a single mother with a big heart if you needed anything she was always there she was a sweet girl everybody loved her is the victim of a bizarre murder duct tape had been wrapped around her head about 14 times this is nothing I had ever seen before or even heard of before leaving her young son as the only witness a four-year-old child had been just mere feet away his mother being old investigators focus on the men in her life this guy he wouldn't look at us he was more nervous than normal and th
at polygraph test he passed it was frustrating his health she was using Norma's house for these sexual deons to unveil a killer hiding in plain sight of everyone we dealt with he was maybe the coolest customer of the bunch people didn't see that inner demon he was an unexpected killer it just blows you [Music] away Port weimi California a peaceful Beach town on the Pacific [Music] coast it's a Hidden Gem for wayi is about 60 Mi north of La it's a completely different environment it's a lot more
relaxed it's a quiet town and it's a town that has for a long time a ridiculously low crime rate and very rarely a homicide but the Tranquility of the seaside Community is shattered One Summer morning when police get an urgent call on June 1st 1993 it was about 7:00 in the morning our dispatch received a call of a possible homicide an ex-husband had called up and said that uh his ex-wife had been murdered we hadn't had a homicide in over 3 years it took me a second to realize okay this is [Music
] real detectives arrived to begin the investigation but nothing can prepare them for the scene inside I got inside the house and then it was like you know oh my God this is just too bizarre for Words she's laying on the floor head encased in duct tape it had been partially cut away but it it appeared as though someone had tried to wrap her like a mummy it went from the top of her forehead to the chin it was just incredibly strange this is nothing I had ever seen before or even heard of before a
nd some rig mortis has set in in the back portion of her body cuz she was laying on the back usually rig mortise takes a number of hours to show up we estimated that the victim probably died in the early morning hours when I saw that duct tape the first thing that entered my mind was this was somebody she knew whoever did it didn't want to have her look at them while they were committing the crime looking to unravel the mystery of this bizarre murder detectives turned to the victim's ex-husband
who claims to have discovered the body at the house the ex-husband was there his brother was there and and two younger Sons were there the ex-husband Tony identifies the victim as 32-year-old Norma Rodriguez mother to two boys Andrew 11 years old and Austin 4 years [Music] old Tony he said that he had come over to the house to uh pick up the kids to take them to school which was his regular practice the two boys were still asleep in their beds when Tony realized what had happened to their mother
he told them to stay in their room until police arrived Tony his brother Hector and the two sons were transported to the Port wiam Police Department where they were going to be interviewed separately Tony and Hector were first at the house and we needed to determine what happened police continue to comb through the house looking for Clues it was not a scene of extreme violence there wasn't blood anywhere there weren't a lot of things overturned in the bedroom we located her purse and it was int
act there wasn't anything that seemed to be missing this was not like a burglary that had gone wrong there's no sign of forced entry into the home then something else catches the detective's eye I noticed a set of keys that were on the floor they were in a unusual location close to her body we checked and confirmed they were normous house keys but why were normous Keys lying next to her body as investigators finish processing the scene Norma's sister Aralia arrives I was supposed to pick her up
cuz we were going to go looking for a car for her and I had been calling her and calling her and I drove to her house that's when I saw the yellow tape I saw the police department there and that's what they they told me would happen and my worst nightmares did I ever think that this would happen to my sister it is horrible [Music] horrible Norma Rodriguez was born and raised in rural Texas we were seven sisters and one brother she was a middle sh and you know I was really close to Norma she was
very quiet very reserved a very big heart if you needed anything she was always there I first met Norma in 1975 in junior high school we were 14 years old and we became friends like right away well we used to like hang out together and just go everywhere together [Music] she could be feisty but she was a sweet girl everybody loved her After High School Norma moved to Oxnard California for college and soon fell for another student named Tony she loved him she just loveed being with him their coll
ege romance became more serious and two years later in 1982 Tony popped the question they soon had their first son Andrew and their second son Austin arrived 7 years later she was just a great mom Norma was very devoted to her boys her boys were her life but in 1991 after almost 10 years together Tony and Norma's marriage became strained Tony was really never around she was getting into arguments and fights with Tony asking him to provide for them she realized it would be an easier life for her
if she just went on her own without Tony and that's what she did later that Year Norma moved with her sons to the neighboring town of Port weimi she got a job at a local retail store and started a new chapter in her life being a single mom people might think that's a hard job but she enjoyed it and it was it was hard for her but she was happy who would want to take the life of this loving mother and in such a bizarre way later that day at Police Headquarters detectives begin to interview Norma's
ex-husband Tony Rodriguez and his brother Hector as the first two parties to the scene the investigators had to look at them the detectives asked Tony about how he found Norma earlier that day Tony he said that he had knocked on the door but Norma didn't answer Sons Andrew and Austin were sleep the door was locked so then he used a credit card in order to slip the lock and he was able to open the front door when Tony and Hector entered the living room they saw Norma lying on the floor her face
wrapped in duct tape Hector told us that he cut the tape because they didn't know whether she was deceased or not and they wanted to try to make it easier for her to breathe he's the one that had the scissors in his possession and he's the one that decided to cut the tape off of her [Music] face we thought wow that's a that's a little strange why why is this guy doing this why is he messing up our evidence you know Hector told us that the body was still somewhat warm and that didn't make sense b
ecause by that time she had full rer mortise I mean she had obviously been been deceased for a number of hours I just wasn't buying it investig ERS are skeptical is Hector misleading police because the two men have something to hide they hone in on Tony and Hector as possible suspects we don't know these people we don't know what they're capable of Tony and Hector are suspicious and Tony being Norma's ex he was right at the top of our list coming up detectives brought in their hunt for a possibl
e killer we've got countless potential Witnesses countless potential suspects interviews with co-workers we didn't know who it was I just wanted him off the streets investigators suspect a love interest from Norma's past has something to hide it was a brief but intense relationship it was that selfishness that narcissistic quality that would cause him to end someone else's life and what police uncover shocks everyone all this time were we dealing with a true sociopath and you know couldn't see i
t [Music] mother of two Norma Rodriguez has been found murdered with her head wrapped in duct tape less than 24 hours into the investigation detectives are interviewing their first suspect starting with her ex-husband Tony Rodriguez in a case like this Statistics will show you that an overwhelming amount of time it's going to be that significant other or former significant other who ends up being your suspect investigators asked Tony about his relationship with Norma in the weeks leading up to h
er death at the time Tony said that they had been separated for a couple of years I don't believe they had filed for divorce yet but they they were living separately and Tony had visitation rights they weren't close friends anymore but they tried to maintain the Friendship for the boys but police have a different account from Norma's family we learned that shortly before the homicide there were some conflicts Norma she was upset at the fact that he would come make excuses to come over with the b
oys but he would end up wanting to stay there no she used to complain about that I said don't let him in he doesn't have the right to come into your house and she was a little timid when it came down to T [Music] according to loved ones Tony couldn't accept that Norma was moving on detectives press him about his whereabouts in the hours surrounding Norma's murder Tony said that on May the 30th early afternoon he talked with Norma and asked if th Andrew could stay with him Tony had tickets to an
Angel's game the next day and so they agreed that that was okay Tony says Andrew was dropped back home the next night at the time Tony never entered the house he found Norma's body the next day did Norma's ex innocently walk into the crime scene that morning or had something more Sinister happened the potential motive with him was he wanted the kids maybe one thing led to another and he lost control in a room nearby police questioned Tony's brother Hector since he was with him when Norma's body
was found they asked where he and Tony went after dropping Norma's son at his monom Hector he said that they had been at his residence with other family members in the city of Oxnard and when we interviewed those family members uh they cooperated what Tony and Hector told us knowing their aliis are far from concrete detectives asked Tony and Hector to take polygraph tests the results of the tests were that they were being honest and stating that they did not know anything about the homicide with
no hard evidence to hold them investigators are forced to let the two men go news of Norma's death quickly spreads through the small community when I found out about her being murdered like that I had told my cousin that I had just talked to her it can't be true because I just talked to her it was true at the police station detectives received the results of the autopsy the cause of death was established as manual strangulation nor wasn't a tiny woman whoever did this had to possess significant
upper body strength some important details emerge about the duct tape the length of it was approximately 20 ft and had been wrapped around her head about 14 times the duct tape was examined and there were skin cells that were discovered but in 1993 DNA technology was in its infancy you had to have a fairly significant sample si in order to potentially get a result from it in Norma case they didn't have nearly enough in these samples to find out who did this we have to dig deeper searching for N
ew Leads detectives hope Norma's 11-year-old son Andrew can help with Tony's consent the detectives talk with him at the station when you're interviewing any type of a witness it's it's uh it's a difficult process and you have to understand understand that when you're interviewing a child is extremely difficult we interviewed Andrew and we just wanted to try to get as much information as we could from the date of the homicide Andrew had gone to a um baseball game with his father and his uncle la
ter at night Andrew was dropped off at the house and the house was dark Andrew walked up to the front door found it was locked he went around to his bedroom saw that the window was open and crawled in then Andrew shares a disturbing detail told to him by his younger brother when Andrew came into the bedroom four-year-old Austin had said Mommy has a Band-Aid on her face that didn't register immediately with Andrew and so he went to bed and it wasn't until the morning that Andrew found out exactly
what Austin meant by a Band-Aid it it just ripped at your heart knowing that a 4-year-old child had been just mere feet away from his his mother being killed and at one point he had come out he had seen his mother's body that just ripped at me a lot what else had Norma's youngest son Austin seen detectives decide to speak to the 4-year-old at first he was withdrawn he was didn't want to talk about it which was understandable I knew that because he's 4 years old and I couldn't have gone on much
longer than I did and I knew that that I needed to stop but then he mentioned a man by the name of [Music] Corey he brought up the name Corey as someone who was over at the house at that time now we've got this person who might end up being our Prime Suspect but who was Cory had he killed Norma did The Single Mom's youngest son just solve her murder we've got to run it down as far as it [Music] goes police are investigating the bizarre murder of single mother Norma Rodriguez her youngest son Aus
tin says he saw a man named Corey at their home around the time of the murder at that time we had no idea who Cory was but it was something that had to be checked out detectives learn from the family that that Corey could be Corey Davis one of Norma's co-workers so they head to her workplace First Step was find out you know to what extent Cory knew Norma if they socialized if they were friends away from work and so forth Cory was more nervous than normal in talking with him he uh he wouldn't loo
k at us he he kept staring down not tuning in or paying attention Cory's unusual behavior during their convers ation alarms investigators he did not like being talked to and and having to answer anything they question Corey about his relationship with Norma he stated that he would interact with Norma at work but they weren't that close with each other and they didn't have any interactions beyond that detectives want to know if he was at normous House near the time of her murder as young Austin c
laimed he made it pretty clear that he wasn't at the house at that time instead he said the night of the homicide he was at home the only people who were who were there at home with him were his parents we needed to find out how much of what he was telling us was you know provably true while officers are sent to check Cory's Alibi detectives speak to Norma's other co-workers starting with her friend beatress beis came to nor nor 's house on Sunday the day before the homicide Norma had a get toge
ther a small barbecue at her house for several of her co-workers police asked beatric if she remembers anything unusual about the day of the barbecue beatric said that while she was there suddenly Norma can't find her keys anymore and they ended up searching all over Norma's house trying to figure out what happened to Norma's keys they didn't find them and then they're laying beside her body inside her house at the time she's found we figured someone had taken her keys and that's how they were a
ble to enter the house it's a significant lead does this mean the killer stole the keys at Norma's barbecue detectives renew their focus on her Inner Circle from everything we knew this was a pretty personal crime we had a certain confidence that the killer knew Norma at the police station investigators discover information they received from Cory Davis has some holes one of the things we do with everyone as we find out what their addresses are their date of birth everything else and with Corey
Davis one of the things we noticed was that his address he gave us was not the address that where he was actually living so there was a discrepancy there why would Cory withhold that information from detectives they wonder what else he's hiding but at this point in time Cory jumped out at us as this is the one we need to concentrate on police bring Cory in for an interview but he's far from helpful he's like I don't want to be involved in this well I understand that but like it or not you are pa
rt of this case if you want to be eliminated from the suspect pool the best way to do that is to cooperate with us detectiv Shar details of the crime with Cory to observe his reaction with the information that we were giving to him he was obviously upset and he took it really hard Cory denies any involvement in Norma's death they asked him to take a polygraph test he submitted to the test and he passed all detectives have tyed Cory to the crime scene is a statement from Norma's 4-year-old son bu
t police know he could be mistaken given his young age and traumatic experience erience at that point Cory worked his way down the the ladder on of possible suspects dramatically one week into the investigation detectives are out of leads they look at who else was at Norma's barbecue the day before she was killed friends tell them about a former coworker named Warren Mackey Warren Mackey was a previous co-worker of normas and also he lived in fairly close proximity to her Warren and Norma HD it
off and became friends they worked together for a while and the work relationship became a social relationship that it appeared that Warren had something more than just a friendship interest in Norma I remember Norma telling me that there was a guy there that she used to work with and he was always trying to talk to her and trying to ask her out talking to Norma's co-workers detectives learned that Warren pursued Norma but she wasn't interested in him romantically Norma told beatric and some of
the other people that she felt that Warren wanted more than to be friends and that she wasn't interested in that she tried to curtail any attempts that he may have made to ask her out some of the employees that we talked with felt that Warren wasn't real pleased with that he liked Norma and that uh he he wanted the relationship a little bit more than what it was but Norma still tried to maintain their friendship she noticed he was kind of like an outcast just very private so she tried to include
him in the group she didn't want to leave them out as detectives look closer At the quiet cooworker the information they uncover is concerning started picking up little details about him at that point there were some people who said yeah good guy guy you know he was okay to work with but you know there were enough people who pointed out that he was a little weird and had made some overtures to Norma enough to make us want to look into this a little further but did Warren's workplace Crush make
him a killer the nature of their relationship was interest to us we're going to have to have a conversation with Warren [Music] Mackey police and investigating the murder of single mother Norma Rodriguez are questioning her former cooworker Warren Mackey detectives have learned that Warren may have been more than a doting colleague they're trying to determine if he's connected to this brutal crime in our first encounter with Warren Macky there was nothing that that seemed overtly suspicious or e
vasive or anything about him detectives ask Warren about his feelings for Norma the impression that Warren macki gave us was that you know his relationship with with Norma Rodriguez was was pretty casual they didn't see quite as much of each other because they were no longer working with each other but they socialized a lot Warren said that they were close but it was only a close friendship he never had romantic feelings for Norma he had tried to present himself to Norma as someone to lean on so
meone to talk to you you know I'm here for you but investigators aren't fully buying it we felt that Warren liked Norma and that he wanted to uh make the relationship closer than it already was then Warren reveals a detail that grabs investigators attention he had helped out Norma with you know a couple little things around the house and one of the things that he mentioned was that the kids had a small basket ball hoop and it had somehow gotten broken and that he had fixed it and what really kin
d of set off an alarm was the fact that he had fixed it with duct tape this is the first time in the investigation that anybody's mentioned duct tape or someone possessing duct tape detectives drilled down on when Warren last saw Norma Warren said that he had been in the presence of normo at the barbecue the day before for the homicide by the time things had wrapped up for the evening it was essentially just him and Norma there and they had just kicked back and watched TV for a while this made h
