a devoted couple building the perfect family they were both very committed to adopting children that had a difficult past everybody in the family loved her murdered in a night of unspeakable horror she saw a man with what appeared to be an ax her skull was split with a mom who could have wanted Bob and Cas sword it's dead this person had threatened to kill them we couldn't rule out anyone we just didn't know and what detectives uncover has everyone blindsided I didn't have a single suspicion I w
ould have never thought the relatives were in disbelief the uh expected killer hadn't done it the unexpected killer had done it nobody in a million years would have expected them to commit one of the most heinous crimes in the history of Annapolis onor cold winter morning in 1984 County police police in Cape St Clair Maryland receive an eerie call to my house okay what is the problem sir my parents are dead you think your parents are dead yeah First Responders race to the scene and make a horrif
ic Discovery when I arrived there were uniform officers that were protecting the crime scene who told me we had a 17-year-old and a 9-year-old who just learned that their parents Bob and Kay Schwarz were killed the children are visibly shaken and in shock but agree to answer a few questions my partner and I met with a young man by the name of Larry Schwarz and his sister Annie both of them were very calm this young man he said that he had gotten up that morning and that Annie who was nine told t
hat she didn't know where their parents were he then looked out the dining room window and saw his mother's body in the backyard he told me he immediately shielded Annie's ey so Annie wouldn't see her body and called the police detective bar leaves the kids in the care of the attending officers and moves to the backyard it's his first grim look at the scene of the crime K Schwarz was found outside she was a few feet from the sign and glass door in the snow she only had one sock on her right foot
her left foot was Bare the blood in the snow was horrific it was just horrific the blood had created a slush in the snow K Schwarz had puncture wounds around her neck and she had a massive wound to the top of her skull detective bar then heads inside I looked in the basement area and I found a black vinyl chair that had pool blood beside it it appeared as though she had been attacked sitting in that chair and she bled heavily on the floor and there was blood from that chair leading out back jus
t when it seems the crime scene can't get any more Grizzly detectives discover another ravaged body we found a small office adjacent to the landing of the stairs the door was closed we opened the door looked inside and found Bob schwarz's body there was an inor a number of stab wounds to Bob Schwarz there were defensive wounds in the body we theorized at that point and it was very possible that K was attacked first and then Bob heard the noise and started to come out of the room giving Kay the o
pportunity to flee out the back door as the killer Killers went after Bob as detectives make their way through the rest of the house they see no signs of forced entry did Bob and Kay know their attacker or did an intruder sneak in through an unlocked door as I viewed this crime scene the enormity was off the chart there was blood found everywhere it was extraordinarily gruesome investigators collect blood evidence but there's no sign of a knife or any kind of murder weapon then toward the back o
f the house they spot a critical clue we found a bloody palm print on the sliding glass door near K's body we wanted to figure out who it actually belongs to Bob obviously never left the computer room he died where he was attacked and Kay's body was outside and neither one of her hands had blood on the palms that palm print probably belonged to the killer well concerned neighbors whisk Larry and Annie away detectives get a chance to talk to some of Bob and Kay's grieving friends who have gathere
d at the house when I found out that Bob and Kay had been murdered I said what you're numb you don't know what happened and I just I just couldn't believe that Bob and Kay were gone Bob and K Schwartz met at the University of Maryland outside Washington DC they were both getting their master's degree in education they both wanted to be teachers he was 35 she was 27 she fell in love with him and maybe 18 months later they married they were very involved in all kinds of church activities K and Bob
were intimately involved everybody seemed to know them everybody felt a connection with them Bob was an engineer of sorts worked at Nasa Goddard down in greenb Belt Maryland in the space program on some level Bob had to be a pretty clever man because he was involved in computers back in the Dark Ages 1984 he was always very positive he was funny quick sense of humor Kay was the funloving Carefree Spirit beloved by everyone who knew her always wanted to be a teacher became a teacher they wanted
children but Kay was unable to have children far from breaking their Spirit Bob and Kay's disappointment only seemed to strengthen their bond and gave them a loving sense of purpose they decided they wanted to open their house and their hearts in 1973 Bob and Kay embarked on their dream that became part of their mission in life in adopting children that had a difficult past to provide some some substance and some guidance Larry Schwarz was 6 years old when the Schwarz has adopted him 6 years lat
er they adopted a 4-year-old girl an and Annie was born in Korea did not speak much English when she first arrived Annie and Larry were happy to be part of that family K and Bob wanted to be the best parents ever to those children now Larry and Annie were orphans again and detectives need to find out who committed such a heinous crime and why police Begin by talking to neighbors hoping to find a witness who might lead them to the killer we were alerted by person proxy walk away on a parallel str
eet that he had found what appeared to be a Blood Trail leading into the woods at the end of that street and as we followed that trail we found what appeared to be a Barefoot footprint and a socked footprint were these K's Footprints if so how did they end up in the woods when her body was found in the backyard we also found a pair of footprints made by shoes Footprints suggesting a Chase through the neighborhood the trail of footprints ran for quite a distance through the woods and the neighbor
hood the footprints seemed to suggest that after stabbing Bob to death the murderer went after Kay one last time in my opinion it appeared as though K Schwarz was fleeing from her killer and at some point a person caught up with her and then walked her to the back of the home where she was killed at the end of the trail detectives make one more pivotal Discovery searching through the woods my sergeant found what appeared to be the murder weapon it was a wood splitting Mall there appeared to be B
lood on the mall along with hair but the handle appeared to have been wiped clean there wasn't any blood on the handle at all detectives send the mall to the lab but find no trace of a knife anywhere it's a puzzling scene that offers them few Clues it was a very difficult crime scene to try to put together in your mind what may have happened how did this occur at this point we only had two children Larry and Annie who could provide any information when detectives Circle back to them at the neigh
bor's house they do their best to help any related to us that she had awakened in the middle of the night to her father's screams of help me help me she continued to tell us that she went to investigate and she walked to the door that exited to the carport at that point she saw a man walking away with what appeared to be an axe over her shoulder and she described the person as very tall with curly hair and asked was that person as tall as me she know he was taller detectives speak to Larry next
but suddenly the 17-year-old seems nervous does he know something about the man Annie saw in the yard when we pressed Larry he said that Michael was 6'4 detective stop cold who is Michael and very quickly I established that Michael Schwarz was a brother of Larry as it turned out Bob and K Schwarz had adopted three children Michael who was also 17 no longer lived with them but it wasn't clear why so at that point we were very very eager they talked to Michael coming up investigators uncover bad b
lood and dark secrets they sent him to a state mental hospital detectives uncover startling Clues nobody expected anything like this to happen it became almost unbelievable was there more than one person with a score to settle this person said I could stick a knife in his back we didn't know what we were dealing with when they appear to have no SU suspects and the homicides of Bob and K Schwarz police learned the couple's adopted children have an a strange brother both Annie and Larry related to
us that Michael no longer lived with them but had been getting into a lot of trouble detectives are anxious to know more could Michael have possibly wanted to harm Bob and Kay as we spoke to relatives during the investigation Michael was quickly identified by them as someone we should look at very clear mostly Michael had made threats internally in the house detectives interviewed the schwarz's friends and family to get more insight into Michael's history Larry was the schwarz's first adopted c
hild but long before Annie Bob and Kay provided Larry with a brother Michael was 8 years old when the schwarzes adopted him the boys were only 6 months apart in age the Schwarz 's second adopted child had arrived at their home a troubled boy as they interviewed everybody detectives found that Michael's mother abandoned him when he was an infant and Michael was relinquished to the custody of the state and became a foster child he went through a series of six foster homes before the schwarzes adop
ted him Bob and Kay were determined to turn Michael's life around but the boy's difficult past wasn't easy to shake and the problem started almost immediately Michael was so antisocial in his approach to life Michael was having behavioral issues at home not obeying his parents on a consistent basis smarting back profanity as the boys Grew Older Michael continued to struggle but that didn't stop Bob and Kay from having high hopes for both their children I think Bob and Kay expected Larry and Mich
ael to apply themselves very ently to their studies and to do well I think that Larry had a desire to please people he had kind of a a soft spoken shyness to him he seemed to want to engage with people but I think Michael was a challenge from the get-go I think Michael he had some deviancies that probably would have precluded anybody from having any type of relationship with him on any level 2 years after Michael was adopted Bob and Kay found a new Ray of Hope when they adopted Annie Annie was c
ute as a button when she arrived um everybody loved her Bob adored Ann Annie became the apple of her father's eye and suddenly Annie the baby became the favorite Child everybody in the family loved her the more attention Bob gave Annie the harder he was on his two boys Larry seemed to be able to turn the other cheek but not Michael Michael had been getting into trouble more increasingly over the last year or so Michael began to have problems of a fairly serious nature tension between he and his
father tension between he and the other family members by 1980 Michael's rebellious nature pushed his parents to their breaking point one night Michael asked to go out and they said no so he sneaked out went out with his buddies when he came back home at about midnight he pounds on the door his mother comes to the door looks at him and says no we're not letting you [Music] in he goes over to a neighbor's house spends a night goes to school the next day on his own and while he's there his parents
had called Social Services said we can't handle him anymore after 5 years of struggling with Michael Bob and Kay were so concerned about his volatile behavior that they asked the state to place him with another family he never lived at home again it was just a very difficult situation Bob and Kay loved him but they felt there was no nothing they could do for him while Bob and Kay tried to stay focused on Larry and Annie Michael's State of Mind seemed to deteriorate Michael had been in a reform
school and he got in a fight and got in some trouble so they sent him to a state mental hospital for evaluation and that was just a few weeks before the murders he was staying at this facility the crowville State Hospital Center was terrifying faceless institutional decrepit buildings straight out of a Stephen King nightmare had Bob and Kay's rejection LED Michael Schwarz to commit a cold-blooded murder detective bar and his partner decide to make this short drive to Crownsville and ask Michael
