Homeless 'Santa' Murder Cracked And Sikh Murder Solved By DNA Evidence | 72 Hours | Real Crime

[Music] life in the city can be dangerous especially if you live on the street [Music] how to keep safe finding a place to sleep is the biggest challenge look for well-lit well-trafficed areas this ought to do it but tonight on the streets of Toronto there is no safe place [Music] this isn't the first time it's the third in a series of murders that have terrorized the homeless in Toronto three down how many more to go [Music] in True Crime investigation and conviction may take years but every detective knows that the crucial clue is always there somewhere in the first 72 hours [Music] [Applause] nobody should die that way I've never seen anything that hurts one of the duties of a pathologist is to determine the cause of death watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required download feely now Bright Lights big city for some people it's exciting for the homeless it's a Battleground where you're at the mercy of the very streets you call home balmy night in June 2001 one homeless man has paid the ultimate price the 911 just after midnight two hours later detective Jeff McGuire arrives at the scene first up is the liaise with the detectives there just to ensure the scene is properly protected so we have an exchange of information with them and give them some direction and receive information you still take a breath and go in before you have a look because it's it's not a pretty sight at all officers have already cordoned off the street and begun interviewing bystanders on a major downtown intersection like this one they expect to find a witness so far nothing can't believe that midnight on a Sunday night on Bay Street in the city the biggest city in Canada not one person saw this happen Maguire needs to know the victim's identity bus shelter no belongings to search in the victim's Pockets no wallet but the investigator knows homeless people often hide their valuables so they won't be ripped off in the victim's sock they find a wallet containing a bus pass and an ID [Music] now the victim has a name Mr Andrew Walker [Music] first step in any investigation understand your victim [Music] who he was might tell police who killed him Walker made this downtown Corner his home for months people in the area saw him there every day [Music] it was just somebody who was there he was part of my world he was part of my neighborhood as I would go to work I would see him sitting on his favorite bench he would watch you as you went by you acknowledged him he would acknowledge you and I think that's why a number of people called him Santa Claus he had that kind of open Jolly face but he was a solitary character I noticed that he would speak to an imaginary person from the people who worked in the area McGuire has learned that he was a gentleman a loner possibly a mental patient police need to find his family to notify them of his death [Music] my partner contacted a number of different social agencies and through welfare he was able to determine that he had collected one emergency welfare check on his application there was a name and address I believe it might have just been a town and a name of relatives in New Brunswick I was born in New Brunswick he was very close to his mother and when she fell ill he stayed by her side until she died wanted to be a teacher went to college but never finished after her death nine years ago he disappeared family never heard from him again Andrew Walker is the third homeless man murdered in his many months his death galvanizes the public even a harmless gentle soul like Andrew is at risk should everyone be afraid certainly raise concerns in our minds initially and certainly in the media picked it up and and ran pretty heavy with the potential that there was somebody out running around just aimlessly killing homeless people it was something that we had to consider but the only way to do that is to conduct your investigation of your murder from the autopsy police learned that the cause of death is trauma to the head with a blunt object consistent with the Cobblestone and a deep slash wound to the neck consistent with a knife there are no defensive wounds on the victim suggesting he was asleep when attacked blood tests revealed that he had no alcohol or drugs in his system which is unusual for a street person so is Walker's rap sheet he doesn't have one not an intoxicated chicken not anything which is I think highly unusual for somebody to be able to live on the streets and just basically never get in anybody else's weight generally end up somebody complains about them like he's in front of my building or he's sleeping in my garage that just never happened with this guy with such a clean rap sheet no evidence of robbery or struggle at the scene it's becoming increasingly difficult to see what motive anyone could have had for murder Maguire can reach only one conclusion this was a random killing it's a troubling way to begin a homicide investigation motive is such a big key to an investigation because it leads you in a direction it's the random killing which makes it even more difficult and gives you more concern as an investigator because again it takes away any starting point for me [Music] all McGuire has to go on is whatever is collected the first 24 hours at the crime scene he needs to find a lead before this brutal killer murders again foreign apparently motivless murder of a homeless man on the streets of Toronto at the crime scene everything from cigarette butts to garbage in nearby containers to the murder weapon itself have been bagged and tagged for forensic testing hoping something will yield that crucial physical link between the victim and his killer ideally we're looking for evidence of the suspect being in this area hanging out in this area or living in this area and to uh to put him together with the victim [Music] ident officers find fingerprints on the bus shelter the busy corner ly anyones but police need to cast a