im one of the last people who could have or would have seen normal alive had the former coworker made advances on Norma that attacked her when she turned him down detectives ask where Warren was on the night of the murder Warren said that on May the 3 first close to enormous homicide he and his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend they went to a nightclub in Santa Barbara till about 1:30 and then they came back to where they were living at in Oxnard they talked for a short while and then every
body went to bed we drove to Oxnard and we ended up talking with his roommate and her girlfriend who had gone with him for the night and they cooperated his story as far as them going to Santa Barbara closing the nightclub and then getting back uh probably between 1:30 and 2: in the [Music] morning could Warren have had time to drive to port weimi and kill Norma after arriving home from a late night out with friends Warren agrees to take a polygraph and he passed it stating that he knew nothing
about the homicide and he knew no one who would have killed with nothing concrete tying him to the crime police let Warren go but before he leaves Warren remembers Norma had problems with a man she was dating almost a year ago named Daniel [Music] Garcia as the investigation continued we started interviewing a number of people about Daniel we found out that Daniel Garcia was Norma's boyfriend for a short period of time they met at a party Norma had a strong attraction to the Charming mechanic it
was a brief but intense relationship lasted a few months she told me about Daniel that she really cared about him a lot you know they would do fun things together and she always had a good time with him friends tell police Daniel ended the relationship blindsiding Norma Daniel had approached Norma and essentially told her that uh he wanted to go back with a former girlfriend but Norma was affected quite a bit by the breakup then detectives learned that the relationship was turbulent there was s
ome fraying in the relationship and there were some conflicts and that sends up some big red flags there was one coworker who mentioned that they had witnessed a barely heated argument between Norma and Daniel Daniel came in while she was working for whatever reason it started they had a verbal altercation that was witnessed by other people it shows there was hostile feelings on the part of Daniel Garcia when detectives dig deeper into Daniel and Norma's relationship they learn he visited Norma
at home about 2 weeks before her murder Norma confided to her close friend she was involved with him before her death with a history of conflict in the relationship didn't an argument turn deadly this is big any big fight that went on you know that was problematic detectives are closing in on their new suspect this could be our guy we have to find out if he could have committed this [Music] crime the investigation into the murder of single mother Norma Rodriguez is heating up police have a new s
uspect in their sights an ex-boyfriend Daniel Garcia one of the things that we learned about the relationship between Daniel and Norma was that there were some conflicts that sends up some red flags Daniel agrees to come to the police station for questioning Norma really had no confrontations she was very mild-mannered the fact that she was getting into verbal altercations was unusual when detectives asked Daniel about his relationship with Norma he denies any problems Daniel said that uh he wan
ted to go back with a former girlfriend and so they broke up and one their separate ways but they were still able to be somewhat friends and he would uh stop by on occasion detectives confront him about the heated argument with Norma at her workplace almost a year earlier at the time Norma learned that he had other relationships and it was a she was pretty upset by that she still had feelings for Daniel had Norma attempted to restart their relationship but instead wound up in a fight that spiral
ed out of control during his interviews Daniel told us that he saw Norma but didn't have an argument detectives asked Daniel where he was the night Norma was killed he stated that he was at home with other family members watching TV and then he went to bed we talked with other family members uh and then Alibi was cooperated but family members will lie for other family members sometimes they won't be perfectly honest with what they know and it's extremely difficult to to put weight on that like p
revious suspects Daniel is subjected to a polygraph and he passed with no evidence connecting the ex-lover to the crime police let him go it's another disappointing dead end after a couple of weeks of going through this talking to countless potential Witnesses countless potential suspects neighborhood canvases interviews with co-workers polygraph examinations it was frustrating his heal that was really really hard on my family we did not have an answer to who who killed Norma I just wanted not o
nly Justice for Norma I was very concerned for any woman out there we didn't know who it was it could be someone that just passed me by I didn't know I just wanted him off the streets 1 month into the investigation the pressure continues to mount on police to solve the case we would get calls from the media every day every place we went in the community they would ask us what was going on you know and and it was a lot of pressure then a surprising development Norma's family contacts police with
new information about beatric Norma's coworker and friend it turns out that beatric was having an affair and she was using Norma's house as a location for these sexual aans Norma knew about it and in fact condoned it and gave her a copy of her house key but why hadn't beatric disclosed this detail to police earlier we confronted beatric with this information initially huge wave of embarrassment but she laid it out on the line she told us you know the the when the how many times detectives questi
on whether the secret Rendevous led to Norma murder now we've got other people who had you know either continued access to the house previously they were on the periphery of this case now they've moved right to the center of it one person detectives immediately turned to is Beatrice's husband who also knew Norma had he gone after Norma for helping his wife have a secret affair he now suddenly be's husband he's potentially in the suspect pool we have to find out if he has an alibi if we can corro
borate it he apparently didn't know his wife was having an extra marital Affair in Norma's house that was not the most comfortable thing to do from an investigative standpoint but it still had to be done and you know the the guy was crushed he was absolutely crushed detectives questioned Beatrice's husband about his whereabouts on the night of Norma's murder he told us that he had been at work late that evening we talked to a lot of his co-workers everything about this man was genuine 6 months i
nto the investigation of the murder of Norma Rodriguez detectives worry the trail has gone cold we're no closer to narrowing it down than we were on on day one this case was very mindboggling you build up things that wow this is going to be great it's coming together and then it falls apart as time progressed the lead started falling off it was tough it was really tough months turn to years for nearly a decade the case is at a standstill but normous family doesn't give up every year we would cal
l the police department for any updates any any new uh leads or anything we kept it active we didn't want this case forgotten during this entire investigation I had the picture of Norma Rodriguez on my desk I swore to her that I would never give up trying to find out who was responsible then 10 years to the day Norma was killed an astonishing break in the case worker with a crime lab he had a lot of the evidence that we secured in the normal homicide he called me and he says we have a match we h
ave a match on the DNA my head just like exploded with a thousand thoughts it was just nuts I remember receiving the phone call and and it was like winning the [Music] lottery it's been 10 years since 32-year-old Norma Rodriguez was found in her home strangled and wrapped in duct tape the case has remained unsolved with All Leads turning out to be dead ends until now with advancements in DNA technology evidence collected a decade ago has finally yielded results at the time of the autopsy of Norm
a Rodriguez there were a number of samples that were taken hair samples blood samples and fingernail clippings the crime lab so we have a match on the DNA and it comes back to Warren Mackey Warren Norma's friend and former cooworker who had previously passed a polygraph and had an alibi for the night of the murder at the time of the investigation Warren had submitted his DNA and was cooperative of everyone we dealt with he was maybe the coolest customer of the bunch it just blows you away invest
igators start putting the pieces together about Warren Mackey if you're dealing with someone who's a who's a true sociopath they can get past polygraph test so now I'm thinking all this time were we dealing with a true sociopath and you know couldn't see it we just went into a high gear we started unraveling everything again and doing what we needed to do detectives start building a case based on forensics they evaluated DNA that we had gotten off of Norma's body and we found Warren DNA under en
ormous fingernails the DNA evidence is a major breakthrough but to build an airtight case they want more the single biggest piece of physical evidence we had at the time was the duct tap so it got sent off and it got tested the DNA that was obtained within the multiple layers of the duct tape was he returned to Warren Mackey the odds of the DNA match being from someone else besides Warren Mackey was one in 810 billion so he felt pretty confident that this was our person investigators piece toget
her the events that led up to Norma's [Music] murder I think this was the classic case of a a jolted Suitor and my guess is that he just got a Flatout rejection he built up his expectations to a point where he couldn't take the fall investigators believe in the early hours of May 31st warrren Mackey entered Norma's home using keys he had stolen from her purse at the barbecue the day [Music] before according to Norma's son Andrew the house was dark many times she would fall asleep watching TV may
be she fell asleep on the couch she had no idea what was was about to happen detectives believe that's when waren strangled Norma in his mind she needed to die because she shouldn't have rejected him then Warren wrapped her head in duct tape trying to depersonalize the scene and covered her face so that he wouldn't see it and he ripped that duct tape handling both ends of the duct tape wrapped it completely around her face and left police also believe Norma's 4-year-old son Austin was in the Nex
t Room not realizing his mother had been murdered Austin didn't process cuz he was a very small child that he was too young to process what had happened an absolute nightmare after Warren kills Norma he returns to his place in nearby Oxnard as if nothing happened I believe that Warren Mackey was the type of person who felt that if I can't have her nobody can I think this is this was one sick individual who had no value for life he had no right to do what he did on August 28th 2003 Ventura County
investigators arrest Warren Mackey for the first-degree murder of Norma Rodriguez Warren pleads not guilty during the subsequent 10 years Warren had settled down he had gotten married had a job was leaving a very stable life his friends neighbors said that he was a nice caring man and for him to to live 10 years after that and not even have any remorse that is not human I can't imagine what is in a person's head to even hurt another human in that way then on January 10th 2005 as investigators p
repare for trial the da receives an unexpected call Warren Mackey has changed his plea to guilty Warren Macky is an unexpected killer because people didn't see that inner demon that selfishness that narcissistic quality that would cause him to end someone else's life people just didn't see him that way but he was that way and he is that way on March 28th 2005 Warren Mackey is sentenced to 15 years to life for the murder of Norma Rodriguez oh it was it was phenomenal it was such a an Elation you
felt like this weight been lifted at the end of the day we achieved closure for for the family but there's never going to be complete closure the devastating loss of the vibrant single mother will forever be felt by her loved ones I think about Norma a lot she was having a good life and he took it away from her it still hurts like it happened yesterday I miss her in my life that wound does not heal we just put it in the back burner we have to live for normal and we have to go [Music] forward a l
oving husband and father with so much to live for he did everything for his family he was an amazing Daddy he loved life he loved to to be happy is ruthlessly gunned down at home in front of his wife when he was laying there on the floor nothing can prepare you for that they stood over the victim's body with a shotgun and delivered a fatal blow this wasn't just a random killing this was an assassination police tracked down several suspects she was absolutely the possible person who was involved
she had all the motive he began bragging about other involvements that he had had with acts of violence and we knew that he and the victim had some bad blood between them just when police think they might never catch the killer we were pretty frustrated and the wind was kind of taken out of ourselves the case takes a mind-blowing turn she sang like a song bird he had been in possession of the guns used in law enforcement was pretty stunned by that to reveal a killer no one imagined this is unbel
ievable it was someone that if you passed on the street would look as innocent as they come the darkest blackest Soul known for its white sand beaches Panama City lies on the Gulf Coast of Florida's Panhandle our biggest industry is uh tourism with millions of people coming to enjoy the Gulf Coast the community is very tight you know most of your neighbors you know everybody that you do business with on a personal name basis but in the early hours of October 6th 1998 the town sense of safety is
rocked by a chilling 911 call at 3:00 in the morning there was a call from a woman that her husband had been shot and killed there's a lot of shots I ran back to the bedroom the killer wasn't in the house he was coming after us I literally thought everybody was going to die and I was so scared police raced to the home expecting to encounter an active shooter their first thought is clearing that house making sure that the Killer's not still in the house as the officer the first thing that he noti
ced was the victim's body in the kitchen area they started calling out that they were the police and they were there the wife was in a bedroom she had retreated to seek safety for her and her children which are still in the house this is all just happening so quickly I don't know how I'm supposed to trust that whoever's out there is not the killer officers find no sign of the gunman and assure Angelica it's safe to come out of the bedroom the wife came out and she was very very hysterical when t
hey walked me back out when he was laying there on the floor I knew he was gone you have somebody murdering your husband and shooting you all in seconds nothing can prepare you for that Angelica identifies the man as her husband 30-year-old Ron stoval the children were taken to Ron's parents' house they didn't live too far away and the victim's wife went to the police department where we could talk to her with Angelica and the children out of Harm's Way detectives can examine the crime scene as
responding detective I go in and start looking around R the victim he had been shot three times in the back once in the hip and there was a shot to the back of the head investigators find an important clue close to the victim's body there were some bloody Footprints there on the floor the part of those Footprints had what looked like the letter h two h's kind of next to each other on the soul whoever was wearing that shoe had perpetrated at least part of the crime because they would have been st
anding in the victim's blood and then exiting the residence following the homicide the stovall's front door also reveals how the murder unfolded we could see her husband was shot outside and then the ER shot through the door and he got into the house and he had shot Ron in the back of the head as daylight breaks a forensic team scour the outside of the home they found a handgun projectile out on the sidewalk near the driveway the killer shot what it clearly looks like a handgun round to the lowe
r extremities and then you have a shotgun round to the Head this was Overkill they stood over the body body and delivered a fatal blow when you see that type of crime scene you're looking immediately for someone that displayed some type of Grudge or emotional hatred for the victim while forensics wrap up their investigation at the crime scene detectives head to the police station to speak with Ron's wife Angelica we really took note how emotionally overtaken she was but she had been an ey with w
itness to this scene so she was critical in our investigation I can't even comprehend what's going on he was dead I did not want to live without him Ron was truly amazing he was always full of life very kind sincere very real born in Panama City Ron stoval was one of four siblings he was very close with his family he was always out doing stuff doing stuff with school doing stuff with the church he was well known within the community Ron served almost four years in the Navy he had felt a commitme
nt of his country and enjoyed his St service Ron always dreamt of having a family and in 1989 he met his first wife Tina Trexler Tina and Ron got married they had one child had a daughter the marriage was a Rocky one and after 6 years it fell apart soon after Ron met single mom and gel at a local Beach Bar he said he knew from the second he saw me that he loved me our first night we went on a day took me to the beach to the ocean put out a blanket listened to some Marvin Gay had Italian food it
was very romantic he stole my heart and I was never in love before I just fell right into his arms in 1997 the couple married just like Ron Angelica had a child from a previous relationship a year later their family of four became five when they had a daughter of their own Ron took on several jobs he worked as a waiter he worked as a delivery man for the UPS companies he was very dedicated and he just got his massage therapy licensed he did everything for his family we were very happy who would
want to gun down this loving husband and father in Cold Blood at the station Angelica tells police how the murder unfolded I was able to tell the cops everything I knew and I didn't try to hold anything back Ron got up at about 3:00 every morning and I would get up and and make his lunch for him to take to work she explains how Ron left the house and was suddenly ambushed there was some shots I didn't know what was going on he collapsed on the ground and the killer tried coming through the door
so I was fighting with him he got his hand through I grabbed the gun and he opened the door with his with his hand and I looked down that barrel of that silver gun and he shot it the bullet just misses Angelica I ran back to the bedroom as Angelica shares more details about the deadly attack detectives gain important information about the killer she described him as male brown eyes brown hair and that he had some type of facial hair possibly a mustache she indicated hearing the as salent say to
Ron as he was delivering the Fatal gunshot wound this is for her it sounded very evil Angelica tells police she doesn't know the meaning behind the Killer's words we need to find out who her was and we needed to find out what made this so personal to her this wasn't just a random killing this was an assassination is what it was investigators ask Angelica who might want Ron dead immediately she went to Tina his ex-wife Miss doal indicated that the relationship between Ron and his ex-wife was vola
tile there was custody issue over their daughter things got a little bit more sticky with the custody setup and Ron was filing for full custody of the child could the bitter custody battle have turned deadly this was an enormous red flag for us as a team whoever her was may have in fact had to do with his ex-wife it's probably one of the worst situations we ever deal with is with the man and woman and children involved it would just about make a person do anything coming up police uncover a key
