a vibrant young woman making a fresh start in life my sister had a great sense of humor she was just full of life and ideas and and fun she had a new graphic design job a new relationship a new place to live she was looking to a new future is mercilessly slaughtered in her home the person slit her throat it was a shocking murder whomever the attacker was was extremely Disturbed you just can't register it she didn't have any enemies everyone loved her investigators Tracked Down multiple suspects
there was a creepy guy just watching her there was a note that said saos signs life then police discover an enemy in Disguise they were using other individuals to try to throw us off it was a bombshell detectives unmask a killer no one could have imagined and I said what it didn't make any sense to me I was in complete [Music] shock Golfport Florida is an idilic Community complete with sun sand and seaside charm gulport is kind of a classic uh southern town it's kind of an Arty Community now gul
port has a beautiful beach and people are very friendly I never felt unsafe living there on May 24th 1984 gulfport's laid-back lifestyle is shattered when a disturbing Discovery is made a woman was checking on her neighbor and when she didn't answer the door she viewed inside one of the windows and saw a body laying in a pole of blood and that's when she called 911 homicide detectives are sent to the address in Waterview Park entering into the uh the residence I noticed broken glass and I saw th
e victim's body there was a copious amount of blood pooling around her head she looked like she had been hit with a blunt object there were several stab wounds up and around her neck area like it was a attack of Rage the victim was partially clothed and a black teddy over a white T-shirt it was kind of unusual for someone to wear a Teddy on top of their t-shirt it was done snapped at the crotch and so I had suspicions that she was sexually assaulted even though the area was so gory she had no bl
ood on the soles of her feet and that was important because you could see bloody Footprints and it appeared to be a Barefoot as well we surmised that the perpetrator stepped in the blood after the attack was over the scene is so bloody it's not yet clear what exactly happened the body is sent for autopsy while detectives continue surveying the home there was blood on the bed blood smears on the drapes and blood on the wind the sill possibly the attack started in the bedroom area and then uh trav
ersed over into the living room the trail of blood indicate that she was fighting througha I think she was able to get away from her as salent and run through the house and open the door there was some blood and hair under the door and it looks as though she was stopped drugg back in and then finished upon examination of the residents we couldn't find any type of weapon the crime scene was indicative of a very involved struggle yet there was nothing knocked over or in disarray in the house now i
t's possible that could actually happen that way but it's also possible Somebody went back in and cleaned it up police speak with the woman who found the body she tells them the victim is her neighbor Karen Gregory she said the victim's boyfriend David was at a conference in Providence Rhode Island David had not heard from Karen and so he called and asked if she would check to see if Karen was okay born in Albany New York in 1948 36-year-old Karen Gregory was a loving and kind free spirit she wa
s the center of attraction at any Gathering and people just loved her Karen had a great sense of humor she was a really good artist had a great eye she was a smart woman and very clever and and witty and talented Karen love to seek out new places and was always up for an adventure she traveled a lot she would go to Jamaica and explore and I think her ultimate goal was to go to Jamaica and teach art before Karen can make her dream move a chance meeting in Florida changes her plans and then she me
t David David was an interesting character uh and probably a match for my sister's wit he was very clever very intelligent David was a therapist for PTSD Vietnam vets and they were just a really good match for each other they were probably almost a year into the relationship where she had been visiting enough and staying there enough that it was time for her to move in with him this was a new beginning she had a new graphic design job a new relationship a new place to live and I think she was lo
oking to a new future she had just moved in with David the day she was killed who would take away Karen's life in such a horrific Manner and why detectives hope Clues at the scene will Point them to the killer well we found the Village Voice publication from Providence that struck us as really strange because David was supposed to be up there at the time that newspaper actually was dated the day that Karen could have been murdered was David really in Providence or had he returned before detectiv
es can contact David to question him they find another lead outside a note was placed on the car the context of the note itself was uh was quite telling it says came by I have something for you but there was no sign of life rather brief note but obviously the no sign of Life Would you know send up a red flag the note is signed by someone named Peter but there's no other information so police have no way way to track him down officers collect the note as evidence as Karen's family is notified of
her death the day I got the call was just a beautiful warm day this isn't the kind of day that these things happen on they had found my sister murdered and I said what it didn't make any sense to me and my mind just went through all of these situations to make that call impossible and everything will be okay police asked Karen's brother Roy about her relationship with David Karen's brother indicated that there was a little conflict between Karen and David in that Karen may have had an interest i
n another individual in Jamaica she met a guy and then she'd stay long longer and longer on these trips I think she was kind of torn maybe between both both realities and both Futures we also found out that Karen and David had broken up for a length of time before their death it wasn't some huge breakup and she was still moving in so we assumed everything was going to be worked out but the weekend she was moving in is the weekend she was killed the murder was at David's house and I knew there wa
s a riff there so I think that added to maybe well you know you just never know could he have flown out to Providence and rebooked a flight back to Golfport committed the homicide and then jumped back on a plane we have to track down David we felt that something was there behind the scenes and we needed to find out about it coming up investigators discover a series of suspicious men in Karen's Circle he had been physically abusive to his first wife he made Karen feel very uncomfortable and scram
bled to separate friend from foe here we are building on a story really raised red flags for us he's either protecting somebody or he just fled out Ling until finally The Awful Truth is revealed it makes me sick to my stomach no one would have ever thought that this person murdered this [Music] woman [Music] a day after 36-year-old Karen Gregory was brutally murdered in her home police in Gulfport Florida suspect her boyfriend David Mackey could have killed her and they need to track him down de
tectives found out that David was in Albany and that he had flew there to be with the family for the waken funeral of Karen David Macky seemed to be concerned about Karen and he wanted to know what was going on we weren't going to give David the investigative uh information that we had he said that he wasn't going to be back in Florida for another two weeks David promises to come down to the station when he is back in town in the interim investigators sent officers to Canvas Karen Street many of
the neighbors heard a scream that night many got up and looked outside their windows and saw nothing they didn't know exactly where it came from was it kids in a car I mean you know they didn't really know time of the scream uh was around 1:00 in the morning there some thought the time of death was during the scream she wasn't discovered until midday the day after that the head of the neighborhood watch is one of Karen's closest neighbors and a familiar face detectives can rely on George Lewis
was a Gulfport firefighter had grown up in Gulfport all the police officers know him George and his wife Linda were very good friends with detective Larry tossi well having somebody uh like George uh to depend on was very very comforting in that if something was going on in the neighborhood he just was that kind of neighborhood watch guy George said he was working in his garage which was across the street from the murder scene uh he said he heard a faint scream he had the radio up l out he even
went out in the street didn't see anything but George did see something the day before Karen's body was found George Lewis described seeing this guy pull up in his car and walk up to the door and then write a note and put it on the windshield of one of the cars did George C Peter the man who wrote that note he didn't know Peter clut was certainly something that the police wanted to look into because that was the only person they're aware of that went to the house during that time frame the next
day as police are figuring out how to track down Peter they catch a lucky break in order to release the remains of the body Ken's old roommate was asked to identify the victim and at that time she brought another person with her and he identified himself it was Peter cumle investigators bring Peter in to answer some questions I noticed the scratch on his hand thinking you know maybe it was done by by Karen he noticed me looking at it so he moved his hand they asked him about that and he said tha
t his dog did it Peter confirms to detectives he is the one who left the note for Karen and says he was at the house around 7:30 p.m. he had been invited to dinner by Karen they had known each other for maybe a year they were both reggae music fans he was bringing back at music tape and that's what he was referring to and he said I have something of yours not having anybody respond to the knock on the door he just left the note and left during the interview he didn't seem very upset portraying t
hat he was such a close friend to Karen uh it kind of struck me as being you know strange detectives ask where Peter was when Karen was murdered cell's explanation for where he was at night was he was at home he did indicate that his roommate could verify that he answered the questions and he was amable to whatever I asked him to do Peter provides police with his fingerprints and Footprints and while they let him go detectives will keep an eye on him we weren't eliminating Peter Gumble from the
[Music] investigation three days after the murder police received the medical examiner's report Karen had dozens of stab wounds on her and it wasn't until they had cleaned her up they realized that the person slid her throat Karen was tortured the time of death was day and a half before her body was discovered the report also confirms another disturbing fact the autopsy determined that a rape was involved Co examiner found Seaman but wasn't enough to make comparison and DNA at that time was in i
ts infancy thinking about what she went through it makes me sick to my stomach you just can't register it she didn't have any enemies everyone loved her after 2 weeks out of state Karen's boyfriend David returns to Florida and is immediately interviewed by detectives David was still very upset he said he loved her and they were getting serious with each other and that she had finally found what she was looking for in life when detectives revealed they know he and Karen had issues David brushes i
t off he repeated it was all good they were in love with each other David claims the last time he saw Karen was the day he flew out of state Karen had driven David to the airport cuz he had a conference to attend in Providence skeptical Detective tell David they can place him back at the crime scene and I said we found the Village Voice publication from Providence it was DED and IED a murder here in gulport he indicated to us he had purchased the Providence publication to check on the weather be
fore he had left he told us it was at the news stand in Gulfport a couple days prior to the H we have to look into that detectives asked David Point Blank if he murdered his girlfriend [Music] he became frustrated in my opinion that we'd be looking at him instead of spending time looking for the real killer he was pretty adamant in the fact that he was off doing a conference in Providence and he hadn't gone anywhere he said I want to be as much of a help rather than a hindrance as I can he was a
lso asked to submit foot samples which he did as well when asked who might want to kill his girlfriend David gives a name Detectives recognize David informed us that he felt that Peter kumble had some kind of an interest in Karen it became clear that David was trying to blame this on Peter [Music] combell police are investigating the grizzly murder of Karen Gregory her boyfriend David Mackey denies being involved and points detectives towards Peter cumo a man police have already questioned and r
eleased in David's mind he felt that cumbo was someone who had an interest in Karen like as a potential girlfriend David wasn't aware of anything about Cel being invited to dinner and really probably had no real reason to see why cble would come by the house while he was gone he said that cble was an acquaintance but not a close friend they knew people in the same CC Les Peter Gumble was always calling Karen up and that he felt he was going to try to develop a relationship with her and Karen obv
iously wouldn't have anything to do with it David was concerned that cble could be involved and they needed to look at him closely with nothing concrete to link David to the murder they let him go detectives now need to confirm his claim that Peter had ulterior motives around Karen when police tried to bring Peter in for another interview they had a problem he had left Gulf Port right after this first interview he had went on vacation and the detectives found that strange that him being close to
Karen Gregory that he would leave and go on vacation after her death without the evidence to compel Peter to return investigators switched gears and delve deeper into David Mackey's Alibi David had told police he had given a presentation in Prov at 9:00 a.m. on May 23rd which would have been 8 hours after Karen was killed was it possible for him to have got on a flight come down murdered Karen and got back up to Rhode Island detective Sergeant tossi decided to take flights in the same time fram
e I found that he could have committed murder and get back in time and do his presentation it would have been tight but it's possible detective subpoena David's credit card information but they show no record of David buying any additional flights David's story about the newspaper also appears to check out it was discovered that the paper actually comes out 2 days early and the gentleman remembered selling the paper to David Mackey David was telling the truth and his Alibi was solid as weeks pas
s without an arrest Karen's friend and family become concerned not knowing why or who or how this even happened you're left with all these questions the grief was too heavy there was just a lot of weeping for a long time just the slightest little little memory of her or thought of her I can weep right now thinking about that for such a small town it was a shocking murder I can only imagine what some of the women that live alone in that Community felt when there is a killer out there and they hav
en't been [Music] caught a few weeks into the investigation detectives get a boost when potential suspect Peter cumle arrives back in town he looked a little bit disheveled he looked a little bit shaky as if he didn't want to be there type of a of an attitude detectives cut to the Chase and ask Peter if he killed Karen Gregory he was completely shocked cell's Alibi was he was at home but with David pointing the finger at Peter detectives need to follow up he was pretty adamant in the fact that y
ou know he he hadn't gone anywhere and the roommate could be his uh Alibi witness anybody can say they're home and they're in bed in the middle of the night they can go out and do what they want to do and that's a very shaky and unsubstantiated Alibi we didn't have much to hold him at that point so he left needing something concrete to tie Peter to the murder investigators hope his footprint sample matches the one found at the scene there was a partial bloody footprint on the floor we did send i
