6 HOURS OF TRUE CRIME STORIES! (Documentary Marathon) | Real Stories

[Music] a virginia prison is in the hands of the inmates [Applause] the terrifying escape frees six killers from death row as the men run free police race against time to track and capture the fugitives before they kill again [Music] [Music] mecklenburg correctional center is the pride of virginia's prison system completed in 1977 at a cost of 20 million dollars it is state of the art the see pod of building one houses virginia's most dangerous criminals the death row inmates the double gated entrance or the sally port is the only way in and there is no other way out [Music] officer ron sawyer is informed a bomb has been found in c-pod he is ordered to bring a van to the front of the prison immediately so the bomb unit can move and dispose of the bomb prison policy strictly forbids opening both gates at once but this is a matter of life and death [Music] [Music] [Laughter] the bomb disposal team dressed in protective gear rushes from the buildings [Music] the bomb is smoking one of the men sprays the device with a fire extinguisher apparently to keep it cool [Music] the greatest crisis in mecklenburg's short history has been resolved through the quick actions of a few brave men the bomb is safely outside the prison gates but the crisis is only beginning [Music] what seemed like a bomb evacuation had actually been an escape the guards are now captives and six of virginia's most notorious killers are free a big manhunt underway for six convicted murderers who broke out of a state prison in mecklenburg county virginia during the night the inmates were all on death row the six overpowered guards with homemade knives and drove out with a prison van as news of the escape spreads it sends shockwaves through the state's law enforcement authorities it is the first time death row inmates have escaped in u.s history in this program some of the names have been changed the virginia state police and the bureau of criminal investigation officials are awakened from their beds the governor of virginia issues a state of alert to the army and air national guard [Applause] the director of the investigative division of the state police james lettner is brought in to supervise the investigation the governor was extremely concerned for the safety of any citizens that these escapees might come in contact with he had been briefed on the the background of these individuals he was aware that each one was awaiting execution for murder or mass murders and he was extremely concerned that we apprehend these individuals as quickly as possible investigator leitner arrives after the killers have been on the road for over 30 minutes he immediately establishes a search perimeter [Music] because the inmates are driving a prison van police will increase the search area every hour you got six of them out of the yard right now okay guys i assume you're in total we're in lockdown now we're locked down we're starting to get a final head count ahead letner meets with the warden to learn about the men who escaped it's been about a month and a half the news isn't good the six fugitives have been convicted of killing a total of 17 people the two most dangerous escapees are the briley brothers james and linwood the brileys ran a vicious richmond area gang police suspected they had slaughtered anywhere from 11 to 20 people earl clanton killed a virginia woman just months after being paroled for killing an elderly new jersey woman raped and murdered two elderly women [Music] derek peterson killed a supermarket manager after robbing him of six thousand dollars [Music] willie leroy jones murdered and robbed an elderly couple he asked the wife to pray for him before shooting her and setting the house on fire these are the men who escaped from mecklenburg's death row most of them killed more than once and would likely kill again if given a chance it never occurred to me that we would not capture the escapees i felt confident we would it did occur to me that it would be an absolute miracle if we did so without any great harm coming to some innocent citizen a full-scale manhunt is in effect officers from all over the state are dispatched roadblocks and barricades are set up helicopters with infrared sensors try to pick up the heat of human bodies hiding in the woods police know the longer the killers run free the harder they will be to recapture letting her tours see pod where the inmates were housed officers conduct a search of each cell they find no clues to where the escapees might be heading but they do find some makeshift weapons the inmates were very clever in both manufacturing and concealing weapons in their cells one search that we conducted revealed a table leg that had been used to conceal a hacksaw blade one shank and some other contraband the inmates have been out for over an hour and investigators know they are armed with knives and since they had access to guard's protective riot gear they fear they might have guns the state mobilizes every possible resource to capture the fugitives a death sentence already hangs over each of the escapees these men have nothing to lose officers comb the perimeter searching for any sign of the killer's trail [Music] letter hopes the guards can tell him where the inmates have gone [Music] perhaps during the breakout they heard something that could help direct the search the inmates never spoke of where they were headed fully the guards know nothing the guard's lack of information makes letner suspect they may have helped the prisoners escape from his years of experience as an investigator for the state police at other prison incidents leitner knows that prison guards can be susceptible to bribes in 1984 virginia prison guards had a starting salary of under thirteen thousand dollars even college campus police were paid more guards complained they were often assaulted by the inmates the intimidation and low pay affected their morale first of all let me say this to everyone as letna begins interviewing the security staff he learns tensions at mecklenburg have been rising for the past two years since the execution of frank coppola convicted of beating a woman to death in a robbery frank coppola steadfastly maintained his innocence but after being on death row for five years he stopped his appeal and asked the court to execute him coppola's execution signaled a controversial change in attitude he was the first man in virginia to face the electric chair since the death penalty had been reinstated six years earlier when coppola was executed something went terribly wrong his head in one of his legs caught fire human rights advocates accused prison officials of torturing him and so among the inmates coppola became a martyr frank j coppola was executed at 11 27 p.m in the manner prescribed by law [Music] fears had been growing among the death row inmates fears the state would embark on a rash of executions author joe jackson when coppola was executed i think that the other death row prisoners started to see that that they too could be executed beforehand appeals to drag dime all of a sudden here's this guy that that all of the other death row prisoners look up to and he's the first to go and at that point the other death row prisoners said this could happen to me fairly quickly two months before the breakout an inmate on death row sent an anonymous tip to the state assistant attorney general [Music] according to the informant a bomb was being constructed as part of an escape plan the scheme also involved an exchange of uniforms with the guards [Music] this information was relayed to the warden who ordered two shakedowns officers methodically searched every cell on death row but found no bomb making materials or anything to indicate a bomb was being constructed jim lettner finds it difficult to believe the guards were ignorant of the plan he suspects one of them may have actively aided in the escape an escape freeing six of virginia's most dangerous men over an hour after the escape police in western virginia mobilize and search the area around mecklenburg's prison in a hunt for six escaped killers as the minutes tick away they struggle to maintain their search perimeter police begin to fear that if the escape killers slip beyond the perimeter innocent people might die but it is so important that you remember every single detail no matter how unimportant it may seem to you inside the prison james leitner questions the guards fearing one of them helped the inmates escape everyone else remained and desperate to find any clue as to how the breakout occurred and where these dangerous men might be how the escape unfolded [Music] five guards stand watch as the condemned men of c-pod take their daily exercise [Music] willie turner and another inmate approach an officer telling him they want to go back in early one of the men claims he has a knee injury the other says he wants to use the restroom this is against prison policy state police investigator james lettner it was a mistake to allow those two individuals to go back separately from the others if one inmate went back then they all were supposed to go back the reason for that is that by taking those two inmates back early it took two of the correctional officers off the recreation yard and back to the cell area lessening the number of eyes that were available to watch the remaining inmates as they return from recreation to their cells now the ratio of guards to prisoners is disrupted [Music] in the yard there are only three officers left to watch over the remaining inmates all right guys let's do it kind of go in let's do it [Applause] the other inmates are escorted to their cells the guards seem unconcerned they are outnumbered three to one the correctional officers assumed that nothing was going to happen that that everything was fine that they had a secure operation and that they they simply didn't have to follow these rules [Music] had they been more vigilant they would have noticed a plan is already in motion a plan whose success or failure depends on one man earl clinton [Music] the plan also relies on the guard's complacency they do not bother to count heads [Music] the inmates bunch up and start to push distracting the officers unnoticed clanton slips into the guard's restroom his job to wait for his signal a ruthless killer clanton was chosen as the man to make the first strike in 1980 he stabbed an elementary school librarian eight times in the head he then took the belt from her coat and strangled her to death because they didn't count heads the guards have no idea clanton has disappeared leitner's report would later indicate this was a breach of security protocol it's difficult to believe that when you're dealing with individuals who have everyone murdered at least one person and in some instances multiple murders that the correctional officers would become complacent and feel that they didn't have to count these individuals or or know where they were at every moment it's difficult to believe that that would occur but it did in this instance the guards escort the inmates back to the day room they never notice one of them is missing [Music] [Applause] [Music] a guard tries the restroom door but it's locked the lock door should have sent up red warning flags in such a situation prison policy dictates they should call maintenance and all inmates be placed in their cells the guards don't do that police are beginning to panic it has been nearly two hours and the fugitives have not been spotted the officers are now working a wide perimeter they know the larger the perimeter the easier it is for the inmates to slip past them police are on the lookout for the van used in the escape but have no idea which direction to search james letner continues his investigation by questioning nurse rose clark it is customary for nurse clark to draw the water from the guard's restroom before she distributes the inmate's medication unbeknownst to her this is where earl clanton is now hiding [Music] nurse clark notifies the guard he acknowledges the problem but does nothing all right get these boys lined up for their medications [Music] nurse clark decides to distribute the medication without water as she has done in the past as she is making her rounds one of them complains his toilet is clogged he creates a diversion distracting the guards from what is really going on officer hunter joins nurse clark as she continues making her medication rounds to the other pods in the building the escapees were con artists they they were shrewd in the in the ways of the street and and how they could get around these correctional officers they had observed from from the moment that they entered the institution that certain rules were not being followed and it played right into their hands at mecklenburg building one is broken up into three pods a b and c cpod is divided into two sections with a control booth separating the sections officer hughes the man who controlled cpod was rick hughes electrically activated locks give officer hughes control over who enters and leaves death row [Music] [Music] hughes tells lechner that one of the inmates got his attention it was joe giaratano who was housed on the pod's left side giaratano asks hughes to pass a book to inmate james briley who was on the pod's right side [Music] linwood bryley and his brother james received death sentences for seven murders in one case they repeatedly raped a woman within earshot of her common-law husband and their five-year-old son then killed the three of them officer hughes leaves the door to the control booth ajar as the prisoners had seen him do dozens of times before he has no idea the inmates are already arming themselves with knives there was a fellow by the name of willie turner he was kind of a genius as far as figuring out how to make weapons from the things around him in the prison cell and how to hide them and he would basically strip metal from around the toilets or the sides of the door or something like that and um and sharpen it and make a knife out of it convicted of killing a jeweler in 1978 and sentenced to death willie turner never finished fifth grade but he learned to read and write in prison he claimed to have made a key for every cell he ever occupied the guards suspect he is behind the plan to escape [Music] bursts from the restroom hits a button of control releasing the other inmates [Music] the prisoners take control of c pod in barely three minutes each of the guards relate how he had been taken hostage and stripped of his uniform the inmates take the only defense the guards have their night sticks along with their watches rings and money the guards are hog-tied and shackled with their own handcuffs [Music] blindfolded they overhear the inmates discuss how they need to capture someone in authority everyone else just relax the senior officer is watch commander lieutenant mark johnson reconstruct [Music] the very first time you're involved leitner's report indicates he was in building three when he responded to a page [Music] building three located on the opposite side of mecklenburg houses the shipping department please call 161 lieutenant johnson lieutenant johnson is asked to call the extension of the c-pod day room [Music] the phone is answered by one of the guards held hostage lieutenant johnson has no idea the guard is being held at knife point see pod left i need you right away the guard tells johnson he needs help with inmate jaratano who he says has been wounded in an altercation lieutenant johnson [Music] johnson calls the shift commander and orders him to report to c-pod [Music] nurse clark finishes passing out her medication to the rest of the inmates in building one the exit is through this locked door unfortunately officer hunter has misplaced his key he decides to return to c-pod unaware it is now in control of the inmates [Music] hunter walks right into their arms hunter is taken down to the pod's lower tier where he joins the other hostages the conspirators need his uniform [Applause] they force hunter to strip to his underwear then blindfold and hogtie him the inmates know the security procedures and they make the system work against itself [Music] they got the other guards to come to podca simply by faking emergencies they needed assistance with inmates so and so who was not taking his medication or resisting one thing or another by creating the illusion of a fellow correctional officer in trouble the inmates lure other guards into cpod one by one they then capture them and take their uniforms [Music] nurse clark is beginning to wonder what is keeping officer hunter when a guard finally arrives she is relieved she has no idea her terrifying ordeal is just beginning in western virginia six convicted killers have escaped from death row and have been on the loose for over two hours [Music] investigators have no leads to their whereabouts police are frantically searching a wide perimeter using every resource available they struggle to maintain it desperate to contain the inmates [Music] virginia state police investigator jim lettner continues gathering information for his report by interrogating the prison security staff hoping they will provide some leads to where the escaped inmates are headed each officer recounts his terrifying ordeal [Music] one by one they are taken hostage the inmates used their uniforms as a disguise to lure more officers into the trap the guards tell leitner james briley wanted to kill some hostages i think we have to kill a few of them there were too many briley said he was afraid they would become unmanageable willie turner one of the inmates talks briley out of it they had agreed there would be no murders derek peterson returns with nurse clark [Applause] they take her to a cell nurse clark is alone when earl clanton appears clanton had been convicted of killing two women and now he has his eyes on nurse clark surrounded by convicted killers bent on freedom or revenge the security staff doubts they will live to see mourning the screams of nurse clark stir them to anger but they can do nothing linwood briley joins earl clinton as they begin to molest the nurse wilbert lee evans stops the men willie turner reminds linwood to remember the plan it has been 20 minutes since lieutenant johnson received a report about an emergency on death row he begins to wonder what is happening in cpod he sent the shift commander to help out but he never reported back johnson investigates the situation himself the stairwell doors lock automatically behind him come here the inmates threatened to kill johnson if he does not do as they order once the inmates no longer have any use for them the hostages fear they will all be killed [Music] it has been three hours since the escape and still there have been no sightings of the fugitives authorities begin to fear they've slipped the search perimeter if that is true a lot of innocent people are in danger as the prison guards continue their account jim lettner still hopes to find one detail that will lead him to the killers in the main control room officer cindy smith had word that an inmate was injured but no one had called the paramedics during the past hour several officers and supervisors had gone up to death row [Music] none had reported back officer smith begins to worry [Music] the inmates on death row have taken all the guards in seat hostage having all the uniforms and money they need it is time to make good their escape and get out of building one [Music] they moved the hostages to a janitor's closet at the end of seaport [Music] james briley grabs a television set somehow he would have to pass it off as a bomb now that the inmates have control of cpod they have to get out of the building at the center of building one is a main control room which controls the door to the outside the inmates have to gain control of this room in the main control room officer smith is still waiting word from the officers dispatch to see pod officer smith then she receives a call it sounds like lieutenant johnson he tells her a man is being sent to relieve her by having her supervisor who was a hostage call her and tell her that she would be relieved of duty by another guard she didn't question who the guard was [Music] peterson and clanton now dressed in guards uniforms head for the main control room [Music] officer smith has no way of knowing the officers sent to relieve her is derrick peterson [Music] the prisoners now have control of all the doors to building one [Music] but there is only one way out of the prison compound the sally port james briley forces lieutenant johnson to call for a van at the bottom of building one we need both vehicle sally ports open he claims they have an emergency the van must be brought around to the main sally port willie turner has an appeal pending and volunteers to stay behind and guard the hostages in the c-pod control booth joe giaratano who also stays behind pushes a button opening the stairwell door the rest of the conspirators disguised as guards troop downstairs to the loading dock lieutenant johnson is no longer needed and so the watch commander is imprisoned in the building one stairwell they leave behind one of their own in the control booth to open the door and let them out of building one they lock officer smith in a closet on their way out the six escapees raid the room full of riot gear wearing helmets to further hide their identities they place the television on a stretcher throw a blanket over it and exit building one for months prior to the breakout the inmates leaked a story about a bomb being built in c-pod [Music] so when james bryley warns the officer in charge of the van that they have a live explosive device and it might go off the terrified officer completely believes him linwood briley sprays their bogus bomb with a fire extinguisher and it appears to be smoking [Music] [Music] the escape has taken less than two hours to execute [Music] and now six vicious killers are roaming free [Music] it has been over three hours since virginia prison officials were awakened by terrifying news six death row inmates have broken out of mecklenburg correctional center a state-of-the-art escape-proof facility all police have is a widening search and no leads [Music] james lettner reports that none of the guards conspired in the escape they are guilty only of errors in judgment each era by itself would not have been enough but taken together they enabled six condemned men to escape the most pressing question on leitner's mind is where the killers are headed between them the six escapees have been convicted of killing 17 persons they've been in and out of prison most of their lives and now they are free men officer lawrence harrison of the warren county north carolina sheriff's department on patrol far outside the virginia authority's search perimeter notices a white prison van at the time i thought it was just correctional people could transfer because they do that at night and they came by they waited me and i waited them and they kept going the prisoners have slipped the perimeter and officer harrison has not yet been informed of the breakout the escapees realize a white prison van would be easily spotted as their euphoria from the escape wears off they begin arguing about where they should go what they should do with the van someone suggests they hide the van in the woods and cover it with branches but that would take time and the six are getting nervous while driving through warrenton north carolina the town of about 1 000 people they find a grove of trees it looks like a good place to leave the van the escapees split up [Music] the riley's tuggle and jones go one direction [Music] clanton and peterson go another the men get lucky finding some sweat clothes hanging outside on a clothesline they ditch their prison garb [Music] while police continue to search the perimeter around the prison the inmates are running free to the south of their search area the fugitives have been on the run for three and a half hours when a north carolina highway patrol officer discovers the prison van 211 central i'm stopping to check out a suspicious van in the back of the schoolyard it's 30 miles from mecklenburg it had been driven into some trees behind the marion boyd elementary school parked near the playground the van is hardly inconspicuous [Music] officers from the warrenton police and sheriff's department approached the prison van [Music] [Music] investigators find the riot gear the prisoners used to disguise themselves along with a television set they passed off as a bomb [Music] unfortunately they find nothing to indicate which direction the escapees are heading [Music] the riot gear can furnish his scent for the bloodhounds certainly certainly we're going to call around a certain area yes excuse me i think we might have a break back at the prison letter gets word a hospital orderly had been carjacked at knifepoint by two men in uniform latner suspects these were two of the escapees the orderly is lucky to have escaped with his life when investigators examine his car they find a prison shank similar to those used in the escape in the back seat police know the men have now split up and two of them are on foot the virginia state police prison emergency teams in the north carolina highway patrol take over a motel and set up a command post because the fugitives have crossed state lines the fbi is called in special agent james trotter is awakened in the middle of the night the phone rang my wife answered it handed the phone to me it was wayne waddell an agent down in danville virginia which covered the prison at mecklenburg wayne said something like uh jimmy uh i got a problem we got a problem six guys have broken out of death row here the fact the escapees split up would make them harder to find but if they were on foot they couldn't go far investigators adjust their search perimeter vectoring in the location and time the van had been abandoned with the location and time of the attempted carjacking it's just a matter of connecting the dots going from point a to point b and seeing how far ahead of you they are and trying to outsmart them and beat them to the next place they're likely to go and be there waiting for them representatives of various law enforcement agencies meet to set up a task force coordinating the search is robert pence special agent in charge of the charlotte fbi office because of the magnitude of this incident the response from law enforcement i would say was massive we had every fbi agent in the eastern part of the state along with support that we sent from the headquarters in charlotte we had we used aircraft we used dogs we used corrections officers in other words it was a door-to-door search it was a field type search and while all this was going on communications were being sent to enlarge the search to prepare the rest of the sector and the rest of the country to be aware of these people and and be alert for them special agent pence needs more information the names and addresses of their next of kin records of telephone calls they had made the identities of persons with whom they were authorized to communicate [Applause] what we did simultaneously was search records to try to identify associates relatives neighbors anyone who these individuals might have tried to contact if they got out of the warrenton area police set up a tip line pence dispatches agents to interview the fugitives friends and family not just to gather information but to warn them that the killers are on the loose [Music] we believe that they were still in the area i mean we had no indication that they had left so the perimeter was kept tight and we kept looking for them but thoughts or feelings creep into you that perhaps they did escape then what the police fear most happens a man reports his truck stolen the truck a five-year-old ford ranger was serviced the day before and is full of gas within moments officials from the department of corrections the highway patrol sheriff's deputies and the local police swarm over the property searching for any clue that might have been left behind [Music] the man tells investigators his truck would be easy to identify it has personalized license tags with the letters p e i one police order an all points and put out for the pickup investigators can't be sure whether the killers had all fled in the truck or whether some stayed behind lurking in the backyards of warrington [Music] special agent pence so initially it was to try to contain them and then it became a national search so while all this was going on while the physical search was going on communications would be sent advising the rest of the country about what happened here that we had the largest breakout of death row inmates in u.s history and we needed to apprehend them very quickly the new perimeter has just been shattered now that the escapees have a vehicle the search area extends for hundreds of miles up the east coast as dawn breaks the day after the escape police set up a fortified perimeter around warrenton north carolina roadblocks are established and every driver is questioned [Music] search teams are organized every available law enforcement officer is recruited police bring in tracking dogs to follow the escapees scent starting in the area immediately around the van a pattern search fans out like ripples in a pond covering an ever wider area requiring more and more manpower police comb the woods and search out buildings anywhere the escapees might hide after several hours of searching investigators know only that the fugitives had split up some of them may have stolen a truck but police were no closer to finding them than when they started [Music] this morning the residents of warrenton north carolina wake up to see helicopter shots of their town on the national news [Music] at the prison officials attempt to answer the questions of a frightened public at this point in time our primary concern is the uh recapture of the inmates who are at large at this point and we are cooperating with the fbi with north carolina with a number of other authorities in an effort to do that [Music] fred patton district first sergeant in the north carolina highway patrol you could all but chart it like a fog bank as the fear rolled across the four counties from warrant and outward and as the sightings increased people became more frightened the fact that they were in their midst six people that had killed 17 folks had murdered them including a five-year-old child and among their rapes was a 76 year old woman they begin to arm themselves warrington residents scramble to buy weapons and ammunition citizens are terrified to learn six desperate killers are loose in their community virginian pilot reporter tony geron mata there was a lot of tension a lot of fear i remember people talking saying they had their guns and you know if anybody came on their step they would shoot him talked to some of the merchants in this little town apparently got cleaned out of guns and there