piece of evidence he brings out a shotgun round that is similar to the one that we've recovered from our crime scene leading to a disturbing plot a photo identification that made him a prime suspect it was his eyes that I saw was the same person and a sickening betrayal no one saw coming they plan this whole thing none of us had ever worked a case like this I do not understand how somebody can have so much [Music] hatred police investigating the cold-blooded shooting of 30-year-old Ron stoval ar
e looking into his relationship with his ex-wife Tina Trexler we knew that there was an extreme amount of tension between Ron and his ex-wife and there was a custody battle that was forthcoming Ron and Tina originally shared custody but Ron had filed a petition basically saying that he wanted full custody of the child up to this point Tina was that individual that had the most gain from Ron's death perhaps she had not been the one on scene but it still doesn't eliminate her as having some type o
f involvement this looked like certainly a an intentional and a premeditated killing might have been a Killing For Hire detectives speak to Ron's friends and family to get a clear picture of the animosity with Tina when Ron remarried it was okay but not really okay Tina as well as her family did not like the new wife and the situation deteriorated between all of them as Ron and Angelica's family grew Tina's Behavior appeared increasingly erratic Tina began feeling that Ron was trying to work Tin
a out of the picture as the mother and so that had really kind of Amplified the rub and the tension there was all this you know crazy fighting and it was too hard for his daughter we were just concerned this custody hearing was coming up in about 2 or 3 weeks from when this incident happened Tina was absolutely the possible person who was involved in this Murder She had all the motive could the custody battle have driven Ron's exwife to murder investigators bring Tina in for an interview one of
the things that was most alarming when we sat down with Tina was that there was no remorse no emotional activity on her part that she was even concerned that he was dead when investigators asked about her relationship with Ron Tina's answer is surprising we knew there were a lot of hostilities but when Tina was interviewed she kind of painted that the relationship with them was cordial It was friendly it's a red flag for us as investigators because she's already showing signs of Deceit with susp
icions raised detectives grilled Tina about her whereabouts in the hours leading up to Ron's murder she told us the night before the homicide she had went to at work at a local restaurant she was a bartender she got off sometime between 11:00 and midnight she had went home and sat and watched TV with her mother then after that that she had went to bed and at the time of the homicide itself she had been home asleep before police can press Tina further the interview is interrupted her mother had h
ired a lawyer for her the attorney made contact with Tina and immediately ended the interview unable to finish questioning Tina detectives look into her alibi police were able to establish that she had been at work that night till 11:30 12:00 investigators also speak with Tina's mother and Trexler she was the grandmotherly type and was helping Tina as get back on her feet and help her get through this divorce and come across as a very downto Earth nice lady a housewife and she confirmed that an
Tina had been at the house with her watching TV though Tina's Alibi checks out police still theorize that she could have hired someone to kill her ex-husband we conducted a preliminary investigation into her financial records everything was consistent with that of just a workingclass individual making normal purchases one week into the investigation with no concrete evidence pointing at Tina police look for other suspects they quickly discovered Tina wasn't the only one in a dispute with Ron Tin
a had a boyfriend his name was Adrien Harris and there had been some confrontations between Ron and Mr Harris regarding the way Ron was treating Tina and in fact at one point there had been some threats made on Harris's part had Adrien decided to confront Ron leading to deadly consequences as we begin looking into Mr haris whether he was paid to do it or whether he did it on his own we weren't sure but the concern was that he may have perpetrated this to make good with Tina for the purpose of he
lping her investigators track down Adrien over 900 mil away near Baltimore when we talked with Adrien he did acknowledge that there was some bad blood between the two of them but he really kind of downplayed the significance the day of the murder he told us he went to work he had clocked in before 7:30 and the time of Ron's death was 3:30 in the morning detectives checked travel times between Baltimore and Panama City there was not enough time to get to Panama City from several states away to do
the murder and go back home while Adrien is ruled out someone close by catches the investigator's attention we talked to his roommate guy mcinville when the officers went to talk to Adrian's roommate they discovered the description of the killer that Angelica gave to the law enforcement the roommate fitted quite well guy Mac andv that had brown eyes brown hair and he had a mustache now we had another individual that we want to look at once we saw him guy fit the description he was a roommate wi
th Adrian Harris and we knew that Harris the victim had some bad blood between him we thought maybe he went there to kill them is this the break police have been hoping for investigators rush to confirm if guy is a true match for the gunman we got pictures of him to show the victim's wife Angelica see if he could have been the one that she saw that night back in Panama City detectives include the picture of guy into a photo lineup Angelica was an essential witness she was a witness who can ident
ify the individual that did the crime her photographic identification it was [Music] surprising it has been 2 weeks since 30-year-old father Ron stoval was shot to death at home in front of his wife Angelica now detectives hope she can identify the shooter from a photo lineup she picked out guy mcinvale as being the killer it was his eyes there was something very very similar what I saw was the same person there was an identification of guy mcinville that made him a prime suspect we have miss st
ovall's positive identification of guy as the individual that was in front of their house there's a sense of relief that begins to sweep through the unit because you're finally on to a really developing hot lead we want to now try to establish what type of physical evidence do we actually have between the victim Ron and Guy detectives get a search wart and race over to guy's Baltimore residence they make a telling Discovery we search his items and looking at me right Square in the face was a pai
r of shoes consistent with the shoe impression that we had at the scene so we're moving in the right direction police bring Guide to the local police station for questioning although we still were missing the key pieces of evidence the guns and and such as that we really felt like we're starting to put together the edges of the puzzle in speaking with guy what he provided us for an alibi was that he was in Maryland working at the end of work he went home slept the next day he got up went to work
and so so that was his Alibi detectives check out guy story we had had an opportunity to speak with guy at this place of employment and we were able to collect some video that that correlated with his timeline of what he said there was physically no way possible for him to have been here in Panama City at the time of the the crime it turned out that what guy Mackville said to the police was correct guy had an alibi eager to further prove his innocence guy volunteers to take a polygraph he succe
ssfully passed that so we were able to clear Mr pville for police it's a disappointing setback we were pretty frustrated and it's a roller coaster it's one of those now you're back in the lows again and the wind was kind of taken out of ourselves Angelica wanted to help the officers along but her perception at the time of the event was clouded by the terror the trauma of the incident itself I remember him being the same person it stuck in my head like that but I was wrong it's difficult when you
see something that quick that you can say okay this is the individual that did the crime we thought we had this thing solved but you just got to go regroup see what you still have to do and you just start from there desperate for New Leads investigators review Ron's autopsy report the autopsy conf two different weapons they told us that it was a 357 round that he had been shot with plus the shotgun shell one big thing we learned was that shotgun residue got in his face we think that Ron was lay
ing there on the floor and this guy's saying this is for her and he presses that shotgun to the back of his head and Ron's looking at him when that went off the forensics report contains another crucial de detail that could lead police to the killer these were close proximity rounds and so we knew that this was something personal and the shotgun shell was Paramount it was a unique round we would be able to identify so that was a plus in our Corner detectives Shar details of the Firearms with loc
al law enforcement hoping to track down their owner we work so closely with the different police departments in the area we talk to them all time in case something turns up as investigators continue to search for answers Ron's loved ones struggle with their grief the best thing in my life was that life I didn't think I was strong enough to go through anything without him he was always full of life losing your soulmate you can't even explain how much pain that was it still is it'll never go away
3 weeks after Ron's murder the investigation is threatening to grow cold but then police receive a tip that reignites the case we got a call from the Panama City Beach Police Department they had a home invasion out there on the beach during that arrest they recovered two handguns and a short barrel shotgun they knew from the investigation of the crime scene where Ron stoval was killed that a shotgun had been used and that a handgun had been used that coincides with what we're looking for we want
ed to go over the evidence they had and the circumstances could these be the weapons connected to Ron's murder the gentleman that they arrested we started looking into him and looking his background and everything he had a pretty lengthy criminal history had actually been uh link to some murders in the past he really caught our attention this turned out to be a big [Music] break police in Panama City are investigating the coldblooded homicide of husband and father Ron stoval they now believe the
missing murder weapons were used in a home invasion robbery less than 15 M away when meeting with this investigator from the beach police department what he produced from his crime scene was this a handgun and Assa off shotgun that coincides with what we're looking for then he brings out a shotgun round that is similar to the one that we've recovered from our crime scene we have everything that meets the parameters now we we really believe we we're on the right path the weapons are sent off to
the crime lab while detectives await the results they dig deep into this new lead at the beach police department they identified the individual as Tony Alberto Perez he went by Tony he had an extensive criminal history there was some acts of violence in his past or some drugs in his past they really felt like he was a pretty violent individual another detail catches their attention Tony had brown eyes brown hair and facial hair he looks just like our guy he met miss stovall's physical descriptio
n to investigators head to the nearby jail where Tony is being held for the home invasion he come across as a kind of a likable guy he was laughing and cutting up but the more he talked more red flags went up he began bragging about other involvements that he had had with acts of violence he was completely nonchalant about it detectives turn up the heat and ask Tony if he killed Ron stoval Tony totally denied any involvement any knowledge of Ron any knowledge of anything that may have happened o
n that date and basically told law enforcement it's not me I'm not the person despite Tony's denials investigators believe he's withholding information and they obtain a search warrant Tony Perez had items that he owned stored at the landlord house and we're searching through Tony Perez's items over there and then we find a pair of or boot type shoes while inspecting the Footwear detectives notice a key detail those work boots had what looked like the letter h two h's kind of next to each other
on the sole it looked like what we had found at the crime scene and we got those sent right off to the lab as police hunt for more incriminating evidence against Tony the ballistic results come back and we actually got confirmation from the Florida part of law enforcement that the the guns collected that Tony had been in possession of match perfectly ballistically to the rounds that we had recovered from our scene that evidence right there is one of the biggest things you could have in any murde
r case you can find the weapons and find a person who has the weapons that's major so now that we can put Tony at least the guns at the scene that gave us the ability to change gears with Tony we had the information and ammunition that we needed to confront Tony about what really happened detectives head back to the jail to interview their Prime Suspect as Tony began to kind of spin his version of what happened to Ron now he acknowledged having a little knowledge of it but he said that he had lo
aned his guns to someone else and that he didn't know what they did with him he didn't have any involvement in it but what he says is is that he had heard Ron was dealing drugs and that's why he was killed we had already done a thorough background on Ron we knew Ron was not involved in any drug business we had talked to too many people he was a happily married man trying to make it in life that's what Ron was then Tony gave us information that would kind of put us on some individuals that might
be involved and we tracked those individuals down and we were able to confirm 100% that they had nothing to do with Ron death people sometimes when they are being questioned especially when the police have some of the goods on them will make up stories and that's what Perez did as far as the police could determine that was a total concoction by Tony Perez detectives believe Tony is lying but wonder what motive he could have to kill Ron we were still kind of struggling to establish how Tony would
have came into Ron's life going through Tony's belongings we found some cell phone bills there and they were linked the name of Kim Miller Kim Miller turned out to be Tony's girlfriend so we went to talk to Kim Kim Miller is the owner of a Panama City haris Salon Tony and Kimberly they had been in a romantic relationship for several months we were told by Kim that Tony he was doing odd things for her he would come around the hair salon and he would actually shampoo customer's hair clean up swee
p up the shop things like that investigators look for a connection between Tony and Ron stoval Kim was familiar with the the stoval homicide she claims that she first heard about it because she had a customer that had called in and canceled her hair appointment saying how her ex-son-in-law had been Mur when detectives ask Kim for the customer's name they receive a startling response the connection kind of came out of nowhere and almost as a surprise Kim's clients is an Trexler who happens to be
Tina's mother Tina Ron's [Music] ex-wife police believe husband and father Ron stoval was shot and killed by criminal Tony Perez they're now exploring a potential link between Tony and Ron's ex-wife Tina Trexler when Kim Miller indicated that she styled Tina's mother an trexler's hair in law enforcement was pretty stunned by that an Trexler is the mother of Ron's x-wife Tina we knew of the ongoing hostilities between Ron and Tina when we talked with Kim Miller we asked her if she had ever met Ti
na his ex-wife and she did met her on a couple of occasions Tina's mother and however was a regular client was in there on a regular basis with Tina previously eliminated from the investigation detectives ask Kim more about Tina's mother 52-year-old Anne Trexler she told us that Anne's talking to her telling her about these problems with her daughter going through this custody battle with her ex-husband and she was upset about it she's afraid she's going to lose her grandchild an had told Kimber
ly the trexlers had to get a second mortgage on their home to provide legal assistance to Tina could the custody battle be the motive behind Ron's murder at that point we were trying to determine exactly who she was she hadn't really been on our radar at all we knew that she was Tina's mom we knew that she was Tina's Alibi at the time of this crime and trucks no criminal history supposedly a wonderful grandmother and fine Christian lady who would never be involved in something like this investig
ators contact Ron's wife Angelica and learn his custody dispute with Tina brought out a different side to his former mother-in-law apparently they had a good relationship when Tina and and them were married but it was just a constant constant battle over visitation rights it was just such a fight with her looking to see if an could have anything to do with with Ron's murder detectives bring her in for an interview when we talked to her she stated to us that there was no way that she had anything
to do with killing she did not want him dead matter of fact she said she loved him and then anrex wanted a lawyer and once once they get a lawyer you you're done talking so we're kind of getting a heightened sense of concern as far as her involvement in the case because she decided to basically not cooperate with the investigation having hit a wall with an detectives get a breakthrough when forensic results arrive we got confirmation that Tony's boot was consistent with the shoe impression that
we had at the scene also Tony had been in possession of the guns used now you've got a personal item putting them at the crime scene with that point we knew we had our shoter that's a big piece of evidence right there we were able to go back to Tony and present him with what we knew he admitted killing Ron his very words were okay I did it it's the shortest confession to a murder I've ever taken in my career investigators pushed Tony to reveal how the crime unfolded and what he tells them is sh
ocking Tony told us that Anne fford wanted to have her ex-son-in-law killed and was willing to pay to have it done when we found out anre wanted to hire somebody to kill Ron I mean this this just this is unbelievable ex-mother-in-law going to get involved and have have pay somebody to kill her ex-son-in-law he had met an at the hair salon she was complaining about Ron and that the two of them had worked out a deal for Tony to kill Ron in exchange for about $10,000 to be paid to Tony on November
10th 1998 Tony is charged with the first-degree murder of Ron stoval but the case is far from over detectives turn their attention back to alleged Mastermind and Drexler searching for answers detectives pull an's phone records the phone records were a treasure Trove of information they showed a lot of phone traffic between Kim Miller and Antonio Perez and an Trexler it clearly looks like Kimberly was the middle person between an and Tony there were phone calls between the Trexler house and Kim M
iller at strange hours of the night for strange amounts of time that could not be explained Away by saying we're setting up our rents and set another thing we were able to show that an tler received a phone call from Kim Miller the morning right after Ron 's death so there were links to tie an Trexler to this plot but there was no hard concrete connection of evidentiary value we needed something else that would show that an in fact had hired Antonio Perez to kill Ron stoval Tony Perez he says th
at he would come to an agreement with anre killed Ron for $10,000 detective scour an's Financial records for any signs she had commissioned Ron's murder we have withdrawals from her banking accounts that coincide with when Tony says he was paid and the amount that he was paid so now we have proof that what Tony's telling us is accurate regarding being paid with regards to an none of us had ever worked a case like this so it was kind of a shock that all of these pieces were kind of lining up to s
