Baltimore’s Heidi Bernadzikowski case: Scam leads to insurance plot

growing up heidi bernasikowski could hold her own talk to me about her and about your life growing up with the only girl in the family heidi had it rough but you know everybody loved heidi you know she could stand her ground and she wouldn't back down she was from a family of all brothers and so was i so we basically were like sisters a bond that couldn't be broken right he was very bubbly all the time laughing heidi's childhood friend karen zuckley says after heidi graduated from high school she was ready to spread her wings she got her own place and picked up a new hobby playing pool and while out playing one night she scores big she meets a new man his name stephen cook their attraction instant did it seem like they were happy together happy yeah they seem comfortable and good for one another their relationship moves like a hustler's shot to the corner pocket fast and within a few months heidi and steven who works in the plumbing department at lowe's move in together in nearby dundalk maryland it will be there in that home that heidi will get the worst break of her life it's late april around 5 pm stephen picks up heidi from work downtown in the red honda civic they both share he takes her home then goes to run some errands when stephen returns a few hours later he opens the door and crosses the threshold to a nightmare baltimore county 9-1-1 my girlfriend's a murderer did you just find her right now did you just find her that way yes what happened was she shot she's cut you don't have any idea how long she's been that way no just send somebody what's your last name sir oh my god cool i'm cooked are you sending somebody yes i am is there a weapon near her no are you sending somebody there they're on the way sir okay i want you to stay when baltimore county police arrive they find stephen on the floor crying holding heidi in his arms she is dead sergeant alan meyer is one of the first to arrive at the gruesome and bizarre scene what was your first initial reaction well we got to the scene and uh it was a weird scene because there was heidi's body laying against the wall the 24 year old had been strangled and her throat was slit there's a lot of blood on the floor where she had been bleeding for some time because it dripped through the floor there was a blood in the basement on the floor cops go room to room trying to piece together a story but so much doesn't add up the living room area when you first walked in had truly no furniture that was odd in and of itself and throughout the rest of the house and looking through it which there were some drawers pulled open a jewelry box was pulled open up in the master bedroom but even though the jewelry box was open all the jewelry was still there and there's something else something straight out of a horror film on the wall above heidi's head a clue left by her killer there was a number one written on the wall in lipstick this number one on the wall that had to be baffling yeah um of course when you see that you wonder does that is the person trying to tell you there's going to be more a number two correct do cops have a serial killer on their hands did you look at that theory that this could be the work of a possible serial killer oh yes we thought that it could be and then again it could be staged either way investigators have a tough road ahead of them while the gruesome scene is processed heidi's body is taken to the medical examiner's office where an autopsy is done and her fingernail clippings are taken and tested down at headquarters a blood-soaked stephen cook is brought him for questioning it's a good place to start the husband or boyfriend is always the first place cops look he was denying any involvement at all he gave us an account for everything he did that day specifically what he had done that evening stephen says around 5 30 he took heidi home because she had to use the bathroom he didn't want to wait so he left to run his errands got his oil changed got his hair cut went to home depot fixed his sister's plumbing went through the tunnel and then came back home and stephen has documentation proving it all everywhere he went he either got a receipt for going or the place where he went had video he has a strong receipt alibi absolutely and so at that point i mean you've got someone who you know for certain was not at the scene correct what did you learn about their relationship stephen told us that everything was wonderful between the two of them and they were going to go to las vegas to get married then cops learn something that may contradict that twenty-four-year-old heidi bernasikowski is dead her live-in boyfriend stephen cook the one who found her my [Music] investigators have cook down at the station he shows them multiple receipts as proof he wasn't there at the time of the murder and he wants cops to know he never would have killed the love of his life they had big plans for their future there were some plans to be married and i guess during that period of time is when they decided to get these insurance policies some pretty hefty insurance policies one on stephen for nine hundred thousand dollars and one on heidi for seven hundred thousand of course once we heard about the amount of policies yeah we were a little concerned about that knowing what we knew about their income and and how their house was he's working at lowe's he's working part-time at lowe's and she's working as a full-time receptionist right and he says what when i asked the insurance agent he said they were planning for the future but stephen says forget about the insurance policies he has information on something much more relevant so stephen proceeds to tell us that there had been some issues issues that could point them in the direction of heidi's killer the first troubling incident happening a few weeks before heidi was murdered heidi's home alone on the phone with a friend and a man comes to the door and he tells her that he's interested in starting a neighborhood watch program but she doesn't know him from the neighborhood he's kind of scary to her heidi had actually described the neighborhood block watch guy as