Caught in the Act | FULL EPISODE | The FBI Files

in alabama a series of deadly assaults shocks the community and frustrates police all the killers leave behind are the dead and fleeting images on surveillance videotape local police and federal agents follow the killer's trail up and down the eastern seaboard the shadowy fugitives keep running but the fbi will not give up the chase [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] surveillance video is often the most precise witness to a crime its images can speak for victims when they are unable after three brutal murders were caught on tape in alabama the suspects fled the area they had an arsenal of stolen weapons and swore they wouldn't be taken alive i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office racing across several states the fugitives tried to elude the fbi and agents hope to capture them without more bloodshed in the 1990s birmingham alabama saw a drop in both its population and its crime rate but even in the safest cities killers can strike on may 18 1996 a customer at a gas station discovered a body [Music] birmingham police responded to the 911 crime scene investigators determined the victim the station cashier had been shot to death he was the only employee on duty that day the customer hadn't seen what happened to him the trail of blood led back into the store and behind the counter more blood there indicated the cashier laid briefly on the floor before going outside perhaps hoping for help [Music] he barely made it to the parking lot police first suspected a robbery shooting but money was left on the counter [Music] and the cash register had not been emptied no fingerprints pointed toward a suspect and no witnesses had seen anything investigators retrieved the store's security videotape and sent it to the police lab [Music] the tape had degraded because it had been reused many times in the recorder so the footage of the crime was blurry and few details could be seen [Music] police technicians tried to clean up the image electronically for detectives [Music] the enhanced tape gave investigators a better look at the crime it confirmed what the crime scene clue suggested a lone customer shot the cashier even though the employee was complying with his demands it seemed he killed without reason technicians made video captures of individual frames and tried to enhance them in order to see the face of the perpetrator or any identifying characteristics birmingham police hope to identify the suspect from the stills checking mug shots they could not find a match [Music] detectives interviewed friends and relatives of the victim trying to find some lead on the senseless murder [Music] no one recognized the killer or knew who might want the cashier dead [Music] the investigation stalled two months later and 20 miles south of birmingham a call came into the sheriff's office in shelby county alabama [Music] sheriff james jones received the report of two people down at a pawn shop we got the phone call it really wasn't clear to us exactly what had happened we had reason to believe that uh lives had been lost in the building it happened so rarely in our county that i really was surprised when i got on the scene emts determined the pawn shop owner had died from multiple gun shots a female employee was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to her head all other cars when you're outside the sheriff ordered deputies to stop any suspicious vehicles in the area we really didn't know what we were looking for at this point but we was in hopes that our people would be sharp enough if they saw something that was out of place that they would be able to recognize stop that vehicle and perhaps give us some leads from it stabilizing her as much as they could in the field the paramedics prepared the woman for the helicopter ride to the hospital authorities determined more than twenty three hundred dollars in cash and jewelry was missing and the gun cases had been nearly emptied [Music] since the pawn shop had frequent customers it wasn't difficult for crime scene technicians to lift hundreds of latent fingerprints connecting one of them to the crime might be impossible the lead investigator was shelby county sergeant michael de hart there was a really a lot of evidence processing to be done fingerprint dusting so on but we didn't find any anything definitive as a result of that the one thing that we did find that we did have were shell casings that were left at the scene the murder weapon was a 380 automatic handgun [Music] at the time we didn't know if this was a one-time event that had occurred or if this was a part of a larger series of events [Music] the in-store shooting was similar to the earlier gas station murder but this crime occurred during a robbery detectives checked for the shop security video [Music] then they remembered something i was talking to the owner a couple weeks ago and he was talking about putting a dummy machine in he was talking about putting a real one over this area sergeant russell yarn found the other machine in the actual surveillance videotape the second or the real vcr continued to operate even after they took and unplugged and removed the tape from the dummy vcr and it continued to record even until at the time that i pushed the eject button the videotape showed two young men entering the store at 3 23 p.m [Music] they cornered the shop owner forcing him behind the counter with a female employee [Music] deputies spotted a red pickup truck barely visible outside the shop it might be the getaway vehicle the suspects looted the pawn shop for 13 minutes while the employees watched they then shot the hostages point-blank we saw nothing that told us that these two victims resisted or attempted to resist they were very compliant and i'm sure they did that with the hopes that they would live but instead their life was taken by execution style and that was very disturbing to see that what i don't understand is this is just garbage sergeant john and his partner sergeant donald king found more evidence near the spot where the victims had been killed as we were doing our search at the pawn shop we saw a small pile of garbage in behind the counter and we you know noted it at the time you know why was the the garbage there there was no garbage can it really didn't make a whole lot of sense at the time there was also some metal filings