t off to the Sheriff's Office and we waited quite a period of time and then we heard back that they couldn't find any identifying ridges or swirls to a big disappointment to me that our Sheriff's Office couldn't make a match detectives refused to to give up the photograph of the bloody footprint looks mostly like a smear so it was sent to Washington for the FBI to look at which was not uncommon practice especially if you had uh something that might be difficult for a local person to do the analy
sis won't be fast so investigators go back through everything collected at the scene and find a potential piece of evidence there was a schematic drawing of a clock it appeared to have a blood stain on it did the murderer bring that with him and leave that there forgetting about it did he get blood on it while this happened so it looked like a pretty good clue they needed to follow up on they were able to determine that these were schematics that have been drawn by Steven fisler who was someone
that Karen worked with detectives send the blood on the drawing in for testing and when they look into Steven fisler they discover something troubling we found out from female workers that they felt uncomfortable around him that he showed the girls pornography and they took offense they indicated they were afraid of him according to one friend Steven Fishler made Karen feel very uncomfortable many times he made unwanted advances at one time he gave her a provocative novel that he was writing Fis
her as far as the way he behaved in the office around women he was a suspect we decided that we needed to have an extensive interview with stepen Fishler step Fishler had kind of a defensive attitude he was Kurt he said that they didn't really know each other he and Karen had seen each other at work but she had only been working in a short period of time when Steven was questioned about the the schematic he had no explanation for how it got into her house other than she probably took it home wit
h her detectives Grill Sten about his reputation among his co-workers and he became angry he says I had no idea we asked him if we take a polygraph test he agreed to do that Steven didn't really want to answer the questions he was extremely frustrated just when investigators think they won't get anything out of him Steven says something truly shocking during the polygraph he blurted out okay I did it everybody thought the heck this guy is [Music] confessing two months after Karen Gregory is vici
ously slaughtered in her home her cooworker Steven Fishler has just confessed to police it was unexpected was he really telling the truth police immediately begin to press Steven for details behind his confession we determined that after talking with Steven that he blurted out okay I did it just out of frustration he was angry because he was being accused of this murder and that was just his personality and his temperament Steven retracts his confession and proceeds with the polygraph he passed
the polygraph it showed no deception indicated the result was totally unexpected to us it basically cleared Fishler but Stevens not off the suspect list just yet he refuses to provide a footprint sample so police must wait for the results from the schematic drawing to see if any foreign blood is detected in this case the blood was clearly all her blood then it wasn't Steven fisler there was a lot of frustration it kind of hit a dead end running out of suspects investigators switch up their appro
ach and put together a behavioral analysis profile of the killer you're trying to look at you know what causes people to do what they might do it wasn't your general who done it whomever the attacker was was uh extremely Disturbed he was the type of individual that had various fantasies sexual fantasies which drove him to commit the murder of Karen Gregory maybe this was a serial killer which kind of fits into that whole psychological pattern to some degree was probably the most difficult case t
hat I had to to deal with 5 months down the road from the homicide I just couldn't let the case go couldn't put it on a shelf for Karen's family coping with the reality that her killer may never be found found is overwhelming we kind of thought like you know they're never going to solve this which was just alarming to us and that's another whole kind of pain there was a nightmare she was a sweet wonderful young woman and the killer was a brute you know who butchered her finally a break comes in
December 5 months after the murder when detectives make discovery that revitalizes the case Tosi was talking to a person who lived a few blocks away from Karen and that person told him they had heard the scream she described it as just a whale and that it was very disturbing Tosi was like he didn't realize it was really that loud that actually over a two or three blocks people heard this this new information is in direct conflict with the statements of the neighborhood watch head and she's sever
al blocks away and she hears a scream and George is right across the street how come he didn't hear more than what he said was a faint scream it didn't make any sense so we figured we better have another talk with George which we did of toi he looked at George as a helper to the police case George was a firefighter the neighborhood watch guy that was actively out there when we went over the story he indicated that he had heard the scream that he walked to the edge of his driveway looked around a
nd didn't see anything now George adds a new detail to his account now he sees somebody on the lawn under the Big Oak Tree the story was quite a surprise why didn't he report it why didn't he call he didn't really know what to say I think in many ways he was he sounded nervous George describes the person he saw the night of the murder he said he was like 6'4 and had red Sandy hair it was a big strong looking guy it was certainly something that the police wanted to look into armed with the new in
formation detectives try to track down this mysterious man and in doing extensive neighborhood interviews it was related to us there may be a peeping Tom in in the area that fit we thought well we may have something to go on here I interviewed one person and she said that she had a Peeping Tom at her window and when she noticed him he took off could the Peeping Tom be the killer police have been looking for investigators show George pictures of possible Prowlers he couldn't Iden if in him so the
mystery man in the lawn remained unidentified so there's some thought that he might have been watching that house and watching her and knew that she was alone that night knew David was out of town I felt terrified especially at night I kept my doors locked I didn't want to end up like her detectives find another woman in the neighborhood who recently saw the prowler there was a creepy guy just watching her for some unknown reason she caught him peeping in the window and he took off the woman re
cognized the man when she tells police his name they're stunned it was a big [Music] surprise detectives hunting for Karen Gregory's killer learn there's a Prowler stalking the women of Gulfport Florida could the offender be one in the same when a victim of the Voyer comes forward with a name investigators are shocked it's the neighbor George Lewis it was totally totally unexpected to us detectives bring George in for a third time and ask him about the woman's claims he admitted he was outside t
he house and he had some explanation for why he was there he was a neighborhood watch guy and always was looking out for people he said he heard a noise or something they thought you know is it possible gets the killer he was given the opportunity to take a polygraph test which he did Detective start by asking about the prowler listening to the polygraph tape and how George Lewis described the man I really believed him investigators also ask him about the night of the murder did you kill Karen G
regory George said now the polygraph results tell a different story the results were disastrous he failed it [Music] miserably after he failed it he had something else to say about United the murder George admits he hasn't been completely honest and tells police that's why he didn't pass the polygraph George Lewis indicated to us the individual that he saw on the lawn left Karen's house itself he saw George and had approached him and threatened him the person walks out and tells him if you say y
ou saw me here I'll come back and kill you so that's the reason he wasn't forthcoming he was afraid of him George Lewis went from just hearing a scream at the edge of his driveway to indicating that he saw the perpetrator and then his next story George said this guy threatened him we were very concerned about that because here we are building on a story so it really raised red flags for us we felt that you know with the abundance of different issues and stories he was telling he was using other
individuals to try to throw us off we had asked him to do a composite sketch of the individual that he saw after the sketch was done we both looked at each other and said this really can't be happening we both came to the conclusion it was George when he was younger I think he thought the police had a witness who saw somebody in Karen's yard so he was making this description of the person who scared him get closer and closer to looking like him he's either protecting somebody that he knows or wh
ich just flat out lying we have to look at George A Little Closer investigators collect his foot and fingerprints but with little hard evidence to hold him George is released detectives take a deep dive into George's past and make some disturbing discoveries he had been physically abusive to his first wife according to her there were times when he had been violent with her he had choked her the crime itself shows some pretty deep-seated violence towards women and I think there was aspects in in
his background where you could see that George had gotten into a swinger club that was the part of George I never really saw you know or never knew he's never said anything like that to me so that was kind of surprising but things were building up with him and and his behavior it appears George developed a troubling fascination with Karen before before she had even moved in one of George's friends told me that uh Karen was visiting over at David's house Karen had come out in a bikini and he made
some comment about liking to have an orgy with her got aroused he had gotten into sexual perversions if you will I think there was indications that he was you know a peeper of some sort still looking for hard proof detectives ask George's wife about the night of the Murder She was woke woken by The Scream After just few minutes George came in from the garage the killer would have been covered in blood but George wasn't when you sit back and you look at you these things because you say to yourse
lf oh well maybe he really didn't do it maybe his story makes sense or maybe he's covering up for somebody that did do it you know what I mean and so now it's you know where do we go from here at that time we didn't have you know DNA the only thing that could tie itself into the case was the footprints detectives are still waiting for those results it was getting extremely extremely frustrating for the team and then the months just went by you know nothing nothing [Music] happened [Music] it see
med like it was just going to be a cold case and it's like well what are we supposed to do with that you know you can't just stop here but they didn't have leads they didn't know where to go with it this is about my sister being butchered to death we were not going to arrest till they found who the killer [Music] was in March 1986 almost 2 years after Karen murder the FBI finally finished their analysis on the bloody footprint at the crime scene the day that the data came back from the FBI every
body was elated it showed the ridges on the heel from the Barefoot and they can be identified compare one to someone else detectives have renewed hope the Killer is within their reach we must have sent 20 sets of footprints then they got a resolve on the that relatively quick which changed the whole case a definite match no one in gulport would have ever thought that this person murdered this [Music] woman nearly 2 years since the brutal slaying of Karen Gregory detectives have just received a r
eport back back on the bloody footprint found at the crime scene the footprint was sent to the FBI we're waiting specifically on just that result there was a definite match of a footprint of George Lewis to the in footprint that we had sent up there to the FBI lab it was shocking it was very hard for me to believe that George Lewis murdered Karen Gregory he was the head of the crime watch he was a firefighter I was in complete shock although no one could believe George was a cold-blooded killer
the evidence doesn't lie Footprints with their ridges and their swirls are similar to fingerprints if you have enough of those patterns to present to a match then they're just as good I didn't want to believe it and I had to face that the trusted George he was toying with me he certainly wasn't the person that that I thought he was the detective knows he has to ask his old friend some tough questions we asked him to commence to the station and that's when we confronted him with the footprint tha
t's when he said I crawled in the window there was a bombshell now here's a whole new story where he's absolutely in the house house he indicated that he had heard the scream he had gone through the bedroom window to try to assist Karen he said that he saw her laying there with her throat cut open only the killer would have known that her throat was cut he said he had stepped in the blood to assist her or help her and then he had exited out through the bedroom window his explanations didn't make
sense if you assume that his story is true that he was threatened by this person on the in the yard and was too scared to do anything about it then why would he go into the house why didn't he call police at that time this story is BS but the nail in the coffin of course was the footprint investigators also talked to George's wife again and they learned he would have had time to clean up after after the crime his wife had been very defensive of him and she changed the story George was gone for
the longest time she said 20 minutes or more we don't have to prove motive we felt we had enough probable cause in to make an arest I had mix feelings I'm sorry it was George and but yet I I was a little upset that he just let us on nearly 2 years after Karen's brutal murder on March 15 1986 George is charged with first-degree murder and sexual battery it was a huge relief that they had finally found someone but it was a shock you know just a shock and still no reason why would a neighbor do thi
s I think in looking at him it was pretty clear that he had a uh fairly misogynistic view towards women he thought she might be an easy easy Mark or an easy target at trial investigators put forward their theory about how the murder unfolded George Lewis would have gone over knowing that David was out of town he came in the house knifed and ready to ready to do it and was living out of fantasy Teddy had been put on her against her will she knew that the only way to get away was fight to get out
of that residence she was pushed and hit her head against the jousy windows that's when she screamed after that it got really violent the rape was involved Lewis knew then that he had only one way to go with this and as a result he ends up stabbing Karen 21 times George Lewis maintains his innocence but a jury convicts him is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole no one ever really wants to believe that someone that is there to protect and to serve could do something so horrible th
is was really unexpected that he was the killer that didn't seem like who I would expect a firefighter to be and certainly not the neighborhood watch guy although maybe he was watching for opportunities I was Rel Leed we could actually get Justice for Karen and all the people who loved her there was a little bit of Justice in knowing he was in jail my sister probably would have forgiven him that's the kind of person she was it's funny sitting here now she was alive for as many years as she's now
been gone she never lived you know we never got to know who she'd be as an old lady she was just full of life and ideas and and fun and humor I have her ring on right now that she made for Me Karen and I were really close and I'll always miss that and I'll just never forget her a devoted mother with a bright future in Show Business she was very much a rising star she was loved by a lot of people is viciously attacked in her own home she had put up a fight she struggled very hard try to live I w
as beyond shocked that this could happen to such an amazing human I mean why police single out several Suspects the boyfriend began to wash his hands before police arrived on the scene a better divorce custody battles money these are all motives for murder we appreciate you coming and talking to us man but we got some problems what's the truth what happened just when detectives think they have the killer in sight complaining while your cell phone and her cell phone too I don't know the investiga
