a wealthy Commodities Trader with the world at his feet my brother was uh a fun-loving guy he had anything he wanted he had a lot of money The Cadillacs and the Rolex watches is viciously gunned down and they shot him again and again and again with his wife and kids in the home at the time of the attack it was a very traumatic event to the family with people with guns threatening them you can't dismiss the fact it was a home invasion but a lot of it didn't add up I had no idea at all how this co
uld have happen police chased down a number of suspects there was a complete falling out between them someone could get killed over a debt that they didn't pay a sudden disappearance leaves everyone on edge there was a traitor he disappeared off the face of the Earth it was suspected there was Foul Play involved or one dead and one missing um put a different spin on this type of investigation every lead brings investigators to a dead end it's very frustrating to have a case that hits a brick wal
l until 30 years later they were holding a very big secret inside when this shocking truth is revealed couldn't believe it couldn't believe it that's not even human that's that's the devil [Music] just 30 minutes outside of Chicago lies Inverness Illinois Inverness is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago it's a safe beautiful neighborhood someone call a very rich very large homes and very few crimes are ever committed in that area but on April 30th 1979 at 3:20 p.m. police receive a distress
ing call from a 15-year-old girl named Becky gamari her words were there's been a robbery my dad's been shot he was bleeding from the chest the police responded immediately as we entered through the front door we were met by Becky gamari she was crying and pointing downstairs I went downstairs and I saw a male who was leaning back back in the sofa who appeared to have numerous gunshot wounds there was a woman who was kneeling at the feet of the victim crying almost in hysterics the woman identif
ies herself as Jackie gamari she says the victim is her husband Carl and that she and her three youngest children Bobby Carly and Nick were in the home when The Intruders stormed in those children must have been terrified and and felt so helpless it's horrifying the fames were taken out to the squad car so that they were secure and away from everyone investigators set to work processing the crime scene starting with the body I went over to the victim I didn't find a pulse there was a number of u
h bullet holes in his chest with the blood basically draining down to his pants I noticed a 9 mm gun and there were a number of 9mm casings that were strewn about the victim's feet there was also a small 380 caliber handgun it appeared that of 9mm was placed to make some type of a statement this could be a staged killing the victim his legs were crossed at his ankles it didn't appear to be a natural position I went and took uh an inventory of what the rest of the house looked like the bedrooms t
he dresser drawers have been opened uh a number of items appear to be tossed on the floor I could see that there were jewelry boxes that still had jewelry in them which raises questions as to why they actually came to that residence was this a legitimate robbery was this stage to cover something up you can't dismiss the fact it was a home invasion but a lot of it didn't add up it did bring into question that they were there really to kill the victim we took a number of fingerprint lifts from the
kitchen the dining room and the bedroom area one of the officers noticed them there was no forc entry nobody kicked in the door or Pride it as police continue working the scene Carl's family receives the tragic news my sister called me and says you better get home Carl was shot it's the whole neighborhood where the house was all quing off we were told by the police he's in the house he's dead and uh they're investigating so we were all like stunned when this happened it was just a huge huge sho
ck and we didn't know how to react disbelief and just um can't be Carl gamari was born in Elmwood Park Illinois in 1944 he was the third of four children my brother Carl was a a funloving guy you know he um he liked to go out and have fun you know know go on dates with girls and um go to parties and things like that when Carl was in high school he met the love of his life when he started dating Jackie he was like 18 and I think she was 17 at the time he just knew that this was the one and you kn
ow he wanted to get married and he want to get married now still teenagers Carl and Jackie started a family right away Carl was excited to be a dad they had four kids Becky was the oldest Bobby was the second oldest Carly was the third daughter and then Nick was the youngest he was his son by 1977 Carl had the perfect family and the perfect job working in finance at the Chicago Board of Trade Carl climbed up the ladder he was energetic and he loved it and it fit his personality to a te he had an
ything he wanted he had a lot of money he came to Cadillacs Rolex watches and things like that um he started Living a high life from the outside Carl's life they seen picture perfect but now his violent death leaves his family shattered he's been shot and I was shocked you know no one knew anything what's what's going on I had no idea at all what how this could have happened investigators start by interviewing Carl's family who were also witnesses to the crime I took Jackie and the two girls out
to the garage so I could get a general statement from them as to what occurred Jackie was crying and very upset Becky was crying Bobby was crying this was the most traumatic thing children could go through they said Carl went to work Jackie was at home with Bobby her 13-year-old daughter 5-year-old Carly and 2-year-old Nick around 1200 or 12:30 Bobby is laying on the couch and she's watching TV and two men come in and they have guns she said the two men were wearing stocking masks and dark clot
hing and they had come in through the unlocked back door they point the guns at her and they ask her where's your mother so Bobby leads these men to the master bedroom where Jackie is on the phone they ask Jackie for her money and she says I only have $20 and they said we're here for more than that these men tie Bobby's hands behind her back and then they tie up Jackie they force them into the master bedroom closet with Carly with baby Nick time is passing Bobby said that she heard a man yelling
no who she thought was her father and she heard three banging sounds which she believed were gunshots Becky came home approximately 3:00 in the afternoon from school uh she walked in through the front door called for her mom all she heard was uh crying from the master bedroom uh at that time she found them banging on the closet door to be let out once Becky opens up the closet doors Bobby went directly down to the basement and Bobby saw her father's bloody bullet-ridden body laying on that couc
h it is difficult to imagine how Terri ter ifying this must have been while the family lived through an extremely traumatic ordeal police are hopeful that with their help they can catch Carl's Killers Jackie and Bobby said at the suspects had actually pulled up their mask so they had their face exposed to them Jackie described the first suspect as a male white mid to late 20s to 30s uh tall darkhaired and also had a mustache the second suspect was shorter than the first slightly heavier was a wh
ite male but had a pale complexion and facial hair Bobby and Jackie were able to do composits of the faces they saw I think there was a lot of hope somebody's going to recognize these individuals when we heard about the sketch we thought that would be it they they'd be able to find them I was hoping to get the information out as quickly as possible with the suspect's description so that if someone would was possibly stopped or seen within the general area a patrol vehicle could have stopped them
in Inverness where crime is virtually non-existent police believe there is more to this case than meets the eye it appeared to be a staged crime it could be someone who owed money to someone and being shot for that a jealous boyfriend uh it could be a number of different things you can't close your mind to any possibility at that point in time coming up investigators uncover sorted Secrets he might have had some Associates who might have been involved with the mob it definitely raised a red fla
g The Killers of eight detectives until an unexpected witness steps forward you told me how it was going to be done how they were going to kill Carl to reveal a dark and twisted plot no one predicted icted soon as they knew how Carl was going to be murdered and that's exactly what happened to him that was the missing [Music] key police are investigating the murder of commodity's Traer and father of four Carl gamari his wife and young family were at home at the time of the terrifying attack Jacki
e and the two girls were mostly in shock they were completely overwhelmed by what was happening Jackie and Bobby saw the gunman armed with their description officers go door too looking for Witnesses one of the neighbors saw two men coming from the Garis through her yard and she thought one of them was carrying like a u a jewel bag after that neighbor pointed out where she saw the two men walking through her yard the detectives went back and followed that path they had found a cigarette bus but
that still had Ash on it by her driveway that cigarette butt was collected by the state police crime lab but in 1979 there was no DNA uh so there really wasn't much uh of the evidence that could be collected off of that cigarette but more witnesses come forward to help police trace the suspect's movements there was a woman who was in her car around the time that this incident took place she stated that she saw a beater type gray car parked on the side of the street when she returned approximatel
y 3:00 or so she said that she saw the vehicle oncoming towards her she said that the driver was a white male the second passenger in the front was a white male but he was trying to slump down in the seat in her word she thought he was trying to hide himself the neighbor who saw that vehicle coming towards her with the two men was also able to do a composite it's similar to the one Jackie and Bobby gave police composits are very very useful you can put them in the newspaper you can get them on t
he news you can get them out there for people other agencies to see if anyone could identify them as possible suspects so after the canvas was conducted they then did a sweep of the area between uh the the victim's house and where this car was observed to see if they could find any evidence they also discovered um Tire Impressions and some footware Impressions that were in the mud there where the car had been [Music] parked back at the crime scene investigators get an unexpected visitor I notice
d someone approached me and he pulled out his credentials as being a Chicago police officer and told his name was Sam Greco Sam said that he was was a family friend the girls knew Sam uh they felt comfortable around him he said that he had been called by the daughter that something had happened so he was coming out to see what assistance he could lend on the day of the murder Becky made two phone calls she did call 911 her next call was to Sam tell him what had taken place Sam originally arrived
up the scene about an hour after the initial call he had advised him that he had been on the phone with Jack this was about 12:30 in the afternoon and that during their conversation she said somebody was there and he heard some voices in the background and then the call was disconnected so he had offered to give them his phone record so they could try to establish a timeline of when that occurred based on the time of the phone call police believed the gunman arrived at 12:30 p.m. and left by 3
that afternoon they spent over 2 hours in the home a detail that puzzles the investigators they spent so much time in the house which is not normal home Invaders usually come in take care of business and leave they don't sit around second the amount of items that were left behind didn't indicate that this was a straight up home invasion my question was whether or not they knew that Carl gamari was coming home at that point in time and why did they kill him who did it and why and why my brother w
hat did he do that he deserved to have his life snuffed away and taken away we had no idea who it could be in their search for answers detectives turned back to Carl's wife Jackie anytime you're investigating a murder within a family you have to look at the surviving spouse it was clear that Jackie hadn't been the one to shoot Carl two armed Invaders came into their house and locked them in the closet it was very traumatic to the kids and Jackie to have all of a sudden their peaceful day broken
down with people with guns and then threatening them and not letting them move around the house not knowing what was going to happen next they were absolutely terrified even after uh the suspects had left it was difficult to get them to to concentrate on making a statement Jackie was crying upset when detectives asked Jackie about her relationship with Carl she tells them she loved him and that he was her high school sweetheart but what she reveals about her marriage surprises investigators Carl
and Jackie had a rather unorthodox situation at times over the years they both had affairs and they would bring their lovers home when you get information like that that's an important thing to follow up on and and look further to see where if that has anything to do with what occurred here had the couple's infidelities led to Carl's murder you have to look at that as a possibility it definitely raised a red flag it was definitely [Music] shocking detectives investigating the coldblooded murder
of Carl gamari have learned he and his wife Jackie had both been unfaithful that's a big red flag it needs to be looked at very thoroughly Jackie tells police they had recently agreed to work on their marriage they seem to be getting better as you got into 1979 they were trying to work it out they went on a romantic vacation they were making a plan to do another big trip to Africa um they were buying a new house and they would tell friends that yeah things are getting back together for us we're
going to make an effort to make this this work because especially because of the kids a year before the murder the couple had even decided to renew their vows we as a family thought wow this is nice this is really nice to see you know that they wanted to get together and they have us there witness the renewing of their vows they were like two love birds he was gleaning from ear to ear and so was Jackie and they seemed like a wonderful couple while Jackie was also a victim in this crime did dete
ctives still need to know if she'd have anything to gain financially from Carl's death it was learned that there was only about a $30,000 life insurance policy Carl had never signed a will which ties it up in court and it could be 7 years before you see any of the the financial gain from this and so this kind of cleared jacket of being in the spotlight of the investigation investigators consider whether Carl and Jackie's renewed marriage could have driven one one of their former lovers to murder
when they ask Jackie who she had an affair with her answer is surprising Jackie and Sam Greco had an affair she said that she had dated Sam for quite some time but that she had broken off the relationship with Sam to recommit to her marriage with uh Carl Jackie had said when she became pregnant with Nick she stopped seeing Sam detectives need to know was Sam a jealous ex could he have killed Carl to have Jackie to himself Sam was interviewed once on the phone and then again in person he had met
Jackie at a wedding and he was doing some private investigative work and Jackie had hired him to follow Carl to see if he was having an affair there was an indication from some Sam's investigation that Carl was having an affair and that ultimately led to them initiating a relationship Sam also told the investigators that he and Jackie had been lovers but they were now just friends Sam denied any involvement with this case they took his phone records fingerprinted him and they interviewed indivi
duals associated with Sam he was considered a hero within the Chicago Police Department the police back then still investigated him as much as they could the investigators ruled him out as not being involved in this with Sam eliminated from the investigation detective's next look at the woman with whom Carl had been having an affair Gail kayak was some someone whom Carl had actually hired and worked with when Gale was interviewed her description was It was kind of two adults having some fun toge
ther it was nothing serious she knew it was going nowhere she knew Carl was married Gil tells investigators she and Carl broke things off about a year ago and that there wasn't any animosity between them she ended up after the relationship was over between her and Carl had a boyfriend got pregnant given the affair had been over for a year it just made really no sense that she would be involved in this in any way just when detectives think they've hit another dead end Gail gives them a stunning n
ew lead she says they need to speak to Carl's former friend and colleag Ned Kaiser Ned Kaiser was one of the closer people to Carl at the Board of Trade they had worked together there for a while they socialized Gail claims Ned not only knew about her affair with Carl but told Jackie about it Carl and Ned were friends Carl would use his apartment to be with his girlfriend um Ned ultimately got upset with Carl told Jackie that Carl was using his place to be with his girlfriend once Carl found out
that uh Ned was the one who told Jackie about Gail that soured the relationship Gail also tells police Ned had a dark reputation she had rumored that he had ties to organized crime whenever you're dealing with people with money and investment and all there's always a possibility that someone um could get killed over a debt that they didn't pay had Carl and Ned fallen out over money had Ned put out a hit on his former friend you always look at the big picture business dealings with Ned him betra
ying Carl to Jackie about using his place uh Ned having some possible mob connections I think you got to look at everything you have to see what's there where does that lead you is this a person who has a reason to kill [Music] kyl police are following a tip that the murder of successful traitor Carl gamari may have been a targeted hit one organized by his former friend and coworker Ned Kaiser Ned Kaiser might have been quote unquote involved with the mob during the 1970s Chicago was was very mu
ch involved with the criminal network of the mob and uh a number number of people wound up dead every year organized crime had a hand in gambling from information obtained from co-workers and people that knew Carl he gambled at the Board of Trade he would gamble outside if individuals are gambling like that then chances are they would cross paths with organized crime people 5 days after the homicide Ned is brought in for an interview police ask about his friendship and working relationship with
Carl the relationship ship with Ned and Kaiser and Carl and the family was was an extensive involved one um they had known each other for approximately 9 years and at one point when Ned was going through a divorce they actually let him move into their house Ned says that's why he had a hard time keeping Carl's Affair secret Ned had told investigators that the reason he came forward to Jackie was because he was friends with both of them and he just felt that Jackie was being mistreated by the way
Carl was acting and needed to correct him detectives asked Ned if Carl was indebted to him or if they had any conflict about money Ned denied ever having any kind of a fight with Carl Ned was asked if he had any involvement if he knew anything about Carl's murder and he denied having any direct knowledge there was nothing that anyone could dig up that would say Ned was responsible for Carl's death the investigators took a very hard look at him to see if there was any way that he could have comm
itted this crime and they were able to rule him out there was no evidence connecting him to the murder of Carl gamari investigators are forced to let Ned go the police talked to everyone that they possibly could if they talked to one person and that person mentioned other people they went and talk to those people as well and then it gets to a point where there's just no other leads to pursue Sue at that time so they police are essentially waiting for new information authorities once again turned
to the public in an attempt to find the men who killed Carl and terrorized his family they're composits are very critical in our ongoing investigation and identifying the shooters I remember cutting out all the headlines and all that boy someone's going to be recognized with the sketch and something's going to happen with this and come about from it but days would go on and nothing when the sketches were released there wasn't a lot of uh information that came in nothing substantial at all detec
tives hope that the autopsy report will provide a crucial new lead Carl have been shot six times the fatal wound it penetrated his chest into his heart and and severed the aorta when you have multiple shots like that from two different guns it's apparent that their intent was was to kill him and they shot him again and again and again and again total of six times since the medical examiner didn't find any defense wounds on Carl there is no physical evidence on his body to linked to the perpetrat