on the floor mixed in with the trash the filings likely came from a key making machine installed on the counter detectives collected them for later examination they believe the killers took the garbage can but they didn't know why federal law requires that anyone buying or selling firearms must keep records of the transactions detectives asked another employee to bring up the store's weapons manifest comparing it to the gun still in the shop they realized the suspects took an entire arsenal there were 32 stolen weapons in the hands of vicious killers we was very disturbed about what else would they do what were they doing now and what would they do again in the future because of the potential for more violence by the heavily armed killers sheriff's detectives immediately contacted the shelby county district attorney's office prosecutor randy hillman joined the investigation we'd like to be in on the front end of any investigation it makes things a lot easier for us it makes things a lot easier for the police officers working the scene as well the surveillance videotape was the best evidence investigators had to find the killers [Music] it showed the suspects carry out many of the stolen items in a guitar case one of them shot both the shop owner and the employee at one point his gun jammed mechanically he cleared and reloaded and then kept firing the two suspects got into the waiting red pickup both on the passenger side there must have been a driver a third suspect [Music] technicians made photos from video captures but the quality was poor we had photographs of these individuals actually doing the execution we had a partial photograph of the vehicle that they were in but we didn't know who they were and the level of violence here was critical to us i mean we had to stop these guys before it happened again less than eight hours after the shooting investigators learned the pawn shop employee died in the hospital now there were two innocent murder victims technicians at the alabama department of forensic sciences examined the bullet fragments and casings found at the pawn shop they compared them to those used in other area shootings including the one at the birmingham gas station to see if the same gun was used but the pawnshop bullets did not match any others still investigators thought the two crimes might be related they turned to the public for help [Music] we were able to distribute still photographs to the local media in the area and we enlisted their assistance in getting the the pictures out there to the public and to request assistance in identifying the perpetrators of these crimes they kept several aspects of the crime secret to help identify more reliable the media exposure generated dozens of calls okay how many guys were there one caller said that while driving in birmingham he saw two men fitting the description of the pawnshop killers they were carrying guns and a guitar case from a red pickup into a house okay the detail of the guitar case had been withheld from the public okay great the caller said he knew the men but only by their street names turkey and maine hey mark shelby county detectives took the information to birmingham police [Music] the metro department had a database on street names turkey was an alias for 16 year old marcus presley he resembled the shooter in the pawnshop murders mane was 18 year old le samuel gamble he resembled the second pawnshop robber the two had long juvenile records go into the areas where the information who court documents they learned where gamble lived we knew that the people that we were looking for were very dangerous men they had killed before we were afraid that they would kill again and so when we undertook these searches we wanted to use every safety precaution available to us so we used tactical dynamic entries into the residences that we searched the arrest team cleared the house where gamble had been living [Music] no one was home nobody in the house nobody a pair of cold-blooded killers with an arsenal of stolen weapons remained on the loose [Music] on july 28 1996 alabama investigators searched for marcus presley the samuel gamble and a third suspect believed to be involved in a double murder at a pawn shop the tactical arrest team entered the house where suspect gamble lived but they found no one there [Music] armed with a warrant detectives searched the house shelby county sergeant russell young recovered evidence that directly linked the suspect to the pawnshop murders [Music] during the search we found the videotape that came from the dummy vcr it was destroyed the case was cracked and broken the tape pulled from the uh the housing and it indicated to us that they were aware that they were being recorded and they had the presence of mind to stop and try to remove or eliminate all evidence of the crime they also found an empty guitar case it appeared to be the one taken from the pawn shop sergeant donald king found more evidence in the kitchen [Music] we were able to find a garbage can and in the bottom of it had some labels uh some price tags and so forth from some of the guns and some of the jewelry from the pawn shop and it also contains some of the same metal shavings that we were able to tie back to the burton to the robbery scene sergeant michael de hart was frustrated that they didn't find any of the 32 stolen weapons at the time that we did the search we knew that three people were involved but the third person we didn't know when we did the search at the residence we found a paycheck stub in a coat pocket that had the name stephen mckenzie on it from a business in the boston area perhaps mackenzie was the third suspect who drove the getaway vehicle fairly recently he had no local address but neighbors said he was a friend of gamble and presley records listed marcus presley is living with his grandmother there's nothing here that can directly be tied to the pawn shop investigators searched that house too but found nothing there that related to the crime that's 10 4 12 30 3rd avenue west presley's grandmother arrived home as they were executing the search warrant yes ma'am we got a search warrant to search this resident can i go in my house not right now we're doing an investigation of the robbers but you can [Music] ma'am i'm chris currie with shelby county sheriff's office detective showed her video captures from the [Music] she robbery one of