wide net some small bit of evidence that seems irrelevant now could be crucial later since the shelter is located just outside a complex of government buildings there are dozens of security cameras trained on the area Maguire hopes that one of these cameras got a picture of the killer [Music] the day after the murder surveillance tapes come in police know that a young man made a 9-1-1 call about the crime at 1202 a.m and that the victim died a few minutes later the video shows a man walking through an exterior passageway around one of the government buildings at 1205. if the killer struck just before midnight then hurried away he'd have ended up in these shots at just that time so this could be the Killer but the footage doesn't show the man's face clearly enough to make a positive ID for 22 hours investigators have been combing the crime scene for evidence [Music] the bus shelter Maguire sees a row of cobblestones clearly missing it appears that the killer took the trouble to dig out a heavy Cobblestone to bludgeon his victim to death nearby an officer finds a discarded liquor bag which is sent into the forensic Center and tested by ident Officer Larry Hicks Hicks finds a clear print on the bag We examined the fingerprint and compared it to the fingerprint that I found inside the bus shelter the previous day and the fingerprints belong to the same person and a hit came back to a known offender that person is identified on the police database as Daryl Rodney also known as Daryl Callan a man with a long string of convictions for violent crimes he's an alcoholic vagrant with an old fixed address police will have to act fast before he moves on [Applause] for one of the officers who worked at the crime scene the name Daryl Sparks a memory an onlooker She interviewed on the night of the murder identified himself as Daryl Callan one of the two names that came up on police records officer fighting Chuck remembers him clearly there was one particular party in the group who was just very boisterous very loud laughing jovial not the behavior that you would expect to see at a crime scene his explanation for being in the area was that he had spent his day drinking over at Queen's Park [Music] I asked him about a red droplet that he a red stained droplet that he had on the sleeve of of his Adidas jacket [Music] since he was cooperating she asked to see what he had in his knapsack just to prove to her that he wasn't carrying a knife the only request he made was that I'd be discreet about it because he admitted to being a cross-dresser and that he had articles in the bags that he felt would embarrass him he was so unusual he made he made the hairs on my neck stand up he was just too weird and too bizarre but I mean there was nothing there was nothing else there than just a feeling can't build a case on a Feeling Maguire needs more than fighting Chuck's hunch he keeps in touch with the officers investigating the two other homeless killings to see if there's any connection Daryl Rodney may be the key [Music] puts out a police bulletin to find Rodney and have him picked up [Music] Daryl Rodney's prison record shows a conviction from manslaughter 18 years ago it also shows that he was released from jail just before Andrew Walker's murder five days after the murder police finally locate him but he looks different he shaved his head when they bring Rodney in for questioning he's difficult and evasive pretending he's drunk and out of it Maguire recognizes this kind of slippery Behavior he guesses that Rodney changed his appearance to disguise himself from police make him a suspect until Maguire's spots what appears to be blood on his boot Rodney's rap sheet tells police he's a dangerous man blood on his boots and his attempted disguise McGuire feels he has enough evidence to arrest him he's counting on forensics to prove him right in crime fiction the boot would give him the evidence he needs but this is true crime and as McGuire will find out things don't wrap up quite so neatly Daryl rogny the prime suspect in the murder of Andrew Walker is in jail detective Maguire has sent his boots to forensic biologist Cecilia Hagerman hoping through DNA analysis to finally have solid physical evidence there is a small amount of blood found on those boots however no DNA profile was obtained from that small amount of blood a blow to Maguire's case but Dr Hagerman suggests a new line of Investigation there was a significant amount of bleeding at the scene and that would indicate to me that the best thing to look at would be the clothing of the suspect because there would be a good chance of transfer of blood from the victim to the suspect he didn't have his backpack when he was arrested or any of or some of his other clothing was missing as well so I asked him I said look you know you're going to be in jail for a while and where's your stuff we'll get it and his comments were that don't worry you'll never find it it's uh I've got to put away in detention Rodney boasts to a cell mate that he doesn't care if they put him in a hell hole like the Don jail because from the window he can keep an eye on the few possessions he owns [Music] Windows of the Don jail look out in a ravine where homeless people live and makeshift shelters what Rodney doesn't know is that his cellmate is an undercover Detective foreign deep in the bushes we located a plastic garbage bag which one torn open contained a black backpack the backpack holds all the items that the officer at the scene of the crime had seen and cataloged in her notes including the jacket which she suspected was spotted with blood [Music] this find is good news for investigators who are running short of evidence but when Dr Hagerman examines the blood on the backpack and jacket turns out to be Rodney's blood not the victims as they prepare for trial Maguire's worried the case isn't strong enough to win a conviction all they need is one piece of physical evidence that ties Rodney to the murder and they still don't have it [Music] Looking For A