tion takes a jaw dropping turn and it was a murder from a Hollywood movie so it was definitely bizarre it was just unexpected only a twisted person could pull something like this [Music] [Music] off Nashville Tennessee is the vibrant heart and soul of country music in complete contrast just a few miles away is the suburb been calm of Hermitage Hermitage is about 20 30 minutes outside of town and it was a quiet place it doesn't have the hustle and bustle of downtown Nashville it's a upscale nice
area to live in that didn't really have that much crime that all changes one quiet Sunday afternoon I was working that afternoon when the call came in the victims boy friend found her deceased and called 911 when I'd walked inside the residence I found the victim dead inside the living room area there was blood next to her and it appeared she had a several gunshot wounds when I looked at the victim's body I noticed multiple bullet holes multiple projectile strikes I also noticed powder burns on
one of her hands hands there was gunshot residue on her hands which would indicate she attempted to grab the gun the curtains had been pulled down and some chairs had been moved around like a struggle had started it appeared she had put up a fight with the suspect we began looking for a murder weapon we could not find one we realized that the uh salent picked up shell casings and removed them from the scene to make it harder on investigator to determine what happened we were lucky we found one s
hell casing that rolled to the edge of the wall and it was sort of hidden so the suspect wasn't able to find that one it had a green Sheen and I thought it was an old brass shell casing that was corroded we turned it over for the test we knew upon locating that shell casing that we were now going to have a clue that we could find follow up on we noticed there was money on the counter and there was other valuables jewelries a ring so it didn't appear that robbery was a motive investigators follow
a trail of evidence from outside the house the victim's vehicle was parked in the garage the vehicle's door was open and it appeared that items from her purse were strown across the floor of the garage it appeared that she was targeted followed to a resident and the suspect took the most opportune time to gain entry once the garage was opened and she pulled in detectives want more information from the victim's boyfriend he tells police his girlfriend is 39-year-old Veron kabza they had plans to
go out that day stated when he arrived at the residence of back garage was up he noticed the victim's vehicle was parked the door was open upon entering the residence he found the victim deceased obviously he's a suspect for us he was the one that found the victim and uh the red flags are up for us as detectives but Brian's too overwhelmed to say much more we can't roll him out because we don't know the history and don't know what happened we knew we were going to have to conduct an interview w
ith the boyfriend later [Music] on Veronica was originally from Milan Italy Veronica was very religious she was Catholic I think her faith is what led her to be so sweet and kind and help others she was just a beam of light happy happy happy Veronica had a lot of energy and of course she was from Italy so she had this accent and everybody from here was like wow where are you from at 23 Veronica moved to the US to pursue her dream of working in the entertainment industry as a TV producer when I f
irst met Veronica she was entry level in the production industry she took to it really well Veronica was very much a rising star you just wanted to work with her she would BOS you around you'd like it she'd tell you what to do and and you'd be like okay you know but work wasn't the center of Veronica's life her loved ones were Veronica had a lot of friends she was loved by a lot of people and respected in 1994 Veronica got married and seven years later she welcomed a son I think Veronica was ver
y happy she wanted her family her son her husband it was the whole thing Veronica's son was the end all for her like she would walk through fire for him after 15 years of marriage Veronica and her husband Tim separated but they were successfully co-parenting their 8-year-old son officers confirmed the boy was with his father during the time of the murder as news of Veronica's death sinks in her loved ones struggle with the loss I was beyond shocked that this could happen to such an amazing human
I [Music] mean why why that's really what I sit with why to hear this um news was like just like a punch in the gut I was stunned at the crime scene investigators make a startling Discovery Veronica was a victim of a random mugging and robbery just months before her murder we noticed a letter from the state saying the subject that was arrested for robbing her was going to be released on parole person was armed and took property from her and ultimately the suspect was arrested in the robbery and
Veronica prosecuted was the attacker out of jail that da Veronica was murdered this was definitely an angle we had to look into and to see his whereabouts and if he had ever made any statements toward Veronica after he had been arrested this definitely was a motive that could be related to the homicide coming up an old friend with a troubling past draws suspicion we found out that he had a large number of physical assaults against women then investigators uncover a web of Deceit this was signif
icant cuz it show that he was lying about where he was that leads to a killer hiding in plain sight we then noticed that his phone was in the general area of the crime scene she admitted that she stole her exis M hand it's like [Music] what after finding TV producer and loving mother Veronica Boza gunned down in her living room detectives are trying to establish if a criminal from her past has taken his revenge we definitely had to look into see if he was about to harm Veronica we started to do
a background investigation on he was a dangerous person but when investigators dig deeper they are forced to reassess we were able to find record shown he was in jail during the day of the murder with a key suspect eliminated detectives now focus on reconstructing their victim's Final hours we found out that Veronica attended St Edward's Church and that's where she dropped her son off with his father after church service at Sunday before she was murdered heror boyfriend Brian spoke with Veronica
right after she had left church she also spoke to a coworker during her drive we were able to learn when her last call was made and then from Brian when the 911 calls made from this information detectives pieced together a timeline Veronica was alive at 12:08 and dead by 1220 so there was a 12-minute span that we were able to narrow down when this murder took place due to the very limited time frame that the homicide could have occurred the suspect would have been definitely rushed for time to
perpetrate the act with Brian arriving just moments after Veronica's death police question how he could have missed spotting her as salent so we needed to speak with our boyfriend we had to interview him and exclude him as a suspect if possible or or keep him as the suspect Brian agrees to go down to the station for further questioning we could visibly see he was upset detectives Begin by asking about Brian and Veronica's relationship Brian was also a TV producer and they worked on a show togeth
er and then that's how they met they had just started dating two to three months earlier and they were getting ready to uh go on a weekend trip I've never been loved the way that she loves me never felt so strongly about a relationship we moved very quickly um and hadn't fought our hearts on it though Brian appears to be The Grieving boyfriend they still do not have evidence to eliminate him as a suspect did you say it all hurt all today no so uh the last time you saw Sundays are really usually
when we reunite he stated that he talked to Veronica after she dropped off her son near the church and they were talking about a short trip they were going to take he left a friend's house and he was heading to Veronica's house along the way he stopped and purchased a cal drink at a market and then spoke with Veronica on the phone and then he pulled up to the residence walk in look to the right saw on the ground I SC for her name and I went over like to her I saw the state she was in I believe s
he was still alive up until few mons far door [Music] when police ask how Brian knew Veronica was dead his answer is troubling at first the boyfriend didn't check the victim to see if she was breathing or if she was now deceased when Brian called 911 the 911 operator asked him is she breathing only then did Brian check for a pulse and he didn't find a pulse and then he began to wash his hands before police arrived on the scene he didn't perform any type of medical assistance to Veronica it would
seem odd did you hurt Verona today did you no she the love of my life byal life together Brian insists he had nothing to do with Veronica's death he's then very quick to offer up another suspect that she had any disagreements with anybody that you know of tempos as we were interviewing Brian he brought up the soon to Bex husband as a person that we might want to look at as being involved in the homicide Brian had stated that Veronica and Tim were going through a rough divorce he said the divorc
e was contentious between Tim and Veronica and he knew there was issues relating to the custody of their son Brian tell tells the detectives that he and Veronica were worried that Tim was capable of terrible things' been very cautious for the past six months I've been keeping an eye out was anybody there always felt like maybe he was the kind of guy was going to have somebody like surveillance or something like that that raised red flags and piqued our interest a bitter divorce custody battles m
oney these are all motives for m we wanted to interview him obviously Tim he was a suspect to us at this time due to his relationship with Veronica police investigating the homicide of TV producer Veronica Boza are interrogating her boyfriend Brian Robinson I was freaking out like oh God oh my God he points the finger at Veronica's soon toe ex-husband Tim Boza we found out that the divorce was within a few weeks to a month of being finalized and that uh the divorce was going to be favorable to V
eronica Brian tells police Tim isn't happy about the settlement or the custody Arrangement when Veronica refused to submit to him to just being a split he then attempted to tarnish her as a mother with nothing to tie him to the murder Brian is released officers are dispatched to check his Alibi while detectives look in to Tim Boza we found out that he was a home remodeler and worked for himself basically investigators learned that Tim and Veronica's marriage became strained in the last year and
a half we found that Tim had uh hit a rough patch in his work some of his houses weren't selling he was starting to have money issues her life was taking off and going a really good direction and Mr Bose's life was doing exact opposite 12 months before the murder Veronica filed for divorce the reason they had started the divorce was the financial situation Tim had put the family in with this business business is basically uh going down to tubes he fought with Veronica over money there was sort o
f an issue uh between Veronica and Tim as far as custody and Tim was worried Veronica was going to take their son out of the country would Tim kill his wife to keep from losing his son we went to Tim's house to notify him of Veronica's death he didn't seem very upset didn't seem very shaken t did start to show emotion when he started talking about how to make notification to a son that his mother had passed Tim told us his son went to his sister's house Tim called his sister he told her what hap
pened to Veronica and he again became upset at the thought of having to tell his son what happened to his mother police asked him to come down to the station for an interview where they question him about his wife's personal life tell me about the sport for heres you doing the shows and you put in 14 16 20 hours a day started hanging out she just started acting weird and then I started paying attention more she fessed up I said okay tried therapy for a little while didn't work I moved out June 6
Tim stated that he was upset that they were going through a divorce and that it wasn't what he wanted had Veronica's relationship with another man driven Tim to kill has your relationship with your wife ever been volatile no was there ever any problems in the divorce our thing was was good you have any insurance that you're going to claim from this accident happen I don't know I mean I have no idea if I'm the beneficiary then sure the life insurance policy uh on Veronica was approximately $550,
000 Tim admitted that once they were divorced Tim would be taken off the life insurance as a beneficiary so he was 2 to 3 weeks out from losing being on the life insurance policy detective crumby cuts to the chase did you have anything to do with your wife smart I'm sure when asked if he had done it Tim reacted calm cool part of my technique in interviewing people I like to make accusations and statements to try to throw them off I'm sitting there calling you a murder you I think you all I mean
I don't know how to respond to him I didn't do it he came back at me and was adamant that he didn't Tim says the last time he saw Veronica was in the church parking lot at the custody exchange he gave us the exact route that he followed after he picked up his son and the different stops that he made Tim had said that he had gone to hardware store and a grocery store near his residence he provided receipts we had other detectives follow up actually to go to the store pull surveillance tapes when
police get a hold of the security footage they're stunned the receipts that Tim had given us match up the times on the surveillance video and we had already had a time frame of when the homicide happened so we're were able to narrow it down to where he was Tim was not there at the residence when it happened Tim is cleared as a suspect and officers have also looked into the boyfriend Brian's Alibi Brian and went to a a local store for a cold drink before he came to Veronica's house surveillance t
apes showed him at the store at the time he stated so we knew where he was during the time we suspect the homicide happened investigators are back at square one we don't have a known suspect I started getting frustrated you know anytime you have a homicide of this magnitude community members neighbors friends are obviously worried everybody was just really shocked and tried to comfort each other and try to understand what happened why the hell did this happen how did this happen who did it I wan
ted Justice for her you know I mean no matter who did it no matter what it was I wanted I wanted answers officers canvased Veronica's neighbors asking if they saw or heard anything unusual around around the time of the murder a neighbor stated they saw a light colored white or silver SUV or van in the alley right before the homicide they didn't know if it was involved or not they stated that it was gone before the police arrived did the driver have something to do with Veronica's murder is this
the lead police have been hoping for we started to have some pieces to the puzzle but at this point we didn't have the puzzle and we didn't even have the Border [Music] 2 days after Veronica Bo's murder police still don't have a solid suspect their only lead is a light colored SUV that was seen in the alley by Veronica's house right before she was attacked we try to narrow down whose vehicle that possibly could have been uh we were told that maybe a handyman that comes around so we followed up a
nd determined he had a T truck with few leads investigators looked to Veronica's autopsy results for insight the medical examiner said she was shot four times she had a defensive wound to her arm the last time was a shot to her head to make sure that she was dead so she was basically executed well is this a stalker is this a Hitman what is it and so everybody was on alert while the murder weapon wasn't found at the scene police do get one piece of good news technicians ran ballistic test on the
shell casin and that gave us a type of gun we were looking for it was fired from a high. 9 mm investigators decide to track Veronica's phone for further Clues when we have a homicide we like to collect electronic evidence we knew from family and friends that she had an an iPhone so we had our Tech investigator follow up on cell phone records and GPS records we were able to see uh that she'd gone to church and then came back home uh and then now that phone is missing police believe Veronica's att
