy he told us that Missy used to Babys said his his son and that they work together so I told Lis what I want to do is exclude all of the known males to Missy so that I could find t
he guilty party and the process in which I do that is I take samples blood hair and saliva compare it to the DNA and exclude them the request instantly changes Louis's mood his response immediately was what what are you talking about wasn't wasn't the evidence all burnt up and I said no it wasn't I've got significant incriminating evidence that was specifically left there by the suspect now his demeanor is changing and you can see the the concern in his face I kind of even broke my own rule a li
ttle bit here because a lot of times I don't like to give guilt knowledge information but the fact that I knew that he had already said something about Missy being sexually assaulted I went ahead and revealed to him whoever killed Missy sexually assaulted her and I've got their SE and Luis immediately says you know I've got to go I I I have to leave and and I have no legal right to keeping regardless of what I believe I just simply asked Lis are you are you going to give me your sample he says I
got to get out of here I got to leave we'll do it [Applause] Monday Monday comes and goes with no sign of Louise but detectives don't let up I call him he calls me back Tuesday we make arrangements for Wednesday come Wednesday he doesn't show up again detective Lenor calls Louise at work but gets some alarming news management had informed us that the woman that he was living with at the time his common-law wife had called and said that he had to leave town I called her I said I hear Louisa's go
ne you and I need to talk Janette has been living with Louise for 2 years the couple moved into the Hol Park apartment 6 months earlier they had been together long enough for them to have a child together she was also pregnant with another child but what's interesting is on the Monday that Lis was going to meet with me which was about 3 days earlier they got married they got legally married well in Texas a wife cannot testify against her husband I mean those are my thoughts that are going on I k
ind of kept that to myself and said okay that's interesting Janette knew Missy as a sweet girl who used to babysit her son and had been shocked to hear about her murder and so I asked if she recalls what occurred on the night of Missy's Murder She said Louis had gotten off work about 10:30 11 and informed her that he was going to have some drinks with some friends then he came in close to midnight and then she heard him leave 2 hours later Janette hears Louise return she hears him come into the
apartment and takes a shower and then leaves again and then she hears him come back again she notices that he's coughing and he smells of smoke his story to her is that he was out jogging and he noticed that there was an apartment on fire and so he went in there and that he saw this individual on a bed and he said it was Missy and he tried to do mouth to mouth he said but he couldn't do it and he was overcome by smoke and that he had to leave and he came back that's it end of story they just go
to bed nobody calls 911 uh nobody does anything they go to sleep I mean the story is so bizarre but she didn't questioning and I don't think she ever really saw it for what it was until she actually sitting down and starts telling me and as she's telling me reality is sitting in as far as what Louis might have done she's pretty much stunned I said I need to go into your apartment I need to get a search warrant investigators descend on Louise and janette's apartment just a few buildings over from
where Missy was killed one of the things that I wanted was his dog tags because he was in the Army I wanted to know what his blood type was and I wanted to know if the blood type from his dog tags matched the blood type from the seon the blood type matches that of Miss's attacker it's the link detectives have been looking for and enough to bring Louise in but first they'll need to find him so I got an arrest warrant for Lise the next day I get a teletype that the vehicle that Lise was in was fo
und abandoned and burned in San Antonio detectives believe they have finally uncovered the man who murdered Missy grubba and set fire to her apartment but Luis Ayo has fled Arling his car found abandoned and set Ablaze in San Antonio we don't know but suspected there was evidence there but the car was pretty much gone I mean it was burned up there's an urgency we need to find this person as soon as possible detective Lenor suspects Louis's wife Janette knows where he's hiding I told her that we
realized you had nothing to do with this crime but you can be a party by covering and by lying I said you realize that when she was murdered she was sexually assaulted and when she heard that you could see it it it upset her it angered her confronted with the full horror of what was done to Missy Janette gives up Louise Janette gave me the address where he was staying in San Antonio San Antonio Police Department went into the home and arrested Luis without incident detectives Lenor and Stanton t
raveled to San Antonio to confront Lis Ayo in person it is the most unique interrogation I've ever seen I mean Louise really had like a mental regression and he actually wound up in a ball on the floor weeping and kind of in a fetal position I don't know what he was doing I just thought he wanted us to have some type of empathy for him when Louise finally tells his side of the story it doesn't add up for detectives he did not admit to sexually assaulting missing rubo he did admit yes I did have
sexual intercourse with her he said we had consensual sex I knew it was her first time and I wanted it to be a very gentle and pleasant experience for her that just sickened me what happened to that young lady was anything but gentle and loving it was brutal faced with Louis's denial detective Lenor changes tactics I said you killed Missy gual all right let's start talking about this he said you know I don't remember I remember getting a knife I think I did stab her detectives are stunned is thi
s the confession they've been waiting for I'm not going to call it a confession because my definition of a confession is someone who says this is what I did and I did everything that you have evidence that they committed Luise gave a state statement with several admissions that included guilt knowledge information Louise did not admit to setting the fire but he recalls that there was a fire set he gave us all of this incriminating information that clearly said it was him they have enough to char
ge Lise but detectives want to make the case against him airtight detective sa and I got an evident search warrant collected his blood and his hair and S a sample he was in fact matched to the DNA from the sexual assault kit with Louis's statements detectives can put together exactly what happened on the night Missy was murdered I believe he went there thinking he could convince her to have intercourse with him his primary focus was to have sex with that young lady maybe initially he thought wou
ld be consentual which it would never happen so now he's mad at her and then he took it to another level physically abused her sexually assaulted her and then he killed her after he killed Missy he needed to destroy evidence and that's when he made his decision to set fire to the apartment Lewis was charged with capital murder once we had a written statement we had the statements from the wife pretty straightforward case as Louise awaits trial detective zero in on two former suspects in the case
Charles Johnson was finally tracked down and he was not even in the area at the time of the murder Jeffrey Smith was arrested and convicted of kidnapping his girlfriend Christen he received a 4-year sentence Louis AR royo's trial lasts only 5 days we got a conviction rather quickly and in Texas once a person is convicted of capital murder with the death penalty wave it's an automatic life sentence although detectives have found their killer the win is Bittersweet he being in prison will never t
ake away the pain the horrific torture that child was put through and him being in prison will never heal the wounds that the family has they never recover you can't bring Missy back you just do what you got to do and and make sure people pay for the crimes they [Music] commit Missy's mother is in a state of permanent grief Missy's death did leave a very large void Missy's life was taken way too soon but it was a beautiful life she was a beautiful soul and she still is for more information on an
unexpected killer go to oxygen.com [Music] a charming and spirited young mother oh she was so vivacious like a little firecracker she was sweet and loving but she just didn't take any crap off anybody is found strangled in her bedroom whoever did this left her there with no chance to survive police face a challenging crime scene there was no forensic evidence whatsoever no fingerprints no eyewitnesses this case was a definite who case and a long list of suspects he had been hanging around her d
esk and he had made some comments that really creeped her out she had had some troubled boyfriends in the past he didn't want to accept the fact that they were done their relationship was over you would think that whoever did it had a score to settle until one big break reveals a culprit that one key piece of evidence was the AHA moment in the cas and it shocks everyone when they finally discovered who it was it was just surreal there's no rhyme there's no reason behind it it was absolutely [Mus
ic] senseless just before 5:00 p.m. on a Monday in March of 1999 in the small bedroom community of Norcross Georgia police raced through the Suburban streets in response to a 911 call the only information that we had at hand initially was there had been a person discovered dead in an apartment it was her fance that had called 911 when we arrived at the scene we spoke with the fiance briefly the man tells detectives the victim is 20-year-old mother of one Danielle Jennings her 2-year-old son is c
urrently at daycare the fiance told us he walked in and found her lying on the bed and he stated that she was cold and blue she was deceased by that point she was face down on the bed and he rolled her over and then called 911 while Danielle's fiance is taken to provide a statement in investigators take a close look at the crime scene when you went back into the bedroom she was on the bed fully clothed laying on her back but you could obviously see its signs of strangulation she had a a ligature
around her neck the ligature appeared to be some type of stocking and it was tied around her neck very very tight it had been tied off to leave it that way it's not like it released which I thought was pretty unusual I mean whoever did this left her there with no chance to survive the lature was knotted in in the back which would tell you that the person was on her back behind her when she was strangled detectives explore the rest of the crime scene looking for Clues the bed was messed up one o
f the dresser drawers was open the stocking that she was strangled with may have been one of hers out of that drawer her purse was dumped out as if somebody had dumped the contents and rummaged through it it could have been a robbery or a burglary just gone wrong however there was other stuff such as cameras miscellaneous jewelry that could have been taken but they were not taken it was possibly a burglary that had been interrupted but you always have to consider the possibility that it could ha
ve been a staged burglary because frankly there really wasn't a lot of disruption next investigators try to determine how the killer entered the apartment there was absolutely no tool marks or anything on the front door and then there was a sliding patio glass door it was locked there was no evidence of tampering with it at all we went around and we searched the outside but we didn't turn up anything of any value before they returned to the station to interview Danielle's fiance detectives fan o
ut to speak with other tenants in the complex most of the people in these complexes work during the day and so most of them are not home we left our business cards with a note asking them to please give us a call as the crime scene investigation continues news of Danielle's violent murder quickly spreads to her family and friends when I found out that Danielle died I said no I said you've got to be kidding me I said this this cannot be real and then I was I just I just I dropped the phone and I
just started [Music] screaming I was just absolutely an utter shock how does one handle the information that your best friend your sister the person person that you basically love more than anybody in this world is gone why would somebody do this to such a loving caring beautiful person born in Columbia South Carolina in 1978 Danielle grew up with her mother and stepfather in Stockton Georgia even in her youth Danielle had a Magnetic Personality she was beautiful uh strong tenacious ferocious sh
e was very fun Danielle was always ready to have a good time to laugh oh she was so vivacious like a little firecracker she was very tiny but she had this big attitude she was sweet and loving but she just didn't take any crap off anybody Danielle showed her resilience when she was left to deal with an unplanned pregnancy alone at the age of 16 there was never a doubt in her mind that she wanted to have that baby she wasn't scared I mean she had brass balls of steel she wasn't going to let her a
ge stand in the way of being a good mother Danielle gave birth to her son Tristan in 1996 she was so proud I could see her little attitude in him the new mother longed for her son to have a father and hoped she had found one when she started dating Louise Pano we grew up with Louis so we go way back with him we met Lewis in our early teen years Danielle was always partial to Lewis and Louis and Danielle were dating and I was so thrilled and the way that Louis would look at Danielle like she woul
d walk into the room and he would just light up soon the couple moved into an apartment together and landed an office job at a landscaping company she was so excited to have like what we titled a big girl job she was very proud of herself we were all very proud of her you know she was going places in December of 1998 Louise asked Danielle to marry him she was so excited and I'm like this is going to be the best marriage ever when Danielle first got her engagement ring it was too big and I said g
irl I said you got to get it sized she's like I don't want to take it off it was beautiful Danielle had everything going for her she had a great career opportunity ahead of her she had a man she was so excited to marry she had a beautiful son that just meant the world to her Danielle was really on top of her game she was probably the happiest I have ever seen her now all Danielle's happiness and hope has been stolen by a coldblooded killer I could not even begin to Fathom why somebody would do t
hat to her back at the crime scene investigators are searching for answers the scene raised several questions of course the most obvious was how did whoever it was get into the apartment cuz there was no sign of forced entry was it someone she knew we know working off the percentage is that the person most likely to kill you is laying next to you in the bed in this case Danielle's fiance Louise coming up detectives unearth dark secrets she had had some troubled boyfriends in the past he was viol
ent he was abusive you could tell when he talked about Danielle that it made him mad he was just very very creepy to me and I know they had tumultuous fights the person that did it could have been amongst us and just as the case threatens to turn cold we felt like we had hit a Brig wall I had a huge fear that whoever it was got away with it a stunning Revelation points to a killer no one suspected the killer was much closer to home than anybody first thought I don't think anybody saw it coming p
olice investigating the murder of 20-year-old mother Danielle Jenning have their first suspect her fiance 25-year-old Luis Pano even though he's her fiance everybody remains a suspect and until such time that we solve the crime investigators question the distraught young man he was very emotional but romance can raise anger to a level sometimes that that leads to homicide detectives begin their interview by asking Louise about Danielle's movements the day of her murder he stated that he had been
at work all day the last time he had seen Danielle was when he left to go to work according to Louise they had both left the apartment at 6:45 a.m. but Danielle went back into the building to get something he tells detectives that Danielle seemed distracted because of an upcoming work meeting she was supposed to be having a meeting with management that day she didn't feel easy about it Louise says Danielle called him at work around 11:30 a.m. she wanted to see if Louis would have lunch with her
but he was tied up at work and he couldn't break free they didn't have lunch and later in the afternoon he couldn't reach her he called her at work and then they told him that she had gone home at lunchtime but she didn't come back from lunch after a couple of hours Louise tells investigators he called Danielle's cell phone and their apartment he stated that you know he was trying to get hold of Danielle and was not getting a response and then he left work and went home to see if she was there
Lise said that when he got home the front door was unlocked and that really Sur surprised him because they were pretty careful about keeping the front door locked detectives asked Louise about his relationship with Danielle we wanted to find out if they had domestic issues he said that it was a very good relationship and they were very much in love with each other to verify his story detectives call Louis's work and Danielle's loved once her family and friends stated that they were just a young