for themselves he was interrogated by these talented homicide detectives you know Michael's denying Michael's words say one thing but to the detectives his appearance tells a different story they did notice it Michael had very noticeable marks on his long neck and he clearly had an injury of some kind there but he said they were hickeys detectives keep pushing but Michael is adamant that he was at the hospital on the night of the murders and the hospital records back up his claims we learned fro
m the staff that their logs indicated that Michael had been there all evening he has what appears to be uh an ironclad Alibi I mean he is in a locked ward in the state bentle hospital the police weren't so sure a lot of people weren't so sure it was very LAX at this Crownsville State Facility it's not a prison it's just a hospital detectives aren't completely convinced of Michael's Alibi but they don't have enough to arrest him either and soon after that interview Michael Schwarz lawyers [Music]
up of course I finally got to him I did what all defense lawyers do which is to say don't say a word to anybody about anything he was never interrogated again Michael won't talk and the lab has found no useful prints on the handle of the splitting mall but detectives know one key piece of evidence from the crime scene that could tell them everything they need to know during the investigation there was a bloody Palm Trent recovered from the sliding glass door we had examined both victims neither
one had blood on the palms if detectives can prove Michael Schwarz left that print they'll have their murderer but that's easier said than done this evidence was difficult to analyze we were very limited in 19 need for with what we could do this would involve the evidence being sent to the FBI laboratory in [Music] Washington detectives investigating the Savage double murder of Bob and Cas Schwartz are hoping one of their most promising pieces of evidence will help them catch the killer a blood
y palm print was lifted and sent to the FBI laboratory for analysis we knew that it would probably take a long time to get those results while the feds in Washington do their careful work the shocking news of the murder spreads there was a tremendous uproar in the community about this murder a couple were murdered in their own home a craze killer chasing a woman through the neighborhood there was a lot of pressure to solve the case that pressure only mounts when detectives receive the Coroner's
report it's a grim account of a seemingly psychotic attack the wounds to Mr Schwarz numbered 17 in total and in fact were lethal both his right and left cored were severed during the attack on kwarts the autopsy showed that she was stabbed seven times around her neck area but they were very light wounds tentative and then her skull oh split with a mall detectives still haven't been able to locate the knife used in the attack but the coroner's report does appear to confirm that they're on the rig
ht track according to the medical examiner we had the Right theory about how this may have occurred K was stabbed in the basement got up the flea the killer would have chased K Schwarz as she ran from the neighborhood and into the woods then back to the house where she was killed is it possible Michael Schwarz eluded security at the Crownsville mental hospital and committed this crime if so detectives need to understand why I think it's fair to say there was tension in the house Bob had a bit of
a shorter fuse than Kay and had a little bit less willingness to be tolerant of of some of the children's shortcomings neighbors tell detectives a story they remember from a few years before when Michael was still living with the schwarzes Michael got in trouble for some sin fighting on a school bus something like that and his father decided physical labor would was what he needed so he gave him this heavy wood splitting mall and said take this stump out of the front yard the dead tree stump it
was massive a massive thing there was no way Michael could get it but he just swung it again and again and again neighbors told us that Michael chopped at that tree every evening for up to 3 hours and approaching a month later the stump was still there this boy had bushers on his hands Michael was seething and getting more and more Angry everybody said Michael had threatened to kill his parents could the mole that was used to teach Michael Schwarz a lesson have been the same one that ended Kay'
s life Michael told his mother Kay that I could walk up to Bob and stick a knife in his back kill him and no results would befall me because I'm a juvenile The Logical assumption on all of our Parts was Michael had made good on his threat he had said he would do it and now he's done it 4 days after they were found brutally murdered Bob and K are laid to rest the funeral I had replays of of having moments with them I always admired them like why would somebody killed them the couple's obedient ch
ildren Larry and Annie Schwarz have been staying with With Friends of the family while their brother still resides at Crownsville Michael Schwarz was allowed out of the hospital to come to the funeral and at the cemetery both boys stood over the grave and shook holy water one into Kay's grave the other into Bob's grave off to one side the two detectives on the case stood in their suits with their sunglasses in the cemetery everyone gathered around gave them their support uh but most people belie
ved it was Michael who had done it many note the suspicious red marks still visible on Michael's neck talk spreads through the community the newspapers were saying that Michael was a suspect but even though he was in Crownsville at the time there was some question about the accountability there and maybe he could have gotten away and done it with lingering concerns over Michael's Alibi and the security at Crownsville detectives decide there's only one way to find the truth once and for all wanti
ng to make sure that we had crossed every tea and dotted every eye my partner and I decided that we were going to follow up and visit that mental hospital again we wanted to make sure that it was impossible that Michael would never have been able to leave undetected so we asked the staff to lock Us in the ward where Michael was committed if Michael could have gotten out of that there was a chance Michael had done it detectives are about to put Michael schwarz's Alibi to the test by locking thems
elves in the room where he stayed at the Crownsville mental hospital if he had killed his parents Michael would had to leave undetected return and get back in without someone discovering that and we went through every door and every window and there was no possible way we could have gotten out of that without help so it was very convincing to us that Michael was not at the scene of the murder Michael's been eliminated as a suspect it's good news for Michael but a setback for detectives the young
man was their strongest lead undaunted investigators reach out to the public hoping to cast a much wider net as we conducted our investigation we methodically went through a list of possible persons that may have intended harm to the schwarzes we started a hotline for people the call in tips and we got phone calls from various neighbors and acquaintances one of the many calls that come in immediately pequs the detective's interest persons we interviewed told us that Bob steadfastly picketed an
abortion clinic in Indianapolis for 4 years never missed a Saturday and he would approach women entering the abortion clinic and attempt to change their mind about what they were going to do he would intensely try to dissuade women from coming into the clinic he would get up in their faces detectives confirm that a few of those women filed police reports against Bob so they begin interviewing every complaintant and witness connected with those reports the police were called on several occasions
by the clinic Bob is never arrested but he caused the abortion clinic a lot of grief could the killer be someone Bob confronted or someone with a grudge against kay kay was a school teacher at Broadneck High School in her classroom she was known for La Fair not a strict disciplinarian according to Witnesses Kay was well-liked in school she was an easygoing teacher detectives pursue every credible tip that comes in our investigation revealed that there was no evidence that anyone would have a ven
detta against her in fact there was no motive that we could establish where anyone would have been that angry or vengeful to want to kill either of them 8 days after the brutal double murder investigators have hit a wall with no fingerprints on the splitting mall and their single most promising piece of evidence still under analysis detectives are all out of options undaunted they decide to start fresh pouring over every piece of evidence they do have starting at the very beginning County Police
to my okay what is the problem sir um my parents are dead you think your parents are dead this time investigators hone in on something they didn't notice before when I listened to the 911 call Larry Schwarz said my parents are dead my parents are dead however he told the first police officer on the scene that he hadn't gone downstairs his father was in the basement at that point he would only known that his mother was dead not his father so there's an inconsistency there it didn't make sense th
e discovery leads detective bar to take a harder look at Larry's version of events and he finds several contradictions for example Larry telling us that he saw his mother's body from the window yet I looked out the dining room window and couldn't see her body I thought perhaps he was confused and meant to say the kitchen window which turned out to be even worse I climbed on the kitchen counter and looked out the window and still couldn't see her body detective bar had shocked it up to the extrem
e shock the boy had suffered that morning Larry de meter wasn't unle at the time various people react differently under stress he could have very well been in shock repressing his feelings I didn't know bar wants to give Larry a chance to clear up his story but that isn't going to happen Larry had gotten an attorney the attorney advised him not to talk to us at last word comes in from the FBI test results on their key piece of evidence from the crime scene the bloody palm print on the sliding gl
ass door the one detectives believe was made by the killer it came back finally we could find out who it could possibly belong to what we were dealing with coming up it's a Twist that no one saw coming a chill just went up my spine it just didn't seem [Music] right detectives working to catch Bob and K schwarz's killer finally had the results of their key piece of crime- scene evidence from the FBI's forensic lab in Washington DC I was notified by the FBI laboratory that they had positively iden
tified the bloody Palm Trent recovered from the sliding glass door the results confirm what detectives believed months earlier the palm print belongs to one of Bob and Kay's own children but not the child they suspected it came back belonging to Larry Schwarz at that point the state's attorney for anol County authorized an arrest warrant to be obtained for Larry Schwarz authorities charged young Schwartz as an adult with two counts of first-degree murder when the news gets out it causes an uproa
r in Cape St Clair Michael Schwarz was known as the bad kid in the family not handsome likable Larry a chill just went up my spine it just didn't seem right I didn't have a single suspicion it was very difficult to accept that Larry had that type of violence within him Larry was seen as this model mild-mannered son nobody in a million years would have expected him to commit one of the most heinous crimes in the history Anapolis the community was in denial the majority of them were convinced that
Michael Schwarz had done this there was certainly a lot of speculation about whether we had the right person or not it was very hard for people to believe that he could have done it I think that they just felt there was more to this there was more going on than any of us could understand why would a docel youth beloved by everybody explode in a rage and stabed both his parents wh why everybody wanted to know the answered authorities want answers too but Larry at the direction of the defense tea
m hired by concerned family friends is not talking and has neither admitted nor denied guilt so for the next 15 months while Larry Waits it out in jail detectives spend every waking moment trying to build an airtight case we lacked a confession the state's attorney ranwell County had me reassigned to his office to work exclusively on this case we had to make sure that we had every piece of evidence we could get to close this case without Larry's confession detectives need to find out what led th