a larger light-skinned black male or a dark-skinned maybe mediterranean white male with black hair he had this tattoo on his left arm that she drew on a piece of paper for the girls that worked in her office she drew she drew it and then the very day before the murder there was this the back door seemed to have scratches around the lock it appeared that someone had been trying to tamper with the basement door lock stevens says that terrified heidi so he did something about it he goes to the rental agency to demand that they change the locks for him investigators have a lot to follow up on for now stephen cook is free to go but cops aren't ruling him or anyone else out we let him leave headquarters that night and we just had to continue our investigation and also notify heidi's family of the tragic news heidi's brother francis bernasikowski who is on a navy ship deployed overseas gets a message his father is on the phone when he answers his dad can't seem to get the words out i remember getting on the phone and my father he was kind of almost trying to make small talk and i was like dad i know there's something wrong tell me what happened you know and he's like i'm trying to find a way to say it eventually he did did you have an immediate gut feeling as to who did this to her no police are stumped too but as the weeks go by and after interviewing about a hundred people they may have caught a break when they learn about a man named terry gilliam i find out that terry gilliam worked at the safeway store with steven's sister he is a butcher i'm thinking okay i've got a girl whose throat was slit he's a butcher natural step would be find out what he was doing on the day of the murder meyer says his suspicions grow even stronger when he pulls gilliam's time card for the day in question it's a computerized printout the day of the 20th the day the murder is handwritten and it's actually handwritten over again oh my goodness so i'm thinking okay i might have my guy they arrest gilliam on another charge and bring him in for questioning the focus at that point was on terry why that time card wasn't matching up that day the fact he was a butcher also he had a tattoo he did it wasn't in the same place and it wasn't of the same style that heidi had described i was more concerned at the time that his alibi for work didn't really fit ultimately there isn't enough to charge gilliam with heidi's murder yeah so they let him go but his name remains at the very top of their list i certainly thought i had my guy so i just kept digging and digging on terry over time a lot of time the case goes cold meyer is promoted out of the homicide division but never gives up on finding heidi skiller then 11 long years after she was so savagely murdered the technology catches up with the police work boom got the hit eleven years go by and not one arrest not a serial killer not the neighborhood watch guy the butcher or boyfriend stephen cook the case of heidi bernasikowski officially goes cold cold but never forgotten at least not for baltimore county sergeant alan meyer over the years even though he wasn't assigned to the homicide unit out kept talking to people re-interviewing people looking at phone records and he just kind of stayed on it so when he returned as a supervisor we were just reviewing the case as a cold case to see if there was anything you know that we could do something you could look at differently right and there was something definitely worth another look heidi's fingernails so you had dna early on the results come back and what does it say it's a male it was a mixture we figured it was some of heidi's and some of whomever so with a decade's worth of advancements made in dna technology we did decide to resubmit the fingernails and the results come in what do they tell you we got a hit you get this head and i you had to be floored i can remember the day like it was yesterday and what happened and i'm hoping it's some guy from south baltimore and i get the information it's this guy alexander bennett from colorado i'm thinking colorado how could this be and now we have to make sure it's the right guy so i call out to colorado i said describe him to me and heidi had actually described the neighborhood block watch guy as a larger either a light skinned black male or a dark dark-skinned maybe mediterranean white male with black hair and he had this tattoo on his left arm anyway the clerk out in colorado says i don't know if he's if he's a light-skinned black guy or a dark-skinned white guy oh my god oh my god no i know i said does he have a tattoo and she said yeah at that point i knew we had a guy the question is how do we put alexander bennett in baltimore 11 years ago sergeant meyer has an idea he searches the internal maryland state police database which shows when someone has been stopped by police he was able to come up with a hit that gave bennett's name and his date of birth but nothing else which was kind of weird there was no indication as to why then it had been stopped or who stopped them so that put him in maryland well it put a guy named bennett in maryland you just weren't sure if it was him or not and that's what the state's attorneys wanted us to find out so meyer and childs fly to denver colorado to talk to alexander bennett turns out bennett isn't your run-of-the-mill guy he's a trained opera singer he attended the denver school of the arts and received a scholarship to the prestigious manhattan school of music detective childs will be conducting the interview will bennett sing like a canary what does he tell you he said when he was in maryland got abandoned by some friends they were going to a concert and he was kind of living on the street living on the streets of baltimore for about a month around the time of heidi's murder and during that time he was stopped by an officer while trying to walk through the baltimore harbor tunnel you would think that if two detectives from maryland asked you if you were in maryland you probably would say no i've never been to maryland he didn't say that though he admitted he was in maryland yes he did so you had that confirmation yes and then we took a little further like telling him