COLD CASE FILES MEGA MARATHON Part 3 - Fan Favorite Full Episodes of ALL TIME | A&E

foreign [Music] they said kids are going to come back they just ran away we knew they didn't just run away this is one of the largest manhunts in the state of Wisconsin Dave is I think it should be solved you got to blame somebody we had to figure out what kind of killer we were dealing with station runs out of leave it becomes a Cold Case years pass and hope fails but for the families of the victims whose cases are never cold [Music] the truth takes time this is Farm country Wisconsin High School sweethearts Tim hack and Kelly Drew are at the wedding of a friend the couple has plans to go to a carnival so they don't stay long they have a drink then disappear into the night never to be seen again [Music] we do take this part of Wisconsin for granted we love the sunrises and the sunsets and the planting and harvesting of crops [Music] some of us are lucky enough to meet our high school sweetheart and get married Tim and Kelly started dating in high school Tim would bring Kelly out to the farm I thought it was kind of cool that a city girl would come and hang around with a farm boy they were a good couple I really do believe that the two of them would eventually be married that they would be a couple for life [Music] Tim and Kelly we're going to go to a wedding reception at the Concord house [Music] Tim and Kelly get to the Concord house at approximately 10 30 pm they're there for approximately half an hour 45 minutes Witnesses say that Tim had a beer and Kelly had a soda during the time they were there and there are witnesses that see them leave [Music] the next morning get up and get work done except when you got up in the morning and Tim wasn't there instantly there was a level of concern if he wasn't going to come home he's going to stay with a friend he'd call we called Kelly's mom and said did they stay there she said no [Music] I drove up to the Concord house to look Kim's car was still there the door wasn't quite shut and this wallet was still in the car and that was not like him to do stuff like that from there on we finally realized Tim and Kelly are are gone the sheriff's department binds cigarettes checkbook wallet there did not appear any sign of a struggle they were boyfriend and girlfriend there was some talk I remember did they lope did they take a bus someplace our kitchen actually became a command post Dave knows that something's wrong something has happened we need to figure out what happened that they had run off to Las Vegas and got married they would have called us they wouldn't have let us sit and worry about them in the first four days they were talking to all the employees from the Concord house we're talking to wedding guests one consistent thing that was reported was that there was this dark dirty van that had been in the parking lot one witness specifically recalled the van taking off you know sort of in a suspicious fashion in a quick way the Concord house itself was right next to the interstate there's a big parking lot there's not a lot of lighting or anything out there if you were intent on abducting somebody all you had to do is wait for the right moment we need to find the kids the community stepped up all the local farmers were there to help do some searches around the Concord house they're searching vacant buildings they're searching everywhere that they can find everybody was involved this is one of the largest manhunts in the state of Wisconsin real nothing seemed real you have two news helicopters Landing in the field next to the house I mean how real is that we checked every place we could think of there was nothing that could lead us to them [Music] a teenager on his tractor had seen something as he was driving they caught his eye a pair of pants just like Kelly had been wearing on the night that she disappeared [Applause] both the left and the right leg are completely cut from the ankle all the way up to the waist and so in other words the pants could have still been on her body but they had been cut away it just magnified what I had thought all along that someone had definitely raped her over the course of 10 days multiple pieces of clothing belonging to Kelly are found along the roadway within a six mile radius of the Concord house as well as about a dozen pieces of rope with various knots tied in it [Music] we have very good evidence now but we need Tim and Kelly [Music] squirrel hunters from Milwaukee are out in the Ixonia Wisconsin area which is approximately seven miles from the Concord house while they're walking through a wooded area they stumble across a body and immediately contact law enforcement the body was badly decomposed it's dark out it's nighttime so law enforcement sets up a perimeter around this area until daylight approximately 100 yards away they locate a male body is fully clothed and appears to be the same clothing that Tim was reported to have been wearing on August 9th 1980. [Music] the manner of death for both of them was homicide [Music] I had the radio on and they announced over the radio that they had indeed found both bodies and so um so I remember walking in the kitchen and the detective is there with my parents telling them that they did indeed find Tim Kelly there were ligature marks on Kelly's ankles and wrists that were consistent with having been bound Kelly was most possibly strangled based on damage and insect activity around the throat area so then these pieces of rope were finding along the roadsides become extremely significant there's the regular square knot but there's also half hitches 12 hitches bowling knots this is somebody with knowledge of not tying somebody that's been in the Navy or the military or in the trades like a carpenter maybe a painter it's not going to just be your everyday person that's going to tie these types of knots [Music] this is a tight-knit community so the phone calls are coming and the tips are coming in there's a tip that comes in from a woman who believes that her husband may have been involved in the murders of Tim and Kelly this suspect Mr James lived in the area where the bodies were found he does Roofing work s with ropes he's known to carry a knife on his belt he has a van and on August 10th of 1980 shortly after The Disappearance of Tim and Kelly he has his wife and stepdaughters completely clean out the van a lot of things are adding up here this could be the guy that took Tim and Kelly there were a lot of things that were adding up for Mr James being our suspect so a search warrant is obtained to search the property to try to see if they could find anything linking Mr James to Tim hack and Kelly Drew they retrieve clothing that is eerily similar to Kelly's shirt both in terms of color and the way that it's torn foreign they find ropes tied knots they find what could be blood they transport this clothing to the crime lab for testing as they're conducting a search they received information from his wife she said that he's an alcoholic he's violent P according to his wife had tied her up in the past [Music] and that his wife said that her daughters his stepdaughters were being sexually assaulted by him officers took him into custody so that he could be questioned in regards to Tim and Kelly [Music] he was questioned at length he denied any involvement and a polygraph or lie detector test was used on him polygraphs aren't admissible at trial but they do give investigators at least some guidance as to whether a suspect is being truthful [Music] he admits the sexual assault of his step-daughters but denies any knowledge of timra Kelly denies ever meeting them abducting them ever being at the Concord house [Music] it was the examiner's determination that Mr James was being truthful when he denied having any involvement in Tim and Kelly's murders Mr James ultimately is convicted of the sexual assault of his stepdaughters and sent away however he remains a suspect in this case I know that my parents and Kelly's parents work together on planning the funerals they died together they wanted him to be together eternally Dave never let it go because Dave was always searching for justice for Tim you think it should be solved you got to blame somebody we're looking at anything that was going to help solve it [Music] [Music] Henry Lee Lewis gets to know his tool where a pair of drifters who were arrested on a number of very minor charges after their apprehension they started confessing to dozens and dozens of murders as a result detectives from all over the country now have to become involved in the investigation to see if any of their cold cases involved Lucas or tool what led us to believe that they could be responsible was that they had abducted so many women and men sexually assaulting them and at times killing them there were a total of either four or five cases in Wisconsin at that time that were unsolved that could have been them serial killer with a Drifter lifestyle can leave a trail of bodies and no one can actually pinpoint them to be in that location at any given time [Music] one of the murders Henry Lee Lucas confessed to was the orange socks Drifter this was a young Jane Doe unidentified who was found murdered wearing only orange socks the orange Sox Drifter was strangled and raped very similar to The way Kelly Drew was because of the similarities in these crimes this was a significant motivating factor for detectives to go interview Lucas and Tool it was optimism now it's getting serious you just had that feeling that they were going to solve this case [Music] Lucas and Tool are confessing to in excess of 300 rapes and homicides that they've done across the country the reasons that Lucas and Tool might confess to all these crimes might be to gain attention it might be important for them maybe it fed their egos our investigator went to interview Lucas and Tool regarding Tim and Kelly what let investigators to believe that they could be responsible for the murder of Tim and Kelly was that they had committed two separate homicides in Wisconsin Lucas and Tool had previously admitted to being in Wisconsin traveling on I-94 very close to where Tim and Kelly disappeared from at the Concord house and the time frame was around the same time frame as Tim and Kelly's disappearance do you know where this girl's at I want you to admit too hey about 48 different states well I know but who's going to do it if we don't how many people this was killed 150 [Music] investigators and the families believe that the murder had been found it was all that people could talk about was that finally we know who did it investigators established a detailed timeline and find that Lucas and Tool were in Wisconsin in September and October of 1980 however they were not in Wisconsin in August of 1980. I mean they certainly were killers serial killers even but they were not involved in Tim and Kelly's murders tips aren't coming in all the evidence that has been found has been processed has been sent in all the leads that have been developed have pretty much been followed up on the reality was we weren't making any progress towards identifying a suspect eventually the leaves dry up and the case goes cold the case remains cold for more than two decades the hack family is forced to move on without their oldest son I sold the family farm I always felt Tim would eventually take over the farm but then after they died it didn't really make any difference anymore because it was no longer a family farm we all used to expected Tim and Kelly to be there to run the farm to run the crops it just leaves a hole [Music] when I turned 18 my parents gave me Tim's car and I still have the car I still drive the car I still love the car I just didn't want Tim and Kelly forgot [Music] a big part of my love for the community is that it's where I grew up it's where I'm raising my daughter now [Music] small towns are safe you know you can let your kids out at night and they can play without fear I was eight years old at the time Tim and Kelly went missing so when I first was elected district attorney I was well aware of this case and I wanted to know what happened to Tim and Kelly when I got the case it was 26 years old at that point knowing what a big case this was after being unsolved for so long it immediately became my number one goal to solve this case I reviewed thousands of pages of reports attachments maps and photos but in general there's limited evidence I have to go with but what I do have was Kelly's close at that time DNA is becoming more and more popular and that was something that wasn't available to law enforcement back in 1980 the clothing was submitted to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab and they told us that they did have DNA [Music] the DNA located on Kelly's pants and underwear was from seminal fluid so this was a huge break in the case this is incredible I think for the first time in my life I felt like there's a ray of Hope here [Music] in looking at the maps you could see where there were clearly three major roads that were used to dump the bodies and to dump the evidence [Music] and so a triangle was established at one point is where the majority of the evidence was found at another point is the Concord house and at the third Corner would be the location where Tim and Kelly's bodies were found so this was something somebody used to throw us off the track or this person lives or is very familiar with this area media is a valuable tool for law enforcement to use they have a huge audience and they can get people to say something you normally wouldn't say or maybe get people to feel that what they thought wasn't important is important it had been a couple months since the news story ran and one evening I received a phone call it was a female who identifies herself as April she explains to me that their family were basically Drifters that they lived in a lot of locations in the summer of 1980 they lived in the Concord area within that triangle he said I think my dad could be responsible for Tim and Kelly I think he killed them April believes her father may be involved in The Disappearance and killing of Tim and Kelly and she said his name is Edward Wayne Edwards she tells me about a book that he had written that she said would explain more about her her father [Music] Ed Edwards please stand up the 70s Edwards appears