New Perspective Maguire returns to the crime scene [Music] starts with what he knows about the night of the murder then tries to reconstruct the rest of it [Music] Rodney was drinking in a nearby park Rodney is an angry hyper drunk but Walker was sleeping so peacefully so deeply he wouldn't wake up for some reason that must have pushed Rodney over the edge [Music] foreign [Music] retraces Rodney's path he struggles to dig out one of the other cobblestones it's harder than he thought it suddenly Dawns on Maguire that the killer might have left traces of his skin on the murder weapon I reminded her you know Cecilia you promised I said if we got to the point where this guy's going to walk out and it was the end of the line and the bottom of the list of priorities you told me to look at the Rock blood on this rock after DNA typing was the victim's blood that was no surprise the question was whether or not the person who used this rock to bludgeon the victim also left his or her DNA on that rock in the form of perhaps skin cells the preliminary hearing was running from a Monday to a Friday and if we got past the Friday and we didn't have a match then the gate would have opened and the accused and I would have walked out of court together [Music] The Rock was quite want it when we did the DNA analysis of those swabs from the sides of the rock the initial analysis did not work we had to dilute the sample down in order to get the profile out so we had what were called Inhibitors to the process but in this case we were able to dilute them out and we were able to get a full DNA profile the skin cells found on the Rock match Rockne's DNA profile which puts the murder weapon in his hand [Music] midweek a call comes in from Dr Hagerman I answered the phone and uh I think her exact words were Jesus I hate it when the cops are right finally McGuire has got the evidence to nail Rodney both Rodney's fingerprints and the skin cells on the Rock were collected in the first 72 hours after the crime cornered destined for a long prison sentence Rodney wants to talk he went on to tell a story about him in and a fight broke out and this victim had grabbed him in a headlock and beat him up and uh when he finished the story I just said you know I just don't believe it I just none of it fit anything we knew about the victim I mean what he did was just uh very very horrific I don't doubt for a moment that uh from what I know of his history and from his conver my conversations with him that uh some form of alcohol abuse has obviously played a big part in his life and he uh he's got extremely violent tendencies that he just simply has no control over oh [Music] police have since solved the two other homeless murders each was committed by a different killer Rodney is sentenced to 25 years in prison but why did he kill this man a drunken rage doesn't answer the question it was a random act devoid of rationality it was what we fear the most chaos striking in the heart of our ordered everyday lives [Music] mystery writers like to say there's no such thing as a perfect murder but maybe they're wrong Toronto in this Sikh neighborhood you can speak Punjabi all day young people marry according to their parents wishes people find each other jobs at businesses like this Bakery which is why in 1988 the city's favorite rye bread is baked by seats someone like Robbie Bethel bravi is a hard-working fun-loving 22 year old everybody likes him he's got no known enemies but on the night of August 2nd Ravi does not come home from work [Music] for 24 hours no one has any idea where he could be his family grows more worried shortly after 6 PM the phone rings a man Whispers your stead that's when police are called in [Music] True Crime investigation and conviction may take years but every detective knows that the crucial clue is always there somewhere in the first 72 hours [Music] [Applause] 24 hours after an anonymous caller says that Ravi Bethel is dead police assign someone special to the case I was born in India I'm a Sikh I have certain language skills and that's the reason I was brought into the investigation detective cedu is now a senior intelligence officer but in 1988 when this case broke Seadoo was a young detective trying to find out why Robbie Bethel was missing like many seek families Ravi and his wife have come together through an arranged marriage and there have been problems Bobby's father points an accusing finger at his son's pregnant wife he says if anything happened to Ravi his in-laws in Chicago are behind it he hints it as something to do with the dowry but refuses to say more next stop the bakery where Robbie Bethel was last seen U and his partner locate Robbie's best friend though he's reluctant to get Robbie into trouble detectives managed to convince him that talking to them is the best way to help his friend the friend says Ravi got an unexpected phone call around 11 45 P.M though he shipped wasn't over for hours he said this couldn't wait so around midnight Ravi flipped him a Mickey and asked him to sign out for him that was the last he'd seen Ravi reluctantly he adds one important fact the call was from a woman the night he went missing he did tell a friend that he was going he was on his way to see his girlfriend a girlfriend and a pregnant wife detectives tracked down another co-worker Ravi talked to the night he disappeared it was common knowledge that that he had a girlfriend a matter of fact he had more than one girlfriend he says Ravi was pillar with women in the bakery but there is one of a year ago Ravi seemed to have his eye on a woman named ravana when detectives asked her if this was more than a workplace flirtation she tells them about the day her boss asked her to get boxes from the upstairs store room [Music] foreign detectives wonder if ravana is the girlfriend Ravi went to see the night he disappeared but the co-worker doesn't know all she knows is that ravana quit the bakery more than a year ago and moved out of town with her husband [Music] the next day detective