exactly why they've brought him in this girl's fingernails were taken at the time of her death and under their fingernails is your dna there's no denying it there's no getting around it but bennett offers up an interesting explanation for that he said when he was in maryland he was in a bus stop one day and a girl came up just screaming at him and scratching his face for no apparent reason i got kind of scared because you know i was trying to fight back and i think i heard her it seemed like something that could be reasonable possibly no no not at all not us no childs then shows bennett photos of several women hoping he can pick out that woman from the bus stop heidi's photo is included in the mix normally this role is reversed normally you're showing a victim picture of suspects in this case you're showing the suspect a picture of possible victims yes hoping that you know he might say something or you know indicate something to us that would be helpful to us bennett does and also too kind of looks like her he picked heidi out of all these other girls that were in the pictures he could have said i've never seen these women before right but instead well see in his mind i think in his mind he had to give an explanation as to why his dna was under these girls fingernails childs then lays down his cards for you to have been in baltimore at the exact time this occurs and for your dna to be there for this tattoo to be on your own in the exact location that the victim describes him as being and actually drew it um i mean that's just a lot of coincidences that's a profound thing so you know that's why i'm concerned well i really should be i'm concerned am i being like charged with anything right now well you're not charged with it right now but i'm telling you things are not going good that's fun i i've given you all the explanations i've told you everything and you know like i said if we're done here i mean i have a lot of stuff to do today there isn't enough to charge alex bennett just yet but before he leaves bennett offers up a character witness bennett indicates that his friend grant lewis could verify that he wouldn't have done this thing grant lewis a long time friend and associate of alex bennett's turns out nine years before three years after heidi's murder bennett and lewis were arrested for calling in a phony bomb scare at a colorado courthouse the motive for their bizarre plot pin it on the guy bennett was living with so they can steal his car when he goes away to prison not a very good idea no not at all with that child's and meyer are anxious to talk to grant lewis because luck would have it he had an open warrant on him for some petty offense but it was enough to at least get him in but in the interview lewis is hard to pin down he's playing a mad game of cat and mouse detective childs is having none of it nothing was satisfying gary no he wanted to keep going and he did and he pressed on until finally grant lewis said that yeah he does recall alex going to baltimore and ultimately when alex got home we were drinking down by the bridge and he said i heard someone bad and i it's over in him and i said i don't want to know and he said i think someone's dead and then he said i knight for someone with that revelation from grant lewis his friend alex bennett is eventually arrested for heidi bernzakowski's murder and extradited to baltimore were you surprised by that yes like what's in colorado how you've never been there as far as i know and then eventually that turned into somebody being arrested and charged the guy wouldn't open his mouth though two years later bennett's buddy grant lewis the star witness for the prosecution is in town ready to testify against him it's the morning of jury selection in alex bennett's murder trial in town is the prosecutor's star witness bennett's best friend grant lewis he's prepared to tell the court one night while drinking bennett confessed to murdering someone in baltimore but lewis will never make it to the courthouse al and i picked him up to take him to breakfast and then we were going to take him to the courthouse for his testimony while grant and detectives are having bagels and coffee alex bennett is making a move no one saw coming his attorneys came out and said he'll tell you everything in an unbelievable turn of events bennett wants to talk what gave him a change of heart it was a come to jesus moment in a conversation he had with his mother uh the night before trial started she told us later on that she talked to him and said if you did this you have to confess god will forgive you was a come to jesus moment the news makes it to the detectives at the coffee shop what did you do at this point well at that point we took granddaughters back to the hotel and we all rushed off to the courthouse to hear what was going to be said with sergeant allen and prosecutors glennon and bro watching from the other room detective child sits down once again with alex bennett this time bennett holds nothing back all right alex you all right bennett spills out the gruesome details of the night he murdered 24 year old heidi bernasikowski she had opened the door she saw me panicked i panic and rush at her at the front and you know try to muffle her scream and yell she's clawing at me she clawed at my lip scratched my lip at that point i uh had my hand on her mouth and i was holding her throat crushing her legs her throat um trying to kill her and i just remember eventually she was passing out and losing consciousness then i had like turned her around and had her you know at my her back was on my back and i was still you know choking to make sure that she was dead and she then went limp so i wasn't sure if she was dead but i know she wasn't breathing and i just kept doing it to make sure bennett says after that in an effort to mislead cops he used heidi's lipstick to write the number one on the wall he then went around the apartment trying to cover his tracks all before delivering the final assault got a rack from somewhere and started wiping down doorknobs and i like oh pulled some of the doors of the drawers of the dresser jar after i had wiped everything down i was making sure if she was