ors frustration grows when detectives get the report on the fingerprints found at the crime scene there were no known matches of any of those latent fingerprints they had no real suspects didn't seem like anybody was going to be arrested for this with the killer still on the loose the town of Inverness is on edge while Carl's family lives in fear a couple of days after the original murder someone had put a threatening note in the mailbox Jackie then went to the police and said she was being thre
atened and that was her concern for her safety when I found that out I was very dis I was concerned about jacking the kid somebody wanted my brother killed 2 weeks after the murder police make a disturbing Discovery it came to the attention of the initial investigators that there was a Trader worked at the Chicago Board of Trade had just disappeared um it was suspected there was Foul Play involved detectives learn his name is Ry Jones and he's one of 's business associates our Jones knew harl th
ere may have been some money involved between the two of them no one knew what happened to him he left uh for work uh drove into the City and was never heard from again could the two cases be connected now put a new light a new focus with two traders in close proximity one dead and one missing um put a different spin on this type of investigation at that point time when we heard the news and it was all over the papers that we thought wow now we know there's something going on at the Board of Tra
de when you had Carl who was killed uh and being part of boorder of trade and then you have Arty who who disappears after going to work at the Board of Trade those don't happen often when Ry Jones happened that was very concerning it was you know we wanted to find up okay who's after Arty and who's after Carl if there was somebody in fact after both of [Music] them 2 weeks after Carl gamari murder his coworker Ry Jones has vanished detectives are hunting for a potential connection between the tw
o cases through the Highland Park investigation of of Ry they interviewed his wife and she said that since the the murder of of of Carl he had become very edgy he was very secretive about going out to meet some people for business at that time and then never coming back it just uh hidden that concern she had about the two being related there was just no trace of him they ran credit checks they did phone records They had absolutely nothing of where this individual may have gone or why he disappea
red they located his vehicle near O'Hare Airport no reason why it was there no rhy couldn't put him on a airplane there was just nothing he was gone that investigation was rather lengthy and they never did locate him and eventually his wife had him declared dead it's very frustrating to um have a case that hits a brick wall Carl's family continues to push for answers I was persistent I would call I wanted to hear from the horse's mouth from the detectives um what's going on what's the next step
what are you looking at months and months and months turned into a year a year turned into two years then you kind of like lost faith a little bit Carl's loved ones try to cope with the terrible realization that his Killers may never be found the investigation wasn't turning up anything they broadcasted and showed those pictures of the two men for a long time no one knew anything the case is considered a Cold Case 30 years later the case is reopened detectives Mike Kirby and Bill stutzman took o
ver that investigation gave it new life these were people who had investigated you know hundreds of violent crimes in their careers I had spent 9 and A2 years on a homicide task force so this was my first actual Cold Case we were told told to look at this case from 30 years ago right away you're like 30 years who's even going to be alive from back then that we could talk to but when we sat down and we compiled uh our plan of action people we wanted to talk to we became extremely excited about th
e possibility of this being solved as the new detectives start digging into the cold case they are confronted with a daunting problem barington Police Department had two floods in their basement where their evidence was kept these floods basically contaminated any of the evidence ruling it unusable any DNA we might have was gone that's a major blow in an investigation most cold cases nowadays are soled through forensic evidence we had none of that then in 2011 a stunning turn of events reignites
the investigation we get a phone call it was uh shocking to us Ry Jones had been located living under an assumed name in Las Vegas a part of a fraud investigation by the federal government and uh located him we were extremely shocked that he was alive investigators fly to Nevada to interview Ry Jones about Carl's murder well the first thing we wanted to know was what uh relationship did R Jones have at all with with Carl did they have any any kind of business transaction he claimed he didn't ev
en know so then we focused on why did he disappear then when we talked to Mr Jones he said that he was having financial problems um he didn't like his job he didn't like his life he was unhappy with his marriage so he just faked his disappearance and that became very clear that he had staged all this by planting the car by the airport the two um had no connection the Kamari of murder and his disappearance were not related With the yardi Jones mystery solved detectives are again left with no lead
s what we decided to do was to work this like it was a fresh case and just start from the beginning with no preconceived notions no no thoughts on where we were going to go with it Bill susman and Mike Kirby reinterviewed everyone who had been interviewed that they could find back in 1979 and 80 and one of the people that interviewed was Jackie's sister Tootsie when police interviewed Tootsie the night of Carl's Murder She told them and the morning of April 30th Jackie called Tootsie and told he
r to come over that day and if Tootsie had come that day I don't know if she would have been another victim detectives bring Jackie's sister Tootsie in for an interview as they question her she makes a jaw-dropping revelation she said I've been ridden with guilt throughout the years I've seen what it did to the kids what it did to his family um I can only be truthful about this I can only tell you what was told to me Tootsie was having ulcers after the murder of Carl she was holding a very big s
ecret inside it troubled her to keep this secret for so long she just realized I believe that it was the right thing to do and that's what she always always wanted to do and she proceeded to tell us about 2 months prior to the murder that Jackie had said I don't love Carl anymore I don't want to be with him this is the time when Jackie and Carl were getting back together Jackie had uh supposedly stopped the affair with Sam Greco based on what we learned that was not the truth her Affair still co
ntinued I it was very shocking it gives you a Different Light view of of Jackie yes's a person and and the type of individual she is what Tootsie says next leaves investigators stunned jaie had told her of a plan that she had with Sam Jackie said to Tootsie we've found a way to get rid of Carl we're going to make it look like a home invasion some men are going to come in uh they're going to tie me up and they're going to wait for Carl to come home and kill him Tootsie couldn't believe what her s
ister was saying to her they just kind of ended the conversation with Tootsie saying Jackie you don't have to do that divorce him just divorce him and Jackie would reply if I divorce him then I don't get all the money Jackie had told her how Carl was going to be murdered and that's exactly what happened to him it seemed almost mindblowing to think that uh Jackie could be involved in such a crime has to expose her daughters and her uh infant to their father get getting killed in the home investig
ators tell Tootsie they'll need more than just her word to lay charges they decided to ask her if she would be willing to record conversations with her sister Jackie at first tosie said no she didn't want to do it she didn't want to hurt Jackie we had emphasized with her that no we're not saying Jackie physically killed Carl but she was part of a plan in which Carl was killed and we had said we're asking you to put an open-ended statement to her and see how she responds she agreed to do it that
was the missing key to make this case go [Music] forward more than 30 years after the coldblooded killing of father of four Carl gamari police learn his wife Jackie plotted his murder with her former lover Sam Greco but investigators need hard evidence to arrest her they convince Jackie's sister Tootsie to record a conversation hi Jackie how you doing I'm not doing good honey the police have been here about Carl and uh they've been asking me a lot of questions they're saying I might have to go i
n front of the grand jury I don't know if you remember what you told me I do are you going to do that though to me I'm sorry but I'm going to have to oh my God you're just tell him that I wish you that don't tell I said that please I already they already know Jackie you told me how it was going to be done how they were going to break in and tie you up and put you in the closet and then kill Carl you know they got to help me just jail you got to help me I I can't lie I can't lie did you just tell
them your own that don't be M but they know I remember they know I do those recorded conversations are devastating Jackie saying can you lie for me um can't you say you forget there was truth to what Tootsie was saying and and that's why Jackie wanted to lie for her that was very damaging evidence those recordings were all that were needed to have an arrest warrant issued police bring Jackie down to the station we did not tell her she was under arrest but she was not going anywhere we had the a
rrest warrant during the course of the interview not only did we tell her we talked to tossie who told us about their conversation we played portions for Jackie and I told do that St it's enough to put me away what am I supposed to say when they asked me why I said that to you what am I supposed to say bet I can't answer I don't know maybe you didn't mean to tell me but you did what should I do I don't know I don't know I don't know you you're my sister but you're a witness against me your testi
mony is enough to put me away I'm going to go to jail confronted by her own words Jackie tries to put the blame on her former lover Sam cuz she wanted to be able to say yes okay early on I said let's do this but then I backed out I didn't want to have anything to do with it so therefore I'm not guilty of Carl's murder there are so many things Jackie did that tells you what kind of a person she is she wanted to be with Sam she didn't want to be with Carl after the murder Sam and Jackie married a
few months later several years later Sam and Jackie were were divorced we continued a full force investigation into Sam gre's involvement as also pursuing the two Shooters and before we could gain enough evidence uh to charge them um he passed away from his medical conditions on March 27th 2013 Jackie alone is charged with the first-degree murder of her husband Carl gamari Jackie was the true monster without Jackie this crime never would have happened in 2016 a jury finds Jackie guilty but the v
erdict is overturned on appeal prosecutors offer Jackie a deal she pleads guilty to murder and is sentenced to 22 years in prison Justice finally finally was served couldn't believe it couldn't believe it she was a true sociopath and not just for taking Carl's life but because of what she did to her children she chose to have her children be victims of this traumatic event just for her own selfish needs to get rid of her husband a woman that involves her own children in a scheme and a plan and a
plot to have their father murdered her husband murdered I don't know if you ask me that's not even human that's that's the devil four decades after the murder police are still searching for the gunmen this remains an open and active investigation it's never going to stop if there's any new information the police are going to follow up on it no matter how long those Shooters live and how much time passes they can never stop looking over their shoulder my brother was a good guy he was very determ
ined to succeed in anything he did to see how he would have been when his children got older would have been a wonderful thing to happen and I'm sure he would have loved it who knows how our lives would have been you know a lot of missed opportunities a lot of of things that um never happened I lost a brother and you know somebody to look up to and somebody to uh experience life with you know the rest of the way I miss Carl a [Music] lot an ambitious young woman loved by the community everyone w
as friends with Terry she was hardworking had two jobs by by 21 she owned a home has her future ripped away this was a particularly brutal attack they stabbed her multiple times on that road this would have been a horrifying death police discover unwanted admirers prone to violence he was covered in blood and had blood in his hair and always carrying a knife he was jealous and said that it kill her but the evidence leads nowhere the investigation is getting older and older and harder and harder
to solve I didn't think we were going to get an answer for this case until a surprise breakthrough I was beyond excited I actually shouted oh my God at my desk points to a killer off the radar right away I'm like who's that guy why why did someone do this people said oh no he wouldn't kill anybody but he had this pretend life he had no criminal record he did not emerge as a likely suspect at [Music] all German Town Wisconsin a sleepy Village celebrated as one of the best places to live in Americ
a I grew up in Germantown it's you know a small community I would ride my bike to the store for my mom it was not some place that you afraid of German toown is a small town near Milwaukee a lot of Farmland a lot of Open Spaces just a lot of dairy farming some factories and homes but on May 28th 1999 this bedroom community wakes to a horrific [Music] crime here Lane there's a green car car the cood on the road [Music] I got a phone call that there was a suspected homicide in the industrial park I
immediately went to the crime scene I saw a vehicle down the side of the road facing west a large amount of blood in the roadway I observed what appeared to be Footwear impressions in blood I saw what appeared to be drag marks of blood two large pools of blood and alongside the vehicle was a female lying face down when we rolled her over she had a significant number of what appeared to be stab wounds on her front she had stab wounds on both sides of her neck she had some blood on her hands and
you know we're always hoping that there's a fight so she can either scratch the attacker so the hands were swabbed for DNA we proceeded with the perspective she may have not been expecting it and things went South very very fast I do believe there was rage in this case that usually is indicative of personal that they know each other and it's almost to the point of Overkill who was this woman who had been so savagely murdered investigators looked to the victim's car for answers the vehicle itself
appeared to be parked in a reasonable manner alongside the road her car keys were by her body so she probably had them when she got out of her car and then dropped them in the fight the keys indicated that she willingly got out of the vehicle and talked to someone and then the homicide occurred the stabbing continued not only in the roadway but on the grass at two different locations and and then it looked like it may have occurred alongside the vehicle there's blood spatter and castoff on her
wheel on her hood on her Fender and up on her windshield her purse was in the vehicle there was $200 in her purse this was not a robbery this was something else after finding a driver's license police determine the victim is 22-year-old Teresa weselowski out on the road there was Tire acceleration marks leading away from the pool of blood in the roadway as if you put your foot on the accelerator and peeled out confirming to us that there was another vehicle in front of her where she was more tha
n likely stabbed police comb the crime scene but no murder weapon is found as detectives try to make sense of what happened to Teresa her lifelong best friend Michelle gets a call Bar's brother called and it was early not that it was out of the ordinary because we were all so close and so I answered and he's like Michelle Terry never came home last night well I'm going to start calling police departments and Germantown said we have her name on file you'll have to come and speak to a detective Mi
chelle and Teresa's brother rushed to the station they had last seen Teresa the day before when she left for work I'll never forget the officer was in front of me and I said where is she and he said I'm sorry she's gone and I just remember screaming someone just told me my friend is gone what does gone mean born in Germantown Wisconsin Teresa walowski grew up an outgoing girl with a Magnetic Personality everyone was friends with Terry we became best friends in sixth grade and from that moment on
we were inseparable we were sisters there were not many people that called her Teresa she was always Terry I think the only time that I remember her being called Teresa was when her mom was mad when we had done something wrong it was always just her and I on the playground I mean we were just always I want to say running the neighborhood you know I can't remember a weekend that I wasn't at her house as she got older Teresa was fiercely independent buying a car at 16 and moving out on her own at
18 she was working at Cousins Subs in mecan and she would go there at 7:00 a.m. and she would get done by 1 and she would head over to Stone container and she would work till 11:00 at night despite a heavy work schedule Teresa loved to be social oh Terry was fun you know Terry liked attention and she definitely liked the attention from men men just seemed more attracted to her she was young she was beautiful and any guy would have wanted that how then did someone so driven and well-liked meet s
uch a horrible fate young female you know at the beginning of her life getting getting things together and it's ended back at the station investigators reach out to Teresa's family and friends to piece together the hours leading up to her death her shift ended at 11 and the last that anybody saw of her that we know of was that she got into her vehicle and left that parking lot during the interviews detectives get their first tip that morning the officers received a contact from somebody at the D
epartment of Public Works they had a channel on the same radio system that the police department was on so they would know that the homicide occurred they indicated that somebody driving a truck pulled into the parking lot an individual got out and they said that he was covered in blood and had blood in his hair is this man somehow connected to the crime scene detectives head over to interview the witnesses who tell police they'd never seen the man before we were told the truck driver asked if t
here was a hospital nearby and then he indicated now he just clean up in the bathroom which he did and then left it's very common that the person who's doing the attacking gets stabbed too or Cuts himself especially if there's a struggle now we had a suspect a viable suspect and now we needed to find that person to figure out what happened coming up detectives uncover suspects with violent tendencies he said he can cut people like paper he could become abusive and violent and untangle a web of d
eception well he was never married he didn't have any kids he said I don't want to be a snitch leading them to to a suspect they never imagined we really felt that we had turned the corner on this case it was almost surreal it got me because it wasn't anyone I [Music] knew hours after finding Teresa walowski stabbed to death at the side of the road police searched for a man seen covered in blood at a nearby Public Works building we had a a very good police artist he did a sketch of the individua
l based on the statements from the witnesses put the word out there into the community while police wait for leads on the bloody man they shift their attention to Teresa's home to look for Clues I went down to Teresa's house we made a search of the residents I checked the shoes in the residence against the Footwear impression at the crime scene and none of them matched so the Footwear impression at the scene weren't Teresa's investigators talked to Teresa's family and friends hoping to learn mor
e about her they learned she was dating someone named Charlie Charlie was a young man who didn't hold down a lot of jobs very well he was staying at his parents' house they had been dating for a few months prior to her homicide we had known Charlie since grade school we grew up with Charlie he was three years older than us we had some people that we interviewed and that said they fought a lot or she wanted to break up with him I didn't think Charlie was good for anyone in Terry's mind he was tem
porary a couple of weeks before her homicide we found out that he borrowed her car while she was at work and failed to pick her up she walked to the tavern and then they got in a bit of a argument and she finally said enough is enough friends worried how Charlie might react to Teresa moving on some of the people indicated that Teresa told them this boyfriend was jealous and said that if he caught her going out was somebody else he'd kill her he said give me two weeks and you won't have your frie
nd anymore you're like what do you mean I won't have my friend so that it raises a flag that we have to determine if it got worse after that or was it just just a a one evening spat you know stabbing is very personal that usually is indicative that they know each other why did someone do this what did she do that was so bad that someone had to stab her repeatedly in this crime of passion police immediately bring Charlie in for [Music] questioning Charlie was very nervous and seemed to act like h