couple that were very much in love and looking forward to getting married and spending their life together she had had some troubled boyfriends in the past but Lewis was on the up and up I mean he was setting up a financially stable life for him and Danielle and Tristan and she loved him so much Danielle's friends are adamant that Louise would never harm her and his Alibi seems solid we were able to confirm that he had been been at work all day through statements of his co-workers as a result he
was eliminated as a suspect now you're on the hunt for other suspects with Louise in the clear detectives asked him if he knew of anyone who may want to harm Danielle he brought up the name of Jeff a coworker of Daniel she had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him at work that uh piqued our interest a little bit we immediately went to Danielle's place of work and we met with her supervisor and discussed what was going on Danielle's supervisor tells detectives about the young mother's
harassment complaint against her coworker he was a middle-aged man he worked at the same Landscape Company he had a different job he was in management Danielle told her manager and supervisor he had been hanging around her desk and he had made some comments that really kind of creeped her out and acting inappropriately at work there was a big age difference between Danielle and Jeff he was 40 she was 20 he had asked her out for lunch and she told him that she had a fiance that she loved and uh h
e had made a comment to her that if he was 20 years younger things would be a lot different Danielle had briefly touched base with me about the situation that she was having at work dude was kind of crushing on her and she was trying to get that you know under control but I said just don't you know don't let it get out of hand she filed the complaint I kind of admired her grit she wasn't going to take it the company was very responsive to her complain they took it seriously they moved quickly de
tectives note the timing when told of the company's response that day that uh Danielle was killed she was supposed to be having a meeting with upper management about the sexual harassment charge once we realized that the meeting had taken place that day that was something that was suspicious talking with the management we found out Danielle was anxious and nervous about the meeting she was a relatively new employee when she made the complaint that was one of the reasons she was so nervous becaus
e his career was in a certain amount of Jeopardy co-workers state that after the meeting Danielle went home for lunch but never returned she didn't come back and we knew that was consistent with the the time of death you had to think where was the coworker at the time detective suspicions increase when they learned that Jeff was out of the office and did not return until late in the day was this too much of a coincidence could he have killed Danielle as revenge for her complaint we definitely wa
nted to speak with him face to [Music] face detectives hunting the killer of Danielle jenix suspect a harassment complaint against her coworker Jeff may have led to ret R alation and murder we were now focused on him as a possible suspect we had to consider the possibility that he followed her home and ambushed her and killed her investigators bring the 40-year-old in for an interview and ask about his interaction with 20-year-old Danielle he admitted to asking her out for lunch but he said othe
r than that he had not done anything he talked about the sexual harassment complaint and pretty typically said you know I didn't think it was that big a deal I I didn't know she was that offended according to police reports Jeff denies any sexual intentions toward Danielle he told police that whatever laps and manners that he had had with Danielle that he liked her he seemed to be genuinely dismayed to find out what had happened Det detectives asked if Danielle's complaint gave him a reason to w
ant to harm her his first reaction was he was angry he was adamant that he was not a suspect and then he said it couldn't have been me because my truck was broken and I was on a job with somebody else with a coworker and I can prove it Jeff provides investigators with the name of the coworker he claims to have been with we immediately ran down his coworker at like 1:00 in the morning this guy verified that he was with him all day till the close of business they were together with his Alibi confi
rmed police eliminate Jeff as a suspect 24 hours after Danielle's murder the enormity of her death is only just starting to hit home for Danielle's loved ones things like that didn't happen where we grew up I could not believe somebody would do that to her it was just the most nightmarish thing I could imagine it made me question God why would you let something that horrible happened to her I didn't want to accept it I couldn't sleep I just kept saying she's dead she's dead Danielle should not b
e dead the f following day investigators received the autopsy report and scour it for anything that might point to Danielle's killer the manner of death was uh asphixiation or strangulation the medical examiner stated that she probably lost Consciousness within about 15 to 20 seconds after the lature was placed around her neck it seemed clear that she had been surprised by her attacker had no time to move had no time to strike back it's almost like it came out of nowhere we knew from the positio
ning of the knot someone had come up behind her with the nylon stocking pulled it tight until she lost Consciousness and then tied it off to kill her she had not been sexually assaulted there weren't any other injuries there weren't any defensive injuries this case was a definite hentic case there was no evidence found at the scene that could help us there was no no forensic evidence whatsoever uh no transfer of skin no fingerprints uh nothing a lab could look at after striking out with the auto
psy investigators revisit the theory that the homicide was a robbery gone wrong we don't live there so we don't know what's supposed to be there and what's not we asked the fiance to go back through the apartment with us and tell us what he sees missing the smallest detail sometimes helps point us into the direction of a suspect but nothing was missing according to the fiance at that point we had absolutely nothing to go on other than the stocking that she was strangled with detectives ask Louis
e if he recognizes the stalking we wanted to know whether it came from her it was a tan knei women's stocking and he said that she never wore anything like that and we didn't find any in the apartment whoever did this brought that with them the homicide was brutal violent and vicious it lent itself to a personal motive you would think that whoever did it and had a score to settle Louise told us she had had some tumultuous relationships in her past so we pursued that angle investigators asked Dan
ielle's friends about her previous relationships when they first started questioning me they were asking me a lot of questions about her boyfriends in the past who I felt might have been able to do it and then it clicked that you know Eddie he was a tow truck driver and he was a big guy and he was just very very creepy to me her best friend told us about her ex-boyfriend he was was violent he was abusive she ended up having to get a restraining order on him with Eddie no one ever really knew whe
n he was going to pop up again that was somebody we needed to look [Music] at 2 days after the murder of 20-year-old Danielle Jennings friends have alerted invest tigators to Eddie maany an ex-boyfriend with a violent history we learned a lot about her former boyfriend we learned that she had begun to see him when she was a teenager when she was younger friends reveal Danielle started dating Eddie shortly after she became pregnant from another relationship but Eddie's Behavior soon raised red fl
ags as they got more serious he became more possessive and controlling and he definitely wanted to start isolating her from her friends and family more I didn't want to be around him I did not like the way he made me feel I didn't like the way he looked at Danielle I mean it was he would sometimes look at her with he looked at her with disgust and I know they had tumultuous fights we learned it had been a an abusive relationship physical and emotional I mean she would stand up to any anybody but
as tough and as a badass as she was I think she was a little bit afraid of him things only got worse with Eddie when Danielle gave birth to her child her family and friends stated that shortly after her son was born and Eddie was getting involved in drugs and that was finally the straw that brought the camels back and she ended the relationship with that Danielle moved out and tried to start fresh but Eddie had other plans she knew it was going to be difficult but she didn't realize that Eddie
was not going to leave Danielle in peace he didn't want to accept the fact that they were done their relationship was over she never knew when he would turn up around the corner when she just wanted to be left alone she had gotten a restraining order against Eddie because he had been stalking her he had been driving back and forth in front of her house he had gone to her work and she was in fear that she was in danger we found out that he had violated the restraining order several times he would
call her leave voicemails for her he would drive by our house several times a day or night when police asked when Eddie last contacted Danielle the answer is troubling Danielle's family had told us that within the last few months he had been calling her trying to get her to talk to to him but she would just hang up on him could Eddie have shown up at Danielle's apartment the day she was killed leading to a deadly confrontation I've seen a lot of domestic abuse cases so I knew that there was a p
ossibility that with his past that he could have done something like that investigators track down Eddie and bring him in for questioning in the interview with Eddie he was kind of belligerent and un happy to be there and a little bit hostile you could tell when he talked about Danielle that it made him mad what we saw with Eddie certainly had all the ear marks of a domestic violence case when questioned about his relationship with Danielle Eddie's responses raised detective suspicions even more
when he was asked about the relationship his version was a little bit different he never mentioned any abuse he thought everything was great we asked him when was the last time that he had had any contact with Danielle and he said that he had not talk to her for at least a year or longer we know that he's lying about that from speaking with Danielle's family and friends we knew in the last several months he had been calling her at that point he's looking pretty good so you have to determine whe
re he was at the time of the crime Eddie tells detectives that he was working many miles away from where Danielle was killed he said that on his job as a tow truck driver that he had to go out of state investigators immediately look into Eddie's Alibi his boss verified that he was out of state and he was able to produce hotel receipts gas receipts that showed that he was actually out of state at the time of the crime whenever he responded to a legitimate call he had to log it and this whereabout
s could be verified throughout the day that is is a pretty tight Alibi so he was eliminated as a suspect it's another dead end for detectives once again we're knocked for a loop and we're back to ground zero and he moves down the line and we're looking for somebody else it was infuriating it was frustrating I had a huge fear that whoever it was got away with it because people get away with murder every day I was really hoping that the detectives would find something because you're sitting here t
rying to point a finger at somebody that you don't know who there was this air of suspense around everything because we didn't know at that time who had killed Danielle the person that did it could have been amongst us we had basically eliminated everybody who was close to the victim when you get to that point in an investigation you don't have anywhere else to logically follow up with no more leads the investigation is at a standstill we felt like we had hit a brick wall and then we got a call
that changed [Music] everything 3 days after finding Danielle Jennings strangled in her apartment bedroom police hunting her killer have just got a stunning new lead we received a phone call from a Miss Kirk that that resided at the apartment complex the woman tells detectives about a disturbing incident that took place a week before Danielle was killed she was awakened one morning by someone knocking at the door and she looked out the peephole but didn't see anybody there so she went back to be
d and a few minutes later she hears the front door open and the maintenance man is standing there the maintenance man says that he's there for a work order however Miss Kirk said she felt very uncomfortable the entire time that he was in there because he was always staring at her feel like he was more preoccupied with her than he was completing the work order the woman cannot provide the name of the maintenance man but she gives a description to police detectives head back to Danielle's apartmen
t complex to investigate while speaking with the management at the complex we found that there was another case similar in the past from a Miss Bruno that lived in the apartment complex management told the detectives that someone had walked into This Woman's apartment she had of course asked him who the heck he was what are you doing in my apartment and he said maintenance and claimed that he was there to change light bulbs and she said I don't have any light bulbs to change he kind of mumbled a
nd stumbled and then you know maybe I have the wrong apartment and he backed out and left it was so similar to the other one which of course raises our eyebrows the complex was big enough so that there were several maintenance workers but only one closely fit the description given by the young ladies that would be Kelvin Oliver we showed a photograph of Mr Oliver to miss Bruno and Miss Kurt and both of them identified him as the person that had walked down on them investigators discover a distur
bing Trend emerged after Calvin had been hired 7 months ago come to find out there had been several burglaries reported where items had been stolen out of apartments that had no forced entry could Calvin have been responsible for these thefts we learned that he had an apartment in the complex the fact that he lives there makes it so accessible that he could walk around not be suspicious we also learned that the custodians had access to the master keys of every apartment he has complete access de
tective search for any link between Danielle and Calvin we found out that he had done a work order in her apartment a couple of weeks prior to the murder that is somebody that you really want to look at it went back to our original theory of if this was a burglary then it had been interrupted he could have known that Danielle Jennings was gone during in the daytime and he decided that day that he was going to enter that apartment investigators haul Calvin Oliver in for an interview but make the
call to slow playay their suspicions when Oliver was brought in for questioning we didn't want to tip him off to anything about the homicide so he was interviewed initially about the burglaries he absolutely denied any of that he he said I didn't steal anything I didn't going to Apartments he denied any involvement in any burglaries the 42-year-old tells detectives that his intrusion on the two women in the complex was a simple misunderstanding once we got around interviewing him about the murde
r the first question was did you hear about this it was kind of odd you would have thought that a person who worked in that apartment complex that was there every day would have heard everything about it he went yeah I think I heard something about it uh you know I don't know much about it I don't know that woman he insisted he knew nothing about as he described her that dead girl all he admitted to knowing her was that he had done the work order in her apartment at that point we had a pattern o
f conduct uh going into Apartments we had the admission that he had been in the apartment but we had nothing that directly linked him to the murder with nothing concrete on Calvin detectives and the interview but before they let him walk free police run a background check and are shocked by what they find he had a criminal history of burglary and theft there was an outstanding warrant on him for failure to appear on a burglary charge in another jurisdiction that day that Daniel was killed if he'
s in there and she walks in on him that would be a reason for him to cause her harm because he doesn't want to go back to prison he had an outstanding warrant so he was held for that and that bought them enough time while they investigated based on the burglaries that had occurred in the complex we obtained a search warrant for his apartment we're trying to see if we can find anything that would tie him to Danielle Jennings we're looking for any type of the stockings or panty hose or anything it
would be similar to the one that we found tied around her neck detectives find no matching stalking but they do discover incriminating evidence we do find evidence of the other burglaries that have been committed in the complex and then we also found out that he had possession of a master key for the apartment complex so that he could open any door on any building at any time and he was not supposed to be in position of that key it's only enough evidence to allow investigators to charge Calvin