was no ammunition to be to be bought residents barricade themselves in their homes aware the fugitives have disguised themselves as guards they are wary of police officers and answer their doors with weapons in hand special agent robert pence and we had a lot of fear in the neighborhood of warrington where they were supposedly or possibly still contained people were were extremely afraid and scared and people were going around door to door making announcements that lock your doors lock your cars a lot of people didn't sleep there for a few nights 300 sheriff's deputies state troopers and highway patrol officers join in the search hoping to ease the public's fears warren county sheriff's deputy lawrence harrison at that time with debits is what few we had we made deliveries for the old ladies that were called up to the grocery store or something we would pick it up and carry it to them because they were scared to come out how many people are in the search right now i don't know the number the media clamors for any information about the investigation [Music] the anxious public wants to know where the fugitives might be laying low until dark well that's a possibility it's easier to move and not be detected what do you do in that case [Music] earl clanton and derek peterson traded the guard's uniforms for some sweat clothes clanton kept his guards jacket but ripped off the patches [Music] the two fugitives walk into a coin operated laundry having spent a sleepless night on the run they are hungry and thirsty they had just been to a convenience store where they bought a bottle of wine and some cheese commander of the prison emergency response team or pert happens to be driving by the laundry he spots a man wearing a coat the coat is the same color and cut as a mecklenburg guard's uniform certain this is one of the escaped inmates the officer decides to arrest him before he can leave the laundry he hopes to catch him by surprise ma'am get out get out go go turn around get your hands up clanton and peterson were out of prison for no more than 19 hours they didn't go far and now their freedom is over the two men concede they expected to be caught because they were lost [Music] turns out it was a convenient place to be arrested the coin operated laundry is only a half block from the county jail they found two of them there they thought maybe the rest of them would be there so if we had fear before when the van was discovered we had a tremendous amount of fear whenever two of them were apprehended right in town so during that early two or three days the mood was was very serious and the people were very concerned very scared we knew at that point was going to be a complicated search because they weren't all looking out for each other and they weren't together and maybe two of them were a little more half-hearted in this escape and now we had to find the ones that really intended to go the route and where they were going investigators debate the possible whereabouts of the other four escapees to special agent trotter the briley brothers are at the top of their list the briley brothers killed repeatedly for no apparent reason they killed women they killed pregnant women they killed little children they killed grown men and they killed in very brutal and grisly ways and apparently had absolutely no remorse for any of the crimes for which they were convicted trotter fears that unlike peterson and clanton the briley brothers won't give up without a fight police are in a desperate race against time today to find four killers who they fear may kill again the capture of two escapees in the town of warrenton north carolina only intensifies the sense of fear in the region on the second day of the search police scour a north carolina campground after a woman reports she saw two of the convicts jogging across a field officers fan out through the woods emerging hours later with nothing but a cold trail sightings of the escaped death row inmates are coming in from throughout north carolina and virginia each call has to be checked out fred patton district first sergeant in the north carolina highway patrol it was like the dam breaking first of all there was a drip and and then there was a minor uh fluctuation of calls that we would receive as far as sightings were concerned and then the dam broke and sightings were coming in by the hundreds and of course by that time we had mobilized enough people and had them spread out to the point that we could respond to the sightings within a short period of time and that this is what we wanted to do investigators suspect the escapees may have left the area but they cannot be sure the manhunt continues in and around warrington but these fellows are very smart they know what they're doing obviously and they could be dug in anywhere and they got to turn every limb and every tree helicopters search the dense forests and red dirt fields on the north carolina virginia border police patrol the waterways in abandoned houses stop traffic along all roads and highways looking for four dangerous men police continue to get tips special agent robert pence a lot of those tips were scare tips they were fear tips they weren't helping a lot and i don't believe that any of the calls really materialize as far as giving us direction about where these fugitives might be but i did i do think it gave the citizens a conduit to to really vent some of their fears and concerns a manhunt sweeps the forests and swamps all day long they search growing more miserable by the hour [Music] they run out of insect repellent in warrington and have to send out for more the officers endured difficult conditions all to no avail officer lawrence harrison responds to several sightings of the fugitives everybody in the whole county has seen them once we get there and i don't know how many bloodhounds we didn't have here if they would say i saw him run across the road then him we'd take the bloodhounds down there tearing out nothing and they said i saw him run down there we take the bloodhounds down there and sometimes be proper running them guys we did see some guys run across the road but it wasn't a brilliant brother coming from the legacy in the marijuana patch reports pour in as residents throughout virginia and north carolina call police hotlines claiming to have seen the fugitives the governor of virginia posts a 40 000 reward for information leading to the fugitive's capture sightings come in from north carolina and virginia every call has to be checked out but leads nowhere [Music] thinking the brileys might return to their old neighborhood richmond virginia police interview their acquaintances and former gang members special agent james trotter these guys uh just killed to see people die just to be killing and i think that's why the richmond community upon learning that they had escaped particularly the areas of richmond which they frequented in the past the people were terrified their own parents were terrified not for them but of them in portsmouth virginia just a few hours drive from warrington a police officer spots two men breaking into a car hey police what are y'all doing see some hands let me see your hands step out from behind the car when he tries to stop them the two men opened fire one of our officers saw linwood briley in the 1800 block of elm avenue but then he lost sight of it and shortly before nine o'clock another officer spotted linwood riley and james briley here at elman lincoln apparently they were tampering or appeared to be tampering with an automobile in this area as soon as they saw the officers they ran as fears spread the sightings keep coming in from far and wide if the escapees did steal a pickup truck they could be anywhere the missing vehicle had enough fuel to get past richmond yeah on a hunch the fugitives might head north agents begin interviewing gas station attendance just north of virginia's guys in the capital truck one attendant remembers seeing a pickup truck with one white man and three black men in the back four guys pull out the investigative gym i was absolutely convinced that at least two of them and perhaps four of them were capable of of murder or any other crime and and would eventually commit other murders if they on remained street [Music] having lost their perimeter investigators scramble for clues to where the fugitives might be headed they focus their attention on the leaders of the gang they begin by examining a log of phone calls made from death row [Music] the log indicates the briley brothers made a number of calls to the philadelphia area [Music] the log entries lead agents to one wrong address after another michael carbonell is a supervisory special agent with the fbi in philadelphia based upon all the negative investigation we had conducted i felt that those numbers were not right in other words they were not telling the guard which number they were actually calling [Music] investigators subpoenaed the toll records corresponding to the phone on death row when they compare it to the handwritten log their suspicions are confirmed [Music] the phone company's records show the actual numbers that riley's called [Music] agents now have over 50 good numbers to investigate okay the only other thing we have with maybe male two of the calls had been placed to a house in north philadelphia investigators know from prison visitation records that the briley's have an uncle who lives in north philly carbonell set up to trace their uncle's outgoing calls [Music] i didn't think that the briley bros would be staying with him and i didn't want to hit his house until we were absolutely sure that they were here the time was on our side at that point so we decided to put a surveillance on his residence and and we conducted that surveillance for probably four or five days the fbi watches the briley's uncle's every move [Music] although they never see him with the brileys the agents have no choice but to wait it out [Music] as the fbi chases every lead on the fugitives from mecklenburg's death row they get another break hundreds of miles from virginia lamb tuggle and willie jones took eight days to make their way to woodford vermont a little resort town just south of the canadian border [Music] the men had spent the night in the woods they decide to try and make it to canada [Music] the two fugitives have a problem their stolen truck is low on gas and they need money tuggle leaves jones and drives back to a souvenir shop he had visited three days before [Music] waiting for the right time to make his move tuggle asks the owner for a soda and there will be anything else for you sir yes ma'am drawing a hunting knife he demands all the money in the cash register [Music] [Applause] [Music] once tuggle gets the money he turns and walks out the woman notes the truck's license tag p-e-i-1 it is easy to remember the take is about eighty dollars and change it isn't much but it's enough for gas and a new start in canada unfortunately for tuggle he is heading in the wrong direction ronald wunderlich has just woken up and is about to head off for an all-night job guarding a nuclear power station when he hears the report of a robbery at the woodford gift shop [Music] wunderlich is a constable in a town of only 300 people his ford escort doubles as his patrol car [Applause] in stamford vermont it seems unlikely he'll have to engage in any high-speed chases trooper daniel begibing also hears the report the dispatcher says that the suspect was last seen driving east on route 9. [Music] and the dispatch advised that upon running a registration check on the motor vehicle they had discovered that it was a stolen vehicle suspected involved with escapees from the mecklenburg area the gebing accelerates to intercept the vehicle wunderlich is driving out of stamford when he spots the suspect vehicle coming right at it on the wrong side of the road [Applause] the constable whips his forward escort into a u-turn and begins a pursuit author joe jackson most town constable had ever really done before was to like hustle drunks off the street and check out reports of stolen bicycles and all of a sudden he was he was chasing this this crazy man who had robbed robbed a store at knife point radios beginning that the truck is now heading south toward the state of massachusetts trooper begibing goes from a code 2 to a code 3 response using his lights and siren i was accelerating around probably 80 or 90 miles an hour to try to try to meet them to make up some time and distance before he got north to the intersection of route 100 and route 8. if they act quickly they can set up a roadblock before the convict has a chance to slip away on the radio the gibing hears that other officers are joining the chase wunderlich advises him that the vehicle is turned around and is proceeding north on route 100. the trooper and the fugitive are now heading straight for each other at that time i was trying to find a good location to execute a stop where there weren't any residences around where we could have something of relative safety yet still being enough of a field of view where i could see the truck coming the officers now realize they are pursuing a convicted killer when begibing swings his vehicle across the road he knows he is putting his life on the line in a high-stakes game of dare there's a little element of danger involved but yet it's something that being a rural patrol officer you rarely see and you're kind of like saying oh no to yourself you know that what have i got myself into here begebing is gambling that the suspect isn't desperate enough to ram his cruiser or that he is a good enough shot to stop him before he does a vermont state trooper and a town constable have boxed in one of the death row escapees it's now a question of whether lem tuggle who had been convicted of killing two persons would be squeamish about killing a third weighing his options tuggle pulls over and stops [Music] i then ordered him to place his hands out the window so i could see his hands and we then ordered toggle from the truck to lay down on the pavement and then approached him and took him into custody he identified himself to me as you know my name is lam and i'm from virginia and something to the effect i'd expect you'll find that i'm wanted lem tuggle has been a fugitive for just 10 days he seems almost relieved to be captured tuggle admits that robbing the gift shop was a big mistake but the truck was out of gas and he wanted to get to canada the next day an unusual call comes into the vermont state police the man gives the dispatcher his name willie jones yes can i help you he says police are looking for him where he'd escaped from prison i can't mecklenburg mecklenburg queer in virginia he had broken out of death row how long when and you want to turn yourself in i will be sending the are up the police up to talk with you when tuggle didn't return jones became lost and confused [Applause] tired of being on the run he wanted to turn himself in the dispatcher asks jones to describe where he is [Music] she determines that he is on route 242 outside the town of jay jones tells the dispatcher he is unarmed [Music] in his 26 years as a trooper this is the only time richard armitage has ever had a fugitive call and asked to be picked up he just looked like he was ready to turn himself in it he looked dejected he looked tired dirty hungry and it was obviously been bit by a number of of the black flies that we do have in this area and it was really it was like the the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders he was so glad that he was going where he could get something to eat and something to drink it wouldn't have been difficult for jones to enter canada in vermont the border is only guarded at the highways [Music] if he knew where he was going he could have easily just walked across [Music] but jones gave himself up just five miles from the canadian border [Music] author joe jackson believes jones may have been overwhelmed by his newfound freedom they live most of their adult lives in prison i mean prison is their world and so they're able to figure out how the prison world acts but they don't they're not able to figure out how the free world acts they fit in the prison world they don't fit in the free world with four of the six fugitives captured only the brileys the most dangerous killers remain at large with their well-known history of vicious murders the two remaining fugitives seem to be everywhere sightings come in from as far north as montreal in richmond virginia where the brothers went on their bloody rampage everyone locks their doors [Music] a manhunt is organized in oxford north carolina after a man thought to be linwood briley steals some cans of food from a convenience store [Music] in richmond virginia the family of a former gang member who turned state's evidence against the brileys is given police protection investigators questioned lem tuggle for clues to the briley's whereabouts tuggle tells police how the escapees wandered through warrenton looking for a vehicle they could steal they hot wired a pickup truck and took off tuggle tells them the briley's had never been in portsmouth or richmond he says they didn't kill anyone while he was with them after stealing the pickup truck in north carolina they drove north to philadelphia they burned the guard's uniforms in a trash can according to tuggle the briley's claimed they arranged for someone to meet them with clothes and a gun [Music] further recalls that james briley stuck one of the guards badges into a tree in philadelphia's hunting park he and jones then headed north towards the canadian border tuggle claims they even stopped and asked two state troopers for directions to the new jersey turnpike there they were driving along two escaped convicts from a maximum security prison wanted by the fbi and law enforcement agencies in several states but apparently no one noticed them [Music] tuggle says he and jones eventually parted company at a campground when he left to rob the gift shop special agent mike carbonell comes to philadelphia with a map of the park drawn by tuggle i uh frankly didn't believe it i'm familiar with hunting park when i looked at the map there were no tennis courts drawn on the map i was skeptical i felt why would a guy who's on death row who's going to be executed cooperate with us searching the trees investigators find the guard's badge this confirms tuggle's story i was i was stunned i didn't i didn't believe it but the proof is in the pudding the badge was there and then we knew that they were here [Music] the fbi knows the briley's have an uncle in philadelphia they believe the two fugitives will probably contact him if they haven't done so already [Music] special agent james trotter they set up a surveillance and sat there for days nothing he would call me a report he would say guys not doing anything nobody's coming or going agents get a break when they shatter the uncle to a body shop specializing in upholstery and vinyl car tops [Music] days earlier a woman in new york notified police she received a call from james briley [Music] the call originated from this garage its owner dan latham had been introduced to the brileys by their uncle using false names he called them lucky and slim the fbi sets up a fixed surveillance on latham's garage agents see several men hanging around but aren't sure if they're the brides they send in an informant from the neighborhood to try and confirm an id he was a street type guy who was very sharp that could really uh maneuver in that environment we sent him in there he actually talked to james brarley he came back out met with us he said i think it's him a tattoo on the suspect's left arm further confirms the id agents believe they have found james but they see no sign of his brother linwood they wonder whether to go in and arrest one or wait with the hope of getting both [Music] but if they wait virginia's most notorious serial killers might slip away [Music] after 19 days of searching the fbi believes they have located the last two escapees from mecklenburg's death row they have taken refuge at a body shop in north philadelphia the two fugitives appear to be having a party having confirmed their identities through an informant agents decide it's time to move in [Music] [Applause] garage owner dan latham is surprised by all the commotion i myself was in the office on the phone just taking it easy and i heard some wheels screeching coming to a halt and i heard a lot of screaming i looked outside all i seen was guns a lot of guns both brothers admit their identities and are led away in handcuffs the nationwide manhunt is over the last of the mecklenburg six are recaptured they had been free for 19 days for sergeant fred patton it is the end of a nightmare when the the briley brothers were finally apprehended in philadelphia it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off of you because i reiterate that these were bad folks these were killers the briley brothers who are facing death sentences in virginia were picked up at a car shop on philadelphia's north side fbi agent john hogan says they were surprised when 20 agents surrounded them they were apprehended without incident they caused no problem to us they have both admitted their identity they have the appropriate scars and marks so we know who they are the brinely brothers were the last of six convicts to be rounded up after their escape in the largest death row prison breakout in u.s history that was three weeks ago at mecklenburg correctional center in virginia the brileys will be arraigned in philadelphia today on charges of unlawful flight to avoid confinement the fbi wants to make certain that briley's can't slip away again special agent trotter arranges to have them kept in federal custody in these unlawful flight cases usually as soon as you catch them you dismiss the federal warrants and leave it between the two states to work out getting them back to where they belong the fbi's out of it but we were able to keep these guys in federal custody long enough to have them uh return to virginia through the federal system rather than having to go through state extradition proceedings in the wake of the escape mecklenburg goes into lockdown the governor of virginia announces the firing of five guards the warden and his security assistant are suspended without pay an investigation by three independent consultants finds the conditions at mecklenburg are highly dangerous and at times unmanageable [Music] two months after the escape riots break out at the prison using homemade knives inmates stabbed two guards and take six others hostage author joe jackson a lot of violence in the prison before the escape but once the escape occurred that was like a symbol to a lot of the other prisoners and so at that point the lid blew off of mecklenburg and they were right there was a big riot it appears to be a repeat of earlier events only this time there is no escape the standoff ends shortly after sunrise corrections director robert landon resigns three months later before he leaves landon puts many changes into effect [Music] doors to the guard's restrooms are now locked all the time open stairwells where inmates could hide are boarded up stricter procedures are put in place an interlock is installed on the main sally port preventing both gates from opening at once with these changes in place jim lettner believes that such an escape could never happen again corrections were made to our institutions both in in the way a jobs were performed as well as as new regulations that were were instituted that makes our prisons more apt to be escape free in the future in october of 1984 as linwood briley's execution grows near he is quoted as saying at least i had my 19 days briley is the second man in 22 years to be executed in virginia but in the aftermath of the escape officials step up the rate of executions six months after linwood was put to death james briley follows his brother to the electric chair [Music] in that same month earl clanton jr pays the price for the two murders he committed derrick peterson one of the first escapees to be recaptured makes his final walk in 1991 [Music] willie jones is executed in 1993 [Music] willie turner masterminded the escape but he remained behind because he had an appeal pending convinced of his innocence he puts his faith in the system willie turner is executed in 1995 by that time the state of virginia stopped using the electric chair turner's life is ended by lethal injection an hour after the poison stops turner's heart his lawyer finds a loaded 32-caliber homemade gun inside a typewriter in his cell along with the weapon is a hand-written note that reads simply smile the last escapee to die is lem tuggle [Music] on december 12 1996 the convicted double murderer is led to the death chamber joe giaratano whose book passing started the escape had his sentence commuted to life in prison of all the conspirators he is the only survivor the escape of the mecklenburg six shocked and terrified the nation for 19 days the coordinated efforts of police and law enforcement officials returned the men to face the ultimate penalty for their crimes since the escape the commonwealth of virginia has executed over 80 people state-sanctioned execution continues to be hotly debated in virginia america and around the world a body falls from the night sky to understand this tragic death police must follow a winding trail of clues they struggle to learn whether it was merely an accident or something far more sinister [Music] each menacing clue heightens the mystery as police seek to uncover the identity of a man who kept dangerous comedy don't [Music] in this program some of the names have been changed september 10 1985 midnight [Music] the plane flies under the radar [Music] two men prepared to bail out it was a desperate act but they were out of options they put the plane on autopilot uncertain of the dangers that awaited them they leapt into the vast night sky [Music] the next morning in knoxville tennessee sam reed and his daughter went about their morning routine nothing seemed out of the ordinary until sam's daughter headed outside for the morning paper dad a man was sprawled on their driveway dad [Music] he didn't appear to be breathing sam's daughter called 911 [Music] police lieutenant jerry day was alerted the dispatcher called us and said we have a a dead body it has a parachute attached to it and it appears this individual has died from a fall car [Music] nine two one zero pin oak circle 1091 in the driveway cart thirty two ten four [Applause] hey [Music] police and paramedics arrived in minutes paramedics confirmed the man was dead no one in the neighborhood had seen anything suspicious [Music] the man must have fallen in the middle of the night it appeared he had been dead for some time his primary shooter not deployed although his hand clutched the rip cord it appeared the emergency chute opened on its own we have someone who is skydiving in the middle of the night which is very unusual if you do have skydivers they're usually out in open areas in daylight time so we knew immediately that we had something that was going to be very unique nothing about the situation was what the officers expected including the condition of the body [Music] what we were expecting probably was to find an individual who had massive wounds from impacting the ground what we found was what appeared to be very minor superficial injuries we weren't sure why was such a small amount of injuries in this individual the officers expected to see a much greater amount of blood his wounds didn't seem consistent with a violent fall to the ground there was a cut underneath the chin the mouth was bleeding the nose had been bleeding and the teeth were rearranged as if the jaw had been impacted with something very hard but beyond that there were no other outside physical injuries the officers suspected the victim wasn't from knoxville he was wearing very expensive jump clothing appeared to be things that we would say were high dollar which you don't normally find on most area skydivers he was carrying several thousand dollars in cash we started looking for id we found his wallet and inside the wallet we found a driver's license to an andrew thornton out of kentucky but only to find behind that another kentucky driver's license with his picture but with another name the other name was andrew bourbon officers had no way of knowing which name if either was real but it was the next discovery that stunned knoxville police inside a large black duffel bag strapped to the victim investigators found small parcels each containing what appeared to be a kilo of unprocessed cocaine from the markings on the drugs investigators deduced they were packaged outside the u.s neighbors were drawn to the scene but couldn't give the officers any information no one had seen or heard anything suspicious that morning or the night before the officers took the evidence found on the body back to headquarters to examine it they were looking for additional clues to the parachutist's identity the man was carrying various handguns we start through the backpack to find a fully loaded semi-automatic nine millimeter plus the derringer which is the type of a weapon that's going to be used by someone who is either working in a deep cover operation or is a survivalist someone who's going to have a backup weapon which a lot of police officers carry the guns were sent to the lab for testing the pair of night vision goggles were even more puzzling they were only available to the military there was no serial number to use to trace the goggles origin he had all kinds of evidence that showed that this was a really bad actor someone who meant to survive whatever situation he found himself in a notebook contained names and odd groupings of numbers it appeared to be some kind of numeric code though detective day was unsure of its meaning inside the bag investigators also found south african gold krugerrands that's an expensive membership they suspected the man carried gold so he could flee to another country and easily convert the untraceable krugerrands to local currency most disturbing to the officers however was the discovery of teflon coated bullets ammunition that is teflon coated and is only used to penetrate body armor which normally is worn by law enforcement officers these bullets are are normally called cop killers and individuals who are dead set on not being captured will use that type of ammunition detectives scrutinize the two kentucky licenses they placed calls to authorities there to determine if either was legitimate there was no idea by anyone in the investigative area as to who he really was once we found the passport driver's license we started trying to pull everything together to make a positive identification they also found a membership card to an exclusive resort in miami in the dead man's pocket investigators found a key with some strange numbers on it look at that i've