acker took her phone the location of the cell phone was being recorded leaving the scene of the homicide traveling down the roads down the interstate was the signal leading police straight to Veronica's killer that was one key piece that really opened our eyes it was almost as if Veronica was helping us in our investigation but then the signal goes down so we thought that the phone had been destroyed powered off or just the battery died we requested records for her current boyfriend Brian we det
ermined that he was telling us the trth truth about where he had been what he had been doing we looked at the cell phone records and the GPS locations for Tim in relation to the homicide his cell phone was hitting on Towers along the path that he stated he took but something else about Tim's phone records jumps out to detectives we noticed uh multiple calls to one number uh during before and after the custody exchange police learn the number belongs to Cory cam Cory cam was a friend of Tim's the
y worked together they hung out together and they were very close he was friends with Veronica and at some point actually stayed with Tim and Veronica were the calls just routine conversations between two friends or something more Sinister Tim had told us that he spoke with his friend Cory but he just made it seem like it was just a matter of the fact not a long conversation but this was definitely a red flag dust but when police look closer at Cory they find Tim and Veronica's good friend has a
dark and troubling past we found out that he had a large number of assaults uh physical assaults against women toy cam prayed on women he was always playing women and trying to get money he had such a high opinion of himself he called himself big fan it's a major Revelation was it possible Cory had something to do do with Veronica's death maybe there was a personal reason between him and Veronica that we didn't know about that could have been related to the homicide we were just unsure at this
point we then got a warrant issued for Cory's cell phone data to show what Cory had been up to that day the results raise immediate suspicions Cory's phone and Veronica's phone were both hitting in the same general area uh as each other we noticed that uh the day of the homicide he was in the general area of St Edward Catholic Church which is where Veronica went to mass at that morning we then noticed that his phone was in the general area of the crime scene uh later that morning when detectives
track his phone's movement after the killing they make a stunning Discovery we notice that Cory Cam's device was in the area of the crime scene uh then heads back out towards Interstate 40 the route is suspiciously similar to the path Veronica's cell phone took we would conclude that the two devices are in close proximity to each other and that there's a good probability that the phone was taken by the suspect at that point upon learning that information we now started looking at Cory cam as a
suspect in the murder of Veronica kosza investigators come up with a plan to lure Corey into talking I was very nonchalant with them um tried to play it as we needed his help to clear his buddy Tim Cory agrees to meet with detectives he didn't think our radar was up in regards to him Cory confirms he spoke with Tim the morning of the murder it was a couple times I know I called but we I know I called on the way back in the Nashville he stated he was coming back from Kentucky from seeing one of h
is girls and that at the time he spoke with Tim he was passing the Portland area on the interstate where were you when you talked to him at 12:20 I was already back in town I went over my you know one of my girls' house and just chilled with her you know he went to a girlfriend's house in Nashville which was on the other side of town from where the homicide occurred so he put himself way away from the homicide location this was significant cuz it showed that he was lying about where he was then
investigators decide to set a trap one thing we had to do was put Cory's phone on his person and in his hand 100% of the time is that the best way to get a hold of you by your phone you always have it on you always you're like me man 247 I got the car charge of the whole deal we were able to get Cory to admit that he always had his cell phone with him and that nobody else had the phone that day and that's almost as good as putting a weapon in Cory's hand all right man um we appreciate you coming
and talking to us man but we got some problems what's WR we've already pulled cell phone records all right and what you told us is totally not what's your cell on record show he got fired up he was pretty upset pretty [Music] mad after Veronica Boza is found shot to death police have caught her old friend Cory cofin in a lie you need to start explaining while your cell phone and her cell phones hit I don't know all right I'm telling you man I ain't got nothing to do with this I'm not I a have a
nything to do with that I knew Veronica before I knew T I ain't got nothing to do with that that's what's crazy I came because I'm trying to bail my boy out from get some mess he started to get angry uh started getting frustrated you you want a lawyer before you talk to us or you want to talk there's nothing I can tell y'all I haven't done anything at that point we needed his vehicle and his cell phone in relation to the investigation and we went and obtained a search warrant for them when polic
e sees Cory's vehicle they notice striking details Cory had a champagne colored Cadillac Escalade a neighbor saw a light colored vehicle in the alley that day of the homicide we found a collapsible lunch boox we found gloves and clothing shoes and other uh items that we didn't really know how they related to the scene if Cory is Veronica's killer what's his motive Cory is definitely a dangerous person you don't know what he's capable of he was aoop paath but with no hard evidence against him pol
ice have to let Cory go releasing him at that point was frustrating obviously Corey was a top suspect at the time but we needed to do further investigation and one of the things that we did with Cory's records is we looked at everybody he talked to the day of the homicide one of the numbers that stuck out was around 12:28 in the afternoon so I called the number and the person on the other end of the phone stated he used to live across from Corey he had stated that he had cleaned a gun for Corey
a couple weeks prior it was a high9 MM Cory came to him and pulled it out of a red collapsible lunch pal and we found a red collap lunch pal in the truck of Cory's Escalade so it started to come together at that point investigators need to find the gun and connect it to Cory but they still have a long way to go with phone records placing him near Veronica's house at the time of her murder police confront Cory's only Alibi his girlfriend Jenny during that interview Jenny told us that Cory had bee
n with her that day from 12:00 to 12:30 because she fixes on lunch at that time it's the same time Veronica was murdered I showed her Cory's phone records and told her we knew she was lying detective cromy myself fully explained to Jenny that lined dur in a murder investigation she could go to jail at that point she backed off she actually walked away from us and she called her attorney I didn't know her motive for lying I didn't know if she was scared of Corey I didn't know if she was involved
in the homicide and complicit so we had a lot of other investigation to do and a lot more digging detectives still need a witness to place Corey at the scene of the murder we showed multiple neighbors an array of photographs of different vehicles and one was an Escalade they couldn't make a positive identification on what type of vehicle it was so ultimately we could use it it's another roadblock for police and more frustration for Veronica's family and friends it makes you mad that somebody wou
ld do something like that to somebody like her if felt Twisted it was like we couldn't get answers we were getting all these rumors what's the truth what is the truth what happened investigators need a break and they finally get one Jenny Cory's girlfriend was starting to contact the police department multiple times and wan to speak with detectives in relation to the case so when we interviewed Jenny the second time she decided to tell us what really happened I'm not sure what time he was at he
was at my house Sunday I can't be certain of the M now she couldn't provide an Albi for Cory she did State she saw him that morning but she was half asleep when she awoke up later in the afternoon Cory was now at her house after the time of when the murder happened you didn't go with him you didn't take no no no no I do not leave my house Jenny does make one startling admission that's very valuable to police to admitted that she stole her ex-husband's handgun and put it inside a red collapsible
lunchbox and hid it in her vehicle whenever I thought I could get arrested for it I was going to try to sneak it back whenever I went to go sneak G back it was Miss and the only person that need was it's a major discovery not only as Cory's Alibi shattered police now have a lead on the possible murder weapon we showed Jenny a picture of the red collapsible lunch boox we found in Cory's vehicle and she identified that as being the one that she put her handgun in after she stole it from her ex-hus
band she agreed at that point to work with us to prove that she wasn't involved in the homicide when detectives get the results from the analysis on Cory's phone they sense they're on the right track they were able to recover a picture of a 5.9 mm handgun it's the same type of gun that was used to kill Veronica the one shell Cas and we were able to locate on the scene had a greenish tint to it after looking at Cory's phone ammunition in the picture also had a greenish tint to it this was possibl
y the gun that that was used in the homicide we didn't know if Jenny gave it to Cory Cory stole it we didn't know so we dug through the police reports relating to her and her ex-husband and it just says that a hang gun was stolen when police contact Jenny's ex he confirms that the gun in the photo is his he stated it was the high9 mm that was stolen was this the actual gun used in Veronica's murder our uh main motive was to find ballistics that affirmatively tie the handgun that was stolen as th
e handgun used in the homicide to kill Veronica Jenny's X also tells police he used to shoot his gun on his property we searched everywhere trying to find evidence any shell casings that could have matched as we were about to wrap up our search our iD Tech actually found one shell casing and he dug a couple more I knew it could be very critical turning point in the investigation if it didn't match 3 hours later detectives received the ballistics report it's a match definitely was fired from the
same handgun it was the best thing we could have done and could have to tie the handgun to the scene without actually having the handgun but where is the gun that was used to kill Veronica before investigators can lay any charges against Cory they get an urgent call from Jenny she told the police Cory would plan a trip to Barbados he was going to leave the [Music] country police now believe Cory cam murdered Veronica Boza but Cory's girlfriend Jenny has told detectives he's about to flee the cou
ntry they need to act fast before he slips through their fingers we contacted Jenny again and asked her to come in and do a controlled phone call I asked Jenny to wear wire to see if Cory would talk about what had happened and also to try to get him to come back to Tennessee where we could arrest him Jenny is nervous but agrees to help police hey hey what's WR hey they're coming to arrest me Cory what do I do she stated that the police coming after her that we had a warrant for her they got some
sort of bullet and it matches the same thing exact match as one that they found at the crime zene she stated that the detectives were able to tie the handgun that she had from her ex-husband to him were to the homicide she said Cory they they know they know they fans not know they didn't not anywhere that don't matter that's that was an aha moment cuz we never released to him or anybody else the caliber of weapon that was used so we were very confident in all the evidence from cam which was jus
t overwhelming that he was a killer but it's what Cory says next that blows investigators away didn't touch I don't know what's going on Mr cam did make a statement you need to check with Tim and get with Tim for him to tell jany to call Tim call Tim that let us know right then and there that Tim was involved in the homicide it's a surprising twist had Tim been involved in Veronica's death after all surveillance was started on Tim that afternoon Mr Boza had a big motive he had custody issues in
his marriage we had money problems Tim had Financial gains from the death of Veronica Boza $550,000 in Insurance it would have turned his life around while Tim had motive to kill Veronica he didn't pull the trigger but would he have recruited the couple's mutual friend to do his Dirty Work police take Cory into custody then they close in on Tim officers were able to file Tim around and then once the warrants were obtained Tim was arrested during a traffic sty Cory refuses to speak to police but
Tim is eager to talk he tells detectives a tale so Twisted they can hardly believe it I'm sorry I lied everybody here there was a movie years ago they both had terrible wives mothers or whatever and they said what do this crisscross and just in just I said okay you know hey know we did the same thing it was a very crazy plan this homicide didn't make sense to me and how it played out uh it was just unexpected it was definitely bizarre when he told us what the plan was Cory was supposed to murder
Veronica and Tim was supposed to murder one of Cory's girlfriend's ex-husband the two of them got this idea from a Hollywood movie with the same type of PL the crisscross killing theory was strange of course Boza claimed he thought they were joking but I could see that Mr toam really talking it up and acting like Mr Big Man or Mr Hitman and they could pull us off the day she's she's murdered he called you and says it's done yes sir he did what did he say were he he just said that he went in the
house and she tried to run and he shot her when I talked to him it said that Cory said it's done which was obviously Dynamite evidence for us police learned Cory also had something more to gain from Veronica's death Tim promised to pay Cory 35,000 of the life insurance policy his wife was leaving him and it her he just had anger and jealousy issues of the victim he was a desperate man and he had the strongest motive of anybody Cory Cam and Tim Boza are tried separately for their roles in Veroni
ca's murder in court prosecutors put forward a theory of how the crime unfolded the morning of the of the homicide Cory went down to St Edward Catholic Church the only person could have told Coy cam where she was going to be that day was Mr bza well Tim runs errands to build his Alibi Cory follows Veronica home Veronica opens her garage door she pulls in to park Cory pulled right in behind her got out of his vehicle he was wearing a mask and gloves and Veronica was in her vehicle and saw this sh
e runs into the house Cory's chasing after her I believe they fight in the kitchen area and in the living room area she fought for her life she obviously struggle very hard to try to live Cory and Tim are both found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder Mr cam got life without Paro Mr Boza got a life sentence which means he'll have to serve 51 years before he ELD will Paro Veronica was definitely an unexpected Target I can't fathom Tim would ever do something like this he hired the Hitman h
e's just evil only a twisted person could pull something like this off he has no soul the truth behind what happened it just makes you feel sick to your stomach in losing Veronica we lost one of the most amazing human beings That Ever Walked this Earth miss her all the time it's painful the real tragedy in this case is all the families that were destroyed Veronica's son won't have a mother and father I remember as someone who was who you enjoyed working with and looked forward to being around I
think Veronica would want to be remembered as a loving soul that simple she was just she's just such a bright light and she would want that for [Music] everybody a woman devoted to her town she was the deputy County Treasurer away from the courthouse you saw a different person she loved to [Music] dance her life snuffed out in a Savage attack there was quite a bit of blood she had been beaten pretty severely she had to have been terrified she struggled at the end of her life she had no enemies n
obody had a clue who would do something like that police investigate several troubling theories is it a close friend that got into an argument with her there had been some shouting matches maybe she interrupted a burglary or a theft after months of false leads and dead ends the town was on high alert a stunning Discovery breaks open the case it added a new twist to the crime all of a sudden you realize maybe I don't know all my neighbors and points to a murderer in their midst I was kind of spee