e didn't really want to be there when police asked Charlie where he was the night of the murder he says he was home he lived in the basement of his parents house and he was alibied by his mother I remember the mother claiming there's no way he could get out of this house without me hearing it however he slept in the basement which the patio door opens up from the basement outside so he could leave the house without his parents knowing at times Teresa got off for work at 11: at night and she's fo
und in the morning at 5 or 6:00 so his Alibi has weaknesses it's not airtight could Charlie have snuck out driven to see Teresa and murdered her did Charlie have access to a car he borrowed cars from people a lot so could he have had a car that night yeah he could have the homicide's probably less than 5 miles from his house police looked to the tire track evidence the tire tracks at the scene were measured and documented I made contact with the Michigan State Police who have a database of vehic
les they came back with a list of vehicles based on manufacturer specifications that could have created that and it's quite a large list while detectives continue to investigate Charlie they also turned to the Box Factory where Teresa worked whenever you have a homicide like this and it's right down the road from where she worked obviously your biggest pool of suspects has to be the guys she worked with there was a fair number of men that were interested in her and there were some that you know
had dated her there were some that wanted to date her it wasn't like she was going out and dating them she just liked hanging out with them so so we went to the factory to determine who had contact with Teresa and is there anything that stands out and points to any particular individual as possibly having done this we interviewed one of her co-workers named Mark lecki Mark Lecky worked the same shift as Teresa Mark was known as a softspoken but well-liked guy at the factory he's a very quiet ind
ividual very reserved most people would describe him as very mellow working just a few machines away from each other Mark and Teresa had become close he talked her at work he was a nice likable person and it got to the point where they developed kind of a friendship unlike the men at the factory who wanted to date Teresa Mark preferred sharing stories about his family Mark lecki told Teresa that he had a couple kids and he kept photos of them in his wallet he would show them to Teresa saying the
se are my kids he talked to her enough to create a relationship that she felt the need to go and talk to him when he needed a friend Mark tells police he is saddened by Teresa's death he also remembers something was off with her the night she died he indicated that he saw her that night of the homicide and commented that it looked like she was having a bad day and she said yeah something was jamming in her machine she just laughed at all and moved on having no reason to question mark further pol
ice turned to co-workers with a less amicable relationship with Teresa there were some statements from individuals that they observed her having an argument with somebody by the vehicle before the night of the homicide the man Teresa was arguing with is identified as her coworker Isaac Alvarez when police dig into his background they find some troubling details Isaac Alvarez was just a little bit weird and he always carried a knife at one point he was upset with a coworker and he said I'm going
to cut that Cracker or I'm going to knife that [ __ ] he told somebody else that you know he can cut people like paper his comments about cutting up a supervisor those are the comments that we heard and those are the comments that kept our interest in him to find out more police look into Isaac's personal life his ex-wife indicated that he did have a knife he always kept on his belt and she indicated that he could become abusive and violent after one drink police bring in Isaac to shed light on
his relationship with Teresa and why they were arguing at work and in talking to him about Teresa you could see the emotion coming out of him this was very stressful for him that that's also the type of stressor that might cause somebody to commit a homicide then Isaac reveals something else he did ask Teresa if she wanted to meet him for a drink and Teresa being who Teresa was she didn't say no way she said well we'll see he shows up and she's not there is that rejection had to 's rejection sen
t Isaac into a murderous rage we asked Isaac to take a polygraph because of Isaac's Strange Behaviors Outburst maybe prone to violence and always carrying a knife and he was seen in the parking lot area that night he was on our main suspect [Music] list while investigating the stabbing death of Teresa walowski police focus on her co-workers she's working in a factory populated by mostly men that sets up a scenario where you're going to have people trying to ask her out she was outgoing and she w
as friendly so people could perceive that as being let on where in fact she was probably just being nice she always tried to L on easy she would always be like well I don't want to hurt his feelings she just wanted to make sure that they still wanted to be her friend at the police station investigators interview one of those workers Isaac Alvarez Witnesses saw Isaac argue with Teresa before the night of her death Isaac Alibi when he was interviewed he was home he lives with 50 plus year old lady
his story was he went to bed at 9:00 and he may have had a conversation with her when she came came home but he doesn't recall she says she had a conversation with him 11:15 11:30 at night and she thought it was around 1:00 when he went to bed it's a little different than his story well in his case is that person willing to lie for you we don't know so that's not an airtight Alibi police convince Isaac to take a polygraph he was somewhat deceptive and not answering the questions in the proper m
anner and so we believe that he was trying to skew the results of the polygraph you couldn't get a good answer from him so because of that it was ruled inconclusive without any hard evidence police can't charge Isaac for the crime while detectives look for more leads Teresa's autopsy report arrives based on the injury patterns the attack was a surprise attack because we did not see a significant amount of defensive type injuries and then she was pinned in a prone or face down position I individu
ally identified and labeled 47 separate stab wounds this would have been a horrifying death for any individual as police review evidence they follow up on the lead on the bloody man from the Department of Public Works they had a sketch made of this uh unknown person that stopped at the garage to wash up we put it out there the individual didn't come forward it was out in the press it was in the newspaper I did go back and reinie the witnesses but nothing came back of evidentiary value police als
o continue interviewing Teresa's friends I always protected Terry so when she was killed I had no purpose anymore more and so I gave my all to whatever they needed it was hours and hours and hours of interviews with the police trying to give them everything that I knew about every person we had ever hung out with for me to help them to hopefully find who did this one of the people detectives learn about is Jerry Kirkpatrick so Jerry Kirkpatrick was a delivery guy two cousins where Teresa worked
friends say Jerry asked Teresa out numerous times I don't think she was looking to have a relationship with him he was definitely interested in her that's the indication that we got that he was pursuing her more than she was pursuing [Music] him police learn about one encounter with Jerry that left Teresa unsettled I thought I saw Jerry before she died at the club just watching us and it just it gave me this feeling like why is he here like he shouldn't know we're here why is he standing off in
the shadows it was a very creepy feeling so the question is is Jerry stalking her but then Teresa's friends point out something else disturbing about Jerry they thought he might be similar to the picture of the person that was at the Department of Public Works the drawing looked like him officers immediately interviewed Jerry at his home Jerry denies he is the man in the sketch he claims he was at a bar with his stepbrother the night of Teresa's murder then went home before midnight there was Al
by information that was confirming of the statement when he got home he called for a pizza to be delivered and that was confirmed subsequently with phone records he let us just look at his vehicle We examined the interior or exterior nothing of evidentiary value was located in that examination then investigators make a startling Discovery there were knives found at Jerry Kirkpatrick's residence a lot of times we'd ask people do you have knives and can we see those knives do you mind if we'd have
them tested a lot of times that's done for reaction so he presents four or five knives he did let us look at them when we were at the house we even submitted them to the crime lab to have it analyzed while investigators wait for results Jerry's landlord delivers some alarming news what happens within the next few days is he talks to his landlord about breaking his lease Jerry Kirkpatrick decided to move out of town and that's in the midst of being interviewed and investigation so right away tha
t raises our suspicion was Jerry trying to give detect Ives the slip it is clearly a red flag and we have to look at that behavior as being possibly flight Behavior so you want to find out [Music] why while investigating Jerry Kirkpatrick for the brutal stabbing of 22-year-old Teresa walowski detectives learned from Jerry's landlord he's about to skip town the landlord knew the police were talking to Jerry we were actually notified by the Milwaukee Police Department because the landlord had thou
ght hey this is odd and called them he says he's going to move to Tennessee one of the aspects you look at in the homicide is there any flight Behavior after the homicide well breaking your lease and moving to Tennessee might be described as flight Behavior we did confirm that he put money on a place on that Friday after the homicide but when investigators get the lab results back on Jerry's knives the case takes a frustrating turn nothing came back of evidentiary value somebody having a collect
ion of knives is not that uncommon especially in Wisconsin and their quick move that he made is something strange but you know there's nothing we can do about it if he wants a move he can move police have one more lead to follow Jerry's resemblance to the bloody man at the Public Works building he fit that description we've actually did an in-person lineup with Jerry and he was not picked out by the individuals that observed this person driving the truck that person was never identified and neve
r located without any hard evidence linking Jerry to the murder police have to let him go weeks go by and investigators worry the case will grow cold we're doing interviews some people were re-interviewing But as time moves on the investigation is getting older and older and harder and harder to solve as the weeks turn into months investigators doggedly work the case well I technically could have retired about 5 years before I did a lot of it is to bring Justice for the victim but also to bring
some sort of resolution or closure for the family the police kept telling me that it was someone close to her because of the horrific nature of it I alienated myself from people because I just didn't know who I could or couldn't trust months turn into years but Teresa's loved ones make sure she's not forgotten once a year on the date of the murder the families would come out and hold vigils it was a way for the family to try to say that we're still fighting to resolve this case but we use it as
a way of seeing who is showing up and maybe more importantly who isn't showing up up nothing seems out of the ordinary until 2005 6 years after the murder when Teresa's family notices something unusual her mom had called me and said did you happen to go out and leave flowers for Terry and I said no I didn't these Arrangements showed up and they checked around and didn't know who put them there so that always leads you to believe is there's somebody out there that's feeling guilty about committin
g a homicide leaving something on a grave site we had a camera installed to see if maybe we could identify the next time somebody did something like that but we didn't capture any image or anything for detectives it's another dead end but then with the investigation on the brink of going cold a new forensic technology turns this 6-year-old case red hot in 2005 I got a contact from the Wisconsin crime lab and Patty said hey I want you to submit this list of items for us to analyze using a techniq
ue called yst DNA testing with yst DNA testing it allows us to find a very small amount of Y chromosome male DNA and a very large amount of DNA from a female source so it's like finding that single grain of salt in a large bag of sugar early on when we had the blood evidence on Teresa's hands tested it all came back as her DNA that's a problem because it's not giving us a lead what happens if we strip away all the EX chromosomes if she's a female and that's all her blood there should be nothing
left the analyst retest the swabs of Teresa's hands for male DNA the first thing I did was look at the previously run DNA samples to see if there was any Y chromosome DNA present in those all of a sudden all the DNA types I developed on her hands are matching a known standard for male DNA and it was incredible I contacted detective yogurt for samples of DNA from individuals known to be connected to the case and now we're going to go pick DNA samples from all of our suspects we took what probably
our 25 top suspects nearest and dearest ex-boyfriend boyfriend that type of thing that first group was a zero undeterred investigators submit more samples we went back to the list and got a second group we were testing people that were anary people we had DNA from officers at the crime scene that we used to eliminate I didn't think we were going to get an answer for this case then after over 40 samples a breakthrough the testing came back and only one person matched the Y chromosome found mixed
into the blood on Teresa's hand detective yogur called me and said you're not going to believe this the last guy that I swapped is the guy that has a positive match on that [Music] DNA after 7 years investigating the murder of Teresa weselowski detectives have now matched DNA from the scene to one of their suspects I was beyond excited I actually shouted oh my God at my desk we had a match from the D on Teresa's hands to Mark Lecky right away I'm like who's that guy Mark leiki is a coworker of
Teresa Mark Lecky was one of the individuals that was interviewed by the officers his statement was that he and Teresa were friendly at the factory so the murder occurs and Mark lecki kept working there and was still working there before they approach Mark detectives need more than just the DNA evidence now the other heavy lifting starts because even the DNA evidence isn't going to stand on its own on so we need to bring all these other factors into play in building a case that's sufficient for
the da to charge first detectives go back to the factory to dig deeper into Mark's background some people said oh no Mark leiki he wouldn't kill anybody and he's just a puppy he would show people pictures of little girls and he said they were they were his daughters what do you think I should get them for Christmas or birthday birthday whatever when detectives look closer they discover Mark isn't all he claims to be well he was never married he didn't have any kids so this is just like weird he
had this like pretend life Mark Lecky was pretty much a loner lived with his parents in a mobile home in a rural area apparently liked to watch television play video games I think it was just a big fantasy with him a big game to try to fit what else had Mark been hiding we had one person that said that Mark had asked her what she thought he could do the better his chances with going out with Teresa so he clearly had a focus on her detectives revisit evidence from the crime scene starting with th
e bloody bootprints the problem with identifying somebody with a common shoe is there's so many of them there could be millions of those shoes made I contact a person in Scottdale Arizona a detective in their forensic unit and he had the foremost outsold databases that existed and he said that is a Texas deer outo early in the investigation we had information about the employees being supplied shoes or they could purchase shoes from a store when police search Factory records they make a crucial
discovery and we determined that Mark leiki had submitted a receipt for a Texas steer sh next investigators turned to the tire tracks left at the scene so we took 56 people out of our investigation and identified the vehicles that were registered to them at the time of the homicide five individuals had vehicles that were able to make that Mar Mark at the scene one of them was Mark leiki with the evidence piling up detectives ask Mark to come down to the police department for an interview he was
quiet he answered the questions he was confident I would say that confidence doesn't last long when he finds out that his DNA is on her hands he then starts to try and explain why they are there what started out as I just talk to her at the door is I didn't talk to her then I talked to her at a break and we may have hugged detectives confront Mark with the evidence I told him the car wheel track matches your DNA is found on her hands and a boot that you wear is into the blood Footwear impression
on the road so you know we're looking at you you need to start explaining some of this stuff now it's Mark's turn to drop a bombshell on police he said I don't want to get anyone else in trouble I don't want to be a snitch then he mentioned this guy named Tom Thompson Tom Thompson worked at the factory with Mark and Teresa at the time of the homicide the officers that went up and did the canvas at the factory did speak with Tom Thompson his statement to them was that he knew Teresa he wasn't ne
cessarily friends with Teresa they never dated anything like that Mark tells them what happened the night of the murder Mark said he stopped on the side of the road to buy some cocaine from Thompson he said that when he got up there there was a vehicle already parked in front where he parked and Tom Thompson walked up to his vehicle so Thompson goes in sits in the back seat Mark said I am doing the cocaine in the front of the seat according to him Teresa gets in the back seat and gets in argumen
t with Tom and he proceeds to stab her Mark says he only hears thumping and movement in the back seat now it's time to start poking holes in the story she cannot be stabbed 40 some times in the backseat of someone's car and they not know what's going on the whole interior would have been covered in blood so that's out right there Mark says Teresa flops out of there onto the ground Tom Thompson continues to stab her and drags her to that location alongside the vehicle according to Mark Thompson t
hen turned on him Tom Thompson tell him you keep your mouth shut and then he let him go so he kept his mouth shut he didn't go to the police 4 years later Tom Thompson dies but Mark keeps silent for another 3 years he's trying to explain how he's involved in this homicide and the easiest thing to do is to blame it on the Dead Guy detectives reinw workers at the factory about Tom Thompson everybody to a person said he was a health nut we found no indication that he was dealing cocaine or using co
caine investigators asked Teresa's friends if she used drugs Terry wanted nothing to do with cocaine nothing so she wouldn't have gone there to buy drugs from Tom Thompson what was her reason for being there there's one last piece of evidence to examine the car that Mark drove at the time of the murder we wanted that vehicle we found it by another owner and we ended up buying it from that guy we brought it down to the lab and examined it for blood hair whatever evidence that we could that rear s
eat was taken apart it was a perforated leather so there were were holes in it so the blood went down through the holes in that leather and then they soaked into the foam rubber of that seat does the blood belong to Teresa it's sent to the lab for analysis I was very excited to call Mike yur and let him know I had found a possible [Music] match 10 years after 22-year-old Teresa weselowski is stabbed to death detectives are waiting to see if blood found in the back of coworker Mark lecky's car be
longs to her those DNA profiles match the DNA profile from Teresa wasowski oh it was significant it was an important moment but what about Mark's claim that cooworker Tom Thompson killed Teresa at this stage in 7 years after the murder when Becky is implicating a man who had died 3 years earlier but it was only lecky's DNA that was ever found on Teresa's body they find blood in a cushion of a seat in lecky's car they find that that's Teresa's DNA they have his DNA her DNA and at that point the c
ase was made that was the final thing that district attorney needed to issue the charge we really felt that we had turned the corner on this case of yogur called me and he said I just want to let you know that we are going to make an arrest and I was so excited I was waiting just waiting for the the news detectives go to the box Factory where Mark works we watched for him to come out of the building and Kim and I walked up to him and build was under arrest I was excited it was a good day Mark de