never seen one like that yeah that's that's an end number two uh that's a tail number off of an aircraft that's an aircraft key detectives weighed the stash of cocaine we normally come in contact with 34 kilos of coke over 80 pounds at one time occasionally we would get involved with cases with pounds but nothing of this magnitude the street value of the cocaine was almost 20 million dollars too much for a small police department to protect fearing their precinct could be targeted by criminals desperate to get their hands on that much cocaine they called for help we contacted drug enforcement administration and told them what we had we told them we had a large quantity of over 70 pounds of cocaine and that we didn't want to keep it in our facility the dea had a vault that could secure it [Music] the victim's main parachute hadn't been deployed but his backup chute was open technicians examined the dead man's equipment they were looking for signs of sabotage but the equipment appeared to be in perfect working order it was unclear why the victim's primary shoot hadn't deployed he appeared to be an individual who knew exactly what he was doing which made the the parachute accident seemed somewhat strange to us the officers would have to rely on other evidence to determine how and why the man died [Music] examined the gun but found no fingerprints and gunmetal residue tests came back negative it had not been fired recently the county medical examiner began conducting an autopsy later that day he hoped to find tattoos or other identifying marks there were none the medical examiner did find various injuries on the man's body that did not make sense bruises and contusions appeared inconsistent with a fall to the ground they could find no external injuries or no bullet wounds or stab wounds anything of that nature and it appeared the man had been dead for several hours perhaps even before he struck the ground according to the preliminary autopsy report something or someone had hit this man before his fall or in midair it was looking less and less like an accident and more like murder while investigators grappled with the puzzling clues the remarkable tale quickly became the media's lead story in knoxville and across the south a man was found dead on the driveway in knoxville police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding this bizarre death officials ask that anyone with any information about the incident please contact the publicity paid off a ranger with the u.s forest service in georgia made a puzzling discovery a black duffel bag identical to the ones found near the parachute victim was snagged in a tree another one lay on the ground the bags contained another 150 kilos of cocaine several more duffel bags were found strewn in the chattahoochee national forest and in cherokee county georgia just south of knoxville [Music] from the location of the drop sites and the amount of cocaine authorities speculated the drugs had come from somewhere south of the u.s perhaps central or south america media coverage of the event led investigators to their next big lead back in tennessee an employee at a small knoxville airport contacted authorities [Music] he'd seen the news and it found something he thought was perhaps linked to their case one of the maintenance men from the airport had discovered a parachute and a reserve chute and a a green jumpsuit the gear had been hidden behind a building investigators suspected the gear could have belonged to a second parachute yes it is i didn't i just found it he probably survived the jump and hid the chute before he made his getaway lieutenant day the detectives soon received yet another call this time from officials in north carolina the drug enforcement investigators called and stated that the remains of a plane had been recovered on north carolina and that it might be associated with the parachutists that had landed in knoxville clay county north carolina laid due east of knoxville detective day had no idea what he might find at the crash site [Music] they hope that somewhere in the twisted wreckage lay the clue to the identity of the mysterious dead man in late summer 1985 officers in tennessee were investigating the mysterious death of a parachutist they suspected he had a partner but had no leads as to his identity on the dead man's body investigators found weapons [Music] cash and millions of dollars worth of pure cocaine [Music] they got a break when a fisherman in north carolina contacted the local sheriff to report a plane crash the accident occurred on september 11th at around 1am [Music] a local fisherman who was night fishing on a lake near the cherokee national forest heard a low-flying aircraft approaching his location and then it flew over him which kept his attention and then the next thing he notices is the flames from the impact of the aircraft hitting the mountain [Music] it took five hours for detective day and federal agents to hike to the crash site it was a very devastating crash like you had trees which had been sheared off three four feet above the ground and there were probably five to ten of those which tell me that there was a major impact when we we got to the aircraft one of the main things we were looking for was if there were any other bodies the plane was destroyed but didn't have much burn damage apparently there had been little fuel left when it crashed there was no luggage no flight documents and no bodies there were even few seats most have been ripped out leaving the cabin hollow a standard procedure in drug runs the end number on the aircraft matched the end number on the key that we found on the body in knoxville that was the connection for us between this aircraft and our skydiver like the odd clues found on the body in knoxville the plane crash didn't seem logical of course we had no other bodies no other drugs within the aircraft we were still very perplexed on why he was jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft and putting it on automatic pilot which was very evident from the wreckage and the levers and things in the wreckage the wreckage offered no new clues as to the reason why the man jumped from the plane they were also no closer to finding the identity of his accomplice the trip to north carolina left authorities with even more questions but the biggest question was finally about to be answered also we need to do something about this word come from lexington kentucky on the identity of the dead man [Music] one of the man's id's was a fake the other legitimate fingerprints confirmed it their victim's name was andrew carter thornton ii he was a former lexington police officer and was known to kentucky state police detective don powers when i first met drew thornton i was impressed that he was a go-getter hard worker a good officer get on the ground years earlier drew had been a member of the police department's first narcotics squad the squad found early success cleaning up lexington streets but they soon began to gather some unwanted attention their drug busts had become marred by a string of complaints from defendants about their treatment at the hands of the police i was aware in the mid 70s of certain problems that were occurring within the lexington police department there had begun to be all kinds of rumors about how their drug unit was operating some of the strong wiring tactics growing allegations against the narc squad also attracted the attention of the fbi special agent jim huggins they were kind of a rogue group that pretty much skirted the law and did a lot of questionable things in enforcing drug laws around the university of kentucky campus and the lexington community they were allegedly involved in planting drugs on suspects stealing drugs out of evidence lockers and reselling them and this sort of activity thornton and his crew were moved to other positions the fbi learned it came too late drew thornton and his friends had made many contacts within the drug world the more we got into it the more people started to surface and then it was almost like a web it started expanding out into different crimes different people different states different countries the kentucky state police and the fbi opened investigations into the activities of drew thornton they learned he had partnered with a friend of his frank barkley and opened a security business barkley was another drew thornton type guy very smart very impressive and if these guys at thornton and barkley had put all those talents to good use there's no telling what they could have done but unfortunately they decided to go the other way [Music] the men ran with a rich crowd wherever drew and frank were money was always being thrown around the word on the street was their security business was an alleged front for the sale and distribution of marijuana we were mainly gathering intelligence reports and formulating a plan and trying to somehow verify some of these allegations barclay was the money man the two were known simply as the company [Music] drew thornton handled the supply side acquiring weapons vehicles and drugs the duo had a reputation of doing anything for a buck i think that thornton prided himself on living on the edge on being a soldier fortune type person on being almost invincible that he could do anything number one because of his dangerous lifestyle lieutenant jerry day and the knoxville police were beginning to suspect that their skydiver had not died from a mere accident [Music] 48 hours after the skydiving death of ex-cop drew thornton the fbi took over the case newspapers shouted the mysterious details of his death and kentucky residents were shocked lexington herald reporter valerie honeycutt he came from a very well respected family and there was a lot of people in lexington who just had a hard time believing that he was involved in drug smuggling lexington kentucky is surrounded by beautiful country and lavish horse farms where some of the world's best thoroughbreds are raised drew thornton was well known to the region's wealthiest families the day after drew's death federal agents armed with a search warrant entered the exclusive lexington home where thornton lived at the scene of his death agents had been left some enticing clues cocaine guns and ammunition and the parachute of an unknown accomplice who had escaped they hoped that somewhere on his property they would find a clue to explain the bizarre circumstances surrounding his death and lead them to his accomplice [Music] but a search of thornton's house turned up no new evidence fbi special agent jim huggins someone had already been there and taken whatever incriminating information there might have been investigators turned to thornton's former employer for help [Music] lexington police detective john bizac we were asked if there were people who could identify not only his body but certain things that they'd found on his person we recognized telephone numbers and names in the address book we of course there were several names and telephone numbers which we were familiar with one of the names in the phone book was wes trotter he was a close friend of thornton's and both men had been questioned in an unsolved missing persons case years earlier [Music] socialite amanda finley left her parents home on january 25th 1977 for a routine appointment about 5 15 in the afternoon she turned left traveled south in her car heading to a doctor's appointment and was never seen again she had talked to her father earlier in the afternoon and said that she would be home for supper her parents called police after not hearing from amanda in four days the finley's told police it wasn't unusual for their daughter to take off but she would always call when her boss confirmed she hadn't shown up for work the family knew something was wrong [Music] a week after her disappearance amanda's car was found abandoned in a local parking lot [Music] the storekeeper said the car had been parked there for several days her coat and other belongings were found in the vehicle but her car keys and her purse were gone forensic evidence technicians combed her car looking for fingerprints blood or any signs of foul play they found nothing [Music] months passed and the finley case turned cold the press however did not forget her reporter valerie honeycutt amanda finley was a beautiful young woman from a well-known family what police knew from the onset was that she had had some connection to drew thornton and wes trotter exactly what that connection was has never really been clear amanda had been dating wes trotter a member of lexington's narcotics squad at the time of her disappearance her parents feared he knew something about their daughter's whereabouts trotter and thornton were interviewed very early in the investigation about their knowledge of finley and what information they had as to when they saw her last trotter claimed that he used her as an informant on drug investigations off and on but other than that had no relationship with her [Music] he also claimed he hadn't seen her for weeks there were allegations that came from personal friends of finley that she had told them she was involved in withdrawter but thornton claimed he only knew finley through trotter and had no idea where she might be [Music] then detective bizac got a lead on the missing girl we had telephone records from findlay that showed she had placed some calls to florida prior to her disappearance we also had information that a person who appeared to be her had been sighted in daytona beach florida that was certainly enough to warrant a trip to florida to determine if there could be any other eyewitnesses or any evidence that she was in fact there the phone calls had come from a restaurant he has recognized this girl there detective bizac met witnesses who identified amanda from photos lexington police believed their victim was in fact a runaway more than six months after amanda finley vanished a man came upon an unusual find that made detectives question their conclusion a purse floating near the banks of the kentucky river by analyzing the contents the purse was identified as amanda finley's fearing the missing person's case could possibly be a homicide investigation the river was dragged the dock lay just a short distance from drew thornton's property 70 acres of land he co-owned with west trotter kentucky state police lieutenant don powers as a result of that purse being found we then did become involved in some aspects of that investigation and so much as trying to to see if we could locate amanda it seemed that drew thornton was constantly surrounded by mystery and possibly murder the list of those who could have wanted drew killed was growing [Music] on september 10th 1985 drew thornton jumped from an airplane into the night sky above knoxville tennessee it was the last jump thornton ever made he was found the next morning dead in a man's driveway while police were still trying to determine what caused his death drew thornton was buried in a lexington kentucky cemetery drew's body was found with nearly 80 pounds of cocaine strapped to it the fbi was trying to find out where he got the drugs his funeral drew dozens of lexington's elite politicians police officers and local aristocrats [Music] investigators kept a close watch on all his associates they hoped one of them held the key to the mystery many of drew's friends couldn't accept the rumors generated by his death reporter valerie honeycutt there was a great deal of mystery surrounding drew thornton's death there was a lot of people in lexington who just had a hard time believing that he was involved in drug smuggling but the fbi knew differently they had been watching drew's friends very closely agent jim huggins well this group is kind of unique from other drug organizations because of their social status in the lexington community and a lot of people in high places gave them some aura of respectability which they certainly shouldn't be entitled to but they were [Music] thornton along with his friend frank barkley ran a business they called the company the fbi believed it was a front for a drug smuggling operation the men had connections in las vegas with a notorious pair of drug smugglers jimmy and lee chakra were believed to be two of the biggest and most dangerous drug traffickers in the country the shaggers are extremely uh fearless and desperate individuals and they were heavily involved in some serious drug smuggling lee nicknamed effly in his hometown of el paso was an infamous texas attorney known for his successful defensive drug dealers his brother jimmy was also well known to law enforcement currently out on bail he was waiting to stand trial for drug trafficking there was a pretty intense investigation going on in las vegas from the u.s attorney's office and dea into their activities the chagra brothers made millions running drugs from the largest suppliers of colombia's infamous medellin cartel the company wanted a piece of their action barkley was the one that ingratiated himself with the shagger organization and had a lot of connections with people in las vegas the feds had never been able to successfully try the chagrin brothers despite their reputed ties to the mob mid-east terrorists and colombian drug lords they were separate operations the the shaggers operation and the company's operation and they it's kind of like a merger barclay took all his assets and teamed up with chagra and then they really became involved in some big time smuggling it appeared to investigators the heads of the company were stepping up to the big time federal prosecutor brian layton barkley wanted the high life in the biggest way the quickest way to get to the high life is to run drugs agents began hearing from informants that frank and drew were going to start running drugs for the chagras and they were looking to expand their gang [Music] they began scouring small and rural airports for pilots who could meet their criteria were you certified to fly they had to be good pilots they had to be able to fly without lights without instruments land get off the plane take off and allow somebody else to to unload the dope and then they would later get paid a little bit of risk i think most of the people that got involved in this they got involved for the thrill of it it's thrilling you go out and buy airplanes you smuggle dope you know you toss that airplane go buy another one the men developed a routine for their drug smuggling operation they felt it was a sure way to stay ahead of the police the team would buy used aircraft for cash that's accurate they would equip them with extra large gas tanks they'd take the seats out so they could carry large loads and started flying uh to south america and back and forth and recruiting pilots bodyguards and it was very sophisticated drug smuggling operation by the late 1970s the company's drug running operations were in full swing with each run they got better and were able to smuggle larger and larger amounts of contraband for barkley this meant more money and more power drew and frank wasted no time in using the chagra's connections they began buying as many drugs as they could afford in colombia and shipping them to the u.s when they landed in the u.s unloading was done in record time by trained ground crews they knew any delays could mean getting arrested within minutes we began to have some airplanes that were abandoned at various airports that were searched and had marijuana residue and and we began to get information that thornton was involved in these on one occasion they landed at a small lexington airport with a massive 20 000 pounds of illegal cargo authorities found the planes afterward empty and scrubbed clean with disinfectant but had never caught the men in the act in one of the planes the occupants had left behind a clue a magazine addressed to mr andrew thornton in my view that was the first clue to a lot of people here in central kentucky that some of their local sons were involved in a major drug running smuggling operation [Applause] it seemed there was no limit to what the company and the chagras could achieve [Music] but only a few months after the two groups teamed up tragedy struck [Music] police in el paso texas got a report that lee chagra was found shot to death in his office [Music] jimmy called barkley for help unsure who had executed his brother and faring for his own life chagra had nowhere else to turn [Music] he called in a favor from frank barkley he asked the company to protect him i'm gonna be three playing tickets to las vegas west me and drew seeing this is a possible opening to move in on the chagra's empire frank agrees without a plan what are you doing he started making plans to beef up security in chagra's las vegas home however was wary all i'm asking for is a couple of hours working this closely with the chagras meant more power and more risk wait a minute come on any shake-up in the chagra empire would inevitably cause trouble for the company you're smarter than this don't do this come on frank was determined not to let jimmy chagrin down [Music] but jimmy was in trouble he was arrested in san antonio texas charged with importing marijuana and cocaine from colombia [Music] the prosecution had been gearing up for this case for months judge we're here to request a reduction veil was set at one million dollars an amount chagra's attorney argued was excessive my client first of all has no prior record u.s district judge robert drewes agreed with the defense and lowered the bail he vowed that if chagra was convicted he would not get off easy jimmy had a long run just out of reach of the law but this judge was known for being tough on drug dealers georgia who was trying the chagra's case was known throughout that area as a extremely harsh judge in in drug cases at this time the ties that bound jimmy chagra and the company were tighter than ever before they were extremely uh fearless and desperate individuals and they were heavily involved in some serious drug smuggling and they saw i think their empire getting ready to come down may 29 1979 it was the first day of jimmy chagra's trial and judge drewes had no idea what awaited him when he stepped from his home that morning his wife heard the shot but did not see the sniper paramedics responded quickly to the scene the judge had lost a considerable amount of blood it would be a race against time to save him when drug smuggler drew thornton was found dead on a driveway in knoxville tennessee with 80 pounds of cocaine strapped to his body local law enforcement was baffled the fbi had been tracking thornton for years hoping to learn more about the events leading up to his death and find out who he was working for when he died the more they looked into drew thornton's death the more difficult it became to try and piece together his life years before drew's death he and his partner frank barkley had become linked with notorious drug smugglers jimmy and lee chagra [Music] lee had been murdered and thornton's company was now providing protection to jimmy chakra fbi agent james huggins the shaggers are extremely uh fearless and desperate individuals and they were heavily involved in some serious drug smuggling and they saw i think their empire getting ready to come down jimmy chagra was in serious trouble he was up on drug charges and the judge presiding over his case was notoriously tough on drug smugglers on may 29 1979 judge drewes was walking out of his house when he was shot paramedics arrived within minutes and were now working to save his life it was a losing battle the judge had lost a lot of blood [Music] despite all their efforts they couldn't save him judge drewes was pronounced dead on arrival [Music] news of the assassination of a federal judge reverberated in fbi offices across the u.s including lexington fbi agent jim huggins it just shows how dangerous these individuals were and that they would stop at nothing to keep their operation going [Music] the sniper was captured and prosecuted and jimmy chagra was convicted of drug charges but escaped the country before he was sentenced although the fbi suspected the company might somehow be involved they like the texas police had no proof they maintained surveillance from members of the company but they found nothing to incriminate them just gonna go down pick them up with the the company showed no signs of slowing their business dealings they were looking to intensify their drug runs to colombia pressure from investigators concerned bartley he brought in a new member to the gang to help solve his problem mike kelly was a licensed gun dealer in lexington federal agents suspected he was the alleged go-to man for anyone looking for illegal weapons mike kelly was an electronics expert had a small company in lexington supplied radios alarms and this kind of equipment according to federal surveillance reports kelly was in contact with frank barkley and drew thornton on a frequent basis heard some rumors that they were getting ready to do a big drug deal but we had no specifics the company was so effective at moving in the shadows that law enforcement seemed powerless to bring their illegal dealings into the light investigators continued pressuring anyone who was associated with the company and some of them started to talk when possible yes or no danny yates had been hired by barkley as a pilot what was it exactly that you did steal he was implicated on smuggling charges and was issued an ultimatum by prosecutor brian leighton cooperate or go to prison for a long time none of these people had ever been in prison before and they didn't like the prospects of it we needed their cooperation to go after barclay and some of the big boys um and so we struck deals in exchange for immunity yates confirmed the company was looking to increase their drug running activity yates said that colombia had become a regular destination for frank barkley and his business associates the death of lee chagra had left a void that barkley was only too willing to fill barkley had long had his eye on the chagras drug empire yates told investigators barkley was particularly seduced by this new world it seemed a prime business opportunity he's gonna stay right here with me combining assets and giving them access to aircraft brokers and weapons experts and working directly with colombia's top suppliers meant they no longer had to deal with the middleman but frank barkley had a problem [Music] he needed to come up with the cash to buy the drugs and he didn't have any but barkley was ruthless in running his drug business tom burke one of the men accompanying barkley would learn that the hard way frank decided to leave burke behind that person was left with the colombians as collateral for payment for the dope because barclay would not pay for the dope up front the colombians didn't trust him and they said well if you don't pay us within so many days this guy dies so they kept him captive down in in colombia until the dope got into the into the country and barclay paid for it for barkley it was a small price to pay to keep his drug lord satisfied he was looking to make money no matter who got hurt he had to find a better way to pay for the drugs barkley came up with another plan [Music] investigators learned he found a source of drug money thousands of miles away at a naval station in california a man taking inventory of specialized radio and guidance equipment noticed that some items were missing when the man called his supervisor they checked the requisition orders and couldn't find any record that the items had been removed the man's supervisor contacted the fbi special agent mike devitt i was notified by the naval investigative service agent at the base that a an individual there had apparently requisitioned some equipment that he apparently had no need for and that when they confronted him uh he had some very elusive answers as to what happened to the equipment they questioned the man who had taken the goods [Music] he told them two men approached him and asked him to help them obtain some radar and guidance devices [Music] we interviewed this individual he was pretty vague initially as to what it was used for because he had been told by the two individuals that had approached him in order to obtain this information to just be on the lookout for certain types of equipment the man went on to say that he had several meetings with john barkley his name was familiar to investigators he was frank barkley's cousin agents set their sights on john barkley they pressured his suspected accomplice he basically realized we had him in a pretty hard spot we obtained permission from the united states attorney's office to actually tape record his phone calls their witness got in touch with john barkley but as federal authorities listened to his phone conversations it became clear that john wasn't the brains of the operation it appeared frank barkley was in charge barkley was in charge there wasn't any question about that okay agents set up surveillance at john barkley's home we conducted surveillance we'd seen him move moving some of this equipment we knew for a fact we had him cold on the settlements after the government property in the fall of 1979 john barkley was seen in possession of the stolen military equipment but the fbi didn't arrest him they continued to watch john barkley hoping he would implicate his cousin in the thefts from talking with informants investigators pieced together barclay's plan to take the equipment he was an electronics technician who worked for the u.s air force because of his work on classified radar systems john barkley would have had security clearances in the summer of 1979 with the aid of insiders on the base he asked his friend to help him steal 10 sets of starlight night vision goggles and a variety of technical equipment which could be used to outfit small planes to avoid detection they had some instruments installed in some of the planes so they could pick up when radar beams were being directed their way so that they could drop or do whatever they had to take action barclay must have counted on the fact that the equipment was older ignored and that checkpoint guards only stopped vehicles on their way in not on their way out he thought this equipment would never be missed he was wrong investigators had recovered most of the stolen equipment but three sets of the night vision goggles were still missing federal prosecutor brian layton had a theory on where the missing equipment might have gone barclay thought it was a very good idea if he could get military equipment because he found that it was cheaper to steal military equipment and trade it to the colombians for drugs than it is to pay him cash [Music] it was the strategy of a consummate businessman lower costs and up the profit margin okay you can use that yeah it looks good yeah colombians have a lot of money they like gadgets and so they just love these little gadgets leighton knew the company was still in action and he was determined to bring