upport she is the motivation to this entire crime but we felt like we still can not make the case against Dan Trexler we needed someone to corroborate what Tony Perez said we needed somebody else that can draw the line between the money and the murder of Ron Stovall we have to go back to the middleman in in the case which is Kim Miller she's the whole key to this thing she was looking at criminal charges but without her we're not going to get an she is the only way that we're going to have true
accounts of what happened we went and picked up Kim Miller and brought her in Kim Miller she stonewalled she said no I'm not talking to you I'm not telling you [Music] anything investigators working the Ron stoval homicide have charged shooter Tony Perez with murder and Believe The Mastermind is Ron's former mother-in-law and Trexler but to build an ironclad case they need Tony's girlfriend and go between Kim Miller to share what she knows however Kim is refusing to talk it really wasn't until w
e actually laid out in front of her the phone records and Drew the lines between an and her and her and Tony that we were able to convince her to cooperate with the investigation we let her know you know she was going to be charged with accessory to the murder and she's facing life in prison prosecutors offer Kim a deal A reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against an Trexler eventually Kim takes the deal Kim sang like a song bird Kimberly was very adamant that there was a deep seated ha
t hatred for Ron on an trexler's part she indicated that on many occasions an Trexler ran and raved about Ron stoval how bad he was that he was going to remove her granddaughter she wished that somebody would take him out and it got more and more finally Kim said okay if you're really serious I know somebody who might help you Kim lets her know that her boyfriend Tony Perez will get rid of him for $10,000 that's how the the deal came about Kim then reveals how in the early hours of October 6th T
ony drove to the Stow ball house to lie and wait for Ron about 3:00 in the morning when Ron went out to his vehicle Tony took a shot at him with a pistol and Ron ran inside and slammed the door behind him and Tony Perez fired more shots which struck Ron in the back to finish Ron off Tony tried to force his way inside the house Angelica she tried to hold the door and Tony Perez fired a shot that almost struck her she ran to the other room to call 911 Tony Perez came in and he found Ron on the flo
or and walked up with a shotgun said this is for her boom he killed Ron stoval right there when he made the statement this is for her it's our belief that Tony was doing this on an's behalf Tony came there to do one thing and that was to kill Ron Stovall once he had made his getaway he was able to reach out to Kimberly and make notice to her that in fact the job had been done and then of course she notified an Kim swears Ron's ex-wife Tina Trexler wasn't involved in their murderous plan law enfo
rcement looked at Tina Trexler her mother and may have confided in her but no one could get to that much evidence to put Tina in the situation of taking Ron's life an Trexler she tried to be the you know the grandmotherly type but she planned this whole thing an trexler's thought pattern was Ron stoval is getting ready to take my only precious granddaughter away from me and I won't have visitation and he left my daughter he married somebody else he he should not be able to get away with this fro
m an investigator's perspective an carried just as much weight as Tony without an Tony would not have even known who Ron Stovall was on February 15th 2000 an Trexler is formally charged with the murder of her former son-in-law Ron stoval then the cops called and he said got her she's in jail she is morbidly evil the darkest blackest Soul ever and then she'll put on a face like she's just Miss Innocent the killer he didn't know Ron and knew Ron I do not understand how somebody can have so much ha
tred in their body and their mind in their heart in court shooter Tony Perez pleads guilty and is sentenced to life without Parole in February 2000 Kim Miller is sentenced to 5 years probation as part of her deal with prosecu computers finally in 2001 Anne's trial begins and she pleads not guilty an Trexler took the stamp she testified about not being involved she testified about her concerns of of her grandchild and the fact that she had absolutely no involvement on May 14th 2001 the jury finds
Anne Trexler guilty of first-degree murder she's sentenced to life in prison without parole there's a little [Music] peace I'm in a little peace in this horrible thing a little Justice I guess gets a little emotional sometimes it's not just me you know we we're a whole team working this thing we celebrated I'll just say that we celebrated this the most striking thing to me is that these are all Ordinary People and it's a little bit frightening to think that people who are walking around living
everyday ordinary lives would be capable of this the one that initiated it all was someone that if you passed on the street would look as innocent as they come for Ron's family his loss continues to be deeply felt I miss him and I love him so much my poor daughter she never got the honor she deserved she never got her daddy we celebrate his life all the time he loved life he loved to be happy and I've tried so hard to keep his memory alive very much so I will never forget how amazing Ron was a b
rilliant free-spirited college student Barbara was very creative she was always very theatrical I always thought she was a genius because everything came so easy to her is found brutally murdered in a mountain Canyon we could see five or six gunshot wounds there was some speculations that she had been sexually assaulted a clue left by the victim leads to surprising suspects he finds this note addressed to all the Mormon's roommates that she was leaving to go be with her people just how bad was t
his relationship with her roommates and what could it cause anyone to do and a series of bizarre twists he's telling us bullet holes were in a triangular pattern and that's a sign of a possible Satan killing somebody took her up there into the woods this was potentially a sacrifice until the evidence reveals a killer no one saw coming there was DNA from the soil that was underneath her body it was like finding a needle in a Hy stack a big hay stack it just didn't seem like somebody who would kil
l somebody it was just the biggest shock you could face have [Music] them Provo Utah a small college town in a picture perfect Mountain setting proo sits in a County south of Salt Lake it's where the brigam Young University campus is at it's a very safe Community during the 1970s uh Provo was definitely a a place that was very low on crime and uh you didn't have to worry about locking your doors at night that innocence is lost on a cold March afternoon in 1974 when a Grizzly Discovery in a nearb
y Canyon sent shock waves through the community on March 11th 1974 the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office received a telephone call from a power company worker who started walking up from the power plant and as as he was cutting through some brush he came across a white female with gunshot wounds to her back the crime scene is essentially a couple miles up what we call Big Cottonwood Canyon investigators race to the canyon where the utility worker leads them to the body we could see five or six g
unshot wounds uh all of them look to be in her back or in her arm the shot placements look like execution type shots and it looked like she had been there for a few hours at least with the way that her body was positioned we felt like sexual assault was part of this crime scene her arms were tucked up underneath her uh that told us that she was in pain that she was fearful of what was happening to her we're looking for things like drag marks but the ground around the body was not Disturbed it lo
oks like where she was is where she was killed detectives are struck by an unusual detail her clothes were folded neatly and piled towards the top of her head we suspected that the victim was probably trying to buy some time as she was being told to undress she was stacking her clothes in this neat pile more evidence is revealed when they turned the victim over we found some possibly 38 caliber bullets that were recovered after they had gone through the victim's body we also picked up some soil
and logged it into our evidence room the detectives back back in the 70s they didn't have the DNA that we have in today's uh crime scene investigations they focused on all kinds of trace evidence like the soil fibers hairs May link the suspect to that scene while the body is taken to the morg detectives interview their only witness the only thing we really knew at this point was a utility worker had found this body and we were able to clear him fairly quickly but we didn't know who the victim wa
s we didn't have any other real suspects to go with at that point we got a hold of the local media let them know that we had a a white female Jane Doe that we were trying to identify later that night we received a telephone call from the Brigham Young University Police Department that they had received a missing person report of a white female earlier that day the missing person in Provo matched the description of our Jane do the missing person is 22-year-old student Barbara Jean Rocky but polic
e need a formal identification to be sure she's also their murder victim we made a phone call down to a couple of the guys that were hanging out with Barbara Jerry hicker is the one that filed the missing person's report Jerry is also a student at BYU and he was a friend of Barbara's and some of her roommates Edward fiser and Jerry hicker went to the morg to do an identification on our Jane do Edward and Jerry confirmed the murdered woman is Barbara Rocky police now face the difficult task of in
forming her family at the time of Barbara's murder my parents were living in California my mom found out first from the police and was crying and from then on Nothing Was the Same it was just the biggest shock you could fathom it's like what you knew of the world has just imploded born in 1952 Barbara had an idilic childhood growing up in Meno Park California Barbara was very creative she was always very theatrical I always thought she was a genius because languages and uh music came so easy to
her Barbara was always rooting for the underdog if somebody needed help she would open doors for them I mean always doing something very sweet when the time came to go to college Barbara's Choice reflected a growing spiritual interest Barbara was always searching for a religion Barbara was interested in the Mormon religion my parents were very happy for her to go to gam young because they felt that she would get the safe group of friends and the good education and religion that she required when
Barbara went off to college she seemed up and happy and like things were going well investigators asked Barbara's loved ones if they can think of anyone who might be responsible since she was away at college and out of our supervision we had no idea what she was doing we just didn't know what kind of friends she was making and speaking with the family they just had no idea on who could have done this to her with the family unable to provide leads detectives hope her College friends might be abl
e to point them in the right direction Ed Fisher was dating one of uh Barbara's roommates when asked if he had any idea who would have done this to Barbara he just had no idea he felt Jerry hicker might have more information about Barbara than he would Jerry hicker is also a student at BYU and Barbara seemed to spend lots of time with him Jerry described that he was just devastated that this had happened to Barbara he knew Barbara very well police asked Jerry what led him to file a missing perso
n's report just hours before Barbara was found dead he said that he had gone skiing a day before uh used Barbara's car to take the skis back and then he met up with Barbara on March 11th at about 10:00 in the morning and gave the car keys back with plans to meet up later on to go grocery shopping after leaving Barbara Jerry was spoke with one of Barbara's roommates and then he went to study at the library later that day Jerry and Barbara had plans to grab some food but she didn't show up as Jerr
y left the BYU campus he walked past Barbara's house and he didn't see Barbara's car so he continued towards his home and as he was passing the Park Plaza apartments and sees Barbara's car sitting in the parking lot which was someplace that Barbara would have never parked her car he said that was kind of odd why it would have been parked where it's not normally parked inside the car he finds this note that was left by Barbara addressed to all the roommates that basically said that she had found
found her people that she was leaving to go be with her people I think that he looked at it as a suicide note and so he took the note over to the roommates and that raised enough suspicion to report her as a missing person in order to clear Jerry as a person of interest detectives drilled deeper into his timeline Jerry gave his timeline up until uh that evening and essentially once he found that letter he came and talked to us Jerry reported her missing he found the know he was cooperating with
detectives so he really wasn't somebody that fit as a suspect when detectives asked Jerry about any conflicts Barbara may have had he mentions one unexpected Source Jerry tells investigators that the roommates and Barbara kind of have an off on again relationship Barbara gen Rocky lived with seven other women from Mormon families barbar sometimes like to do things for shock value and this is not a place people go to to shock others there was a little bit of intimidation between Barbara and some
of the girls Jered said that things had gotten so bad that he had uh tried to find Barbara another place to live was it possible one of Barbara's roommates could be the culprit behind her death just how bad was this relationship that barbar jeene Rocky had with her roommates and what could it cause anyone to do coming up detectives uncover Dark Secrets the majority of the roommates were were very religious he had a relationship with Barbara Jean and had been dating one of her roommates the love
triangle could easily turn deadly when there's jealousy involved he had pulled a dagger on her and said he was going to stab her and links to a terrifying killer she described him as a great Warlock and maybe even a devil worshipper there's women all over the American West that are going missing and being discovered dead this guy turns out to be probably the most famous notorious serial killer of all time until the evidence reveals the horrific truth he was not who we suspected and so to learn t
hat he was responsible for killing her was very [Music] surprising after 22-year-old college student Barbara Rocky is found shot dead police have discovered she had clashed with her roommates and bring them in separately for questioning the roommates only known her since January when Barbara moved into the house and going to their predominantly Mormon uh School Barbara really didn't fit that mold she was from California and she was more of a free spirit she was uh somebody who was very opinionat
ed and was not a conformist Barbara Jee Rocky's roommates say that she was kind of dating around not necessarily saving herself from marriage and it was generally not accepted the roommates were very religious they attended church Faithfully I think Barbara would probably experiment with different uh religions just to expand her knowledge and at times would do things that would maybe scare them Barbara J's roommate said she was kind of into witchcraft so she was attracted to that lifestyle a lit
tle bit they didn't want to be a part of Barbara's life so they would keep her at arms length had one of Barbara's roommates lashed out and done something Unthinkable being more of uh the typical lbs BYU student you just wouldn't think that somebody like that could kill somebody but until you do the the leather work on it you can't clear them detectives work to verify the roommate's aliis once the investigators cooperated all the stories and looked at the timelines they were able to clear the ro
ommates as not being somebody that had killed Barbara as detectives continue asking the roommates about Barbara they learned some startling new information investigators found out through the interviews of the roommates that Barbara would carry a 357 revolver pistol some of the roommates described desribed Barbara as being maybe a little bit paranoid where she would um think people were following her in 1974 people weren't just walking around with guns the way they do today so if a 21-year-old c
ollege kid was walking around with a 357 Magnum pistol who is she afraid of detectives get more surprises when they search Barbara's vehicle when the investigators looked in the rear of the vehicle and they found ammunition and targets things that you wouldn't expect in a female BYU student's car did Barbara feel like she needed to have a gun did she practice with the gun was somebody after her we weren't sure what all of that meant at that point the car was fingerprinted but there was just noth
ing of good forensic value that we could come up with at that time with more questions than answers detectives turned their attention back to the note Barbara's friend Jerry had found earlier in Barbara's car they found a victim shot multiple times and then someone else finds this note in her car that says she's leaving to be with her people and what's the purpose of this the investigators were wondering if the note was even authored by Barbara so they do some handwriting analysis on it and send
it out to have that done while detectives await results the autopsy report comes in at that time they came up with six Bullet Hole entrance wounds the shot in the arm was probably the bullet that killed her because it went back into the chest and hit some vital organs and the final wounds were when Barbara was turned over and on her stomach and the entrance wounds were in her back being shot in the back is a good indicator that the person is known by the by the asant he doesn't want to see thei
r face uh when he kills them at the autopsy the medical examiner took swabs of both her rectum and her vaginal area uh to try to preserve any evidence that might be there the autopsy report indicated no definitive evidence that she had been sexually assaulted with the autopsy offering no new leads investigators turned their focus to any romantic relationships Barbara may have had they were talking with the roomates more about other men that may be in Barbara's life and uh they came up with a guy
named Richard they knew that Barbara was very much infatuated with him she spoke about him all the time even called him uh her boyfriend as police focus on Richard they make a disturbing Discovery they had ask if Richard had ever been violent towards Barbara and Barbara had relayed one story that Richard had pulled a dagger on her and that he was going to stab her this was not the only alarming story Barbara's roommates related made to detectives about a month before Barbara was murdered she re
ported that her gun was missing and and that raises all kinds of concerns she reported it to campus police and then to my knowledge she never got that gun back a 357 revolver would have fit with the potential murder weapon that killed Barbara she had expressed concern to her roommates that the person that had taken the gun may use that gun on her and the room just kind of dismissed it but now that Barbara was found shot to death the roommates were concerned for themselves as well having that inf
ormation uh the investigators really wanted to find out who Richard was at this point all we have is Richard's first name he's willing to maybe take a dagger and stab her we strongly felt that he could have been responsible for her murder [Music] 3 days have passed since student Barbara Rocky was discovered shot dead in big Cottonwood Canyon and police are hunting a man named Richard who they believe is her boyfriend this could be the person that killed Barbara but all we have is Richard's first
name and so we're kind of running into a dead end with no way to identify their potential crime suspect detectives catch a lucky break out of the blue a guy named Richard finder calls into our department and tells us that he knew Barbara Rocky Richard finder initiated contact offering his services to um basically try to help them solve this case first question we had was is this the Richard that we've been looking for as investigators prepare to meet with Richard finder they learn everything th