is softspoken boy to such violent extrems I continue to interview people collect statements investigate soon realized that Michael wasn't the only son who had a hard time at home I believe that Larry was under tremendous pressure he was repeatedly chastised for the poor grades he was restricted from leaving the yard I think it was more of a protection thing you're trying to keep him away from the wrong crowd and uh I think Larry could have been pulled in many ways I think they were afraid of tha
t I believe personally that he was angry he was frustrated it was cumulative that he was holding rage inside him and whatever may have happened that night set him off but some speculated that there was another reason why Larry turned on his parents Michael kept contact with Larry he changed Larry's view of the family and in a negative way he was telling him that they just got rid of me they want nothing to do with me you know Larry he didn't want to be left like that he didn't didn't want to go
into foster home again Larry was extremely worried that what happened to Michael would happen to him then it changed where he was afraid he was going to be put out despite what may have led to this violent act 17-year-old Larry Schwarz is about to be tried for first deegree murder 15 months after the crimes the prosecutor had had Witnesses ready to lined up psychiatric Witnesses who said Larry was Zayn and he knew what he was doing and he actually planned it and they had a case to present that s
howed premeditated coldblooded murder Larry Schwartz looked unconcerned as he arrived this morning from the county jail where he had spent the last 15 months more than 60 Witnesses have been subpoena to testify at Larry schwarts trial which is expected to last 2 weeks I was at the courthouse expecting a trial there was no trial nobody expected anything like this to happen it was [Music] shocking after detectives and prosecutors have labored more than a year preparing their case against Larry Sch
warz for the murder of his parents a last minute maneuver by schwarz's legal team has brought everything to an unexpected screeching halt the trial is called off Larry had confessed to his attorneys he broke down he broke down sobbing and heaving and he said he did it he was guilty and he just killed them finally authorities have their confession leaving behind any doubt of Larry's guilt ultimately the expected killer hadn't done it the unexpected killer had done it now the State's Attorney's of
fice has to decide what punishment could possibly fit this crime the state agreed to app plea of second deegree murder the prosecutor recommended a 20-year sentence with all but 12 suspended the judge agreed to make it concurrent as opposed to consecutive I've never seen it case that lenient the state's attorney wanted me to take Larry to the confinement facility he knew that if I took Larry there was a potential for Larry to tell me why he did this and how did it really occur and I've sat down
with him and asked him to tell us Larry why did you do it he didn't answer me and I pressed him again and he said I just lost [Music] it he said that he had come home from school that day and later in the evening his mother had asked him how he had done on his tests and he knew that he had failed Spanish and she had been writing him about not doing well in school and she made actic remark about his grades having you probably failed them meaning the tests so he took a knife they stabbed her repea
tedly about the [Music] neck and then Bob was alerted to the activity the noise and he attacked Bob [Music] Larry never did explain or admit to chasing K through the neighborhood I found out during the autopsy that she had been stabbed through her sophus so perhaps she couldn't scream was sheer Terror running for her life Larry did did admit to putting the splitting Mall into his mother's [Music] head after committing such a violent act Larry knew there was only one way to cast off suspicion cou
nt police we came the realization that throughout the interview with Larry he was trying to steer our investigation he force fed us information about Michael the whole time that his brother Michael was a suspect in the killings Larry played the victim card when we were here for the funeral Larry wanted to hang out with us essentially which we were perfectly prepared to do not believing for a minute that he was involved we viewed him as a victim a kid who didn't have any parents at this point in
time it's to this day hard to Fathom though Larry 's adoptive brother Michael had been exonerated he nonetheless met with a tragic end when it turned out that he didn't commit the murders he had nowhere to go his parents are dead his brother's in prison his sister's been adopted by another family and he has no one in the oral he starts doing drugs and while he's taking drugs he and his buddies go rob a man and in the course of robbing the man they stabbed him to [Music] death Michael is sentence
d to prison for life none of the leniency his brother got life he's now in his 50s still in prison in the state of Maryland 35 years later this just had to be one of the worst lose lose destructive situations at uh you know Society can see happen looking back over this case I have empathy for both Michael and Larry I know that they they struggled yet the parents still tried to do the right thing K and Bob had adopted children who had been through a a lot of bad times and so I think they were try
ing to heal the wounds that they came to the family with we're both Michael and Larry I could understand the frustration the anger but I couldn't understand the murder that's the part I didn't [Music] understand for more information on an unexpected killer go to oxygen.com [Music] a wealthy Commodities Trader with the world at his feet my brother was uh a funloving guy he had anything he wanted he had a lot of money The Cadillacs and the Rolex watches is viciously gunned down and they shot him a
gain and again and again with his wife and kids in the home at the time of the attack it was a very traumatic event to the family with people with guns threatening them you can't dismiss the fact it was a home invasion but a lot of it didn't add up I had no idea at all how this could happen police chased down a number of suspects there was a complete falling out between them someone could get killed over a debt that they didn't pay a sudden disappearance leaves everyone on edge there was a trait
or he disappeared off the face of the Earth it was suspected there was Foul Play involved or one dead and one missing um put a different spin on this type of investigation every lead brings investigators to a dead end it's very frustrating to have a case that hits a brick wall I'm until 30 years later they were holding a very big secret inside when the shocking truth is revealed couldn't believe it couldn't believe it that's not even human that's that's the [Music] devil just 30 minutes outside
of Chicago lies Inverness Illinois Inverness is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago it's a safe beautiful neighborhood some would call it very rich very large homes and very few crimes are ever committed in that area but on April 30th 1979 at 3:20 p.m. police receive a distressing call from a 15-year-old girl named Becky gamari her words were there's been a robbery my dad's been shot two was bleeding from the child the police responded immediately as we entered through the front door we wer
e met by Becky gamari she was crying and pointing downstairs I went downstairs and I saw a male who was leaning back in the sofa who appeared to have numerous gunshot wounds there was a woman who was kneeling at the feet of the victim crying almost in hysterics the woman identifies herself as Jackie keamari she says the victim is her husband Carl and that she and her three youngest children Bobby Carly and Nick were in the home when The Intruders stormed in those children must have been terrifie
d and felt so helpless it's horrifying the fam were taken out to the squad car so that they were secure and away from everyone investigators set to work processing the crime scene started with the body I went over to the victim I didn't find a pulse there was a number of uh bullet holes in his chest with the blood basically draining down to his pants I noticed a 9mm gun and there were a number of 9mm casings that were strewn about the victim's feet there was also a small 380 caliber handgun it a
ppeared that of 9 mm was placed to make some type of a statement this could be a staged killing the victim his legs were crossed at his ankles it didn't appear to be a natural position I went and took uh an inventory of what the rest of the house looked like the bedrooms the dresser drawers have been opened uh a number of items appeared to be tossed on the floor I could see that there were jewelry boxes that still had jewelry in them which raises questions as to why they actually came to that re
sidence was was this a legitimate robbery was this stage to cover something of you can't dismiss the fact it was a home invasion but a lot of it didn't add up it did bring into question that they were there really to kill the victim we took a number of fingerprint lifts from the kitchen the dining room and the bedroom area one of the officers noticed there was no forced entry nobody kicked in the door or Pride it as police continue working the scene Carl's family receives the tragic news my sist
er called me says you better get home Carl was shot the whole neighborhood where the house was all cting off we were told by the police he's in the house he's dead and uh they're investigating so we were all like stunned when this happened it was just a huge huge shock and we didn't know how to react disbelief and just um can't be Carl gamari was born in Elmwood Park Illinois in 1944 he was the third of four children my brother Carl was a a funloving guy you know he um he liked to go out and hav
e fun you know go on dates with girls and um go to parties and things like that when Carl was in high school he met the love of his life when he started dating Jackie he was like 18 and I think she was 17 at the time he just knew that this was the one and you know he wanted to get married and he want to get married now still teenagers Carl and Jackie started a family right away Carl was excited to be a dad they had four kids Becky was the oldest Bobby was the second oldest Carly was the third da
ughter and then Nick was the youngest he was his son by 1977 Carl had the perfect family and the perfect job working in finance at the Chicago Board of Trade Carl climbed up the ladder he was energetic and he loved it and it fit his personality to a te he had anything he wanted he had a lot of money he came to Cadillacs Rolex Watchers and things like that U he started Living a high life from the outside Carl's life seemed picture perfect but now his violent death leaves his family shattered he's
been shot and I was shocked you know no one knew anything what's what's going on I had no idea at all what how this could have happened investigators start by interviewing Carl's family who were also witnesses to the crime I took Jackie and the two girls out to the garage so I could get a general statement from them as to what occurred Jackie was crying and very upset Becky was crying Bobby was crying this was the most traumatic thing children could go through they said Carl went to work Jackie
was at home with uh Bobby her 13-year-old daughter 5-year-old Carly and 2-year-old Nick around 1200 or 12:30 Bobby is laying on the couch and she's watching TV and two men come in and they have guns she said the two men were wearing stocking masks and dark clothing and they had come in through the unlocked back door they point the guns at her and they ask her where's your mother so Bobby leads these men to the master bedroom where Jackie is on the phone they ask Jackie for her money and she say
s I only have $20 and they said we're here for more than that these men tie Bobby's hands behind her back and then they tie up Jackie they force them into the master bedroom closet with Carly with baby Nick time is passing Bobby said that she heard a man yelling no who she thought was her father and she heard three banging sounds which she believed were gunshots Becky came home approximately 3:00 in the afternoon from school uh she walked in through the front door called for her mom all she hear
d was uh crying from the master bedroom uh at that time she found them banging on the closet door to be let out once Becky opens up the closet doors Bobby went directly down to the basement and Bobby saw her father's bloody bullet-ridden body laying on that couch it is difficult to imagine how terrifying this must have been while the family lived through an extremely traumatic ordeal police are hopeful that with their help they can catch Carl's Killers Jackie and Bobby said at the suspects had a