them down we knew we had a huge operation on our hand very well organized operation on our hand a bunch of dangerous people fbi special agent mike devitt we started tying it together building upon what we had developed initially and now all of it was mushrooming into a full-blown narcotics investigation yates went on to tell them that with the arms coming in from china lake barkley could finally get his man out of colombia he hatched a plan that would serve two purposes barkley was angry with an associate named ray dim he asked him to join yates in a quick run to colombia barkley told deming he had to leave a man behind on his last run and hoped to win his freedom with an extra shipment of arms within minutes yates fired at the engine and the plane was headed down the runway they flew south southeast over the gulf of mexico in the caribbean headed for the northern coast of colombia deming soon learned this was not a typical trip his marching orders were at the time that the trip was initiated where that when he got over the caribbean he was to put the plane on automatic pilot and throw ray deming out the door he threw the plane into a dive the caribbean sea rushed closer it was a controlled uh ditching as it turned out danny yates was a very accomplished pilot he just put it down in the waves yates knew there was an unspoken code among drug smugglers an uncompleted mission will be forgiven if you have to ditch your plane either by accident or to avoid capture by police what else did you have i uh that was the first time that he really realized uh what he was into he uh he was just a good old country boy and there wasn't any way he was going to get involved in a murder and that's where one of our night vision devices got away from as a result of that crash and they had done this just to throw off barkley [Music] plan seemed to work the colombians were satisfied was released and deming was alive gates went on to tell investigators that on returning to the u.s the three went into hiding [Music] yates also told them that tensions among members of the company were running high the company was in danger of pulling apart investigators hoped these tensions would prompt the men to make a mistake that would lead to their capture on september 10 1985 a low-flying plane raced across the night sky inside two men put on skydiving gear they put the plane on automatic pilot when everything was ready they jumped into the night the next morning one of the parachutists was found dead on a driveway in knoxville tennessee on his body police found over 20 million dollars worth of cocaine the mysterious man was identified as drew thornton [Music] a former narcotics officer from lexington kentucky the fbi and local law enforcement had been watching thornton and his close friend frank barkley the men were living a lavish lifestyle and investigators suspected they were involved in a drug smuggling operation they called it the company law enforcement agencies have been trailing the company for years but the two men always seemed one step ahead of [Music] him after drew's death agents were scrambling to try and uncover what may have happened to him and if anyone would have wanted him dead [Music] investigators looked into a piece of rural wooded property he owned called triad lexington police detective john bizac this property was down on the kentucky river and it was alleged to belong to trotter thornton and some other folks there were accusations that there was a soldier of fortune type training going on at that facility neighbors in the area reported citing strange men in camouflage gear and hearing the sound of gunshots [Music] don powers of the kentucky state police the triad was somewhat always a mystery we had information that it was an encampment and a training ground probably for terrorist or something of that nature by 1980 as they got bigger they needed more and more security the group had become a strange meld of socialites and social misfits including smugglers gun runners and mercenaries profits were at an all-time high but tensions were splintering the group i want to be alive lee's dead and learn that barkley's relentless pursuit of the chagra empire infuriated thornton to barkley his partner seemed short-sighted and disloyal don't you think after how much we've made the word on the street was that their partnership finally cracked under the strain thornton and barkley severed their ties drew thornton and frank barkley went from partners to competitors after they had a falling out and broke up their drug smuggling ring in january 1980 atf agents heard that frank and his cousin john were staying at a hotel in philadelphia john was under investigation for stealing arms from the china lake naval facility [Music] atf special agent frank eddy they were you know tipping big tips to the maids the maids were told at times to stay out of the rooms not to make up the beds not to do anything their behavior made the staff suspicious housekeeping at certain times the maids did see firearms guns in the rooms they notified the philadelphia police on january 4th 1980 authorities raided the motel they arrested john barkley charging him with firearms violations but detectives had been told two men occupied the room john barkley told the cops where to find his cousin he wasn't far at the time of the raid frank barkley was at a local airport officials caught up with him minutes before he boarded his plane he was found to be carrying semi-automatic weapons commando daggers several fraudulent ids and more than 22 thousand dollars in cash first we really became involved in this was after they were arrested in philadelphia the philadelphia police contacted lexington police and atf you know asking for information on who these guys are what they're doing you know anything about them they have criminal record the philadelphia authorities learned that john barkley was under suspicion for the alleged theft of military hardware from a secret testing site in california turn to the right [Music] the philadelphia police found frank barkley had no arrest record were outstanding warrants he seemed the picture of a typical upscale businessman but federal authorities revealed that he too was being investigated for his role in the thefts and his links to drugs guns and organized crime [Music] philadelphia police soon recognized that they had inadvertently busted members of a large-scale weapons network they uncovered a small cache of weapons silencers and telephone scramblers when they raided the room they found guns certain other eave-dropping equipment there was also some documents one was a receipt for storage facility uh in lexington kentucky and of course that peaked everybody's interest [Music] agents had been tipped off that the door of the storage facility was booby-trapped the door wasn't booby-trapped we thought well you know maybe something else is boob-trapped here's all these weapons there's boxes and cartons of ammunition and all kinds of stuff so we had to be really careful about going through the individual items about you know when does this blow up and is this going to blow up in your face or what's in this box the assortment of weapons and military gear stunned the officers much of it consisted of items stolen from china lake a starlight knightscope soviet-made machine guns with anti-aircraft mounts taser stun guns and anti-tank gun even semi-automatic m2 carbines the arsenal was estimated to be worth a quarter of a million dollars i was very much surprised to find some of the type of weapons that they had just isn't something that the average person is going to have in their gun collection you know this of course indicated to us that these people are involved in some other type of activity we started um tracing the guns one of the weapons a 22 caliber survival rifle uh was registered in the name of andrew thornton and it had been purchased from a local gun dealer by the name of mike kelly it seemed an open and shut case investigators hoped the legal pressure on bargley would push him to testify against thornton and other members of the company but frank barkley had other plans [Music] after years of tracking members of the company a drug and gun running ring based in lexington kentucky federal officials finally caught a break for the first time members of the company were being brought to trial frank barkley was arrested and tried in lexington kentucky his cousin john in philadelphia both on weapons charges the media was fascinated by the unusual case the details of it like something from a spy novel [Music] in addition to weapons officers found in the motel room a listing of top secret radio frequencies of the us government radar jamming equipment and memos on the proper use of disguises and wigs [Music] it seems certain frank barkley would go to jail but as lexington herald reporter valerie honeycutt recalls the citizens of lexington did not all agree we got letters to the editor from people from from ministers and from people saying that it just couldn't be true of these of these fine men and that it was all uh allegation and we were just trying to sell papers by muddying these these folks names a lot a lot of community of outrage that we were that we were continuing to write about this it would be difficult to stop the members of the company both frank and john barkley were found not guilty atf agent frank eddy see when you find uh these type of devices the machine guns with anti-aircraft mount anti-tank guns radar jamming equipment yeah it makes you think i mean what what lawful purpose could these individuals have with that there's no no civilian use for this type of weaponry [Music] despite their good fortune members of the company could not exactly breathe easy by 1981 the gang had splintered apart many were in hiding were the targets of indictments from prosecutors in other states mike kelly and his wife bonnie had been close friends of drew and frank's mike who supplied the two with electronics and guns soon found himself entangled in a florida drug case agent jim huggins mike kelly was employed by some drug smugglers in south florida to supply electronic equipment to a boat they were equipping for a shipment of marijuana being smuggled into punta gorda in the process of this operation mike went to florida and when he was down there an informant blew the whistle on the whole operation he was arrested kelly denied any knowledge of the drug deal but the ploy didn't work he was found guilty of drug conspiracy charges the first alleged member of the company was behind bars mike kelly was arrested in in south florida on the drug smoking operation and the prosecutor was uh pressuring him very hard to get his cooperation that sent shock waves throughout the group in lexington charlotte harbor florida january 16th 1982 shortly before 7 pm the doorbell rang at the home of district attorney larry noland [Music] it happened in seconds [Music] yes i can help you don't know d.a nolan was shot in the heart at point-blank range he was declared dead at the scene detectives knew the victim noland was a criminal prosecutor known to be tough on drug runners he was the same prosecutor pressuring mike kelly to name his criminal associates when the prosecutor was killed his wife had overheard some conversation indicating that possibly he knew who the person was and then she heard the shots ring out and uh some indication that that the killer was known to her husband according to an autopsy report the assailant had used wad cutter bullets most bullets have a rounded rounded edge these are flat with a hole in the center and what it does when it enters the body it rips and tears more than a straight bullet that would go straight through it makes more does more damage officers canvassed the quiet affluent neighborhood a witness recalled seeing a woman with blonde hair in a blue based on witness descriptions the composite sketch of the woman was developed rental car agent identified bonnie kelly mike kelly's wife from the composite sketch of the alleged shooter no one was surprised among the kentucky state police well it was everyone's suspicion that bonnie killed the prosecutor he had quite a reputation of being hard on drug people people involved in drug trafficking and i guess they thought they would take a better have a better chance with someone else things were really beginning to hop things were beginning to come together information was coming fast and furious and the heat was on the group i'm sure knew it bonnie however had a solid alibi i have a few questions for you right quick harvey walker a close friend of drew and frank's stepped forward claiming that he and bonnie had been in a business meeting on the night in question they were stonewalled by walker he refused to talk to him they didn't really have a lot of direct evidence no one would cooperate fbi agent jim huggins knew they needed someone on the inside less allegiance to the group someone more easily manipulated than harvey walker and drew thornton he set his sights on bonnie's sister she had lived with mike and bonnie kelly off and on for years i want you to tell me what your sister was doing she was privy to their conversations and the activities of their friends fearing she would be indicted as an accomplice she confessed what she knew to agent huggins she told huggins that after mike's arrest the group was nervous they needed a plan harvey walker was concerned that if mike kelly had uh agreed to cooperate with the prosecutor then all their activities illegal activities had been committing over the years would all become to the forefront and they'd all be in a lot of trouble the group had an idea [Music] it was a chance for bonnie kelly to reveal her loyalty to the company [Music] bonnie's sister's information broke the case wide open after the murder bonnie uh returned to fort myers checked in a motel with stephen taylor and her getaway driver and they called made a phone call to her sister in lexington bonnie told her sister to give harvey walker a message it's been done in exchange for immunity she agreed to testify against her sister at trial but mike kelly's wife bonnie wouldn't take the fall alone mike's wife had never involved in a crime in her entire life harvey walker had given her the weapon harvey walker told her that she should use wad cutter ammunition and she and her sister went to a kmart in lexington and purchased a box of wad cutters and he told her the reason for that that it would do more damage and would be would kill someone easier than a regular round agents broadened the net and began bringing in anyone they could find who was connected to the company it was a lengthy investigation because of the number of places that we had to go to the amount of confirmations that we had to do the amount of grand jury subpoenas that had to go out uh but the more things we corroborated um the more we said geez we got a tiger by the tail here in january 1982 assistant u.s attorney brian leighton indicted frank and john barkley drew thornton mike kelly and 21 other company members [Music] the seven counts range from drug trafficking to stealing and receiving government property barclay was arrested outside chicago [Music] frank barkley was sentenced to 20 years for the china lake case as well as an additional four and a half years on out-of-state drug charges 20 years was probably the maximum we could get so it was a just sentence at the time did he deserve life if there were any killings yeah he deserved life we just could never pin any killings on him thornton was harder to catch when news of the indictments broke he fled [Music] mechanical difficulty landing at southern pine airport [Music] u.s customs caught a lucky break when they intercepted a radio transmission from a plane bearing thornton's call letters thornton logged a flight plan indicating he was headed to a north carolina airport for repairs police were waiting for it when he landed he was arrested and held on one million dollars bail when he was arraigned in court he was extremely arrogant it's like oh you have no case against me oh this is bs because there was little evidence linking thornton to the events at china lake jews served only a few months for his part in the operation he would be released in the fall of 1982 and promptly disappear when a suspected drug smuggler named drew thornton died in a fall from an airplane police in knoxville tennessee began trying to understand what could have caused his death the knoxville police called upon the fbi and the dea for help [Music] at the time of his death the dea had an open case file on thornton it appeared that after the china lake case it put many of his friends behind bars he was now working alone the dea had followed him to miami agents have been keeping a close watch on drew thornton in august drew made contact with an aircraft broker named levi shulman he was unaware the aircraft broker was also a dea informant cessna is a good airplane dea agent kieran cobell well levi schulman was brokering aircraft to groups that he knew were involved in transporting cocaine up from south america into south florida and he had a history with these people agent kieran cobell observed from a distance there were meetings that were being conducted and he would tell us about that and we would cover those so we would conduct surveillance of those meetings shulman was a career criminal and had been known to work deals on the side and pass bad information i had been down that road with informants before and i knew the game that he was playing florida was a major port of entry for drugs the dea worked to stem the flow but to do that they had to know when the drugs were moving i had every hope that we would know when thornton would be taking off and shulman knew that we wanted that information shulman had orchestrated hundreds if not thousands of deals like this before but to cobell this seemed different shulman seemed genuinely fond of the stranger from kentucky i think he liked him i think he trusted him and i think the proof of that to me the is the fact that thornton actually stayed with shulman in his townhouse or his condominium at the jockey club because shulman couldn't be trusted agent cobell and his partner kept close tabs on drew thornton but cobell knew the former police officer might quickly pick up on surveillance they needed to be careful thornton had pulled onto miami's palmetto expressway headed north cobell and his partner split up they kept in contact about thornton's location via a dea radio frequency my partner and i were communicating on the radio right that thornton's headed to down to the next exit because somebody's in the lead and then somebody stays behind on surveillance so it becomes pretty clear that as we're communicating thornton begins rubbernecking more than just casual looking around he's looking in the rearview mirror in in the passengers compartment he's looking in the side rearview mirrors he's he's looking for something it's almost like as we're talking he's listening to us thornton gets off at the next exit and i communicate with my partner i said i don't think he's made us but he knows something's going on let's get off him agent cobell's fears about tracking thornton were justified shulman later told him thornton had a scanner and it picked up cobell's communications with his partner thornton disappeared that day it's really much more difficult to conduct investigation of people that type because they know the logical investigative steps that you're going to undertake the next time agent cobell heard about drew thornton he was dead cobell was expecting his informant to tell him about thornton's next drug run but that information never came agent cobell went to talk with shulman to try and determine what had happened shulman admitted he'd provided thornton with the plane for his last flight the plan was to pick up some 800 pounds of cocaine in colombia so what can you tell me the information was new to agent cobell shulman had not given me the call that i needed to have so that i could be on alert so that i could alert customs there's all there is a whole team of law enforcement people who needed to be put on alert when when an aircraft launches on a on a smuggling trip like this one did cobell was furious his informant had held out on him he says well i was contacted by so-and-so in colombia and i got to go up to kentucky to find out what happened and i said and i'm going with you and then he was oh no you can't do that and it's like well i'm not really asking you the only logical plan was to go up to kentucky and try and track down through different various points of contact up there who had the cocaine where it was and try and find out who else was involved agent cobell headed to kentucky to try and find the rest of drew's stash of cocaine and possibly find his murderer [Music] when drew thornton was found dead with millions of dollars worth of cocaine strapped to his body dea agent kieran cobell and his informant levi shulman went to find out who had the rest of the drugs the two men started with the woman closest to drew levi shulman promised cobell that he would lead him to thornton's girlfriend rachel gant she had agreed to meet with him gant admitted being in a hotel the night that thornton died waiting for him waiting for a drew's call because kent admitted that to thornton had not showed up but accomplice on the aircraft had showed up and they had ganton the accomplice had waited until sometime early in the morning for thornton to come the reason we asked you down here the thornton never came now the thornton was dead gant knew his drug business partners would come after her the colombians would be looking for their cocaine and so she knew that she was in a bit of a hard spot kant said that she was going to be going into hiding and that any further contact could be made through the attorney [Music] with that rachel gantt disappeared and the rest of the drugs and the money were never recovered the investigators brought together all the information they gathered on drew thornton and pieced together the events leading up to his final flight on september 10 1985 drew thornton and a co-pilot arrived in colombia ready to pick up a substantial load 800 pounds of cocaine packed in a series of large black duffel bags the deal was going down but the dea had no idea shulman had held out on [Music] several hours into the flight somewhere over the southern u.s drew noticed it a plane in the distance he was convinced they were being followed thornton ordered his pilot to lose the plane 1.5 but the aircraft in pursuit was larger gaining fast knoxville tennessee police detective jerry day we surmised that andrew and his accomplice had thought they had picked up an air tail either from the drug enforcement administration the fbi or customs he had become very paranoid we know that later on and through the investigation he was a very paranoid individual and he thought he was probably thought he was being followed for thornton there was no choice give me the headphones he couldn't afford to be caught he radioed rachel who was awaiting his arrival in knoxville when interviewed by the dea rachel refused to identify thornton's accomplice or divulge many details we're going to but she confirmed that thornton sounded panicked what about our cargo and the need to bail out then he signed off for the last time rachel gant never gave investigators any more information rachel gantt was uh very loyal uh protected him right up to the end and refused to testify for a grand jury in knoxville which resulted in her indictment but to this day i don't think she's ever betrayed his confidence pretty hard pretty hardcore individual in my opinion the men jumped at night a dangerous prospect even for someone who seasoned his thornton don't worry you're gonna be fine according to gantt the pilot had never jumped before his was a leap of faith but thornton welcomed the danger some said he thought he was invincible but thornton was not invincible in fact none of the gang escaped capture or prosecution they were a tight close uh knit group of of friends and i think that they fed on each other's adventures and and and misdeeds in fact i think they kind of fed on each other's crimes the fact that and that they were all connected with each other that they were somehow involved in the assassinations of both the federal judge and a federal prosecutor i think speaks volumes about the fact that they thought that they were untouchable they thought that they were capable of doing anything and trying anything and getting away with anything and they did but when indictments and various trials were finally handed down the company turned on its own friend testifying against friend frank and john barkley mike and bonnie kelly and harvey walker were all found guilty on a variety of charges from murder to conspiracy only mike kelly's drug conviction was reversed on appeal what happened to drew thornton however is still not entirely clear the knoxville tennessee medical examiner eventually declared his death an accident the mysterious injuries most likely caused by a duffel bag battering him all the way down [Music] or he may have struck the wing of his own plane when he jumped [Music] but how such an experienced jumper could make such a mistake is unclear he impacted something as he was exiting the aircraft the wound to the bottom of his chin made it very evident that something had impacted his head what we surmised was that it rendered him unconscious to the point that he was falling and then once he regained consciousness he immediately pulled his emergency shoe because he wasn't sure how far from the ground he was but it was too late the emergency chute jerked thornton onto his back everyone that that knew drew liked him personally but there was always this dark side it was that dark side that drove thornton into a world of crime drugs and guns [Music] and it was that dark side that ultimately killed him a woman disappears the only clues are an incomplete eyewitness account [Music] and three dead men on the new york pier [Music] the case takes a bizarre twist when investigators uncover a web of greed [Music] deceit and even more murder 244 responded to the triple homicide the cold-blooded killer is on the loose as police track him over six states they are in a race to find a missing woman before more blood is shed [Music] and more people die the solution to these brutal murders rests with a missing material witness [Music] in this program some of the names have been changed new york city monday april 12 1982 it was the end of the work day and commuters headed for their cars at a parking facility on the west side of manhattan it was just after 6 p.m when a lone woman made her way across the desolate rooftop parking lot the lot was located on pier 92 by the hudson river in the midst of the bustling crowds of midtown manhattan as she approached her car her key would not fit in the driver's side door the lock was jammed she had no idea she was in grave danger a moment later three employees from the cbs television network arrived on the parking deck they had just gotten off work as the three headed to their cars they saw a man struggling to load a woman into a van another cbs employee anthony silva was trying to catch up with his friends he saw them talking to a man behind a silver van silva took cover ready [Music] silva tried to alert the parking attendant to the shootings taking place two stories above but the man thought he said three cars had been hit he was in no hurry to deal with it come on [Music] as silva pulled out onto 12th avenue [Music] he watched to see if the gunman would follow him the van went the other direction he rushed back to the parking attendant and insisted he called the police three people had been shot hurry up okay [Music] okay 244 and responded to the triple homicide police officers were dispatched to the scene and sped towards the parking garage [Music] the crime scene was bloody and grim new york police detective richard chartrand systematically one by one the search was done of each body each one was shot once in the rear of the head with a small caliber of gun the location of bullet entry would appear that these were assassinations a single 22-caliber shell casing lay beside each body two men were found close together the third was found a short distance away like the others he had been shot in the head at close range it appeared he tried to run from his assailant the 22 caliber shell casing was collected police feared these weren't the only victims we did an extensive search on up here to make sure there wasn't a fourth or fifth dead body up there we even had the harbor precinct come in and search the surrounding waters we didn't want somebody floating that might have jumped off the pier to avoid being shot investigators found no additional bodies beside a blue car they discovered several items a set of keys a purse and a pair of women's shoes scuff marks on the back indicated the victim had been dragged blood was spattered on the pavement near the car from the small amount it appeared the woman was wounded but how badly the officers could only guess a detective took the keys found on the ground and tried to unlock the car they wouldn't fit hey jason the lock was jammed with a toothpick the passenger side door opened in the glove box police recovered a license and registration the car belonged to melissa benson of ridgewood queens right here what happened to her and why was still unclear robbery seemed unlikely in her purse investigators found credit cards and a wallet full of cash none of the clues pointed to the killer but anthony silva provided a description the shooter was described from five foot five to five foot eight with a reasonably husky build he said that there was some sort of a commotion dear evan silva told police to look for a gray or silver van with a burgundy stripe down the side because of his description of the gunshots detectives believed these were assassinations a silencer must have been used the parking lot was reserved for those with monthly permits each person who parked there had to fill out an agreement and could only enter by punching a license plate number into a keypad the parking attendant provided police with benson's agreement and those for all the vehicles in the rooftop lot detectives took the stack of papers hoping they would help reveal their killer's identity dispatch he advised apb on silver grey band with a red stripe seen leaving the scene with a white female wounded as news of the murders spread through police channels more and more officers joined the search for the killer who was already long gone at the crime scene the press clamored for the story it appears that the three males apparently happened upon either an altercation or an abduction of some kind at this point where you're just not sure what happened various items which would indicate that the female was present at the scene a woman's shoes women's