chless at first I thought my gosh I mean you just can't believe [Music] it the tiny farming community of col Nebraska is one of the smallest towns in America with a population of just over a 100 people colon Nebraska is the very layback Community very close-knit family it's there I think that if you went there You' drive through and you go oh this is small many people would leave their doors unlocked their cars unlocked keys left in the ignition just a feel of safety that there's no threat but t
hen on June 30th 2003 police receive a distressing call around 6:42 in the evening dispatch indicated to me that they had received a report of a possible suicide a friend ended up finding her body across the street in her garage along with a gun he had called 911 and it was reported as a suicide Once I arrived the firemen on scene already were pointing me to a garage I walked in and could see the body of a white female that was laying on the ground there was quite a bit of blood and there was di
sfigurement to the head and face area so we could not recognize the victim a black handgun was found near her head there is so much blood on the scene investigators aren't able to determine the cause of death and need to wait for an autopsy to be sure the small black handgun didn't actually contain bullets and we didn't find any shell casings in the area the car had a smear on the driver's side and then I did find that there was a smear of what appear to be Blood on the walk-in door that went ou
t the side of the garage there was also what looked like blood spatter where someone stepped in the pool of blood there was a footprint impression that was taken that indicated that there was a second person there this was a suspicious death there were DNA swabs taken on her body and of her clothing that she was wearing at the time we noticed that her purse was located underneath her vehicle was this just a uh boted burglary or did the person have some other intention from the personal items in
her purse police identify the victim as 66-year-old Sharon Erikson Sharon was very well known it was shocking to us as law enforcement to see somebody that was a fixture in the community being the victim in this [Music] case born and raised in Nebraska's Farm country Sharon Erikson was a lifelong government worker Sharon worked across the hall from me she was the deputy County Treasurer she was excellent very honest I would put her against anybody in the state of Nebraska for knowledge when it c
omes to the office of the treasurer she would do anything for you gosh darn when it came to the office or anything she was always attendant and very very helpful always and 1998 after 37 years of devoted service Sharon retired away from the courthouse you saw a different person more relaxed she loved to dance and if anyone wanted to dance boom she was on the dance floor and boy she was so good at dancing I'm telling you what boy she could dance every dance until they'd shut the music off as a si
ngle woman Sharon lived alone but saw the people of colon as her family people used to go to the bar and have coffee well that one closed Sharon came over and she says I have a little front room in my house there would you come and remodel it and paint it for me she had me fix that room up and gave the locals a key for coffee had a coffee pot in there it was just somewhere they could go she didn't charge them that's the type of person that you're talking about police are at a loss when they real
Sharon was attacked just 50 ft away from the Gathering Spot she gifted to the town who could have wanted to kill her and why detectives expand their search for evidence to Sharon's home she lived in what used to be a grocery store and had converted to her house the other odd thing about Sharon's residence is that her garage was located across her house and so to get to her car she would have to walk out the front of her house and across Main Street what or who could have lured Sharon out of her
home and to her death in the garage that we did find some damage to the back door that appeared to be consistent with some forced entry there was a coal chisel that was found next to the door that more than likely was used we also did find that the phone line had been cut there was at least some planning on the attack someone was obviously trying to prevent her from calling for help inside there was nothing out of place when we started going room by room we found that there was a holster for a
small gun in her bedroom near the bed and the gun was missing that along with her bed not being made and the back door having damage and being PRI open we started to have a a picture in our minds that this may have occurred in the middle of the night our assumption was that there was a burglary she was alerted to the burglary because noise coming from the person cying on the back door that she got up out of bed grabbed her gun and went to investigate what was occurring before she was [Music] kil
led as investigators continue to process the scene they are interrupted by volunteer firefighter and Village postmaster Rick Hartman he was friends with Sharon he actually was the one that found her body Mr Hartman appeared to be a little more interested in the situation than some of the other firefighters that were there Mr Hartman had to be asked on several different occasions to stay behind the crime scene tape after it kept happening it really alerted a lot of us to why ises he keep doing th
is is there something else going on is there something wrong Rick's Behavior makes officers immediately suspicious so they approach him for an interview on site during the interview Mr Hartman had indicated that he was really close friends with Sharon when Sharon would leave town she would leave a key in her post office box for him to check on her house so he was trusted by her Sheron to come visit him every day when she'd come pick up her mail but Rick tells police he didn't see Sharon that mor
ning he was asked to check on her after a worried relative didn't hear from Sharon that evening Rick Hartman he had gone looking for Sharon Sharon was nowhere to be found Mr Hartman opened the garage door and he could see Sharon laying beside her car without prompting he indicated that it was a suicide that she had a gun knew how to use it but we were very confident that there was Foul Play involved when Rick is asked to make a formal statement his demeanor abruptly changes he said if you're goi
ng to arrest me arrest me otherwise I'm leaving I was taken back why why would he say that why would he do that we need to look a little harder at this person and find out what that was all about coming up new evidence reveals a disturbing detail she' been sexually assaulted I was definitely shocked small town gossip Sparks salacious rumors there may have been more than just a friendship there he was trying to hide additional evidence and just when detectives think they have the killer in their
sights it had to be him a startling truth is revealed I sent shock waves through the entire area I went what you got to be kidding [Music] me police investigating the murder of Sharon Erikson are speaking to her close friend Rick Hartman but when they ask him for a statement Rick suddenly ends the interview he was upset that he couldn't leave and finally just told the investigators that I'm going to leave and if you want to arrest me go ahead and arrest me that was pretty out of character and un
characteristic for somebody who had a friend that was just killed so that immediately caused investigators some concern the statements and odd behavior really pointed us in a direction towards the postmaster Mr Hartman gave his Alibi he was at home with his family and that was confirmed by his wife Rick never had any criminal record or had done anything wrong so there wasn't a great deal of focus on him any more than anybody else Rick's on the back burner for now but investigators will keep him
in their sights we didn't want to rule anybody out specifically but we wanted to cast a wide net while investigators consider their next move news of the murder the first one in 40 years travels fast the town of colon was buzzing I got calls bang bang bang I can't remember who called first I went what that's all I got and I just was dumbfounded I mean I just couldn't believe it when you hear of someone that you know and you knew for 25 30 years it's devastating everyone just shaking their heads
saying how can this happen how can this [Music] happen Sharon's death was a big loss for our community she had known so many people through her work through her friends and to not have her in the community anymore that always creates a hole everybody spoke well of her she was beloved by the people in the community we didn't know where to start looking so we tried to determine anything potentially that could have happened is it a close friend that got into an argument with her is it a neighbor th
at maybe didn't like her the day after the murder police canvas Sharon's neighborhood they question almost everybody that New Sharon about have you heard anything do you have any information that can help us and I said I have no idea no idea she had no enemies nobody had a clue who would do something like that it has to be someone that we don't know I mean it has to be someone that came from town while we don't have a lot of violent crime in the area there was definitely one family that lived ri
ght behind Sharon that came to mind as somebody that could have been concerning the investigators had made contact with uh Jim Mars he was an individual that would get into trouble here and there he wasn't real responsible he associated with people that were involved in minor crimes such as burglaries drug [Music] use asked what his relationship with Sharon was and basically it was just an acquaintance Mr Mars would see her occasionally outside of her house when he was going to the post office o
r on Main Street they would say hi he said he got in trouble by her a couple times for Mischief when he was younger and she would yell at him when we interviewed Jim Mars he didn't know anything about sheron's death and he was so sorry that she died Jim had been in Kansas doing a roofing job after he got back from Kansas he eventually uh went to Wahoo drank some beer with a friend attempted to go to another bar at that time it was after closing time and he drove the back roads home to colon he e
stimated he got home about 1:30 in the morning stayed up watched TV drank a pop and then eventually went to bed his mom confirmed the time that he came home everything seemed to be okay with his story investigators don't know the exact time of Sharon's death so the 24-year-old remains on the suspect list before police leave Jim gives them a tip Jim had indicated that there was a trucker that always had interactions and always seemed to be bickering with Miss Ericson the truck driver may have par
ked a little bit on her property and she'd get upset about it he might have his engine running on his truck and it would bother her and she would bring it to his attention and he would not necessarily comply with her request it was no secret the two didn't get along we were gaining information from friends that Shar Sharon had had disputes with this man detectives must now determine if a run in with the trucker turned fatal a lot of the community members felt that the truck driver was doing thin
gs to antagonize her and to cause more problems between them that was something that was public because there had been some shouting matches some vocal exchanges about the fact that this truck was running all night some of the people in the community who knew that he wasn't overly fond with Sharon they kind of rumored him to be a suspect maybe the frustration amongst the two had just finally boiled over it just seemed suspicious I know the investigators had attempted to reach out to the truck dr
iver in question and W unable to contact him police do all they can but can't track down the driver's whereabouts today's technology is there's cameras everywhere uh you're using your cell phone at the time of this homicide that kind of Technology wasn't prevalent we didn't know if we were going to find that person is Sharon Ericson's murderer On The Run that's concerning and that was on the minds of probably all the citizens in this area and probably the scariest thing for law enforcement in th
e community is is that person likely to offend again [Music] police hunting the killer of 66-year-old Sharon Erikson have a new suspect a truck driver she had clashed with several times had something escalated from vocal argument to some other level now detectives fear the trucker has fled the [Applause] area door too ask people if they saw the truck driver no one had any information about him and it didn't appear we were any further along than we were the night we got there and the town was on
high alert there was a murderer out there it's hard to contemplate hard to C the plate a week after Sharon's murder detectives received the autopsy results the report did indicate that the death would have occurred some time most likely that night or the early morning hours of the day that she was found the medical examiner indicated that there was no gunshot wounds that the gun had not been used in the commission of the crime the pathologist ruled the cause of death to be asphixiation along wit
h blunt Forest trauma it was found that Sharon had been beaten pretty severely she had also been strangled she also suffered some broken ribs and had some defensive wounds on her hands from fighting off her attacker the autopsy contains one more disturbing detail she had a small vaginal tear as well which indicated that she'd been sexually assaulted I was definitely shocked that there was a sexual assault involved totally unexpected it added a new twist to the crime which further led to more que
stions it really makes you feel for the victim she had to have been terrified for those few minutes that she struggled at the end of her life during the autopsy her underwear were taken for possible Examination for DNA this being pretty early in the DNA process in the early 2000s we waited 2 days later on July 10th the trucker is back in town and police bring him in for questioning he's not overly Cooperative he was reluctant to give any details about where he was what he was doing detectives pr
essed the trucker on his relationship with Sharon the truck driver wouldn't have called Sharon a friend he felt irritated by the way she would overreact I believe it's how he he tered it he did not have a good relationship with her but the truck driver vows he's no killer he told us he was out of town at the time of the homicide he was in Wyoming or Colorado he was hundreds of miles away and had receipts to prove it officers were sent off to cooporate the receipt he was asked for a DNA sample an
d a polygraph and he refused was the trucker hiding something it's just one of the things that you can add to a list of items that if there's too many on that list it's a problem with nothing concrete linking the trucker to the homicide detectives have to let him go law enforcement officers were in the process of interviewing and chasing down aliis we've been following up with people but there was not a lot of new information coming in and not a lot of credible information with Sharon's murder s
till unsolved the community remains on high alert before this happened was probably one of the safest places you'd want to be everyone's on their toes you know you drive up you lock your car you lock your house you watch everything there's a lady that just retired 60 some years old who could do this it just was a shock to the whole County as a community you want resolution ution or you at least want to know why it happened and how can we get some justice out of this although the entire town is m
ourning the loss of Sharon Rick Hartman seems to be taking an unnaturally Keen interest in the investigation Rick would ask us about what we were doing about other leads and then he would insert his thoughts his behavior was a little more pushy trying to get as much of information as Rick could is this just a concerned friend who wants to see how the investigation's going or is there something more to than that despite his odd behavior Rick still has a solid Alibi and the investigation stalls we
decided that we all need to get back together and just have like a brainstorm session and say what do we do that one of the things that we talked about is at the time of the homicide early 2000s meth had been a problem people would steal and hydr ammonia from tanks and then use that to create their own methamphetamine some of these people were heavy addicts very dangerous and involved in a lot of crimes one of the things that was being discussed with the anhydrous tanks was they were not too fa