ctually pulled up their mask so they had their face exposed to them Jackie described the first suspect as a male white mid to late 20s to 30s uh tall darkhaired and also had a mustache the second suspect was shorter than the first slightly heavier was a white male but had a pale complexion and facial hair Bobby and Jackie were able to do composits of the face they saw I think there was a lot of hope somebody's going to recognize these individuals when we heard about the sketch we thought that wo
uld be it they they' be able to find him I was hoping to get the information out as quickly as possible with the suspect's description so that if someone was possibly stopped or seen within the general area a patrol vehicle could have stopped them in Inverness where crime is virtually non-existent police believe there is more to this case than meets the eye it appeared to be a staged crime it could be someone who owed money to someone and being shot for that a jealous boyfriend uh it could be a
number of different things you can't close your mind to any possibility at that point in time coming up investigators uncover sorted Secrets he might have had some Associates who might have been involved with the mob and definitely raised a red flag The Killers evade detectives until an unexpected witness steps forward you told me how it was going to be done how they were going to kill Carl to reveal a dark and twisted plot no one predicted soon as they knew how Carl was going to be murdered and
that's exactly what happened to him that was the missing [Music] key police are investigating the murder of commodity's Traer and father of four Carl gamari his wife and young family were at home at the time of the terrifying attack Jackie and the two girls were mostly in shock they were completely overwhelmed by what was happening Jackie and Bobby saw the gunman armed with their description officers go door too looking for Witnesses one of the neighbors saw two men coming from the Garis throug
h her yard and she thought one of them was carrying like a uh a jewel bag after that neighbor pointed out where she saw the two men walking through her yard the detectives went back and followed that path they had found a cigarette butt that still had Ash on it by her driveway that cigarette butt was collected by the state police crime lab but in 1979 there was no DNA uh so there really wasn't much uh of the evidence that could be collected off of that cigarette butt more witnesses come forward
to help police trace the suspect's movements there was a woman who was in her car around the time that this incident took place she stated that she saw a beater type gray car parked on the side of the street when she returned approximately 3:00 or so uh she said that she saw the vehicle oncoming towards her she said that the driver was a white male the second passenger in the front was a white male but he was trying to slump down in the seat in her words she thought he was trying to hide himself
the neighbor who saw that vehicle coming towards her with the two men was also able to do a composite it's similar to the one Jackie and Bobby gave police composits are very very useful um you can put them in the newspaper you can get them on the news you can get them out there for people other agencies to see if anybody could identify them as possible suspects so after the canvas was conducted they then did a sweep of the area between uh the victim's house and where this car was observed to se
e if they could find any evidence they also discovered um Tire Impressions and some Footwear Impressions that were in the mud there where the car had been [Music] parked back at the crime scene investigators get an unexpected visitor I noticed someone approached me and he pulled out his credentials as being a Chicago police officer and told his name was Sam Greco Sam said that he was a family friend the girls knew Sam uh they felt comfortable around him he said that he had been called by the dau
ghter that something had happened so he was coming out to see what assistance he could lend on the day of the murder Becky made two phone calls she did call 911 her next call was to Sam tell him what had taken place Sam originally arrived up the scene about an hour after the initial call he had advised him that he had been on the phone with Jackie this was about 12:30 in the afternoon and that during their conversation she said somebody was there and he heard some voices in the background and th
en the call was disconnected so he had offered to give them his phone record so they could try to establish a timeline of when that occurred based on the time of the phone call police believe the gunman arrived at 12:30 p.m. and left by 3: that afternoon they spent over 2 hours in the home a detail that puzzles the investigators they spent so much time in the house which is not normal home Invaders usually come in take care of business and leave they don't sit around second the amount of items t
hat were left behind didn't indicate that this was a straight up home invasion my question was whether or not they knew that Carl gamari was coming home at that point in time and why did they kill him who did it and why and why my brother what did he do that he deserved to have his life snuffed away and taken away we had no idea who it could be in their search for answers detectives turned back to Carl's wife Jackie anytime you're investigating a murder within a family you have to look at the su
rviving spouse it was clear that Jackie hadn't been the one to shoot Carl two armed Invaders came into their house and locked them in the closet it was very traumatic to the kids and to Jackie to have all of a sudden their peaceful day broken down with people with guns and then threatening them and not letting them move around the house not knowing what was going to happen next they were absolutely terrified even after uh the suspects had left it was difficult to get them to to concentrate on ma
king a statement Jackie was crying upset when detectives asked Jackie about her relationship with Carl she tells them she loved him and that he was her high school sweetheart but what she reveals about her marriage surprises investigators Carl and Jackie had a rather unorthodox situation at times over the years they both had affairs and and they would bring their lovers home when you get information like that that's an important thing to follow up on and and look further to see where if that has
anything to do with what occurred here had the couple's infidelities led to Carl's murder you have to look at that as a possibility it definitely raised a red flag it was definitely [Music] shocking detectives investigating the coldblooded murder of Carl gamari have learned he and his wife Jackie had both been unfaithful that's a big red flag and needs to be looked at very thoroughly Jackie tells police they had recently agreed to work on their marriage they seem to be getting better as you got
into 1979 they were trying to work it out they went on a romantic vacation they were making a plan to do another big trip to Africa um they were buying a new house and they would tell friends that yeah things are getting back together for us we're going to make an effort to make this work because especially because of the kids a year before the murder the couple had even decided to renew their vows we as a family thought wow this is nice this is really nice to see you know that they wanted to g
et together and they have us there witness the renewing of their vows they were like two love birds he was gleaning from ear to a and so was Jackie and they seemed like a wonderful couple while Jackie was also a victim in this crime detectives still need to know if she'd have anything to gain financially from Carl's death it was learned that there was only about a $330,000 life insurance policy Carl had never signed a will which ties it up in in court and it could be 7 years before you see any o
f the the financial gain from this and so this kind of cleared jacket of being in the spotlight of the investigation investigators consider whether Carl and Jackie's renewed marriage could have driven one of their former lovers to murder when they ask Jackie who she had an affair with her answer is surprising Jackie and Sam greo had an affair she said that she had dated Sam for quite some time but that she had broken off the relationship with Sam to recommit to her marriage with uh Carl Jackie h
ad said when she became pregnant with Nick she stopped seeing Sam detectives need to know was Sam a jealous ex could he have killed Carl to have Jackie to himself Sam was interviewed once on the phone and then again in person he had met Jackie at a wedding and he was doing some private investigative work and Jackie had hired him to follow Carl to see if he was having an affair there was an indication from some Sam's investigation that Carl was having an affair and that ultimately led to them ini
tiating a relationship Sam also told the investigators that he and Jackie had been lovers but they were now just friends Sam denied any involvement with this case they took his phone records fingerprinted him and they interviewed individuals associated with Sam he was considered a hero uh within Chicago Police Department the police back then still investigated him as much as they could the investigators ruled him out as not being involved in this with Sam eliminated from the investigation detect
ive's next look at the woman with whom Carl had been having an affair Gail kayak was someone whom Carl had actually hired and worked with when Gil was interviewed her description was It was kind of two adults having some fun together it was nothing serious she knew it was going nowhere she knew Carl was married Gil tells investigators she and Carl broke things off about a year ago and that there wasn't any animosity between them she ended up after the relationship was over between her and Carl h
ad a boyfriend got pregnant given the affair had been over for a year it just made really no sense that she would be involved in this in any way just when detectives think they've hit another dead end Gail gives them a stunning new lead she says they need to speak to Carl's former friend and colleague Ned Kaiser Ned Kaiser was one of the closer people to Carl at the boorder of trade they had worked together there for a while they socialized Gail claims Ned not only knew about her affair with Car
l but told Jackie about it Carl and Ned were friends Carl would use his apartment to be with his girlfriend um Ned ultimately got upset with Carl told Jackie that Carl was using his place to be with his girlfriend once Carl found out that uh Ned was the one who told Jackie about Gail that soured the relationship Gail also tells police Ned had a dark reputation she had rumored that he had eyes to organize crime whenever you're dealing with people with money and investment and all there's always a
possibility that someone um could get killed over a debt that they didn't pay had Carl and Ned fallen out over money had Ned put out a hit on his former friend you always look at the big picture business dealings with Ned him betraying Carl to Jackie about using his place uh Ned having some possible mob connections I think you got to look at everything you have to see what's there where does that lead you is this a person who has a reason to kill [Music] kyl police are following a tip that the
murder of successful traitor Carl gamari may have been a targeted hit one organized by his former friend and coworker Ned Kaiser Ned Kaiser might have been quote unquote involved with the mom during the 1970s Chicago was was very much involved with the criminal network of the mob and uh a number of people wound up dead every year organized crime had a hand in gambling from information obtained from co-workers and people that knew Carl he gambled at the Board of Trade he would gamble outside of i
ndividual are gambling like that then chances are they would cross paths with organized crime people 5 days after the homicide Ned is brought in for an interview police ask about his friendship and working relationship with Carl the relationship with Ned and Kaiser and Carl and the family was was an extensive involved one um they had known each other for approximately 9 years and at one point when Ned was going through a divorce they actually let him move into their house Ned said says that's wh
y he had a hard time keeping Carl's Affair secret Ned had told investigators that the reason he came forward to Jackie was because he was friends with both of them and he just felt that Jackie was being mistreated by the way Carl was acting and needed to correct him detectives asked Ned if Carl was indebted to him or if they had any conflict about money Ned denied ever having any kind of a fight with Carl Ned was asked if he had any involvement if he knew anything about Carl's murder and he deni