with burglary we concluded that search with those items but nothing was found relevant to the murder you really don't have anywhere else to go at that point we don't have a stocking we don't have anything that ties him to Danielle or her apartment at all that's where we were until called out of the blue he said do you have the engagement ring we told him no we don't have a ring we didn't know one was missing and then he describes the ring and then the big bright light goes [Music] off when we we
re doing the search on Oliver's apartment we noticed a ring on a dresser in his bedroom but the ring didn't match any of the items stolen so we really didn't have a reason to seize it at that time we do another search warrant go back into the apartment we seize that ring we show it to the fiance he can't positively identify the ring but he says her best friend will definitely be able to identify it if we were able to identify that as being Danielle's ring that would physically tie Oliver to Dani
elle and her apartment on the day that she was murdered with the entire investigation on the line detectives race to the home of Danielle's best friend is that ring the engagement ring this is something we got to [Music] know investigators believe the key to solving the murder of Danielle Jennings is her missing engagement ring if we had that ring then we had the killer detectives have seized a ring from suspect Calvin Oliver's apartment but is it Danielle's engagement ring they hope her best fr
iend can answer that question the detective and LS were there and uh I said well what's going on and the detective looked at me and he said lesle he said do you know what Danielle's engagement ring looked like and I said yes sir I do the detective said is there any defining characteristics to this ring he goes and I need you to be specific and I said yes sir I said it was bent she had bent the band so it stayed snug on her finger because she wouldn't take the dang thing to get sized we needed to
find out when was the last time she had seen her wearing the ring I said I saw Danielle the Sunday before she was killed and she had a ring on on Sunday night and he takes the evidence bag out and he says is this her ring and the minute I saw it I knew it was hers when we had that ring and had it identified as being hers we knew that we had the guy we knew we had the right person finding the ring was the aha moment in the case and that was the piece of evidence that allowed us to charge Calvin
ol with Burner 9 days after her death Calvin Oliver is arrested for the murder of Danielle Jenning the primary charge was malice murder and that means that you intentionally and unlawfully kill another human being detectives once again interview Calvin this time taking a different approach why don't you have a suspect under arrest for the charge that you're interviewing him about then the interview becomes very direct he was given a chance again to tell the story um where he denied any involveme
nt in the murder and then he was confronted with the evidence that we had we told him about the ring and that's when he said well I stole that ring 2 weeks ago when I did the work order in her apartment but see we knew that was a lie because we had people that had seen her wearing the ring so we knew that he was lying about that Calvin refuses to answer any more questions we told him that he was being charged with malice murder because you took the panty hose with you into the apartment because
you had intent to harm someone and he said there was no intent there which was a good comment to have in a statement it's like he admitted to killing her without knowing that he had admitted to it we were convinced 100% that we had our guy this is the guy that was responsible for the death of Danielle Jennings and that we were going to send him to prison for the rest of his life news of an arrest and Danielle's murder brings relief to her loved ones and surprise when they finally discovered who
it was the maintenance man in her apartment building it was just surreal I don't think anybody saw it coming the killer was much closer to home than anybody first thought when I saw his picture I just I threw up knowing that that was the man that strangled my best friend for no reason at trial prosecutors present how they believe the crime unfolded the day Danielle was killed Mr Oliver had already let him self in hoping for financial gain after the HR meeting about her coworker Danielle went hom
e for lunch by herself once she opened the door and stepped in he knew she was there and he knew she could not exit again he was not going to get caught he ambushed her from behind with the stocking he came over her head he pulled it tight pushed down onto the bed until she lost Consciousness and then he tied the ligature off and there was no way for her to escape there was no Heat of the Moment there was no emotion he killed Danielle because it made his life easier the jury hears about the pros
ecution's most damning evidence Danielle stole an engagement ring I had to be the one to test ify about the ring because I identified the ring I actually had to look at that man I had to sit there and look at him Calvin Oliver sat there just staring daggers into me is what he did and tried everything he could to make me feel uncomfortable and I took a big deep breath and uh I stared right back at him there was no explanation for the presence of this ring in kelvin Oliver's apartment other than h
e took it off Daniel Jennings dead finger on October 13th 2000 after a 5-day trial the jury delivers their verdict he was found guilty on all charges the judge sentences Calvin Oliver to life in prison when the verdict came through we were all holding hands we just knew Justice had been served as far as it could be I mean we were glad dad but it still wasn't going to bring her back her mom was never the same again it destroyed her that horrible man took away an angel that was put here she was a
huge light to me to her fiance to her son she was everything to a lot of people I still to this day I still dream of her there's not a day that goes by that I don't miss [Music] her a good-natured funloving man he was just a wonderful person he was so funny and so Charming enjoying his retirement years at that point in his life he was very content very close his family his nieces nephews is brutally gunned down a month before his wedding it was Point Blank assassination there's a big puddle of b
lood oh my God investigators pieced together a series of Clues we had to look at what role that upcoming wedding had and what happened they had their arguments they had their differences was the scene stage to cover up an intentional pilling the investigation kept hitting dead end after dead end and chased down multiple suspects it was but who done it we were hoping for that break to come revealing a plot fueled by greed he was somebody who had had a criminal history of theft and assault just wh
en police are close to making an arrest it was like he just got smacked in the head with a baseball back they uncover damning evidence pointing to a surprising suspect you never expect anything like this and then all of a sudden the kill was right in front of us on a warm July afternoon in 2014 the Sleepy Pittsburgh suburb of Kennedy Township is rocked by a panicked call to 911 what's going on I just come home from work and my husband he's been on the ground he's he he's dead there's a big puddl
e of blood police fire and ambulance are coming okay please help me oh my God [Music] why the woman who made the 911 call Carol laaya says the victim is her soon to be husband 59-year-old Jack parks when I arrived on scene the first thing I noticed is that the victim's head was covered in blood it was on closer examination that you could see it was a gunshot wound One Challenge we had right out of the gate was that there was no casing or gun found we don't move his body until it can be photograp
hed it was possible there was a gun underneath him that no one had seen so we weren't 100% sure if the gunshot wound at that point had been self-inflicted or homicide we looked for a while unfortunately we didn't find any type of gun detectives searched for any signs of what happened to Jack and who pulled the trigger it was pretty clear right off the bat that this was some type of a home invasion or robbery that occurred it didn't look like a struggle had ensued in the room but once you walked
through the victim's house the further you got into it the more you realized the level of disarray it was in and as you went into the dining room you started to see jewelry box here a drawer gone through here papers rifled through upstairs there was just complete disarray the drawers were all pulled out the clothing that was inside the drawers was strewn everywhere jewelry boxes flipped open empty watch boxes laying there we were trying to determine was the scene stage with someone just trying t
o make it look like a robbery or a burglary and when in fact they're just trying to cover up an intentional peeing where they intended just to walk in and execute somebody the house was dusted and and processed for DNA and fingerprints we then began to process the outside of the resident looking for any type of force entry and none of that was fine our first thoughts were the victim either knew the actor or was familiar with them that's just our first impression to you know who was friends with
the victim who would have access to the victim who would had opportunity to the victim and who would he trust it really was a shocking case he was killed execution style this homicide happened in an area that we don't normally have murders Jack's death is the first homicide in Kennedy Township in 10 years the news stuns his family and friends when I got that phone call and I heard Carol's voice I knew something was wrong and she said Jack's [Music] gone I said what do you mean gone she said he's
dead and then she said he was murdered and I just went in the shock Jack Parks was born the second of five kids in Pittsburgh in 1955 friends and family were everything to him jack always made friends he was one of the best people I've ever known he would do anything for anybody we first met in first grade we hit it off all through high school and after that it was it was a good ride Jack was so well like he could be Charming when he wanted to and funny he was just a wonderful person in 1989 a
chance encounter changed Jack's life Jack met Carol at the local bar and I guess they hit it off they were two PS in a part soon he brought Carol we fell in love with Carol Jack was very close to his family he had about nine nieces and nephews Jack and Carol used to have their nieces and nephews over for sleepovers making the popcorn and just having a good time you just swore that Jack and Carol were the parents they didn't have kids so when those kids were around they were their kids Jack had r
ecently retired but had big plans for the future at that point in his life Jack was very content him and Carol were to get married they've been together for over 25 years Carol in the beginning really wanted to get married and Jack didn't and then at one point Jack wanted to get married and Carol didn't and I used to tell Jack you know what I like to be living when you get married when you say I do and and then when they set the date I was so happy it was going to be an exciting very exciting da
y tragically Jack was murdered a month before the ceremony was to take place her and Jack were going to be married on August 31st of that year and it just it was really sad it was so close at 5:00 p.m. on July 21st 2 hours after Carol found Jack dead police questioned her at the station talking to Carol was so important because first of all we had to determine whether she was or wasn't involved and we wanted to just get the best timeline from her during the interview with Carol she explained tha
t she had left for work as usual her normal time about 5:40 she starts work at 6:00 everything was fine when she left for work it wasn't until a realer called her about a potential buyer for Jack's late mother's home and when the realtor couldn't get a hold of Jack Carol started to worry she tried to call Jack and there was no answer so then she got concerned he always called her back every time that she tried to get a hold of them so I think it was approximately about 2:00 she left work and the
n come over and find Jack of course detectives know that spouses are always the first suspect and must determine if they can trust Carol's version of events we have a timeline between 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. when she returns home in some cases you know if a person is a cold blooded killer they may have killed him before she left the house and then all of a sudden she finds them and you know the Killer's right in front of us her demeanor she was very upset but you can't take a chance by skipping t
he stone and not trying to look at her detectives are suspicious of why it took the couple so long to decide to get married and if someone had cold feet something that we thought is or either one of them having affairs with someone else could that be a possible motivation and is this upcoming wedding triggering that coming up detectives uncover a Family Feud they just decided to distance themselves from not let him come to the house and learn Jacks Inner Circle isn't as loving and devoted as it
first seems things got more contentious as police keep digging more suspects service we learned of several burglar raiser they had concerns about the employees they hire criminals just when the investigation is about to hit another dead end we had no idea who would have done this detectives make a crucial discovery it was exactly what we needed when we got the phone record back it was oh my God that was an aha [Music] moment Kennedy Township police are investigating the area's first homicide in
a decade 59-year-old Jack Parks was found dead in his home by his fiance Carol and what appears to be a robbery but since there was no forced entry investigators tried to determine if this was actually a staged attack and if the motive was something more personal when we interviewed Carol we had to look at what role if any that upcoming wedding had in what happened we had to start looking at every aspect of their lifestyle what were the family Dynamics we had to chip away a number of things in t
heir life things that happen that day but also things that might have happened in the past that could be a motivation for this murder they had their differences they'd have their arguments but it wasn't my point to get involved in their squabbles we kept talking more and more about any kind of problems that they had had in their home and I asked her do either of them have a gun and she said that they did not Carol says she would never do anything to to hurt the love of her life she wanted to mar
ry him Jack was her soulmate Jack and Carol they loved each other they felt they were already married to everybody they were husband and wife years before you know the wedding was planned Carol was very upset it was very difficult to talk to her while she processed that emotion but then to still get the information we needed to keep moving the investigation forward to me that was a sign that she wasn't involved with suspicion shifting from Carol for now investigators explore whether theft was th
e main motive the bedroom was ransacked the mattress was Disturbed things were emptied out of drawers Carol had indicated to me some items that should be there their wedding rings that they had bought Jack collected some coins he had some expensive watches she indicated that the watches should be in the boxes when we first processed the areas of disarray none of those items were there that was our first big clue to go off of I knew that if we could find that jewelry we could find who was involve
d we didn't know if the person who took it might have given it to someone else but we had to start with where is it who has it and how did they get it the next morning the autopsy report comes in he was taken out with one shot and to the right side of his head it took it to a level where you know that is someone who probably came there with the intent to either use that weapon to intimidate or control Jack there was a projectile that was recovered from his skull and we were able to determine tha
t we were looking for this 380 so that was a good start for us now we knew what kind of gun we were looking for during the victim's autopsy you could see that there were no wounds on his hands at all there were no scratches there were no broken fingernails nothing did seem to indicate that he had had a chance to fight back he had been caught completely off guard during Carol's interview she indicated to police that Jack's nephew Bradley Johnson is someone they should look into Bradley was living
across the street with his mother and father across the street from Jack and he was always over there and from what I understand he was one of the last on to see Jack alive we made contact with Bradley and Bradley had pulled us that he had gone over the Jack house on the 21th and he said he got there around 10:30 in the morning detectives find that timing suspicious They Know Jack was killed sometime between 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. that day I asked him I said Bradley what did you go over there
to talk to him about and he said well Jack's mother had passed away and he knew that Jack was looking to sell the home but Bradley wanted to negotiate a deal with Jack and he wanted to talk to Jack alone because he said you know I just I don't want Carol weighing in on this I want this to be a Parks Family Matter and I want to discuss it with him in his words I didn't want her putting her two cents in and that was a phrase that seemed to hint at some kind of anim Bradley tells investigators that