r from Sharon's home so could she have seen something could she have spotted something said something to to make someone believe that she knew who they were and what they were doing did Sharon confront them did they attack her to keep her quiet we might be looking for somebody who's manufacturing and selling methamphetamine who may have been in Colon on that particular night 5 weeks after Sharon Ericson is savagely beaten to death detectives investigate whether she had been killed by a criminal
gang manufacturing illegal drugs near her home it's an easy target No cameras in that area we were aware that Sharon kept an eye on Main Street she a lot of times had information about suspicious people something going on after hours there Sharon was one that if she saw something that she didn't think was right she wasn't afraid to stand up and say something maybe she saw something that she shouldn't have she interrupted a burglary or a theft as we talk to people around town they also indicated
that that might have been one of the reasons why Sharon may have been [Music] murdered investigators had talked to local suspects who were involved in the manufacturing of methamphetamine people that we had arrested Ed previous to this incident and then people from the Metro areas most of them have pretty extensive criminal records and they're heavily addicted so the level of cooperation with somebody who's addicted to methamphetamine is not going to be very good it creates a a difficult picture
to paint we were not able to generate the type of evidence or leads that we really would hope for we as a department were frustrated with things not happening real fast and the way that you always want the canvas fails to yield the information police were looking for as does the investigation into the trucker as the investigation unfolded the truck driver was eliminated he was miles and miles away from the incident we contacted the establishment where he got fuel and it wasn't a phony receive w
ith this the driver is fully off the suspect list after doing the first set of interviews and looking at potential suspects the investigators really weren't able to focus on anybody that would be so mad or somebody that would want to sexually assault Sharon or to kill her so it it kind of left a lot of question marks where do you go what do you look for um there's just a lot of [Music] unknowns we just don't know what's going on do we feel safe or do we need to worry everybody had their ideas wh
o did this and I think it just kept going and going and going people didn't have a clue but they wanted to talk about it there was a lot of discussion amongst the community members as to what was going on a lot of rumors floating around one of these rumors that starts circulating has to do with one of Sharon's good friends and a familiar name to detectives because of Rick's close contact with Sheron small town rumors begin to surface that there may have been more than just a friendship there man
y of the community members had mentioned rumors that Rick Hartman and Sharon had been having an affair we start to wonder was there more to their friendship maybe in a romantic way there was talk this was something that was being discussed so it's not that heart of a thought process or big of a leap to say could he be involved police talked to Rick again this time at the sheriff's office he was cooperative he somehow I think liked the attention but that changes when detectives ask Rick some very
pointed questions law enforcement actually asked him if there was a romantic relationship between the two of them he was immediately offended and he denied that Mr Hartman appeared to be very distraught he said he was just friends with her that there was no romantic relationship could this sexual assault that appeared in Sharon's autopsy actually of being a consensual encounter with Rick that question certainly seems accusatory those things are not comfortable but that comes with a job you got
to do your job Rick was questioned in detail and really scrutinized on where he was what his involvement was there were a number of times he said we got to look somewhere else cuz we were wasting our time on him he became agitated and wanted to go home Rick stands by The Alibi he gave police back when they first questioned him 7 weeks ago at the crime scene Rick was home with his wife at the time that we believe Sharon was killed the investigators went and cooperated his story with his wife agai
n we really had no reason to believe that Rick's wife would not disclose if he were gone at that time even though there were a lot of things that kind of pointed to him he had a pretty good Alibi with no hard evidence against Rick detectives have to let him go but not before getting one thing we collected DNA from Mr Hartman we talked a little about it and he says but Don I didn't do it but again you always had that doubt you know what happened there was just speculation and suspicion 2 months a
fter Sharon's murder detectives finally received results from the forensics lab they had tried to do analysis on some of the items which were collected at autopsy to come up with a DNA profile will this be the break detectives have been hoping for we were really needing something such as that to come through for us [Music] 2 months after the murder of Sharon Erikson police hope the DNA results they've been waiting for will confirm who they suspect is her killer there was quite a bit of speculati
on that it could be the postmaster in town we were contacted by our state patrol lab they believed that there was something there but that they could not separate out a complete profile for comparison it was kind of frustrating to know that there may be something there but that maybe it was a dead end that we couldn't get past without a DNA match we as investigators knew that if that was the case it would be very hard to solve this crime but detectives aren't giving up the Nebraska Medical Cente
r could test smaller quantities than the state patrol lab could do so we made the determination that we would take our evidence and send it into the other lab and have more DNA testing done results will take months to come back and with a killer still on the loose nerves in small town colon Nebraska begin to fray when the investigation went on and on and on I thought come on we've got to find something we had a murder back in ' 69 or ' 68 that was never solved D in Wahoo and of course right away
you think gosh we got to find out who did this could it be someone we do know there can be a mistrust all of a sudden you realize maybe I don't know all my neighbors then police receive an unexpected tip that points back to the man they can't seem to rule out the estate of Sharon Erikson had a garage sale and Rick Hartman was at the garage sale Mr Hartman went in and purchased her mattress and that was suspicious to us if there was some sort of uh maybe DNA evidence or something that would be o
n the mattress that would be of interest to law enforcement by somebody purchasing that and maybe getting rid of it then it would be something that we would no longer be able to go back and utilize at a later time did he want the mattress because they did have potential sexual activity on the mattress maybe he was out there trying to hide additional evidence every time the investigators seemed to close a loophole with Mr Hartman something else happened he kept drawing attention to him it was jus
t another thing that brought him back on radar law enforcement asked him about his attendance there and what he bought he actually denied that he bought her m so then that caused law enforcement some concern on why would you buy it okay why if you did buy it why would you lie about it Mr Harman agreed to undergo a polygraph so he cooperated in that aspect but he seemed nervous on edge jittery the results from that polygraph were inconclusive it left a lot of questions unanswered it just added a
little fuel to the fire every chance that we could get that he could clear his name seemed to be something that elevated him to the next level the people in town were thinking it had to be him and scared to go to the post office in a small community where pretty much everybody knows everybody it's easy to point fingers it's easy to to cast outs I golf with r Hartman that week in our golf league and he was just nervous he was just edgy and just scared a number of us may have felt like Mr Hartman
had acted inappropriately or suspiciously we just didn't have enough to really push it over the top there was nothing that we could charge him with we had no evidence that he committed the crime other than he kept interjecting himself in the investigation detectives hope that definitive proof will come from the medical center forensic lab the last piece that we didn't have back yet was the DNA evidence we got a phone call and they were able to isolate a DNA profile they actually located a sperm
cell on her clothing which was a positive breakthrough for us the only person that it could have been from would have been the person that had sexually assaulted her and presumably killed her we felt that there was more hope in solving this than we had had for quite a while because at least DNA is something that we can link to a specific [Music] person armed with this DNA profile police immediately zero in on their top suspect we did send in Rick Hartman's DNA came back and not a match Rick's na
me is finally cleared from the suspect list once and for all scientific evidence is what it is it confirmed everything that he was telling us there was no romantic relationship we were focused on an individual that had absolutely nothing to do with the homicide I apologize for any stress we caused him or his family but if it wasn't Rick then who killed Sharon one of the big concerns that we had is is that if this was a stranger that was maybe passing through town or someone completely not associ
ated with the community or with uh Sharon that it potentially could go unsolved without any additional evidence uh coming forward investigators are back to square one but they come up with a new game plan we try to determine who else should we go out and collect samples from who else were potential suspects who could have done this and who would provide those samples so we can send them in and see if there's a ratch it was just a matter of being able to find that one person out there in the worl
d that that belonged to we're trying to get that needle and hay stack 10 months after Sharon's murder in April 2004 police get the results of their DNA Dragnet the lab got a confirmation that they uh had a match we now know who killed Sharon it was the Breakthrough that we needed I sent shock waves through the entire [Music] area almost a year after the murder of Sharon Ericson police have matched DNA from the crime scene to her killer the DNA came back and it matched Jim Mars James lived near n
earby to Sharon he was one of the people that police talked to early on Jim had known Sharon nearly all his life he had helped her out when he was younger doing some yard work or snow removal I was kind of speechless at first because he had no problem providing his DNA to law enforcement I was shocked to find out that James Mars was the perpetrator we had never seen that type of violence out of him once we had a DNA match with Jim we needed to figure out where the holes in his Alibi are when we
originally interviewed Jim Mars he said he'd been out at a bar in waho and later went home the bartender believed the timeline that Jim had given us uh was fairly accurate Jim's mother stands by her story too I think those aliis were solid but they didn't cover him for the whole evening what I think happened is he was home and left he lived right across the back alley from Sharon's house and even if he would have been home that doesn't mean he didn't leave his house the determination was that we
did have enough evidence to proceed with the arrest and prosecution of gy we went to his residence very early in the morning and he answered the door and we place him under arrest he was shocked that he was being arrested that he was considered the suspect we brought him in to interview him police try to establish a motive that was one of the unique things in this case to find out and even just try to resolve that big why why without that even happen he was reluctant to give any details there w
ere a number of times he said I don't remember he sobbed at times he said he didn't have anything to do with it denied that he had any involvement when asked about the sexual assault he stated that Sharon was an old lady and he wouldn't do that and from that point on he stated he wanted an attorney and we stopped our question questioning we had filed charges for first degree homicide sexual assault news of his arrest hits the community hard this was very unexpected I thought my gosh something's
wrong here I mean you just you just can't believe it I was hoping that they'd catch someone that I did not know the family the reaction in town was split there was definitely a thought that oh it couldn't have been him that did it and then there were supporters that well we thought maybe it was him while investigators are confident that DNA evidence will be enough to get a conviction they get even more ammunition against Jim we had at least five inmates come forward with information that Mr Mars
had confessed to them he struck her strangled her killed her these inmates were going to testify against him that he had confessed to them with this information investigators piece together what happened the night of the murder Jim was at the bar like he said he had few too many drinks at some point went home he wasn't able to sleep from what he told the other inmates he was uh looking for some money he thought Sharon maybe an easy target he was just going to burglarize her house he climbed ove
r for Sharon's fence in the backyard cut her phone line so she wouldn't be able to call anybody Pride her back door open and ended up kicking the door in in order to go see if he could find her purse or find some money that was laying around once that back door was kicked in Sharon woke up he was confronted by Sharon who was holding a gun and threatened to shoot him at that point if he didn't leave Sharon went to call 91 one and her phone line was dead she kept her cell phone in her car for emer
gencies Sharon ran across the street to get into her car Jim chased her down caught her and ended up attacking her he punched her and then eventually choked her to death there was a sexual assault he refused to talk to the inmates about that had he not sexually assault her and we didn't have any DNA uh we would never have it solved when you have a sperm cell that was a perfect match there's nobody else that could be responsible the chance of this being another person was out of this world with t
he evidence we had this was an a slam dunk for his conviction on August 15th 2005 Jim Mars pleads guilty to Second deegree murder he is sentenced to life with no possibility of parole when I found out there was a sex ual assault that went along with the slain I was just furious what kind of person would do something like this you've got to be kidding me and the community was appalled I was happy that we finally got closure he did it he's locked up Sharon was the one that suffered the ultimate lo
ss and that's what the investigators put in all those hours of work for and give her her last uh voice Sharon's presence is missed in Colon to this day do not have her in the community that's tough there's pain and sadness Sharon loved her community yes she did she was very good to my kids and very good to me and my family really a good [Music] lady a brilliant free-spirited college student Barbara was very creative she was always very theatrical I always thought she was a genius because everyth
ing came so easy to her is found brutally murdered in a mountain Canyon we could see five or six gunshot wounds there was some speculations that she had been sexually assaulted a clue left by the victim leads to surprising suspects he finds this note addressed to all the Mormon's roommates that she was leaving to go be with her people just how bad was this relationship with her roommates and what could it cause anyone to do and a series of bizarre twists he's telling us the bullet holes were in
a triangular pattern and that's a sign of of a possible Satan killing somebody took her up there into the woods this was potentially a sacrifice until the evidence reveals a killer no one saw coming there was DNA from the soil that was underneath her body it was like finding a needle in a Hy stack a big hay stack it just didn't seem like somebody who would kill somebody it was just the biggest shock you could fathom [Music] Provo Utah a small college town in a picture perfect Mountain setting Pr
ovo sits in a County south of Salt Lake it's where the Brigham Young University campus is at it's a very safe Community during the 197s uh Provo was definitely a place that was very low on crime and uh you didn't have to worry about locking your doors at night that innocence is lost on a cold March afternoon in 1974 when a Grizzly Discovery in a nearby Canyon sent shock waves through the community on March 11th 1974 the solake County Sheriff's Office received a telephone call from a power compan