sunglasses and some other items are present at the crime scene close to one of the bodies as the story broke across the city new yorkers were shocked reporter selwyn robb covered the murders for the new york times everybody in new york knew about the story on the night it occurred three men try to act as good samaritans the idea that three people during a period when people were very concerned in new york about a soaring crime rate would intervene and get shot down blasted away the way they were so from the start this was a case that was obviously going to draw a lot of attention the grisly murders touched a nerve each new piece of information triggered a growing sense of dread across the city it sends a real message maybe you better not intervene if you see something happening it could happen to you even in a crowded area even when you're with two other when you're three men and you think you can you can handle a situation like that it isn't one person on a dark street so that made it very intimidating as panic grew police were under immense pressure to find the killer and melissa benson the faster they could find her the more likely she would be alive officers first visited her current employer melissa benson worked in a camera store as an accountant her co-worker told the officers before that she worked at a diamond company hoping to find some clue to melissa benson's whereabouts investigators went to her apartment in queens the superintendent let them in the super said he didn't know much about her benson kept to herself [Music] for a homebody however she was quite familiar to the local police an officer from the 104th precinct in queens knew her i remember her right here i knew her yeah she became a regular around the precinct after a friend of hers named debbie wong disappeared benson feared debbie wong was in grave danger the woman never turned up and now benson was missing too investigators found nothing incriminating in her apartment just piles of financial papers which did not seem unusual for an accountant according to the queen's officer benson said she was working with the fbi if she was involved with the bureau the next step was clear for detective chartrand made a call to the director of the federal bureau of investigation and dropped a little bomb on him and said you guys got something going and does this name mean anything to you the news benson was missing was a blow to agent robert paquette she was the key witness in a multi-million dollar fraud investigation i received a call from the new york police department and he advised me that there was a a murder that took place at pier 92 in new york city and that one of the individuals involved was melissa benson in addition to three other individuals who were employed by cbs at the time somewhat stunned fbi agents agreed to meet with a detective the next day nypd detectives and officers patrolled the streets that night searching for a silver or light-colored van in the early morning hours they caught a break a van and driver matching the general description given by witnesses yet no sign of the missing woman police brought the man in for questioning he insisted he knew nothing about the crimes of the missing woman melissa benson tell us everything you know he wasn't anywhere near the pier at the time of the murders they had a suspect in custody but detectives continued to try and link him to the crime while the man was questioned they began analyzing parking lot permits all right what do you guys got so far well right now the only thing i've found of interest is i got miss benson's manson's agreement indicated she had only parked there a few months it was dated april 1st of that year police reviewed the other agreements hoping to uncover a clue to the killer's identity outside once his alibi checked out investigators were convinced the man they had in custody was innocent they released him [Music] the new york police feared they were running out of time if they were to find melissa benson alive on the evening of april 12 1982 nypd investigators were grappling with a brutal triple homicide the bodies of three television employees were found in a parking lot atop pier 92 on manhattan's west side and a woman named melissa benson was missing by the morning after the murders the nypd learned benson was an important witness in a federal fraud case traveled to fbi headquarters to see if they could shed any light on the missing woman federal agents explained they had been conducting a fraud investigation for the past eight months it involved a diamond company in new york which once employed melissa benson they described how their case began to the new york detectives i received a call from an investigator who was employed by the bank in new york city they had believed at this time that candor diamond had defrauded their company of approximately 6.5 million dollars canada diamond corporation was a family business owned by a man named erwin margolis melissa benson handled his finances creditors recently discovered someone at the company falsified documents in order to secure million-dollar loans [Music] the creditors were becoming suspicious and an auditor was scheduled to inspect kander's books [Music] the next morning the auditor from the finance company began to value kander's inventory of precious gems and examine their books the diamonds kander had been buying up were worth more than two million dollars on paper my goal has told the auditor he feared they had been stolen the finance company called the fbi we interviewed numerous people that were involved with the company and those people that worked in the vicinity of candor diamond and to a person they all painted a picture of a company that was in trouble kander was forced into bankruptcy but proving who specifically was responsible for the scheme would be difficult fbi agent don richards knew he needed to find someone on the inside willing to talk the diamond district is a very very closed community and the only way that we saw that we could get into what was going on at candor diamond was to find somebody on the inside who's wanting to talk with us they chose melissa benson she wanted nothing to do with them she tried to pretend that she was really an innocent victim of this whole scheme benson avoided them for weeks then suddenly she asked for a meeting don't get up it was january 1982 four months before the mysterious shooting she told the agent she was worried about a friend a woman named debbie wong benson said she had gotten a friend a job as a bookkeeper at candid diamond corporation in 1981 she told the agent wong had recently disappeared and benson feared she might be next at the time investigators weren't certain what to make of the disappearance but now that benson was also missing the agents were concerned benson had always insinuated that wong knew nothing about what was going on and that really all she did was hang out with her so when she first disappeared we didn't understand the significance of her disappearance on march 25th benson pled guilty to federal fraud charges and agreed to testify and tell everything she knew about candid diamond corporation but the fbi had now lost their witness for both the fbi and nypd finding melissa benson was priority one the investigators headed to queens to take a deeper look at benson's missing friend debbie wong detectives spoke with two teenagers who witnessed her abduction now was he driving on the night debbie wong disappeared january 5th 1982 the teenagers told police they saw a woman walking out of an apartment building [Music] when she got to her car they saw a man wearing all black rush from a van and throw a blanket over her head the teenagers told police the man shoved her into a car and sped away and a van followed them they didn't get a good look at the abductor one week after debbie wong disappeared officers found her car abandoned in a lot on manhattan's west side the car bore few clues to her whereabouts but police found disturbing evidence inside was a single 22-caliber shell casing the evidence that most concerned police was found on the carpet under the back seat a small dark red stain that appeared to be blood [Music] nobody was found the investigators were determined to confirm whether the benson case and the wong case were linked they asked for the evidence from wong's car to compare with the evidence gathered from the parking pier one shell casing would be all they'd need [Music] ballistics tests confirmed what they'd suspected the casing found in debbie wong's car was similar to those found at the parking garage they'd been fired by the same gun that shell casing matched the shell casings from the pier so it would leave a reasonable person to say there's a connection at the lab evidence from debbie wong's car was tested they confirmed the dark stain was in fact blood genetic markers were consistent with debbie wong's blood type police now feared she had been killed whoever killed the three men on the parking garage and took melissa benson also abducted debbie wong three men were killed in a new york parking garage police believe they were executed when they came to the aid of melissa benson she was now missing along with her close friend debbie wong the two women worked in new york's diamond district for a man named irwin margolis his company was under federal investigation for fraud and benson was providing the authorities information about her boss investigators went to talk with erwin margolis fbi agents visited the diamond importer at his home in a westchester suburb he told them two million dollars worth of diamonds were stolen from his safe and he had strong suspicions who took them he was certain melissa benson and her friend debbie wong were the thieves at the club benson had seen the gems and knew the combination to the safe talk he claimed he was innocent of any fraud it was all perpetrated by melissa benson according to special agent don richards everything was her fault she had orchestrated it she had this strange illness she was dying she had been embezzling she needed money for a cancer operation in europe and just on and on and on the number of things that he came up with as to why she was guilty of doing all these terrible things to candor diamond unbeknownst to him to try and corroborate margola's story agents visited debbie wong's husband at his home in new jersey he said he had last seen his wife on the day she disappeared he admitted they had had a fight he suspected something was going on with his wife and benson melissa had given his wife a blue bag and he wanted to find out what was in it it was filled with stacks of documents related to the candid diamond corporation debbie was furious he had seen the documents he told her to get rid of them she said she had been holding the bag for melissa benson according to wong's husband benson had stolen the documents because she feared margolis was planning to set her up to take the blame for his illicit schemes she needed insurance and she wanted to keep it safe so she asked debbie wong to keep the documents for her [Music] found the bag wong wanted nothing to do with the papers and insisted debbie get rid of them she stormed out of the house that day taking the blue bag with her she returned the bag and the documents to benson's apartment in queens miss wong had to visited miss benson's apartment in queens this evening she had called her husband and told him that she was leaving and was going to be on her way home it was approximately seven o'clock in the evening it was then that the teenagers saw the masked man shove her into the car and drive off [Music] debbie's husband never saw or heard from her again with a strong suspicion the two cases were related investigators heightened their search to identify the killer fbi agent don richards you start with the known and you keep adding the unknowns and you try to figure out how it fits one of the first tasks was try to find out who was up on the parking lot that had access go through all of the applications you look for vans of the many parking agreements investigators found only one van had used the lot that night but a check of the plates with a dmv came back empty one of the detectives came up with a recent parking lot application of a van um seemed to fit license plate didn't seem quite right the license number was a phony the agreement however contained another clue and some of the information on there had been scratched out and redone a second license number which had been written and then crossed out was barely legible on the page through a little bit of forensics you're able to raise the correct license plate number that was written down then scratched out investigators hoped this number would lead them to the killer this time they got a hit the plate was registered to a man named donald nash nash had filled out an agreement for a silver chevrolet van on april 6 less than a week after benson had applied this is good this is real good you're on your way and you can you can feel yourself begin to say okay we've we've got that initial break we're on the right track police discovered he had been arrested seven times in the last 30 years on various felony and misdemeanor charges donald nash was now the prime suspect all of a sudden the adrenaline starts pumping you're feeling good you're you're on the scent and you're moving and from there you just begin to run that out as quickly and as thoroughly as you can the fbi ran nash's name and license plate through their own crime database and got another hit nash's van had been linked to an infamous fbi case known as the pizza connection we found that that license plate had been spotted by an fbi surveillance team that was doing a surveillance on a meeting of some genevieve's people in queens we didn't know its relevance [Music] the fbi's investigation began back in 1979 after mafia crime boss carmen galante was gunned down in a brooklyn restaurant in the world of organized crime a shift in power was taking place if donald nash worked for the mob investigators feared they might never find him or melissa benson the fbi stepped up surveillance outside pizzerias bakeries and other known mafia fronts agents collected license plate numbers of any and all cars parked in the area they recorded the license plate of donald nash's silver van for fbi agents donald nash with his possible links to the mob seemed an even more likely suspect than their scheming diamond merchant to determine whether the mob ordered a hit on melissa benson the fbi asked around on the streets i had two or three agents do a little research into our files speak with their informants speak with other people to find out if this woman who had been killed in any way was connected girlfriend wife relative of the people that we had under investigation benson had no mob ties if organized crime hadn't ordered the hit agents wondered why nash would be in that neighborhood they soon made the connection the spot where nash's van was seen was just blocks from benson's apartment in queens we knew from the facts of the pizza case investigation that nash did not have any relationship with those individuals however based on the fact that that plate and that van were at the pier that evening that there's only one reason that he could have been in such a close proximity to her apartment and that was because he was surveilling her and that he was interested in determining what her normal activities were it appeared nash had been stalking her police continued their desperate search for him hoping to find melissa benson before it was too late new york police and the fbi were investigating a disappearance of a woman they thought might be linked to organized crime [Music] mafia crime boss carmen gallante was gunned down in brooklyn [Music] during the investigation into his murder they uncovered their chief suspect's license plate number the fbi determined their suspect donald nash and his victim melissa benson had no mob ties it did appear nash was stalking benson and his license plate was recorded as part of a surveillance on the mafia hit investigators believed someone may have witnessed the murders and headed back to the pier the ss rotterdam was was moored on the west side of manhattan getting ready for a cruise we were desperate to find any evidence at that point that would help us solve the crime and we realized that there were a lot of people on that ship on deck with cameras and we asked the passengers if they would share with us their videotapes and photographs to see if by chance we might have caught the murder on on camera agents interviewed passengers and collected rolls of film but no one had seen anything and none of the photos captured the murders or the murderer as investigators struggled with dead-end leads trying to understand the facts of the crime they were constantly under the microscope of the new york press it was front page on the new york times the new york post the daily news the director of the fbi was getting probably three or four telephone calls a day from the chairman of cbs wanting to know what the progress was the residents of the city seemed starved for any information they could get on the story this was better than any kind of uh chandler fiction story or daschle hammett detective story what you had here from the start was anyone who started picking up the stones to see what was going on you had a tale of greed embezzlement murder missing witnesses cooked books very strange witnesses and also all the participants had checkered or intriguing backgrounds melissa benson had been missing for less than 24 hours when police received a call that a woman's body had been found in an alley located near wall street a non-residential area that was often desolate after dark it was the perfect spot to dump a body without being seen police scanned the area looking for clues to identify the woman's killer it was a factory area and there was cardboard boxes there and it was quite evident that there were tire tracks on the cardboard all of which were photographed and gathered up everything down there even garbage was gathered up to see if it would have any relationship to the incident the tire tracks were a solid piece of evidence for police but they wouldn't help unless they could find the killer's van a pay phone was next to the body [Music] police ordered records pulled for it maybe someone who had used it had seen the killer dump benson's body it was also possible the killer used the phone i need a record of all phone calls perhaps it held the key to finding the murderer [Music] the body was sent to the morgue using dental records it was identified as melissa benson she had been dead for less than 24 hours cause of death a 22-caliber bullet fired at close range into her brain the m.e determined her death was not instantaneous i don't believe that she died immediately during the forensic and medical investigation there were particles in her throat that should not have been there which would indicate that there was one or two last gasps after she was thrown into the van the medical examiner found metal particles straw bits of styrofoam and tiny pieces of cellophane tangled in the victim's hair none of those materials were found near benson's body they must have gotten in the victim's hair inside the getaway van they were collected to match against the van when it was located the 22-caliber bullet removed from benson's body with its distinctive lands and grooves etched around the outside was compared to the 22 caliber bullets recovered from the men murdered at the parking garage the grooves matched the same man who abducted debbie wong also took melissa benson our witness is dead she was killed along with three people who worked for cbs we don't know who did it we didn't understand exactly why the connection was there somebody killed this woman and the cbs employees we had to find that person to increase their efforts to find the killer the nypd and the fbi set up a joint task force we closed no doors um everything was open for discussion each of you have a different part you don't know how it fits together but you think it does and over time you'll find out fortunately melissa benson was a federal woman because benson was working with the fbi agent don richards felt an urgency to find her killer we couldn't help her after she had been killed the best thing we could do for her was find her killer you you don't mess with our witnesses nothing get away with it they believe their prime suspect donald nash had been planning the crimes for some time parking lot records showed he had parked at the pier on the same dates and times as melissa benson in the weeks prior to her murder he appeared to be stalking her [Music] nash's van was registered to a construction company in midtown manhattan police were dispatched to the scene but it was empty once we identified donald nash we went to the location that was known to be his business location his business location amounted to a telephone on a desk and somebody else's premises he was well known to the area and well liked he was the local handyman if you had any problems mechanically or electrically if you got a hold of donald nash he would take care of it fix it for you do whatever you want officers also visited nash's neighborhood a rough area of the city known as hell's kitchen run by an irish gang called the westies the ammo of the crime made detective chartrand suspect nash was connected to the gang i know that he was using the same technique that some of the quote westies were using and they were responsible for maybe 17-18 murders always a van always a small caliber gun always a shot that i had neighborhood locals had known nash for years but no one admitted to knowing his whereabouts perhaps out of loyalty or fear in this area known as hell's kitchen they have their own code and the code is never give up anybody because if you do and it's found out you're going to be dead very shortly they'll come and kill you if they don't their friends will so everybody keeps quiet with no one talking about donald nash the fbi turned their attention to the only person with a possible motive to get rid of melissa benson erwin margolis agents hoped to find a link between margolis and their suspected killer this time margolis agreed to talk only if his attorney could be present his story stayed the same he again pointed the finger at melissa benson he was not as cooperative as you would expect he basically tried to place the entire blame on his comptroller and insinuated that she was behind it all the diamond merchant denied he knew donald nash he claimed benson was a criminal and any number of people might have wanted her problem dead attorney dave owen suggested benson had taken everyone for a ride including the fbi sure they had no proof to tie margolis to the murders and the officers were running out of leads but the urgency of finding the killer was growing the pressure on the political end is increasing doesn't matter that it's a weekend the calls keep coming chairman of cbs wants to know when you're going to make an arrest police commissioner when are you going to make an arrest the media wants to know when are you going to make an arrest [Music] and even though they had a suspect they had no idea where he was while they were going over phone records they got a break it was a single phone number buried in a mountain of phone records from lower manhattan on the night of the murders a phone call was placed from the pay phone where the body was found to a home in new jersey the call was charged to a number in keanesburg registered to donald nash the fbi now had his address and set up surveillance we put a team over there they barely had set up and all of a sudden they spotted him not the van but they spotted him and he was heading off with a friend and surveillance began they soon caught sight of their man but couldn't approach there wasn't enough evidence to arrest him and questions would tip him off he might run but watching donald nash would not be easy he was about to take them on a dangerous ride in april 1982 the nypd and the fbi joined forces to catch a hired gun donald nash was believed responsible for at least four deaths and an unsolved kidnapping the nypd had tracked him to his home in kingsburg new jersey now the fbi took the lead it was april 17 1982 five days after the murders and they were on his tail special agent don richards we don't have nearly enough to arrest this man we can't even pull him over unless he's speeding but let's find out where he is let's make sure that he doesn't slip away at fbi headquarters in new york agents got word nash was on the move traveling in a red datsun with an unknown man according to the dmv the datsun was registered to thomas dain who also lived in keynesburg just a few blocks from nash agents tracked the two men to a nearby sporting goods store where they watched them load several large packages into the trunk they could not identify the items it looked like camping equipment but the store also sold high-powered rifles and ammunition [Music] they feared their surveillance might be turning into a cross country or even global chase once nash headed for the airport agent ron moretti still works undercover and his identity has been hidden to protect ongoing investigations nash proceeded to the newark international airport where they went into the long-term parking area and donald nash got into a black van now we had been given a description that the van used in the murder was a light colored vanity the white or silver so we were looking for a white or silver van but we also realized there was a possibility that someone might paint that van though the van was black agents understood its importance if this was the same vehicle used in the crime it may still contain vital evidence but they did not have enough tying nash to the crime to get a search warrant they decided to tail him until they uncovered the proof they needed agents ran the plates through the dmv they had been recently issued and were not yet entered into the dmv database the agents followed nash to a highway rest stop they watched as the men transferred items from the car to the van the black van doesn't have the plate on it it should it's the wrong color it's the wrong plate is it the right fan one agent went forward to get a better look the van had hunting decals affixed to the back nash might be planning a trip to some sort of rural area they would have to follow him because they could not arrest him without being certain he was the murderer if the van didn't contain any evidence they couldn't hold him and if nash was hired by someone agents also wanted to find that man [Music] again he was on the move and the fbi was in pursuit and i had been in constant communication with the surveillance team and the only thing we had to go on was this van i mean if we we didn't find the van we were looking for we would have been in a lot of trouble yet within minutes agents were faced with a dilemma [Music] they couldn't risk losing nash and radioed for other agents to watch dane so flying down the interstate with two cars on the van it's probably the the most important case that the fbi and police department are working on in the last month and you can't let them get away we had no idea where he was taking us we had no idea if we had the right van we had no idea if we had the right man and we couldn't let him go nash got on the new jersey turnpike headed southbound with two carloads of federal agents never far behind the new york office was run and supervised by a deputy assistant director by name of ken walton ken looked at his surveillance supervisor and told him that he was to have full access to all bureau aircraft and that they were quote not to lose him and if anybody did lose him they should not come back to new york by day's end nash led agents as far as lancaster pennsylvania he checked into a motel and appeared to call it a night my instructions were following until we can figure out how we can arrest him just don't let him go don't let him out of your sight agents kept a close watch on his room they wanted to get a closer look at the van but they could not risk getting caught they waited for nash to settle in let's find out if it is the right van let's look on the dashboard for the vehicle identification number auto manufacturers engrave a vin or vehicle identification number on every vehicle often on the dashboard it is a unique number no two vehicles have the same vin if the id numbers for this van and the silver van were the same the men would have their answer this was their chance now it's two o'clock in the morning the van's locked don't want to spoil anything in there anyway so the surveillance agent takes a flashlight shines it around but on this night luck was not on their side papers on the dashboard covered the id number the fbi would have to wait for the next day and nash's next move fbi agents in new york were investigating a diamond company owned by a man named erwin margolis [Music] the fbi suspected someone on the inside was defrauding its creditors out of millions of dollars they focused their attention on the company's comptroller melissa benson then margolis employees began disappearing a woman named debbie wong was abducted outside melissa benson's apartment [Music] after wong disappeared benson became frightened and told the fbi she would cooperate with her investigation less than a month later melissa benson was shot and killed she was then loaded into the back of the silver van three men tried to come to her aid and were brutally murdered police tried to make sense of the murder scene piecing together the clues but they had little pointing them to the killer the day after she was abducted melissa benson's body was found in a new york alleyway [Music] the murders were front-page news new york times reporter selwyn robb of course a murder like this that happens in a very public area four people killed during the evening rush hour there's going to be enormous pressure police had only one solid lead in the case and he was hundreds of miles from new york they were following a man named donald nash he was a suspected killer but the investigators had no proof he was involved in the murders they were ordered to keep a close watch on him [Music] special agent ron moretti our surveillance team had to stay awake 24 hours a day because not only will they follow him when he was driving but wherever he spent the night we didn't want to nash to be able to leave without us knowing about it so someone had to stay awake and keep an eye on the van the entire time so it was taxing on our surveillance team at the scene of benson's disappearance witnesses had seen a silver van nash was driving a black van agents suspected he may have painted he's rolling let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go only looking at the vehicle's id numbers would confirm their suspicions but the number was obscured and now nash was once again in motion