he finds Carol too controlling and that she shouldn't have a say in this family decision Jack wanted to wait until he could talk with Carol about it which sort of defeated the purpose of why Bradley had gone there when she wasn't home so he said he ended up leaving and they were going to revisit the conversation later as investigators press him further Bradley reveals an alarming fact we did ask him about any firearms that he owned and when Bradley told us he owned a 380 caliber pistol it kind
of was like okay this may be something maybe something broke bad cuz now we know Carol leaves for work at 6:00 a.m. and Jack's alive at 10:30 because Brad's telling us he's over there he indicated he had left about 11:15 with Bradley's timeline it definitely seemed that Bradley was very close in time to when Jack would have been killed and he put himself there he had the same type of gun had the discussion about Jack's mother's house turned fatal with the timing of Bradley's conversation with Ja
ck it made me wonder whether things got more contentious than he was alluding to in my interview with him or did he leave there upset or did somebody else come back and do something to jack it had to be looked [Music] into 12 hours after Jack Parks was found dead investigators chased down leads around their latest Person of Interest Jack's nephew Bradley Johnson when I found out that Bradley was a suspect I was mad I was really upset knowing that they thought that but then again when it comes in
an investigation police are doing their job Bradley and Jack had a disagreement and he admits to owning the same caliber gun so that definitely stepped up our interest in Bradley this is a gun that we needed to take a look at Bradley's gun was collected taken to the lab where it was test fired the ballistics on the gun did not mat the projectile that was recovered from yeah or the autopsy with nothing concrete linking Bradley to the murder he is dropped as a suspect detectives also cerate Carol
's Alibi on the day that this happened we were able to verify that she was at work and she was accounted for at that time we were able to eliminate Carol as a suspect looking for New Leads detectives speak to the other nieces and nephews who were close to Jack during our interview of Carol she had P us about her nephew Michael Lea who was almost like a son to her and he had been at the house a lot they got along good Michael joined the military Jack was very proud of Michael Jack took pride in t
he nieces and nephews because he watched them grow up Michael was brought in to the homicide office and interviewed about Jack's murder and during that interview Michael had said that he was unemployed he was trying to seek help through the VA Hospital due to his PTSD from being in the Army Michael had been discharged from the military due to his use of uh cannabis Michael also admits he' fallen out with the family including his aunt and uncle and hadn't seen them in a year he specifically denie
d being over near the victim's house and he made reference to them being estang Michael had a bit of a drug problem and Carol and Jack decided to distance eles from Michael and not let him come to the house detectives still need to know where Michael was when Jack was killed we knew Carol left around 6:00 a.m. we knew that Bradley was there about 10:30 we knew Carol will find him around 3:00 so there's a window of opportunity of about 4 hours he told us he was at home in Sharpsburg on the day of
the incident July 21st first 20 minutes away from Jack house he said that his girlfriend had kind of unexpectedly taken the day off and they spent the day together nothing out of the ordinary he gave us some landmarks on our timeline that we could check out Michael and his girlfriend Melanie had gone and done some shopping in the town that they lived in he said that he had had a doctor's appointment at the VA hospital later that afternoon these were things at businesses and locations that we co
uld check from doing surveillance video or getting sales transactions Michael's girlfriend Melanie did corroborate his activities and she stated they had spent the day together it was determined that as Albi had checked that a day into the investigation with Jack's closest Circle cleared investigators escalate the search for the missing jewelry we were physically going to many pawn shops to try to see if anybody had sold this jewelry we didn't get any traction with that that's when we started do
ing a canvas of the neighborhood when we were doing our neighborhood canvas so many people had mentioned near their house there's a meat factory and they had concerns about the employees we had heard things like they hire people with records they hire criminals from talking to Carol she said they have a straight view into Carol and Jack's home and Jack had mentioned sometimes he would let people use his phone or use the bathroom when they were on their break and it upset her in a case like this
you may see hey look at this guy he got some gold on it's a crime of opportunity we knew that they got their morning break right around the time when people stopped hearing from Jack so we definitely wanted to look into that and see what the consensus was over there I think we did like almost 40 interviews of all the employees to see who they were one worker in particular Peaks police interest Ronald Levens was a name that came up from multiple employees in the context of people who had gone ove
r to Jack this may be the person that Carol was aware that had come over there Ronald glev was somebody who had had a criminal history of petty theft and assault so he was on our radar for sure investigators work quickly to bring Ronald in for an interview Ronald indicated that he had known Jack and they were actually friendly and that's why he was allowed to come into the house when Carol wasn't home Carol said she would get upset with Jack she would say Jack don't just let anyone in our house
you can't do that and he would just you know kind of shrug it off but she just didn't want people coming into the house that she didn't know investigators ask Ronald Point Blank if he had anything to to do with Jack's murder he said he had no involvement in Jack's death the day that Jack was killed Ronald didn't come to work he had actually taken scheduled vacation for Friday and Monday Ronald Levin's Alibi checked out and we were able to eliminate him as a suspect in this case desperate for a n
ew lead investigators look for similarities with other robberies in the area after Jack's murder we talked to the local authorities and during that we learned of several burglaries one of which an older lady was burglarized about $55,000 worth of quarters were taken Jack's killer had stolen his coins as well as jewelry is this the same person and could they strike again the neighbors were very afraid we still have a killer out there it was a who done it once something like this happened you thin
k that anything's possible now [Music] police investigating the coldblooded shooting of Jack Parks suspect his murder could be linked to another recent robbery in the neighborhood we learned that during that burglary there were some items similar to what Jack had that were taken and it was a burglary that happened during the day which is the timeline we were looking at in this particular incident often times in our investig ations we see that residential burglaries are done during the day in bed
room communities where the chance of the people inside the home being at work are better and that way they can go in and they can take what they need without fear of being caught with Jack being retired and home all day had he caught the burglar red-handed and paid the ultimate price the neighboring Police Department already has a suspect in custody Vernon zalinsky was identified as a possible suspect in this case he had been recently arrested the items that Vernon was accused of taking were coi
ns while Jack had coins that were missing so Vernon zinsky was tracked down and he was interviewed we really just wanted to do an interview and determine what connection if any he had to Jack during the interview he said that he had been arrested for the burglary but that burglary was at an old employer's house he denied knowing Jack and he said that the day that this happened he was actually at work we confirmed that through his new employer that he was working that day during the time frame th
at this would have occurred Vernon was somebody we were absolutely able to rule out of being directly involved at that stage of the investigation we had no idea who might have done this and why 48 hours after Jack's murder with no arrests in the case fear is growing in Kennedy Township everyone was concerned that how in broad daylight can someone walk into a house kill somebody and walk out without even being seen the hardest thing to comprehend was the murder it was Point Blank assassination St
one Cold killing you never expect anything like this I know I didn't waiting for an arrest you're still in that days of trying to process it all he's not coming back it's just too unbelievable is this going to be another murder unsolved we had a lot of information to go on and we were constantly moving the in investigation forward people were being eliminated further suspects were being developed 3 days after Jack was discovered dead police get a major break a local pawn shop in Sharpsburg PA wh
ich is another small little burrow within alag County the owner had called uh the local police due to some suspicious activity on the day of the incident July 21st he said a gentleman came in with a cache of gold and was trying to sell it to him what the employee found to be concerning was first of all the jewelry was manipulated it was very distinguishable pieces but they had been it seemed to be hammered or just manipulated in a way that would make them hard for law enforcement to identify it
threw up a red flag to him but also he seemed to think that this was a person who had sold him stolen jewelry in the past so he didn't buy the jewelry but he also had the foresight to know he wanted to see where this jewelry might have come from he knew it was important to get a picture of it so he took a photograph of the items that this person was trying to sell he provided us with the photographs and they were taken to Carol who viewed them she became very upset she started crying and she sai
d that's our jewelry it felt like we were closing in then based upon the photograph of the jewelry we were able to get that out to the local department they could share it with the pawn shop owners and town if anyone comes in with them investigators hope they can identify the seller the pawn shop owner was able to give a good description of the person who brought the jewelry in a younger white male black hair and thin bu that description was provided to the local police chief in fburg and he tho
ught that fit the description of a white male from that area it gave us a very good lead in this game a photo array was put together who include eight individual photographs and they were shown to the shop owner we have a set of instructions that we give them and we say the person that we're looking for may or may not be in here but if you see the person indicated on the lineup so once he reviewed the photo array he did identify who that person was It was a huge break it was exactly what we need
ed coming up police find stunning evidence pointing to Jack's killer in the video we knew exactly who it was this was a shock to everyone you never thought that would happen it would be that person but making an arrest wouldn't be easy she provided Lys for him and just denials until investigators find proof no one can deny those records don't [Music] Li detectives have just identified the man who tried to pawn murder victim Jack Park's jewelry his name Brian gibons he's been a known Thief to the
local police department we went out to that lead strong we were feeling pretty confident that Mr given may be our man or at least know who our man was we were very excited and very motivated to go find him Brian has a long history of petty crimes but investigators need to determine if he's a killer 4 days after the murder they get a warrant to search his home specifically we were looking for any of the very distinguishing items that Jack Parks had unfortunately we didn't find any of the victim'
s jewelry in the house but we did find some items that did turn out to be stolen from some someone else based upon the search at Mr gibbons's residence we were able to arrest him and have him sent to the County jaill investigators questioned Brian about Jack's missing jewelry he said that he didn't have anything to do with it at that point we were trying to determine if perhaps he'd been given some jewelry to sell that maybe he didn't know its origin and he went to go sell it we really just want
ed to see if we could come up with any connection to rule him either in or out on the homicide of Jack Parks Brian tells detectives he doesn't know the victim and has never been to his home he said he had no connection to Jack at all he denied having any knowledge of the Jack parks's homicide we ask well what's your Alibi and he goes I was arrested for entering an abandoned house that day and that was confirmed Brian was not the killer he had a saw it Albi it was clear that he was not the same i
ndividual who had come in to the store on that Monday that tried to sell the jewelry the pawn shop owner mistakenly identified the wrong person the investigation kept hitting dead end after dead in we thought we had it but then once we eliminated them we took a pause we had to step back a minute not start all over but then keep everything else in perspective while detectives hunt for New Leads Jack's loved one struggle with their grief instead of looking forward to Jack's wedding 5 days after hi
s murder they attend his funeral when he told me he was going to get married his brother and I would have stood up for him I was proud cuz I was never a best man then there I was carrying his casket God to have something like that happen in such a quick time it's devastating to everybody you feel the hurt but it really doesn't sink in until the funeral is all over and then the shock is over it's reality he's gone fearing the case could go cold a week after the murder police step up the hunt for
Jack's stolen jewelry hoping the culprit is still attempting to sell it at a pawn shop we all just sort of fanned out and we took particular geographical areas we knew there was still a person that was out there trying to sell Jack's Jewelry and we had to just keep holding out hope that the pawn shop would take their identification that they would keep Good Records that's what kept us going honestly there is a a detective in the city of Pittsburgh who is a pawn shop records analyst and I reached
out to her and I told her what items that we had missing and on August 4th I heard back from her and she told me that she had found the jewelry where it had been sold investigators RAC to the pawn shop we had to go take a physical look at it see who if anybody was on camera some policies all they have to do is take an individual's driver's license number they don't even have to make a photo copy of it so we were trying to remain optimistic that somehow we would get an image of the actual person
who tried to sell that jewelry it could have been anyone at that point the pawn shop has surveillance video and what detectives see on tape is jaw-dropping it was oh my God we knew exactly who it was in the video it was Michael laaya which was Carol's nephew that Jack raised like one of his own this was a shock to everyone when we first had dealings with Michael early on in the investigation he did provide an alibi about businesses he was at doctor's appointments Michael had his girlfriend Mela
nie saying that he was with her during the time that Jack would over could have been killed so it was kind of going back trying to rephrase what he had initially told us we still had to do a little bit more digging we had to work on if we were missing something early on when we talked to Michael he had given detectives his phone number I wanted to get his phone records while investigators wait for those records They call Michael back in we are going to interview him and uh see what he has to say
now that we have him mon pawning Uncle H we decided that it would probably be ideal to bring Michael and his girlfriend Melanie in at the same times being that she was the person who was providing an alibi for him and chip away at that and see where the truth lied we took them both back to our office and they were interviewed in separate rooms Michael in his interview was initially very adamant that he had nothing to do with this he denied involv with the murder involvement with the jewelry and
he just would not deviate from that Melanie stands by her story too she provided eliis for him and just denials Melanie is Pretty much telling us that he was with her during the time that Jack would have or could have been killed she was just defensive and trying to argue with what we knew was not true and that was the he had sold Jack's Jewelry we showed her a picture of the jewelry and she tried to say it was hers and we knew that was a lie with neither Michael Nor Melanie cracking under the
pressure detectives need something to break the deadlock when we got the information about the cell phone records it was a huge break we were very happy that it finally had come through it was like everything came full [Music] circle two weeks after Jack Parks was shot to death in his own home investigators get the break in the case they needed incriminating cell phone GPS data when I got Michael's phone records I started to see where generally he spent most of his time which was consistent with