y worker who started walking up from the power plant and as he was cutting through some brush he came across a white female with gunshot wounds to her back the crime scene is essentially a couple miles up what we call Big Cottonwood Canyon investigators race to the canyon where the utility worker leads them to the body we could see five or six gunshot wounds uh all of them look to be in her back or in her arm the shot placements look like execution type shots and it looked like she had been ther
e for a few hours at least with the way that her body was positioned we felt like sexual assault was part of this crime scene her arms were tucked up underneath her uh that told us that she was in pain that she was fearful of what was happening to her we're looking for things like drag marks but the ground around the body was not Disturbed it looks like where she was is where she was killed detectives are struck by an unusual detail her clothes were folded neatly and piled toward WS the top of h
er head we suspected that the victim was probably trying to buy some time as she was being told to undress she was stacking her clothes in this neat pile more evidence is revealed when they turn the victim over we found some possibly 38 caliber bullets that were recovered after they had gone through the victim's body we also picked up some soil and logged it into our evidence room the detectives back in the 70s they didn't have the DNA that we have in today's uh crime scene investigations they f
ocused on all kinds of trace evidence like the soil fibers hairs May link the suspect to that scene while the body is taken to the morg detectives interview their only witness the only thing we really knew at this point was a utility worker had found this body and we were able to clear him fairly quickly but we didn't know who the victim was we didn't have any other real suspects to go with at that point we got a hold of the local media let them know that we had a a white female Jane Doe that we
were trying to identify later that night we received a telephone call from the Brigham Young University Police Department that they had received a missing person report of a white female earlier that day the missing person in Provo matched the description of our Jane do the missing person is 22-year-old student Barbara Jean Rocky but police need a formal ident identification to be sure she's also their murder victim we made a phone call down to a couple of the guys that were hanging out with Ba
rbara Jerry hicker is the one that filed the missing person's report Jerry is also a student at BYU and he was a friend of Barbara's and some of her roommates Edward fiser and Jerry hicker went to the morg to do an identification on our Jane do Edward and Jerry confirm the murdered woman is Barbara Rocky police now face the difficult task of informing her family at the time of Barbara's murder my parents were living in California my mom found out first from the police and was crying and from the
n on Nothing Was the Same it was just the biggest shock you could fathom it's like what you knew of the world has just imploded born in 1952 Barbara had an idilic childhood growing up in Meno Park California Barbara was very creative she was always very theatrical I always thought she was a genius because languages and uh music came so easy to her Barbara was always rooting for the underdog if somebody needed help she would open doors for them I mean always doing something very sweet when the ti
me came to go to college Barbara's Choice reflected a growing spiritual interest Barbara was always searching for a religion Barbara was interested in the Mormon religion my parents were very happy for her to go to Brigham Young because they felt that she would get the safe group of friends and the good education and religion that she required when Barbara went off to college she seemed up and happy and like things were going well investigators asked Barbara's loved ones if they can think of any
one who might be responsible since she was away at college and out of our super Vision we had no idea what she was doing we just didn't know what kind of friends she was making in speaking with the family they just had no idea on who could have done this to her with the family unable to provide leads detectives hope her College friends might be able to point them in the right direction Ed fer was dating one of uh Barbara's roommates when ask uh if he had any idea who would have done this to Barb
ara he just had no idea he felt Jerry hicker might have more information about Barbara than he would Jerry hicker is also a student at BYU and Barbara seemed to spend lots of time with him Jerry described that he was just devastated that this had happened to Barbara he knew Barbara very well police asked Jerry what led him to file a missing person's report just hours before Barbara was found dead he said that he had gone skiing the day before H used Barbara's car to take the keis back and then h
e met up with Barbara on March 11th at about 10:00 in the morning and gave the car keys back with plans to meet up later on to go grocery shopping after leaving Barbara Jerry spoke with one of Barbara's roommates and then he went to study at the library later that day Jerry and Barbara had plans to grab some food but she didn't show up as Jerry left the BYU campus he walked past Barbara's house and he didn't see Barbara's car so he continued towards his home and as he was passing the Park Plaza
apartments and sees Barbara's car sitting in the parking lot which was some place that Barbara would have never parked her car he said that was kind of odd why it would have been parked where it's not normally parked inside the car he finds this note that was left by Barbara it's addressed to all the roommates that basically said that she had found her people that she was leaving to go be with her people I think that he looked at it as a suicide note and so he took the note over to the roommates
and that raised enough suspicion to report her as a missing person in order to clear Jerry as a person of interest detectives drilled deeper into his timeline Jerry gave his timeline up until uh that evening and essentially once he found that letter and he came and talked to us Jerry reported her missing he found the note he was cooperating with detectives so he really wasn't somebody that fit as a suspect when detectives ask Jerry about any conflicts Barbara may have had he mentions one unexpe
cted Source Jerry tells investigators that the roommates and Barbara kind of have an off again on again relationship Barbara jeene Rocky lived with seven other women from Mormon families Barbara sometimes like to do things for shock value and this is not a place people go to to shock others there was a little bit of intimidation between Barbara and some of the girls Jared said that things had gotten so bad that he had uh tried to find Barbara another place to live was it possible one of Barbara'
s roommates could be the culprit behind her death just how bad was this relationship that barbar jeene Rocky had with her roommates and what could it cause anyone to do coming up detectives uncovered dark secrets the majority of the roommates were were very religious he had a relationship with Barbara Jean and had been dating one of her roommates the love triangle could easily turn deadly when there's jealousy involved he had pulled a dagger on her and said he was going to stab her and links to
a terrifying killer she described him as a great Warlock and maybe even a devil worshipper there's women all over the American West that are going missing and being discovered dead this guy turns out to be probably the most famous notorious serial killer of all time until the evidence reveals the horrific truth he was not who we suspected and so to learn that he was responsible for killing her was very [Music] surprising after 22-year-old college student Barbara Rocky is found shot dead police h
ave discovered she had clashed with her roommates and bring them in separately for questioning the roommates had only known her since January when Barbara moved into the house and going to their predominantly Mormon uh School Barbara really didn't fit that mold she was from California and she was more of a free spirit she was uh somebody who was very opinionated and was not a conformist Barbara Jee Rocky's roommates say that she was kind of dating around not necessarily saving herself from marri
age and it was generally not accepted the roommates were very religious they attended church Faithfully I think Barbara would probably experiment with different uh religions just to expand her knowledge and at times would do things that would maybe scare them barar Jam's roommate said she was um kind of into witchcraft so she was attracted to to that uh lifestyle a little bit they didn't want to be a part of Barbara's life so they would keep her at arms length had one of Barbara's roommates lash
ed out and done something Unthinkable being more of uh the typical LDS BYU student you just wouldn't think that somebody like that could kill somebody but until you do the the leather work on it you can't clear them detectives work to verify the roommates IIs once the investigators cooperated all the stories and looked at the timelines they were able to clear the roommates as not being somebody that had killed Barbara as detectives continue asking the roommates about Barbara they learned some st
artling new information investigators found out through the interviews of the roommates that Barbara would carry a 357 revolver pistol some of the roommates described Barbara as being maybe a little bit paranoid where she would um think people were following her in 1974 people weren't just walking around with guns the way they do today so if a 21-year-old college kid was walking around with a 357 Magnum pistol who was she afraid of detectives get more surprises when they search Barbara's vehicle
when the investigators looked in the rear of the vehicle and they found ammunition and targets things that you wouldn't expect in a female BYU student's car did Barbara feel like she needed to have a gun did she practice with the gun was somebody after her we weren't sure what all of that meant at that point the car was fingerprinted but there was just nothing of good forensic value that we could come up with at that time with more questions and answers detectives turned their attention back to
the note Barbara's friend Jerry had found earlier in Barbara's car they found a victim shot multiple times and then someone else finds this note in her car that says she's leaving to be with her people and what's the purpose of this the investigators were wondering if the note was even authored by Barbara so they do some handwriting analysis on it and send it out to have that done while detectives await results the autopsy report comes in at that time they came up with six Bullet Hole entrance
wounds the shot in the arm was probably the bullet that killed her because it went back into the chest and hit some vital organs and the final wounds were when Barbara was turned over and on her stomach and the entrance wounds were in her back being shot in the back is a good indicator that the person is known by the by the as salant he doesn't want to see their face uh when he kills them at the autopsy the medical examiner took swabs of both her rectum and her vaginal area uh to try to preserve
any evidence that might be there the autopsy report indicated no definitive evidence that she had been sexually assaulted with the autopsy offering no new leads investigators turned their focus to any romantic relationships Barbara may have had they were talking with the roommates more about other men that may be in Barbara's life and uh they came up with a guy named Richard they knew that Barbara was was very much infatuated with him she spoke about him all the time even called him uh her boyf
riend as police focus on Richard they make a disturbing Discovery they had asked if Richard had ever been violent towards Barbara or and Barbara had relayed one story that Richard had pulled a dagger on her and said he was going to stab her this was not the only alarming story Barbara's roommates relay to detectives about a month before Barbara was is murdered she reported that her gun was missing and and that raises all kinds of concerns she reported it to campus police and to my knowledge she
never got that gun back a 357 revolver would have fit with the potential murder weapon that killed Barbara she had expressed concern to her roommates that the person that had taken the gun May Ed that gun on her and the roommates just kind of dismissed it but now that Barbara was found shot to death the roommates were concerned for themselves as well having that information uh the investigators really wanted to find out who Richard was at this point all we have is Richard's first name he's willi
ng to maybe take a dagger and stab her we strongly felt that he could have been responsible for her [Music] murder three days have passed since student Barbara Rocky was discovered shot dead in big Cottonwood Canyon and police are hunting a man named Richard who they believe is her boyfriend this could be the person that killed Barbara but all we have is Richard's first name and so we're kind of running into a dead end with no way to identify their potential Prime Suspect detectives catch a luck
y break how of the blue a guy named Richard finder calls into our department and tells us that he knew Barbara Rocky Richard finder initiated contact offering his services to um basically try to help them solve this case first question we had was is this the Richard that we've been looking for as investigators prepare to meet with Richard finder they learn everything they can about him we find out that he's in a 30s and he's a self-proclaimed psychic he lived in California Barbara was from Calif
ornia so that was one of the connections that they had we also found out that 8357 uh pistol was registered to him which is obviously the same caliber that we're looking for Richard finder arrives at the Sheriff's Office and detectives Begin by asking him about his relationship with the 22-year-old college student Barbara heard Richard find her on on the radio talking about the occult Barbara had called into the radio station uh they ended up exchanging phone numbers Barbara had gone up to see h
im at his hotel and I think Barbara at one point even felt that Richard was her boyfriend Richard claimed that it was just a spiritual relationship that he looked at uh Barbara not in a physical way under further questioning Richard mentions something that gets the detective IV attention the place that he was staying at was very close to the uh mouth of the canyon where it was that barber jeene was found detectives cut to the Chase and ask Richard where he was on March 11th the day that Barbara
was killed he tells him that he was in Salt Lake at the time of the murder he said that he had gotten up and had some breakfast and then he went over and helped a friend do some construction work on a house all day long and then he went back home and uh went to sleep on the couch detectives set to work checking out Richard's Alibi the guy that Richard finder was staying with did confirm that Richard was with him in the evening but he could not confirm the times that Richard told us about during
the daytime with holes and Richard's Alibi detectives dig deeper into his claims about his relationship with Barbra our investigators talked to Barbara's therapist and she just really got the impression that Barbara was in love with with Richard the therapist reveals another way the relationship was less innocent than Richard made it seem Barber described Richard as a great Warlock and maybe even a devil worshipper I think that the satanic uh and the Witchcraft it's not too far-fetched to think
okay somebody took her up there into the woods this was potentially a sacrifice when police confront Richard with these allegations his response is even more alarming he's telling us that he's having these dreams and and that she was shot in the back in a triangular pattern and uh that that's a sign of a possible Satan killing or devil worship Richard also told us that he had a vision that the murder weapon was also thrown into water how would he know that we didn't have the murder weapon so tha
t really raised a question to us we're wondering is this guy confessing to us is he telling us about our crime scene he has all of this knowledge is this guy the one that killed Barbara that day when you start putting all of these things together it made Richard finder a pretty good suspect despite the circumstantial evidence stacking up against him detectives need something more concrete so we collect all of his weapons for ballistic test with the projectiles that we located from Barber's body