the men looked like her grandson help us tell me if you recognize anyone she had tried her best to raise marcus but he got involved with drugs and gangs and had been in trouble ever since thank you very much you've been very helpful but again i apologize for the income she said he would disappear for weeks at a time she was devastated to learn that now he was a murder suspect the suspect's apparently constant movement troubled prosecutor randy hillman they were young they were mobile they didn't have any uh home base that they operated out of like normal people have a home that they go to and from they had several different residences that they would frequent detectives canvassed the neighborhood where gamble and presley hung out interviewing anyone who might know the suspects several people in the neighborhood said that lately gamble and presley had been flashing jewelry and giving away guns to members of their street gang some said they heard the suspects were still in the area and offered addresses where the young men might be staying [Music] the detectives checked all the addresses gamble and pressly seem to have disappeared we had one last place that we wanted to look before going home that particular day we were on the way back and the suggestion was made let's ride by the uncle of the samuel gamble let's ride by his house and and just see if anyone's there we did that and when we did we saw a red pickup truck that matches the description of the vehicle that was used in the robbery [Music] it had no plates but they could see the vehicle identification number [Music] the detectives noticed a massachusetts parking permit in the corner of the windshield 6802 746 [Music] they hoped gamble's uncle would have information about the suspects [Music] the uncle agreed to answer their questions but not at his home he did not want to be seen with the cops they took a drive so they could talk the uncle told investigators that the truck belonged to stephen mckenzie a friend of his nephew it was the same name as the one on the boston pay stub the uncle admitted that his nephew recently stayed at his house with mckenzie and pressley [Music] the trio had cleared out several days ago sergeant john believed the uncle knew details at first he really didn't want to give us any useful information but we continued and he did admit that they had left town and they had gone to boston a check of the red pickups massachusetts parking permit confirmed that the truck belonged to stephen mckenzie the suspected getaway driver eventually the uncle gave investigators permission to search his property he suggested they look under the porch there police found a paint gun [Music] the serial number on the gun matched one taken from the pawn shop [Music] there was enough probable cause to impound mackenzie's pickup and process it for evidence but the technicians did not find anything that tied it to the pawnshop robbery homicide with the possibility that the suspects had left the state shelby county authorities contacted fbi special agent jeff newton they requested fbi assistance in locating suspects that they had identified as they believed to be responsible for this terrible crime at that point i got information from the case from the sheriff's department representative realized that we had enough probable cause at that point to apply for a federal unlawful flight to avoid prosecution or ufap warrant the fbi re-interviewed the suspect's friends they told agents gamble and presley were acting desperate and volatile and that the pair had promised if the law ever caught up with him they would not be taken alive [Music] in alabama authorities struggled to find the men believed responsible for two robbery homicides the state increased the reward for the capture of the samuel gamble marcus presley and stephen mckenzie to 100 000 fbi special agent jeff newton believed the suspects left alabama for boston [Music] anybody is a suspect in a double homicide is automatically rated at the highest priority i immediately notified our boston office you got bad guys heading your way we believe or may already be there we i gave them lots of details everything i learned from shelby county pertaining to their level of violence you know what they look like we were sending photographs we were sending full physical descriptions at the boston massachusetts fbi field office special agent joseph altman received the priority call the three individuals were identified us as ambitious killers that they had made claims to the effect that they would not hesitate to kill again that they would not be taken alive or that they would take that they would take the life of any law enforcement officer that attempted to stop them birmingham agents also sent boston a list of places they should investigate one was the construction company where suspect stephen mckenzie had worked [Music] agents went to speak with the owner the man said he had not seen the suspect in weeks if mackenzie was in the boston area he had not made an attempt to come back to work the owner had an employment record but it did not contain any new address or other information that would help find the suspect boston authorities staked out the other addresses that birmingham had sent including one of another uncle of the samuel gamble but they did not approach this house immediately we did not want to let on that we were surveilling this particular home we wanted to allow at least one or two areas homes in the area that they could return to after several hours they spotted a man leaving the residence it was not one of the suspects they waited until they were sure he was alone and not being watched special agent daniel and special agent friends i would like to ask you a couple questions if you could all right um do you live in that building he was hesitant to talk but did say that neither gamble's uncle nor the suspects were in the house but he hadn't seen them thank you very much again he told us that both gamble and presley had been staying at this location but they had since moved out he did not know where they moved to we felt that this location was no longer vital in our in our investigation so we append a search warrant and search the home and did not discover anything of lead value another address on their list was in roxbury a suburb south of boston an agent set up surveillance there [Music] it meant more long hours with