his home he told us he was in starburg 20 minutes away from jackon on the day of the incident parts of his Alibi checked out cell phone data wise but there was an anomaly where about 11:45 his cell phone pinged over in the area of Jack and Carol's house to me the significance of 11:45 was it is in this time where Carol can't reach Jack it would be impossible to be in Sharpsburg in your phone ping off a tower in in Kennedy Township the amount of distance between the two it wouldn't be possible h
e was not at home he was over near his uncle's house so 11:45 Michael's phone being over there was an aha moment those records don't lie detectives want to see how Michael will react when confronted with his own cell phone records it was like it just got smacked in the head with a baseball bat he became very quiet took a second and he just let it all out I was suffering from PTSD and the morning of July 21st I asked Mel to take a ride with me she just drove down with me and I parked her car I to
ld her to wait she never got out the car she had no clue where we were going Michael's explanation of why he went to see Jack only raises more suspicion but here goes accused of stealing jewelry and I wanted to make amends I wanted to fix it I knocked on a door to apologize and talk at that time became hostile and he choked me and swung at me his story changed to self-defense he had two hands around my neck and at that time I I felt my life was threatened and I had a pistol 380 on me it went off
reconciling that just wasn't possible Jack was shot one time right close to his ear basically someone held a gun to his head and executed him he fell to the floor and I panicked friend grabbed jewelry and I left Michael tells detectives he sold the jewelry for $1,000 even more shocking is what he spent the money on you stated that that's one of the people you sometimes purchase narcotics from yes and gave him about $6 or700 in addition to that several days later what did he give you he gave me
heroin Michael was following a path of substance abuse that was getting to be more addictive drugs and his use was increasing it wasn't recreational anymore it was more the behavior of an addict it was heartbreaking for us to know that someone who was was almost like Jack's son very close family member would do something like that in exchange for a couple dos to get high I believe Michael went to that house to take jewelry he knew Jack was there and the only way he was going to get that jewelry
is if Jack was dead he walked up to the house and as soon as Jack met him at the door and turned his back to him he shot him and he fell and he died instantly on August 5th 2014 Michael laaya is charged with first-degree murder to say to Carol we know who did this it was hard but the hardest answer that we had for her is when she said Michael who and he had the same last name as her really it was hard to tell her that it's your nephew and it just hit her and she was very upset you never thought
that would happen it would be that person it's still to this day so hard to believe that somebody that they loved Michael could have done something like this I mean what he did I Can't Describe there's no words at trial Michael is found guilty on December 9th 2015 the 24-year-old is sentenced to life in prison he took a loving caring man and just executed him there was no winners we lost Jack who won nobody I would never forgive him Michael took away my best friend my brother he took away a lot
from me to this day I still hate the guy Jack will never be forgotten in the beginning It's hard talking about a loved one without really breaking down crying but you continue to talk about them you keep their memory alive and that's how he stays with us every day he's a hearer in my mind my heart and my dreams I I see his face always smiling I know he's flying with the [Music] angels a dedicated family man he was the best grandpa I could ever asked for for my kids he loved his family he was alw
ays there for everyone and a pillar of the community he helped a lot of the people who were down on their Lu he was changing everyone's life is senselessly murdered we noticed what looked like burn marks is this a torture type crime was he actually tortured detectives follow a trail of evidence I noticed my dad's truck was is going we knew that this truck was a key to solving this homicide that reveals devastating betrayals party would employ people from drug rehab centers you look at him and yo
u're thinking that if anybody could do it this guy could do it then a surprise lead reveals a killer no one imagined I've told you guys everything I know no you haven't we're pretty excited we're just about to go nut it was a moment I'll say that I never thought he would do something like that he's not the guy I would have picked to have committed this crime I was in complete [Music] shock armore Oklahoma is an honest hardworking Town built on Family Values we're a town of about 25,000 people an
d it's a wonderful Community it's a great place to live because you can have that large Town field and then yet come home to the small town atmosphere as well on the evening of November 15th 2019 that small town feeling is shattered when police respond to a 911 call I had just sat down to eat when the phone rang and it was dispatch advising me that officers were out on a possible homicide police are checking in on a local man who hasn't been seen or heard from in several days they arrive immedia
tely looked in the window could see the victim was laying face down in the floor and they could see blood so they forced their way into the residence they knew immediately that he was deceased minutes later homicide detectives arrive at the scene the living room was just in disarray there was items kicked over there was blood on the couch there was a blood spatter on nearby items in the living room the TV and pictures and so we knew that there was a struggle that had taken place in that room whe
n the detectives look at the body they recognize the dead man I knew the victim it was Marty Lucas most of the police officers knew who Marty was Marty helped in the community he helped a lot of the people who were down on their luck Marty was a a nice guy detectives have to determine why 63-year-old Marty Lucas would be the target of such a heinous crime with the amount trauma that Marty had suffered it was pretty violent bloody scene you can see a lot of blood that has pulled around the body y
ou can see blood on the back of the body on the head and we knew that this was a death as a result of a beating or a blunt force trauma it's obvious that there was quite a struggle Marty had hair in his hands he had abrasions on his hands I think he fought for his life we noticed that there were pieces of what appeared to be a rock that had some moss on them we found parts of it over by the couch where there was a large blood stain and then parts of it over by him we walked the exterior of the r
esidence trying to find where maybe a rock would have come from immediately under the carport there is a rock pathway the walkway was missing a rock so immediately we thought well whoever it was that did this took a rock from there and brought it with him that indicated to us that this was premeditated and so we believe he or she had used it as a weapon against Arium and in the process of that it was broken we didn't find very large pieces of it and so we believe that the the majority of that ro
ck was taken from the scene police discover unusual markings on the body we noticed what looked like burn marks on his shirt like his shirt had been ironed my initial reaction was not only has he been hit by an iron he's been burned by an iron is this a torture type crime was he actually tortured and so so we believe maybe early on that the iron Could Have Been a Murder weapon in or at least an additional murder weapon in this case but what could have been the motive for such a violent attack wh
ere his wallet would have been someone had reached in and taken his wallet cuz you could see the blood transfer a handprint like sliding down into his pants almost we were pretty clear that this was a crime involving a robbery and theft his wallet was missing along with his phones detectives make one one more important observation we thought whoever had killed Marty knew him because there wasn't a sign of forced entry as investigators work Marty's son Michael arrives at the scene I went to his h
ouse it was an not Mar the worst day of my life I was in shock once I seen what was actually inside my husband called me he said my dad's dead someone killed him and he was just screaming in my ear he's like I can't believe someone would kill my dad I was in complete shock he was such a nice person who would want to hurt him Marty Lucas was born into a military family in 1956 after graduating high school Marty got married and had two children Jennifer and Michael Michael and his dad were very ve
ry close he loved his family he was always there for everyone you know he made sure to make time favorite one I used to call him Papa smar because he's just really funny he's short he's just a real you know bubbly person my parents they divorced when I was pretty young Marty had struggles when my husband was a child and a teenager he had a substance abuse problem he had been in and out of trouble with the police Petty crimes that was a result of that Addiction in 2007 Marty got a second chance w
hen he was offered a job as a carpenter and found renewed purpose in life from then on he straightened up and started his own business did really well he turned his life around he was one of the few success stories that I'm aware of in my career Marty threw everything into rebuilding his life and his family he taught me a lot of work rated skills at an early age he let me start working with him when I was 12 years old and my son he's eight he's already starting working him basically showing him
skills like he did me when I was young he was the best grandpa I could ever asked for for my kids Marty never forgot the second chance he'd been given and vowed to pay it forward Marty would usually go to the halfway houses and get people that had just got out of jail or they have a hard time with their life and see if they would want to work for him basically just giving workers Second Chances he knew where they was coming from he's been in their shoes he taught these men and women new skills h
e treated them with the utmost respect now investigators are left asking who would want to bludgeon this well-respected contractor and caring grandfather to death he really had no enemies and just to see that the way that he died was so brutal it was very difficult to know that someone would be capable of doing something like that as detectives finish up at the crime scene they turn to Marty's son who gives them a crucial lead when I showed up up I noticed that my dad's truck was gone that reall
y threw me off because he wouldn't even let me drive his truck he wouldn't loan the truck out to no one it was a Chevy pickup that originally had belonged to Marty's father that truck was everything to him detectives put out a bolo or be on the lookout for the missing truck we needed to find the truck and maybe hope that either the suspect was still driving it or that they left behind evidence that we could identify him we knew that this truck was a key to solving this homicide investigators ask
Marty's loved ones who they think would have seen him last we found out that Marty had been missing 2 or 3 days prior to the Friday the 15th that we found his body and one of the things we were told by family and friends is that Marty goes to this Valero gas station every morning to get coffee the Valero had video that pointed down the street that the crime occurred on the manager said that Marty had arrived BL at that store in Tuesday Morning detective searched the security footage on the day
after Marty was last seen alive and 3 days before his body was found the truck appears Marty's truck was very unique dark green color with custom wheels this green truck was in a big hurry and it pulled out in front of a semi TR and it was almost into in an accident that we had captured on video investigators need to track down Marty's truck and whoever is behind the wheel we thought if we find the truck we probably going to find our suspect this is going to be our guy coming up detectives uncov
er suspects with dark pasts they said he violent I thought good Lord he gets violent I don't know what I'm going do she had frequented a lot of the local casinos she knew he had large sums of cash this was the break that we needed and the trail leads to an unlikely killer you're not going to think that this is someone who could kill somebody that kind of broke open a whole new layer of the case the investigation took off at warp speed because we think we've got our [Music] guy police investigati
ng the murder of 63-year-old contractor Marty Lucas have obtained gas station surveillance video of someone driving his truck the day after he was last seen we collected hours and hours of video from the store we were able to piece together some events that happened before and after the homicide the footage shows a busy street a few blocks from Marty's house when detectives scour the rest of the security tapes something grabs their attention on Wednesday morning just after daylight you can see a
gentleman walking from the direction of Motel 6 and that person was walking towards Marty's home is this unidentified man involved in Marty's murder you can see the suspect then an hour later you can see on the video that there's one guy in the truck that there's a single person in the truck and so we thought he might be the same person that was in that video Marty did not allow just anyone to drive this truck in fact he did not allow anyone to drive this truck we had to follow the stolen truck
that was really going to be our key to solving this case while officers continue their search for the truck detectives return to speak to Marty's family and friends that's one of the things we were trying to just nail down is who has Marty been hanging out with lately who has he been working with who has he had problems with if anyone police learned that along with helping people back up on their feet Marty often forged friendships with those he employed Marty would become close with some of th
e men that he worked with or that he would hire and try to get to know them there's probably about six or seven of them I actually got pretty close to he built up friendships with them Amanda and Jason Marty's neighbors were very close to him Amanda used to work for Marty because she paints very well he didn't look down on me for you know I was trying to get my life back on track and he told me he you know he did it so you can do it Marty would bring a lot of these folks to family dinners or get
together he tried to bring them into his family but now police want to know had Marty's generosity and business exposed him to Danger he paid all of his people in cash and that's just the way it is in the day labors with those guys uh they need they need money that day so they're going to work and everything is cash to know that he could pay them daily with cash and help them out may have led to his demise police also discover not all Marty's employees felt like part of the family it wasn't an
easy Road for Marty because sometimes he would have to tell them that they couldn't work for him anymore because they would steal from him anytime you're working with people who have drug and alcohol problems it's not uncommon for them to steal from their employers and Marty had faced some of that he wasn't afraid to stand up to these people he would tell them if you you know if you mess up you're gone so our list of suspects was a mile long we were given several names but yeah it was so difficu
lt for investigators because it was going to be hard to track them down where they were staying they usually don't keep jobs very long as detectives began tracking down Marty's current and former employees they asked his neighbor if anyone had a grudge against him well I initially went to interview Amanda and she said you know over the last month or so there's been some roughl looking characters over there one month before his death he had been hanging out with these new people people and they w
ere helping him work on his truck and then had to redo the job she thought maybe there had been some anger issues between the victim and those guys the day they were there working Marty seemed to be pacing back and forth like they were taking too long and he didn't want to you know leave them at his house they were making too big of a mess he was upset about that Amanda didn't know the men but it overheard Marty talk to the Man In Charge one was a guy named Junior and so this was someone that we
wanted to speak with there's just one problem we did not know who junior was we knew this to be probably a nickname and that's all we really knew while detectives plan to search for junior Amanda also provides them with the name of another one of Marty's former employees Marty met Chris Dy at Valero the local convenience store that he went to nearly every morning to get a cup of coffee Chris had recently been fired from that store had a falling out with the owner and Marty had employed him I kn
ow Chris Dyer had worked for Marty had been fired from there for drug use he' had a criminal pass he'd been arrested had addiction problem with drugs and alcohol officers speak with the owner of the Valero station where Chris once worked the owner manager of the Valero store reaffirmed that Chris was just not a very good guy that he had had trouble employing him and so he felt like that he needed to let Chris go because there was always drama that Chris was basically just at rock bottom and desp