ey can about him we find out that he's in his 30s and he's a self-proclaimed psychic he lived in California Barbara was from California so that was one of the connections that they had we also found out that a 357 uh pistol was registered to him which is obviously the same caliber that we're looking for Richard finder arrives at the Sheriff's Office and detectives Begin by asking him about his relationship with the 22-year-old college student Barbara heard Richard finder on the radio talking abo
ut the occult Barbara had called into the radio station uh they ended up exchanging phone numbers Barbara had gone up to see him at his hotel and I think Barbara at one point even felt that Richard was her boyfriend Richard claimed that it was just a spiritual relationship that he looked at uh Barbara not in a physical way under for further questioning Richard mentions something that gets the detectives attention the place that he was staying at was very close to the uh mouth of the canyon where
it was that barber jeene was found detectives cut to the Chase and ask Richard where he was on March 11th the day that Barbara was killed he tells him that he was in Salt Lake at the time of the murder he said that he had gotten up and had some breakfast and then he went over and helped a friend do some con construction work on a house all day long and then he went back home and uh went to sleep on the couch detective set to work checking out Richard's Alibi the guy that Richard finder was stay
ing with did confirm that Richard was with him in the evening but he could not confirm the times that Richard told us about during the daytime with holes in Richard's Alibi detectives dig deeper into his claims about his relationship with Barbara our investigators talk to Barbara's therapist and she just really got the impression that Barbara was in love with with Richard the therapist reveals another way the relationship was less innocent than Richard made it seem barbar described Richard as a
great Warlock and maybe even a devil worshipper I think that the satanic uh and the Witchcraft it's not too far-fetched to think okay somebody took her up there into the woods this was potentially a sacrifice when police confront Richard with these allegations his response is even more alarming he's telling us that he's having these dreams and and that she was shot in the back in a triangular pattern and uh that that's a sign of a possible Satan killing or devil worship Richard also told us that
he had a vision that the murder weapon was also thrown into water how would he know that we didn't have the murder weapon so that really raised a question to us we're wondering is this guy confessing to us is he telling us about our crime scene he has all of this knowledge is this guy the one that killed Barbara that day when you start putting all of these things together it made Richard finder a pretty good suspect despite the circumstantial evidence stacking up against him detectives need som
ething more concrete so we collect all of his weapons for ballistic test with the projectiles that we located from barbera's body we received the results from the ballistics test and they were not a match and that pretty much blew up most of our case with Richard finder detectives Pinn their hopes on the results of the handwriting analysis on the Note found in Barbara's vehicle maybe she wrote the note under duress maybe she was forced to write the note that could be a significant clue especiall
y if it's determined that our victim didn't author the note it's like someone's writing a suicide note for someone else the handwriting analysis came back and it showed that Barbara was the one that had written the note the letter itself seemed to be a valid letter to her friends and several people said that's Barbara's handwriting the investigators concluded that maybe uh Barbara was thinking about moving home and she was just explaining that in the note at this point we're starting to run out
of leads as the investigation stalls Barbara's family is rocked by another tragedy my dad would call the police practically every day when nothing was coming to fruition and he he died like within a year after she died it killed my [Music] father and we had so many key relatives die still wanting to know what happened to Barbara detectives never give up on the case and a year later in 1975 they notice a disturbing pattern of crimes there's women all over the American West that are going missing
and being discovered dead college co-eds with dark hair were found murdered and the serial killer was certainly the big topic of conversation a surprising arrest changes the whole course of the investigation in 1975 a Utah State Trooper makes an arrest west of Salt Lake City the suspect was arrested for a kidnapping case and some of the evidence in the vehicle definitely could have had something to do with Barbara's murder as well the driver's name is Ted Bundy this guy turns out to be probably
the most famous notorious serial killer of all time is he the one that killed [Music] Barbara a year and a half after the murder of Barbara Rocky the investigation is sparked back into Life by the arrest of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy more and more that police start investigating Ted Bundy the more connections they find to missing and murdered women all over the country in 1974 Ted Bundy was also in uh the Utah area going to school at the University of Utah Barbara jeene fit Ted Bundy's pr
ofile she was a college student she was a brunette and she was the age that Ted Bundy seemed a Target Ted Bundy had a reputation being a very Charming Man you know he was a good-look guy and uh was kind of a smooth talker Ted Bundy would act like he was hurt and ask for some assistance from a female and that would have fit right with the personality of Barbara she would have helped Ted Bundy if he had approached her with Barbara fitting the profile of Bundy's victims detectives connect with the
FBI the investigators were able to get a hold of a timeline uh that the FBI had prepared find out what his whereabouts were on March 11th 1974 when the investigators looked at Ted Bundy's timeline they found that he had an ironclad Alibi for that day because he was in Washington committing another murder with Bundy cleared the barber Rocky investigation grinds to a halt the investigator had done everything forensically that they could they had done all the interviews that they could they had loo
ked at all the suspects that they could and the case just went cold once the case was cold um we pretty much accepted that it was not going to be solved when a case goes cold it it definitely affects the family every bit as much if not more than the the investigator they just want someone to be held accountable for their daughter's death the case lies unsolved for 30 years while Barbara's family yearns for answers the hope and the drive to crack this case someday was powered by losing so many fa
mily members that were enraged and wanted justice so we had nothing to lose by trying in 2005 Barbara's loved ones make one last push for justice I asked Mom I said do you want me to try to open this and she said yes because I need to know before I die I was a fairly new homicide detective and my phone rang and it was one of the family members saying hey my my sister was killed back in 1974 our mom's getting up in years and she'd really like to know who killed her daughter the family would expec
t us to just do what needs to be done to solve their case and you can't put a price tag on this level of Justice digging in to the 30-year-old Case Files detectives attention is drawn to one suspect in particular the self-proclaimed psychic Richard finder I was not convinced that law enforcement had closed the door all the way on Richard finder I wanted to look into Richard further uh because the timeline to me wasn't Rock Solid and I wanted to try to look more into the the forensic end of it DN
A and and the ballistic stuff has uh come a long ways since 1974 as I'm looking through each piece of evidence I'm trying to figure out if that would have any forensic benefit to having tested while evidence from the original crime scene is sent to the crime lab investigators dig deeper into Richard's version of events as I started looking at at Richard's Alibi um I I spoke with some of the same people that the investigators had spoke with previously as we reinvestigated and reinterviewed these
people information that wasn't known back then was revealed what I learned was that Richard had been uh dating and seeing a friend at Barbara's Janelle but then Barbara also found that Janelle was getting closer to Richard finder than Barbara was and there was some animosity from what I understand regarding that I learned that sometime very close to the murder Richard had left town with Janelle Bach and Richard and Janelle became boyfriend and girlfriend and that was kind of a blow to to Barbara
that really kind of stuck out to me Janelle came back uh to Salt Lake for three or four days around the time of the homicide with Richard finder and they were staying a house just west of the mouth of the canyon where Barbara was found had Barbara confronted Richard about Janelle only for the encounter to turn fatal because of this uh relationship between Janelle and Barbara and because Richard finder supposedly had guns and then because of his Witchcraft and the possibility of human sacrifice
Richard finder was up there on the list as a potential suspect investigators try to bring Richard in for another interview unfortunately we found that Richard finder uh had passed away so really the only Avenue I had was to go uh talk with Janelle was Janelle the only living person who knew what really happened to Barbara I didn't see any information in the case File where Janelle Bach had really given a good interview about Richard finder and so that was the place that I wanted to start Barbara
was upset that Janelle had essentially taken Richard finder so when they came back there's this potential triangle and some jealousy uh it placed some suspicion on Janelle anytime an investigation reveals some sort of a love triangle that can easily turn deadly when there's jealousy involved and all of a sudden the whole thing shifts from one guy to the person that's least [Music] suspected three decades after Barbara Rocky was found murdered in a Utah Canyon Cold Case detectives want to speak
to Barbara's former roommate Janelle who had been dating Richard finder the psychic Barbara had fallen in love with Janelle was looked at because of this triangle and this dispute and Richard finder was aware that there was this jealousy detectives want to know if either Richard or Janelle had the opportunity to kill Barbara they were back in Salt Lake for 3 or 4 days on a ski trip during the time of barbar's demise but they never went skiing and they were staying at a place that was uh close to
the crime scene where Barbara was found Janelle was able to give me a timeline that she was with Richard that day uh and the hours that she wasn't coincided with the the times from the initial investigation it was confirmed with others that she was very sick when she came up here she didn't even leave the house and she was being taken care of by Richard finder uh during the time of the homicide and was not in that area Janelle Bach was able to give me enough information to make me feel that he
definitely was not the killer of Barbara and she was not a suspect any longer undeterred detective scour through the files from 1974 looking for details the original investig ERS may have missed as I was going through the case File uh Jerry Hick's name kept popping up so Jerry's early role in the case was uh he was one of the last people to allegedly have seen Barbara jeene at about 10:00 in the morning he reported her missing so he really wasn't somebody that they were looking at as having a ro
le in her in her death they were really good friends that came through in the investigation but I wasn't satisfied IED about him not being a suspect detectives reach out to Barbara's former roommates asking them about Jerry some of the roommates told me that you know Jerry just didn't have a lot of friends and Barbara was accepting of everybody Jerry just kind of latched on to Barbara and I think uh Jerry had more romantic feelings for Barbara than Barbara did for him I think that the roommates
kind of looked at Jerry as basically kind of a stray pet that people were taken care of he just didn't seem like somebody who would kill somebody when investigators dig into Jerry's life after barbra's murder they make a disturbing Discovery Jerry had been uh accused of rap in the Provo area after Barbara's murder when I found that Jerry was arrested for a sexual assault I want to know could Jerry have been the one that killed Barbara Barbara's roommate had been away from Jerry for a long time i
n the interviews uh I found out that Jerry really had an obsession with guns that he helped Barbara find the 357 that she bought he took her out showed her how to shoot the 357 Jerry would always tell Barbara about how to load her firearm leaving one of the cylinders in the revolver uh empty and then looking back and seeing that Barbara was shot five times is that relevant in this case we actually looked at the Em's report and we couldn't really determine if she had been shot five or six times t
here was the opinion that it was six but it could have also been through the re-entries and fragments could have been five as I'm going through these interviews and I'm listening to what the roommates are telling me he was a rock solid suspect at this point detectives race to track down Jerry hicker I went to Jerry Hick's House in Washington I explained to him that I was looking at the barber Rocky case Jerry immediately said uh you'll have to talk with my attorney and that he wasn't going to gi
ve me a statement so at that point I had nothing else to do but leave with Jerry refusing to cooperate investigators must find concrete evidence to link him to Barbara's murder we wanted to see if with uh today's technology that if there was a sexual assault that there might be something suitable for DNA testing I was pretty excited to find that a vaginal and rectal swab had been taken on Barbara because by now we were utilizing DNA testing and I thought that I was going to be able to match thos
e up with DNA that we got from whatever suspects were in the case File investigators hope that the swab test results will Point toward Jerry they didn't know about DNA in 1974 and they packaged everything in plastic because it was packaged in plastic it ruined any DNA that was in any of the biological material that was taken I was devastated I thought I was going to be able to solve that case uh really quickly but that's not what happened fearing that the case will go cold again without solid ev
idence investigators gamble on another way to obtain the evidence they're looking for I took items that had not been tested yet from the original evidence to our crime lab to have them test it the original crime scene evidence includes a soil sample from beneath Barbara's body I was just uh more or less taking the dirt out to have a sample taken in case some seminal fluid had migrated down into the dirt there was still the belief based on the scene and everything that there was a possibility of
a sexual assault when I got the results of the test surprisingly we got a match that there was DNA from the soil that was underneath Barbara's body after 30 years had DNA analysis finally identified Barbara's killer and what came back as a result of that testing was [Music] shocking it's been 33 years since student Barbara Rocky was found stripped and shot in big Cottonwood Canyon Utah in 2007 DNA in a soil sample from under her body finally reveals her killer finding that DNA uh in the soil was
like finding a needle in a hay stack a big hay stack the results come in and we've got a match and it's Jerry hicker just that little bit of information was all that we needed to link Jerry hicker to this crime scene he was not who we suspected initially and so to learn that he was the one responsible for killing her was very surprising on November 6th 2007 56-year-old Jerry hicker is charged with the first-degree murder of Barbara Rocky when I first found out that the killer of Barbara was Jer
ry hicker I was surprised because I heard that he was just sort of a guy from next door it was a shock I never thought it would be S as prosecutors prepare for their day in court they piece together a theory of how Jerry killed Barbara so our belief of what happened was Jerry hicker knew that Barbara may be leaving because that next morning and he was aware of the letter before he brought the car back I think what tipped him over the edge was he wanted Barbara uh sexually and her rejection and h
er indication of leaving Jerry was more than he could take hicker winds up talking Rocky into going up big Cottonwood Canyon with this scenic view one more time before she leaves and when they get to this spot Jerry's trying to put the moves on Barbara and she doesn't want to have anything to do with Jerry that way hicker takes out a gun and in Rage he tells her to strip down and she was probably folding the clothes in order to buy herself a little more time Barbara's pleading for her life she's
just trying to get anything into Jerry's mind to not do this and then he shot her apparently while she was standing up and then she went down and then he shot her four times in the lower back region after the murder Jerry tried to cover his tracks Jerry has to drive back to the campus he gets rid of the gun and he's trying to come up with aliis he knows he can't park the car right there at Barbara's house so he takes it over to the Parkway Plaza Apartments and that's where he decides he's going
to use this letter making her a missing person this was a a young woman who trusted somebody they're supposed to be going to a nice spot and instead she's shot and murdered I felt so horrible knowing that she had gone through something like that she was probably so scared nobody deserved to die like that nobody I believe that Jerry was being a concerned loving friend and that may have put some thoughts in the investigator's mind that there's just no way Jerry could have done this beneath the fa
cade just seemed to be rage and uh anger that he'd been rejected I think Jerry hicker was a sexual predator they got away with a lot of crimes we were so glad and so [Music] grateful that the detectives had worked so hard it boggled my mind that they could solve it after 34 years despite an airtight case against Jerry his declining Health leaves prosecutors with a new dilemma when I went to arrest Jerry he had been diagnosed with cancer he was just the shell of a man we didn't feel that his life
span was much of 5 years if that so we worked out a deal that he would plead to a substantially reduced charge of manslaughter and that he would be sentenced to the prison for 5 years figuring that that would be a life sentence going with the plea deal was my mom's um decision she wanted him to say in his own words that he did it she wanted those answers Jerry hicker serves three years in Utah State Prison and in 2014 5 years after pleading guilty he dies of cancer I bet you he had been looking
over his shoulders all these years I felt that his ill health was Barbara's Justice this is somebody that wasted away not only his life he ruined so many people's lives by his selfish act Barbara didn't deserve this she had so much ahead of her but the family does have some answers that's the goal in my investigation I think that uh in this case Justice was served and that the family uh got answers that they would not have otherwise had the thing I miss most about Barbara was the times that we u
sed to blast Beatles music and sing and dance for hours and just being kids you know I remember her then barbaraa was such a giving person I feel inspired by her uh ability to give of herself and um and I try to emulate [Music] there a vibrant young woman making a fresh start in life my sister had a great sense of humor she was just full of life and ideas and and fun she had a new graphic design job a new relationship a new place to live she was looking to a new future is mercilessly slaughtered
in her home the person slit her throat it was a shocking murder whomever the attacker was was extremely Disturbed you just can't register it she didn't have any enemies everyone loved her investigators track down multiple suspects there was a creepy guy just watching her there was a note that said s signs life then police discover an enemy in Disguise they were using other individuals to try to throw us off it was a bombshell detectives unmask a killer no one could have imagined and I said what
it didn't make any sense to me I was in complete [Music] shock Golfport Florida is an idilic Community complete with sun sand and and seaside charm gulport is kind of a classic uh southern town it's kind of an Arty Community now gulport has a beautiful beach and people are very friendly I never felt unsafe living there on May 24th 1984 gulfport's laid-back lifestyle is shattered when a disturbing Discovery is made a woman was checking on her neighbor and when she didn't answer the door she view