on numerous talk shows and game shows with this book about his life as a master Criminal in the late 60s Edwards was on the FBI 10 most wanted list he was a suspect in a double homicide in Portland Oregon they couldn't prove that he did it but upon checking the criminal history of Edward Lane Edwards I see that he has been in prison he has been convicted of numerous crimes to include robbery vehicle theft fraud arson he's done a lot of of things and he goes on the circuit talking to people about what a horrible person he had been but what a great person he had become I met a man who was a guard at the penitentiary and he's the one that helped me to rehabilitate as I read the book what was so interesting was he exhibited all of the classic signs of the stereotypical signs of a serial killer he was a bad weather he had an affinity for starting fires he was extremely controlling for some serial killers the need to put on a normal face to interact with members of society and have access to victims is very important in fact if they looked unusual or weird or bizarre they might not get to approach victims in the way that they need to my life has certainly been anything but good dangerous yes honest no in addition to that Edward's daughter April had told me her dad was in the military that it had been dishonorably discharged from the military [Music] so at Edwards knows how to tie these knots [Music] and his house is smack dab in the middle of where Kelly and Tim were last seen alive and where their bodies were ultimately located this Drifter stranger who floated around who wasn't really from Wisconsin he wasn't from Jefferson County we obviously have a new Prime Suspect I start going back through the reports and seeing if there's a mention of Edward Wayne Edwards and I had him on my suspect list Edwards was interviewed in early September of 1980 he really didn't have a lot of information to offer he did not know anything about Timber Kelly's disappearance the one thing that stuck out to me was that he had a broken nose he said it was a deer hunting incident that caused the rifle to kick back and cause the broken nose that seemed odd to me gone deer hunting in Wisconsin is November not in August once I found out where Edwards had lived I talked to the landlord that took care of the house he said that Edwards lived in that house for a brief time and then moved to another state shortly after The Disappearance of Tim and Kelly they packed up in the middle of the night during the school year there are advantages to having a drifter-like lifestyle you're not accountable for your whereabouts at any given time you don't necessarily have people tracking you and keeping up on your location for a serial killer it's actually quite ideal the landlord also found some rope in the garage and this rope was of similar characteristics to the rope that was found alongside the road Edwards had a van he kept a 357 revolver in the van this van adds up with the van that was spotted that night what was especially suspicious in 1980 Edward Wayne Edwards was a handyman at the Concord house everything was making sense everything was pointing towards Edward's I think I know what happened to Tim and Kelly [Music] Edwards was waiting in the parking lot Kelly fit the profile he was looking for Tim being a strong farm boy got a good swing in on Edwards causing the broken nose and that's when Tim was stabbed there's no telling what happened in the van but we know that Kelly was raped and strangled to death I need to go to Louisville Kentucky I need to talk to Edwards and they need to get his DNA [Music] if that Edwards truly was a psychopath not having a conscience not having empathy not being afraid of punishment would have made it very easy for Edwards to kill again I was nervous I realized what kind of person I was dealing with there was a high probability that Edwards committed these crimes there's a very very dangerous person this was it I was surprised with his health condition he was in a wheelchair on oxygen very overweight and not in very good health throughout the entire time that we spoke with him he acted very nonchalant like it didn't matter that we were there at all for some serial killers it is a game give it edwards's age it might have been this was his last opportunity to manipulate law enforcement when I asked him to provide a sample of his DNA so that we could test it he said that he had no problem doing that he thinks he's smarter than us after 29 years he's thinking what DNA are we going to have how are we going to prove this turns out it's a match at the time we take him into custody we're just waiting on those guys that's taking to talk to your wife Edwards is acting as though this is no big deal sir I know yeah so one of the traits of a psychopath is this superficial charm that they can turn on and off at will in order to do their bidding Kyle [Music] okay thank you myself and the DCI agent speak with Edwards I'm willing to make a statement and answer questions I do not want to layer it this time do you agree with that we'll go over them again if you're not comfortable everything's fine everything's fine okay he waves as Miranda Rights and we explain a number of things showing that he is responsible for this we're trying to get him to give us his version of events this is your shot I mean this is your show if there's anything you want to get off your chest I'm I'm yours I'm here to listen to you but unfortunately this is your only shop he completely denies ever killing anyone you see that you didn't kill him okay that's right never all right all right I'm gonna ask you this thing we did it throughout the eight plus hours of interviewing with Edwards he remained calm the entire time and he frequently would try to change topics I use two shots of insulin a day uh he would talk about anything he could to stay away from talking about Tim and Kelly my mind is just a muddle his manipulating law enforcement in the interrogations is very consistent with who Ed Edwards is and had been his entire life he lied he manipulated he conned I know I think it's just a game for you he's right your DNA was there yes he's he's lying to us trying to beat us thinking he's smarter than us so I decide to feed into his ego and I had his book with me but if you wouldn't mind signing the book you mind doing that for me oh money police officer I don't have any money and he did enjoy that I'm gonna sign this as Wayne okay sure yeah during the final hour or two of the interview we asked him if he could explain the seminal fluid DNA being on Kelly's clothes so then he comes up with the most unbelievable story all right I had sex with her you had sex with a young lady who died yes okay that explains a lot consensual oh it's me yes oh yes knock knock forcible enough oh no no no no no no no no it was consensual Tim and Kelly were joined at the hip Kelly Drew's not going to go off and and willingly have sex with at Edwards in a cornfield but AdWords the defense attorney could have said it was consensual sucks we as prosecutors have to be able to prove Beyond a reasonable doubt that this is the person and the DNA was really good but from a prosecutor's standpoint that's strong enough after conducting the interview of Edwards which was digitally recorded I went back to see if maybe there was something he said that I didn't pick up on or maybe there were certain movements he made to tell me when he was lying her boyfriend as I'm watching the video something struck me there was a comment that he made when nobody was speaking with him and it was myself and detective Sergeant Brian Nunn in the room go you said something sort of under his breath [Music] I can remember exactly where I was when I when I heard that recording he thought it was under his breath or maybe it was subconsciously that he said it but he clearly wasn't saying it out loud it was quietly said and after listening to it repeatedly and having many others listen to it repeatedly everyone agreed that what he said is thank you damn it I killed her to hear him say damn it I killed her it's that Goosebump moment rarely do you have someone who's committed a double homicide actually admit what they did and that took away any possibility that he would not be found guilty we got him we got him we got our guy ultimately he pleads guilty to killing Tim and Kelly we don't know why he confessed he had been playing the game of cat and mouse for many years [Music] but I was happy to see that the two families did get closure was over you know that feeling of it's over Ed Edwards returns to Wisconsin to face Justice for the murders of Tim heck and Kelly Drew but as his health fails he reveals a 33-year secret to the Cold Case Detectives [Music] while Edwards is in the infirmary in Wisconsin he begins sending letters to a detective in Ohio regarding to other young people that he had murdered Billy livako and Judah Straub his goal is to return to Ohio and get the death penalty for killing them Edwards wants to maintain control over his life over his trajectory and he will say anything and do anything when the opportunity presents itself to maintain that control he's again trying to manipulate the system and control you know his future but he doesn't know that there's a chunk of time that went over the lavaco and Straub homicides where the death penalty did not apply so once he realizes that AdWords confesses to killing his foster son Danny I felt bad but apparently not bad enough that I kept from doing it that's the case that is death penalty eligible we don't generally in prosecution circles you know give defendants what they want but it's going to solve five homicides now there are people working in law enforcement who do believe that Edwards committed many more murders than he confessed to Edwards was an over-the-road truck driver that traveled to California in the late 60s because of this some people believe Edward Wayne Edwards is the Zodiac Killer Zodiac killer was a serial killer who operated Northern California in 1968-1969 some of the links include the fact that Edwards was a Drifter and he could have been in California at this time the fact that Edwards killed couples and that the Zodiac Killer also killed couples symbols that are used to sign off on the Zodiac letters consist of 13 symbols Edward Edwards is 13 letters and his birth name of Charles Murray is 13 letters as well the more trouble you get into the bigger you are this is why I was out there committing the crime was for the recognition [Music] it definitely was the highlight of my career to get somebody like that especially for the families to get this done and to put a bad bad person behind bars at Edwards was held accountable for what he did and he had to admit what he had done and I think that you know really brings me some some peace Tim and Kelly's death made us realize that there are terrible things in the world and you have to appreciate every day and what we have [Music] I think Tim was a son that a lot of fathers would have liked to had [Music] and we'll never know what may have been but we don't want Tim and Kelly forgotten [Music] zelfia went to her grave knowing a lot about a lot of people [Music] two people the same family the same year too much there to be coincidence we live in fear we had two family members missing who was going to be next started to locate the first bone you just got a cold feeling could this be the unknown crime scene we've been looking for all these years [Music] when an investigation runs out of leads becomes a Cold Case years pass and hope fails but for the families of the victims these cases are never cold [Music] truth takes time [Music] in the Deep Woods of Appalachia Nothing Is What It Seems when her sister disappears Reba is desperate for answers [Applause] meanwhile a detective spends decades determined to uncover the one thing he knows might close the case the crime scene foreign was born I was just so excited because she was born a day after my birthday I was 10 years old I made her bottles I changed her diapers she was just like my real life baby doll she loved writing poems and she loved unicorns she collected them to get down to like a child's level always you know wanting to joke and play and just how fun everybody's kids loved her so much she was my favorite aunt I loved her with all my heart I really think I loved her more than I loved my parents at times I myself had an amazing bond with her but it was nothing like Jeremiah's Jeremiah was zelfia's nephew he was a very quiet person he hardly ever would talk much to anybody [Music] they were sort of like brother and sister because they were so close to each other Jeremiah was raised in some pretty rough circumstances his father Eddie was gone quite a bit and I think it was a neglectful relationship [Music] there was one time zelfia and Jeremiah witnessed something really bad they were parked at 80s girlfriend's house Eddie comes and tells them to leave then right after they leave he burns the house down zelfian Jeremiah they didn't go to no authorities or nothing like that they just kept it quiet told a few family members and that was it [Music] my brother had been coming back to Mary and and he sang Jeremiah's truck on the side of the interstate Jeremiah was living with his friends at the time the boys that he was staying with said that he left and went to his daddy's and that was the last time he was ever seen Jeremiah Was Missing but there was no real evidence of a crime there was not a lot of concern on the part of the investigators at the time they had heard rumors that Jeremiah had probably gotten in a truck with a truck driver and gone somewhere to Texas they had hoped he was somewhere where he wanted to be on a beach in Mexico you know enjoying the sunshine zelfia knows he did not leave town [Music] Delphia had come to my house and she was just really upset she said Jeremiah would not have left without telling her and she goes I want to tell you about a dream that I had last night thank you she dreamed that Jeremiah's on Daddy Pittman had killed Jeremiah [Applause] and have buried him [Music] and put lime on him it made my heart mate so fast and she told me she was going to confront him and I begged her to not confront him because I was scared for her life she weren't going to stop until she found out what happened to Jeremiah [Music] zelfia was a waitress she worked at the truck stop which was just a little ways down the road from her house Delphia would walk to work back home sometimes you know if somebody didn't give her a ride one day zelfio didn't come home after work I followed a missing persons report the sheriff's department didn't believe us law enforcement at the time felt that she's not missing she's just gone because she wanted to be gone as if it was pretty much a free spirit she liked to have a good time it wasn't that unusual for her to decide that she was going to be gone for two or three days [Music] we had two family members missing they was making every excuse in the world they could to keep from looking for Jeremiah and selfia everybody in that Sheriff's Office was awful you could walk in and they looked at you like yours trash like you know we wasn't Worthy one time they told me to go do my own investigation to get rid of me I go to the truck stop and I start asking questions nobody wanted to talk to me about it I tried everything that I could I wanted to know what happened I wanted it for her I wanted it for us my family [Music] [Music] [Music] there were some Hunters out in a remote area of our County around Lake James [Music] who ran across the remains there were some fragments of hair and some tissue adhering to some of the bones but the remains were skeletonized almost completely there wasn't any type of burial or real concealment [Music] appeared like that the body was just left on top of the ground and there had been some animal activity [Music] it was also a sheet and a towel and some clothing that was identified as if I know it was her I couldn't feel it before they even confirmed that it was heard she had suffered severe trauma to the Head [Music] her skull was almost crushed completely her remains had been dumped there there was another crime scene somewhere they just did not know where that was said Celsius remains profound then they have to take it serious they have to investigate all of a sudden law enforcement says it's time to pursue this thing now we have a murder [Music] Marion is a rural community in Appalachian Foothills [Music] the mountains have their own kind of culture with our share of problems as well I took an interest in the Lowry caves early on I was working in a small town in the neighboring County I heard that there had been a body found the first day I came to work there was a case File left on a desk of one of the investigators and that was elfia's case File I've always been one that likes a challenge and so I approached the detective captain and ask him do you mind if I pick up that file and take a look at it he looked at me and he said get it take it solve it the scene where zealthiest remains were recovered as certainly one crime scene that we had if we could locate that second crime scene that's probably where we're going to find a murderer the same time I was going through that file I was trying to digest the Jeremiah Pittman file we had two people in the same family in the same year go missing one of them turns up dead one of them's still missing these cases either have to be related or it is a real coincidence when you're taking on a case you have to pick up the ball from where it is kind of like drinking from a fire hose because there's so much information and it's coming at you like crazy first we needed to go back and talk to people at the last place elfio was sick the truck stop one of the individuals who discussed last see in zelphia said that she got in the car with someone but nobody knew who he was where they were going to try to get some more information I visited McDowell County Jail s can become a somewhat of a rumored meal there were people who for one reason or another wanted to interject themselves into this case one individual talked about being with some guys when they had taken a blonde-haired girl wrapped up in a sleeping bag carried her out in the woods and left her there another guy claimed that he had been asked by a drug dealer to take this girl away because she had been killed I heard 11 or 12 different versions of what happened to Delphia it was kind of a moving Target so to speak I arranged I sit down with several of the family members to see what information they might be able to give we were so desperate to try to find out something I was just happy that there was someone to listen and and try to help we had two family members missing Sophia and Jeremiah to me all signs pointed to one person Jeremiah's daddy Eddie Pittman I told detective green about zelfia's dream just knowed that that dream was telling her Eddie had killed Jeremiah if he killed Jeremiah he could kill her too Reba described a dream from an investigator's standpoint we have to deal in terms of evidence that we have and and dreams or visions um are not evidence so I said okay I really thought that Eddie did it and I'll tell you why Adelphia and Jeremiah witnessed Eddie burning the house down for his girlfriend Rosemary so she can get insurance money if Eddie burned Rosemary's house and they had witnessed that that could be a possible motive for murder we felt like we had enough information to talk to Eddie Ed was in denial of having anything to do with Jeremiah's disappearance and he was in total denial about zelfia doesn't know anything about her murder we've got to do something with this lead here we've got to be able to develop it further or eliminate it and so we just keep working at it over the next several months [Music] thank you one day the chief Deputy came back to my office and he looked at me and he said Rosemary gehrings in the lobby wants to talk to you and I looked at him I said what about and he said I don't know [Music] she was led back to my office and came in and she had a concerned look on her face and I'm like Rosemary how can I help you today and she said well I wanted to come see you I think Eddie's going to kill me why do you think Eddie would want to kill you she said because of what I could say [Music] when Rosemary walked in my office that day the last thing I thought I'd be doing would be driving her around while she's pointing where to go she had said I think Eddie Pittman is going to kill me because of what I know we ride down to this real remote area all of a sudden she stops she walks over to a ditch points in the ditch and she says it's right there start digging foreign [Music] we spent quite a bit of time digging we weren't finding anything she walked over to the ditch she said you're in the right place but you're not deep enough continued to dig and we started to locate the first bone [Music] exactly where she pinpointed is where Jeremiah's remains were found [Music] your heart's jumping through your chest and so she began to tell the story of witnessing a confrontation between Ed and Jeremiah where Jeremiah ended up dead Eddie picked up the hammer so he could finish Jeremiah off they had taken Jeremiah's truck and abandoned it out on the interstate Rosemary had gone with him to dispose of the body part of what they did in in disposing of him was to pour the lime in the in the hole and Celsius nightmare came true her dream was killed her for a reason zelfia knew where Jeremiah was she knew exactly where he was whoa here this is not just some abstract dream this is real blunt force injury to the Head just like zelfia's murder Ed Pittman for heaven's sakes killed his own son killed him the same way zelfi was killed in the same county during the same year there's too much there to be coincidence was it actually a dream we don't know but she knew what happened to Jeremiah [Music] we went to Ed's house a number of us went out there not knowing what Eddie might be capable of advised 80 that we had a warrant for his arrest and he was under arrest for murder and I'll never forget the reaction Eddie gave me he said who's murder [Music] now we're really convinced that he could have killed zelfia I said let me ask you a question what happened to zelfia he hadn't seen her and he didn't know anything about her we haven't found any evidence to connect ed to zelfia nothing solid we've got her body that's all we have he was charged with Jeremiah's murder he pled guilty and there was a plea agreement to manslaughter I really thought that Eddie did it got rid of zelfian because of her suspicions of him I think Eddie Pittman got away with my sister's murder I think the family thought that Eddie could have killed himself yet but we're not finding anything sure there's a lot of speculation some suspicious circumstances but nothing you can really hang your hat on I started to think that Eddie Pittman had nothing to do with this [Music] the longer a case goes the less likely they are to be solved you know that statistically weselfia you don't have suspects you don't have a direction to go you don't have really any indication of what happened the case was cold very cold [Music] all those years not knowing no it I didn't know who killed who killed her but I knowed somebody in that town knew something [Music] the 10-year anniversary of Sylvia's murder detective green gets a story to run in the local paper he hopes the story might spark a confession I was trying to pull at some heart strings there emotions can be a strong motivator for somebody to talk we were approached by a prisoner in jail his name was Ricky he gives us a name Ronald Ricky thinks that Ronald may have been involved enzelf is dead several years ago Ronald had shown up in a van with a fairly significant blood stain shortly after zealthiest disappearance we are cautiously optimistic that this may be the break we've been looking for and so we'll begin trying to find that van we found the van we ultimately ended up finding it in a junkyard it had been there for a long time there were some stains in that van that appeared like they could be blood stains there's a chemical called phenolphthalein which is a test for the presence of blood and when phenolphthalein reacts with blood it turns a bright pink color they were not blood stains and so Ronald's van was not the crime scene but Sophia's family came to us with the suggestion that we might want to talk with Ronald Ronald was friends with my son one day Ronald had told my son that he knows what happened to my sister I remember sitting down with Ronald and pretty much one of the first things that Ronald comes with was I can tell you what happened to zelfit Ronald said that at the time that Sylvia disappeared there were two guys who lived in a mobile home near a friend of rockles Ronald said that his friends had gone over there one night to ask him to turn some music down and that they was real suspicious the way they'd answered the door and wouldn't let anybody in and then later that night Ronald's friends actually saw two guys moving something that looked like a rolled up carpet or something of that nature Ronald said that maybe he's all in her body away [Music] the first reaction is could this be real this story that Ronald was telling us could have just been a smoke screen to throw us in another Direction yet at the same time he had given a pretty good description of where that trailer was we made a decision to try to find that trailer you know it's been 11 or 12 years is the trailer even still there well Dudley went out to the area that Ronald had described I found the landlady she walked over pointed out the trailer here it is it was an abandoned old single wide trailer and she confirmed that he yelled back around 1993 there was a guy that had lived at that mobile home and she gave us the last name of Whited Robin why did at that point I got a cold feeling animals had been in the trailer just the sheer um cold feeling that I got strange very strange I don't know uh I almost wondered it almost had that feeling about it I don't know could this really be where his elpha was murdered could this be the unknown crime scene we've been looking for all these years we weren't sure whether this was our crime scene but we had a name this guy Robin might be able to give us some answers the landlord told us that Robin had moved back to what she thought was Richmond's Virginia area [Music] we went to Virginia seeing if we could locate this Robin and have a conversation with him I was able to locate where Robin was working at a car dealership he was very polite and acknowledged almost right away that yeah they had partied with some girl and she had a strange name I mentioned the name zelfia and he said yeah that sounds right showed him a picture of zelfia and he acknowledged that yeah that's the girl that he had partied with he remembers this blonde-haired girl coming over to party one night that he had had sex with her foreign but the next morning she was gone he did not know when she left exactly and he had no knowledge or clue that she had met with any kind of Foul Play if he'd said I don't know what you're talking about don't know this girl never saw her before he basically would have shut us down again and we would have come back empty-handed but now we have direct information that places zelphia at that trailer and now we're walking away with a suspect oh we really didn't have any physical evidence against Robin but because of what Robin had said we're even more convinced that the trailer is where zelford was murdered he knew zelfia had died from extensive blunt force trauma the medical examiner had told us we likely had a bloody crime scene so we had hoped best case scenario we might be able to find some blood even after all these years it had been somewhat open to the elements so we knew we were up against some pretty staggering odds it was the ultimate Hail Mary pass myself and the other detectives were taking swabs of any place in every place that blood spatter might still be not likely but you always have that hope after several hours every one of us was just drenched with sweat but we weren't finding anything at this point he'd probably done 150 swabs sometimes you see something that you didn't see before I knew that flies were naturally attracted to blood and flies constantly excrete and regurgitate whatever they get into they're leaving traces of that somewhere I was looking up in at the the bathroom ceiling and saw these dozen or so little brown specks I'm thinking it might be fly spec so I climbed up on the edge of the tub and just swabbed the specks and