erate for money Chris Dyer knew that Marty carried several hundred when he paid him for a job he would pay him at the end of the day and he would pay him with cash was Chris Dyer desperate enough to bludgeon Marty Lucas to death we were thinking that maybe it was a robbery gone bad knowing that Marty had this money in his home because he was down on his luck and needed money for drugs and so there was a lot of questions concerning Chris Dyer one of our main priorities early on in the investigati
on is to find this subject named Junior along with Chris Dyer and so we we wanted to talk to these people so we need to locate Junior and we needed to talk to Christa as quickly as [Music] possible police investigating the murder of contractor Marty Lucas are chasing multiple leads as they search for his killer and stolen truck they've set their sights on two of Mar's employees an unidentified man called Junior and a recently fired laborer named Chris Dyer a lot of these folks who are going thro
ugh tough times there is nothing permanent in their lives there is nothing fixed in their lives there is no stability and so it was hard to track them down following a lead police questioned employees at the Gap gas station where Chris had worked I spoke with the clerk that was on duty at the Valero and she was able to give me a phone number to Gina Dyer Gina is Chris's estranged wife she and Chris had been separated about a month because she had caught him cheating he had gone back to drug use
and that he was currently living at the eono LOD Hotel detectives find Chris at the hotel and bring them in for an interview we really thought that we had something we knew that Chris had easy access to Marty's home Chris Dyer knew that Marty carried up to5 to $600 in cash on him at any given point in time so there's a rumor that um some rumors went around that maybe you and him had gotten Crossways and he had basically fired you never had a disagreement no not at all I'd like to know who in the
hell saying that cuz that's bullsh pardon my frch police know better than to trust Chris's word we know that Chris Dy is down on his look and had runin with the law and maybe this is our killer this is who it is and then you get him in an interview room and he's cooperative and he's genuine in fact he was very distraught over Marty's death I hope you catch who the hell did it fry their ass yeah I know right but he was man that guy would do anything for anybody he had some empathy there because
he'd been in trouble before too then damn sure sure didn't deserve to go out like that I think he considered Marty a friend even though Marty had fired him would you be willing for us to to go through your truck look through your truck look to your hotel room see if there's anything that would be yeah I got we can roll you out Marty had what we would consider defensive wounds to the hands there was hair and blood under the fingers nails of the body and so we knew that there was some type of alte
rcation we knew that there had to be injuries on our suspect or suspects and Chris had none of that he had no recent Cuts or bruises in order to officially rule Chris out as a suspect detectives check Chris's Alibi he said he had gone to Kingston Oklahoma which is nearby with Christa his girlfriend I believe it was the Wednesday before police bring Christa in for an interview is it possible that he slipped out of the room one night uh While You Were Sleeping left did went and did something no I
to have to say that just could not be possible his girlfriend also corroborated Chris's timeline as to what his story was he had an alibi for that timeline that he just didn't appear to be involved with nothing to link Chris to the murder police are forced to let him go investigators hope Marty's preliminary autopsy report will will provide more leads the significant thing for us from the autopsy was the fact that cause of death was blunt force trauma to the Head including the large gash to his
head obviously he was hit with something other than the rock because of the laceration on his head and because of the burn marks these Burns that was on his back and part of his right arm came back as a postmortem Burns which was very interesting to us which means that they were caused after Marty had passed away initially we were looking at these Burns to the body has being type of a tortured now we believe the iron was used as a secondary weapon after though the suspect didn't realize that in
his rage he didn't know that Marty had already died and he continue to hit him with this iron the preliminary autopsy report doesn't conclude whether the rock or iron ultimately killed Marty and an exact time of death remains undetermined meanwhile with the killer still at Large the worry takes a toll on Marty's family his son Michael's always a quiet person but he was like a walking zombie I couldn't sleep at night I'd stay up during the day just fear for my family uh just cuz like I had no clu
e who would do this to my dad Michael was really panicked Marty had so many different men working with him I was very fearful of my life as police continue their search for other suspects including the former employee Junior who worked on Marty's truck a lead comes in about someone close to Marty who might have had a motive one of Marty's friends had called one of our Patrol officers and told him that Marty was dating a lady named Donna Hargrave so Donna Hargrave is somebody that probably everyb
ody at the armore police department is familiar with and knows on site we knew Donna had a drug problem as well she did have a few run-ins with police and frequented a lot of the local casinos could Donna's vices have pushed her to murder Marty she knew Marty and knew that he had large sums of cash and because she is a known drug user that perhaps she had Enlisted the assistance of another known drug user to go rob Marty that was a scenario obviously had some possibility to it that's why we need
ed to talk to Donna as quickly as possible officers bring Donna down to the police department for an interview Theon brings her into the interview room she was handcuffed and I knew she had not come up there willingly what's this about if I'm not under Arris then why do youall have a reason to search me she was really uncooperative she did not want to speak to us okay what is this about please get this over with tell me what about okay so somebody who I've been hanging with yeah okay who Marty L
ucas that that's straight up she definitely has a problem with Marty that was very suspicious and it really struck a nerve in us cuz we wanted to know what this problem [Music] is two days after finding the body of 63-year-old Marty Lucas police are interviewing his former girlfriend Donna Hargrave a woman with a long criminal history and a grudge against she had been arrested many times here in ardore she had been known to be at least uncooperative with police if not somewhat violent and unruly
she didn't really care too much for Marty we thought maybe she had something to do with his with his death he pissed me off CU he didn't he was just being a dickade so when you said him what are you mad at him about he just promis things and don't never fall through like I talked to Marty about about moving my trailer over [Music] over to his house or something he said no he knew that she had not been clean and that she had not been trying to straighten up and that he wasn't going to help her a
s long as she wasn't trying to help herself could Marty's rejection have led Donna to do something Unthinkable so if I were to tell you something bad happened to Marty what would you say what do you mean what's wrong with him well if I if I were to tell you he was dead someone did something to him what would you say about [Music] that are you serious yeah where is he D yeah that's that's why you're here this was a girl that was very hardened and for her to break down and to cry and was very genu
inely upset over Marty's death she did say that they had had recently broken up and that she hadn't seen him anytime in the last four five seven days can you kind of start like maybe Wednesday morning tell me where you were what you did where did you where you went at my mom's and I slept all day okay and we were able to pretty quickly corroborate where she had been it was unlikely that she had anything to do with his death however we did not rule her out immediately days after Marty's gruesome
death his family and friends come together to say their goodbyes Marty's funeral was amazing it was very very sad though because everyone who knew him knew that he didn't deserve anything ever bad to happen to him everyone loved Marty everyone there was quite a bit of his workers even his past workers that come to his funeral is a good day but a bad day at the same time meanwhile police doggedly follow each and every lead we did have a large suspect pool because we didn't know who all might have
been working for Marty one of the things that we wanted to get identified was who junior was that was working on the truck so myself and another investigator said we'll run by the halfway houses and see if we can get Junior identified so we went over to the Broadway house and the director there gave us the name of Clarence bib Jr he said he thought Junior was from up by Oklahoma City and he's got a pretty extensive record including some assault well we we really believe that if Junior and Marty
had gotten into an altercation over the payment of the truck motor maybe he took the money it got out of hand he killed Marty took Marty's money and the truck and took it back to okoma City to chop it up we found that law enforcement there knew Clarence very well they knew his family very well and they lived in several homes that would be described as a compound like a family compound and they said don't go out there without a lot of Us clearance is violent and so you don't go up there by yours
elf detectives assemble a task force with to the local and State Police and make the 2-hour drive to Junior's compound when I first got out there I thought man this is a real possibility man we might find our truck out here so we went up and knocked on the door and when Clarence showed up I thought good Lord this is one large man and if he gets violent I don't know what I'm going to do you look at him and you see what had happened to Marty you're thinking if anybody could do it this guy could do
it he's big detectives ask if he and Marty had fallen out over the work Junior had done on Marty's truck and he was happy with what Marty had paid him and there was no disagreement he said that Marty paid him $500 more than he was supposed to because of the trouble that we went through and in fact when I told him that Marty had died and that someone had caused his death he too got emotional here this big mean Gruff country guy and he's crying like a child over his friend's death he said you kno
w I wouldn't hurt Marty if somebody paid me to he said he considered Marty a mentor and a friend Clarence denied that he had been in ardore recently he had gave an alibi that he had been at home with his mom and other family members around the time of Marty's death and they cooperated his story that he was there he fully cooperated with the investigation he gave us his cell phone he let us have clothing and boots he let us search his house he let us search the property and I mean he let us just
have free reign of whatever we wanted and we came up with nothing I just remember thinking to myself man we are absolutely going nowhere with this investigation with nothing to link Junior to the homicide detectives begin to fear the investigation is cooling down we had a pretty good idea that it wasn't Junior at that point Donna hardgrave had a stonecloud alibi Chris Dyer just didn't appear to be involved I think both Bryce and I just were disheartened we had no leads we had no suspects so we w
ere just trying to figure out where do we go from here then an unexpected call turns the case red hot well we got back to the station and dispatch yells down to us hey they found your truck we were dead tired but you went from you went from dead tired to wide awake in a [Music] hurry 4 days into the investigation of Marty Lucas's murder detectives get the break they were looking for Marty's missing truck and I remember the dispatcher telling me they found the truck and I said where is it and the
y said in Springdale Arkansas and so this was the break that we needed we're pretty excited we're just about to go nuts we're like okay get a hold of Springdale police get them on the phone let's find out what we got going on it was a moment I I'll say that investigators asked Springdale police how Marty's truck had ended up over 300 miles away they citizen had called and told him that his friend had been in possession of the truck and his friend he identified as Jack lean but who is Jack leam d
etectives immediately ask Marty's family if they know the name they learned Jack was one of Marty's most trusted laborers who hadn't been seen or heard from in months Jack them he worked my dad for a long time he is a really hard worker Marty was extremely good to Jack he gave him extra money here and there whenever he'd need it Marty would bring him by my house sometimes and they would occasionally ride around together he seemed very quiet it was not unusual for people to come and go in Marty's
business Jack leam worked for him on and off a couple of years prior to this when detectives dig into Jack's background they learn he has a daughter and ex-wife in Ardmore and a checkered past we had an extensive criminal history for drugs and theft but he's not the guy I would have picked to have committed this crime Jack leam did minor misdemeanor type crimes drug possession type crimes but this is not a person that would even be on the radar because he had no really violent history so you're
not going to think that this is a guy who could kill somebody particularly not in the manner in which Marty was killed investigator ERS rush to Arkansas where police have taken Jack into custody and seized the truck but before speaking with Jack they interview the man who first contacted police about the truck Jack's friend Raymond Raymond he says to us that out of the blue Jack calls on Friday night and says that he has got court on Monday can he stay or the weekend Raymond tells police Jack a
sked to get picked up at a local parking lot so he goes pick him up and he sees he sitting in a what looks like a pretty nice Chevy pickup and he says hey you whose pickup is that he said oh it's a guy that I'm visiting he'd let me come sit in to wait on you and he says to us I didn't believe him Monday morning Jack says just take me to jail I've got warrants so he takes him to jail and then he goes back home and he looks to see what the warrants are for and it's for theft and he thinks I wonder
if that truck's stolen because something doesn't feel right with that truck so he goes back to where the parking lot where the truck is and sees it doesn't have tags on it and so Raymond knew that Jack was lying he knew he needed to call the police we went and looked at the truck and the truck looked pristine on the inside but when we sprayed it with blue star there was blood everywhere we knew in the back of our minds that this was the key that Jack leam was the key to Marty Lucas's death and
then the investigation took off at warp speed because yeah we think we've got our guy we went to the Benton County Jail and interviewed Jack that day first thing I noticed about him is he's slight to build he's not very big he seems to be very reserved and meek he doesn't seem to be what I would picture to be a killer then police noticed something else about Jack's appearance he looked pretty bad he had some injuries to his face he had this greenish brown black eye or injury to his eye he had so
me a minor abrasion to his lip could jack have suffered his injuries while attacking his former boss Marty police start by asking Jack when he was in armore last okay um I guess at some point in time you've been in ardore been around ardore or Liv in armore or something yeah a long time ago years ago Jack tells detectives he's recently been living 200 miles away in Enid Oklahoma who were you staying there uh my brother and you then investigators cut to the chase we've been working on Investigati
on for the last um almost a week now your name's come up and before I can really get into a lot of questions with you and details and explain to you you know why we're here and all that um I got to read your Miranda right after we mirandized him he said he didn't want to talk to us anymore do you wish to make a statement or will you answer any questions that we have for you today no no okay with Jack refusing to talk police need to find a way to place him near Marty's house at the time of the mu
rder so in his initial interview he tells us that he hasn't been to Artmore that he came down here from his brother's house in Enid I called Enid PD and they went out they talked with the brother they talked with the brother's wife they said yes he has been here at our house but then detectives get a stunning piece of information Jack hadn't shared his brother's wife said I'd put him on the bus to go see his wife and daughter in ardore on the Monday morning before Marty had been killed so we kne
w he had gotten to armore we the next day we got a hold of the bus and found out that yes indeed he had been at Ardmore with Jack still in custody police drive back to armore the detectives got a search one and look through Jack's phone and that led them to his ex-wife and daughter did you see your dad in the truck last week yeah okay do you understand what kind of trouble your dad's possibly in he's been detained as a suspect in a homicide so you for sure haven't seen your dad since he's been i