ed having any direct knowledge there was nothing that anyone could dig up that would say Ned was responsible for Carl's death the investigators took a very hard look at him to see if there was any way that he could have committed this crime and they were able to rule him out there was no evidence connecting him to the murder of Carl gamari investigators are forced to let N Go the police talked to everyone that they possibly could if they talked to one person and that person mentioned other peopl
e they went and talked to those people as well and then it gets to a point where there's just no other leads to pursue at that time so they police are essentially waiting for new information authorities once again turned to the public in an attempt to find the men who killed Carl and terrorized his family there composits are very critical in our ongoing investigation in identifying the shooters I remember cutting out all the headlines and all that Bo something's going to be recognized with the s
ketch and something's going to happen with this and come about from it but days would go on and nothing when the sketches were released there wasn't a lot of uh information that came in nothing substantial at all detectives hope that the autopsy report will provide a crucial new lead Carl had been shot six times at the fatal wound had penetrated his chest into his heart and and SED the a ort when you have multiple shots like that from two different guns it's apparent that their intent was to kil
l him and they shot him again and again and again and again total of six times since the medical examiner didn't find any defense wounds on Carl there is no physical evidence on his body to link to the perpetrators frustration grows when detectives get the report on the fingerprints found at the crime scene there were no known matches of any of those latent fingerprints they had no real suspects didn't seem like anybody was going to be arrested for this with the killer still on the loose the tow
n of Inverness is on edge while Carl's family lives in fear a couple of days after the original murder someone had put a threatening note in the mailbox Jackie then went to the police and said she was being threatened and that was her concern for her safety when I found that out I was very disturbed I was concerned about jacking the kids somebody wanted my brother killed two weeks after the murder police make a disturbing Discovery it came to the attention of the initial investigators that there
was a Traer worked at the Chicago Board of Trade had just disappeared um it was suspected there was Foul Play involved detectives learn his name is Arty Jones and he's one of Carl's business associates our Jones knew harl there may have been some money involved between the two of them no one knew what happened to him he left uh for work uh drove into the City and was never h heard from again could the two cases be connected now put a new light a new focus with two traders in close proximity one
dead and one missing um put a different spin on this type of investigation at that point in time when we heard the news and it was all over the papers that we thought wow now we know there's something going on at the Board of Trade when you had Carl who was killed uh and being part of border of trade and then you have Arty who who disappeared after going to work at the Board of Trade those don't happen often now when Ry Jones happened that was very concerning it was you know we wanted to find o
ut okay who's after Arty and who's after Carl if there was somebody in fact after both of [Music] them 2 weeks after Carl gamari murder his coworker Ry Jones has has vanished detectives are hunting for a potential connection between the two cases through the Highland Park investigation of of already they interviewed his wife and she said that since the the murder of of of Carl he had become very edgy he was very secretive about going out to meet some people for business at that time and then nev
er coming back it just uh hidden that concern she had about the two being related there was just no trace of him they ran credit checks they did phone records They had absolutely nothing of where this individual may have gone or why he disappeared they located his vehicle near O'Hare Airport no reason why it was there no rhyme couldn't put him on a airplane there was just nothing he was gone that investigation was rather lengthy and they never did locate him and eventually his wife had him decla
red dead it's very frustrating to um have a case that hits a brick wall Carl's family continues to push for answers I was persistent I would call I wanted to hear from the horse's mouth from the detectives um what's going on what's the next step what are you looking at months and months and months turned into a year a year turned into two years then you kind of like lost faith a little bit Carl's loved ones try to cope with the terrible realization that his Killers may never be found the investi
gation wasn't turning up anything they broadcasted and showed those pictures of the two men for a long time no one knew anything the case is considered a Cold Case 30 years later the case is reopened detectives Mike Kirby and Bill stutsman took over that investigation gave it new life these were people who had investigated you know hundreds of violent crimes in their careers I had spent 9 and 1/2 years on a homicide task force so this was my first actual uh Cold Case we were told to look at this
case from 30 years ago right away you're like 30 years who's even going to be alive from back then that we could talk to but when we sat down and we compiled uh our plan of action people we wanted to talk to we became extremely excited about the possibility of this being solved as the new detectives start digging into the cold case they are confronted with a daunting problem barington Police Department had two floods in their basement where their evidence was kept these floods basically contami
nated any of the evidence ruling it unusable any DNA we might have was gone that's a major blow in an investigation most cold cases nowadays are soled through forensic evidence we had none of that then in 2011 a stunning turn of events reignites the investigation we get a phone call it was uh shocking to us Ry Jones had been located living under an assumed name in Las Vegas part of a fraud investigation by the federal government and uh located him we were extremely shocked that he was alive inve
stigators fly to Nevada to interview Ry Jones about Carl's murder well the first thing we wanted to know was what uh relationship did R Jones have at all with with Carl did they have any any kind of business transaction he claimed he didn't even know so then we focused on why did he disappear then when we talked to Mr Jones he said that he was having financial problems um he didn't like his job he didn't like his life he was unhappy with his marriage so he just faked his disappearance and that b
ecame very clear that he had staged all this by planting the car by the airport the two um had no connection the Kamari of murder and his disappearance were not related With the yardi Jones mystery solved detectives are again left with no leads what we decided to do was to work this like it was a fresh case and just start from the beginning with no preconceived Notions no no thoughts on where we were going to go with it Bill stman and Mike Kirby reinterviewed everyone who had been interviewed th
at they could find back in 1979 and 80 and one of the people they interviewed was Jackie's sister Tootsie when police interviewed Tootsie the night of Carl's Murder She told them on the morning of April 30th Jackie called Tootsie and told her to come over that day and if Tootsie had come that day I don't know if she would have been another victim detectives bring Jackie's sister Tootsie in for an interview as they question her she makes a jaw-dropping revelation she said I've been ridden with gu
ilt throughout the years I've seen what it did to the kids what it did to his family um I can only be truthful about this I can only tell you what was told to me chitti was having all ERS after the murder of Carl she was holding a very big secret inside it troubled her to keep this secret for so long she just realized I believe that it was the right thing to do and that's what she always wanted to do and she proceeded to tell us about two months prior to the murder that Jackie had said I don't l
ove Carl anymore I don't want to be with him this is the time when Jackie and Carl were Getting Back Together Jack Becky had uh supposedly stopped the affair with Sam Greco based on what we learned that was not the truth her Affair still continued I it was very shocking it gives you a Different Light view of of Jackie as a person and and the type of individual she is what Tootsie says next leaves investigators stunned jaie had told her of a plan that she had with Sam Jackie said to Tootsie we've
found a way to get rid of Carl we're going to make it look like a home invasion some men are going to come in uh they're going to tie me up and they're going to wait for Carl to come home and kill him Tootsie couldn't believe what her sister was saying to her and they just kind of ended the conversation with Tootsie saying Jackie you don't have to do that divorce him just divorce him and Jackie would reply if I divorce him then I don't get all the money Jackie had told her how Carl was going to
be murdered and that's exactly what happened to him it seemed almost mind-blowing to think that uh Jackie could be involved in such a crime as to expose her daughters and her uh infant to their father getting killed in the home investigators tell Tootsie they'll need more than just her word to lay charges they decided to ask her if she would be willing to record conversations with her sister Jackie at first totsie said no she didn't want to do it she didn't want to hurt Jackie we had emphasized
with her that no we're not saying Jackie physically killed Carl but she was part of a plan in which Carl was killed and we had said we're asking you to put an open-ended statement to her and see how she response she agreed to do it that was the missing key to make this case go [Music] forward more than 30 years after the cold-blooded killing of father of four Carl gamari police learn his wife Jackie plotted his murder with her former lover Sam Greco but investigators need hard evidence to arres
t her they convinced Jackie's sister Tootsie to record a conversation hi Jackie how you doing I'm not doing good honey the police have been here about Carl and uh they've been asking me a lot of questions they're saying I might have to go in front of the grand jury I don't know if you remember what you told me I do are you going to do that though to me I'm sorry but I'm going to have to oh my God just tell him that I wish you was that don't tell him I said that please I already they already know
Jackie you told me how it was going to be done how they were going to break in and tie you up and put you in the closet and then kill Carl you know you got to help me just I can't go to jail you got to help me I I can't lie I can't lie did you just tell your that don't remember but they know I remember they know I do those recorded convers ations are devastating Jackie saying can you lie for me um can't you say you forget there was truth to what Tootsie was saying and and that's why Jackie want
ed to lie for her that was very damaging evidence those recordings were all that were needed to have an arrest warrant issued police bring Jackie down to the station we did not tell her she was under arrest but she was not going anywhere we had the arrest warrant during the course of the interview not only did we tell her we talked to tossie who told us about their conversation we played portions for Jackie and I told do that it's enough to put me away what am I supposed to say when they asked m
e why I said that to you what am I supposed to say that I can't answer I don't know maybe you didn't mean to tell me but you did what should I do I don't know I don't know I don't know you we my sister but you're a witness against me your testimony is enough to put me away I'm going to go to jail confronted by her own words Jackie tries to put the blame on her former lover Sam cuz she wanted to be able to say yes okay early on I said let's do this but then I backed out I didn't want to have anyt
hing to do with it so therefore I'm not guilty of Carl's murder there are so many things Jackie did that tells you what kind of a person she is she wanted to be with Sam she didn't want to be with Carol after the murder Sam and Jackie married a few months later several years later Sam and Jackie were divorced we continued a full force investigation into Sam Greco's involvement as also pursuing the two Shooters and before we could gain enough evidence uh to check charged him um he passed away fro