handed those down for analysis all of a sudden one of those swabs it lights up brilliant paint yes this is what we've been looking for I mean there were some high fives went up happy as we were that still didn't say whether this was zephia's blood we did not have anything to compare a sample with calls in 1994 when zelfa's remains were found DNA wasn't as prevalent a science and so there was no sample of her DNA that was preserved where do we go from here [Music] I knew we had to do it in order to get her DNA when you reach out to a family and say we're headed down this road as an investigator that's not something you take lightly [Music] I told them to do what they needed to do and they wanted to know if I wanted to be there when she was zoomed but I couldn't do it I couldn't re-burry her [Music] it's something that needs to be done with dignity and respect [Music] and yet at the same time you're on a search for evidence since it was just bones they put all of her bones in a little baby casket and that's how we buried her I never will forget to look on my son's face when I went home that day and I went home to change clothes he asked me why I got so dirty and uh you know explain to him he knows what Daddy does for a living and but yet didn't necessarily think about his that going digging up a grave you know that's one of those things that stay with you but it was a pretty good day when that lab report came back I was crying I was saying oh my God the DNA matched in that trailer that's when you know you're on the right Road there's no doubt there anymore we're going to get these guys we're going to get them [Music] detective Shook and detective green came into the District Attorney's office and what they told me was that they had a suspect Robin White and now I've got a piece of physical evidence I could take to the jury this is a circumstantial case we're building a Brick by Brick by Brick by Brick [Music] Robin I'm just going to ask you about the death of Sophia Lowry I came in from worked at evening body heads girls down and sitting on the tower here to Northern party do you say Bobby the Bobby Taylor yes okay Robin was able to give us a name and that was Bobby Taylor Bobby has an extensive criminal record with some violent offenses on his rap sheet Robin was having sex with zilfa Bobby wanted his turn but zilfer doesn't want any part of Bobby Taylor Bobby Taylor becomes angry with zilfa then slams Zelf his head into the floor several times Robin said that he had personally witnessed Bobby Peter to death we've got an eyewitness to a murder Robin was charged as an accessory we find out where Bobby is bodies in federal prison Bobby remembered this blonde-haired girl had come over to his trailer and partied one night but his story was that when he had last seen her she was alive and well so we started confronting him with some of the things that Robin said Bobby pretty well shut down and I said Bobby I've been doing this for 25 years and he looked at me and he said what you don't understand is I've been doing this for 25 years and he was sitting in prison at the time he was no stranger to trouble this was something that Bobby was kind of accustomed to before the trial of Robert Taylor Robin comes down for an interview and brings with him a videotape this is the videotape Robin White had made along about the time of zelphia's disappearance as the trial progresses we played this videotape for the jury it's the crime scene as it was 13 years ago [Music] at one point he zeroed in on the bathroom before zilfa died argue to the jury that Robin knows what happened that he has a guilty conscience of it that he did what Bobby Taylor told him to do because he was scared of Bobby Taylor that his guilty conscience made him this videotape the jury has reached a verdict and the judge has Bobby Taylor stand up [Music] when he got up he looked and stirred each one of family members that was sitting on the seats and smiled this smirky smile at us he had the devil in his eyes I seen the devils in his eyes foreign together I felt like it was the answer to a lot of prayers mine too green and the McDonald County Sheriff's Department finally delivered justice as Bobby Taylor is imprisoned for the murder of zelfia after 15 years zofia's family finally has the truth and hopefully some comfort this is where she died right here I loved zelfia more than anybody in this world the Pain's still there I still feel it I'd like to see it just demolished get rid of the evilness foreign [Music] s off her she looks the same in my dreams as she did when she was 24 years old I really do think that dreams are given to us sometimes for reasons in my dreams selfie is always smiling and I'm just happy now she can rest in peace [Music] I remember meeting Janelle she was so excited and bubbly that it was infectious it couldn't help but smile and when she came to my house it was like the sun came in and when she was taken the sun left for a while when somebody you love is killed and there's no justice there's no conviction I don't want to say I was walking in a dream because it was more like walking in a nightmare as the years went on I started doubting whether she would ever have Justice and now as I speak about it it's like it happened yesterday I could feel it I still don't believe it [Music] it's Monday morning the start of another week at Red Bank Middle School teacher Janelle Melton has something special planned for her fifth graders a guest speaker of sorts the students take their seats but Janelle doesn't show up school had been in session for a couple weeks and President Obama had did a speech about education she was going to bring her class to my class and we were going to play the speech inside the classroom Mrs Mountain wanted to show us that we can be a part of history and she actually attended the inauguration for Barack Obama the time has come to reaffirm our enduring Spirit the god-given promise that all are equal all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness she actually had a picture that she shared with us and it was like pretty much her standing in the crowd you could see the sense of wonder and pride on her face if she had to walk she was going you hear me Janelle to watch social studies had a passion for history and also knew how to teach it to students to get them interested in she would learn all the quirky facts about the different people that she was teaching and her enthusiasm about history it transferred to the students they loves it she was adamant I'm going to be the teacher of the year she was writing lesson plans in August she was talking and thinking in terms of how she was going to implement her lessons it was inspiring I knew Janelle in Trenton When We Were Young her Elementary School was across the street from my house and I used to talk a little junk to her and you know flirt with a little bit things of that nature once I graduated from college and I started working as a counselor for school Bay youth service and she was also a teacher in I saw her I was like wow she looking good so like you know I mean I'm fresh out of college I'm a bachelor so I'm I feel like I'm living a life like I'm like what's up with her Michael gets serious about you now and leaves his bachelor life behind she was the one and I felt like I should put a ring on her hand man Janelle got married in Jamaica August 28th 2003. we had a ceremony in Jamaica at sandals in Ocho Rios and we had about 30 people it was beautiful man I was still young then though I was like 27-28 she was one year younger than me so she had to be about 26. I was excited and stuff like I'm really married Michael and Janelle are a married couple and co-workers at Red Bank Middle School Miss Mountain she was always very he was very true he was very laid back very well put together they were definitely like yin and yang a happy home life and rewarding careers it appears Janelle and Michael have a solid foundation but three years after their wedding that Foundation starts to crack she cared about me tremendously it was just like I had never met nobody that was so into me like that whatever I needed she was right there but the way I was raised later on it kind of made me feel uncomfortable because I wasn't used to that much affection I used to go out and spend time with and I had just started my basketball company so it was more of me being immature and not really being able to handle that kind of love and the responsibility of being a husband that's why I filed for divorce most of the people probably thought that she wanted to divorce me but she wouldn't have never left me she told me that once the relationship had got to a certain point should have felt comfortable with she had her own space you know what I'm saying and I respected that so we still saw each other all the time and we talked on the phone every day after school day slips away and there's still no sign of Janelle the school secretary asks Michael to check on the missing teacher at her home in Neptune City about 20 minutes away I pull up at the house and I see the car in front of the house so I feel kind of relieved because I know she at least home so I'm thinking I'm just going to bang on this door yell out our name tell her to get up and tell her to go to work I yelled out our name it was no answer and then I tried the door knob and the door was open and I went in and I was still yelling out her name yelling out her name and I made the quick left to go through the room and then when I walked in the room that's when I saw her on the floor when I found her she had her nightgown on and I saw a little bit of blood at the top of the nightgown and her face looked like it had makeup on it so I immediately thought that she fell when she was doing her makeup and then that's when I picked up the phone and I caught 9-1-1 and I told them to um hurry up and come over and I was asking her like what did you do what did you do what did you do I remember saying that because I thought that since we were separated she couldn't handle it and she had said something to herself paramedics arrive within minutes of Michael's call when they came the first person went up to him and he was like Miss Miss man man [Music] he felt her neck and then that's when he told me she was dead [Music] then that's when I just like dropped in my knees I started crying then he said you got to get out of here I guess because it's a crime scene now it was like surreal like I was living a movie I couldn't believe it I just started screaming a shell shop Michael Belton Calls Red Bank mental school and breaks the horrible news to Janelle's co-workers I talked to the secretary and I'm like crying hysterically and stuff then I told him like the guy said she's dead we drove to her apartment and I saw and I said oh my God I started screaming oh my God I said somebody hurt her this is a crime scene it looks like a scene from a movie or maybe like a first 48 episode the scene at Janelle's apartment is gruesome enough to shock even the most experienced homicide detectives it was evident to the detectives involved that jonelle Melton was the victim of a brutal eating and she was tortured [Music] I worked as the supervising lieutenant in charge of the forensic unit I received a call from the local departments that they had come in contact with a deceased woman in an apartment complex foreign Norm's apartment is a garden style apartment they're two-story buildings Janelle Melton's apartment was located on the first floor and it was accessible from a common walkway with just a quick look around the crime scene detectives know they're searching for at least two killers because of the how physical the crime scene was how brutal it was we believed it was a male more than one the kitchen dinette area had a window which I noticed immediately as a point of forced entry directly under that window on one of the chairs was a footwear impression where someone came through the window and stepped on that chair they noticed that the kitchen area was ransacked the kitchen cabinets were open the closets were went through they had gone through cereal boxes somebody was looking for something detectives believe that Chanel was murdered in her bedroom during the late night hours of September 13th [Music] it was evident to the detectives involved that jonelle Melton was the victim of a brutal beating and she was tortured and in our opinion these injuries were caused over time until her death in an attempt to get either information or something from her ultimately without leaving Witnesses they shot her through the head and killed her I'm seeing texts scour the apartment and find items that could be Telltale Clues throughout the house we noticed that there were no candles we know that the victim was not a smoker there were no cigarettes there were no ashtrays but at the base of that window we located a pink colored lighter and the lighter itself seemed to be out of place there was that piece of Frey colored duct tape it appeared that it was used in a manner that could potentially have been a binding and it had obvious signs of blood staining on it and located near jonelle Melton's body were used latex gloves they were collected for evidence and submitted to the laboratory for examination while evidence is collected inside detectives move outside to talk to a distraught Michael Belton Chanel's soon-to-be ex-husband and close friend they was like you're gonna have to answer the same questions a lot today so you're gonna have to be prepared for that so I was like okay Michael was the soon-to-be ex-husband he was the first one to discover her body he was close with her so I'm sure the detectives wanted to get a feel for what he was thinking about her at the time after almost an hour of waiting detectives move in and pepper him with questions at first the detective started out like they was trying to get information to ask me about our relationship then when I started answering the questions and telling them then they started getting a little like a little invasive I don't want to offend you anything and I know it's a little personal but like were you guys still sexually involved sometimes yeah but I still loved it but I just knew that once we got into the marriage thing it wasn't going to be you know what I'm saying yeah when they asked me about the house and they told me