nies killing Isa so investigators are left to piece together what really happened that night I think Mark leiki was a very lonely person that probably imagined a relationship with Teresa and decided she was the one she was just being nice to people and he probably read that for more than it was I think for Terry it was more that this guy was telling him his problems at work and she was a listener she would listen he wore on her heartstrings and her niceness as a person then on May 28th 1999 Mark
made his move I think that she was coming out of the building and Mark for whatever reason convinced her to meet him they meet at the back of the vehicle I think that he probably did ask her to come back to his place for the night and when she said no he just went on a rampage and just started stabbing her he stabbed her multiple times on that road then he dragged her over to that grass he stabbed there some more there's blood flying up on her car he was a monster that night we can only guess a
t it because he's not talking we don't have to prove why he did this we just have to prove that he did after the vicious stabbing Mark returned to his normal routine Mark Lecky continues to work at the factory he doesn't make any erratic move like moving away or changing jobs he just sort of carries on with life as he did before the murder he had no criminal record Mark Lecky certainly did not emerge as a likely suspect at all it was shocking to hear that Mark Lecky had killed Teresa it was almo
st surreal it got me because it wasn't anyone I knew at trial Mark lecki enters a plea of not guilty and sticks to his story that Tom Thompson killed Teresa clearly his incentive was to try and show somebody else did it back there but that doesn't hold doesn't hold up I don't think the jury bought that at all Mark is convicted of first-degree murder and in November 2010 he is sentenced to 30 years in prison with with no chance of parole Mark Lecky did not admit guilt the judge noted that lecki n
ever expressed any remorse in his mind he's still not guilty and the judge even said to him I hope that someday you will admit to yourself that you've done this because you have done this the journey was long and tedious it will never replace Teresa for the family she was a good kid she was moving forward with her life she probably would have maybe had [Music] grandkids all those things are lost because of Mark I have pictures up of us we had always said we would grow old together and raise our
children together my kids always ask you know Mom why was your friend murdered I don't know is she in heaven yeah I think she [Music] is a woman enjoying retirement after a lifetime of hard work my mother did very well for herself she was a very strong willed woman nah was perky I can't tell you how much she loved frogs and Elvis Presley and Country Music she just marched to her own drum and did her thing found brutally murdered in her home he stabbed her 24 times there was blood throughout the
house looks like living in a bad horror movie a dangerous predator eludes police she had been sexually assaulted our victim potentially knew who the suspect was I kept asking them is this going to be a cold case and they kept telling me we're not done yet DNA evidence leads to a shocking realization it was a match to another murder the thought that we had a serial killer here in town scared the hell out of me and a suspect no one saw coming to call this an unexpected killer is an understatement
that's like every person's nightmare but hit me like a ton of bricks [Music] Kansas City is a large metropolitan area on the border between Kansas and Missouri Kansas City can be a very fun place to be we love our Sports in this city it's a very friendly place to live nothing seems out of the ordinary on October 29th 2010 until Kansas City Police receive a 911 call about a woman found unresponded responsive in her home a woman called police and said she discovered her mother at the bottom of the
basement stairs and she checked her for for Vital Signs and found she was dead when the first officer arrives on the scene the caller leads them to her 75-year-old mother Nina Whitney I showed them my mother's body laying at the bottom of the stairs I told the police officers I believe she had just dropped over from a heart attack and then I called my cousin Ken M the phone rang and I picked it up and Paige told me my mother is dead Paige said she thought maybe Aunt Nina fell down the stairs go
ing to the garage while Paige speaks with her cousin on the phone police take a closer look at Nina's body nah was faed down and there was a shelving unit there with a bunch of glass frogs and a lot of those frogs had fallen off the shelf on top of her it initially looks like a an accident and a natural death but when they rolled the victim of they discovered several stab wounds in her chest and also what we're determined were defensive wounds on our hands which is something that we see when whe
n someone fights back clearly this is no accident and detectives ared to begin a homicide investigation when someone stabbed like the victim was it usually means there's some sort of emotion tied there because you're actually stabbing someone instead of just shooting them or something like that her blouse had been pulled up and there were buttons missing and they quickly discovered that they what they believed to be saliva on her breast which they swabbed so it felt like this was sort of a sexua
l in nature homicide police inform Paige that her mother has been murdered I don't think I've ever been that stunned in my entire life it's just it's so surreal it's like living in a bad horror movie I truly I don't know how to describe it you're just totally and completely stunned a lifelong native of the Midwest Nina Whitney was a woman with humble roots my mother was born in South Dakota and then their family wound up here in Kansas City in the late 40s early 50s my mother had a very rough li
fe my mom's mom left their family so my mom was left to take care of her younger siblings she married my father and my parents divorced when I was about 9 years old my father left her pretty much destitute so it was just the two of us and we struggled tremendously my mother worked some very hard jobs and we lived on food stamps eventually nah found a stable well-paying career she worked on the assembly line at General Motors here in Kansas City she managed to buy a house and she did very well fo
r herself she was a very strong willed woman Nina wanted a better life for her daughter and encourage Paige to get an education I went into Criminal Justice at Central Missouri State University and I was a probation parole officer for 25 years the older I became the closer my mother and I became we spent tremendous amount of time together my mother started collecting frogs back in the mid 70s ceramic glass dishes clothes bedding towels the entire house was filled wall toall floor to ceiling with
frogs Nina's favorite hobby earned her the nickname the Frog lady nah was quirky I can't tell you how much she loved frogs and Elvis Presley and Country Music she just marched to her own drum and did her thing investigators are stunned that someone would viciously attack this 75-year-old woman in her home I was in total shock truly she was in her house minding her own business not doing anything wrong like how on Earth did that happen when I found out Nina had been killed I couldn't imagine who
could have done this I had no ideas detectives interview Paige to narrow down when the murder might have taken place Friday about 6:45 I decided to call my mother to see what time she wanted to go shopping on Saturday and that's when she didn't answer the phone it was extremely unusual for her her not to answer the phone so then I called the cell phone and she didn't answer that either then I started to panic so then I took off and went out South toward her house and when I got to her house the
porch light was not on and I knew something was very wrong so I walked through to the kitchen and it was dark so I turned the light on and there was her body laying at the bottom of the stairs and I could feel the back of her head and her head was ice cold and I called 911 and then it just kind of hit me out of the blue that I was hearing weird noises so I followed the noise upstairs to the hall bathroom both Faucets in the tub were running full blast and I thought well that's just really stran
ge because my mother didn't use that bathroom detectives wonder if Nina's killer had turned on the faucets and if so why the victim's daughter had located the guest bathroom bathtub faucets running and she had turned those faucets off so the bathroom was processed for fingerprints and DNA in the victim's bedroom there was like an imprint of where it looked like somebody had been laying on the on the comforter and near the bed we could see buttons that appeared to be similar to the victim's blous
e as well as a hair roller that was similar to the hair rollers in the victim's hair so that led us to believe that the victim was assaulted and maybe her blouse may have been torn open at that location as every corner of the house is searched for evidence investigators make a crucial Discovery we opened up the knife drawer in the kitchen and located a paring knife where the blade was bent and there was blood at the base of the blade near the handle that could mean that somebody had tried to wip
e it clean forensics bag the knife for further analysis and process the house with luminol which can indicate the presence of blood the luminol tells us that somebody was moving around in that house with some amount of blood on them we got that blue glow in the victim's bedroom bathroom hallway living room and the kitchen the front door door was unlocked and we didn't find any sign of forced entry which was a a big clue for us that our victim potentially knew who the suspect was there's no reaso
n for anyone to hurt her and my mother was not a very social person at all she had no family other than me here in town that would be in and out of the house paage points to one detail detectives could not have determined from their search there was a shelf by the front door where her cell phone always was so she could take it when she went out the front door and um it was missing had the killer snatched Nina's cell phone police request a trace on it while officers go door too looking for Witnes
ses one of my other detectives found a party down the street that had seen a white male in the neighborhood earlier that day he was in his 50s walking with a limp the witness saw him go to a black jeep he saw that car was parked kind of behind the house house about a block away and so he sees this guy walking and kind of looking around and so he just kind of mentally noted it he kind of looked like he was probably up to no good could the suspicious man be nah Whitney's killer as they start to tr
ack him down detectives catch a break we found that Nina's phone was still on and still being used in South Kansas City we were able to do surveillance and observe a person using our victim's cell phone coming up a break in the case reveals a potential serial killer we had a another homicide there were zip ties that have been used for bindings he terrorized an entire community and a grieving daughter takes matters into her own hands I did feel a need to help them investigate my mother's homicide
that she didn't get the answers and she kept asking in my gut I just knew that was [Music] him detectives investigating the vicious stabbing of 75-year-old nah Whitney belied the killer stole her cell phone now police have traced the phone to an address in South Kansas City and rushed to apprehend the suspect we did kick his door in and when we took the suspect into custody we found that he had the phone on his person the suspect goes by the nickname Lil Mickey police demand to know how he came
into possession of a murdered woman's cell phone he told us he was walking down the street pretty close to our victim's house and found that phone laying in the grass he said he didn't make the most money in the world and uh was just glad to have a cell phone that was working and started using the cell phone skeptical of his story investigators ask him if he killed nah Whitney little Mickey adamantly denied being involved in any sort of violence with our victim or anything where someone was har
med or killed we ask him could you have bought this phone off somebody else did you get it from a person despite hours of questioning Lil Mickey stands by his story his story was I found the phone they're in the grass and picked it up police want to know his whereabouts at the time of the murder based on her life lights being off in the house we believe Nina's murder happened during daylight hours and he did provide an alibi a female that he had been with that day investigators have no grounds t
o detain little Mickey any longer but they obtain a sample of his DNA just in case he wouldn't seem like he would have a motive to commit this type of crime but we still had to do our due diligence the next day police Tracked Down the woman he used as his Alibi so we talked to her the information she was able to provide it matched up with what he had been [Music] saying with Lil Mickey looking unlikely as the killer detectives turned back to the theory that nah knew her attacker it was obvious t
hat she had let someone in the house because there was absolutely no forced entry we had to look at Nina's history and try to figure out who she would have let into the house and we also had the witness that had seen a white male in the neighborhood my supervisor thought the composite sketch would be a good thing to pursue in this case the witness willingly came down to Police Headquarters and met with our sketch artist she sat with him and gave a pretty goodlook composite sketch of what he beli
eved the party looked like that he saw that day we showed Paige that picture and she looked at it for a long time but didn't necessarily joger memory about who it could possibly be the individual did not look familiar to me at all I could not for the life of me think of anyone who fit that description investigators can't be certain if the man seen by Nina's neighbor is the killer but with few quality leads police decide to release the sketch to the media I was the publisher and editor of the Cas
s County Democrat Missourian we all know that police sketches are in an unex zact science however I I think they they can be very useful so we had run the sketch in the newspaper to put that sketch out to a larger audience as the sketch goes public detectives work with Paige to come up with a list of people that nah would have had a reason to let in to her home she' had quite a bit of work done on the house in the last year or so so there had been lots of people in and out working on the house m
aybe someone that is a predator did work inside her house and decided that she would be a good victim Paige went back into Nina's home and went through all of her records to show us dates and times when she had stuff done at her house the detectives got all that information from me and questioned everyone who had been in and out of that house my squad started working to collect DNA from anyone that we thought had cont with Nina and I think we collected about 40 to 50 samples honestly most people
were willing to provide their DNA to us when we explained that this is an elderly woman that was brutally murdered if there was someone that maybe we thought was fishy or involved or could potentially be the suspect DNA is good to rule people out in cases like this the forensics lab will compare the scores of samples to the DNA recovered from Nina's body it'd be nice as a detective to get DNA results like they do on TV you know 5 seconds later but it was about a month after the homicide when we
got our results back my boss called me and she said that we had a DNA hit so I thought that well if there's a DNA hit then we'll be able to find a suspect but that wasn't the case cuz it was unknown DNA the DNA does not match the dozens of samples collected by homicide investigators everything from the mailman to little Mickey to contractors that had been inside her house it rules them out absolutely but the DNA profile that was found was unmatched to another murder almost two years to the day
in Harrisonville Missouri so we knew at that point that this was not the first time that this suspect did this and that wasn't something I expected it was a big deal what concerned us was that we did have a serial killer type [Music] situation one month after the murder of Nino Whitney DNA taken from the crime scene as matched to another homicide in the National Database it was a match to another unsolved murder in Harrisonville Missouri it's a smaller town about an hour south of Kansas City Car
a Joe Roberts was found inside her home in the bathtub shot in the head with the bathtub running just like nah it seemed like a sexually motivated homicide and with the tub running that matches nah at our scene police decide to keep this explosive new information under wraps at that point we were trying to keep this information close to the chest cuz the suspect didn't know that we knew both crime scenes were connected we did not want that in the public detectives even withhold this new developm
ent from the victim's loved ones including Paige I kept asking them when is this going to be a cold case and they kept telling me well not yet we're not done yet and I don't know what they were doing but I know they were doing things behind the scenes investigators head to Harrisonville to get briefed on the Carro Joe Roberts case just reading through a case File doesn't give you the whole story so to talk to an investigator that actually worked that case it it helps paint a better picture of wh
at happened in the other investigation I was one of the detectives from Kansas City at the time that was sent to work on this case kajo and her husband lived right there in the small town they had a kid seemed like a very happy relationship just your your normal Happy Family the Roberts family was devastated by a horrific tragedy on November 5th 2008 her husband found car in the bathroom she wasn't wearing any clothes there were obvious gunshot injuries she was in the bathtub and the bathtub was
running there were zip ties that we speculated at the time have been used for bindings at the kaj Jo Roberts scene we found two different white colored zip ties that appear to have been used but cut we also found a roll of duct tape on both the zip ties and the duct tape we had male DNA there was DNA found on Cara's body and there was indications given by the medical examiner that she had been sexually assaulted detectives investigating Nina's murder ask for a rundown of the suspects in Cara Jo
e's case based on the fact of no forced entry very much kind of angled towards us believing that the the husband may have had something to do with this a domestic violence type homicide is usually spur the moment rage and kind of action but this could have been a situation where he was trying to control her physically with the bindings and then it escalated car Joe's husband claimed he found his wife dead when he got home from work and immediately called 911 from the time she was last seen to th
e time when her husband came home and found her it was a very tight window it was only like 45 minutes her husband gave what was kind of a complex Alibi but when we went to talk to his friends who were involved in that alibi they were able to corroborate everything DNA testing at the time also cleared Cara Joe's husband and no other viable suspects were identified the investigation went cold until the DNA connection to Nina Whitney's murder revives the case two years later Nina's homicide was a
Lifeline to to the Carro Joe Roberts case we have double information and we have a bigger picture of what's going on in both of these acts what we have have to do at that point is start doing what's called victimology you basically have to understand the circle of kaj Jo's world and you look at the circle of Nina's world you know these two cases are linked and you want to find those commonalities in between what was really interesting was all the stuff in the Carill Robert's case that matched up
to to Nina's case as far as the tub running we had a lot of different theories but our main one was if our suspect was going to commit a rape they would want to use use that tub to wash away evidence after the act in Nina's case he turns on the water to try to maybe get her body up into the bathtub he may have not been able to drag her body up those stairs our witness down the street sees this guy walking with a limp and we thought the limp may have hindered him from getting her body back up to
the tub so just like our case the car Joe Robert's case had someone down the street that saw someone in the neighborhood the witness had seen a Jeep had seen a male going to the Jeep and that male may have been limping and it looked like they were up to no good despite the telling parallels police can't find anyone connected to both nah and Cara Joe that was not the answer that we wanted as detectives cuz that meant that it was somebody totally random a random person coming in and taking taking
their life that's like every person's nightmare in a case like this where you know there's a suspect out there that could do this again it makes it even more urgent to try to catch the person so you're grasping at straws looking for any any leads any information any help you can get to try to solve a case like this you can only work with what information you've got coming in and there wasn't any new information coming in at that point running out of options detect Ives turned to the one person
who might be able to connect the two victims detective blank called me and he said Paige I have something to tell you and what he told me was more horrifying than my mother's homicide that scared the hell out of [Music] me detectives investigating the stabbing death of nah Whitney have informed her daughter PA about a stunning development detective blank told me that there was a DNA match from the saliva they found on my mother's shirt to DNA that they found on Cara Roberts in Harrisonville Cara