m his medical conditions on March 27th 2013 Jackie alone is charged with the first-degree murder of her husband Carl gamari Jackie was the true monster without Jackie this crime never would have happened in 2016 a jury finds Jackie guilty but the verdict is overturned on appeal prosecutors offer Jackie a deal she pleads guilty to murder and is sentenced to 22 years in prison Justice finally finally was served couldn't believe it couldn't believe it she was a true sociopath and not just for takin
g Carl's life but because of what she did to her children she chose to have her children be victims of this traumatic event just for her own selfish needs to get rid of her husband a woman that involves her own children in a scheme in a plan in a plot to have their father murdered her husband murdered I don't know if you ask me that's not even human that's that's the devil four decades after the murder police are still searching for the gunmen this remains an open and active investigation it's n
ever going to stop if there's any new information the police are going to follow up on [Music] it no matter how long those Shooters live and how much time passes they can never stop looking over their shoulder my brother was a good guy he was very determined to succeed in anything he did to see how he would have been when his children got older would have been a wonderful thing to happen and I'm sure he would have loved it who knows how our lives would have been you know a lot of missed opportun
ities a lot of of things that um never happened I lost a brother and you know somebody to look up to and somebody to uh experience life with you know the rest of the way I miss Carl a [Music] lot 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 shout went through Hil 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 fetal 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 [Music] anybody the City of Arlington is the home of two professional sports teams and a major amusement park there's something f
or everybody and if you can't find something to do then you've got a problem but in early April 1994 this idilic community was rocked to its core1 and it started when police received a 911 call from the Holly Park apartment complex 9115 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 res 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 die firefighters track the fire to its source an apartment on the second floor once inside they make a horrific discovery [Music] firefighters 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 foun
d 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 Le 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 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 wa
s like nothing I've ever seen you know who would do 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 that 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 PR no tell them what we would have had investigators collect the knife for testing an
d manage 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 occupied by one one occupant identified as Missy gual 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 t
hat they had to use a forensic odontologist to confirm Missy as the victim once we've identified the victim as Missy gral we talk 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 s
he would have given any 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 her 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 is 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 t
eenager 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 miss was working to support herself to afford to be able to go 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 you're going to help me find who did this to Missy 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 Missy's murder she'd called her
mother late at night when she got home she finished her phone call with her mom and then dispatch getting a phone call then the apartment's on fire establishing kind of a window 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 gral filed a police report on a guy that's staying with Missy who stole from her and I'm thinking 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 susp
icious here that puts them face to face with Missy's attacker I said you killed Missy gual let's start talking about this Arlington police detectives are searching for the killer of Texas college student Missy guba they've learned that the 19-year-old co-ed filed a police report a week before her death Missy had reported a coworker 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 nex
t 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 disappeared detectives speak to Miss'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 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 that scares me because I see someone who is e
asily victimized only days after Charles moved in Missy discovers she has been played Missy finds out one day that about $1,000 is gone from her tip JW 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 radar 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 autops
y 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 show that the as salent wanted to feel in control and dominant the Fatal Stab Wound of the chest it 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 suspicions the attack was sexual in nature she had been forcibly penetrated this was a 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 Se
aman was recovered that could be analyed for DNA forensic evidence and physical evidence is great you got to have it it least you to your killer so that seen was a forensic link to the suspect the Sean 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 them that's very powerful evidence other evidence is piling up too among the documents collected from Missy'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 Ivan 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 gruba 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 because we know that Missy was sexually [Music] assaulted detectives examined the letters between Missy and Ivan and discovered 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 f
ar 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 Pressur
e 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 bring Ivan in we need to talk to him because he was in fact in some level of a relationship with Missy at the 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 rel
ationship with her he certainly did want to have that relationship go a step fur 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 fact that we had Seaman from the crime scene means we have forensic evidence that would either connect him or exclude him detectives asked 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 four to 6 weeks
while waiting for results on DNA tests for Ivan and searching for Miss's former cooworker Charles Johnson detectives continue their investigation by canvasing Missy's friends at the 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 ups
et him and 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 fight 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 of 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 re
staurant who knows Jeffrey well this girlfriend Kristen agreed to come in to speak with Detective stain and I visibly nervous Kristen paints a troubling picture of her boyfriend Preston told us that they were living together but 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 Kristen 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 involved in the murder of Miss detectives investigating the murder of 19-year-old Missy grubba are interviewing Kristen 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 Kristen told us nigh
t 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 no criminal history but detectives are still suspicious we know that he had made som
e 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 Detective are struck by Jeff's demeanor Jeff Smith was smiling and nonchalant 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 in the conflict between him and Kristen Kristen's telling us no I'm moving out because the guy scares 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 Missy's murder and are forced to let him go but before he 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 that 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 abducte
d Kristen earlier in the morning physically abducted her and drove off with her from her parents home in Denton Christen tells detective Lenor that Jeff was distraught and held her in an apartment for 8 hours threatening to kill her if she tried to leave Christ's 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 an a warrant for his arrest for kidnapping he became a fugitive you've got this guy who is a Loose Cannon and there was a level of urgency to find him we put out a national broadcast 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 and h
is saliva for DNA they would certainly connect or exclude him from the murder DNA testing is still under way but Days Later investigators do get an important update from the lab they were able 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 Miss's murder
and char Char 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 watched 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 th
e investigation detectives get a tip from an unexpected Source I got a call out of the blue from uh Miss grubo she wouldn't let me know that she recalled a conversation that she had uh with missing 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 has turned up the heat on a case going cold the victim's mother recalls a detail from the days just before Missy'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 he 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 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 Louis's baby at the apartment complex detective's first stop the restaurant where Missy and Lise both worked Luis isn't there but the manager tells them Louise is a model employee he was an Army veteran I learned that about him no criminal history matter of fact managem
ent gave him an award for a heroic Act he actually stopped a robbery the detectives asked workers what they knew about Louis's relationship with Missy co-workers described Lewis as a friend sometimes after work they might enjoy beer together detectives also hear something that catches them off guard a work associate relay 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 suspicious coworker in Miss'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 [Musi
c] guy he told us that Missy used to babysit 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 the guilty party and the process in which I do that is I take samples blood hair and saliva compareed to the DNA and exclude them the request instantly changes Louis's mood his response immediately was 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 incri
minating 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 little bit here cuz 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 and I've got their seon and Luis immediately says you know I've
got to go 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 manage
ment head 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 Louis's gone you and I need to talk Janette has been been living with Louise for 2 years the couple moved into the Holly Park Apartments 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 wit
h me which was about 3 days earlier they got married they got legally married well in Texas a wife cannot testify against her husband hband I mean those are my thoughts that are going on I kind 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 Lis had gotten off work about 10:30 11 and informed her t
hat he was going to have some drinks with some friends then he came in close to midnight and then she heard him leave two 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 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 an
d 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 question him 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 setting in as far as what Louis migh
t 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 Tex 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 match the blood type from the seen the blood type matches that of Miss's attacker it's the link detectives h
ave been looking for and enough to bring Louise in but first they'll need to find him so I got an arrest warrant for Lis the next day I get a teletype that the vehicle that Luis was in was found abandoned and burned in San Antonio detectives believe they have finally uncovered the man who murdered Missy grba and set fire to her apartment but Luis aroyo has fled Arlington his car found abandoned and set Ablaze in San Antonio we don't know but suspected there was evidence there but the car was pre