how Ram checked it was I couldn't remember none of that I think once I saw her everything else just shut down even if they was trying to come off of me like crazy and stuff I just still was answering any questions because I knew I didn't do nothing Michael says he was visiting a friend the night of Janelle's murder then later that night he went to his girlfriend's house Michael agrees to give a DNA sample and then leaves Police Headquarters to be with grieving family and friends meanwhile detectives make their next moves they run down Michael's Alibi and search Janelle's apartment complex there were forensics detectives outside in dumpsters behind bushes just trying to find any type of evidence they could when detectives talk with Michael's girlfriend she verifies his Alibi and his phone records Place him nowhere near Janelle's apartment the night she was killed detectives are confident that he had nothing to do with Janelle's death there was no reason for Michael to ever be involved in anything like this he still had a wonderful relationship with janello although they were ex-spouses they didn't act like ex-spouses they had a really nice personal and working relationship investigators might have moved on from Michael but the media hasn't now all of this time I'm thinking that I'm being truthful and helping them like telling them everything they needed to know and then two days later when a newspaper article came out that's when I knew that something was wrong it said she was found it didn't say who found her and then the last paragraph it said she was estranged from her husband and when I saw the word estranged I said whoa then it said that divorce was supposed to be final October 6th and this was like September 16th so now I'm like oh my God they trying to say I killed her Janelle's friends family and colleagues gather to say their final goodbyes [Music] they actually just go down for the funeral when we went in that's that's when it all became real for me like I know I got up and I spoke on the stage I can't tell you everything I said I don't want to say I was walking in a dream because it was more like walking in a nightmare I'm sitting in the front look down the aisle and the three detectives just walking down the aisle Tara just went through me I was scared they just walked past and shook my hand and gave my condolences but then they was in the lobby area talking to her different friends asking them different stuff and this and that and I just felt that that was so disrespectful after the funeral Michael takes steps to defend himself then one of my friends he was an attorney and he said that they're going to try to pin this on you I'mma represent you pro bono don't say nothing to nobody don't talk to them no more or anything I can understand why Michael Melvin had an attorney because the way he was treated in the beginning as a suspect All Eyes is on me so 100 I had to stop grieving and self-preservation everybody turned against me when I get back to work it's a memo on my desk and the memo says you are not allowed to go into any schools and you can't have no contact with kids then I lost it I just was like why are y'all treating me like a criminal I didn't do anything like why are y'all doing this to me with his attorney in tow Michael meets with school officials to discuss his employment he agrees to take a desk job while the investigation continues now the school is right behind the board of education so I'm seeing these kids but I can't go into the school and I can't have no contact with them two months after Janelle's murder DNA tests stood on duct tape found that the crime scene are in the test results have investigators right back where they started the evidence came back the duct tape found in the hallway came back to Mike Melton [Music] Monmouth County detectives have recovered DNA from a piece of duct tape found in Janelle Melton's apartment this tiny piece of evidence is now at the center of the investigation [Music] the New Jersey State Police laboratory was able to determine that there were two contributors of dna-able material on that item jonelle Melton because of the blood on the item and Michael Melton jonelle's husband investigators believe the duct tape they found in the hallway was used to bind Janelle to a chair before the attack today I found Janelle my sneaker got caught on the duct tape so then when I pulled the duct tape off of my shoe that's how my DNA got found on the duct tape he was checking to see if she was still alive so of course his fingerprints and DNA are going to be on the duct tape I mean obviously he cared for her so anybody going into a scene like that would want to see if that person was alive forensic tests on the crime evidence are murky there's no clear-cut answer on the boot print and tex can't lift a usable fingerprint from the latex gloves in the case of the cigarette lighter dna-able evidence was recovered but they were unable to identify who the major contributor was on that item as a result I requested that we transport that evidence to the New York City medical examiner's office for additional DNA analysis they had great advances in DNA analysis and we were able to on occasion either exclude or include a potential donor while they wait for DNA results on the lighter which could take months or even years detectives take a a second look at some of the tips they'd received early on well back in 2009 Brighton arms was generally safe so everyone was really shocked especially the the residents who have lived there for years in one instance one of the neighbors thought he heard a loud noise they don't call the police the lady down the apartment two from Janelle but their dogs are awoken she sees somebody in the back of that apartment complex she doesn't call the police the thought of knowing that there were individuals that actually knew or had some sort of idea of what had happened it made me question like how do you know these things but hold on to them I was actually angered at the fact that no one was caught or no one witnessed anything or you know no one came forward and for us not to have any answers I was there were so many emotions going through me the case drags on without an arrest leaving Michael Melton in limbo he lives his life under a dark cloud of Suspicion everybody turned against me her family turned against me I knew that they thought I did it everywhere you go you feel like people pointing at you you feel the chatter you can't really go to no like football games or basketball games the grocery stores everywhere I went I felt ashamed even though I didn't do nothing that was the only time in my life I ever contemplated suicide that's when the drinking started I just went into sense because that's the only thing gave me instant gratification at the time to help me escape Janelle's family Embraces for the third holiday season without her finally though there's a break texts find DNA on the lighter they were able to identify the major contributor to the DNA as Gregory Jean-Baptiste Gregory Gene Baptiste was involved in gangs specifically the Bloods this is a picture of the yellow meeting her name was uh Janelle Melton well all right when I come to my room for never seen him despite his DNA connection to the lighter Jean-Baptiste claims he had nothing to do with Chanel's murder we're trying to say that your dnas have seen never been there John Baptiste claims the lighter isn't his but he offers an explanation as to how his DNA was found there anyway drugs drugs is my thing okay the DNA evidence puts investigators focus on Jean-Baptiste but DNA alone isn't enough to charge him with Janelle's murder without something more jean-vaptiste will go free not only do we have to accept the fact that she was murdered what's this [Music] detectives investigating the murder of middle school teacher Janelle Melton are face to face with Gregory Jean-Baptiste a convicted felon whose DNA was found on a lighter discovered in Chanel's apartment thank you to explain that though what is my DNA that's why I'm evidence that was left with this what's evidence the DNA and the lighter would indicate that that person was there because the lighter was found at the scene detectives go around in circles with Jean-Baptiste who admits nothing after 27 minutes of the interrogation room the suspect has had enough detectives believe that Jean-Baptiste possibly along with others murdered Janelle Melton but they have no way to prove it John Baptiste denies everything and there are no Witnesses the case of the teacher who never showed up for class those as cold as the ice in the Red Bank Armory [Music] the problem with it was it's not DNA on something that was used to to harm Chanel it was found on an otherwise instant object in another room you know it wasn't like a mask or a gun or a knife it was on a lighter under a window Neptune City police are determined to reignite the investigation and catch Janelle's killers they assigned This Cold Case to two narcotic Squad detectives Scott semis and Matthew quigliato this case needed a new set of eyes they needed somebody who was not going to stop until these individuals were brought for justice we reviewed multiple reports we reviewed the whole case basically we reopened up everything as it was just a brand new case despite the energy new detectives bring to the investigation fresh leads are hard to come by while police pour over old reports and evidence Michael Melton lives life branded as a killer everywhere I turn I couldn't get away from it I see the the original detective in a barber shop and he'd still say something to me so what was going on like for years like that they just made my life hell man and it was nothing I could do about it tired of being cloaked in suspicion Michael can't wait for police any longer he reaches out to a friend to help him clear his name if something happened in Brighton arms right there the streets talk I knew I couldn't go out there and get information from anybody because I'm not from there so I knew he could he called this guy over and he told the guy like yo this my man's he just want to know what happened to his wife is driving him crazy we came back two days later and the guy told me what happened Michael's friend doesn't reveal The Killers names but he does reveal crucial details about the night Janelle was killed Idol wants to tell detectives what he's learned but cooperating with police is risky I truly believe it comes back to gang intimidation and people not wanting to come forward because either they don't trust the cops or they believe that the cops are going to put him in a bad predicament where certainly their lives and their family lives could be put at task is about talking not really because at that point if something would have happened to me I didn't really care like it was that part of life we were like how how words only thing worse was death despite the danger Michael tells detectives what he's heard according to Michael's Source the killers were not after Janelle on the night of the murder so information had come off the street that individuals gang members were looking to rob a drug dealer named David munch an individual who lived directly next to Janelle he said that the god that lived next door to her had fifteen thousand dollars in the freezer and some drugs in the house and the girlfriend was running her mouth at a party and some stick up kids heard her at the party so they came to rob their house and then they went to the wrong house and then I guess they assumed that Janelle was the girlfriend now I knew that somebody else besides me knew I didn't have nothing to do with it you get what I'm saying because people could say they believe you but now somebody else besides me I knew knew that [Music] Michael's cooperation with police might pay off the theory that the killers went to the wrong apartment makes sense to investigators the way Brighton arms is set up the apartments all look the same every window from every apartment is the same it's extremely hard from that backside to identify what apartment is the exact apartment that you're looking for investigators don't know the target was David James AKA Munch but that only gets them so far they still have no idea who the killers are we are working 12-hour days but we were moving forward and documenting all the individuals we were speaking with and I continued to hit the streets and my confidential sources that I had used in the past for information finally the hard work pays off an informant gives sevens the names of three men who allegedly killed Janelle the informant also says a fourth person a woman was the getaway driver the information coming into me was that these individuals Ebenezer bird Gregory Gene Baptiste and Jerry sprawling with a female committed this horrific homicide they were in gangs specifically the Bloods the different sets were different at the times but certainly Ebenezer bird was running this group and he continued to run the group when he was in prison John Baptiste bird and sprouting deny they had anything to do with the murder as long as the three men stick to their stories police can't charge them with anything unless they find a witness who can put them at the scene eventually I get a phone call from a number on my phone that I don't recognize and it's a family member from a girl named norika Scott now norika Scott was also a girlfriend of Ebenezer bird according to samus's informant Ebenezer bird is one of the three killers if bird and norika Scott are in a relationship there's a chance she could confirm the informant story or even give Samus something else he could use to solve this murder it was key for me to identify the driver who drove these individuals to the crime scene [Music] County detective Scott Samus and Matthew quagliato want to question Eureka Scott the girlfriend of Ebenezer bird bird is a suspect in Janelle Melton's murder foreign is known to run with Gregory Jean-Baptiste and Jerry sprolding according to an informant the three men killed Janelle on September 13 2009 the men were allegedly driven to Janelle's apartment complex by a woman whose identity is still unknown all three men deny involvement larika Scott's father brings her in her father's concerned because her father knows the relationship she has with Ebenezer bird certainly he knows the ups and downs that they've