n AR investigators talk to jackx wife Teresa next has he came to visit you lately no no I haven't seen from him or heard from me so would it surprise you to know that Jack is involved in a homicide here in arore yeah it doesn't seem like him both of them said they haven't seen Jack he had been in Armour they don't know what we're talking about about and we knew this was not true because on Jack's phone we knew that he had called Teresa and Shelby and during that interview with Teresa I laid it o
ut for her I just flat out told her I knew she was lying I'm not saying anything I've told you guys everything I know no you haven't it's all right no you haven't and we can prove it it's a matter of time before we put you in that truck we put you in that truck it it starts getting serious in a real quick hurry police start to question if Jack's ex-wife and daughter are involved in Marty's murder at that point she decided that she didn't want to talk to us anymore and she and Shelby left and I j
ust told her we're not going to stop we're going to solve this crime with or without you the only question is what's your role going to be less than 24 hours later police get a call the next day early morning the next morning Teresa had called said I want to come back and talk so from that I'm I mean that that kind of broke open a whole new layer of the [Music] case police investigating the murder of Marty Lucas are trying to place his friend and employee Jack leam at the scene of the crime we k
new that he was coming here to visit his wife and daughter they both told investigators that they did not know where Jack was they had not seen Jack he had not been in ardore but Jack's daughter and ex-wife returned to the police station the next day yesterday you were pretty fir you didn't know nothing I was really scared and I thought about it all night and I felt really bad really hit home so I had to tell the truth I did see Jack on 11th and 12th which was what Monday and Tuesday Monday and
Tuesday okay and he dropped us off at my mom's house on the 13th in the morning Teresa says Jack stayed at an ardore Motel on Monday and Tuesday nights they said Jack had called Marty to see if he had any work for him and Marty said no I can't use you I don't need you right now and do you know what day that was 29 they both said that about 800 or 8:30 on that Wednesday morning Jack left sent an officer to Motel 6 to see if they had video and sure enough we've got video of Jack leam leaving Motel
6 wearing the same clothes as the person that's walking the Bolero camera picks up about an hour later a Green Chevrolet truck that we believe was Marty's truck shows up in the parking lot at Motel 6 you watch him go over to a dumpster throw something in the dumpster which we believe was the Rock and the iron where did he go get the truck he said his friend gave it to him then Jack did something even more suspicious when he came in he went straight to the sink and washed his hands he he did wip
e his face face down and he put his hoodie on and he told me that he did something bad but he wouldn't tell me what he said we got to leave we got to get out of here he drops them off and they don't see him again and so by then yeah we got enough to file charges on Jack I called the family members and told them what we knew I was very shocked because Jack had been in my house around my children he just acted very shy but he didn't act like he would hurt anyone it was shocking to me because he tr
eated Jack with respect like he did everyone else police charge Jack laam with first-degree murder an extradite him from Arkansas when he arrives in ardore Jack starts talking Jack told me that he was in desperate need of money that he had no job he needed money for drugs and he knew that Marty Lucas was the source of that money Marty had told him no that he knew that he wasn't clean his story was that a physical altercation occurred that he took a rock paper weight from the kitchen table struck
Marty with it that in his words he freaked out took the keys to the truck and few hundred from the wallet and left the area Jack denies attacking Marty with a stone from outside or the iron there were some aspects where he seemed to truly be confused about what had happened because he was strung out on drugs including was there an iron used So what had really happened police had their own Theory as to how the murder played out we believe that this was premeditated I think he went to Marty's hou
se and I think he picked that rock up on the outside of the house and he knocked on the door cuz I don't think he was going to take no for an answer and when Marty told him no a fight ensued in which he struck Marty with the rock uh I think Marty fought back he struck him with the iron which was readily available and then burned him with it whether on purpose or on accident he took the iron and he took the rock with him and he disposed of the evidence and he drove to Arkansas it was absolutely s
enseless over a few hundred despite the evidence prosecutors worry defense lawyers will try to argue Jack was desperate and never plan to kill Marty I thought that this case met the elements from a legal standpoint of first-degree murder but then you have to be mindful of the fact that a jury would think also Jack's explanation is somewhat believable he's a hopeless junkie he's desperate for money with the family's consent prosecutors charge Jack with second-degree murder we didn't want to risk
going to trial and then letting him free in October 2012 20 Jack leam pleads guilty and is sentenced to 25 years in prison I feel like we got Justice I know he's going to be locked up and my family is going to be safe Jack was very unexpected as a killer because he just didn't act like he was that type of person Jack leam he's he's still a mystery to me you know because just by being around him I never thought he would do something like that he did this for nothing there was no reason for nothin
g Marty was such a nice guy but not only that I mean think of all the people whose lives he affected in a positive way that's a sense of loss for our community when I lost Marty I lost my life too he was the most amazing person I could ever sorry despite Marty's horrific death the legacy of his compassion lives on my dad he'd be very proud of the lives that he's changed on the community it made me appreciate everything about Marty and the Second Chances he gave to everybody because it made me fe
el like I should give people Second [Music] Chances a college student with a bright future he was a journalism and history major who planned to go to law school he had a huge social group he was very well liked is found murdered in the middle of town the wound was so deep the blade of the knife nicked the spine sending police hunting for an elusive killer this case was a true mystery a true buer he was depicted as a promiscuous young man who could have been killed by anybody and when they catch
him it leaves everyone blindsided they did not want to believe this was true and that was pretty surprising when we figured out who did it I refuse to believe it Columbia Missouri is best known as the home of the University of Missouri I think many people would consider us a college town this is a city small City with 30,000 students you know coming in for the Columbia Police Department a neighborhood of rowdy kids is usually as bad as it gets mainly uh a lot of uh College related uh crimes such
as the parties and uh alcohol offenses homicides in general uh were unheard of that all changes one afternoon in June 2004 I received a call uh that someone had found a body in the east campus area and because I'm the East District Commander I headed towards the [Music] scene Schwarz arrives to find a team of officers already securing the [Music] area the body was in between two apartments lying face up and he only had boxer shorts on his throat had been slit most probably with a knife it was a
very large and gaping wound it was very deep there's a few other abrasions on the upper body so it was a very violent action just a very violent crime I was a student in college and seeing this in a place I knew really well was tough the forensics team processes the scene while police search the area carefully but they can't locate a murder weapon or ID on the body we started talking with people in the area to see if anyone knew this particular person this was a part of town where everybody rea
lly knows everybody else everybody knows everybody else's business one onlooker thinks they recognize the dead young man the body was identified as Jesse Valencia he was a young man attending the University of Missouri and we found out that he lived in the neighborhood block block and a half from where we found his body the 23-year-old lived alone in an apartment just off campus police need to know if that's where the crime got its start we opened it up and started to look for any initial type e
vidence trying to figure out who could have done this and for what reason the forensic team does a thorough sweep of the apartment agging Jesse's cell phone cigarettes and other items while police canvased neighbors to see if they noticed anything suspicious the night before his neighbor admitted coming home drunk about 3:00 in the morning and going to bed he was awakened by yelling that was going on next door this neighbor actually pounded on the door and then went back to sleep then the neighb
or recalls that the shouting was late almost 4:00 in the morning police are curious who is in the apartment with Jesse and what could they have been arguing about that obviously started to help us narrow down the time frame of when this may have occurred but that's all we had to work with at that point there were no real Clues as to who had murdered this young man a few hours into the investigation another young man arrives at the scene in a flood of Tears this guy named Jack Barry told investig
ators he was Jesse's former boyfriend who just lived a few blocks away her friend had called Jack Barry saying that Jesse was dead if he had a relationship with Jesse lcia he was definitely a person the detectives wanted to talk [Music] to Jack agrees to come down to the station for routine questioning but first he helps detectives track down Jesse's family in Kentucky they called me on the phone and a detective told me um that Jesse had been killed and I pretty much [Music] just and I just took
off running through the house and ran out my front door [Music] screaming [Music] just too much even when he was a little boy Jesse never had trouble making friends everybody wanted to be around him because he was constantly smiling laughing and Jesse told me he was gay when he was 10 years old he started crying he got pretty emotional and he said that he was afraid that I was going to hate him and I told him that there was nothing in the world that could make me hate him after that he seemed p
retty comfortable with himself as a teen Jesse's confidence bloomed Jesse loved to talk he loved meeting new people making new [Music] friends when he was in high school he wanted to try modeling he did really well at it and U all always thought that he wouldn't go back to school but a year from the date that he told us that he wanted to be a model he said he wanted to be a lawyer that's what he decided to do and that's why he went to Missouri lendup said he was a journalism and history major wh
o planned to go to law school Jessie Valencia was one of those Larger than Life characters he had such a big personality he had a lot of friends he had a huge social [Music] group now detectives need to find out who cut Jesse's life short in such a horrific way they start by asking Jack Barry about his relationship with Jesse Jack told them he and Jesse had just split up and he was trying to make Jesse realize it's over I need to move on on Jesse still loved Jack so he was having a hard time let
ting go but Jack was already starting to see someone else was it a fight with a spurn lover that the neighbor had heard in the middle of the night it was possible Jack had some type of confrontation with Jesse that led to his death and when investigators asked Jack for an alibi it turns out that he doesn't seem to have one his Alibi was I was home sleeping alone at that point Jack Barry had become the primary suspect coming up detectives discover a secret romance they had started a relationship
very quickly that uncovers a Killer's Trail a lie is the next best thing to a confession to a surprising culprit it was shocking on many levels [Music] [Music] detectives in Columbia Missouri are questioning a man who had recently split up with murdered college student Jesse Valencia Jack Barry wanted to end the relationship he wasn't happy with the relationship any longer Jack paints a picture of a couple growing apart after 2 years of dating but a piece of evidence found at Jess's apartment ma
kes detectives question his story The investigating detectives found Jesse's cell phone and the cell phone showed that Jesse had called Jack Barry at about 3:18 that night the neighbors have heard some type of an argument from the victim's apartment approximately the time frame of when this occurred so that would be obviously suspicious but Jack insists he was nowhere near near Jesse's apartment Jack said that he had already gone to bed that night and that he heard a knock on his door at 3:18 in
the morning and then he simultaneously got a phone call from Jesse's cell phone it was routine that Jesse would use his cell phone or sort of a doorbell Jack said he was tired and he really didn't feel like getting up and talking to his former boyfriend at 3:18 in the morning so he didn't go to the door Jack says he rolled over and went back to sleep but police aren't so sure and question him for hours finally Jack broke into tears and he said he regretted that we didn't go to the door because
what happened might not have happened had he done that his reaction was so genuine and it was clear that Jack still had a lot of love and affection for Jesse and it's becoming clear to detectives that Jack didn't kill Jesse but they press him to see if he might know who did Jack said that he had no clue as to what would have happened to him and why anyone would have killed him 23-year-old Jesse Valencia mu student police found Valencia's body on East Camp his throat slashed as the story of the m
urder hits the 11:00 News it sends shock waves through the city I would say this was probably one of the most gruesome killings in Colombia we don't have very many murders here the murder of a gay young man just a week before the city's first Pride Fest horrifies the progressive College [Music] Community for anyone who thinks that they can get away with something like this so heinous is just Unthinkable we know from past homicides that a majority of them are with people that they know anyone who
had had with him whether in a sexual relationship or a social relationship the detectives wanted to talk to police begin to make the rounds of Jesse's Wide Circle of Friends wondering if there's anyone in his life that might have harbored any kind of Grudge one name they hear over and over is Zev [ __ ] a student that Jesse had met 2 weeks earlier at a political rally Jesse's friends had said oh maybe it was this guy because he didn't seem quite normal there was something that made him a little
bit different from other people several of Jesse's friends they said that Zev wasn't comfortable in his own skin and that he had a lot of issues with being himself there was some contention whether Zev and Jesse were having a romantic relationship they were spending a lot of time together rumors about the two young men had been swirling and after Jesse was murdered the gossip about Zev began to take a Sinister tone somebody saw someone matching his description looking disheveled and crying walk
ing down the street the morning of the murder and a car he was known to drive was seen in that area that's when the detectives started looking towards him and started talking with him and seeing what he had to say detectives call Zev down to the station but he denies that the rumors about him and Jesse are true Zev said they never had a sexual relationship but they were friends then zeev would come over and hang out with him police questioned Zev about where he was between 3 and 5 a.m. his Albi
was I was home sleeping he was a young man who still lived with his parents they subject Zev to a voice stress analysis test to see if he is telling the truth it showed untruthful so deceitful that did seem to be some evidence of guilt detectives quickly follow up with a visit to his parents but they confirmed that their son was home all night zev's parents had said that when when Zev would leave he would always go through the garage door to get to the car and so it made a big racket they would
have awakened his parents and they said there's no way that he would have left that night it seemed like he did have an Albi with Zev [ __ ] discounted as a suspect detectives continue to piece together the last hours of Jessie Valencia's life the detectives were talking with several of the friends of Jesse Valencia to see where he was on the evening and early morning hours that this occurred police learned that Jesse had gone to a party at a friend's house around 11:00 p.m. on the night he was
killed some friends of Jesse said that Friday night uh Jesse was at a party with a young man named Ed mcdevit Ed mcdevit was somebody Jesse had just met Ed was a chef in town they had met just a couple of nights before and had started a relationship very quickly Jesse's friends tell police that the two men left the party together heading in the direction of Jesse's house and that was around 3:00 in the morning on the last night of Jesse's life it appears as though Ed mcdevit might have been the