they continued tailing at a safe distance with nash apparently unaware of their presence [Music] fbi special agent don richards coordinated the search in new york the next morning the people back in new york are trying to figure out what else can we do to tie the van and this this man to the murders themselves investigators hit the streets let's check all of the body shops in and around where she lives and see if they had done a job on a silver van making it black none of the body shops worked on a silver van in the last two days they were at another dead end now we could try to get a search warrant on his home to see if there's anything there that could tie it in without probable cause so it's getting tougher and tougher once again detectives in new york turned to phone records to try and tie donald nash to the victim melissa benson and her boss erwin margolis their job was difficult every phone call that was made by nash either in new jersey or in new york the subscriber to the phone that received the call and then we got all of their phone calls and everybody that they ever called we had a cardboard box piled two feet high with telephone records just a few more phone calls their goal to identify every call he made in the months prior to the murders maybe they could find a link between him and the victim agents knew nash was in contact with his nephew thomas dane they staked out his home in new jersey dane had no criminal record but because they had seen him help nash make his getaway detectives suspected he might be involved in the crime they set up to watch his every move agents following nash tracked him to a campground in west virginia he hit the road again with the helicopter in close pursuit choppers maintain visual contact with the van from high above allowing agents to hang back so they did not risk being spotted they weren't certain he had killed melissa benson but they believed he might be dangerous agent don richards wanted to make an arrest and fast so we said we we've got to find a way to see if we've got the right van from the air the roof of the van appeared to be discolored a lighter color paint was showing through the black roof of the van undercover agent ron moretti got the call they could see that it was a lighter colored van underneath the black paint so now we felt more confident that we had the right van nash had now crossed into kentucky the reports i was getting back from the surveillance team were he was getting into some backwoods area of kentucky and they weren't sure whether they were going to be able to continue following him we were concerned that should they lose donald nash we would never be able to find him again if the van pulled onto one of the tree-covered roads joining the highway the chopper might not be able to maintain visual contact the fbi had to get the vin number from the van they put a call in to the kentucky state we advise vehicles police on i-64 westbound around the 59 or 16 kentucky state trooper steve broad remembers the request the fbi asked that we stop a van that was on i-64 traveling westbound and obtained the vin number off of it to the kentucky state police the request sounded impossible they said realistically you want us to put up a roadblock in the middle of an interstate highway bring all commercial traffic to a screeching halt to see if you've got the right van yeah fortunately they were friends of the fbi and they said they'd give it a shot and so a trap was set troopers established a roadblock and waited for nash to approach if they could see the vin number when the van stopped and the numbers matched the fbi would finally have what it needed proof the vehicle nash was driving was in fact the infamous silver getaway van cloaked in black the fbi was tracking a suspected killer through kentucky they believed he had killed at least four people and possibly a fifth he'd pursued donald nash from new york and he was now speeding westward on an interstate highway the fbi enlisted help from yet another law enforcement agency the kentucky state police state troopers established a roadblock hoping to get a glimpse of the vin number of nash's van the fbi had been on his tail for nearly 72 hours straight and he had done nothing to give them the probable cause to pull him over if they stopped him without cause and the van didn't contain any evidence of murder they could never hold him for three days nash had been the model citizen he didn't even break the speed limit the fbi and the kentucky police were counting on their roadblock to give them the opportunity to read the vin number when nash reached the roadblock a trooper assured him it was just standard procedure but the view of the id number was still obscured kentucky state trooper steve wrote traffic was beginning to back up so a decision was made to let him go in case something went wrong we didn't want a bunch of traffic behind us that would be involved in any potential confrontation with him they didn't get the numbers the pursuit of donald nash would have to continue agents had to find another opportunity back in new york police continued trying to find enough evidence to pull nash over and make an arrest detectives had been piecing together months of nash's phone records looking for anything linking him to the murders then detectives found it nash had made several calls to a man named dave owen owen was erwin margolis's attorney nash called him three times in recent weeks the fbi brought one in for questioning they thought they might have found the connection between nash and melissa benson's boss when questioned the attorney insisted it was perfectly logical for nash to call him he had recently represented him on a minor fraud case we knew we had to act fast and try to get some type of evidence where we could either get an arrest warrant for nash or a search warrant for his van and detain him on federal charges or murder charges out of the state of new york as the fbi was deciding their next move nash stopped of his own accord a few hundred feet up the road [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh sir because nash pulled over the kentucky state police could ask to see his license and registration and the vehicle id number which is listed on the registration and after talking to him for a few minutes i let him go i gave the dispatcher the vin number off the van he ran it through the ncic computer and it came back as a stolen vehicle rest stockholm it took only a few minutes to get what fbi agents had waited for for days the vin number matched the id number agents had on file for the silver van [Music] the kentucky agents were waiting for instructions from the fbi we were following this van at a distance so the driver of it wouldn't see us in the marked cars we didn't want to spook him and make him do something out of the ordinary and just about the time we got ready to stop him the van drives into a rest area nash pulled the van against the curb the troopers surrounded it [Music] the report of the van being stolen gave them enough to make an arrest there's always a potential for violence he was a suspect in a murder whether he knew it or not where a firearm was used you have to wonder in those circumstances when i see him what's he going to do throw the keys out the window he said what's wrong and we said well the van you have been reported stolen and he said no there's got to be more than that this many of you wouldn't be here for a stolen van nash's biggest concern was with retrieving his glasses he was practically blind without them he pressed the police to explain the real reason they were arresting him we still did not want to tell him that he was a suspect in a murder at the request of the fbi so we continued to tell him that he was being arrested for having a stolen van i don't think he ever believed this [Music] donald nash was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle on monday april 22nd in his pockets some eight thousand dollars in crisp new one hundred dollar bills the suspected murderer was finally behind bars [Music] but if his van didn't contain evidence of murder the officers would not have enough to hold him [Music] fbi agents flew to kentucky to retrieve their prisoner they hoped he would talk fbi special agent bob paquette [Music] we made an attempt to interview him he had made it pretty clear to us he was not going to cooperate in any investigation with nash not talking they had to rely on the evidence we then compiled the information evidence we did have we made application to the u.s district court in lexington kentucky and was granted permission to search the van the van had been hastily painted in places the original silver color still showed through [Music] technicians from the kentucky state police worked into the night processing the van the fbi hoped inside was the evidence to tie donald nash to the murder of melissa benson and give them some insight into debbie wong's whereabouts first technicians documented the contents they collected small pieces of styrofoam cellophane and metal scrapings all items found on melissa benson's body they retrieved a tell-tale 22 caliber shell casing the casing would be tested against those found at the pier in new york [Music] technicians inked the tires and took impressions to try and match them with the impressions found on the cardboard near melissa benson's body [Music] supervisor larry ayers turned his attention to the blood they were small but there were numerous blood stains in the van as well as bloodstained clothing i was amazed at how much physical evidence there actually was in the band i wasn't expecting to find very much been several days since the murder had occurred [Music] the blood was sent to the lab for comparison police had samples of melissa benson's blood for testing but because debbie wong's body had never been found they would have to find something to make a comparison [Music] at debbie wong's home officers collected personal items including a hairbrush samples of underwear forensic technicians analyzed the bits of metal plastic and styrofoam recovered from the van they matched those found in benson's hair at the time of her death the blood scraped from the van's interior were of two different blood types matching melissa benson and debbie wong this evidence placed both women inside the van [Music] ballistics testing confirmed the three shell casings found at the pier and the one found in wong's car were similar to the one found sitting in donald nash's van and the tire marks from the van match those found near benson's body we had tire impressions left at the crime scene where uh miss benson's body was left and we matched the tires to that we found boxes of ammunition on shot we found in the van bits and pieces of hair pieces of clothing human blood the forensic technicians found evidence the same caliber weapon was in the van is where the two victims melissa benson and debbie won they had also placed the van at the site where benson's body was dropped on april 21st 1982 donald nash was extradited back to new york just over a week after the city was stunned by his vicious crimes the next day the quiet suburb of kingsburg new jersey was alive with activity fbi agent don richards i sent two agents to begin to develop a search warrant based on evidence from the van and everything else we had for the house we had no murder weapon without a gun the case still had weak links there was a small creek out behind mr nash's house and we thought there's a good chance that he may have thrown the gun into that creek he also might have used it to dispose of a human body scuba teams from the fbi nypd and new jersey police donned gear to search a wide stretch of the creek law enforcement searched nash's home and his garage inside spray paint and a large outline on the floor spoke volumes in the garage we found black paint um some tape some newspapers that had black paint on it to black paint spray cans it was on the walls and it was in a perfect rectangle looked like about the size of a van it must have been here nash executed a shoddy paint job transforming his silver chevy van into a mysterious black vehicle while scanning the perimeter of the garage agents made an unusual discovery [Music] a bullet hole had punctured one of the walls but even stranger the wall on the inside was undamaged back and forth they looked outside and found the hole looked inside and could not undercover fbi agent ron moretti the laboratory guys then took a tape measure and measured the outside of the garage and they went back on the inside and measured the inside of the garage and found it to be a couple feet short on the inside than it was on the outside it became clear a secret room existed somewhere behind the wall of the garage a hidden door led into a dark crawl space as agents crossed the threshold they were prepared for anything construction supplies and arsenal or the final resting place of debbie wong [Music] police in new york had captured the man who killed melissa benson but her friend debbie wong was still missing they searched a creek behind the killer's house looking for wong's body in the murder weapon investigators still needed more evidence according to fbi agent don richards you can put the man in custody at the scene of the crime you can put his vehicle there you can put blood and hair from the crime scene in his van so you can tie him to the van and the van to the killing that's good you're still not there but it's it's looking better it's looking a whole lot better [Music] donald nash was a man of many secrets as law enforcement officials were searching his home they found a hidden room in the back of his garage as agents entered the dark room they found 22 caliber shell casings littered the floor of the small musty space hidden behind a fake wall in his garage [Music] it appeared a gun had been fired inside on more than one occasion crime scene technicians bagged some of the casings and took scrapings of the reddish substance staining the sink blood residue though whose blood it was would remain a mystery forensic test would reveal it to be a different blood type than either benson or wong donald nash may have used this room to dispose of other bodies undercover fbi agent ron moretti it appeared to us that he had used this room to either dispose of bodies or clean up his van which would account for the blood being found there in the creek behind the house the murky waters were slow going for the divers handfuls of mud had to be sifted inch by inch it was as muddy as a mississippi and you could not see your hand in front of your face so it became a groping along the bottom but persistence paid off more 22 caliber shell casings were unearthed but their next big break came once again from phone records police had spent a week analyzing a stack of phone records two feet high pay phones nash's phones and now the phones of nash's relatives and known associates they learned weeks before her murder someone had called melissa benson from the home of nash's nephew thomas dane agents asked him to come down to headquarters benson's number was unlisted police wanted to know how dane had gotten it he insisted he never called her and knew nothing about the woman but as the meeting wore on dane wore out he told police nash had probably made the call himself to check up on benson [Music] for detectives the big question was how nash knew the number nash wasn't talking but his attorney was as the fbi's case strengthened dave owen agreed to cooperate finally uh he caved in and admitted that he was the one who arranged the meeting between himself and this hit man and was a go-between between erwin margulis and the hitman investigators had finally confirmed the link between donald nash and erwin margolis dave owen introduced the two in 1981 shortly after margolis went bankrupt and learned he was being investigated by the fbi someone in his organization was talking and margolis wanted to know who [Music] he suspected melissa benson and debbie wong were cooperating with the feds he felt that miss wong was the weaker of the two women and if anyone would be cooperating it would have been her so i think in theory we we believe that he had her killed first believing that she probably was even though he had no reason to accurately identify that she had met with the fbi margolis's suspicion cost her her life in exchange for immunity dave owen testified at trial the nash agreed to kill both debbie wong and melissa benson for a fee of eight thousand dollars best we could figure is the blanket was thrown over her head gun put to her head and she was shot once killed police theorized nash was assisted by an accomplice who has never been identified with wong out of the way investigators believe margolis went after melissa benson he hired a private eye to tailor her margolis is a paranoid man and unfortunately for miss benson and and the fbi apparently the private investigator saw her go to a meeting with an fbi agent nash tracked melissa benson he chose pier 92 as the perfect isolated spot for murder agent bob paquette we determined that most likely the shooter had been stalking and trying to develop details of the victims activities and in fact probably was just looking for the right time and day to complete this uh this murder he pulled into a space next to benson's car on the rooftop lot [Music] [Music] having stalked her for weeks nash knew benson's habits when she got off work and how long it took her to walk to the lot for nypd detective chartrand nash's brutal crimes didn't match the man you could walk past nash on the street and not even know he was there he never projected the feeling of a hard-nosed son of a gun but he was a cold-blooded murderer melissa benson had no idea what awaited her she stood just inches from her killer in theory in theory only he was seated in the van when she went to the passenger side of the car to get into the car he reached out and shot her the trajectory of the shell casing would go high into the left and that's how it wound up in the van he immediately got out pulled the doors open threw her wrench slammed the door and then he went about assassinating the three witnesses nash was unprepared for witnesses he reacted on instinct his eyesight poor since a childhood accident required him to chase down his victims one by one he shot them at close range he had to it was the only way he could see his target nash's attack on the three cbs employees was quick and brutal never spoke to law enforcement about anything that happened that night new york times reporter selwyn robb he was really uh as hard-boiled and cold-blooded as they came and when it came to a criminal code of silence he was certainly a master disciple of that after he left the pier nash had to solve the problem of what to do with the body he didn't want to drive around in that van with the body in her back my feeling was that he would have taken her to new jersey and got rid of her there in the marshes or whatever he couldn't take that chance of going to the tunnel with benson in the back of the vehicle he went south and dropped the body in franklin alley he then called his nephew to help him get out of town thomas dane in exchange for immunity testified against his uncle he admitted getting a call from nash that evening nash directed him to the long-term parking lot at newark airport where they dumped the van after he painted it it's pretty obvious that he got some help in carrying out this crime certainly in the escape if nothing else yet there was never a word uttered by him with nash not talking investigators had to find hard evidence tying margolis to the murders if they couldn't uncover any evidence he might walk free melissa benson was abducted from a rooftop parking garage in manhattan three men came to her aid and were all shot at close range [Music] the killer drove from the garage in a silver van the fbi had followed their prime suspect all the way to kentucky they felt confident they had the shooter in custody but he was a hired gun they suspected diamond merchant erwin margolis hired him to kill melissa benson and her friend debbie wong they had testimony that he was behind the murder but they had no hard evidence the break investigators were looking for came several months after donald nash's arrest detective chartrand was called to melissa benson's apartment relatives packing her belongings found a blue bag filled with documents from the candor diamond corporation even after death melissa benson was not silenced investigators believe debbie wong returned the bag to benson the night she disappeared benson secretly held on to it not even revealing its existence to the fbi the entitled revenue people and the fbi presented all of those documents in the case of fraud against the principle of candor diamonds it's all written out here she left all of us behind so she was holding the hammer her efforts were not in vain erwin margolis and his associates were arrested in may 1982 on federal fraud charges margolis was convicted of fraud and two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of debbie wong and melissa benson he was sentenced to 25 years to life for each of the murders but jail didn't stop irwin margolis he was determined to get even with his enemies while he's in jail awaiting trial through one of the other prisoners he starts looking for hitman he wants to kill the prosecutor and the philip at the bank who initially turned the matter over to the fbi so we thoughtfully uh learn about this through a jailhouse informant and an fbi agent posing as a hit man meets with him as a visitor and he lays out the deal of how he wants these people killed and what he's willing to pay for it and the tape recording is wonderful so if he's willing to pay to kill them we're pretty sure he's willing to pay to kill the other two women donald nash and erwin margolis committed a crime that paralyzed new yorkers with fear and suspicion and changed the way they looked at their city this was was an abusive aggressive paranoid man who who was ruthless in his business dealings he just wouldn't broach any challenge to his decisions his authorities and the way he wanted things done didn't matter if it was illegal didn't matter if it was immoral didn't matter if it was putting anybody else's life in danger it made no difference [Music] donald nash was found guilty of four counts of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder he is currently serving 100 years to life the people that were involved in the murders in this investigation were the absolute personification of evil man treating man very poorly donald nash currently resides in new york's auburn correctional facility detectives tried to convince donald ash after he was convicted to at least give the the wong family a little bit of solace by telling where the body was so they could at least bury her he denied any knowledge of it he has never spoken of the murders and debbie wong's body in a california hospital patients are mysteriously dying on the graveyard shift their internal organs are paralyzed as they slowly suffocate the deaths devastate families searching for answers the death toll climbs and rumors and innuendo point to murder police must rely on science to stop an angel of death [Music] so in this program some of the names of the participants have been changed as well as the name of the hospital in the hospital's intensive care unit doctors struggled to keep tricia johnson alive her husband larry stayed by her bedside she'd been in the icu for days doctors believed the worst was finally behind her [Music] around three o'clock am he went to get a cup of coffee [Music] as he left his sleeping wife's side he had no way of knowing it was the last time he would see her alive [Music] only moments after he walked out of her room trisha's vital signs began to plummet the nurse's station was alerted she was in full arrest the drama team rushed to trish's room her heart had stopped [Music] when larry returned he saw the doctors surrounding his wife [Music] there was nothing else they could do 247 she was dead respiratory therapist bob baker had become accustomed to sudden deaths in the icu we do work around a lot of emergencies a lot of death a lot of sadness we've had patients that we thought were stable and all of a sudden they died the staff at the icu worked with patients who were on the edge between life and death they're in a very fragile state we're there to monitor the life support systems they're on and care for them many of them we stabilize them and they're they're very predictable and then there's the other group of patients that are very unstable some of the patients were placed in the icu to recover for a few days after routine surgery [Music] john schwartz was admitted to icu after he had his hip replaced his granddaughter mary nicol was grateful his recovery was going so well his prognosis was he's going home in four days it was the holiday weekend it was a friday and they wanted him to go home on tuesday schwartz had been restrained so he didn't re-injure his hip [Music] [Music] when a nurse went to check on schwartz later that night he found him on the floor it seemed he had struggled free of his restraints the code rang out and all the staff on duty rushed to schwartz's aid [Music] he was healthy and he just needed rehabilitation you know using learning to walk again on with a new hip and that's all it was he didn't have anything else wrong with him [Music] the doctors nurses and respiratory care specialists did all they could but it was not enough [Music] schwartz died 15 minutes after he was found mary nichol was shocked let's call it i wasn't ready for it i had no inclination that he was going to pass because he was healthy he had a good heart it was extremely unusual for someone to die after a routine hip replacement [Music] schwartz's sudden death seemed especially odd a nurse checked on him just an hour before no one could explain how he escaped his restraints the rising number of strange deaths bothered the respiratory therapists as well no one was certain whether something was wrong or if the deaths were just a coincidence over the next months the icu continued treating a large number of patients when sarah askari was rushed to the hospital she was having trouble breathing but now she was off the respirator and stable [Music] this particular patient had a very severe lung disease but she was improving to the point where she could go home we had her on a what we call a bipap she didn't need that anymore she was getting better but sarah scary would never make it home at 4 10 a.m her respiration rate suddenly shot up four minutes later she stopped breathing [Music] then her heart stopped [Music] the patient had a do not resuscitate order so the staff could not make any attempt to revive her sarah askari was dead [Music] okay let's just get her prepared um i'll call the resident to pronounce her i'll call the attending if you could put the family in the waiting room so we can have a conference [Music] it was a big surprise to me to find out that she had all of a sudden died it was another sudden unexplained death of a patient who seemed to be recovering something about askari's death didn't seem right the strange deaths concerned bob baker his suspicion grew when he came upon a used syringe with a vial of drugs taped to it in one of the hospital's storage [Music] he rooms it might belong to one of the labs but they told them they didn't keep anything in that storage room they're never supposed to be sitting out when i found out that it didn't belong to the bronc lab i thought well maybe somebody's abusing this was a violation of procedure narcotics were kept in a locked refrigerator this is starting to sound serious i just thought okay this is another piece to the puzzle baker went to talk with the other respiratory therapists if one of them was abusing drugs he wanted to get it out in the open i found a used syringe file a morphine tape to it up in the equipment room his coworkers thought it might have been an oversight and dismissed it baker wasn't so sure throughout this entire time gene coyle was a frequent patient of the hospital seeing her through her many hospital visits was her daughter michelle elmore she started having more and more breathing problems and more frequent visits to the hospital and she would get breathing treatments each time she was short of breath she would call the staff her hand seldom left the call button man please stop pressing the button i'm going to take care of it the nurses are on their way my mom would get frightened about her breathing and she felt more secure being at the hospital when she couldn't breathe at 205 a.m gene's blood pressure dropped to zero minutes later she went into respiratory arrest all right i need some ventilations here just not breathing buddy [Music] good hi you're coming around you're doing great take a deep breath good okay you're doing great uh 125 of lighter cane and give her an amplified car gene bounced back quickly within 40 minutes she was stable and well-oriented i got a call from the hospital late at night i was shocked as i just talked to her and she was fine before that i asked the nurse what had happened did she have a stroke or a heart attack or something what caused that and she said that they didn't know the cause it just happened mom how are you doing michelle's mother explained what had transpired mom told me that she had um felt funny that evening and she couldn't breathe so she pushed the button for the nurse and she remembers waking up to being being resuscitated by uh mr ephron saldivar who was the respiratory therapist the next morning even saldivar took the blood sample to the lab for testing [Music] baker tested it to measure the amount of oxygen in her blood at the time of her arrest her oxygen levels were normal this was highly unusual for someone who had suffered a heart attack and nearly died [Music] strange events at the hospital continued to concern baker gene coyle's attack occurred on efren saldivar's shift he was a kind of a bad luck guy you know his effort on you know because it's bad luck because patients die when he's on the next morning as he was leaving baker got some startling news from another respiratory therapist named everett weir we're walking out to the car and we're talking about golf and um he says oh you know that patient everyone did that killed [Music] he told baker rumors were going around saldivar killed one of his patients to go in and kill a patient with um by using a magic syringe uh just didn't seem very real to me no no hang on a second see i've been hearing all these rumors about you from the hospital but i haven't been listening to him don't look at her look at me my concern was with exactly what was effort i'm doing it made me mad that he would uh have anything to do with my patient at all because i didn't like his therapy and i didn't like him baker told saldivar to stay away from his patients baker decided he had to do