ed inside one of the windows and saw a body laying in a pole of blood and that's when she called 911 homicide detectives are sent to the address in Waterview Park entering into the uh the residence I noticed broken glass and I saw the victim's body there was a copious amount of blood pooling around her head she looked like she had been hit with a blunt object there were several stab wounds up and around her neck area like it was a attack of Rage the victim was partially clothed in a black teddy
over a white T-shirt it was kind of unusual for someone to wear a Teddy on top of their t-shirt shirt it was done snapped at the crotch and so I had suspicions that she was sexually assaulted even though the area was so gory she had no blood on the soles of her feet and that was important because you could see bloody Footprints and it appeared to be a Barefoot as well we surmised that the perpetrator stepped in the blood after the attack was over the scene is so bloody it's not yet clear what ex
actly happened the body is sent for autopsy while detectives continue surveying the home there was blood on the bed blood smears on the drapes and blood on the Wind seill possibly the attack started in the bedroom area and then uh traversed over into the living room the trail of blood indicate that she was fighting throughout I think she was able to get away from her as salent and run through the house and open the door there was some blood and hair on the door and it looks as though she was sto
pped drugg back in and then finished upon examination of the residents we couldn't find any type of weapon the crime scene was indicative of a very involved struggle yet there was nothing knocked over or in disarray in the house now it's possible that could actually happened that way but it's also possible Somebody went back in and cleaned it up police speak with the woman who found the body she tells them the victim is her neighbor Karen Gregory she said the victim's boyfriend David was at a co
nference in Providence Rhode Island David had not heard from Karen and so he called and asked if she would check to see if car was [Music] okay born in Albany New York in 1948 36-year-old Karen Gregory was a loving and kind free spirit she was the center of attraction at any Gathering and people just loved her Karen had a great sense of humor she was a really good artist had a great eye she was a smart woman and very clever and and witty and talented Karen loved to seek out new places and was al
ways up for an adventure she traveled a lot she would go to Jamaica and explore and I think her ultimate goal was to go to Jamaica and teach art before Karen can make her dream move a chance meeting in Florida changes her plans and then she met David David was an interesting character uh and probably a match for my sister's wit he was very clever very intelligent David was a therapist for PTSD Vietnam vets and they were just a really good match for each other they were probably almost a year int
o the relationship where she had been visiting enough and staying there enough that it was time for her to move in with him this was a new beginning she had a new graphic design job a new relationship a new place to live and I think she was looking to a new future she had just moved in with David the day she was killed who would take away Karen's life in such a a horrific Manner and why detectives hope Clues at the scene will Point them to the killer well we found the Village Voice publication f
rom Providence that struck us as really strange because David was supposed to be up there at the time that newspaper actually was dated the day that Karen could have been murdered was David really in Providence or had he returned before detectives can contact David to question him they find another lead outside a note was placed on the car the context of the note itself was uh was quite telling it says came by I have something for you but there was no sign of life rather brief note but obviously
the no sign of Life Would you know send up a red flag the note is signed by someone named Peter but there's no other information so police have no way to track him down officers collect like the note is evidence as Karen's family is notified of her death the day I got the call was just a beautiful warm day this isn't the kind of day that these things happen on they had found my sister murdered and I said what it didn't make any sense to me and my mind just went through all of these situations t
o make that call impossible and everything they will be okay police asked Karen's brother Roy about her relationship with David Karen's brother indicated that there was a little conflict between Karen and David in that Karen may have had an interest in another individual in Jamaica she met a guy and then she'd stay longer and longer on these trips I think was kind of torn maybe between both both realities and both Futures we also found out that Karen and David had broken up for a length of time
before her death it wasn't some huge breakup and she was still moving in so we assumed everything was going to be worked out but the weekend she was moving in is the weekend she was killed the murder was at David's house and I knew there was a rift there so I think that added to maybe well you know you just never no could he have flown out to Providence and rebooked a flight back to Golfport committed the a homicide and then jump back on a plane we have to track down David we felt that something
was there behind the scenes and we needed to find out about it coming up investigators discover a series of suspicious men in Karen Circle he had been physically abusive to his first wife he made Karen feel very uncomfortable and scramble to separate friend from foe here we are building on a story really raise red flags for us he's either protecting somebody or he just flat out lying until finally The Awful Truth is revealed it makes me sick to my stomach no one would have ever thought that thi
s person murdered this [Music] woman a day after 36-year-old Karen Gregory was brutally murdered in her home police in Gulfport Florida suspect her boyfriend David Mackey could have killed her and they need to track him down detectives found out that David was in Albany and that he had flew there to be with the family for the waken funeral of Karen David Mackey seemed to be concerned about Karen and he wanted to know what was going on we weren't going to give David the investigative uh informati
on that we had he said that he wasn't going to be back in Florida for another two weeks David promises to come down to the station when he is back in town in the interim investigators sent officers to Canvas Karen Street many of the neighbors heard a scream that night many got up and looked outside their windows and saw nothing they didn't know exactly where it came from was kids in a car I mean you know they didn't really know time of the scream uh was around 1:00 in the morning there's some th
ought the time of death was during the scream she wasn't discovered until midday the day after that the head of the neighborhood watch is one of Karen's closest neighbors and a familiar face detectives can rely on George Lewis was a Gulfport firefighter had grown up in Gulfport all the police officers know him George and his wife Linda were very good friends with detective Larry tossi well having somebody uh like George uh to depend on was very very comforting and that if something was going on
in the neighborhood he just was that kind of neighborhood watch guy George said he was working in his garage which was across the street from the murder scene he said he heard a faint scream he had the radio up loud he even went out in his Street didn't see anything but George did see something the day before Karen's body was found George Lewis described seeing this guy pull up in his car and walk up to the door and then write a note and put it on the windshield of one of the cars did George see
Peter the man who wrote that note he didn't know Peter cut was certainly something that the police wanted to look into because that was the only person they aware of that went to the house house during that time frame the next day as police are figuring out how to track down Peter they catch a lucky break in order to release the remains of the body Ken's old roommate was asked to identify the victim and at that time she brought another person with her and he identified himself it was Peter cble
investigators bring Peter in to answer some questions I noticed the scratch on his hand thinking you know maybe it was done by by Caren he noticed me looking at it so he moved his hand they asked him about that and he said that his dog did it Peter confirms to detectives he is the one who left the note for Karen and says he was at the house around 7:30 p.m. he had been invited to dinner by Karen they'd known each other for maybe a year they were both reggae music fans he was bringing back at mu
sic tape and that's what he was referring to and he said I have something of yours not having anybody respond to the knock on the door he just left the note and left during the interview he didn't seem very upset portraying that he was such a close friend to Karen uh it kind of struck me as being you know strange detectives ask where Peter was when Karen was murdered cell's explation for where he was that night was he was at home he did indicate that his roommate could verify that he answered th
e questions and he was amable to whatever I asked him to do Peter provides police with his fingerprints and Footprints and while they let him go detectives will keep an eye on him we weren't eliminating Peter Gumble from the [Music] investigation 3 days after the murder police received the medical examiners report Karen had dozens of stab wounds on her and it wasn't until they had cleaned her up they realized that the person slid her throat Karen was tortured the time of death was day and a half
before her body was discovered the report also confirms another disturbing fact the autopsy determined that a rape was involved Co examiner found Seaman but it wasn't enough to make comparison and DNA at that time was in its infancy thinking about what she went through it makes me sick to my stomach you just can't register it she didn't have any enemies everyone loved her after 2 weeks out of state Karen's boyfriend David returns to Florida and is immediately interviewed by detectives David was
still very upset he said he loved her and they were getting serious with each each other and that she had finally found what she was looking for in life when detectives revealed they know he and Karen had issues David brushes it off he repeated it was all good they were in love with each other David claims the last time he saw Karen was the day he flew out of state Karen had driven David to the airport cuz he had a conference to attend in Providence skeptical detectives tell David they can plac
e him back at the crime see and I said we found the Village Voice publication from Providence it was dated and I had a murder here in gulport he indicated to us he had purchased the Providence publication to check on the weather before he had left he told us it was at the news stand in Gulfport a couple days prior to the hon we have to look into that detectives asked David Point Blank if he murdered his girlfriend he became frustrated and my opinion that we'd be looking at him instead of spendin
g time looking for the real killer he was pretty adamant in the fact that he was off doing a conference in Providence and he hadn't gone anywhere he said I want to be as much of a help rather than a hindrance as I can he was also asked to submit foot samples which he did as well when asked who might want to kill his girlfriend David gives a name detectives recognize David informed us that felt that Peter cell had some kind of an interest in Karen it became clear that David was trying to blame th
is on Peter [Music] cell police are investigating the grizzly murder of Karen Gregory her boyfriend David Mackey denies being involved and points detectives towards Peter cumle a man police have already questioned and released [Music] in David's mind he felt that cumbo was someone who had an interest in Karen like as a potential girlfriend David wasn't aware of anything about Cel being invited to dinner and really probably had no real reason to see why cble would come by the house while he was g
one he said that cumo was an acquaintance but not a close friend they knew people in the same circles Peter Gumble was always always calling Karen up and that he felt he was going to try to develop a relationship with her and Karen obviously wouldn't have anything to do with it David was concerned that cumle could be involved and they needed to look at him closely with nothing concrete to link David to the murder they let him go detectives now need to confirm his claim that Peter had ulterior mo
tives around Caren when police tried to bring Peter in for another interview they had a problem he had left Gulf Port right after his first interview he had went on vacation and the detectives found that strange that him being close to Karen Gregory that he would leave and go on vacation after her death without the evidence to compel Peter to return investigators switch gears and delve deeper into David Mackey's Alibi David had told police he had given a presentation in Providence at 9:00 a.m. o
n May 23rd which would have been 8 hours after Karen was killed was it possible for him to have got on a flight come down murdered Karen and got back up to Rhode Island detective Sergeant Tosi decided to take flights in the same time frame I found that he could have committed the murder and get back in time and do his presentation it would have been tight but it's possible detective subpoena David's credit card information but they show no no record of David buying any additional flights David's
story about the newspaper also appears to check out it was discovered that the paper actually comes out 2 days early and the gentleman remembered selling the paper to David Mackie David was telling the truth and his Alibi was solid as weeks pass without an arrest Karen's friends and family become concerned now not knowing why or who or how this even happened you're left with all these questions the grief was too heavy there was just a lot of weeping for a long time just the slightest little lit
tle memory of her or thought of her I can weep right now thinking about that for such a small town it was a shocking murder I can only imagine what some of the women that lived alone in that Community felt when there is a killer out there and they haven't been [Music] caught a few weeks into the investigation detectives get a boost when potential suspect Peter cumle arrives back in town he looked a little bit disheveled he looked a little bit shaky as if he didn't want to be there type of a of a
n attitude detectives cut to the Chase and ask Peter if he killed Karen Gregory he was completely shocked cell's Alibi was he was at home but with David pointing the finger at Peter detectives need to follow up he was pretty adamant in the fact that you know he he hadn't gone anywhere and the roommate could be his uh Alibi witness anybody can say they're home and they're in bed in the middle of the night they can go out and do what they want to do that's a very shaky and unsubstantiated Alibi we
didn't have much to hold him at that point so he left needing something concrete to tie Peter to the murder investigators hope his footprint sample matches the one found at the scene there was a partial bloody footprint on the floor we did send it off to the Sheriff's Office and we waited quite a period of time and then we heard back that they couldn't find any identifying ridges or swirls it's a big disappointment to me that our Sheriff's Office couldn't make a match detectives refuse to give
up the photograph of the bloody footprint looks mostly like a smear so it was sent to Washington for the FBI to look at which was not uncommon practice especially if you had uh something that might be difficult for a local person to do the analysis won't be fast so investigators go back through everything collected at the scene and find a potential piece of evidence there was a schematic drawing of a clock that appeared to have a blood stain on it did the murderer bring that with him and leave t
hat there forgetting about it did he get blood on it while this happened so it looked like a pretty good clue they needed to follow up on they were able to determine that these were schematics that have been drawn by Steven Fishler who was someone that Karen worked with detectives send the blood on the drawing in for testing and when they look into Steven Fishler they discover something troubling we found out from female workers that they felt uncomfortable around him and he showed the girls por
nography and they took offense they indicated they were afraid of him according to one friend Steven Fishler made Karen feel very uncomfortable many times he made unwanted advances at one time he gave her a provocative novel that he was writing Fisher as far as the way he behaved in the office around women he was a suspect we decided that we needed to have an extensive interview with Steven Fishler stepen Fishler had kind of a defensive attitude he was Curt he said that they didn't really know e
ach other he and Karen had seen each other at work but she had only been working there a short period of time when stepen was questioned about the schematic he had no explanation for how it got into her house other than she probably took it home with her detectives Grill Steven about his reputation among his co-workers and he became angry he says I had no idea we asked him if we'd take a polygraph test he agreed to do that Steven didn't really want to answer the questions he was extremely frustr
ated just when investigators think they won't get anything out of him Steven says something truly shocking during the polygraph he it out okay I did it everybody thought the heck this guy is [Music] confessing two months after Karen Gregory is viciously slaughtered in her home her cooworker Steven Fishler has just confessed to police it was unexpected was he really telling the truth police immediately begin to press Steven for details behind his confession we determined that after talking with S
teven that he blurted out okay I did it just out of frustration he was angry because he was being accused of this murder and that was just his personality and his temperament Steven retracts his confession and proceeds with the polygraph he passed the polygraph it showed no deception indicated the result was totally unexpected to us it basically cleared fish Lo but Steven's not off the suspect list just yet he refuses to provide a footprint sample so police must wait for the results from the sch
ematic drawing to see if any foreign blood is detected in this case the blood was clearly all her blood and it wasn't Steven Fishler there was a lot of frustration it kind of hit a dead end running out of suspect investigators switch up their approach and put together a behavioral analysis profile of the killer you're trying to look at you know what causes people to do what they might do it wasn't your general who done it whomever the attacker was was uh extremely Disturbed he was the type of in
dividual that had various fantasies sexual fantasies which drove him to commit the murder of Karen Gregory maybe this was a serial killer which kind of fits into that whole psychological pattern to some degree was probably the most difficult case that I had to to deal with 5 months down the road from the homicide I just couldn't let the case go couldn't put it on the shelf for Karen's family coping with the reality that her killer may never be found is overwhelming we kind of thought like you kn
ow they're never going to solve this which was just alarming to us and that's another whole kind of pain there was a nightmare she was a sweet wonderful young woman and the killer was a brute you know who tortured her finally a break comes in December 5 months after the murder when detectives make a discovery that revitalizes the cave Tosi was talking to a person who lived a few blocks away from Karen and that person told him they had heard the screen she described it as just a whale and that it
was very disturbing Tosi was like he didn't realize it was really that loud that actually over two or three blocks people heard this this new information is in direct conflict with the statements of the neighborhood watch head and she several blocks away and she hears a scream and George is right across the street how come he didn't hear more than what he said was a faint scream it didn't make any sense so we figured we better have another talk with George which we did the fact of Tosi he looke