had been raped put in the bathtub and then shot in the back of the head the thought that we had a serial killer here in town is enough to cause Panic for every female in this city we provided information from both crime scenes to Paige and not something we would normally tell our victim's daughter but in this case Paige was a uh probation and parole officer she is Savvy in law enforcement so we thought we could trust her with that information we wanted to see if anything in her memory would be
jogged to try to figure out if there's any Common People common locations that both victims would have known or gone to at the time I thought it had to be someone who targeted my mother's specifically but when they showed me the evidence in Cara's case there's just a million things to think about when you're trying to come up with a profile for someone like that there wasn't much there that seemed to be connected between the two victims there wasn't an aha moment in that meeting at all it's been
5 months since the murder of Nina Whitney and investigators are desperate for a break they turn back to the composite sketch of the man with the limp seemed close to Nina's house I wasn't necessarily a believer in the composite sketch thing people make their own determination on whether they think the information they have is valuable to a case they see that sketch and they decide well this guy's got glasses and the guy I know doesn't have glasses and so the danger in that is that that person m
ay have information but that person may be turned off by the sketch we had run the sketch in the newspaper but really that sketch sketch hadn't brought in a lot of leads despite their reservations police hope that more people will see the sketch on billboards around the city and someone will identify the suspect they were able to put that picture along 71 highway along with our tips hotline the number of tips that we received on this case based on that sketch were not as numerous as you would th
ink all of them have to be followed up on cuz there there could be something there that you're going to miss if you don't take those tips seriously weeks pass as investigators chase down leads that go nowhere the lack of progress takes a heavy toll on Nina's family I was really angry that she died in her own home in that Terror and that Panic helpless and alone and and fighting for her life 24 hours a day 7 days a week I think about my mother's last few minutes of life I know the neighbor was ho
me next door and nobody heard my mother screaming I wake up to the sound of her Screaming 2 3:00 every morning it just it doesn't go away it does not go away there's nothing nothing worse than having to tell a family member I'm sorry there's no new information coming in because they're frustrated they're of the mindset that why aren't you out there doing something at her wit's end paig summons the strength she learned from nah growing up and takes it upon herself to search for the killer the inv
estigation was not moving fast enough to make me happy so I did feel a need to help them investigate my mother's homicide I drove around the city and went to every antique shop every flea market every thrift store I could think of where she liked to shop she was looking for that white male walking with a limp and that black Jeep and Paige was seeing black Jeeps like that everywhere I would take pictures of all the cars that look like black jeeps and all the license plates on those vehicles and f
orwarded all of those to the detectives Paige made it her job to be involved and if she didn't get the answers then she kept asking I can't even explain to you how badly I needed to know who murdered my mother despite PA's efforts 6 months after her mother's death the investig ation starts to go cold those kind of Unsolved cases in Kansas City leave an entire metro area on edge as the days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months how do you keep that case alive within the pages of your newspap
er most of our weekly papers did not include an update because there was nothing to update in the case I kept thinking this is going to be a cold case I'm never going to figure it out I'm never going to figure it out you always hope for them to get information to catch a suspect quickly but I just couldn't fathom who would have done it I had no suspects in mind I drove around and took pictures of the Billboards cuz I wanted to make sure I got pictures of them before they had taken them down but
the sketch concerned me cuz I don't know if that description was accurate I thought there's just so many questions that I will never have answers to suddenly one month later PA has a realization May 26th 2011 I was driving down 71 highway and rush hour traffic and I just happened to glance up and look at the lower half of the billboard and I swear to you it hit me like a ton of bricks like lightning had come out of the sky and hit me in the head it just it literally all fell into place as I'm dr
iving down the [Music] highway 7 months after the murder of Nina Whitney her daughter Paige has just been struck by a mindblowing realization I was driving down 71 highway and I just happened to glance up at the billboard prior to that when they showed me the sketch the individual did not look familiar to me at all I just focused on the lower half of his face and the chin and it's just an epiphany it was Jeff Jeff Morland was a boyfriend that I had for three years while we were in college we met
in 1983 at Central Missouri State University had a relationship for 3 years Jeff and I met in a criminal justice class he was as sweet and charming and funny as he could possibly be and I truly fell head over heels in love with him once I got my graduate degree I became social worker and Jeff went on to become a police officer he loved being a police officer that was his ideal dream job paig and Jeff broke up after 3 years of dating much to her mother's dismay my mother absolutely adored him fo
r years after we dated my mother told me she wished I had married him I know if he showed up on the doorstep she would happily have let him in the house could Paige's ex-boyfriend from two decades prior really be the sadistic serial killer detectives have been hunting for I was so lost in my own head trying to tell myself that Jeff didn't do it I kept trying to tell myself that I was wrong but in my gut I just knew that was him at the Pearle office I'd mentioned it to a couple of the girls I wor
k with and they told me that I should run him through the system so well that makes sense so I ran Jeff through the system and lo and be cold if he didn't have a black Jeep Wrangler registered in his name and I nearly lost my cookies and I also found out Jeff had been a police officer in the gra view police department but Jeff had retired about 5 years prior to my mother's homicide because he'd had Parkinson's does the Parkinson's diagnosis mean PA's X could be the man with a limp spotted near N
ina's home Paige brings her findings to detectives I told him that Jeff had been a police officer in cran View and gave him all the information that I had officers look up Jeff morland's home address and discover he lives in the same small town as the first murder victim Cara Joe Roberts he lived in Harrisonville Missouri so that was the first person during our investigation that matched all of those factors detective blank said yep it could be him detectives know they have to take extra care wh
en investigating an ex cop Harrisonville is a very small community and detective blank told me that Jeff knew every law enforcement officer in the county and that he would find out that he was under investigation investigators decide a direct approach is the best option we did not believe that we had probable cause at that point to get a search warrant to get his DNA so we went down and knocked on his front door I did tell him your name's come up in a homicide and we need to get a DNA sample fro
m you if someone were to tell me that I'd be like what homicide are you talking about that was not Mr Morin's reaction he said well I've got to go take my cat to the vet and he went back inside his house my gut was telling me that we had our guy but you need to be sure that this is your guy before you go with your gut police again asked Jeff to provide a voluntary DNA sample I ended up calling him and tell telling him again that hey we need your DNA to compare to this homicide and then then we'l
l be done Jeff again claims that he's too busy to provide a [Music] sample a week later investigators receive an unexpected phone call from the police department Jeff retired from located just outside Kansas City so the sergeant with uh Grand View police department calls us and says that he's been in contact with Jeff Morland and he provided him a DNA sample we rushed down there and we made contact with the sergeant on his desk he had a pill bottle the sergeant provides a strange account of how
he obtained Jeff's DNA Jeff told him that I want you to meet me at this gas station along 71 highway and Jeff shows up in his black Jeep and Jeff tells him that Kansas City has come and accused him of being involved in a murder as he's explaining this story he takes swabs and puts them in his mouth and then Jeff hands him this bottle along with my card and says here give this to the detectives we tell the sergeant that sample is not going to work you can't just provide your own sample and the se
rgeant sort of indicated well we'll just get rid of it in the trash then we told him no we'll take that bottle off his hands and take that from him the evidentiary value of this stuff is just worth but obviously we recover it and we examine it that DNA was tested and it did not match our homicide the fact that that DNA came back as not a match just didn't surprise me at all had he followed protocol that would have exonerated him and he very easily could have done that but he chose not to we more
and more really thought that we might have had our suspect based on his actions at that point we all know about serial killers I was worried that the suspect was going to do this this act again a few days later detectives get the call they've been dreading IED a phone call there was a rape that occurred in Harrisonville but the victim was able to get away and then she was able to contact police the victim took the officers to where this eventage occurred the day before it was Jeff Moran's resid
ence so my first question is where's Morland at now when police go to arrest Jeff he's nowhere to be found detective blank told me Jeff may have raped a third victim and he is now on the run I didn't know if he would be after me I didn't know if maybe he had figured out that it was me who initially contacted the police that was a nightmare [Music] former police officer Jeff Morland is the prime suspect in the murders of kaj Jo Roberts and Nino Whitney tragically a third woman has now been attack
ed but Jeff has disappeared an investigators fear he may strike again when I heard that he had taken off I was worried about Paige the detectives told me they truly did not know where he had gone or what he knew I told detective blank he would probably find Jeff in Iowa near his family as Paige predicted a trace on Jeff's cell phone leads police to a motel in Iowa he had taken a bunch of over-the-counter sleeping pills he tried to take his own life and then ended up in hospital in De Mo Jeff sur
vives the suicide attempt and he is taken into custody by local police we headed up there to Iowa to get Mr Morin's DNA we drove all the way back from Iowa with it we wanted to be sure he wasn't going to get out of custody or bond out or whatever and then the next morning we got the DNA results back we told Paige that his DNA match both crime scenes Jeff is in fact involved in the murders of Cara Joe and Nina it just blows my mind and it was beyond all comprehension to me this was 2010 when he m
urdered my mother and Jeff and I split up in 1987 I had no idea what Jeff would become the last time I actually saw Jeff was in 1994 he told me then that he um periodically would Patrol up and down my mother's Street just to make sure that everything was okay and at the time I thought oh that's so sweet but now looking back on it just don't know Jeff Morland is charged with the murders of Cara Joe Roberts and Nina Whitney and the sexual assault of the third victim soon after laying charges inves
tigators learn about the source of Jeff's phony DNA we were contacted by Jeff Morin's ex-wife and Jeff Morin had a daughter with this ex-wife and that daughter was engaged to someone and that guy said that Jeff had called him out of the blue and Jeff told him that he needed a sample of his DNA for a paternity test because someone was accusing Jeff of being the father of a kid and so he provided a DNA sample and gave it to Jeff Morland then Jeff trick the Grand View police Sergeant with some slig
ht of hand so the sergeant provided us a formal statement where he said he wasn't able to see Morin's hands at all times when Morlin was taking a sample of his DNA Jeff attempted deception backfires only giving prosecutors more evidence against him there's nothing for the defense to attack there's nothing to be argued because the physical evidence was just overwhelming I think it also says a lot that Jeffrey Morin had zero Witnesses in his defense at the trial he got life without parole plus 50
years consecutive on car Robert's homicide and then he got 10 years for armed criminal action and 20 years for murder second on my mother's case to run concurrent with no trial testimony from Jeff police and the victim's families are left to piece together exactly what happened to Nino Whitney and Cara Jo Roberts what we do know is that Jeff Morin took Caro's life my personal opinion is he was driving by and saw her in the yard and he was in that mode where he was hunting and decided that's his
Target after killing Cara Joe it seems Jeff developed a taste for murder he struck again two years later I believe the day that nah was murdered Jeff Morin simply knocked on the door and nah saw who it was and let him in the house it's not necessarily uncommon for a predator to go after older women because they feel like they are easier victims of course my mother would let him in and then at some point he had to have started forcing her backwards up stairs I think when he got her into her bedro
om that he tried to rip her shirt off of her forced her onto the bed but she did fight back she did run my mother went running down the stairs he chased her he stabbed her 24 times the kill shot was here through the throat at some point he turns on on the water to try to maybe get her body up into the bathtub to wash off his DNA but at that point he knew with his Parkinson's acting up that there was no way he was going to be able to take her body back up two flights of stairs and put her in a ba
thtub and then he went upstairs to clean the knife off put the knife in the kitchen drawer and went out through the sliding glass door investigators believe that before he left Morin stole Nina's cell phone to throw police off his Trail has the presence of mind to grab that phone and throw that phone in the grass A4 mile away from Nina's house he knows that the investigator is going to be caught up in that phone as sort of a way to lead us away from him I did not know for8 months who murdered my
mother the eight months that I spent not knowing made me insane when you have families that do their investigations sometimes it's it's not the best but Paige being involved was actually good in this case because she was actually the person that found Jeff Morland I can't even explain to you how grateful I am between my mother's neighbor in the sketch artist I would have never figured it out never would have figured it out if it hadn't been for the two of them to call this an unexpected killer
is is is almost an understatement Jeff Morin terrorized an entire Community Police speculate that Jeff's forced retirement a few years before the murders may have been the Catalyst that set him on the path to kill I feel that when he developed Parkinson's and he had his power taken away from him as a police officer the murders were almost like him getting revenge on the world I joined this organization called parents of murdered children and other survivors of homicide victims and we're all basi
cally going through the same thing so it it does help to have someone who understands the enormity of what has happened I think n would B remembered as a strong independent woman who fought to the end and that's how I always remember her there are frogs in the stores everywhere you can't go anywhere without seeing cute little frogs somewhere I think about my mother all the time when I when I see things that I know that she would appreciate her when I hear country music um I I think about her a l
ot a kind-hearted young woman beloved by friends and family Samantha always had a smile on her face she loved people and people loved her and and she loved her cats found bludgeoned and strangled in her own home I noticed the cable wrapped around her neck three or four times military people to use that not fairly often it was a square not police explore whether her search for love took a deadly turn he wanted to come over and say her told her to be blindfolded topless she told me he parked in he
r driveway and just sat there he fit that mode of being a stalker until a shocking Discovery we found that he was more than just a friend that in fact he had been a lover reveals a killer no one saw coming he was a very unlikely killer he didn't fit the profile at all I was in shock frankly I'd never seen anything quite like this [Music] before Witchita Falls Texas a former oil Boom Town That Grew into a small City Witchita Falls is a town of about 100,000 people about 130 Mi west of Dallas it's
quiet community we very uh close-knit Community it does have a small town feel to it it's not difficult to get to know just about everybody in town but the town's sense of security is shattered on the morning of January 6th 2003 when police get a call from a woman who says she's just discovered her friend's lifeless body in the bedroom of her home I was a rookie police officer and we got this call they somebody found a body and we rushed over to the scene when he arrived I remember seeing her f
riends and they're very upset the Frantic couple tell the officer the deceased woman is 28-year-old saman an lazark that's this time I still don't know what exactly is going on I arrived 30 seconds to a minute after the first officer arrived so when he entered the residence I was right behind him so we weapons draw and we're clearing through the bottom of the house the kitchen we started going up the stairs and we have got down the hallway to her bedroom and that's when I realized we have a murd
er the victim was kind of in a prone position I noticed the pool of blood was around her head and I noticed the cable wrapped around her neck three or four times I've never seen a female that was murdered like this this was my first time to actually see that and it gets to you we proceeded to establish a crime scene a few minutes later detectives and forensics arrive the victim had a ligature made of a coaxial cable tied very tight around her throat that was a square knot there's a couple of pla
ces you learn knots like that military people probably use that knot fairly often and so it told me that whoever killed Samantha was versed in the knot based on some training the cable was not the only weapon used by the killer there was a fire extinguisher a few feet away from her that had hair and blood on it there was definitely blood at the back of her head a lot of it there were some hand print Ridge detail on the fire extinguisher that appeared to be in blood it looked like there was some
fingerprint detail even on the coax a strangulation death has some up close and and personal aspect to it based on what we saw we thought there is a good good chance the killer actually knew the victim detectives examined the rest of the room for any other clues in the middle of the bed was a laser pointer on top of the laser pointer was some blood spatter so we figured that the pointer had to have been on the bed when the injuries occurred to the victim and looking around the house in general n
one of the windows were broken and all the doors were intact whenever you don't have forceable entry your first thought is that it's someone that she knows police immediately began the process of interviewing Samantha's neighbors one of the neighbors had written down that a car with California tags was at Samantha's home on about January the 1st the car from California had been seen 5 days prior but a different neighbor noticed another suspicious vehicle less than 24 hours before Samantha was fo
und dead there was a 12-year-old young man who noticed a motorcycle at Samantha's home he said it was red and black and so the information about the motorcycle was noted soon news of the murder reaches Samantha's loved ones I just barely got to work when my husband calls and he tells me to come home and uh he said that someone had k Samantha than that before I went into instant shop that's just not something you comprehend I mean is this really happening I got a phone call from a friend and he t
old me to turn the news on and her house was on the news with police tape all around it I went numb I fell to the ground cuz I mean Samantha why would someone want to hurt her Samantha lazark grew up in the small town of Terell Texas and was the oldest of three children Samantha had two brothers Joe Jor and Lance he was the baby and Samantha practically raised him when I could work she was very responsible she could cook she could wash clothes and she loved little kids and she loved elderly peop