last person to see Jesse alive and it was possible Ed mcdevit went home with Jessie and then killed [Music] him 12 hours after finding Jesse Valencia's body detectives track down 22-year-old Ed mcdevit and bring him down to the station Jesse had met Ed mcdevit 2 days before his death and invited Ed to come home with him on that Friday night the last night of Jesse's life so he became a suspect at that point but Ed claims that he and Jesse went their separate ways soon after they left the party a
nd he was talking with Jesse on the phone at the time he was walking home on the last night of Jesse's life Ed says that his roommate was is up when he arrived home and invites detectives over to talk to him themselves there's nothing found when they search his home and everything Ed mcdevit told the officers they can verify by looking at his cell phone records by talking to his roommate and at that point investigators let him go police hope that DNA results pending at the lab will help them lin
k one of their suspects to Jesse's murder desperate for answers Jesse's mom grows more despondent recalling an eerie premonition Jesse had years ago from the time Jesse was 7 years old he had told me that he was going to die at a young age he said I'm going to die at a young age and I love all of you and I always will love you but I'll be okay he would always end it without be okay and of course I got emotional and upset over it but he said we've got to make the most of what time I'm here a day
after Jesse's murder detectives received the autopsy report and study it closely for Clues the medical examiner concluded that Jesse had been murdered mured in the area of 3 4 5:00 in the morning the cut to his neck was the only knife wound and it was the cause of death and it was so deep the blade of the knife had also nicked the [Music] spine the lack of Defense wounds suggests that Jesse had been taken by surprise the most mysterious thing was that across his breast bone there were bruises an
d in the middle of his back between his shoulder blade there were bruises the evidence suggests that Jesse was easily overpowered in the vicious attack investigators hope that additional lab work will reveal even more and point to a killer there were fingernail scrapings collected during the autopsy and also some hairs were found on his chest and that was sent to the crime lab for analysis until the crime lab turns up DNA police have no choice but to move on to their next lead a lot of Jesse's f
riends were being brought in they were giving evidence they were helping out with information one of those friends is a fellow student named Andy Andy shermerhorn was a young man who had what they called a Friends with Benefits arrangement with Jesse Andy was out of town the night Jesse was killed but the day after the murder he comes forward to share a shocking story Andy shorn told the investigating detectives that Jesse was having sex with a Columbia police officer he was having relationship
with an officer I was surprised Andy nervously reveals an encounter 3 weeks prior at Jesse's apartment Andy sherah horn said that on May 14th he had been at Jesse's home at night and there was a knock at the door Jesse went to the door and a uniformed police officer was there and Jesse said it's okay Al okay he's he's cool he's cool according to Andy the officer took off his gun belt and the next thing Andy knew the three of them were fooling [Music] around after it was over the police officer s
aid this has got to be a secret a secret affair between an officer and a murder victim is a major red flag if anyone of our officers had been seeing Jesse Valencia why is he not being forthcoming if you have nothing to hide why not just tell us detectives need to know who this officer is they said do you think you'd be able to recognize him if you saw him again and he said yes cuz it had only been about 2 weeks since that end incident detectives ask Andy if he'll look through a book containing t
he photo of every officer in the Columbia police department they were having him walk down the hall where he was going to look at the yearbook Andy sherar flipped through it without even looking at the pages closed it and sherar began trembling and he said I passed him in the hallway just now it was him [Music] the day after the murder of Jesse Valencia detectives in Columbia Missouri learned that he was allegedly having a relationship with a local police officer Jesse's friend Andy shorn told t
he investigating detectives that he was an eye wish to this sexual activity Shor began trembling and he said it was him that I passed in the hallway just now and that was Steven Arthur Rios Steven rios's Commander believes Andy must be mistaken about the officer's identity when the detectives told me that maybe Steve had been having a relationship with the victim I told the detectives you're absolutely wrong he was married to a wonderful young lady and they had just had uh their first child Schw
arz knows the 27-year-old Rios well the 5-year veteran is one of the Department's Rising young Stars Steve was very outgoing he communicated well very ambitious he was a young officer who was on his way up in the department because he was a go-getter and a very very popular officer detectives don't know if Andy is telling the truth but they're certainly anxious to get rios's side of the story if he was having a relationship that does not mean that he had killed Jesse Valencia Rios is out of town
for a couple of days on a camping trip with co-workers so they begin tracing rios's steps the day Jesse's body was found he went in for his work shift uh later in the afternoon like he normally did and at that point the body had been found the sergeant on duty that day had told me that Rios was coming to the scene to help identify the body he had contacted the on duty sergeant and said he could help Rio said that I met jessey when I gave him a ticket back on April 18th investigators pull a copy
of the incident report to see if it backs up rios's story April 18th of 2004 some friends of Jesse's were having a party and the party kept getting loud and the police showed up to get him to quiet down and Jesse this intelligent pre-law major said what's your probable cause that got him arrested and Steven Rios gave him a municipal court summon for obstructing a governmental operation a call to Jesse's mother corroborates the report and Jesse told me that when he was arrested that the cop that
drove him down to the jail was really nice and that he talked to him all the way down to the station and he said I kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable because he kept asking me personal questions about my life that I didn't really feel like he should be asking me when he was trying to arrest me for something but the arrest wasn't the end of the officer's interest the very next day he turned up at Jesse's apartment after he got arrested Jesse called me on the phone and he said the cop that a
rrested me last night showed up on my doorstep he said he had to ask me some more questions but the questions he was asking Jesse were more of a personal nature they went out um a few times after that and he would come to Jesse's apartment and just show up unannounced even when he was in uniform Linda doesn't know much more than that but thinks that Jesse's friend Joan sherid in might when they track her down 2 days after the murder Joan confirms that Jesse saw the officer more than once after t
he arrest he had told her that the officer would typically come by sometime after 3:00 and before 6:00 in the morning just for sex and then leave Joan reveals that she got a closeup look at the officer one night when he showed up at Jesse's place they showed her a photo lineup and she was able to pick the person that came by to Jesse's apartment that night and it was Steven Rios detectives now have more evidence that Rios was having a scandalous relationship with Jesse and when they hear what Ja
n says next they suspect he may also have a motive for murder Jones said that when he went to court for his municipal court summons Jesse assumed it would be dismissed since he was having sex with the arresting officer and it had not been dismissed and that had angered Jesse so Jesse had told Joan that the next time the police officer comes over and I'm going to tell him that I have a little secret the chief of police might want to know if he doesn't get that ticket dismissed the detectives call
ed me and told me that Jesse was threatening to contact the chief and expose Ros finally the light bulb went off you start looking at who had a motive to kill Jesse Valencia Rios was very worried about his job he was very worried about his reputation he would be very devastated he would be embarrassed by this information coming out that's when Rios became the suspect it's a serious matter to accuse one of their own investigators quickly regroup to plan the best approach they didn't feel they wer
e ready to interview him yet they were wanting to have the DNA evidence come back before they actually confronted him but all of a sudden Rio showed up at the police department and said oh uh could I talk to you for a second he had this look on his face I he was very upset very upset coming up detectives get a devastating phone call Steve called me crying very upset and he said I've done a bad thing and the investigation takes an unexpected new turn the officers found him on the fourth floor of
a parking garage what was he thinking [Music] detectives investigating the murder of college student Jesse Valencia are preparing to confront their suspect police officer Steven Rios but Rios goes on the offensive first Rio said he was hearing from other people that Jesse was having affair with a Columbia police officer and I just wanted you to know that I did give him a ticket but that's the only contact I had with him and it's it's certainly not me but detectives tell him flat out that they've
heard a different story they said we've talked to a woman who said that she was at Jesse's apartment one night when you showed up Rio sat there for a minute then Rio said well you know what uh we did become social friends but it never became anything like a sexual relationship they said you know we've talked to another young man who says he was actually having sex with Jesse and you came by that night and actually came in and joined them on the bed and Rio said what sex like was the most astoun
ding and false accusation you could ever heard he was getting very agitated with the detectives he's a very prideful person and he was very upset because they didn't believe him it's easy to see that Rios is lying detectives bear down hard and finally their suspect breaks finally Rios admitted that he had sex with Jesse he tried to claim it was just that one time and then it evolved into that he had had sex with Jesse as many as six times it's a stunning admission and a strong motive for murder
he was embarrassed he obviously did not want this information out if he was Keeping a Secret to begin with especially from his wife you know in his family police may not have the physical evidence to prove that Rios is a killer but they do have something that's almost as good we were able to prove that he was lying there's an old saying in law enforcement that a lie approvable lie is the next best thing to a confession and Steven Rios was caught in lots of provable Lies but detectives aren't fin
ished interrogating their suspect they ask for his whereabouts the night that was killed he said he had been at work and he got off at 3:00 in the morning like he normally did and he said that that night he'd gone onto the rooftop of the parking garage with a few other officers and they had drank a few beers before they went home he said he got home about 5:15 to 5:30 took a shower and got in bed detectives Grill Rios for over 3 hours looking for any cracks in his story he still maintained he'd
had nothing to do with Jesse's death at that point investigators let him go he was definitely a suspect but the question remained can we prove it Beyond A Reasonable Doubt investigator's next step is to create a timeline for the night of Jesse's murder and see how rios's Alibi fits in his wife corroborated that he had gotten home in that 5:15 to 5:30 time frame other officers confirm Rios worked until 3:00 a.m. and then had some drinks with them on the rooftop that night the security door record
s reveal that Rios left the roof at 4:37 a.m. 45 minutes before he got home one of the detectives actually drove from the parking garage to Jesse's home the same time of night and was 3 and 1/2 minutes he then drove from the scene of the murder to Rio's home and it was 10 minutes this gave a window of time of 20 to 30 minutes that were potentially unaccounted for at the time that Jesse Valencia was apparently killed and this gave us a timeline that could show that Rios could have done this murde
r within that time investigators search rios's home car and work locker but they uncover nothing to tie him to the crime then out of the blue Captain Schwarz receives an alarming phone call Steve called me crying very upset and he said I've done a bad thing the first question I asked him was where are you and he said that he was in Kansas City and that he had bought a shotgun I really thought he was going to kill himself and my first reaction was no I said you need to just stop what you're doing
just come back just come back to Columbia and we'll get through it Captain Schwarz is able to tuck Rios into driving the 150 Mi back home where police take him into custody still wasn't under arrest that he was put on a 96-hour hole for an involuntary commitment to a mental facility just for observation to make sure that he wouldn't kill himself but Steven Rios is still despondent he manages to evade hos hospital security and soon the entire Columbia police force is on alert I got a phone call
that Steve had escaped and was on top of the parking garage threatening suicide one of the officers found him on the fourth floor of a parking garage Rio climbed up on the wall claiming he was going to jump when they called me and said he's on top of the garage he's threatening suicide what was he doing what was was he [Music] thinking police officer Steven Rios a suspect in the murder of Jesse Valencia has escaped protective custody and is threatening to LEAP to his death this is one of the bus
iest parts of Campus it's about 7:00 at night he goes to the roof of the parking garage starts threatening the J there's a crowd below there are people watching this people are videotaping this taking pictures it's just it's bizarre police arrive on the scene to try to talk Rios off the ledge all I can think of was here we go again why are you putting everyone through this it was just putting everyone through a nightmare after a tense for 45 minute standoff they finally managed to talk Rios back
from the break he was taken back into custody and again put into midal facility and put on a suicide watched while we were finishing our investigation to determine whether or not he would be charged with Jesse's murder 3 weeks after Jesse's murder the analysis of the hairs found on Jesse's chest give police the evidence they need to charge Rios with the cry they were able to say the persons who left those hairs on Jesse's chest limb hairs that would have come from somebody's arm those hairs mat
ched to Steven Rios and that's when we realized that they teach Columbia police officers at the training academy how to administer a choke cold and that cuts off the blood flow of the brain and renders a person unconscious in 3 to 8 seconds that could account for these limb hairs in addition to the bruises that went across the front of his chest and in the middle of his back on July 1st 26 days after Jesse Valencia's body was found Steven Arthur Rios is arrested and charged with first-degree mur
der did you killed Jesse Valencia no I did not during the week-long trial prosecutors lay out their theory of how the murder went down Rios came by after his shift was over thinking they were going to have sex Jesse confronted him Jesse was threatening to contact the chief and expose Ros and he knew his career and his happy marriage would probably be over and that had Ang anger Rios the neighbor heard this argument going on and Jesse's yelling stop it stop it Jesse then clad only in his shorts a
nd Barefoot ran out being chased by Steven [Music] Rios the SE Mario caught him from behind and choked him into unconscious put him on the ground cut his [Music] throat and that's what I believe happened in the last minutes of Jess vencio's [Music] life prosecutors know they have a strong case but convincing a jury that a police officer is a murderer is sure to be a hard cell if even one of the 12 jurors feels like it's not the person then you have a hung jury or a not guilty bur after eight lon
g hours the jury returns with a verdict the jury find the defendant Steven Arthur R guilt of Murder in the second Cru I did feel a great sense of relief and even Pride when the case was over and Steven Rios had not gotten away with murder Steven Arthur Rios receives a sentence of life in prison for the slay of Jesse Valencia I don't feel like that Jesse really got Justice because I I wanted the death penalty for him he took my whole life away from me anytime you have an officer who has done done
a heinous type act like this and taken someone's life it is a huge State and for law enforcement everywhere for Jesse's mother her son's Legacy is in the way he lived his life not the way it ended I want people to remember the Jesse that was constantly laughing and and and trying to make other people happy because that's what Jesse lived for he didn't want anybody to be sad there's always the empty space everybody still misses him and we talk about him daily for more information on an unexpecte
d killer go to oxygen.com [Music] am [Music] Facebook Facebook for [Music] [Music] for for foree [Music] Fore spee fore for
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