no promise of a payoff on august 1st 1996 the boston fbi held a press conference [Music] uh we believe these individuals to be extremely dangerous most likely armed they're wanted in alabama we'd like to bring these individuals in they distributed wanted posters and asked anyone with information to call a special tip line [Music] the media campaign produced dozens of leads one was an address outside boston where alleged getaway driver stephen mckenzie was said to be staying there was no word whether gamble and presley were with him [Music] the tactical arrest team had to be prepared for a fight [Music] they caught mackenzie off guard [Music] but gamble and presley were nowhere to be found the two fugitives remained free and on the streets with an arsenal of stolen weapons in august of 1996 the boston swat team arrested one of three suspects with fled alabama after two robbery homicides the suspected getaway driver stephen mckenzie was unarmed and taken in for questioning good work guys investigators searched the house where he was staying found jewelry later determined to be from the alabama pawn shop that was robbed they also recovered three weapons running the serial numbers of the guns agents learned they were among the 32 weapons stolen from the pawn shop but nothing in the house indicated where the samuel gamble and marcus presley were boston agents held mackenzie on a charge of receiving stolen property [Music] they contacted prosecutor randy hillman in shelby county alabama immediately after receiving that telephone call we got on a plane and flew to boston to to help the boston investigators they hoped mckenzie could lead them to the elusive armed killers we knew the level of violence and the numbers of guns that they had and what a danger they posed to to other people the shelby county authorities interviewed mckenzie mr mckenzie you know why we're here our major concern is that these weapons don't get back out on the street and someone else innocent persons are going to lose their lives he confronted him with the evidence they had hoping for sentencing leniency the suspect began to talk around or whatever and drinking him he said that he presley and gamble planned the pawn shop robbery in mid-july they drove by the shop to check it out gamble said it would be a good place to rub there were guns jewelry and cash inside and no security i'm positive it was guaranteed that you know no one would get hurt it was just an in-and-out thing on july 25th they returned in mackenzie's pickup gamble and presley went inside while mackenzie waited [Music] they were only supposed to grab the money and valuables [Music] but then mckenzie heard shots [Music] they took what they came for then fled [Music] [Applause] [Music] mckenzie said gamble and presley had run with him to boston i don't know and that they might still be in the area somewhere [Music] he claimed that he did not know where they were at the time which i don't know that he did he did give us some information about where they had been staying the different houses that they may have gone to and some other information i think mckenzie held out on us i think mckenzie knew more than what he was telling us at trial mackenzie's testimony would be attacked the prosecutor turned to the one unimpeachable witness the surveillance video he sent the tape to the fbi's audio and video processing lab in quantico virginia the task of cleaning up the footage fell to video program manager dale linden this tape was a vhs recording on a security system it had i would say fairly poor quality as far as resolution i had a backlighting issue where the camera was facing towards the windows at some point some of the people in this video scene looks like silhouette as people moved around the closer they got to the camera the better images we were able to retrieve focusing on the portions of video where the perpetrators were nearest the camera lyndon began enhancing the images once we digitize these images we will go through each one and depending on what the problems are we will apply different types of filter processes in this particular case the first thing we did was we we did some contrast adjustments to make the images look brighter and focusing in primarily on on the subjects in this particular case i felt that we did some improvement to get facial detail of the face and the weapons and also their movements within the store itself the results strengthened the case against gamble and presley now authorities needed to catch them the fbi continued their stakeout at a house in roxbury massachusetts where informants said the men might hide out it was the best lead so far for fbi special agent joseph altman we surveilled this house for approximately 48 hours the street information that we had was getting better and better all the time that the individuals were holed up in in this house we thought that we saw a move a movement in the house are they ready this is special agent for ask or swat ready field agents told the swat team to prepare for entry right before the go word was given a man left the target house agents believed it was gamble's uncle they knew he was on probation for a felony offense in accepting probation a person gives up his fourth amendment rights he can be stopped and searched at any time well that's what we want to find out don't you put them in this procedure i don't care about you agents found a handgun this was one of the weapons that was actually stolen during the robbery in alabama one of the 32 weapons that were stolen he told us that these subjects were no longer in this house however we felt that since he was related to the subjects and then he had stolen weapon on him that we could not take this information at face value so boston swat went ahead and made the entry gamble and presley had sworn never to be taken alive so the swat team prepared for a shootout [Music] we felt that the only way that they were going to be extricated from the house was through force [Music] the tactical arrest team swept through the house clearing each room as they [Music] went [Music] no one was inside however they did find some travel bags belonging to presley and campbell inside these bags were a couple of weapons in addition to a photograph the photos showed the fugitives getting on a bus the travel bags contained the shirts worn by gamble and presley at the pawn shop investigators