le she was one of them light Bloomers she didn't really care that much about boys until she met John Samantha married her high school sweetheart John lazark at age 20 John he went to school to be a refrigerator repair man and Samantha worked at the grocery store and her job was real important to her I met her when I worked at Albertson's and Samantha was everyone's favorite C last year you may be having a bad day and she'd just make you happy she was very um high-spirited she loved her cats she
loved music and she just loved her tattoos everything she had had a meaning she had her fairies on both arms then she had one on her chest right here that was for John said always in my heart a devoted wife Samantha was blindsided when after 8 years of marriage John left her for another woman she just kept crying to make him happy and she was so devasted when he left Samantha picked herself up and several months later she began dating again Samantha's confidence definitely changed I think Samant
ha was just trying to have fun get out back into the world try new things who killed this vibrant and kind Young young woman and why to try to answer these questions police interviewed the couple who found the body Lori and Donnie neevis with Lori and Donnie as they were the last ones in the home before the police arrived we certainly needed to make sure that there was no information that would tie either one of them to the actual murder detectives start with Lori who says she and Samantha were
co-workers Lori described herself as being a good friend of Samantha's and she said Samantha didn't come to work which was very unusual she didn't answer the phone Donnie had taken Lori to work that morning and so he came back to get her and take her to Samantha's home the check on her Lori said they knocked on the door and didn't get an answer but the door was unlocked and so they went in and looked around and they went upstairs and found Samantha deceased investigators speak to Donnie next and
he confirms Lord Lor statement Donnie characterized Samantha as being his wife's friend he said that he was only there because he gave his wife a ride to go check on Samantha detectives ask the couple if they know anyone who would want to harm Samantha Lori pointed her finger at Samantha's aranged husband John lazark Lori said that John was upset with Samantha because she was about to end his health insurance coverage that she'd been paying for and he had an injury that was going to be very exp
ensive if he didn't have insurance investigators learn that this ongoing conflict had recently escalated before he said Samantha told her in the couple of weeks before the murder Samantha and John argued about the health insurance and John told her something to the effect of I want to take everything you have away from you and so that threat certainly raised a red flag for us and made us wonder if John Lazar had anything to do with this Murder coming up police unearth a hidden online world Saman
tha signed up for one of the chat rooms her username was mamix 28 the information on the chat was pretty sexual and nature I warned her plenty of times watch giving her address out to and hunt a bold killer with Sinister motives the fact that he couldn't take no for an answer made us want to figure out exactly who he was he pressed her to meet in person and she said what if you're a serial killer there's only one person that could put the DNA in the fingerprints on the murder weapon until invest
igators close in on an unlikely suspect he looked like a decent clean cut All-American kid one of the most evil human beings I was seriously afraid that there would be another [Music] victim [Music] police are investigating the violent murder of 28-year-old Samantha Lazar detectives have learned that Samantha and her estranged husband John were in a bitter dispute she had threatened attack him off for health insurance policy and Samantha's friend said you didn't make a threat at one point that m
ade us want to know more about John and the relationship with Samantha investigators learn the marriage had only ended 6 months prior they asked those close to Samantha about what led to the breakup her best friend was going through a divorce and Samantha being the kindhearted person she was let her move in Samantha noticed that her friend and John seemed to be a lot closer perhaps than what she was comfortable with finally she ask them if they were having Fair and they said yeah they were in lo
ve I remember how upset she was I mean how else could you feel when your husband leaves you for your best friend John moved out with his new girlfriend but remained in Samantha's life they were separated but John would move back in with Samantha when he kept moving in and out it was pale because he wouldn't leave her alone Samantha finally told Jon to move out for good so she could get on with her life but John was still dependent on her health insurance John when he's 18 A Car fell on him when
he's working underneath it and messed up his back he was really anxious about the insurance investigators bring JN in to the station during the interview with John lazark he said that he and Samantha had sorted out the insurance and that she was not going to terminate his healthc care coverage John also denies that he threatened Samantha like her friend claimed but as he talks detectives notice a suspicious detail he had some small injuries to his hands that we wanted to talk to him about John e
xplained that he cut his hands while moving a table the night of the murder John said that he was with his girlfriend and she in fact confirmed his Alibi if I were in love with somebody and they killed somebody else I may lie for them but there was wasn't anything to contradict what he said we asked John for fingerprints and a a sample of his DNA and he agreed to do that police have nothing concrete to tie johon to the murder but before they let him go detectives ask who he thinks might want Sam
antha dead John lazark told us that his estranged wife was online dating John said he told her it was risky it might run into the some dangerous people investigators set out to verify John's claims we interviewed Samantha's friend Lisa and Lisa told us that she knew that Samantha was in fact online dating Samantha told me one day that she signed up for one of the chat rooms it was so new back then she just made a username and started meeting guys her username was Mex 28 it was her love of cats a
nd she was 28 years old when she started meeting these guys online I said you don't know these people you're not letting them come to the house are you and I could tell that she didn't want me to know because she knew it was going to upset me really bad the computer forensics lab examined Samantha's conversations with people online making arrangements to meet people that that she' chatted with online investigators compare the messages with details of Samantha's dating life provided by her friend
s Lisa told us that Samantha was dating a man named Chris and she'd spoken with Samantha the evening of the murder in fact and that Chris was at Samantha's home visiting with her I did not know Chris i' never met him I know she really liked him and liked hanging out with him she said Chris was over at her house that evening when she called me I had bought her the latest season of friends that was out on DVD and she said we're going to watch Friends I'll call you tomorrow and that's the last time
I talked to her police determined that the call with Lisa around 6:00 p.m. was the last contact anyone had with Samantha she was found dead the following morning just before 10:00 a.m. because Chris was with Samantha shortly before she died we really wanted to look at to see who Chris was and where he was investigators search for Chris in Samantha's online chats however they find her most recent correspondence only 2 days before the murder is with a man who goes by the username I am Elliot I am
Elliot said that he had recently lost his wife and Samantha said well I've recently lost my husband to my best friend I am Elliot seemed very sympathetic to her in their their messages and she seemed to respond to that we weren't sure who I am Elliott was our conversations with IM Elliot had seemed pretty innocent and there was no association with the name Chris so the investigation went moved on from there detectives dig deeper into Samantha's chats looking for messages with a darker tone so t
he forensic lab was able to retrieve a chat with somebody initial KS and the information on the chat was Prett pretty sexual in nature this individual pressured her to meet in person almost immediately and so that raised red flags about him he wanted to come over and see her told her to be blindfolded topless and ironically she said what if you're a serial killer but in the end she went along with it detective suspicion only grows when they realize the chat between KS and Samantha is dated Janua
ry 1st just 5 days before the murder one of the neighborhood watch people had seen a Mercedes with California license plates on it that had been at her house January 1st it had all of the signs that we were on the right track with this guy so we ran the license plate number and the tag came back to Kristoff Sora could Kristoff Flur KS be the Chris who is with Samantha just hours before she was found dead Samantha's best friend said that the night she was killed she was with somebody named Chris
so we said hey maybe this is the Chris that we're looking [Music] for 3 days after the murder of Samantha lazark police have linked her online chat to the owner of a car with California plates seen parked at her house just d days before she was killed the neighbor had written down the license plate number of Kristoff soro's car police believe that Kristoff is The Man Behind the username KS when we looked at the online chat between KS and Samantha they were obviously involved with each other sexu
ally and as we were looking for a Chris we were really interested in finding that person Samantha did tell her friend that she was hanging out with a guy Nam named Chris the night of her murder alarm bells ring when they dig deeper into their suspect's background Christoff was stationed at Shephard Air Force Base here in witto Falls Kristoff wound up being somebody that was in the military there was a perfect square knot in the ligature that killed Samantha and I've already thought that somebody
perhaps with a military background knew that square not while officers are sent to bring Kristoff in to the PD detectives received Samantha's autopsy report the cause of death was strangulation and that the coax was the the mains the report also shows significant blunt force trauma to the back of Samantha's head I think it would be really hard to just strangle somebody with a cable and I suspect that the fire extinguisher was used to incapacitate Samantha so that she couldn't fight back there w
as no evidence found during the autopsy or any other testing showed there was any kind of sign of a sexual assault forensic analysis of the murder weapons gives investigators hope that the killer will be identified from the lab we learned that the coax had and that the fire extinguisher also had DNA from who we believed would be the killer the evidence that came back from the lab was very powerful fingerprints were on both the weapons so it's pretty clear that if we could find one person that ma
tched all these pieces of evidence that we had the person that committed this crime not just beyond A Reasonable Doubt but beyond any doubt armed with new insights into the murder police head to the local Air Force Base to look for their number one suspect when we track down Chris Loro we asked him if he would come in for an interview and he agreed to do that he admitted that he had had had a sexual relationship with Samantha but they didn't have a whole lot else in common and he said he hadn't
seen her for some time inv investigators asked him to explain why Witnesses saw his car outside Samantha's home on January 1st just 5 days before she was killed at that point he did not have anything to do with her death or being over there the day of the murder police want to know where Chris was the night Samantha was killed Chris Laura said that he's spent the day with some friends at a batting cage and offered up the names of his friends we followed up that information by interviewing his fr
iends and they assured us in fact Chris La had been with them during the day and into the evening that day detectives conclude that Chris Laur was not the Chris that Samantha was with when she called her friend at 6:00 p.m. but they can't rule him out as the perpetrator since the exact time of her death is unknown [Music] even though his Alibi was pretty good it wasn't there tight and so Chris Laur provided prints and DNA sample for us with no hard evidence against Chris slur he's free to go 4 d
ays after her murder family and friends gather to lay Samantha to rest Samantha's funeral it was packed it was full of people that loved her it was beautiful she had a really big funeral it was just hard nobody should have to bury their child and the the way she died was so violent and I couldn't stand the thought of what actually happened to her I had to take all of her pictures down for a while I just couldn't deal with it the next day detectives ask Samantha's friends if they know of any othe
r men she may have been involved with and receives stunning new information Lisa raised the name Donnie NIS to somebody that she thought that had an affair with Samantha laori and Donnie neas were the last ones in the home before the police arrived they found Samantha deceased I was surprised because when we interviewed Donnie at the time Donnie characterized his relationship with Samantha as being his wife's friend but after the funeral Sam friend Lisa said that Donnie was more than just a frie
nd that in fact he had been a lover B was a good friend of Samantha's and also a coworker but Samantha told me that Donnie and her had a short intimate relationship shortly before she was killed Samantha definitely felt guilty about it once we realized that he had been a lover of Samantha's we had to look look at them more closely now he had not been forthcoming before about this affair so it makes you suspicious that this person has something to hide and maybe what they have to hide is they're
involved in the crime that is a red [Music] flag it's been one week since 28-year-old Samantha laark was found bludgeoned and strangled to death in her home now investigators have learned that Samantha had an affair with the man who discovered her body when Donnie nevas was first interviewed he failed to mention that he had been intimate with Samantha when we interviewed Donnie again and confronted him with the question were you lovers with a victim he admitted that he was and that it had been a
very brief intense relationship detectives asked Donnie why he didn't tell them about the relationship before he said he didn't want his wife to find out about this affair because he knew she wouldn't be happy about it had Donnie killed Samantha to keep her from telling his wife Lori about their Affair we kept digging into him and see if there's anything that would connect him to the murder Donnie insists he did not kill Samantha and begs investigators not to tell his wife about his infidelity
we asked him if he'd give DNA and fingerprints and he cooperated police let Donnie go and while they wait for his DNA and fingerprint results investigators uncover another suspicious exchange with an online Suitor in Samantha's chat room history his username was death metal Samantha formed a relationship with death metal based on their Mutual enjoyment of that kind of music the messages suggest the Paar had been on several dates but then something changed from the correspondence he thought was a
pretty good relationship and then all of a sudden without warning she's told him she wanted to break it off the relationship may have been over but the man continued to send Samantha messages the fact that death metal couldn't take no for an answer certainly made us want to look at him pretty close and figure out exactly who he was and interview him had the man been so enraged by the rejection that he murdered Samantha police asked Samantha's friend Lisa if she can help identify death metal Sam
antha's friend Lisa said it was a guy by the name of Connor days Connor was the one that really got to her made her nervous I warned her plenty of times like meeting people online you know watch your back watch who you're giving your address out to your phone number and um he was the only one that really stands out in my mind that he he scared her he just wouldn't stay away he left notes on her door even though Samantha told Connor that she didn't want to have anything to do with him any longer
and they kind of freaked her out a little bit Samantha told me one day he parked in her driveway and just sat there and she'd called me and she wouldn't know what to do Connor would fit that mode of being a stalker coming around lady's house all times of the day or night and that stalker profile is the one that can lead to someone P of murderer Conor looked really good for this only he wasn't a Chris but Samantha dated him shortly before the murder and we certainly knew that we had to find him i
nvestigators track down Connor and bring him in for questioning when we interviewed Connor days he was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing he didn't seem to have a lot of interest in the fact that she was dead and that was either a absolutely didn't do this or I'm trying to throw you off and we weren't sure which one it was police asked Connor why he wouldn't leave Samantha alone after she broke off the relationship Connor admitted he kept coming back around even though she didn't want to se
e him any longer and it wasn't until she pressed the issue that he actually left her alone and so when asked for his whereabouts at the time of the murder Connor said that he was home alone and he didn't have anyone else to substantiate that claim and that's a problem Connor was asked during the interview to provide a sample of his DNA and prints for us with no hard evidence linking Connor to the murder he is released 3 weeks of pass since Samantha was found dead and investigators still haven't
found the elusive Chris that was with Samantha the evening she was killed there had been an awful lot of work done and we still hadn't uh solved the case there was kind of a frustrated feeling that the person hadn't been caught yet as they await news of an arrest those closest to Samantha struggle with the pain of losing her the mental images imagining her maybe crying out for her mom or her dad or even me somebody to come help her it just makes me sick knowing someone could do that like one of
the most evil human beings I couldn't grasp the thought that my daughter was gone and she wasn't coming back 1 month into the investigation police are running out of leads but then they received the forensic results they hope will blow the case wide open when you get information about whose prce and whose DNA is on that coaxial cord that was around the throat that's just the place where you work to be there's only one person that could put the DNA and the fingerprints on the murder weapon and th
at was the [Music] Killer it's been 1 month since Samantha lazark was killed and detectives have just received lab results from evidence found on the murder weapons we had all these suspects and were able to obtain possession of DNA samples and fingerprints will the results match John lazark Samantha's estranged husband Donnie NE Avis who had an affair with Samantha and also found her body or one of her online suitors Connor Dace or Kristoff Sora it did seem like we were on the brink of solving
the case but the results came back and it did exonerate all these people investigators are stunned the DNA and fingerprints don't belong to any of their suspects or even anyone in the police database we were hoping for the match and it's a little disheartening when you think maybe you've got something and then it turns out not to be at all I talked to the DA and the lead detective but I didn't know what to do I was in shock it did concern me that Samantha was never going to get the justice that
she deserved with the investigation back to square one police review all the evidence and statements they've collected so far in their hunt for Samantha's killer while we were looking back through the notes we remembered that there was a Youngster in the neighborhood that said something about a motorcycle having been around the night that Samantha died so we asked the computer forensics people to look for the keyword motorcycle and they came back with information that in fact I am Elliot said th
at he had a motorcycle when detectives previously looked at chats between Samantha and IM am Elliot they didn't find any red flags in the correspondence or any indication his name was Chris so they moved on to other leads her conversations with IM Amiot had seemed pretty innocent and during the correspondence he told her he worked out at Metro photo Metro photo was a camera shop in which do Falls investigators rushed to the store hoping to locate their new suspect the 12-year-old said the motorc
ycle is red and black and we went by the camera shop and there was a red and black Harley-Davidson motorcycle it was a an aha moment if you will we ran the placeat on the motorcycle we found out it did belong to a person named Christopher Kyle Russell the tag came back to Chris Russell and we said ah Chris aha it made it even a bigger aha moment for us and that's when we decided it was time to know more about Chris and Chris Russell was enrolled at Midwestern State University here in witto Falls
taking some criminal justice classes he looked like he came from a good home and he was a decent clean cut All-American kid his family was well Todo respected members of a large church here in town his profile was almost too good to be true our first interview with Chris was a trip to Metro photo where we went in and asked him to come with us and he did at the station investigators Begin by asking the 21-year-old if he was with Samantha on the night of her murder he was polite but he declined t