alive i didn't know that's when i had the knife to make sure had cut her throat bennett also admitted to being the neighborhood watch guy and trying to break into the house the day before the murder he was very graphic he was very detailed he was very forthcoming did you buy the story that he was telling we did buy the story he was telling it it reeked of reliability but the question remained why did bennett kill heidi bernasikowski what was his motive and where did the idea come from bennett is about to drop an atomic sized bombshell that's going to blow up in his buddy grant lewis's face the plan of baltimore just came up you know abruptly when grant was discussing about receiving money to kill somebody the same grant lewis who is supposed to be the prosecution's star witness bennett says his friend was not only involved he was the mastermind of their sinister murder-for-hire plot cops pick up grant lewis from his hotel and bring him in this interview will be like none that have come before detective child starts by telling him alex bennett just confessed oh my goodness okay no testifying so the good news is you won't have to testify okay all right but there's bad news along with that okay grant you're in the middle of this thing i'm not in the middle of this thing did you send him to baltimore i did i didn't do anything child's presses harder did you send him to baltimore i didn't send him to baltimore but i know more about this than i said but before lewis says anything more he wants to know what kind of deal prosecutors are offering i will work with you in any way that i can but if i didn't have anything to do with that with him what he did as far as committing a murderer what what's my situation as far as that goes that's not i just want to know that lewis eventually agrees to talk i lost a lot of people and it's kind of sad subject but uh something about something that made me you know think of initially like there's these people out there and they and they're hiring people to kill people lewis tells detectives it was all part of a bizarre scheme to raise money to open a nightclub he and bennett came up the idea to put an ad online selling themselves as hitmen in the advertisement they carefully selected the wording it read professional and discreet house cleaning so somebody contacts you back what does he say something to the effect that he was looking for probably a hit thumb or something and as a result one of the only people that come back to you is a guy from here and he says yeah i remember him sending an email where he said well i could pay five thousand up front um and then more afterwards or something for a hit more or less okay and then um yeah and that's basically what we're looking for was that first set of the the down payment and then we're good to go after that lewis says the deal was really a scam they take the money but no one was ever supposed to get hurt he was supposed to go to maryland to talk to this guy and [Music] pick up some funds for him for uh for what this guy was looking at as a contract murder but um there was not supposed to be any fulfilling or anything you know you get their money and then turn them in lewis says that all changed when bennett went rogue and murdered heidi cops aren't buying it that was his way of trying to finagle out of what really occurred but there were still important unanswered questions who wanted heidi dead and was willing to pay for her murder grant lewis the mastermind and alex bennett the hitman just confessed to their parts in a gruesome murder-for-hire plot to kill heidi bernazzakowski the question is who hired them did you meet the guy at some point at some point when i called grant he had told me that the client wanted to meet me at his house to discuss the plan of how everything go down i did meet with um the person investigators want to know can bennett identify the god he's shown photos of six men bennett narrows the six down to two then he points to one i recognize him as the boyfriend boyfriend yes bennett points the finger straight at heidi's boyfriend stephen cook the same guy who cried like a baby when he called 9-1-1 is there a weapon near her no are you sending somebody they're on the way sir okay i want you to stay with me oh no i can't stay with you i got to go with her we knew we weren't done we knew there was more to this the whole family knew that somewhere along the line stephen cook had something to do with this it wasn't a doubt in anybody's mind when i met um the boyfriend he's like i'm gonna leave a key and when i'm gonna drop her off when she comes in you gotta make it look like she had an accident you can't look like she was killed because of the insurance remember there were insurance policies heidi and cook took out on each other a couple of months before heidi was murdered heidi's was for seven hundred thousand dollars allegedly cook had promised sixty thousand to lewis and bennett once the job was done and heidi was dead did they ever get the money they never got a dime grant lewis is arrested for conspiracy to commit contract murder alexander bennett takes a plea deal and agrees to testify against lewis and cook in the years since heidi's murder stephen cook seemed to have moved on with his life he got married had a child and was working for the government in veterans affairs cook also collected a small portion of that 700 000 insurance policy after a legal fight with heidi's family ten minutes before he's supposed to testify he gets his attorneys and they strike a plea deal and he ends up taking about 20 percent he didn't want to testify it was a small victory in court but an earthquake was about to hit and cook's world would crumble so the stevens arrested and what was that day like for you we just followed him he dropped his son off at the elementary school and once he came out of the elementary school property we arrested him that was it for him i was different stephen cook is charged with first degree murder his defense attorney tara lacomp says not so fast the case may not be as open and shut as some would believe the first thing he said to me was i did not do this i had nothing to do with this lacamp says besides