had and he knows that this case has been the hot news you need to talk I'm here I could have stayed home they could have came maybe you should step out because you're pissing me off yeah Dad do you understand smarter than you the video speaks for itself the video shows her cooperation how scared she is it's so important that you tell me the truth because she's relying on it I want you to look at it I want you to understand okay all right norika said that when she was at a prison visit with Ebenezer bird he had confessed to her that him Gregory Gene Baptiste Jerry sprawling were involved in the murder of Janelle Melton so he says it's him and Jerry sprawling and he's with a girl do you know the girl if I showed you a picture Elizabeth Pinto was a former girlfriend of Ebenezer bird and she turned out to be the key witness in this case if Elizabeth Pinto was there when this crime took place it was so important for us to cooperate this information if in fact she's the driver are you old enough okay you all right Matt and I bring her to one of the Perth Amboy police departments and we go live and probably the most important interview of my life so tell me about in September early September what what happens you could see there's a little bit of fear in her eyes she was very trembly in her voice she she's very standoffish she really doesn't want to talk about it I'm just scared Scott like it's not easy to be in my position do you believe that she deserves justice of course do you believe that their the husband and the mother and the sister deserve to know what happened of course once I broke her down she finally said I was the driver they all get dressed up in Black [Music] they tell me to drop them off I dropped them off at a location let me let's slow it down a little bit I go over with pictures of these guys who's this that's Ebenezer bird who's this Gregory Gene Baptiste who's this Jerry sprawling you know and you continue to have her ID these guys where did they tell you where they were going oh they just told me to drive they told me where to go is there anything else you wanted to add sorry that this happened to them I'm sorry I couldn't say it sooner okay when you're finally getting this years later and you're thinking about Mike and you're thinking about Janelle's mom and sisters it's such a rush that confession was huge but it wasn't over with Elizabeth Pinto pled to conspiracy as part of her plea she entered into an agreement but I still wish that she had to cooperate Bento agrees to testify and she even goes a step further she offers to show Samus exactly what happened the night of the murder during their ride along and who says that bird Jean-Baptiste and spradling put on latex gloves from Pinto's description they sound a lot like the gloves found at the crime scene she said she parked up on the area where this white van is going now and she says that she sees them walking across towards Brighton arms right there it's a direct path of where Brighton Arms 2 was and where Janelle Melton was living at the time Elizabeth Pinto says that she stays there for a while and then after approximately 10 to 15 minutes all three individuals come back running bento's tour establishes her as a rock-solid witness phone records also corroborate Pinto's account placing bird Jean-Baptiste and sprawling at Brighton Arms Apartments the night of the murder it's enough for semis and quagliato to finally make an arrest foreign charges against three men in the Cold Case murder of a New Jersey teacher police say the men broke into the wrong apartment in the complex and encountered The woman Inside Gregory Jean-Baptiste Jerry sprawling and Ebenezer bird are charged with first-degree felony murder second-degree robbery conspiracy and unlawful weapons charges all three men maintained that they are innocent and are not responsible for the murder of Janelle Melton they were going to be charged with felony murder based on the fact that she was killed in the course of a robbery they broke into Janelle's apartment and were attempting to rob her and that's why she was killed she was a valued member of the community and no one deserves for this to happen to them but of all people it's the fact that it happened to Janelle it's it's even it's even worse when this happened it was like it reignited me like you know like my hope wow you mean she could get Justice we knew this was the trial of our lifetime we absolutely knew that we can this far to make the arrests and we wanted to put full Justice for Janelle Monmouth County Prosecutors have a solid case their star witness and centerpiece is Elizabeth Pinto she says she was with the three men the night of the murder and can put them at the scene I'm walking and then I see the three guys over here on the left I see their attorneys and then I see the jury and then I go up and sit down and it's like wow this real the defendants had no connection to the victim whatsoever if they were in the wrong place so they have a completely innocent victim who had nothing worth stealing in her apartment she was not the target of any crime for any rational reason it's so important that these Witnesses testify given information is one thing but getting on the stand and providing the truth and corroborated truth is a whole different story throughout the trial there's contentious motions going on between the defense and the state they tried to make it look like Mike Melton did it and that clearly didn't happen based on the evidence police tested so many different items of evidence and went through so much forensic testing and yet still the the defense says well what about this they didn't test this or they didn't do that they could have done this what if you know that type of thing so we had to counteract that the prosecutors then tell the jury what they believe happened the night Chanel was murdered so the night is September 13th into September 14th Janelle was home by herself at that same time Elizabeth Pinto is going over to Ebenezer Bird's mom's house in Asbury Park where she finds bird Gene Baptiste and sprawling getting ready for what they're about to do they drive over she Parks the car they tell her to wait for them two of them break in through the back regime Baptiste goes in through the window drops the lighter steps on the chair leaves a footprint and then walks down opens a sliding glass door so the second person can get in now there's multiple of them in the apartment they find Janelle in the bedroom behind her they hold her down they're looking for money in Munch's freezer and they're not finding it and then finally when they realize that they're in the wrong place they shoot her in the head and they leave her for dead DNA found on the lighter puts Gregory Sean Baptiste at the scene phone records place all three men at Janelle's apartment complex on the night of the murder and Elizabeth Pinto's eyewitness testimony dies everything together what did you drive them to do I drove them to uh I guess you could say still some money um that was that we will not be well that they heard was in an apartment and all three of them got out the car and went on their way you know into the apartment complex I didn't see them for a little bit after that Ebenezer bird Gregory Jean-Baptiste and Jerry Spalding are all found guilty of first-degree murder robbery conspiracy and weapons charges a Fourth Man James Fair pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary James fair was guilty for spreading the word to other gang members that there was money in David Munch's apartment once I heard the first guilty I just knew that it was going to be guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty then I was just like yes I remember doing that fist bump thing like real happy like yes like it's over and the verdict came down on my birthday when I heard that verdict it was like yes finally like fine up finally finally when I heard it I was at school I couldn't contain myself I ran into the principal's office who had a relationship with Janelle and loves her and I told her and we just started hugging and crying we just started hugging and crying Gregory Sean Baptiste Ebenezer bird and Jerry Spalding are all sentenced to life in prison despite their convictions all the three men still claimed to be innocent in exchange for her cooperation Elizabeth Pinto is allowed to plead guilty to conspiracy and is sentenced to probation James fair is currently serving an 82-year prison term from a previous conviction on 78 unrelated crimes he is eligible for parole in 2065. on that day 2009 two people died not only she died but I died too because I wasn't the same person after that it makes me feel like a sad that I wasn't there to protect her what people fail to realize I got in this situation trying to do the right thing I hit my bottom but alcoholism and I had to go back to rehab I found out I had a disease and I did the steps and I had my Spiritual Awakening it totally changed my life like I could I could see the world different than I ever could see it before in my life once I got past the anger and I learned how to forgive then I started learning how to forgive everybody in a situation I missed Miss Mountain her laughter I missed you know the jokes that she made and to believe it or not I mean even though it was annoying sometimes I missed when she used to play with my ears I've succeeded succeed I made it and I'm just like I wish that she was here for me to share these experiences with her to share these memories to share these stories with her she was somebody dead I knew was in this world that knew me and still loved me she always saw the best in people and she always saw that potential I miss her I guess I'll always miss her here we are like 12 years something like that the pain and anguish has diminished but the missing her that's still right there it's right there [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] look at the Flames listen to the coyote yell thank you ladies and gentlemen [Music] Baraboo Wisconsin in 1899 the Midwest Town housed the winter residents of the Ringling Brothers Circus a century later another circus is about to inhabit the Sleepy town but in this show the main Act is murder [Music] Friday afternoon in Sauk County Wisconsin at 3 45 detective Joseph Welch answers a call about a family finding a strange bag by the river the mother was on the beach they had come over and they were actually poking at what they thought at the time was garbage and they they had poked it open told the mother that they had found something she came back and looked and found that it was a human torso a female torso wrapped in a black canvas bag The Remains are fresh deposited on the beach within the past seven days search teams immediately begin patrolling the banks for the rest of the body by Saturday morning four more bags are recovered each contains a separate limb when detective Welch Moves In for a closer look the merely horrific turns bizarre the femurs both femurs were completely skinned the legs are the skin along with the flesh was removed and that was found in a bag another very unique aspect of the body was how precisely this young lady was dismembered special agent Liz figals views the disarticulation of the corpse as an investigative key a window perhaps into the mindset of a killer disarticulation specifically refers to the taking apart at the joints as opposed to hacking or cutting and it was done almost with surgical Precision on Saturday afternoon 24 hours after the Torso was discovered search teams find the victim's head amidst a Thicket of brush on the river's North Bank when it's placed next to the recovered arms and legs the investigation takes yet another twist the skin from the face was actually removed there was no skin on the the face at all in the scalp along with the nose was removed from the skull it completely precluded her identity at least for a facial recognition you know there's no way that you could have shown this Photograph to anybody and had any sort of compassion or concern for them as possible surviving victims of their loved one a skull without a face whoever killed the young woman clearly did not want her identified figgles and Welch believe if they can find the identity of their Jane Doe she will lead them to her killer foreign on the first floor of the State Historical Society behind the banners in Colonnades dwells the Indian burial Department inside forensic anthropologist Leslie Eisenberg studies the art of reading bones most of her specimens date back hundreds of years occasionally however she is called upon to read the tea leaves in an active murder investigation one of the ways that forensic anthropologists can contribute to a case that's otherwise unidentifiable is to provide information on the sex of the individual the age of the individual the stature and the ancestry Eisenberg is asked to examine the Jane Doe remains based on at between five feet and five foot four the age in my opinion was 18 to 24 and ancestry was African-American eisenberg's findings provide detectives with their first Toe Hold in the investigation Jane Doe's profile is cross-referenced against missing persons from across the country now certainly we had to notify all law enforcement Nationwide and using the teletype system then we entered her parameters on unidentified deceased victim in ncic the National Crime information center for any possible what we'd call hits of similar missing females the remains of the victims show evidence of decapitation and then we also used a press conference to get our information out to the community and get leads coming in at least locally the story gets local than National play a fund bank is set up over 1 000 hits are registered all potential leads on missing black females detectives quickly realize they need more detailed information on their Jane Doe if the investigation is to go forward specifically they need to put a face to their skull giving them the information that this was a female black giving them the height and weight was not going to give us a lot of information at all it was that we needed to actually have a physical photograph that people could look at on a pollster to attempt to identify this person detectives want to undertake a facial reconstruction of the skull the problem is it's a procedure that requires boiling any existing