o give an interview he was asked to give his DNA samples and fingerprints and he said he needed to talk to a lawyer before he did anything even though it's Chris's right to tell us no maybe it's because he had something he didn't want us to know so we served Chris to search for him in order to obtain prints and DNA from him as detectives wait for results they continue to look into to Chris Russell's past and discover he served in the armed forces Chris had in fact been in the Marine Corps but on
ly for a matter of days they sent him packing after they got a good look at him that was a large red flag that the Marine Corps didn't want him with Chris looking increasingly suspicious what detectives discover next is chilling in the chat between Chris and Samantha he said that he had recently lost his wife and we looked into this and found some frankly rather terrifying information investigators learn that Chris lived in the small town of shadrin Nebraska with his wife Tara who died only 10 w
eeks before Samantha's murder it was a short time after she had passed way one night he packed up his belongings and moved back to wito Falls from shadron police contact law enforcement in Nebraska for information about the death of their suspect's wife Chris Russell's wife died under circumstances that at first uh was R pneumonia however when the autopsy came back and there was noticed some bruising on the neck that tells me that probably was a pneumonia that sounds to me like a strangulation b
ut by the time the autopsy information was released Chris had already had his wife cremated and left the state I think the original autopsy didn't go into enough detail for authorities to charge Chris with that murder and now that she had been cremated that was never going to happen police fear they have an emerging serial killer on their hands detectives obtain a search wart for Chris's residence Chris lived with his parents here in witto Falls while we were executing the search warrant we noti
ced in Chris's bedroom a photograph that we thought was Samantha but that was his deceased wife Tara Chris Russell's wife died and Weeks Later Samantha's now dead and she looks incredibly like Chris Russell's wife police uncover more disturbing clues in Chris Russell's bedroom we found a book and it was a book about knots and had I not known that there was a square knot around Samantha's neck probably wouldn't have looked twice at that book and we also found some laser pointers the laser pointer
s found in Chris's bedroom were nearly identical to the one found at the crime scene there wasn't actually a Smoking Gun found during that search warrant but there were certainly bullets to load that gun with investigators seiz Chris's computer and confirm that he's the man behind the username I am Elliott but as they start reviewing his chat lcks police discover another troubling detail we found that Chris Not only was he seeing Samantha but he was seeing another young lady which all falls as w
ell fearing that their killer could strike again police rushed to track the woman down was terrified about her I was seriously afraid that she would be another victim in what looked like a continuing pattern from Chris [Music] Russell police investigating the murder of Samantha lazark have learned that their Prime suspect's wife died under suspicious circumstances and believe that his new girlfriend is in grave danger I was worried he would do something else again this nice young lady has no ide
a what she's involved with we were certainly worried that she might be another victim in this case detectives locate the woman and inform her that Chris is under investigation she was surprised to to find that Chris perhaps was involved with a murder here in witto Falls when we interviewed her she said that Chris had brought her a DVD of friends to her home and that it was opened when uh when she got got it investigators believe it's the same DVD Chris had watched with Samantha on the night of h
er murder Samantha told her friend Lisa that she and Chris had watched that DVD of friends at her home but when we searched the the crime scene at sent saman's house the friend's DVD was not there with the evidence against Chris growing police receive his DNA and fingerprint results in the end there was only one person with DNA and fingerprints on the murder weapon and that would be who killed Samantha and that was Chris Russell we arrested him at work as I recall he didn't seem surprised we wer
e there at all in fact he didn't have anything to say about it at trial prosecutors put forward their theory about how the murder unfolded the day of the murder they were having a nice Sunday afternoon together and went out to her house and her friend Lisa talked to her on the phone and things were still going good when he was there evidently maybe Chris brought her a laser pointer so that she could play with her cats then something happened that caused him to be angry the first thing was a surp
rise attack from behind cuz the bruises were all in the back of her head he knocked her to the floor at that point the coaxial cable was in connection with the television set and he had evidently ripped it out which indicated a person who is very angry and she's desperately trying to fight him off at the same time he starts looping that quill cable around her throat once twice and then a third time and then he ties the knot there and all the time she's getting weaker as blood is Flowing out of h
er body then he strangles the life out of her with no confession from Chris no one knows his motive for murdering Samantha you'd always like to know exactly what happened at the lazark home that night but something caused him to decide that he was going to kill her that night the jury finds Chris Russell guilty and the judge gives him the maximum sentence of 99 years in prison there was an overwhelming sense of relief that we had taken somebody from society and put them someplace where they were
n't going to harm anybody and that's that big deep sigh you get when you know in your heart that you did a good job when you look at Chris Russell at first glance you see a nice cleancut young man who was going College to better himself and who was a regular Church goer he was a very unlikely killer he didn't fit the profile at all I guess what we should take away from a case like this is that we need to take caution when we meet people online you can't be too careful an investigation is later o
pened into the death of Chris Russell's wife but no charges have been laid for Samantha's family and friends the pain of losing her will never go away I want my daughter back which I know it's you know know not ever going to happen she was special she really was she loved everybody she loved her mama the best but I just I don't know what to say I don't know we can't get her back that day Chris took my best friend an amazing person a person that can never be replaced in your life I know she's wat
ching down on me I know she tries to protect me and Samantha inspired me to definitely not take things for granted and to just live each day make it the best I can she's just made me a better [Music] person an outgoing in vicious mother everybody that met her loved her she would make like everyday Fun she was vibrant happy she was the life of the party is savagely murdered the level of brutality that was involved in the actual murder was just shocking her throat was slashed almost to the point w
here she was decapitated police hunt for an elusive killer we had nothing to tell us what happened crime scene evidence produced basically nothing we couldn't figure out who did it and why they did it we were really baffled could have been anybody and follow a twisted trail of evidence why would he use a calling card there were 44 phone calls made up until the day of the murder the officer found a loaded handgun and hollow point bullets it kind of lit up like a light bulb until a desperate move
this was really the one shot that the police had to solve this case reveals a secret that stuns everyone I was very surprised like I was shocked all of us were I never would have expected that it would lead to [Music] this at 10:27 p.m. on a cold Tuesday in January 2003 Ramapo police dispatch receives an emergency call 911 my neighbor just ran in my house and said his his wife is on the floor in the house he's here and he's sort of like in a State of Shock let me talk to him on the phone all rig
ht hold on yes sir I have help on the way you stay right where you are until the officers get there do you know if your wife is breathing no she didn't answer me did you check no I walked into her room the lights don't go on okay she have any injuries yes she's got blood on her where when I cried Evelyn Evelyn Evelyn she didn't move did you come home and find her that I just came home officers are dispatched to the home located in a quiet family neighborhood when I initially approach the house I
see a man with a young boy with this really blank face walking by he didn't say anything to me I noticed that he had a shopping bag looked like a gallon of milk I entered the home and go upstairs to the back rear bedroom to give this woman Aid only to find that I was at the scene of a murder you know her injuries were so severe she's clearly dead she's a very deep laceration to her neck and she has what appears to be a knife handle sticking out of her chest and the blood is just pulled around h
er body to me it looked like the blood was still moving and I was thinking to myself this just happened it could be that the killer still in the house so myself and another police officer went room by room and and cleared the house and we didn't find anybody else inside at that point now I had to secure the crime scene I knew that it was dark but once it's a crime scene you try not to touch anything because you don't know what is evidence detectives arrive on the scene and begin their investigat
ion in the bedroom the victim was lying on her back and she had a tremendously deep wound to her neck so deep so you could see part of her spine there appeared to be two stab wounds to her chest and there was a large I would call it a kitchen knife sticking in her chest we of course dusted the knife for fingerprints which came back negative the actual blade had gone through her and was stuck into the paret wood floor you know it's a pretty brutal scene she didn't appear to be dead for long her b
ody was cold to the touch but there was no Rigamortis there was no lividity we looked at a potential attack of a sexual nature there was nothing obvious to the eye her clothing was not disturbed i' look for any defensive wounds if there was a struggle there'd be some indication on our hands and none of that was evident the brutality of her injuries and how many times she had been stabbed it looked more like a what we would call a crime of passion looking around the room investigators discover so
me unusual Clues I found it kind of odd that there was no lights but the fan in the ceiling was running the fan light had no light bulbs in it and in the garbage basket were three light bulbs and there was one on the floor next to it and I'm like you know just what's this all about and there was a wall scon that had a light bulb that was loosened to me it would be indicative of somebody looking to hide their presence you know lessen the ability of the victim to see them the house was a little bi
t in disarray but it didn't looked like it had been rans sacked or that it was part of a burglary there was some expensive tools in the garage there was quite a bit of silverware which is a burglar they would take that I would think nothing really a value was taken and so that started raising more questions of what exactly happened here police examine the exterior of the house for evidence we didn't see any types of brakes in the windows or the screens everything appeared to be locked and secure
on the ground you could see a set of footprints in the snow that led to the back door and that door wasn't broken open but it was open just slightly that could have been a point of entry for whoever had done this to her investigators speak with the homeowner Peter visich he tells police the victim is his wife 36-year-old Evelyn visich and that they live in the house with their 2-year-old son Ryan Peter told the police he had gotten home with his son and that he observed that something happened
to his wife when the police spoke to Peter and explained to him uh what exactly happened to uh his wife Evelyn it was a strange reaction he just sort of had a very stale face that was something that was odd to me but it certainly didn't Point any fingers at him there was no blood and nothing in his hands or on him or on his clothes that would indicate that he had been part of the murder well Peter is taken to headquarters to make a statement Ryan is looked after by his grandparents at the crime
scene investigators continue to look for any clues to who has killed Evelyn Visage in these early stages you don't really know the victim and so now you have to start thinking who would do that and what was the reason for this brutality that was leveled against this victim born to a single mother in LZ Puerto Rico in 1966 Evelyn grew up determined to escape her humble childhood she came to this country from Puerto Rico go when she was 19 to live the American dream Evelyn landed a job at a large
Home Improvement store in pamus New Jersey where she made an immediate impression Evelyn was a great um employee she had such a good work ethic everybody loved her she was vibrant positive you could hear Evelyn from a mile away she was always happy she loved her music she was passionate about dancing she was a PR she was beautiful Insider now such a giv person she was very kind Evelyn started dating Peter after they met at the store Peter used to shop there with his father he was very quiet very
polite family oriented he seemed like a good guy someone that she could see building a family with that was her dream Peter and Evelyn married and soon welcomed their son Ryan into the family Ryan was her world everyone knew she had a son and everyone knew how much she loved her son after 4 years of marriage the couple's relationship deteriorated and Evelyn filed for divorce things started to go wrong they were just very disconnected but she wanted Peter to be a part of Ryan's life while they f
igured out their divorce and and custody agreement but Evelyn was killed before the divorce was finalized raising police suspicions due to the nature of her murder the ferocity the level of violence you would think somebody really had an a to grind someone that's personally involved with the victim you looked at the nature of the crime it suggested that it was somebody doing this for a reason you have a couple who are going through a divorce in these types of cases you're going to look at the hu
sband coming up police discover additional sus suspects we learned that he had been with Evelyn the night of the murder maybe they were having a domestic argument a dispute and unearth hid in evidence Evelyn had secretly audiotaped some of the arguments and fights that they had been having but just as the investigation falters maybe he wasn't the one who actually did the murder because it just doesn't make sense was there a piece of the puzzle that we weren't seeing a new face blows the case wid
e open he's perspiring heavily I could see the vein in his neck beating and I said to him I said I don't want to hear what you have to say I already know what happened and I'm going to prove [Music] it police investigating the murder of mother of one Evelyn visich have their first suspect her estranged husband Peter Visage you have to start thinking did the husband even do this or is he involved in it somehow Peter mentioned that his relationship with Evelyn was troubling to him because they wer
e in a different place he wanted her to stay home she wanted to work and um the relationship deteriorated and Evelyn had filed for divorce Evelyn and Peter still lived in the same home even though this divorce was preceding they slept in separate bedrooms but they were living under the same roof Peter claims he last Saw Evelyn alive the morning she was killed he had taken his son for the day uh Evelyn had gone to work Peter told us he went to his mother's house at 8:30 that morning with Ryan to
do some household repairs he didn't have a steady job his parents supported him he also did a lot of odd jobs for them that they paid him for he stayed at his mother's house till approximately 8:30 and at that time he went with his son Ryan to the Palisades Mall Peter tells police that that just after 900 p.m. he called Evelyn's cell and she told him she was at a friend's house she told Peter that she was on her way home and would probably be home within 20 minutes or so at approximately 10: p.m
. Peter received a telephone call from Evelyn asking where he was Peter said to Evelyn that he was picking up milk and that he would be home shortly Peter said that upon arriving home his intent was to put Ryan to bed but he said that he found it odd that the lights were not working in the hallway he said he looked into the bedroom he saw that Evelyn was on the floor and he said that she was obviously deceased according to him and he ran back downstairs and ran to the neighbor's house to call th
e police Peter Visage was questioned for over 16 hours I mean it was a very long interview he never asked to leave he never said you know I want a lawyer leave me alone anything like that he was cooperative throughout he agreed to provide us with with fingernail clippings hair samples blood sample a buckle swab for his DNA as Peter is providing samples investigators run a background check there was nothing in his history indicative of this violence Peter was typically a guy who was if he wasn't
home working on cars motorcycles he was at his parents house Peter visic's mother confirmed his Alibi for the day and evening at the time that he said that he was there we found Peter to be at thep supermarket buying milk and exiting the store consistent with the times he described confirmed by video cameras and he produced a receipt for the milk time and date stamped 10:15 p.m. the amount of time it took to go from A&P where he purchased the milk to his house it just would not have been possibl
e to commit that crime and call the police from the neighbor's phone and not be contaminated in some sort or Leave Behind Some evidence or have evidence on him we found no sign of any injuries we found no sign of any blood on his person on his shoes at this point in the investigation there was nothing that we could find that was showing that Peter Visage was involved in the murder of his wife he was in all these different places where there were surveillance cameras and with a timeline that prev
ented him from being at the scene of the murder when it occurred now you have to start thinking other than Peter Visage who could do something like this and why would they do something like this I asked him would did he have any concerned about his own safety you know somebody came into your house maybe they were looking for you too does he have any enemies does he owe anybody money does he have any uh illegal habits drugs gambling and he answered no to all those questions and I asked him if he
knew anybody that might want to do this and he said that she did have a boyfriend and that we should look at him Evelyn was dating another employee of Home Depot Mike Granda here you have people going through a divorce and now you have a boyfriend thrown into the mix motive could be jealousy could be a fight in their relationship the fact that she still lives with Peter could be a source of upsetment for Mike Granda maybe it was a jealous boyfriend who had come in there it fit the profile for th
e crime scene being that it was so horrific the next morning police head to Evelyn's work to interview her boyfriend Mike and find that her co-workers already suspect something is wrong I remember I kept calling her because Evelyn was always at work by the time I got there and she wasn't there that day I saw detectives when they came in and I got suspicious and I said something happened to Evelyn right so the detective said to me how would you know that so what I said was you just confirmed it t
o me we interviewed Evelyn's co-workers and to a person they all loved her and spoke highly of her and she had some very close relationships with people that she worked with that loved her dearly that she was good to them they were good to her they looked out for each other Evelyn was a very very loved at work emotionally was horrible I mean we were her friends we were her family she wasn't just a friend like she was like a big sister to me as investigators speak with Evelyn's co-workers her boy
friend Mike Granda arrives to start his shift when Mike Granda arrived for work we told him that Evelyn had been murdered he was visibly upset but when detectives asked Mike where he was the night before his answer raise his eyebrows according to Mike Granda he had been with Evelyn the night of the murder at that point you have to really look at every possibility maybe she was going back to her husband maybe she had broken up with him maybe it was a Crime of Passion maybe they were having a dome
stic argument a dispute we had to look at him as a possible suspect for the [Music] murder police hunting the killer of Evelyn visich are focusing in on the man she was dating while in the throws of divorcing her husband we did look at Evelyn's boyfriend Mike Granda there could be a source of jealousy based on the fact that she still lives with her husband during this process so he has to be looked at detectives bring the 28-year-old to the station for questioning when Michael Granda was intervi