tty 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 realize 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 g
ives up Louise Janette gave me the address where he was staying in San Antonio San Antonio Police Department went into the home and arrested L Luis without incident detectives Lenor and Stanton traveled to San Antonio to confront Luis Ayo in person it is the most unique interrogation I've ever seen I mean 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 so
me 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 Missy grou 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 tact
ics I said you killed Missy grubba all right let's start talking about this and he said you know I don't remember I I remember getting a knife I think I did stab her detectives are stunned is this 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 Luis gave a statement with several admissions that included guilt knowledge informat
ion Luis 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 charge Louise but detectives want to make make the case against him airtight detective s and I got an evident from search warrant collected his blood and his hair and saliva sample he was in fact matched to the DNA from the sexual assault yet with Louis's statements detectives can put together exactly what happened o
n 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 would be consensual 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 missing he needed to destroy evidence and that's when he made his decision to set fire to the apartment Lewis w
as charged with capital murder once we had a written statement we had the statements from the wife pretty straightforward case as Louis 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 Kristen he received a 4-year sentence Lisa royo's trial lasts only 5 days but we got a conviction rather quickly and in Texas onc
e 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 wind is Bittersweet he being in prison will never take 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 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 to his family his nieces and nephews is brutally gunned down a month before
his wedding it was Point Blank assassination there's a big pudle of blood oh God investigators piece together a series of Clues we had to look at what role of that upcoming wedding had and what happened they have their arguments they had their differences was the scene stage to cover up an intentional peing 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 s
omebody who had had a criminal history of theft and assault just when police are close to making an arrest it was like it just got smacked in the head with a baseball back they uncovered 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 de there's a big puddle of blood police fire and ambulance are coming okay holy please oh my [Music] God the woman who made the 911 call Carol upaya says the victim is her soon to be husband 59-year-old Jack [Music] 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 photographed 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 did
n'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 wer
e trying to determine was the scene staged with someone just trying to 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 and none of that was fine our first thoughts were the victim either knew the actor or was familiar with them tha
t'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 said he was murdered and I just went into 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 liked he could be Charming wh
en 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 peas in a pot 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 recently retired but had big plans for the future at that point in his life Jack was very content him and Carol were going 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 then when they set t
he date I was so happy it was going to be an exciting very exciting day 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 here and it just it was really sad it was so [Music] 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 ju
st get the best timeline from her during the interview with Carol she exped explained that 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 tri
ed to get on all of them so I think it was approximately about 2:00 she left work and then 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 have killed him before she left the house and then all of a sudden she finds them and you know the killer was right i
n front of us her demeanor she was very upset but you can't take a chance by skipping the 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 are 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 for not le
t 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 surface we learned of several burglaries they had concerns about the employees they hire criminals just when the investigation is 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 Harold 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 th
eir lifestyle what were the family Dynamics we had to chip away a number of things in their 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 C
arol says she would never do anything to hurt the love of her life she wanted to marry 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 w
ith suspicion shifting from Carol for now investigators explore whether theft was the 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 involved 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 that 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 th
at 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 tolded 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 6:0
0 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 wa
s a phrase that seemed to hint at some kind of animosity 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 a
ny 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 a
bout Jack's mother's house turned fatal with the timing of Bradley's conversation with Jack 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 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 to 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 M the projectile that was recovered from yeah autopsy with nothing concrete linking B
radley to the murder he is dropped as a suspect detectives also corroborate 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 [Music] suspect looking for New Leads detectives speak to the other nieces and nephews who were close to Jack dorar interview of Carol she had told us about her nephew Michael Lea who was almost like a son to her and you know he had been at the house a lot the
y got along good Michael joined the military Jack was very proud and Michael Jack took pride in the 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'd fallen out
with the family including his aunt and uncle and hadn't seen them in a year he specifically denied being over near the victim's house and he made made reference to them being estranged Michael had a bit of a drug problem and Carol and Jack decided to distance themselves 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 find him around 3:0
0 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 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 that they lived in he said that he had had a doctor's ap
pointment at the VA hospital later that afternoon these were things at businesses and locations that we could 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 Alibi had checked out 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 doing 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 pe
ople 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 intere
st Ronald Levens was a name that came up from multiple employees in the context of people who had gone over 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 w
asn'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 asked Ronald Point Blank if he had anything 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 Ronal
d Levan's Alibi checked out and we were able to eliminate him as a suspect in this case desperate for a new 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 $5,000 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 think that anything's possible [Music] now 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 Burg that happened during the day which is the timeline we were looking at in this particular incident
often times in our investigations we see that residential burglaries are done during the day in bedroom 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 hand 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 coins 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 that this would have occurred Vernon was somebody we were absolutely able to rule out of being directly involved at that stage in 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 wi
thout even being seen the hardest thing to comprehend was the murder it was Point Blank assassination Stone 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 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 which is another small little burrow within aagy 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 b
e 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 photogra
ph and they were taken to Carol who viewed them she became very upset she started crying and she said that's our jewelry it felt like we were closing in 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 in 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 blac
khair and thin buil that description was provided to the local police chief in fburg and he thought that fit the description of white male from that area it gave us a very good lead in this game a photo aray was put together to 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 phot
o array he did identify who that person was it was a huge break it was exactly what we needed 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 LBI for and just denials until investigators find proof no one can deny those records don't [Music] lie detectives have just identified the man who tried to paw
n murder victim Jack Park's jewelry his name Brian Gibbons 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 someone else based upon the search at Mr gibbons's residence we were able to arrest him and have him sent to the county jail 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 wanted 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 Park'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 Bri
an was not the killer he had a solid Albi it was clear that he was not the same individual who had come in to the store on that Monday and tried to sell the jewelry the pawn shop owner mistakenly identified the wrong person the investigation kept hitting dead end after dead end we thought we had it but then once we eliminate him 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 struggl
e with their grief instead of looking forward to Jack's wedding 5 days after his 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 and 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 feari
ng 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 ident 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 race to the pawn shop we had to go take a physical look at it see who if anybody was on camera some store 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 just 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 provi
de an alibi about businesses he was at doctor's appointments Michael had his girlfriend melan he saying that he was with her during the time that Jack would have or could have been killed so 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 Monte pawning his uncle we decided that it would probably be ideal to bring Michael and his girlfriend Melanie in at the same time 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 involvement 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 that he had sold Jack's Jewelry we showed her a picture of the jewelry and she tr
ied 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 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 Mic
hael'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 Jack on the day of the incident parts of his Alibi checked out cell phone datawise 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 where Carol can't reach Jack it would be impossible to be in Sharpsburg and your p
hone ping off a tower in Kennedy Township the amount of distance between the two it wouldn't be possible he was not at home he was over near his uncle 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 confron 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 told her to wait she never got out of 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 a yearo was accused of stealing jewelry and I wanted to make amend 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 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 $11,000 even more shocking is what he spent the money on you stated that that's one of the people you sometimes purchased narcotics from