soft tissue off the bone that's a step cutting prosecutor Pat Barrett that's not what it take in order to do clay reconstruction you need a naked skull and we didn't have a naked skull we also didn't know if we had anything of evidentiary value with the flesh itself because we didn't know necessarily what weapons may have been used to do that we didn't know what we would miss by taking any of that flesh away unwilling the chance destroying critical evidence Barrett refuses to allow the skull to be stripped for facial reconstruction figgles and Welch are forced to return to the initial phone leads for missing persons the volume is overwhelming in 1999 over 100 000 missing black females were registered Nationwide the chances of matching one to the detectives Jane Doe especially without a picture or sketch of the victim are slim to none in time the case of the dismembered torso goes cold I believed that it was going to be virtually impossible to solve and as time went on and we didn't have a missing victim being reported anywhere and we had not been able to find a fingerprint match I thought you know this probably never will be solved in the summer of 1999 a female body is found along the banks of the Wisconsin River the victim's head is missing its face making identification impossible traditional face reconstruction requires removing All Flesh from the skull and reducing it to Bone it has stepped the district attorney is unwilling to take for fear of destroying critical soft tissue evidence the case goes cold and remains cold until one day when detectives happen Upon A group of Engineers working out of a lab in Milwaukee thank you it's not every day that an engineering Professor that you get a call asking if he can help solve a murder Bob Crockett works in the basement of the Milwaukee School of Engineering home to an emerging technology called rapid prototyping the basic idea of rapid prototyping is to take a computer model anything that you can draw on the computer or import from Medical Data a skull perhaps a skull is a good example usually we do industrial Parts things like engine blocks and things that people design three dimensions makes all the difference so you took an industrial technology and created something that we can use forensically that's right this is so cool it is it's really neat technology using rapid prototyping Crockett is able to make an exact replica of the skull without removing any of the soft tissue the D.A wants to preserve well we received a data disk from the sheriff's department that had a CAT scan of the victim's head and then you sent the information to the machine all the data was was sent to the machine which sliced it up into probably about 10 000 different layers and when you do that enough times you've actually built up layer by thin layer a physical object so each layer of paper represents a slice of the CAT scan is that right actually each layer of paper is quite a bit thinner than the CAT scan slice a CAT scan typically pulls information out one millimeter at a time so we've actually used our computer in this case to to interpolate to actually smooth out the CAT scan images to get a better representation of the actual skull after 30 hours of processing Crockett's machine has built up enough layers of paper to recreate the victim's skull and after all the layers are bonded together you have something that looks like this it feels like wood and it looks like it's absolutely made to detail yeah I think the uh the feature definition is about one thousandth of an inch it's an identical replica to the actual skull when I actually saw the skull and I was amazed I thought it looked exactly like a actual skull all the proportions down to the teeth the eye sockets everything was exactly the way an actual skull would look like Welch drives the skull to Lexington Kentucky and the office of Dr Emily Craig a world-renowned expert in the field of clay reconstruction Welch presents the rapid prototype skull to Dr Craig [Music] I thought it was really well done since it was made with layers of paper you could still see the layers and so it was like a topographical map of the entire skull the next day Dr Craig begins the process of building a face from the skull these are basically the ingredients that we use the materials that we use for doing a 3D facial reconstruction Craig uses a knife erasers glue and Clay her most important tool however cannot be found on the shelves of any store the best tools I have are right here Craig starts by Consulting an anthropological chart for the typical tissue depths of a young black female using the erasers she plots these out on the skull and those were then glued on the skull at these specific places and then I Simply Connected the dots in three dimension with clay and built the face up according to this particular victim's skull structure Craig then moves from skin tissue to eyes the eyes have to be there first and working on a correct gaze is actually one of the hardest aspects of doing a facial reconstruction once the eyes are set it's like okay now let's do the rest the rest takes three days to complete three days Dr Craig spends alone relying on an innate sense of feel to reveal Jane Doe's identity a matter of fact but the final stages of the Reconstruction I actually do with my eyes closed so I'm feeling the Contours and seeing if it's symmetrical some people say it's a little bit of Clairvoyance to kind of think how this person would look and when I'm doing a facial reconstruction I almost hate to say this because it makes me sound like so much of an artist but it just has to feel right on September 16th it feels right it's an approximation created to suggest the victim's facial Contours and the proportions of the facial features Dr Craig presents her approximation of Jane Doe to Cold Case detectives it was phenomenal I expected a Gumby sort of clay figure that would not at all look human this actually looked like a photograph of a person four different photographs are taken each showing the same clay model in a slightly different way with longer hair or glasses it really personalized the case for both the tech Welch and myself when we could see this young lady's face the pictures are placed on posters and distributed around the world it would be two more months however before Cold Case detectives get the break they need but it would happen less than 100 miles away winter in Western Wisconsin on a Wednesday afternoon nurse practitioner Sherry Goss makes a routine stop at the local grocery store I stopped at the cash machine at the front of the grocery store and looked at a poster out of the corner of my eye and saw what I thought was a picture of myvano it just struck me very immediately that that was her her name is muivano kupaza in 1997 the 23 year old Tanzanian lived with Goss and her husband in medicine it's been a year since Goss last saw the foreign student when she first sees the poster Gus thinks it's a photograph of weavano then she reads the details very upsetting and I tried to convince myself that it couldn't be true but I was quite convinced that it was her very frightened Goss provides Cold Case detectives with wivano's name but precious little information about the young woman's whereabouts the team checks with immigration but can find no identifying information on muivano to check against their Jane Doe Cold Case detective Welch then discovers that muivano had attended an English language school during her time in medicine he goes there with a hunch we had known that she had handled documents at the school that she had attended so we took those documents submitted them to the crime lab and the crime lab was able to develop Prince from those the prints are compared with lifts taken from the corpse they're a match the victim who for so long has just been a skull thou has a face and a name muivano kupaza detective Welch receives the news while in his car I was driving down the roadway and I almost went into the ditch it was a unbelievable feeling I was extremely elated I guess that we at least knew who she was and had a place to start then of course the investigation takes a whole different angle you can't really do productive investigation until you know who your victim is a corpse without a face is found along the banks of the Wisconsin River months later the female victim is still unidentified the case cold technology however is able to replicate the skull providing the victim with first a face and then a name wivano kupaza from Tanzania she had come to Medicine in 1997 to live with her cousin 37 year old Peter kupaza and his wife Sherry Goss you know I think she was excited about coming here and furthering her education she wanted to study so that she could have a good job back in Tanzania Sherry Goss and Peter capaza welcome the Tan City and woman into their home at first the arrangement seemed to work then Peter capaza began to change seemed to be very kind and caring um through our time together I found that that was not his true character that he tended to manipulate and um control a lot that he was very concerned about himself above all of other people according to goss kupas's desire for control turned into anger which eventually gave way to violence in July of 1997 Sherry Gus moved out and wivano kupaza followed but she didn't stay away for long she wanted to continue to go to school so she went to stay with friends of hers and I believe went back to live with Peter aware of kupasa's capacity for violence Sherry Goss warned muivano not to return to her cousin the warning however did not take I was very concerned but it was a difficult time in my relationship with Peter so I I didn't see her again the next time Goss does see muivano he's on a police poster about a murdered woman I knew that he was capable of harm and cruelty but I didn't feel that it would extend to murder particularly of a family member and reflection I decided that it was within his capacity Gus shares her concerns with Cold Case detectives and Peter kupaza jumps to the top of their suspect list they decide it's time to talk with a man who last saw their victim alive [Music] January 31st 7 30 PM detective Welch and agent feagles approach a town home complex in Madison Wisconsin they are there to execute a search warrant for the home of Peter kupaza as they ring apartment 107 kupaza answers the door we showed him the Reconstruction I asked him if it looked like anyone that he had ever seen before he had said no it does not everybody else we showed that poster to didn't miss a beat and says that looks just like movano I asked him if it actually looked like movano and he said no it does not he's the only person we talked to who said it did not look like movano Cold Case detectives prescupasa for details he said she went back to Tanzania on April 25th of 1999. as he talks one fact makes itself clear Peter kupaza is lying he said that her father called him said that she returned to Tanzania that he had picked her up at the airport and she arrived safely we knew none of that was true a suspect Who Lies is good in a homicide investigation hard evidence is even better inside kupas's apartment Cold Case detectives find the murdered young woman's clothes her jewelry and her hymnal and the upstairs bathroom the first hint of murder behind the baseboard technicians find a drop of blood measuring half an inch DNA testing matches it to wivana one drop of blood however is a slim Reed upon which to rest a charge of murder Cold Case detectives want more they bring in Eagle a dog trained to search for blood he hits on multiple spots in kupasa's home and garage well as you can see this garage accommodates about 28 Vehicles there were only about eight in here at the time and virtually after immediately after entering the garage she let him off leash and Eagle she sent him to search and he immediately alerted on Peter kupaza's vehicle which was then parked in this stall Eagles alert convinces Cold Case detectives kupaza is their killer on January 31st he is arrested and taken to Sauk County Jail to await trial on a charge of murdering his cousin [Music] on June 12th Peter capaza stands trial for the murder of his cousin muevano watching from the front row of the courtroom sits muvano's parents they are also the accused aunt and uncle Pat Barrett delivers the prosecution's opening statement my case to the jury basically was is that she was a young woman who came here and was to the best of our knowledge totally dependent on Peter kupaza and that Peter kupaza lied about things that he had no reason to lie about when law enforcement contacted him lies that were proven to be lives kupasa enters a plea of not guilty this has been going on in my heart I don't know what to say but I would like to tell you today that I did not do this his defense focus is not on what the prosecution has but on what is missing certainly the defense was the obstacles you don't have a cause of death you don't have a motive you don't have a manner of death you don't have any weapons you don't have any smoking gun what the prosecution does have is wevana's blood found in Peter kupasa's bathroom Barrett contends this is where kaposa killed muivano and then drained her blood in the bathtub Central to the state's case is the work of the specialized canine eagle the dog hit on every place the lab had already found blood but it also hit on a lot of other locations where we could not visually detect anything but we knew the dog was hitting on areas where there in fact was blood now just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there the dog has certainly a much stronger sense of smell than we have a sense of vision for the jury to find kupasa guilty they must believe Eagle can and did detect blood throughout the suspect's home the first item I'll be using is going to be beef blood to illustrate that point bold case detectives provide the court with a demonstration handkerchief in the blood detective Welch soaks a series of Clubs one in beef blood and then another in Pig's blood human blood Welsh then takes one drop of human blood puts it on a third piece of cloth and then washes the cloth in cold water welchin Barrett plays three Brown Bags containing the different blood samples in separate areas of the courtroom Eagle the dog is then brought in and asked to locate the human blood the