ewed we asked him to describe their relationship he said initially they were just friends but as time went on they became romantically involved and began dating investigators press Mike for details on the night that said Evelyn was killed according to Mike Granda Evelyn and he had left Home Depot at approximately 3:00 p.m. Evelyn had gone to the Garden State Plaza Mall to return some clothes and she actually was supposed to be having dinner with her son that night but Peter called Evelyn and sai
d I'm going to my mother's house with the baby so Evelyn called Michael saying that she was free so she went from the shopping mall to Michael Grand's House in West New York New Jersey Mike claims he and Evelyn had dinner around 900 p.m. Peter called to say he was on his way back with Ryan after which Evelyn decided to head home to see her son Michael granda's house is approximately a 40-minute drive to the Visage house Michael Granda called her when she was approximately 20 minutes from home wh
en she was on the Garden State Parkway approximately 40 minutes after that phone call Evelyn was being murdered we asked him to describe his whereabouts he said that he had stayed home for the rest of the night watch TV and went to bed so there was a window of opportunity where he did not have a alibi that could be corroborated by someone else we subpoenaed his phone records to try to determine where he was Michael's cell phone records indicated that his cell phone was in his apartment or very c
lose by his apartment in West New York New Jersey if he were to drive from West New York in all likelihood he would have to pass through a toll we subpoenaed toll records Easy Pass records we subpoenas video records from some banks in the area looking for his car passing by and none of that was ever found so that also led us to believe that he was telling the truth he actually was in his home at the time that Evelyn was being murdered I never thought for one second that Mike had anything to do w
ith it Mike really lifted her up on a pedestal he gave her that support that she needed Mike made her feel beautiful Michael was most Cooperative he offered his phone he offered his laptop computer he offered samples of his blood a buckle swab for DNA hair he offered everything he said please I know you have to look at me cross me off the list and find out who did this it just never even dawned on me that the police would look at me I just tried to give them as much information as I could I do r
emember telling them like oh I know you guys have to suspect me I told them if they wanted to search my house they couldn't if they wanted to search my cars they could I was just very focused and trying to be helpful after the police obtained all the information from Mike and speaking with him and speaking with others he was uh quickly ruled out as a suspect in the murder of Evelyn Visage and there was just nothing to suggest that Peter Visage was involved so if you don't believe the husband's i
nvolved you don't believe the boyfriend's involved you have to look at other individuals that may be involved at that point you know could have been anybody you can't make assumptions on who it could be you have to really look at every possibility the day after Evelyn's murder as police consider possible suspects news of the crime hits the airwaves the Evelyn visit murder was newsworthy just because of the area we're in a a small town we don't have that many murders that it's common place this w
as a case that really really was troubling because you have a woman who was violently brutally killed and we couldn't figure out who did it and why they did it hoping for a new lead investigators looked to the autopsy report to learn more about the crime she had two stab wounds in her upper back area those were the initial strikes and then she had a very deep slash wound to her throat and then there were two stab wounds in her upper chest area powerfully done as indicative by the fact that the k
nife was stuck in the floor based on what the medical examiner described to us I could only imagine the sheer horror that Evelyn was experiencing the level of brutality that was involved in the actual murder was just shocking her throat was slashed almost to the point where she was decapitated it was blood curling she must have been scared somebody's in her home she's in her bedroom maybe it was a burglary gone bad and she came home and had startled whoever was in her house we Circle back to exa
mining Parolees in the area both New York and New Jersey sex offenders people that have committed similar crimes burglar's gone bad or robbery's gone bad at the time of Evelyn visic's murder there was a group of young men who were committing robberies and burglaries in the vicinity including a Terren monk who lived approximately 5 miles from the vage residents I do remember that we were having burglaries in the area area and I remember that we were having home invasions too the name teren monk l
ike it it clicked with me there were cases robberies burglaries and assaults where Terren monk committed violent acts on people that didn't cooperate he was also implicated in a robbery probably a mile and a half from the Visage house it kind of lit up like a light bulb he certainly went right up to the top of the [Music] list [Music] Evelyn visich was killed in her own bedroom in a frenzy knife attack and now police are investigating if a violent local burglar might be responsible Terence monk
was like a known criminal and the detectives had been dealing with him for years at that point we had been investigating him so arduously and for such a long time there was not any possibility of cooperation on his behalf to get the information they need investigators take a different approach I utilized a confidential informant to try to determine where Terence monk was and if in fact he was involved in this crime he described to me where Terrence monk was at the time that Evelyn was murdered h
e told us that Terrence monk was in Buffalo New York and that was substantiated by witness statements and his cell phone records it's another dead end for detectives they press the informant for any other information that might help solve the case this young man was so plugged in in the criminal community so I asked him what the word on the street was if it was a local guy chances are in the criminal Community somebody would have been talking and he said there's nothing on the street at all no i
nformation about who killed Evelyn Visage with no other lead leads police Rec canvas the neighborhood around the VIS home there was multiple attempts to locate Witnesses and detectives actually went back and conducted a road stop in the area hoping that somebody may have seen something nothing was discovered and we couldn't gain anything from that in the village of Chestnut Ridge it's prohibited to park a vehicle on the street at night so we also checked to see if any parking tickets had been is
sued or any Vehicles par marked on the street and there were none found collectively between the police and the prosecution we were really sitting there thinking this may never get solved while investigators consider their next move Evelyn's loved ones struggle to accept her loss I just couldn't believe that she was killed avelyn was such a loved person by everyone something like that happened to her it makes no sense you know there's some people that come into your life for a reason a season In
Our Lifetime that's what they say there was a lot of respect and love there she would make like everyday Fun always laughing having a good time but um you know that's life I mean you have to take every second you get cuz never know when um it's going to end detectives reinw Evelyn's friends and colleagues hoping to uncover a tiny detail that leads them to her killer we did speak to many of Evelyn friends to find out if she had a lifestyle that was potentially dangerous to her or would expose he
r to this type of uh demise her life revolved around her being a mother she had no enemies everybody that met her loved her there was not one person that met her that did not instantly take to her she was just a really pleasant person to be around all the time day and night it was very puzzling what happened and why was is this done with a violent killer still on the streets concern spreads through the community in this area this little Hamlet of Chestnut Ridge it's just not that kind of area wh
ere you would expect anything like this people in the community are starting to get fearful I remember I was living alone and I certainly had my radar up and I was very careful coming and going almost to the point of paranoia I wasn't going to be a victim 3 days after Evelyn's murder detectives receive explosive new information turning the investigation on its head Mike Granda came to the rpool police station with some personal items of ebbl and visages amongst those personal items we found audi
o tapes and a journal that she wrote in detectives immediately recognized the voices on the audio tapes as Evelyn and her husband Peter Evelyn a apparently had secretly audio taped some of the arguments and fights that they had been having everything from any money that she spent taking the car away from her shutting off her phone he wanted to be completely in control of Evelyn so it was in stark contrast to what Peter described to us the fact that Peter didn't describe any turmoil caused us to
have some doubts about how truthful he was being Evelyn's Journal contains even more St startling Revelations about their divorce he wanted custody he was told that he wasn't going to get full custody and he wanted to sail of the house so if Evelyn is gone he's got the child he's got the sail of the house and he can move on when detectives try to follow up with Peter about these Revelations they're met with silence at this point Peter had retained an attorney and we were no longer able to questi
on question him so that again raised some suspicion we went back and looked harder at Peter based on the fact that he had the most to gain from Evelyn being dead with Peter having an ironclad Alibi investigators consider other scenarios maybe he wasn't the one who actually did the murder but you have to wonder if somehow Peter is involved in this because it just doesn't make sense that anybody else had a reason to do this the suspicion is is enough to get a warrant to search Peter's vehicle we h
ad no idea at the time that that search of the van was about to unleash a whole new Avenue of this investigation and turn this case totally upside [Music] down new evidence in the Evelyn Vis homicide investigation has led police to revisit her husband Peter as a potential suspect ECT and they are now searching his vehicle for any trace of incriminating evidence you just never know what might be that little piece you know whether it's a hair or a fingerprint or that one bit of DNA might be the br
eak in the case desperate for any lead in their investigation police make a critical Discovery there was an extensive search of Peter's van and we uncovered in the back pocket of the middle seat of the van 37 $100 in cash in a white envelope in addition to the money that was found there was a Sprint calling card this was tremendous tremendous evidence that we have just now uncovered it offered a lot of questions why would a person have $3,700 cash We examined Peter's financial status at the time
Peter was not very solvent in terms of having any money somebody who's by all accounts broke and he's got $3,700 in the back of his his van and of course we couldn't ask him why cuz he had already retained counsel you have to now start wondering why is this man have $3,700 in $100 bills left behind in his minivan it's possible that Peter may have engaged someone to kill Evelyn and that money was going to be used to pay off the final payment Furthest Thing from my mind was that a Hitman could ha
ve been hired that's really very rare in in real life let's look at his bank accounts his credit cards statements you know things like that as far as getting any solid evidence he was involved in this we went back and looked harder at Peter's bank accounts stock market anything like that in an effort to see if he had taken any money out to try to pay somebody to maybe do this and nothing was found to be out of the ordinary or even considered to be like a payoff finding no evidence Peter paid to
have Evelyn killed detectives focus on the other item found in his van why would would he use a calling card most folks unless you don't have a cell phone or don't have a landline don't have the necessity for a calling card and Peter had a cell phone he had a home phone so we subpoenaed the records for that calling card there were 44 phone calls made from that prepaid phone card record beginning in November of 2002 up until the day of the murder in January of 2003 of 44 calls made on that card a
lmost all of them were made to an individual named Frank thawn the name is new to detectives but when they run it through the police database they make a telling Discovery police learned that Frank Thon was currently at the time in jail in the state of New Jersey this is a man who's been arrested numerous times assaults violent assaults his most recent arrest was for driving while intoxicated the officer found a loaded handgun underneath the armrest of the truck and hollow point bullets at the t
ime of the murder he was on intensive supervised parole shortly after the Visage homicide Frank thawn turned himself in to serve a year in the county jail could there be an innocent explanation why Peter called a known violent criminal for months leading up to the murder only to stop the day Evelyn was killed we subpoena Frank thon's phone records analyzing his phone records we found that he was in the vicinity of the VIS home on January 6th the day before the murder and January 7th the day of t
he murder then it became really evident to us that he was involved in this so now things are starting to click we were able to secure a search warrant to search Frank thon's apartment and one of the things that the police recovered was a computer upon forensic investigation of that computer we found that Frank donon had searched directions from his apartment to the Visage home the evidence is compelling but investigators need something more concrete to lay charges based on the evidence that we h
ad it still was a very weak case we don't have any forensic evidence that would connect him to the murder of Evelyn Visage you need the probable cause you need the connection to prove your case and to actually have it stick with little else to go on detectives make a bold decision we had no other option other than to go at Frank thawn we knew our case would depend upon Frank thwn making a confession this was really the one shot that the police had to to solve this case it was a huge gamble becau
se if he decided to ask for a lawyer they could not question him anymore if he denied it they were stuck with what he had to say police can only help hope that Frank reveals the truth of whether Peter was involved in the murder we don't have a case against Peter we're getting closer to figuring out maybe what occurred but again it doesn't prove that Peter Visage had any relationship to this murder we had nothing other than just the fact that Peter is calling Frank Thon this case is going to rise
and fall whether we succeed or not with an interview investigators head to the county jail to confront the hardened criminal I specifically requested a small room where we could have the table against the wall and we deliberately set that room up to increase Frank thon's anxiety we had lawyer boxes with Evelyn visic's name on the boxes we had maps with pin pins in them just small office was full of as I call it a number of props with everything in place police bring in 41-year-old Frank Thor th
ey took the handcuffs off him and we pretty much just stared at him for like a good minute or two again in an attempt to increase his anxiety and he was visibly nervous and I said to him I said I don't want to hear what you have to say I already know what happened and I'm going to prove it and I'm going to tell you what a murder for hire in New York you could potentially face the death penalty we told him that we had all types of evidence implicating him and his face hit the table he's perspirin
g heavily his heart rate was obviously increased I could see the vein in his neck beating and I said to him I said you don't have any friends in this world right now I said if you tell us the truth we'll try to assist you in getting the best possible deal there was a long pause he took a big sigh and then he began to tell us what [Music] happened 4 weeks after the murder of Evelyn visich investigators have have just convinced suspected Hitman Frank Thor to start talking he almost had a look of D
etachment from what was going on he took a big sigh and he says all right I'll tell you guys what happened Frank thwn told us that he was the person who killed Evelyn Frank Thon confessed not only to the murder of Evelyn Vis but that he was hired by her husband Peter I really was surprised after everything was said and done after all of the investigative leads that it all came back to Peter Frank tells detectives that he was introduced to Peter 3 months ago through a mutual acquaintance Peter as
ked this gentleman if he knew of anybody that could take care of his wife Frank Thon requested $10,000 cash with $5,000 being paid up front we later learned that Peter obtained money from a friend of a friend on a loan a short time after that Peter visic met Frank FR th at a pizzeria where Peter gave Frank the down payment of $5,000 cash I looked at the money found in the van as this could have been the final payment to hear that for such a small amount of money that somebody was willing to go o
ut there and kill someone I was shocked and disgusted in his confession Frank describes Peter's impatience to have Evelyn killed he told me that he had a second envelope ready he was really pushing it Peter visich was pestering him to get this done so he decided January 7th was going to be the night Frank meets Peter at the VIS home the day before the murder told me to lay out of the house and I'd be able to walk to the back of the house and leave a door unlocked for me Peter told Frank that he
would uh leave the back door open and he gave Evelyn's a schedule for that that day the next day Peter establishes his Alibi he went to his mother's house and then the shopping mall and then stopping to get milk he knows that there's video cameras you know he knows that he's going to get a receipt that's all adding time to his Alibi that can also be substantiated after Sunset Frank enters the Visage house and removes the light bulbs to lie and wait for Evelyn in the dark door open then I heard t
he house door open then I heard her coming up the stairs and that's when I came out of the room he had a gun he pushed her into the bedroom had her kneel on the bed and he told her he was merely here to do a robbery and he wasn't going to hurt her he said he then took a knife that he had brought with him and stabbed her twice in the back she dropped to her knees from the bed she slid down I took her by the forehead from behind her I sliced in then I sliced back I heard the blade scratched the bo
ne I recognized the sound she dropped immediately to to my right on the floor I heard the air leing her body I stabbed her two or three more times in the chest do you leave the knife behind yes I where' you leave it stuck in the chest Frank thawn was the instrument of Evelyn's death but Peter Visage brought that instrument into his own home on Valentine's Day 2003 a warrant was issued for the arrest of Peter Visage police rushed to take Peter into custody I said Peter I have very good news for y
ou he said what's that he was somewhat befuddled I said we found out who killed your wife and he became like almost giggly he's like really who I said you did expletive you're under arrest it angers me and it pains me to think that the person that she married was the one that did that to her it's shocking it's sad I was very surprised like I was shocked all of us were he went through this elaborate murder and I just thought like how pathetic are you as a person Frank Thor pleads guilty for his r
ole in the the murder of avelyn in exchange for his cooperation he was promised a sentence of 20 years to life if he testified truthfully at the trial of Peter Visage in November of 2003 in front of a packed courtroom Peter stands trial for plotting to murder Evelyn Evelyn's friends and family were throughout the trial present um they had to endure really gut-wrenching testimony particularly when Frank testified he said that he told her at the end I'm going to put you out of your misery and your
husband was the one that that hired me she was just in shock Peter visit never takes the stand during the 8-day trial he showed no emotion the whole entire trial I would look at him and then just think to myself like why why why you had to get to that point why did you do it after hearing the evidence the jury deliberates for only 3 hours the jurors announced that they did have a unanimous verdict guilty on each and every count including murder in the first degree which carried a life without p
arole sentence we all screamed we were relieved and we felt like justice had been served although it was bittersweet it's just so hard to to comprehend why now the child doesn't have a mom or dad what he did to to Ryan is just as unforgivable as what he did to Evelyn cuz he deprived Ryan of one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met in my life I've never met anyone like Evelyn for those closest to Evelyn she remains alive in their hearts Evelyn is still here with us she's still in our
spirit she was full of love she was full of life she was the life of the party she was always happy and if you weren't happy next to her she would made you happy she was a good Soul she was a good person she will always been [Music] missed for for for for for
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