d at George as a helper to the police case George was a firefighter the neighborhood watch guy that was actively out there when we went over his story he indicated that he had heard the scream that he walked to the edge of his driveway looked around and didn't see anything now George adds a new detail to his account now he sees somebody on the lawn under the Big Oak Tree the story was quite a surprised why didn't he report it why didn't he call he didn't really know what to say I think in many w
ays he was he sounded nervous George describes the person he saw the night of the murder he said he was like 64 and had red Sandy hair it was a big strongl looking guy it was certainly something that the police wanted to look into armed with the new information detectives try to track down this mysterious man and in doing extensive neighborhood interviews it was related to us there may be a peeping Tom in in the area that fit we thought well we may have something to go on here I interviewed one
person and she said that she had a Peeping Tom at her window and when she noticed him he took off could the Peeping Tom be the killer police have been looking for investigators show George pictures of possible Prowlers he couldn't identify any of so the mystery man and the lawn remained unidentified there's some thought that he might have been watching that house and watching her and knew that she was alone that night knew David was out of town I felt terrified especially at night I kept my door
s locked I didn't want to end up like her detectives find another woman in the neighborhood who recently saw the prowler there was a creepy guy just watching her for some unknown reason she caught him peeping in the window and he took off the woman recognized the man when she tells police his name they're stunned it was a big [Music] surprise detectives hunting for Karen Gregory's killer learn there's a Prowler stalking the women of goport Florida could the offender be one and the same when a vi
ctim of the Voyer comes for with a name investigators are shocked it's the neighbor George Lewis was totally totally unexpected to us detectives bring George in for a third time and ask him about the woman's claims he admitted he was outside the house and he had some explanation for why he was there he was a neighborhood watch guy and always looking out for people he said he heard the noise or something they thought you know is it possible get the killer he was given the opportunity to take a po
lygraph test which he did detectiv start by asking about the prowler listening to the polygraph tape and how George Lewis described the man I really believed him investigators also ask him about the night of the murder did you kill Karen Gregory George said now the polygrapher results tell a different story the results were disastrous he failed it [Music] miserably after he failed that he had something else to say about inited the murder George admits he hasn't been completely honest and tells p
olice that's why he didn't pass the polygraph George Lewis indicated to us the individual that he saw on the lawn left Karen's house itself he saw George and had approached him and threatened him the person walks out and tells him if you say you saw me here I'll come back and kill you so that's the reason he wasn't forthcoming he was afraid of him George Lewis went from just hearing a scream at the edge of his driveway to indicating that he saw the perpetrator and then his next story George said
this guy threatened him we were very concerned about that because here we are building on a story so it really raised red flags for us we felt that you know with the abundance of different issues and stories he was telling he was using other individuals to try to throw us off we had asked him to do a composite sketch of the individual that he saw after the sketch was done we both looked at each other and said this really can't be happening we both came to the conclusion it was George when he wa
s younger I think he thought the police had a witness who saw somebody in Karen's yard so he was making this description of the person who scared him get closer and closer to looking like him he's either protecting somebody that he knows we just flat out Ling we have to look at George A Little Closer investigators collect his foot and fingerprints but with little hard evidence to hold him George is released detectives take a deep dive into George's past and make some disturbing discoveries he ha
d been physically abusive to his first wife according to her there were times when he had been violent with her he had choked her the crime itself shows some pretty deep-seated violence towards women women and I think there was aspects in in his background where you could see that George had gotten into a swingers club that was a part of George I never really saw you know or never knew he's never said anything like that to me so that was kind of surprising but things were building up with him an
d and his behavior it appears George developed a troubling fascination with Karen before she had even moved in one of George's friends told me that uh Karen was visiting over at David's house Karen had come out in a bikini and he made some comment about liking to have an orgy with her got aroused he had gotten into sexual perversions if you will I think there was indications that he was you know a peeper of some sort still looking for hard proof detectives asked George's wife about the night of
the Murder She was Wok woken by The Scream After just few minutes George came in from the garage the killer would have been covered in blood but George wasn't when you sit back and you look at you these things could you say to yourself oh well maybe he really didn't do it maybe his story makes sense or maybe he's covering up for somebody that did do do it you know what I mean and so now it's you know where do we go from here at that time we didn't have you know DNA the only thing that could tie
itself into the case was the footprints detectives are still waiting for those results it was getting extremely extremely frustrating for the team and then the months just went by you know nothing nothing [Music] happened it seemed like it was just going to be a cold case and it's like well what are we supposed to do with that you know you can't just stop here but they didn't have leads they didn't know where to go with it this is about my sister being butchered to death we were not going to arr
est till they found who the killer [Music] was in March 1986 almost 2 years after Karen's murder the FBI finally finished their analysis on the bloody footprint at the crime scene the day that the data came back from the FBI everybody was elated they showed the ridges on the heel from the Barefoot and they can be identified compare one to someone else detectives have renewed hope the Killer is within their reach we must have sent 20 sets of footprints and they got a resol on that relatively quic
k which changed the whole case a definite match no one in gulport would have ever thought that this person murdered this [Music] woman nearly two years since the brutal slang of Karen Gregory detectives have just received a report back on the bloody footprint found at the crime Center the footprint was sent to the FBI we're waiting specifically on just that result there was a definite match of a footprint of George Lewis to the ink footprint that we had sent up there to the FBI lab it was shocki
ng it was very hard for me to believe that George Lewis murdered Karen Gregory he was the head of the crime watch he was a fire fighter I was in complete shock although no one could believe George was a coldblooded killer the evidence doesn't lie Footprints with their ridges and their swirls are similar to fingerprints if you have enough of those patterns to present to a match then they're just as good I didn't want to believe it and I had to face that the trusted George he was toying with me he
certainly wasn't the person that I thought he was the detective detective knows he has to ask his old friend some tough questions we asked him to commen to the station and that's when we confronted him with the footprint that's when he said I GR in the window I was a bombshell now here is a whole new story where he's absolutely in the house he indicated that he had heard the scream he had gone through the bedroom window to try to assist Karen he said that he saw her laying there with her throat
cut open only the killer would have known that her throat was cut he said he had stepped in the blood to assist her or help her and then he had exited out through the bedroom window his explanations didn't make sense if you assume that his story is true that he was threatened by this person on in the yard and was too scared to do anything about it then why would he go into the house why didn't he call police at that time his story is BS but the nail in the coffin of course was the footprint inv
estigators also talked to George's wife again and they learn he would have had time to clean up after the crime his wife been very defensive of him and she changed the story Georgia was gone for the longest time she said 20 minutes or more we don't have to prove motive we felt we had enough probable cause then to make an arrest I had mixed feelings I was sorry it was George and but yet I I was a little upset that he just let us on nearly 2 years after Karen's brutal murder on March 15th 1986 Geo
rge is charged with first-degree murder and sexual battery it was a huge relief that they had finally found someone but it was a a shock you know just a shock and still no reason why would a neighbor do this I think in looking at him it was pretty clear that he had a uh fairly misogynistic view towards women he thought she might be an easy Mark or an easy target at Trust investigators put forward their theory about how the murder unfolded George Lewis would have gone over knowing that David was
out of town he came in the house knifed and ready to ready to do it and was living out of fantasy the teddy had been put on her against her will she knew that the only way to get away was fight to get out of that residence she was pushed and hit her head against the jousy windows that's when she screamed after that it got really violent the rape was involved Lewis knew then that he had only one way to go with this and as a result he ends up stabbing Karen 21 times George Lewis maintains his inno
cence but a jury convicts him and he is sentenced to life without the possibility a parole no one ever really wants to believe that someone that is there to protect and to serve could do something so horrible this was really unexpected that he was the killer that didn't seem like who I would expect a firefighter to be and certainly not the neighborhood watch guy although maybe he was watching for opportunities I was relieved we could actually get Justice for for Karen and all the people who love
d her there was a little bit of Justice in knowing he was in jail my sister probably would have forgiven him that's the kind of person she was it's funny sitting here now she was alive for as many years as she's now been gone she never lived you know we never got to know who she'd be as an old old lady she was just full of life and ideas and and fun and humor I have her ring on right now that she made for Me Karen and I were really close and I'll always miss that and I'll just never forget her a
trailblazing local businesswoman beloved by her community she was effervescent she just had a glamour about her that was just unique she took pride in who she was savagely murdered in her own home this person was so enraged that they just kept stabbing and kept stabbing and kept stabbing she been hit in the head to the point that it actually had changed shape we're looking for something that's got an edge on it but that can snap bones detectives uncover a trail of secrets and lies he couldn't e
xplain things and he failed the polygraph miserably what kind of animal is this person and Chase a killer that stays one step ahead of them they fled to a another country until a series of stunning Revelations patience leaves an entire town in shock everyone was a suspect and everyone was afraid here comes some guy out of the blue telling us that he's the one who committed the murder you would think there's just a serial killer or somebody crazy running around I was like how can we have gotten t
his wrong 2 hours Southwest of Louisville Kentucky lies the quiet town of Madisonville Madisonville Kentucky is a small community it's built on coal mines and agriculture it's a close tight-knit Community there's not a lot of crime in our area they call themselves the best town on Earth and for the most part they truly believe that on January 13th 2003 Madisonville Police received a call from an elderly man for a wellness check on his 85-year-old fiance Anna May Branson her fiance Dr Bob benan w
as afraid that she may have fallen or that she had had a stroke of some type he knocked on the door and couldn't get her an answer that's but when he became worried and he called anime's brother and the local police department an offic officer meets an's fiance and brother outside her house finding a backup key under a bush they enter the home to look for her the patrol officer went in One Direction Dr Bob fenman was looking around and Earl Winstead her brother went down to the basement when he
got to the bottom of the basement steps he said I found her it appeared as first though she could have fallen but then upon seeing all the injuries to her body it was obvious that Miss Branson had been murdered homicide investigators are called to the scene and are shocked when they arrive miss an was a friend of my mother's and it was quite devastating she was on her stomach her legs were extended she had many many stablo to her back she had been hit in the head to the point that it actually ha
d changed [Music] shape looking at the body Detective start building a theory of what happened she had defensive wounds on her forearms then she was knocked down that's when the perpetrator really went to work her head was facing the small chest type freezer there was actually two types of blood spatter on the freezer next to her head one was like a striking motion and one was a golf type swing where the spin-off from the blood spatter actually landed on that I remember thinking that the perpetr
ator must have used two different weapons the weapon was not only going through flesh and organs going through bones and was coming out on the floor underneath her it was unlike anything that we'd ever seen or heard of before why was this defenseless woman attacked so viciously detectives continue their search for evidence at the time we didn't see anything stolen all of her large carrot jewelry were on her finger and had not been touched the amount of damage she sustained suggest that the attac
ker was emotionally attached to her you think about someone leaving the area dripping blood from you know their arms and not to find any blood on the door frames handrails it was suris that person had taken the time to clean up the crime scene but other than the evidence on the freezer and the man of damage that she had sustained there was no other real Clues news of Anne's death spreads quickly in the small town I got the call that Anne had been murdered and not just murdered but unbelievably b
rutally murdered it's just something that you see on the news but it's not real until it happens in your family I just felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me having someone who was a second mother to me killed in such a horrible way is just overwhelmingly [Music] devastating Anna May Winstead was born in Madisonville on November 30th 1917 and from the beginning she stood out from the crowd an was ever vescent she just had a confidence about her a glamour about her that was just unique anim w
as a very flamboyant lady she had a zest for life in 1935 Anne married her high school sweetheart Carol Branson when anime and Carol were first married they were poor during war World War II anime was a Rosie the Riveter working on fighter planes but that was just the start for her after that she liked business and she stayed in the business World in 1950 the hardworking couple use their savings to buy a Dairy Queen franchise the center of the town was the Dairy Queen and everyone went there for
date night Miss an as a boss was a demanding person but she also made you feel like you were part of the family there they literally became multi-millionaires through this Dair Queen when Anne's husband Carol died in 1994 Anne was ready to take on a new business challenge she would get these older houses and then she would make them fabulous and then she would rent them anime was one of the most successful business people that I've ever known even in her older age and was generous with her rent
ers and she was generous with her family and everyone knew that they could borrow money from an but they would have to pay it back an aay was so much of a businesswoman that she kept a ledger with information about people that owed her money in her later years family and business weren't the only things in an's life several months before her death an had met retired eye surgeon Dr Bob Fen Dr Bob lived in Evansville Indiana about 50 mi from Madisonville when she and Dr Bob first started dating sh
e said well I've got a boyfriend the very last thing that anma acted like was an old lady when I found out that she was murdered that just totally totally shocked me at the crime scene detectives examined the rest of the house for Clues there were no signs of for entury into her residence nothing was ransacked like somebody was searching for something we didn't have any idea who would committed such a violent act on an 85y old woman what kind of animal is this person while forensics continue the
ir work detectives speak to the two men who alerted police her fiance Bob and her brother Earl Earl was asked to to establish a timeline for that Sunday and he had provided an alibi where he was with family at the time of the murder and family did substantiate his whereabouts what about an's fiance could he have had a reason to harm her a homicide of this magnitude you need to ask who's in a relationship with this victim when we interviewed uh Dr Bob fenman he was emotionally distraught Dr Bob d
id ask an to marry him she did accept his three karat diamond ring but she had not said a day they had talked about whether they would have some sort of agreement because she did have a lot of money but she was kind of hesitant police want to know had an's hesitancy about Bob caused him to turn against her in a violent rage this person was so enrage red that they just kept stabbing and kept stabbing and kept stabbing to inflict that many injuries this was a personal crime coming up buried secret
s are brought to light we all thought he was a family man thought he was a church G she explained that her Alibi had been cced while detectives unearth suspects with violent pasts he had several assaults in his past we're starting to think hey you know this could be our guy they had already stabbed another woman we would never have dreamed who the killer [Music] was detectives are investigating the horrific murder of elderly millionaire Anne Branson forensic suggests it was a crime of passion Dr
Bob even with his age we did feel could be a viable suspect Dr Bob was from Evansville and he drove all the time to Madisonville to court an but she had not yet decided whether she was going to get married had an's reluctance turned Bob against her Dr Bob fman was asked to establish a timeline and provide us with an alibi the day before Miss Branson was murdered she had gone to Evansville Indiana to meet up with Dr finman to go to a dance and after the dance Miss Branson returned to Madisonvill
e Sunday he said he attempted to call her and she didn't answer the phone it was shortly before 10:00 that evening and Dr fenman said that he presumed that she had gone out or that she had gone to bed early so the next day he said he became worried and he said that's when they discovered a body at the bottom of the staircase detectives learned from speaking to her family that Anne had been to an evening church service on Sunday Miss Bron's estimated time of death was on that Sunday evening after
she returned home from church Dr Bob said that he was at home in Evansville Indiana taking no chances investigators search his phone records phone calls plac Dr Bob in Evansville Indiana so he would not have been in the area during the time frame of the murder he did not have the opportunity to murder her it just wasn't feasible for him to have committed the crime [Music] from after clearing Bob as a suspect they ask if he can think of anyone who would harm his fiance Dr Bob recalled that her h