canine walks past the bags containing the animal blood and alerts on the cloth containing human blood show me where exactly this compelling demonstration taken together with the blood evidence found in kupaza's home and car his inability to answer questions about muivano's whereabouts and the fact the accused was the last person to see the victim alive comprises the prosecution's case for murder after nine hours of deliberation the jury agrees that the case is sufficient and finds Peter kupaza guilty of murder in the first degree he's sentenced to life in prison when the verdict was read I had no idea Joe was doing this but I was doing it at the same time they pulled each individual juror is this how you voted they said yes yes yes Joe and I looked at each one of them in most of the words thank you neither one of us knew that the other was doing it like so many others muivano kupaza came to America a stranger like so many others she trusted in the people she knew best her family Peter kupaza repaid that trust with a violent and brutal death cutting short the young woman's life and her dreams did not however die without a champion Cold Case investigators who took up her case to discover first who she was and then who was her killer wivano was buried at a cemetery close to sharigos's home the woman who knew we've honored the best during her brief time in America her friend's memory may have been put to rest but it will never be forgotten oh I try very hard to remember her smiling and happy and um [Music] laughing person [Music] that's my best memory ever and I struggle really hard to keep her on living in my heart [Music] just south of San Francisco sits the county of San Mateo home to the wealth of Silicon Valley here land is gold with million dollar homes shoehorned on to Tiny Lots each lot part of another block each block eating away at the natural beauty of Northern California John dillingers is an arson investigator for the Woodside Fire Department this was really an open land area a lot of farms and horses and and sheep up here they were like little ranches countries you know type homes and now all of a sudden the area is being built up with brand new big homes 4 000 to 6 000 square foot as the Hammers fall and the wood is cut resentment builds in the area and new housing starts to burn all of the houses were under construction they had a total of 11 fires that were all similarity and sets all in the same vicinity some on the same street seven new homes in the span of 12 months burnt to the ground fortunately no one is hurt but losses are in the Millions dellinger's videotapes each of the fires and studies them hoping to discern a pattern messages scrolled on the walls provide him with his first clue there were handwritten messages written on the walls neighbors Revolt no more homes experienced arsonists number one they don't leave Clues and there were a lot of things that were left at the scene that indicated us that juveniles were involved in it a task force of state and local officials is formed dellingers begins nightly stakeouts of the neighborhood Kirk lindyke from the California Department of Forestry provides backup we kind of felt that it was taking on a little bit of a dangerous tone I mean we had somebody that was very open about burning these homes down in and was straightforward about it you know they just stepped up and and burned these places in 1988 the Spree continues four more homes set on fire bringing the turtle to eleven destroyed in the area one of the houses that was under construction that was set on fire was occupied people were asleep smell the smoke called us we got there and the owners had extinguished the fire as neighbors watch their homes burn fear ripens into suspicion and the community begins to turn on itself everybody was suspicious of everybody and everybody was saying hey I think my neighbor might be doing this there was a lot of pressure put on everybody to get something going here and it was and we just weren't able to really identify something we kept up the patrols and the uh in the nighttime surveillance work but we're still unable to find anybody that was responsible for setting these fires after three years of Investigation the team is still no closer to finding their arsonist frustration takes root and fresher cases are given priority by May of 1990 the task force has dwindled to a precious few and the San Mateo fires case goes cold Highway 205 some 50 miles north of San Mateo County a truck breaks down a father and son get out to make repairs fella broke down about where that pickup is and he was going to come to this house it's over here to use the phone the boy sees an army jacket bundled in some bushes along the side of the road and he kind of come in here and he kicked it and when he did the cassette tapes and the videotape fell out of the jacket the boy picks up the tape and brings it home this is the tape the family sees and hears when they got home they uh father was viewing the videotape and he stated that it scared him to death the family takes the tape to police and eventually to George Wells a fire investigator for San Joaquin County when I first saw it I immediately thought that we were dealing with somebody that was very disturbed all Skies black with smoke the house captured on the video is fully involved with fire the narrator and person making the tape claims to have also set the fire Wells concludes the blaze is not one his department is investigating the mysterious tape is then set out to fire conferences across the state and eventually to San Mateo County and investigator John delegis an investigator called us from Santa Clara County saying hey we have this tape we want to bring it to your task force I went to Sacramento retrieved the tape brought it back to San Mateo County and early in the morning we viewed it and went from there look at it look at it doesn't help at first the task force has little luck in identifying the house or fire as one of the San Mateo fires engine seven you're trying to command then dellings remembers the videotapes he had made as part of his investigation into each of the fires frame by frame he Compares his tapes against the mysterious video what I did was I took their tape I set it up on a on a TV screen and I set my tape the fire department tape on a TV screen and looked at them both he viewed a lamp post a PG E power pole a trailer that began to to pop up the telephone pole and trailer highlighted in these frames of video are the keys for dellingers who pinpoints the house as one of the first to burn in Redwood City dullinger's revisits this sign and comes to a chilling realization whoever videotaped The Blaze had stood behind a screen of bushes less than 50 feet from dellingers on the night of the fire the fire department was trying to put it out I have somebody in the setting fires and hiding up in the bushes behind me filming the same fire that I'm filming and I've never ever had this happen to me before look at the Flames listen to the coyote yell after three years this bizarre tape has given Cold Case investigators their first real break in the case they believe whoever made the video either set the San Mateo fires or knows who did look at the fun look at this this tape found wrapped inside a coat along the side of a California freeway has breathed new life into the hunt for what Cold Case investigators believe To Be A Serial arsonist this case was was very unusual and Incredibly interesting from our standpoint because of that mechanism of the tape geographically where it was found and how it came back to us that was a pretty amazing thing in itself I said all done I set out that the narrator on the tape appears to be claiming responsibility for setting the fire Cold Case investigators reach out to the public in an effort to put a name to that voice we had another task force meeting we said we know where the fire was and it's tied into all of our other fires so therefore we decided we were going to put it on television on September 9th Unsolved Mysteries airs the mysterious video San Joaquin fire investigator George Wells is in Los Angeles with a field more than 1800 phone calls phone calls came from all the way from Australia Canada uh throughout the United States a lot of weird phone calls psychics and all this during the last 30 minutes of the show's feed the team gets five calls all from San Mateo County it was either the third or the fourth call where somebody called in and they even described a young man that color is Doris Lentz a neighbor in the area we were sitting watching Unsolved Mysteries I was looking at it and looking at it and it looked just like the fire we watched burn you know a year or so earlier did her feet Omar Lance believes the name mentioned might very well belong to her 17 year old neighbor look at it Omar she said it was a kid that lived across the street whose name was Omar so that name was a concern to us because that was a name that we use on tape gold case investigators decide to talk to Lance's 17 year old neighbor to discover if he is the person mentioned on the video and if so why Redwood City police detective Mark polio questions the boy initially this youth denied any knowledge or in volvement in the arson or the taping of the fire the 17 year old is brought into the police station and questioned further in short order His Story begins to crumble pressured him a little more and eventually he did admit that he did know about it had not seen the tape until it was aired on TV though but his friend who burnt the house had told him he did videotape it the boy gives polio the name of a second youth an 18 year old who investigators believe actually made the video and perhaps set the house on fire police put this second youth under surveillance before they could act however the suspect's garage Goes Up in Flames providing dullages and landike with a free look inside the suspect's house and while investigating that particular fire we came across some evidence that was disturbing to us we found animal parts we found what appeared to be you know I hate I don't want to say sacrifices but we found things that led us to believe that there think that animals were being cut apart were being sacrificed we found a cutting table with a big blade we found knives with blood on them we found uh Freddy Krueger mask Freddy Krueger fingers was a concern to us at this time that uh the kid that lived here needed some help definitely put him as a number one suspect on September 27 1990 they bring the 18 year old into the station for questioning he broke down and cried and eventually started admitting that he had committed this one arson inside the boy's home they find more tapes and more evidence that he may have been involved in more than just one fire the arsonist message spray painted on the walls please home video documents the boy's fascination with television coverage of the fires there's also a scrapbook of sorts a collection of newspaper Clips on the fires what we find in serial arson type cases is the suspect will document his acts in some way keep newspaper articles write a diary what have you but in the age of the video camcorder we're finding that more often suspects will use that to videotape their feeds and in this case I believe the suspect just wanted to document what he was doing to maybe perhaps relive it later or just just have fun but his fun appears to extend beyond the mere video diary how you doing father real good sifting through the collection of tapes Cold Case investigators happen Upon A fascination with violence and satanic images he had videos of him wearing bizarre outfits one in particular was he was dressed up as Dracula and he had a picture behind uh behind him looking at it saying you're next I where Satan rises again and fulfills the destiny of hatred and evil and sin the kid was definitely needed some help and now to finish the job this final tape provides police with what they believe to be a motive for the fires a home video of two of the boys questioned in the case playing army in Edgewood Park near the scene of the fires according to Cold Case investigators it was this park that the 18 year old felt compelled to protect and in doing so almost burned the neighborhood to the ground this was their neck of the woods this was their their area they were had played in there they had done military games they had done sacrificial kinds of ceremonies out there they uh pretty much didn't like this area being developed and that is the reason for him setting these fires this my domain although investigators feel certain the 18 year old was responsible for the string of fires in San Mateo County they allow him to plead guilty to a single count of arson their focused more on Rehabilitation than punishment we also felt that the way the kids were going in the road that they were going down could easily have escalated to something else your house is next in this case we were able to identify them stop him and get him treatment so hopefully it will never happen again today this section of San Mateo county is quiet the development boom has slowed but not subsided for fire investigator John dellingers this area has been home for most of his adult life he's in a change seen it grow and seen the pains that come with growth dullinger's views his job as a simple one to Serve and Protect in the case of the San Mateo arson fires it was a responsibility he did not take lightly or relinquish easily in our agency attributes the success of the case to Captain diligence out of Woodside and he refused to let go of it if it was an investigation I wasn't going to close and my job was to stay on as long as I had to in order to solve it [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: A&E

Views: 7,173,246

Keywords: a&e, aetv, a&e tv, ae, a&e television, a&e shows, a and e, a+e, a&e full episodes, the first 48, crime, true crime, crime investigation, solving crime, police, detectives, attorneys, police procedure, cold case files, cold case, murder investigation, true crime show, cold case files episodes, murder, homicide, unsolved murders, cold cases, unsolved homicides, unsolved crimes, dna, murderers, serial killers, death, unsolved death, hunch, COLD CASE FILES MEGA MARATHON

Id: naHa9O2QW2c

Length: 173min 14sec (10394 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023