bennett's testimony the prosecution's case was a circumstantial one there was an alleged contract killing with no contract was there any evidence at all to prove that this crime was orchestrated and coordinated over the internet no not one shred of evidence no emails nothing from a chat room no chat room nothing nothing printed no not even a hard drive no why is that the police didn't take that computer that day the lack of a paper trail was one i think of the most difficult things to do when prosecuting this case their computer was sitting on a table and they didn't actually look at it it wasn't part of normal police procedure back then to conduct investigation into a computer and i mean nowadays that would probably be one of the first things they do as both sides prepare for trial cook allegedly tries to pull off a repeat performance this time from behind bars stephen really takes this to another level and while he was behind bars he did something what happened while awaiting trial stephen met a cellmate began to talk to him and ultimately asked him to have grant lewis who was also in the same facility to have him whacked and whatever happened was he charged that cellmate was very helpful he agreed to wear a wire in jail and we were able to record stephen talking about having grant whacked so we charged him with witness intimidation and attempted murder that seems to be how stephen cook solves problems one year after cook's arrest the case goes to trial the star witness for the prosecution alex bennett but there's more heidi's friends testify her relationship with cook was not the blissful one he described she was thinking about leaving him she had taken steps such as borrowing money from a friend to rent out a storage facility to take that next step to move out the crux of the defense's case heidi brought this on herself cook's attorneys allege she had been looking for love online when she met alex bennett he traveled from colorado to maryland to be with her and when he showed up at her door she rejected him so he killed her so you believe they met over the internet on a chat room this man is professing his love for her an unrecorded love made the most sense out of everything the defense said bennett traveled to maryland to meet heidi and she rejected him and that was ultimately why she was murdered there was no evidence in fact to support that in a bold move stephen cook takes the stand in his own defense cameras are not allowed in the courtroom but cook's testimony is audio taped cook says he's surprised to hear other accounts of his relationship with heidi mr folk you keep saying that you and heidi are gonna get married but we've heard from other individuals that she was thinking about leaving you i've never heard anything like that until now cook then explains how the large insurance policies came to be we're going to start a family we're going to have children and i wanted to make sure that there was enough money for heidi in case i died heidi then asked me if it was all right if she could get 700 000 worth of life insurance and i said fine then the comp asks point blank if cook had heidi killed steve you've heard your testimony that you arranged for heidi's murder via the internet did you do that not at all no i didn't i didn't have anything at all to do with honey's murder why are you testifying i'm testifying because i want my family and friends and i want heidi's family and friends to know the truth the case goes to the jury they deliberate a day and a half the jury came back with the verdict the moment before it was announced what were you feeling i was scared i'm not gonna lie to you this is i mean truly it felt like it was a life's work for me you know and this guy has been haunting me forever so the jury came in the hedgerow spoke very quietly so i had my head down and he gives the verdict i looked over my wife i said what did he say because i couldn't tell what he said she said guilty yeah guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of witness intimidation and attempted murder it was the news so many had waited so long to hear what was that moment like for you and for your family such a relief and he stole your sister's life all for nothing because he didn't get the big payout he didn't even pay the people there's no explaining sociopaths alexander bennett as part of his plea deal was sentenced to 30 years in prison grant lewis was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison and stephen cook got life without the possibility of parole plus another 30 years for trying to have grant louis killed you believe you did everything you could to defend him absolutely i think he got a fair trial but cook's sister kim told crime watch daily her brother has been wrongfully accused and evidence left out at a trial would have proved that his sister believes he's 100 innocent any sister would she doesn't see him that way but that's the way he is for detective childs and sergeant meyer they're happy they've helped bring closure after so much time to heidi's loving family we'll never forget heidi she'll always be a part of our lives and she's there with us no matter what or where we are oh it's one of these cases i'll never forget i think al did a great job dropped her off to her own death and drove away they're tough cases and i never gave up this case is a real testament to hard police work and dog and pursuit of justice and we got it cook continues to maintain his innocence in heidi's murder at sentencing circuit judge jan marshall alexander told cook he had no doubts about the jury's decision calling the murder quote one of the most cold-blooded heartless manipulative despicable crimes that i have seen in almost 30 years of law

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 510,554

Rating: 4.7268224 out of 5

Keywords: Dundalk Maryland, Heidi Bernadzikowski, Stephen Cooke, Baltimore County Police, Terry Gilliam, Alexander Bennett, Maryland State Police, Grant Lewis, Baltimore County Prosecutor Garrett Glennon, Circuit Judge Jan Marshall Alexander, Crime Watch Daily, True Crime Daily

Id: d9PqwqgX2sU

Length: 36min 14sec (2174 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020