yes I gave him about $6 to$ 700 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 almost like Jack's son very close family member would do something like that in exchange for a couple dollars to get H 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 him you keep their memory alive and that's how he stays with us every day he's here in my mind my heart and my dreams I I see his face always smiling I know he's flying with the [Music] angels [Music] a charmin
g 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 eye witnesses this case was a definite who done it case and a long list of suspects he had been hanging around her desk and he had made some comments that reall
y 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 with 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 case 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 senseless [Music] 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 uh person discovered dead in an apartment it was her fiance 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 currently at daycare the fiance tol
d 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 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 it signs of strangulation she had a a ligature around her neck the lature appeared t
o 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 of the dresser drawers was open the stock
ing 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 rumag 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 have been a staged burglary because frankly t
here 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 out to speak with other tenants in the compl
ex 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 screaming I was just absolutel
y in utter shock how does one handle the information that your best friend your sister the 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 she was very fun Danielle was always ready to have a good ti
me 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 age stand in the way of being a good mother Danielle gave b
irth 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 Louis in our early teen years Danielle was always partial to lisis and Louis and Danielle were dating and I was so thrilled and the way that lisis would look at Danielle like she would walk into the room and he would just light up soon the c
ouple moved into an apartment together and Danielle 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 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 girl 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 had 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 that to her back at the crime scene investigato
rs 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 percentages 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 violent 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 [Music] coming police investigating the murder of 20-yea
r-old mother Danielle Jennings have their first suspect her fiance 25-year-old Lise Pano even though he's her fiance everybody remains a suspect and until such time that we solved 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 Lise 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 could
n'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 well he said that when he got home the f
ront door was unlocked and that really surprised him because they were pretty careful about keeping the front door locked detectives asked Lise 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 ones her family and friends stated that they were just a young couple that were very much in love and look
ing 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 at work all day through statements of his co-workers as a result he was eliminated as a suspect now you're on the h
unt 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
uh 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 he had made a comment to her that if he was 20 ye
ars younger things would be a lot different Danielle had briefly touched Bas 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 complaint they took it seriously they moved quickly detectives note the timing when told of the compan
y's response that day that uh Daniel 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 ious 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 because his career was in a certain amount of Jeopa
rdy 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 time of death you had 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 wanted to speak with him face to [Music] face d
etectives hunting the killer of Danielle Jennings suspect a harassment complaint against her coworker Jeff may have led to retaliation 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 other than that he had not done anything he talk
ed 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 detectives asked if Danielle's complaint gave him a reason to want to harm her his first reaction was he was an
gry 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 were the 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 confirmed police eliminate Jeff as a suspect 24 hours af
ter 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 happen 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 be dead the following day investigators received the a
utopsy 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 in about 15 to 20 seconds after the ligature 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 positioning of the knot someone had come up behind her wi
th 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 w't any other injuries there weren't any defensive injuries this case was a definite henic case there was no evidence found at the scene that could help us there was no forensic evidence whatsoever uh no transfer of skin no fingerprints uh nothing a lab could look at after striking out with the autopsy investigators revisit the theory that the homi
cide 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 if he recognizes the stalking we wanted to know whether
it came from her it was a tan knee high 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 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 Danielle's friends about her previous relationship
s when they first started questioning me they were asking me a lot of questions about her boyfriend's 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 violent he was abusive she ended up having to get a restraining order on him with Eddie no one ever really knew when he was going to pop up again that was somebody w
e needed to look at [Music] two days after the murder of 20-year-old Danielle Jennings friends have alerted investigators to Eddie maaany 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 flags as they got more serious he became more posse
ssive 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 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 Eddie was getting involved in drugs and that was finally the straw that broke 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 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 he
r 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 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 possibility that with his past that he could have done some
thing like that investigators track down Eddie and bring him in for questioning in the interview with Eddie he was kind of belligerent and unhappy 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 Daniel Eddie's responses raised detective suspicions even more when he was asked about the relationship his version was a l
ittle 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 talked 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 where he was at the time of the crime Eddie tells detectives t
hat 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 his whereabouts could be verified throughout the day that is is a pretty t
ight Alibi so he was eliminated as a suspect it's another dead end for detectives once again we're knocked for 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 trying to point a finger at somebody that you don't know
who there was this a 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 of 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 Danie
lle 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 bed and a few minutes later she hears the front door open an
d the maintenance man is standing there the maintenance man says that he's there for a work order have however Miss Kirk said she felt very uncomfortable the entire time that he was in there because he was always staring at her 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 apartment complex to investigate while speaking with the managemen
t 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 and stumbled and then you know maybe I have the wrong apart
ment 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 kin 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 in on them in investigators discover a disturbing 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 entury 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 detective 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 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 i
n for questioning we did 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 go into 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 murder the first question was did you hear about this this it wa
s kind of oddd you would have thought that a person who worked in that apartment complex that was there every day would have heard everything about he went yeah I think I heard something about it 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 we had a pattern of 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 Danielle was killed if he's in there and she walks in on him that would be a rea
son 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 that would be similar to the one that we found tied arou
nd 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 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 possession of that key it's only enough evidence to allow investigators to charge Calvin with burglary we concluded that search with t
hose 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 Lise called out of the blue he said do you have the engagement rate we told him no we don't have a ring we didn't know one was missing then he describes the ring and then the big bright light goes off when we were doing the Sur 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 be able to identify it if we were able to identify that as being Danielle's ring that would physically tie Oliver to Danielle and her apartment on the day that she was murde
red 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 know [Music] 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 friend can answer that question the detective and Lewi
s there and uh I said well what's going on and the detective looked at me and he said Leslie 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 s IED we needed to find out when was the last time she had seen her wea
ring 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 Oliver with Burner nine days after her death Calvin O
liver is arrested for the murder of Danielle Jennings the primary charge was malice murder and that means that you to 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 involvement in the murder and then he was confronte
d with the evidence that we had we 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 s
aid there was no intent there which was a good comment to having 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 Daniel 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 apartmen
t 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 that strangled my best friend friend for no reason at trial prosecutors present how they believe the crime unfolded the day Danielle was killed Mr Oliver had already let himself in hoping for financial gain after the HR meeting about her cooworker Danielle went home for lunch by herself once sh
e 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 her 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 prosecution's most damning evi
dence Danielle stole an engagement ring I had to be the one to testify 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 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 he took it off Daniel Jenn
ings 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 sent is 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 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 [Music] for for e [Music] ready on e
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