andyman Wayne Shelton had borrowed money from Miss Anna in the past and the amount was more than what a handyman should be borrowing from his employer Mr Shelton also ow child support he was trying to provide the court system a statement that she would guarantee his employment and Miss Branson did not feel that she could guarantee him employment so she had concerns over it the fact that the maintenance man had a financial relationship with the victim made him a person of interest that we wanted
to talk to detectives contact Wayne Shelton and ask him to meet them at an's House Wayne Shelton came to the crime scene when we were there and I explained to him the circumstances of what had occurred he was extremely shaken he was in disbelief police cut to the Chase and asked Wayne where he was on the night Anne was murdered he is Alibi was he was in another County visiting with his daughter during the murder of Anne Branson knowing Wayne's Alibi is weak detectives take him to the station for
a polygraph but there's just one problem Wayne Shelton had a hard condition was so fragile that it kept him from even being able to take a polygraph so the polygraph examiner refused to give Mr Shelton a polygraph frustrated by this setback an's nephew Jack Branson a retired FBI officer pulls some strengths Mary and I hired a retired FBI polygrapher and Wayne Shelton said yes I'll be polygraphed Jack's polygrapher takes Wayne Shelton carefully through the test questions Wayne Shelton passed the
polygraph with flying colors so at that point we were able to say okay he pass the polygraph he did not do it as investigators search for new suspects news of the Savage murder puts the whole town on edge this had been a little town where literally people didn't lock their doors and all of a sudden everyone was a suspect and everyone was afraid the community needed to know if they had something to fear so it was pressure all the way around to get this crime solved as word spreads police begin t
o received tips from the public we've received a tip that there was a black pickup truck at the residence after 12 at night could the black truck belong to the killer investigators ask Anne's family if they know anyone who drives such a vehicle we kept heing about a crazy tenant drove a black truck what detectives learn about an's tenant concerns them Robert PR had characteristics of a mentally unstable person he would actually call her in the middle of the night and say that he had ghost up in
his attic and would she please get rid of the ghost an always said she was nervous around him and she didn't like it when he came to the house and he called her at all hours of the day and night Miss Branson had received several complaints from the neighbors asking that she evict Mr Prince from his apartment and she did want to move him from that location the family would say don't become some involved with him had an's attempt to move Robert prompted him to attack her if Robert Prince was menta
lly unstable and became angry at her could he have caused her [Music] death detectives investigating the slaughter of Anne Branson have discovered she had been involved in a dispute with a volatile [Music] tenant Robert Prince would call Mrs Branson at all hours saying crazy things to her wanting her to come over they had warned her not to go over there by herself due to his mental instability he did pose a great concern for for us to investigate searching their database detectives find alarming
information about their new suspect Robert Prince was found to have had a violent criminal history he had several assaults in his past and he could express a lot of anger towards someone else police obtain a warrant to search his home what we were looking for is the murder weapon I'm looking for something that's got Edge on it but they can snap bones and go completely through the victim's body and I'm looking for any clothes there's no way that the perpetrator did this without getting some of t
he blood on himself but we weren't able to locate any of the items that would be of interest to us in this case despite the lack of physical evidence detectives bring Robert Prince into the station for questioning when he was taken from his residence and interrogated he did did not want to answer any questions to do with his prior criminal history and upon initial confrontation with Robert Prince he was extremely agitated as he starts talking we're picking up on his violent tendencies we're star
ting to think hey you know this could be our guy detectives note that Robert's right arm is injured even though he's a man they could inflict this kind of punishment he can't bend us right on and we asked him so you right hand or left hand he said said I'm right-handed detectives Wonder Could Robert have hurt his arm attacking an he said he was in another state at the estimated time of death for Miss Branson Robert Prince gave the elbi that he was with some family in Tennessee and he had stopped
in a convenience store and got some gas and got a sold or something with nothing concrete linking Robert to the homicide police have to let him go and detectives get to work checking his alibi we contact that convenience store pull surveillance video and well behold there's Robert Prince on camera and in addition to that prior to miss Branson's murder Robert Prince had surgery to his elbow area and his arm and according to his doctor if he had inflicted those injuries upon Miss Branson then all
of his Staples and his stitches in his arm would no longer be intact so The Alibi and surgical area just ruled him out as a suspect back at square one detectives are relying on the autopsy to break open new leads the autopsy revealed that Mrs Branson was stabbed about 97 times throughout her body her skull was pulverized she was beaten so badly that a lot of the stab wounds were actually inflicted after she had passed away the evidence technician said that we're not talking about just a regular
old steak Knife that's something that's very heavy cuz the blade is going through her bones through her organs it was coming out on the other side while the autopsy fails to identify an actual murder weapon it gives a clear estimate of an's time of death there was a pot on the stove which she had baked her supper she had eaten we were able to analyze the food in her stomach and based on the absorption rate principle the time of death for her was approximately 30 minutes after she got home from
church it was determined that her time of death was between 7 and 7:30 p.m. as police continue their search for the killer ant's family struggles with her death Mary and I walked over to Earl's house to see how he was dealing with with the grief and his son Russell took us in to see Earl the whole family was in shock and everyone was just questioning who could have possibly done this Earl and Russell they were both saying we'll be glad when we found out who did this and we understood that was ex
actly how we were feeling as the family Grieves Madisonville residents question whether their town really is the best town on Earth when the Town found out that Miss Branson had been murdered it scared a lot of people because you would think there's just a serial killer or somebody crazy running around to have done that this is mville Kentucky coin best town on Earth you cannot have an unsolved murder of one of its most prominent members it just it can't happen as detectives contemplate their ne
xt move an unexpected tip sends the case in a new direction we're day four or five into this investigation but we have nothing strong yet and then we get a phone call that was the pivotal Turning Point the caller is a local mine worker named Jeff hibs Jeff hibs has some information about one of anime's nephews Russell winad that phone call basically shocked and rocked our investigation [Music] 5 days after the bloody murder of 85-year-old Anne Branson police are contacted by a man named Jeff hib
s who makes a stunning allegation Jeff hibs believed that Russell Winston had some involvement with the murder of his aunt anime Branson Russell Winstead was known as was a coal miner a hard worker he had three sons he was married to Terry Winstead it was known that he and his family attended church regularly Jeff claims that Russell has a secret unknown to his family Jeff hibs told us that Russell Winstead had an extreme gambling addiction he also tells detectives that he'd gone gambling with R
ussell a few nights before an's murder Russell told Jeff he had gotten a loan from his aunt that he had to repay by Monday morning and he had $9,700 and he lost every single penny of that money Russell told Jeff that they're all going to know about his gambling addiction because his aunt is going to expose him for borrowing money from her on a regular basis and uh not paying it back Jeff tells police that on Monday the local headlines grabbed his attention Jeff hibs reads about this old lady tha
t got murder [Music] massil and he was like oh my gosh this is the ant that Russell had to repay by the first day of the week detectives go back to Anne's house to search for evidence on our second search I found a ledger and the large amount of loans that was written down for one nephew they totaled up almost $100,000 the day before her Murder She had actually written down that he had received $9,700 from her and that he had paid her a check for [Music] $112,000 detectives believed that Russell
had given and a check in hopes of winning enough at the casino to cover it but when the check is nowhere to be found detective subpoena his bank records upon the financial investigation it was determined that Russell was basically shifting money around to cover the loans from his aunt and the missing check for the $122,000 never cleared the bank 10 days after the homicide detectives interview Russell Winstead even when we told him that Miss Branson had put it in her Ledger Russell still denied
any knowledge of that check he denied having any involvement in this whatsoever at the time of death Russell explained that he had gone to church and that upon leaving church he had dropped his children off at his ex-wife's house and then that he was at home in the basement Russell said he got home about 7:25 p.m. with an's time of death estimated between 7 and 7:30 p.m. detectives interview Russell's wife Terry to verify his Alibi Terry's explanation for Russell was down to the minute she said
yeah we went to church we drove separate he dropped a son off at his ex-wife's house and then he got home 7:25 Russell had a solid Alibi his wife told the exact same story he did as to where Russell was on the night of Mrs Branson's death there's just one loose end for detectives to tie up Russell's Casino visits I ask you know Russell gambles right she's like yeah I know he gambles I was like on a bad night what do you think he loses and she's like I don't know 2 or 3,000 I was like try 38,000
on one night and then she started balling then this was just devastating to her because she trusted Russell that same day police get a search warrant for Russell's home we didn't find the murder weapon we didn't find any clothes that uh that were Blood Stained but we did recover a couple of burner cell phones that his wife didn't know even existed one of the cell phones was only used to contact a waitress at one of the casin knows Russell had a girlfriend who worked at the casino so we talked to
the waitress and it alarmed us somewhat that even after he's a suspect of entance in a murder case Russell was still continuing to go to the casino still trying to be uh the High [Music] Roller Russell has plenty of Secrets but do money problems and infidelity make him a killer Russell's father Earl told me the police are trying to jam Russell up because they need a suspect they want to solve this case when we found out that Russell had been living a literal double life we were shocked but we f
elt that there was no way Russell had not done this we believed it with all of our hearts but as they dig deeper into Russell's gambling detectives fin evidence of a man out of control we come with a total of 236 times that Russell had visited a casino in the last year losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in that time frame when it's rolled up into one you're just like going who is this guy the scope of Russell's betrayal prompts his wife Terry to kick him out of the house and return to polic
e with a damning admission Terry explained that her Alibi had been coursed she said that Russell is the one that told her what to say she explained that Russell actually did not come home around 7:30 p.m. that it was more like 9 so that put him as being a person that could have committed this murder investigators obtain a warrant for Russell's arrest but when they go to bring him in they're in for a shock Russell Winstead had fled the country we were very concerned that he would not be brought t
o Justice when I found out that Russell Winston had fled it was my goal to get him no matter what the cost Manpower What it Took [Music] the prime suspect in the murder of Anne Branson is her nephew Russell Winstead but before investigators can make an arrest Russell Goes On The Run for Russell to have fled the country it was shocking to all of us an innocent man doesn't flee like that this is the last straw and he has to come back I have never been a person that takes waiting very well and our
son came up with the idea of putting this case on America's Most Wanted if you've seen Russell Winstead please call our hotline tonight at 1 1800 Crime TV they aired the show February of 05 and then in May of' 05 Russell was spotted at a casino in Costa Rica he was living under a pseudonym he was still bouncing from female to female and he was living the lifestyle that he attempted to live here we knew where he was we wanted Justice there's just one problem with Russell facing a potential death
sentence at home Costa Rican authorities refuse to hand him over Costa Rica will not EX extradite anyone to the United States where the death sentence is a possibility and also they have gambling so Russell had done his homework big time while investigators strategize how to get Russell back to Kentucky they make a troubling Discovery we found out that Russell's father Earl had been providing wrestle with monies for his lifestyle in Costa Rica we had a guy come forward that said that Earl was ac
tually paying him to wire money via Western Union to Russell in Costa Rica we believed Earl was actually uh aiding and eding uh Russell's flight with Earl sending his son proceeds from the estate of the person he murdered it basically rubbed salt in the wound it turned your stomach investigators set up a sting to catch Earl red-handed so we wired this guy up as a confidential informant and he met Earl wired the money and we got Earl doing that the two or three times it was verified that Earl was
sending money to wrestle in Costa Rica while investigators find no evidence that Earl was involved in his sister an's murder they arrest him for helping his son evade Justice it really struck all of us by surprise the thought that Russell Winston's father Earl widay was sending money down to live on in Costa Rica just sat like a bur under a saddle with me I remember Earl being led out in handcuffs because he was arrested for helping a fugitive but what really hurt us deeply was the fact that we
knew it was an's money that was paying for her murderer Earl eventually pleads guilty to seven counts of hindering apprehension he was placed on probation for two years and if he contacted Russell at any point during those two years then he would have to serve jail time while Earl faces legal trouble at Home Federal authorities move in on Russell in Costa Rica Russell was observed at the gambling casinos they felt that that was probably the safest place for them to take him into custody so as R
ussell was leaving the gambling casino in Costa R he was apprehended he was arrested in May of 2005 in Costa Rica we did not get him back to Kentucky until February of the following year extraditing someone back from another country takes a a lot of time and federal authorities had to make assurances that we would not seek the death penalty against [Music] Russell it took us seven months to extra back to the United States to know that that it was taking this long was very hard in fact every time
we'd visit the cemetery where am's buried as say we're going to get him we're going to get him that was a long slow long slow [Music] process finally more than 3 years after Anne's murder Russell Winstead has returned home to face trial for the murder of his aunt that day I'll never forget I went back to en's grave and said we got him and I felt like a burden had been lifted cuz we knew what Justice was going to be done upon Russell's return to Kentucky we were preparing for a trial when we got
another humongous bombshell as far as our investigation concern someone who was also charged with murder of an elderly lady came forward saying that he was the one who had killed Mrs Branson all of this evidence has been stacking up against Russell Winstead and here comes some guy out of the blue telling us that he's the one who committed the murder the confession is contained in a letter posted from Hopkins County Jail by an accused murderer named Fred roulette Fred roulette basically gives de
tailed information on the murder of Anne Branson that was never publicly made known he stated that the murder weapon was a bratus hammer it is a mining tool and he advised that he had modified that Fred roulette provided a drawing of mes Branson's home and it was early accurate he gives all these details that only the killer would know I was like how can we have gotten this [Music] wrong police have arrested Russell Winstead for the brutal murder of his aunt Anne Branson but now accused murderer
Fred roulette has confessed to the crime leaving investigators reeling Fred roulette was also charged with murdering an elderly lady so you think oh my gosh did we get it wrong it was completely devastating so we were determined we were going to find out the circumstances of his confession investigators throw all their resources into checking the validity of Fred's confession Fred was a drug addict and he could not provide the details of the murder and robbery that he himself had committed to t
he level of detail that he provided about Mrs Branson's case when investigators checked the jail records they discover a telling detail Fred did not come forward until after Russell had been extradited back to Kentucky and Fred roulette and Russ so onstead were cellmates already facing 25 years on a separate murder charge Fred roulette insists to detectives that he killed Anne Branson Fred didn't realize until we told him that if he wanted to confess to this murder it now packed a death penalty
after Fred heard those words he was like no game's off gigs up that's when he told investigators that that he had all the intimate details of the murder from Russell Winstead Fred roulette was promised that his family would receive compensation since he was going to be in prison for the additional murder so Fred rette agreed to take the false confession with Russell's deception exposed his trial can proceed in July 20 2007 4 years after an's murder a jury hears what really happened on that Sunda
y night in January 2003 Mrs Branson had loaned Russell upwards of $100,000 and Mrs Branson notated in that ledger was that she had received that $112,000 check from Russell on Saturday as partial repayment of the loan Russell had a large sum of money that he lost in the casino and he made mention that he needed to pay back to his aunt on Monday Russell knew he could not make good on that $112,000 [Music] check I believe that Russell Winstead was so desperate that he went over and he attempted to
talk Miss Anne into tearing up the $112,000 check when that didn't work I believe that he lost it and that he snapped and that's when she started receiving all the damage to the 65 plus stab Booms to her back we still do not know to this day how many times anime Branson was hit in the head he Clan up the crime scene and he felt that he could get away with murder the person that ended up being the killer when they announced the verdict relief washed over me like Niagra Falls a relief that this j
ury saw through Russell Winston and he did not fool them finally missan got her justice and everybody he loved and knew her got a form of Justice I miss an every day and finally I can think of her without thinking of her murder I can finally think of her for who she was beautiful beautiful part of our family and I took pride in who she was I think she'd be happy to be remembered ask someone who enjoyed life and had a good [Music] one e e for e e for
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