we received the results from the ballistics test and they were not a match and that pretty much blew up most of our case with Richard finder detectives pin their hopes on the results of the handwriting analysis on the Note found in Barbara's vehicle maybe she wrote the note under dress maybe she was forced to write the note that could be a significant clue especially if it's determined that our victim didn't author the note it's like someone's writing a suicide note for someone else the handwrit
ing analysis came back and it showed that Barbara was the one that had written the note the letter itself seemed to be a valid letter to her friends and several people said that's Barbara's handwriting the investigators concluded that maybe uh Barbara was thinking about moving home and she was just explaining that in the note at this point we're starting to run out of leads as the investigation stalls Barbara's family is rocked by another tragedy my dad would call the police practically every da
y when nothing was coming to fruition and he he died like wasin a year after she died it killed my [Music] father and we had so many key relatives die still wanting to know what happened to Barbara detectives never give up on the case and a year later in 1975 they notice a disturbing pattern of crimes there's women all over the American West that are going missing and being discovered dead college co-eds with dark hair were found murdered and the serial killer was certainly the big topic of conv
ersation a surprising arrest changes the whole course of the investigation in 1975 a Utah State Trooper makes an arrest west of Salt Lake City the suspect was arrested for a kidnapping case and some of the evidence in the vehicle definitely could have had something to do with Barbara's murder as well the driver's name is Ted Bundy this guy turns out to be probably the most famous notorious serial killer of all time is he the one that killed [Music] Barbara a year and a half after the murder of B
arbara Rocky the invest mation is sparked back into Life by the arrest of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy more and more that police start investigating Ted Bundy the more connections they find to missing and murdered women all over the country in 1974 Ted Bundy was also in uh the Utah area going to school at the University of Utah Barbara jeene fit Ted Bundy's profile she was a college student she was a brunette and she was the age that Ted Bundy seemed a Target Ted Bundy had a reputation bein
g a very Charming Man you know he was a good-look guy and uh was kind of a smooth talker Ted Bundy would act like he was hurt and asked for some assistance from a female and that would have fit right with the personality of Barbara she would have helped Ted Bundy if he had approached her with Barbara fitting the profile of Bundy's victims detectives connect with the FBI the investigators were able to get a hold of a timeline uh that the FBI had prepared find out what his whereabouts were on Marc
h 11th 1974 when the investigators looked at Ted Bundy's timeline they found that he had an ironclad Alibi for that day because he was in Washington committing another murder with Bundy cleared the barber Rocky investigation grinds to a halt the investigators had done everything forensically that they could they had done all the interviews that they could they had looked at all the suspects that they could and the case just went cold once the case was cold um we pretty much accepted that it was
not going to be solved when a case goes cold it it definitely affects the family every bit as much if not more than the the investigator they just want someone to be held accountable for their daughter's death the case lies unsolved for 30 years while barbar family yearns for answers the hope and the drive to crack this case someday was powered by losing so many family members that were enraged and wanted justice so we had nothing to lose by trying in 2005 Barbara's loved ones make one last push
for justice I asked Mom I said do you want me to try to open this and she said said yes because I need to know before I die I was a fairly new homicide detective and my phone rang and it was one of the family members saying hey my my sister was killed back in 1974 our mom's getting up in years and she'd really like to know who killed her daughter the family would expect us to just do what needs to be done to solve their case and you can't put a price tag on this level of Justice digging in to t
he 30-year-old Case Files detectives attention is drawn to one suspect in particular the self-proclaimed psychic Richard finder I was not convinced that law enforcement had closed the door all the way on Richard finder I wanted to look into Richard further uh because the timeline to me wasn't Rock Solid and I wanted to try to look more into the the forensic end of it DNA and and the ballistic stuff has come a long ways since 1974 as I'm looking through each piece of evidence I'm trying to figure
out if that would have any forensic benefit to having tested while evidence from the original crime scene is sent to the crime lab investigators dig deeper into Richard's version of events as I started looking at at Richard's Alibi um I I spoke with some of the same people that the investigators had spoke with previously as we reinvestigated and reinterviewed these people information that wasn't known back then was revealed what I learned was that Richard had been uh dating and seeing a friend
at Barbara's Janelle but then Barbara also found that Janelle was getting closer to Richard finder than barbar was and there was some animosity from what I understand regarding that learned that sometime very close to the murder Richard had left town with Janelle Bach and Richard and Janelle became boyfriend and girlfriend and that was kind of a blow to to Barbara that really kind of stuck out to me Janelle came back uh to Salt Lake for three or 4 days around the time of the homicide with Richar
d finder and they were staying at a house just west of the mouth of the canyon where bar was found had Barbara confronted Richard about Janelle only for the encounter to turn fatal because of this uh relationship between Janelle and Barbara and because Richard finder supposedly had guns and then because of his Witchcraft and the possibility of human sacrifice Richard finder was up there on the list as a potential suspect investigators try to bring Richard in for another interview unfortunately w
e found that Richard finder uh had passed away so really the only Avenue I had was to go H talk with Janelle was Janelle the only living person who knew what really happened to Barbara I didn't see any information in the case File where Janelle Bach had really given a good interview about Richard finder and so that was the place that I wanted to start Barbara was upset that Janelle had essentially taken Richard F so when they came back there's this potential triangle and some jealousy uh it plac
ed some suspicion on Janelle anytime an investigation reveals some sort of a love triangle that can easily turn deadly when there's jealousy involved and all of a sudden the whole thing shifts from one guy to the person that's least [Music] suspected three decades after after barbaraa Rocky was found murdered in a Utah Canyon Cold Case detectives want to speak to Barbara's former roommate Janelle who had been dating Richard finder the psychic Barbara had fallen in love with Janelle was looked at
because of this triangle and this dispute and Richard finder was aware that there was this jealousy detectives want to know if either Richard or Janelle had the opportunity to kill Barbara they were back in Salt Lake for 3 or 4 days on a ski trip during the time of barbar's demise but they never went skiing and they were staying at a place that was uh close to the crime scene where Barbara was found Janelle was able to give me a timeline that she was with Richard that day uh and the hours that
she wasn't coincided with the the times from the initial investigation it was confirmed with others that she was very sick when she came up here she didn't even leave the house and she was being taken care of by Richard finder uh during the time of the homicide and was not in that area Janelle boach he was able to give me enough information to make me feel that he definitely was not the killer of Barbara and she was not a suspect any longer undeterred detective scour through the files from 1974
looking for details the original investigators may have missed as I was going through the case file uh Jerry hicker name kept popping up so Jerry's early role in the case was uh he was one of the last people to allegedly have seen Barbara jeene at about 10:00 in the morning he reported her missing so he really wasn't somebody that they were looking at as having a role in her in her death they were really good friends that came through in the investigation but I wasn't satisfied about him not bei
ng a suspect detectives reach out to Barbara's former roommates asking them about Jerry some of the roommates told me that you know Jerry just didn't have a lot of friends and Barbara was accepting of everybody Jerry just kind of latched on to Barbara and I think uh Jerry had more romantic feelings for Barbara than Barbara did for him I think that the roommates kind of looked at Jerry as basically kind of a stray pet that people were taking care of he just didn't seem like somebody who would kil
l some somebody when investigators dig into Jerry's life after Barbara's murder they make a disturbing Discovery Jerry had been uh accused of raping in the Provo area after Barbara's murder when I found that Jerry was arrested for a sexual assault I want to know could Jerry have been the one that killed Barbara Barbara's roommate had been away from Jerry for a long time in the interviews uh I found out that Jerry really had an obsession with guns that he helped Barbara find the 357 that she boug
ht he took her out showed her how to shoot the 357 Jerry would always tell Barbara about how to load her firearm leaving one of the cylinders in the revolver uh empty and then looking back and seeing that Barbara was shot five times is that relevant in this case we actually looked at the Em's report and we couldn't really determine if she had been shot five or six times there was the opinion that it was six but it could have also been through the re-entries and fragments could have been five as
I'm going through these interviews and I'm listening to what the roommates are telling me he was a rock solid suspect at this point detectives race to track down Jerry hicker I went to Jerry hicker House in Washington I explained to him that I was looking at the barar rocky case Jerry immediately said uh you'll have to talk with my attorney and that he wasn't going to give me a statement so at that point I had nothing else to do but leave with Jerry refusing to cooperate investigators must find
concrete evidence to link him to Barbara's murder we wanted to see if with uh today's technology that if there was a sexual assault that there might be something suitable for DNA testing I was pretty excited to find that a vaginal and Reckless squab had been taken on bar because by now we were utilizing DNA testing and I thought that I was going to be able to match those up with DNA that we got from whatever suspects were in the case File investigators hope that the swab test results will Point
toward Jerry they didn't know about DNA in 1974 and they packaged everything in plastic because it was packaged in plastic it ruined any DNA that was in any of the biological material that was taken I was devastated I thought I was going to be able to solve that case uh really quickly but that's not what happened fearing that the case will go cold again without solid evidence investigators gamble on another way to obtain the evidence they're looking for I took items that had not been tested yet
from the original evidence to our crime lab to have them test it the original crime scene evidence includes a soil sample from benath Barbara's body I was just uh more or less taking the dirt out to have a sample taken in case some seminal fluid had migrated down into the dirt there was still the belief based on the scene and everything that there was a possibility of a sexual assault when I got the results of the test surprisingly we got a match that there was DNA from the soil that was underne
ath Barbara's body after 30 years had DNA analysis finally identified Barbara's killer and what came back as a result of that testing was [Music] shocking it's been 33 years since student Barbara Rocky was found stripped and shot in big Cottonwood Canyon Utah in 2007 DNA and a soil sample from under her body finally reveals her killer finding that DNA uh in the soil was like finding a needle in a hay stack a big hay stack the results come in and we've got a match and it's Jerry hicker just that
little bit of information was all that we needed to link Jerry hicker to this crime scene he was not who we suspected initially and so to learn that he was the one responsible for killing her was very surprising on November 6th 2007 56-year-old Jerry hicker is charged with the first-degree murder of Barbara Rocky when I first found out that the killer of Barbara was Jerry hicker I was surprised because I heard that he was just sort of a guy from next door it was a shock I never thought it would
be solved as prosecutors prepare for their da in court they pieced together a theory of how Jerry killed Barbara so our belief of what happened was Jerry hicker knew that Barbara may be leaving because that next morning and he was aware of the letter before he brought the car back I think what tipped him over the edge was he wanted Barbara uh sexually and her rejection and her indication of leaving Jerry was more than he could take hicker winds up talking Rocky into going up big Cottonwood Canyo
n with this scenic view one more time before she leaves and when they get to this spot Jerry's trying to put the moves on Barbara and she doesn't want to have anything to do with Jerry that way hicker takes out a gun and in Rage he tells her to strip down and she was probably folding the clothes in order to buy herself a little more time is pleading for her life she's just trying to get anything into Jerry's mind to not do this and then he shot her apparently while she was standing up and then s
he went down and then he shot her four times in the lower back region after the murder Jerry tried to cover his tracks Jerry has to drive back to the campus he gets rid of the gun and he's trying to come up without Alis he knows he can't park the car right there at Barbara's house so he takes it over to the Parkway Plaza Apartments and that's where he decides he's going to use this letter making her a missing person this was a a young woman who trusted somebody they're supposed to be going to a
nice spot and instead she's shot and murdered I felt so horrible knowing that she had gone through something like that she was probably so scared scared nobody deserved to die like that nobody I believe that Jerry was being the concerned loving friend and that may have put some thoughts in the investigators mind that there's just no way Jerry could have done this beneath the facade just seemed to be rage and uh anger that he'd been rejected I think Jerry hicker was a sexual predator they got awa
y with a a lot of crimes we were so glad and so [Music] grateful that the detectives had worked so hard it boggled my mind that they could solve it after 34 years despite an airtight case against Jerry his declining Health leaves prosecutors with a new dilemma when I went to arrest Jerry he had been diagnosed with cancer he was just the shell of a man we didn't feel that his lifespan was much of 5 years if that so we worked out a deal that he would plead to a substantially reduced charge of mans
laughter and that he would be sentenced to the prison for 5 years figuring that that would be a life sentence going with the plea deal was my mom's um decision she wanted him to say in his own words that he did it she wanted those answers Jerry hicker serves 3 years in Utah State Prison and in 2014 5 years after pleading guilty he dies of cancer I bet you he had been looking over his shoulders all these years I felt that his ill health was Barbara's Justice this is somebody that wasted away not
only his life he ruined so many people's lives by his selfish act Barbara didn't deserve this she had so so much ahead of her but the family does have some answers that's the goal in my investigation I think that uh in this case Justice was served and that the family uh got answers that they would not have otherwise had the thing I miss most about Barbara was the times that we used to blast Beatles music and sing and dance for hours and just being kids you know I remember her then Barbara was su
ch a giving person I feel inspired by her uh ability to give of herself and um and I try to emulate [Music] that for e for for for foree spee for for for for
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