something i heard it frequently enough and it was just shortly after i had been told about my patient up in uh ccu that somebody that efron had killed my patient it was just a little while after that and i said you know what this this sounds serious we need to bring this to somebody's attention in april of 1997 baker went to his boss and told him about the rumors there's been some rumors going on he said in short people are saying that efren's killing his patients they told me that he killed this one particular patient in ccu and i could get you the name if you need it baker had made a serious accusation but the idea someone was killing patients in the hospital seemed impossible to believe [Music] a string of unexpected deaths at a california hospital sparked rumors that one of the respiratory therapists had a magic syringe the rumors all centered around one man efren saldivar to try and confirm or refute the rumors hospital officials tallied the deaths on saldivar's shifts over the past year they compared them to the number of deaths at other times but found nothing statistically unusual [Music] respiratory therapist bob baker had brought the rumors to the hospital's attention they tried to match up the days that efron was working and did more patients die that night than when he was off there was no big difference or big increase in patient deaths they just dropped it at that point said well you know there's nothing to it the hospital could find no link between any of their employees and the deaths the icu remained busy myrtle brower was admitted after coming down with pneumonia she was being cared for by her great niece vicky lowry when we took her to the hospital we figured she'd be home in a couple weeks i expected to bring her home for her birthday after several days in the icu she suddenly stopped breathing her heart continued to beat she was slowly suffocating [Music] the puzzling deaths were difficult for the families to accept when you care about your loved one you bring them into the hospital you expect them to be taken care of you go home that night knowing that they're safe and being taken care of by professionals and you take solace in knowing that life is sacred to the people who work in that institution and we're going to do everything we can to help your relative and care for them hospital officials were aware of the rumors that something strange was going on but did not have enough information to do anything about it [Music] that all changed when an administrator received an anonymous call a man claimed a lady friend on the hospital staff told him a respiratory therapist was helping patients die the man refused to reveal his friend's identity but told the administrator to look at efren saldivar the administrator asked the caller for his name and he told her it was jeff broden all right all right thank you hospital officials went to the police glendale police officer john mckillip i got a call from the chief's office come to the office we have a situation that we have to discuss you don't get invited to the chief's office to discuss the case normally it's a i knew there was something something major going on hospital administrators related what jeff broden told them the officers advised the officials to take saldivar off their work schedule for a few days while they investigated police suspected broden may have an ulterior motive detective anthony fuchsia ran a background check when somebody's making an allegation that people are being killed we want to know whether or not these individuals who are making these comments you know are of good moral character we ran jeff's background uh through the computer system and found out that he had a pretty extensive criminal history he was arrested for attempted murder he was arrested on some theft charges narcotics possession charges so he's familiar with the criminal justice system and he's got a criminal mindset he may have cooked up this story to extort money from the hospital detective fuchsian is partner will curry located there in foreman he told them everything was a big misunderstanding he must have heard wrong nobody was killing any patients at the hospital no disrespect when he slammed the door in our face uh investigator curry and i just kind of looked at each other and said this isn't the place to start we're to have to find another you know individual to talk to to see if we can you know work this from a different angle hospital administrators told police evelyn abrams could be broden's lady friend she often worked the graveyard shift with efren saldivar she said there was no basis to the rumors it was all just rumor and that she had worked with efren for a very long time and she didn't believe that he was capable of doing anything like that abrams went on to explain she had been involved with both jeff and efron to anthony fuchsia this seemed to explain the entire situation we've already had some questions there was a consideration on our part that maybe um the fact that efren was having a sexual relationship with evelyn may have been the motivation for jeff to make the call and allege that efren was doing this as a way of getting back at him she told the detectives jeff must have made up the story we wrote the opinion that this you know it was just one of those vicious rumors that sometimes occurs in the workplace maybe this was just all rumor and innuendo and that in fact there was really no basis to the allegations investigators questioned bob baker he insisted they meet outside the door would you be more comfortable we talked to him out in the parking lot at the hospital he had told us that particular night about a prank that he had pulled on efren along with another respiratory therapist baker told him about something strange he found one night while he was working the graveyard shift with everett weir they decided to play a trick on one of the other respiratory therapists they were rigging up his locker so that when he opened it he would be covered with flour [Music] he had taken some things from his locker and needed a place to stash him [Music] knowing saldivar was not scheduled to work for a few days they decided to borrow his locker [Music] inside baker noticed a plastic bag bulging with drugs the bag of drugs was was fairly huge and it was full of morphine and demerol and valium and bag just stuff full of drugs you could think at that point well maybe he's selling it to someone and then i saw on the shelf two vials of succinct choline succinyl choline chloride paralyzes the muscles and is used to make it easier to insert breathing tubes it can be an extremely deadly drug if administered improperly when you are paralyzed with succincoline you can still hear and think and feel and that's the reason we give the morphine or give them a sedative to put them into a dream state because it's extremely terrifying if you can imagine being completely paralyzed and you can see and you can hear and you can't move a muscle and your brain is completely working normal when i saw the succincoline in the locker it's obvious that he could not abuse this drug this could not be for personal use he would kill himself baker told the officers he kept quiet about what he had found nobody outside of the doctor is supposed to be in possession of that so when he saw that in efren's locker you know it raised a red flag for him but he told us he didn't go to anybody with that information because he was in efren's locker kind of what he thought illegally suspicious of baker's motives the detectives went to baker's supervisor he said it was common knowledge baker and saldivar hated each other he thought baker made up the magic syringe rumor in an effort to ruin saldivar's reputation there may have been some bias there on the part of bob baker as to the statements that he was giving us you know were they skewed a certain way to make to put effort in a bad light you know that's something that you take into consideration the detectives hadn't uncovered much both broden and baker had motives for making up the rumor and in the middle was saldivar's co-worker on the graveyard shift evelyn abrams we were on this roller coaster ride from day one we all kind of thought at that time that was it was probably just a dark rumor or it was just someone's ploy to get money out of the hospital the hospital had kept salidvar off work for the entire week but for detectives the next step was clear based on everything we're getting dead end dead end dead end no it's not happening and then you know ultimately we got down to okay let's bring in that friend i'll bring him in well it was time to pull in here get your zaldivar of questions okay they had no idea what surprises he had in store for them i'd like to speak with efren saldivar please rumors of murder at a california hospital sparked a police investigation all the rumors seemed to center on one respiratory therapist to find out whether they were true detectives decided to question efren zaldivar they asked him to come down to the station at this hour detective will curry was the only investigator on duty he told saldivar about the rumors and asked him to take a polygraph test to clear the matter up why don't we just go and meet with detective youngblood irvin youngblood was the polygraph examiner curry briefed him on the investigation he had mentioned to me that they really didn't suspect that this was actually occurring that this may have been someone who just didn't like him and was given some false rumors so they wanted to put it to rest detective curry left saldivar alone with the polygraph examiner and went to the department's bug room where he could monitor their conversation it all of a sudden changed my perspective of things at that point i felt that there's something wrong with the person being that fearful of this so i decided to step up my interview toward an interrogation when i began to ask him uh did he kill it at one he was hesitant in his answer and he said i may have assisted in one way or the other and that's why i'm afraid to take the polygraph then i asked him to explain to me what he meant by assistant saldivar began to tell youngblood of an incident that occurred early in his career there was a patient with a cancer patient and it had been determined that the patient was not going to survive and the doctors had said they were going to take the patient off of the respirator but they had not done so he described to me as how he saw that the patient was still breathing [Music] the ventilator on patient three still on saldivar said he informed one of the intensive care nurses the nurse indicated she expected him to do something about it so he decided to go in and literally cause the patient to suffocate saldivar told youngblood it took the patient 15 minutes to die correctly or salivar admitted there were other times when he helped patients to die young blood pushed him to reveal the number of patients he had murdered saldivar thought it was less than 50 but was unsure of the exact number and he later said that it was could be up to around 90. and then he began to tell me that this had also occurred at two other hospital that he had moonlighted at so the figures went up even more and before it was over he told me that it could be as many as 200. i was really amazed at it it was really hard for me to keep my composure there because i was just wondering how could you have done such a thing the legal implications of saldivar's confessions soon hit youngblood i need to confer with one of the detectives and decide how we're going to continue with this i was thinking i need to find a way to get out of the room without losing rapport with this man and coming back and talking with him youngblood rushed from the room to find curry waiting for him the men needed to read saladivar his rights but they were afraid of spooking him and losing his cooperation and i'll get the boys on the phone bring them down [Music] was it a man i don't remember detective curry divisive of his constitutional rights surprisingly he waved his rights and continued to talk to us right to remain silent the investigators expected saldivar to deny everything but suddenly they had a serial murder confession i don't care about that i need you guys detective curry asked for help sergeant mckillop got the call and it was will curry telling me that uh we got a major problem and i better come back to work um he said this guy's rolling over detective curry placed zaldivar under arrest detectives fuchsia and mckillip arrived within the hour they also called the district attorney and their chief this was potentially the biggest case of their careers if saldivar's confession was true then he had murdered more people than jeffrey dahmer ted bundy and john wayne gacy combined he said that he had been doing this he killed his first patient approximately six months after he became a respiratory therapist and he became a respiratory therapist in 1989 and remember this interview that we were conducting with zeldivar was taking place in march of 1998 so we're looking at nine years of uh you know work that he had been doing at local hospitals confession was shocking almost unbelievable according to glendale detective mario yagoda did we have a person that was psychologically unstable or did we truly have a murderer and that's what made it difficult even after his confession because the confession a lot of things he was saying a lot didn't make sense and a lot did make sense according to the district attorney's office the confession was not enough to convict saldivar of murder they needed corroborating evidence well the district attorney told us at this point all we had was confession we had no physical evidence we had no identified victims that there were a number of things that we had to do before we could even think about filing charges against mr zeldavar for murder we need to bring the resources [Music] the detectives had only 48 hours to find hard evidence of saldivar's crimes without it they'd be forced to free him if he was a serial killer the investigators knew putting him on the streets could mean more innocent people would die rumors a serial murderer was killing patients in the icu at a california hospital prompted a police investigation they had their suspect efren saldivar behind bars but to keep him there they had only 48 hours to find physical evidence of his crimes if they failed saldivar would walk free the next morning detectives arrived at salivar's home armed with a search warrant they were looking for something to prove he had been poisoning patients zaldivar lived with his parents his older brother stood by watching as they searched efren's bedroom the officers uncovered almost 100 pornography tapes but they didn't find any paralyzing drugs they did find vercid a sedative often used in conjunction with a paralyzing drug called pavulon [Music] detective john mckillip was disappointed when they didn't have better luck at the hospital we didn't find pavulon or succinylcholine chloride and again you know we believe those drugs were used so the only thing we could rely on um was up to that point was the word of bob baker who said he saw one of those drugs in his locker but we didn't we can't prove that he saw it because we never found it in his locker they did find the printout of a blood gas test the name on the bottom concerned police [Music] one of the things that sticks out in my mind was a paper that uh where he had listed himself as dr jack kevorkian on the paper and obviously we all know dr kavorkian as an individual who believes in assisted suicide and that kind of struck us as odd and suspicious in and of itself that here we have somebody who's confessed to killing a number of patients and he's got something in his locker at his workplace identifying himself as dr uh kavorkian that's not the doctor's name they didn't know the significance of their find and it still didn't prove efron killed anyone i understand all we have as far as a confession that's not sufficient in itself we need additional substantiating information well i got my investigation well here they are now what do you got guys here's the file he's locked up he got his confession as far as the law goes you can't just file criminal charges on somebody by what they say and if it's a murder in particular you have to have a body and be able to prove that the body was murdered in this case you know we didn't have a body we had no proof that any person in particular was murdered on a confession it's not enough by itself the detectives had run out of time their 48 hours were up they hadn't found enough evidence to formally charge zaldivar the detectives would now have to put a confessed serial killer back on the street i just started thinking about what we have to do now to get the evidence and i could have killed a lot of people how can you just let him go the glendale police needed to find some hard evidence to put zaldivar behind bars but it now seemed that finding it would be nearly impossible none of us had ever dealt with a serial killer before so it was something that took us all by surprise along with the fact we have no evidence of any homicides nothing all we have is a confession so there wasn't really anything tangible for us to identify at that point so it was there was a bunch of different emotions that were going through all of our minds the detectives set up headquarters at a house on hospital property they needed a secure place to conduct their investigation information leaks could prove fatal to building a case against zaldivar we knew we were going to be under scrutiny from the public and from the press and we also knew that we had a suspect out on the loose he was no longer in custody the progress of the case had to be kept very confidential from him from the news we really needed to keep this one under wraps and being in the police department was such a big investigation there's no way we could have kept the information confidential the officers started gathering the hospital records of saldivar's patients in them they hoped to find evidence of murder [Music] while detectives began looking into the past they made sure not to lose track of their suspect saldivar could run at any moment and investigators knew there would be nothing they could do to stop him efren saldivar had admitted to killing as many as 100 patients at a california hospital but without physical proof to back up his confession detectives are forced to free him detective randy osborne conducted interviews with saldivar's friends and family to see if they could shed any light on his guilt or innocence i wanted to find out as much as i could about efren saldavar dating back to his early childhood i even went to his high school and got a copy of his yearbook contacted schoolmates detectives tracked down one of zaldivar's high school girlfriends she said her last conversation with sal davar disturbed her tell they had a conversation about their futures and what they wanted to do in life and effort at that time explained to her that he was going to be participating in training for respiratory therapy she told him that she was impressed by that that that was a very noble and worthwhile profession but then the discussion took an unsettling turn he mentioned to her that he wanted to get in this profession so he could help people but also so he could help people by putting them out of their misery and he explained that he had a hard time seeing people suffer and that he would not have a problem with killing people detective osborne also interviewed saldivar's co-workers i learned that efren was a very quiet individual most people that i spoke to described him as standoffish and quiet he kind of existed in the shadows many of his co-workers described him as someone who was lazy and who was uncaring towards the people that he was being paid to take care of a nurse who often worked with zaldivar spoke with the detectives she told them a few years ago he did something she found very disturbing she explained to us that she was working at the hospital with efren and that there was a male patient in one of the rooms who was there in in very bad condition near death and one night she heard an alarm go off in the patient's room the patient had stopped breathing efren was in the room at that time she started to work on the patient she looked up at efren and she stated can you come help me this patient is flat lining at that time he raised his finger to his mouth and went shh as indicating to her don't do any work on the patient leave well enough alone and just let them pass away that shocked her and at that moment another nurse came running into the room and they were able to resuscitate the patient that really shook her she didn't want to work with zeldavar after that at that time she said she felt she had to come forward with this information this information about salivar was troubling if he was poisoning patients then investigators would have to try and understand why in order to find his potential victims john trestral of the regional poison center in grand rapids michigan has devoted his life to the study of poison and those who use it the angel of death would be the kind of person who plays god uh he selects a group of people or an individual to eliminate them and and this power gives them some kind of a psychological rush to be able to say i will take your life whenever i choose these people tend to be what i call stealth killers they come at you when your back's turned they come at you in the dark poison is very hard to find unlike a gunshot wound where the bullet's entry is easily recognizable if investigators don't suspect poison they won't look for it in a poisoning case the unknown offender rate is 20 to 30 times higher than any other form of murder what does that mean it means that the chances are 20 to 30 times better that you'll get away with this than any other form of murder death by poison is particularly insidious the victim has little chance of avoiding his fate if you are the victim you'll never see it coming there's no defense breathe it drink it eat it inject it you'll never see it the officers realized the prospect of finding poison was not good they asked for help from many agencies who all told them they had little chance of finding paralyzing drugs detective daniel hinojosa we had consulted certain members of the fbi and they had worked on similar cases cases involving the drugs that we were looking for involving the drug pavilion and the drug succinyl choline chloride it was their opinion that we needed to find a certain type of toxicologist who could assist us in extracting these samples because as far as the majority of the scientific and medical community was concerned we weren't going to find these drugs the detectives had no choice but to move ahead if they ever hoped to find evidence of poison it was now buried with the suspected victims to find the victims the detectives realized they would have to decipher thousands of complex medical charts it was unfamiliar territory when we got these medical records you can imagine that uh it's like sitting down and trying to read a language that you don't know how to speak so all of us had to go out and buy medical dictionaries to understand a lot of what was being said in these medical charts in terms of uh the treatments that the patients were receiving the medical conditions that they were being treated for the detectives began searching the charts for suspicious deaths they consulted experts like dr dale isaf to help them identify the possible use of poison what particularly i would look for and i saw a number of examples of this is that the patient had been admitted with a serious illness had responded to treatment and was doing relatively well in review of the vital signs of respiratory pattern pulse blood pressure heart rhythm on the monitor appeared to be stable and then the patient abruptly experiences a decrease in heart rate where the heart would progressively decelerate or go slower over a relatively short time period over a few minutes or so where the patient would experience then full cardiac arrest with a heart activity just ceasing altogether notes made by the hospital staff provided initial clues i then went back and very carefully looked at the nursing notes and tried to make a determination how that patient been doing clinically if all the vital signs were stable the nurses concluded the patient was doing well and in fact in some of the patients it was anticipated that there was going to be an early discharge either home or to another facility and then to see a note in the chart patient found dead in bed was something that caught my attention dr isaiah told investigators to search for a reverse of the normal dying process normally a patient's heart stops then their respiration fails but if a person is poisoned with a drug such as pavulon the reverse would occur if an individual is given a paralyzing agent one of the first things that happens is the patient or the individual is not able to breathe or the impaired there's impaired breathing function that very quickly leads to not being able to breathe the heart will survive for a time but then rapidly will slow down and the heart will stop this type of death leaves behind disturbing clues according to mario yagoda we knew that these patients there was a desire to live so you see the racing of the heart so in other words like when a person's scared you know the the heart speeds up so we'd see these speeding up of the heart rhythms on the ekg strips and that's what we looked we looked for these rhythms in the heart that would show some sort of fight or flight syndrome the detectives hoped information in patient medical charts would lead them to some proof of murder the medical charts were only the first step to finding hard evidence pavulon or succinal choline chloride in human flesh we were ultimately going to have to exhume bodies we're going to have to have specialists come in to test the tissue samples that we got during the autopsies to see whether or not these drugs were present whether or not these drugs were even going to be detectable okay and you can't tell the detectives had to find some way to narrow the potential victim list so we decided that we would probably pick a number of about two years prior to the incident from that we had to go through and compile every patient that had been that had died at this hospital while mr saldivar was on duty because more recent cases offered a better chance of finding traces of paralyzing drugs they ignored saldivar's first seven years that brought their list down to 171 of those 54 were excluded because their remains were not available that left 117 deaths to investigate each detective took a series of patients if they found anything suspicious they had to present it to the group this is exactly what we're looking for notice how the neurological lines and we had to go to bat for them we had to fight in a round table type of atmosphere where we all got together we presented our cases and we discussed our cases our individual cases and why it is we thought that they should be exhumed and of course we couldn't exhume them all when they found a patient who fit the profile they posted their name on a board of possible victims to exhume the list was beginning to grow deciding who to exhume was their first problem finding evidence of poison was their second be right here [Music] for help they contacted lawrence livermore national laboratory a high-tech government research facility near oakland california it employs approximately ten thousand scientists doing chemistry physics nuclear and forensics work brian andreessen is director of the lab's forensic science center he was unsure he could help when he first learned of the drugs the police were searching for i looked up these drugs and everything had been known about them it was interesting a lot of these drugs of course to be used in people have to be tested and tested and the data on that testing has to be published and i read all those papers but no one had really taken these drugs out of a healthy human and then analyzed it after someone had died and been buried for a long time because those were that kind of work had not been done with these drugs to any great extent andreessen also learned succinal choline chloride the drug spotted in zaldivar's locker quickly breaks down into chemicals that are naturally found in the body their best bet was to test for pavulon but no test existed that could detect pavulon and decomposing human tissue he would have to develop one i wasn't that confident because it never really had been done before but i was willing to give it a very substantial try to see if i could develop a protocol that would work [Music] on march 27 1998 the story of saldivar's suspension and the possible murders broke in the media the community was outraged at the possibility their relatives had been murdered in their hospital beds the phones were ringing off the hook at the station as well as the off-site where we were now housed at with people wanting to know whether or not their loved one was a victim of saldivars officers used the information provided by family members to aid their investigation the inquiries that we received from the families helped us in two ways one is we went back and looked at those particular cases if they felt they were suspicious maybe it warranted some additional research on our part but this case is suspicious well this warrants an additional interview with this family member what did you see where were you where were you at bedside at the time that your loved one passed away in the midst of the media frenzy officers watching salivar's house noticed he had not returned for several days at that point i believe he was still in hiding we didn't know his whereabouts so we did lose track of him for a while after he was uh released from custody if saldivar had fled the detectives knew they'd have little chance of ever putting their suspected serial killer behind bars in glendale california outside of los angeles a small hospital was experiencing a rash of unexplained deaths patients like tricia johnson were fine one moment and then suddenly went into an unexplained crisis trisha was in full arrest the trauma team rushed to her room but despite their efforts they could not save her the staff began to suspect someone in the hospital was causing the patients to die they started to point the finger at one another when the employees began to find drugs hidden in strange places the suspicion grew all the rumors seemed to point to one of the respiratory therapists a man named efren saldivar he was questioned by the police and shocked them with a confession but without any evidence they had to release him to find proof of murder police turned to thousands of complicated medical records that spanned over nine years glendale police detective daniel hinojosa because of the amount of potential victims involved we were talking about probably the