also recovered one of the guns used in the pawnshop robbery thank you officer thank you very much the uncle confirmed gamble and presley stayed at found the house [Music] he said they left on a bus for virginia where gamble's girlfriend lived the fbi and boston police had missed the dangerous fugitives by a matter of hours [Music] on august 5th 1996 fugitives liz samuel gamble and marcus presley eluded an arrest team in boston an uncle told agents the men had left for virginia where one had a girlfriend but he did not know exactly where [Music] to narrow the search the fbi obtained the phone records of houses in boston where the suspects might have stayed for nearly 48 hours agents combed through the records looking for common numbers according to fbi special agent joseph altman they found one we did find a common phone numbers that occurred about two and a half months before the murders took place and about a week after the murders took place the number was in the norfolk virginia area boston agents contacted the fbi's norfolk field office on august 8th special agent john harley received word from boston to apprehend the young fugitives [Music] youth can be a factor in making somebody a little bit more unpredictable if they're older and more set in their ways they may even have a past pattern of conduct that we can look at and and help us in apprehending that person but with these two individuals as young as they were they proved to be very difficult because they were not predictable at all at 5 30 the next morning the fugitive task force arrived [Music] an individual came to the door who we weren't sure match the description or not initially but uh we went ahead and detained him there at the door and asked if we could go ahead and consent to search his apartment at which time he said we could seen these guys you haven't seen him before the resident recognized photographs of the suspects the individual uh who we talked to provided us information that he had party recently at his apartment and that two individuals matching the description of presley and gamble had come with a girl that he knew [Music] the place was empty but the resident gave agents the girl's address time is starting to tick by and we then have to head over to try to locate this apartment where this girlfriend is apparently living who's associated with the two subjects an arrest team quickly assembled outside the target apartment a third-story residence norfolk police helped cordon off the area while agents assessed the building for entry it's now getting to be about nine o'clock in the morning the sun's up now and we were getting concerned that if the two subjects were sleeping that they weren't going to be sleeping for very much longer and we would prefer to go in if they were obviously not awake the arrest team split into two groups and moved in we decided to make our our main effort uh use the most people to go up the fire escape which isn't uh the most conducive route but it was a rat that we thought offered the most uh surprise we also then stationed the two special state police agents on the front door which would be in the interior hallway just to make sure that any bad guys didn't run out the agents did not have the time to obtain a search warrant for the apartment to get inside and make a legal arrest they would have to see the suspects or get permission they spotted a resident through a back window and took a risk we announced to him who we were and that we were looking for a couple of individuals and asked if he minded we took a look around this older gentleman then stepped aside nodded come on in and that's when we made our entry they found presley first we immediately uh handcuff him and detain him he had no opportunity to warn his friend [Applause] [Music] the agents positively identified presley and gamble from photographs and placed them under arrest u.s marshals transported the fugitives back to shelby county alabama when questioned at the county jail the samuel gamble blamed presley for the murders when they spoke to marcus presley he had a different story each believed they had destroyed the surveillance tape presley and gamble both still thought that there was nobody alive from the robbery who could say exactly what happened they continued to point the finger at each other saying he's the one that did it or it wasn't me it was someone else until they saw the videotape once they saw the videotape they realized that no longer could they lie about it that we had them actually doing the executions and the whole tenor of the conversation changed then eventually marcus presley after pointing the finger several other places presley confessed and said that he did do the killing how about this presley also confessed to another crime he had been the shooter in the gas station murder in birmingham he said he thought the cashier was going for a gun so he shot him [Music] in 1997 the three suspects had separate trials for his role stephen mckenzie received 50 years an alabama jury convicted la samuel gamble of capital murder and sentenced him to death for being part of the pawnshop slayings marcus presley received the death penalty for killing the gas station cashier another jury sentenced him to death a second time for killing the pawnshop employees when the jurors saw this tape they were shocked people are used to seeing violence on television and we've seen so much of it that you kind of become detached that it becomes old hat to you this was an actual videotape of two people being executed and it had a profound impact on the jury actually the owner of the palm shop was an unwitting participant in the investigation of his own murder by having the dummy bcr and putting that that tape in our hands showing the actual executions uh he helped us solve this case a lot more quickly and and with conviction with with absolute certainty whereas if we hadn't had this tape it would have been a guessing game [Applause] [Music] you

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Keywords: FBI, FBI Files, FBI Documentary, Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True crime daily, Unsolved, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Full Episode, unsolved true crime, fbi files full episodes, we got him, mystery, solved, investigation, police, criminal, prison, jail

Id: bNxyFVc7T1w

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021