largest murder case this city has ever seen in its history it might have made him probably the largest mass murderer in the history of the united states for that matter the media descended on saldivar's home his brother told reporters efren had gone to stay with relatives he also told reporters efren was innocent glendale officers say saldivar targeted elderly patients with do not recess larry schlegel saw the news report on saldivar's confession schlegel's mother eleanora had died of respiratory failure at the hospital more than a year earlier they had listed a number of conditions that seemed common to the people he had claimed to have killed she was there in the time frames larry called the hotline and told investigators his mother fit the criteria they outlined schlegel told police how his mother's frequent hospital visits were a matter of increasing concern for him it's always a scary thing when she began one of these bouts and need to be rushed in but once the medication kicked in and and her lungs cleared up then she was always ready to go home and and get on with the rest of her life she had come down with pneumonia and was having trouble breathing she was resting comfortably when larry came to visit her on new year's eve my son and i stopped by to visit with her and and we were there for about an hour and she was uh sitting up and and breathing about as well as she could and and able to carry on a conversation for for all of that hour eleanor was looking forward to going home but the next day pasadena would be crowded with visitors for the tournament of rose's parade in the rose bowl football game [Music] places a zoo for at least 24 hours in advance so the doctors figured we don't even have to think about this one you know it's new year's eve we'll decide after new year's day about a release date [Music] they decided it would be okay for her to stay in the hospital a couple more days when eleanor schlegel checked in she had asked that she be classified as a dnr or do not resuscitate on the early morning of january 2nd her vital signs were stable and she was planning to go home later that morning the nurse returned to check on her [Music] she had stopped breathing and no pulse could be detected [Music] the last time i talked to my mom she had been well down the road of recovery and it just hit you like a ton of bricks to larry the possibility that his mother was poisoned seemed impossible to believe we hear all sorts of things on the evening news that you know happened to other people and that was basically my reaction oh this is this is something that happens to other people the detectives told schlegel they would check into his mother's case the police hotline was jammed with hundreds more calls just like larry's in the first three days police received more than 230 messages from worried relatives whose family members had died at ecovera the media frenzy sent the hospital into damage control they suspended the entire 44-member respiratory department including bob baker the atmosphere of the hospital changed almost immediately and all of a sudden you had you know a massive investigation it changed everything at that point then it was like a tornado hit the hospital 39 employees were eventually cleared but evelyn abrams and three others remained on suspension the following week saldivar emerged from hiding appearing on nationwide television he told two news magazine shows that he had made up the confession the task force was shocked saldivar claimed he lied to the police making up the confession because he was depressed and he wanted to die so his rationale was that if i confess to killing a number of people that i'll be found guilty of murder in a trial sentenced to death by the state and the state can do what i couldn't do for myself [Music] salivar was taking his case to the public detective hinojosa recalls the frustration the officers felt because i was being accused had this just been some kind of a sick joke that he had been playing on us by by making this story up we as investigators wanted to get to the truth and if that was the truth then we were obliged to take that information and figure out which side was the truth did he do it or did he not do it the task force watched with frustration salivar recanted his confession before an audience of millions the heat was now on to prove that he was an angel of death i wanted to die a confessed serial killer was on the loose but detectives had no idea who he may have murdered it was a whodunit reversed according to glendale police detective daniel hinojosa what we have here is a backwards case usually we have a victim and from that victim we go forward and try and find the suspect in this instance we had a suspect and no victims and so that is completely the opposite of what we're used to handling the police's prime suspect in the case was a respiratory therapist named efren saldivar as police narrowed the list of saldivar's suspected victims they kept an eye on him he was hiding out at the home of a former co-worker the detectives also consulted criminal psychologist chris mohandi they hoped his experience with other serial murderers would help them identify saldivar's victims he told the detectives they should not believe all of efren's confession they may use substances other than the ones that they say that they're using so you may need to expand your search beyond the obvious into a much larger victim pool we learned from other cases that these perpetrators will choose victims who are not just on their shift who are not just fitting their criteria but they will actually expand their hunt to other individuals dr mohandi gave the detectives a sketch of salivar's psychological makeup my initial impression of zaldivar was an everyday guy who's somewhat socially awkward a little geeky doesn't quite fit in any particular group desperately hungers to be liked and recognized by other people mohandi looked into zaldivar's past and found he chose his profession to counteract his sense of inferiority it's interesting to look at why salavar became a respiratory therapist somebody came into the supermarket where he was working had the uniform of the respiratory therapist complete with stethoscope i guess and he was attracted to it because it looked medical it looked official it looked like it had authority and power imbued in it mahandi also warned the detectives that given the opportunity saldivar would commit more murders and once they get a taste of it by actually doing it's like you can't put the cork back on the bottle the genie's out of the bottle and you can't put it back in because then no fantasy is gonna really measure up to actually doing it [Music] the detectives continued to talk with everyone who worked with saldivar they hoped that someone had seen something specific they could use to identify a body to be exhumed in his confession saldivar mentioned his co-worker evelyn abrams knew about the killings and tried to stop him what did you do investigators granted her limited immunity in return for any information she could provide at that time right there she essentially came clean with us at this point and told us that yeah she knew that something was going on and that she was aware of a particular time when efren came to her and said that he had inadvertently given a patient a pavulon male female investigators hoped she could point them to a specific patient but evelyn couldn't recall anything about the person i don't remember old young male female anything i didn't look at the patient she did say that salivar told her about his criteria for deciding if a patient should die leave her alone and when he targeted one of her own patients evelyn warned him to leave the woman alone check on her make sure she's okay leave her alone leave her alone [Music] evelyn's admission was incriminating but it still didn't point investigators to any victims but one nurse did remember a disturbing incident involving a patient named linda sharovsky she had trouble breathing and was placed on oxygen the nurse asked saldivar to collect a blood sample [Music] foreign [Music] a couple of minutes after she left shirovsky's room the nurse said she saw saldivar come out and call a code blue [Music] the nurse was surprised to find the patient totally unresponsive shirovsky had suddenly stopped breathing and her muscles were flaccid as if she were paralyzed and yet the monitor showed that her heart was still beating strongly [Music] [Music] family had authorized a meds-only code the doctors could medicate the patient but they were forbidden to attempt any resuscitation [Music] it took linda shirovsky 40 minutes to die [Music] the nurse was confused because the woman had been responding well to treatment [Music] investigators placed swarovski on their list for exumation the detectives continued to monitor saldivar's whereabouts as he changed jobs they still feared he might try to flee we believed he was thinking of taking off and he had made a statement again through the surveillance we saw him talking to somebody at the credit union when he made a withdrawal and upon follow-up the credit union said he made a comment about you know fleeing the country so there was a real concern all the way through and that was another hidden pressure to get to the bottom of this case we didn't want to lose him finally find the evidence and he's gone helping to find the evidence was brian andreessen of lawrence livermore's forensic science center he was struggling to create a test to find pavulon in exhumed human tissue there was a number of people who voiced opinions that this could be a waste of money it could be a waste of time because the drugs are so low concentration it was a long shot andreessen knew pavulon could sometimes be detected in urine he planned to process tissue samples from the exhumed bodies to make a urine-like substance which could be tested with a mass spectrometer a machine determines the makeup of a substance by measuring the weights of its elements he had no idea whether it would work he had dedicated nearly a year trying to perfect the test i got involved with it and i started just putting in the hours and going on and on and it would be 16 hour days day after day with failure i mean it's it's kind of depressing because i couldn't get anything to work i almost abandoned my house i was like living in the lab the neighbors were worried because the lawn was never cut things weren't picked up then the sacrifice began to pay off when andreessen looked for help from a very unlikely source we have a big program on the detection of chemical weapons and their breakdown products in the environment and i took one of these what's called the solid phase extraction cartridges that didn't work for chemical warfare agents i says well let me just try this and sure enough all of a sudden it trapped pavulon it was like one of those eureka moments andreessen had found his test now he just needed the police to find the victims salivar's victims however remained mute and unknown john schwartz who died after mysteriously falling out of bed may have been one of them his family filed a lawsuit convinced schwartz had died by salivar's hand he admitted to murdering many people and with all of the discrepancies with my grandfather's records and with him being on shift and dying so quickly my grandfather was checked on one moment i believe it was like 3 30 and then he was deceased a half an hour later a half hour to 40 minutes later and that was just when the attending physician declared him dead because they had to find someone to declare him dead the whole thing was pretty suspicious you know he gave us reason to be suspicious of him by admitting to so many things the task force followed up every lead detectives went to meet with larry schlegel his mother died mysteriously while under zaldivar's care i got a call from some detectives in the police department and their questions were much more specific much more about you know what had been done with my mom's body had she been cremated had she been buried eleanor schlegel had been buried the detectives notified larry his mother was a prime candidate for exumation by the middle of march 1999 the investigators had identified 20 possible victims that was the largest number of bodies they could exhume at the original time of death doctors had declared that every one of those deaths was due to natural causes mckillip and his detectives would have to prove them wrong it was difficult for the victims families but detective mario yogoda knew they understood the need for the exhumations a majority of them did cooperate and were willing to help us they too were looking for the truth because keep in mind some of those family members had that suspicion all along they knew something just wasn't right when their loved one passed away [Music] one of the first to be exhumed was the body of myrtle brower the casket was enclosed in a burial vault made of concrete the crew from the cemetery hoisted it from the ground the team took soil samples for testing they doubted pavulon would be present in the soil but they could not afford to overlook anything the anticipated saldivar's defense attorney may argue that chemicals had seeped into the bodies from the surrounding earth detective anthony fuchsia made certain the officers were careful not to make any mistakes during the exhumations we used the same coroner's investigator each time we did an exclamation we used the same corner pathologist to do the autopsies every time the same forensics technicians from our department do any collecting of samples of of water what have you at the grave sites we had the system down and we used the same people every time just for purposes of chain of custody so that an issue wouldn't arise as to how things were collected cemetery workers removed the casket from the burial fault and loaded it into a van for the trip to the coroner's office brower's body had been buried for nearly two years to positively identify the remains the task force supplied the coroner with hospital x-rays photo identification and dental records [Music] when all was ready the investigators broke the casket's seal they checked the mortuary band to positively identify the body [Music] the remains were surprisingly well preserved dr andreessen had warned them that if the remains were too decomposed finding pavulon would be virtually impossible the autopsies were unsettling for detective hinojosa these were people that i felt i had almost come to know at this point in the investigation i had done a lot of research on these particular people i had spoken to their family members i had seen photographs of them i knew about where they had lived who they were what their jobs or careers were and to see these people now in this way is definitely difficult to say the least i could only hope at that time that it was it meant something that it was not all for naught appears to be an elderly female caucasian dr andreessen directed the coroner to remove the tissues that would best reveal traces of fabulon [Music] each tissue sample went in a separate jar and they all went into a box for transport to the forensic science center the officers continued to carefully handle all the evidence they collected our whole case hinges on these samples we couldn't afford to have these things out of our sight for even a minute i mean these things had to be accounted for at all times from the minute they were extracted from the body to the minute they arrived at the lawrence livermore laboratory we had to be able to count for them there was just no exception to that anything less could have been our whole case the next morning the killip and curry made the drive 334 miles up interstate 5 along california's grapevine to preserve the chain of custody and deliver the tissue samples to the lawrence livermore national laboratory technicians there took custody of the autopsy samples they'd spent months waiting for this moment [Music] but dr andreessen's test was unproven if it failed all the painstaking investigative work would be for nothing and confessed serial killer efren saldivar would remain a free man to catch suspected serial killer efren saldivar investigators must reopen the graves of 20 of his possible victims it was their only hope for finding the physical evidence to put him behind bars that evidence a paralyzing drug called pavulon must be extracted from the exhumed bodies by an experimental procedure if it fails the investigators will have no way to prove their suspect is a murderer glendale police officers hand-delivered autopsy samples to forensics expert dr andreessen he immediately began processing the exhumed tissue he started by grinding up the samples into a paste like substance i first just looked at kidney and the lung tissues those tissues that receive a lot of blood supply because theoretically at the moment of death the blood is still circulating greatly in the bodies and the lung tissues would have great circulation we can confirm that the drugs present andreessen filtered it through a polymer that would stick to the drug he then tested the samples using a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer which can detect compounds weighing less than a billionth of a gram what a mass spectrometer does it actually weighs molecules and i know the exact weight of pavulon i present this unknown sample to this mass spectrometer it gives me the weights of all the chemicals and from that i can say sure enough i do or do not have pavulon in this sample in the first couple of samples i didn't see anything in them at all and initially these samples were coming back negative and i thought well maybe there has not been a crime committed that these patients died naturally but then andreessen discovered the evidence the investigators so desperately needed one night i was working up the samples started looking at the data and there was pavulon the first time i'd seen it in a real exhumed tissue sample it i wouldn't say took my breath away but i looked at it i said is this true this is true there is pavulon in this patient six weeks after the first specimens were delivered detectives got the call they had been waiting for and driessen had a solid hit in liver tissue from one of the exhumed bodies he had found traces of papillon the task force was elated after more than a year of investigation their hard work had finally paid off [Music] then they discovered a problem the victim's medical records showed he had received two milligrams of pavulon in the course of his treatment at the hospital it had been given to him on august 7 1997 eight days before he died detective mckillip was losing his patience we went from shock and happiness jubilant to here we go again every time we get a piece of evidence there's something that pulls us back and says that's not going to be good enough while the drug would have metabolized in 20 hours long before the man's death salivar's attorney might argue this is why it was in his system if the team guessed wrong and pavulon failed to show up in any other bodies their case against saldivar would collapse the exhumations continued bob baker had told investigators he suspected saldivar used his magic syringe on sarah askari based on this information iskari's body had been slated for exumation the cemetery workers found water in the burial vault so detectives took samples of it for analysis [Music] the captain of the department called the lead detective john mckillip in to account for his progress or the lack of it mckillip's team had spent the past year and a half working the case but they still had not found anything proving saldivar's guilt it was all about finding the truth i mean if we could prove that it didn't happen that was success just like proving that it did happen what everybody was afraid of is un being unable to prove that it happened because what does that mean it means we can't prove it happened and we can't prove it didn't happen what's going on the captain informed mckillop that the brass was losing their patience we're a department of uh 220 sworn police officers with a budget that's not the same as a major uh you know multi-thousand person police department so we really knew we were draining our resources financially the lab work alone had cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars the task force needed hard evidence soon or the department would shut them down the success of the entire investigation now rested on dr andreessen's shoulders he needed to find some evidence of the drugs soon or suspected murderer efren saldivar would remain free [Music] detectives in glendale california exhumed the remains of people they suspected were murdered in an area hospital a laboratory detected traces of a paralyzing drug in one of the bodies but the drug had been legitimately administered by the hospital they had identified a suspected serial killer but still had not located any of his victims investigators got a break when dr andreessen at lawrence livermore lab started getting hits sarah iscari and linda sharovsky the results were overwhelming he told the task force he had found massive amounts of pavulon in the women's lungs kidneys bladder heart tissue liver and brain investigators finally had hard irrefutable physical evidence to confirm salivar's confession they were ready to arrest saldavar on three counts of murder but investigators wanted to make sure they gathered all the evidence they could the exhumations continued [Music] havilan turned up in three more patients jorge hagata eleanor schlegel and myrtle brauer six out of the 20 bodies exhumed had traces of the paralyzing drug we expected we would be lucky if we got one so now we're getting five six we're starting to think we've got one of the biggest serial killers of all time [Music] they now had potentially linked saldivar to six counts of murder the prosecutor wanted to make sure there was no other explanation for pablo on being in the bodies [Music] to solidify their case the detectives obtained all the medical records they could find for all six patients going back over their entire lifetimes they examine them for any traces of papuleon the patient's medical history showed that eleanor schlegel had received pavulon on two occasions in 1983 and 1984. aside from her in the first patient none of the others had ever received pavulon as part of their legitimate medical treatment the only explanation for pavulon being in their systems was saldivar's magic syringe the detectives believed they had a rock-solid case but their optimism wasn't shared by the da's office the prosecutor had some discouraging news the wrongful death lawsuit brought by john schwartz's family had been thrown out the judge had cited a lack of evidence the ruling only exacerbated the detective's fears they went back to review all the charts of every patient in the hospital all 450 beds on the nights the six patients had died they wanted to make sure saldivar was not actually treating someone else at the times he was accused of committing murder he could have been present at each murder after years of searching for evidence of murder the investigators finally had enough to make an arrest on january 9 2001 the detectives gathered and set out and unmarked cars police had kept a close watch on salovar they knew his schedule for every minute of the day [Music] they were waiting for him as he left for work that morning [Music] as he left his house the officers latched onto zaldivar's bumper it had been two and a half years since salivar's confession they almost had him in their grasp but all they could do was wait for the right moment to arrest the serial killer they had no idea what he might do when they finally pulled him over and they couldn't take any chances when saldivar turned onto a deserted road the officers made their moves out the window [Music] he didn't fight as the officers surrounded him [Music] get out of the car slowly turn around don't look at me get your hands up the murderer of defenseless people was now defenseless himself stand your knees right there get your hands behind your head detective fuchsia cuffed zelda a lot of police officers don't get to say they they bagged a serial killer during their career and you know there was a lot of times during the investigation where i didn't think this case was going anywhere and there was a lot of frustration and we thought this day would never come and when it was finally there and to be able to place the handcuffs on him it was a good feeling it was one of satisfaction saldivar's freedom had come to an end as the detectives read him his rights the investigators long journey to capture saldivar was finally over if you decide to answer questions now without your lawyer being president you have a right to change your mind at any time to request that your lawyer be president before you answer any further questions you understand these rights saldivar had taken the lives of countless patients for nine years he had gotten away with murder but now the law would call him to account for his crimes [Music] [Music] now the officers hoped they could discover his motives for killing detectives brought zaldivar into the station to question him one more time we brought him to the interview room when he got in there it wasn't about so we want to ask you did you do it it was about we know you did it let's get over that hump let's talk about why and you know let's see if we can put an end to this and maybe keep us from exhuming another 20 bodies and disrupting another you know 20 victims families lives detective mckillip told saldivar six of his patients had tested positive for pavulon i just told him it's over we're here to find out why you did it not if you did it you know if you're going to give us that baloney then we might as well end this conversation he said you know be a really low volume type way he just basically said that he did it because of workload that too many patients and too much work and he was doing it to just you know thin out the crowd but this second confession conflicts with what police psychologist chris mohandi believes was saldivar's true motives for killing at the core of his being is some sort of deep-seated sense of inadequacy or inferiority which killing remedies that the power that one experiences the omnipotence that one experiences by having control over life and death is what would drive him to do these kinds of things the omnipotence control over life and death is the perfect antidote for a person who feels insignificant perhaps unloved powerless out of control what better way to wield control than to have the ultimate control over life and death to be almost godlike detectives called the relatives of saldivar's victims it was devastating for them to finally learn their loved ones had been murdered but with saldivar's arrest they would at last find justice [Music] by his own account saldivar was near the top of any list of serial killers he told detectives that he killed on impulse and after he did it he never thought about it again this explanation rings true to police psychologist chris mohandy i don't think that saldivar truly felt a sense of guilt or remorse i believe that to this day he feels justified in what he did but not in a mean-spirited way he truly thinks he was being helpful the district attorney's office began building their case according to prosecutor albert mckenzie the key to a case like this is basically what i call connecting the dots there's no one thing that is going to convict the defendant it's the totality of the circumstances it's all the little bits of evidence that you have to present to a grand jury or a jury the prosecution team was concerned with the level of scientific detail they would have to present to a jury according to prosecutor carla curlin in this case it may have been too technical and the jury just couldn't grasp the concept and it also was we were using established technology but it's not technology that people are generally familiar with but we were using it in a new way and so a good defense attorney will always put a spin on that to make it look like it's new never been done before experimental can't be trusted that kind of thing at his trial saldivar shocked everyone when he pled guilty in order to avoid the death penalty larry schlegel was in the courtroom that day given what he had done to my mother and to the other six name victims and he had injected them with pavulon and pavulon is one of the drugs used in administering capital punishment in the state of california it would have been some poetic justice i suppose for him to have gotten similar treatment the judge gave saldivar six consecutive life sentences and 15 more years for the attempted murder of gene coyle despite the prosecution's overwhelming evidence albert mckenzie felt it was best to accept saldivar's plea let's bring resolution to all of these people if ever we got the death penalty on mr saldivar you know that might be years away and the people who cared most about the victims may no longer be around if we can bring closure to the victims if we can get mr saldivar off to prison for six life in prison without the possibility of parole sentences and one life sentence on top of that you know we've accomplished some justice here ecovera medical center has since tightened their controls but bob baker believes saldivar has done irreparable damage this sacred institution was in a large sense a playground to efren he obviously didn't hold life sacred he violated this institution and it was felt all over the world i think that you you take somebody like that and for them to feel that they can do this is just it's unspeakable investigators may never know the actual number of salavar's victims the six murders he's known to have committed occurred in his last year at the hospital i think salvar killed hundreds and again it's based on his own words and just doing the math if we had that many in one year and in his own words it was a slow year he must have killed hundreds of people i know that we found over 50 suspicious cases in that final year of employment so it's not like i'm just taking his word for it i think our own investigation proved that he killed a heck of a lot more than than what we were able to prove but thanks to the tireless work of police and scientists alike they do know that this angel of death will never claim any more victims

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: documentary movies - topic, full length documentaries, real stories, documentary, channel 4 documentary 2022, true crime documentary 2023, bbc documentary 2022, best documentaries on youtube, full documentary, real stories documentary, crime documentary, true crime stories, real stories full documentary, crime stories, escape from death row, investigative journalism, material witness, genetic genealogy, missing persons cases, solved disappearances, real world

Id: jPeakb5SHtU

Length: 376min 34sec (22594 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022