sedu gets his first private interview with ravi's wife she was very humble very simple lady they only had been married for a short while and very upset and I talked just like a normal wife who would be upset [Music] cedu wants to find out if she knows anything about a girlfriend but he wants to be tactful in case Ravi still shows up [Music] ravi's wife reveals that a few months ago things got so bad that she secretly packed her bag and went to live with her family in the states but cedu can't get her to say why she left or why she agreed to come home [Music] as the 72-hour Mark approaches police discover ravi's car abandoned 10 minutes from the bakery the car has no plate and has been vandalized after 72 hours we were a lot more concerned that he hadn't been hasn't been found yet shortly after this a witness claims he saw someone run from Robbie's car to a second car the night Bobby disappeared detectives wonder whether the Running Man was Ravi or the person responsible for his disappearance but it was too dark for the witness to get a good description of the man or the driver ravi's father now comes up with a new theory he tells detective sedu about his son's run-in with members of the Babar Khalsa Barbara Khalsa is a militant Sikh organization founded in India and they have cells in Canada foreign coerce workers to contribute towards an independent Sikh Homeland ravi's father says his son not only refused to give them money but threatened to write letters exposing their members to the Indian Embassy as they're following this up police in the Toronto suburb get a disturbing call to come to a wooded area foreign [Music] detective Paul Carroll vividly recalls arriving at the scene it was in 1988 and we received a call that initially it was thought to be a baby in a bag was the initial radio call when we arrived we discovered that it was in fact a burned human remains of an adult skull shows signs of severe Trauma from a heavy object the orbital bone around the eye had been fractured and there was a severe fracture in this part of the jaw and the skull as well which was consistent with a pretty severe blow or several side and someone is trying to hide the victim's identity there was a few items located around the body which eventually assisted Us in making a positive identification uh there was a Seiko man's watch which led us to believe it was in fact a male there was a necklace a gold pendant [Music] detective sedu and Carol now A Team undertake the delicate task of showing the jewelry to ravi's father the pendant was actually customized and made by their missing person's father who was a jeweler that was identified by the father as he having had made that for his son [Music] detectives now know Ravi Bethel was murdered and that the killer or Killers have taken great pains to cover it up [Music] the night he went missing Ravi Bethal told his friend at the bakery he was off to see his girlfriend [Music] but it's a homicide detectives press ravi's wife for answers does she know about Ravi having a girlfriend our investigation showed us that the victim and his his wife had had been having some marital problems painfully she recalls cleaning up after a party the month before Robbie disappeared foreign three hours later and he'd been drinking she actually confronted him and he confided at that point in her with her that he had in fact been This Woman's residence so it was confirmed that he was having an affair or hadn't had an affair he said he'd been in love before he was married and he wasn't going to give her up detectives ask if she knows the woman's name says the woman's name is vavana the same woman who Ravi reportedly had an affair with at the bakery but when police interview ravana she denies it all they'd never been involved romantically she didn't have any idea what happened to him that she knew nothing basically I moved away and from that area of Toronto and hadn't seen him in several months she was a quite firm and I didn't appear to be nervous and her answers were simple and straight detectives also questioned ravana's husband sukhvinder shigil about ravi's disappearance shergill says he only met Ravi once at a dance for Bakery employs more than a year ago something doesn't add up cedu and Carol apply for a wire tap when it's turned down for lack of evidence detectives have no choice but to close the investigation into Ravi bethal's murder months later Robbie's Widow and newborn daughter moved back to her family in Chicago [Music] for six long years there are no further leads it looks like someone is going to get away with the perfect murder until one day police received word that a Sikh man has new information relevant to the case the man is currently in jail for sexual assault and slated to be deported at the end of his prison term he's willing to exchange his information for permission to immigrate to Canada in his videotaped testimony he says he was a friend of sukhfinder chagill they'd been police officers together back in the Punjab on the night of August 2nd 1988 he received a phone call from his friend shergill he tried to find out on the phone what had happened but he wouldn't tell him he just asked him to come over and ask him to come over in a hurry he arrived here and he entered the house and he noticed a lot of blood he'd known that shergill's marriage to ravana was in trouble foreign told him that he had surprised his wife and her boyfriend and the boyfriend had tried to attack him he said he killed him in self-defense he advises that he was a fraid and didn't want to help but he was threatened by his friend and uh he needed him to help and if he didn't help him that he would kill him as a former police officer chagil figured it would throw the investigators off the trail to abandon the dead man's car near the bakery and put the body somewhere else around two they found a wooded area off a side road it's at a site that they had chosen our victim was uh dosed with gasoline and uh it was set Ablaze the informant is hoping his cooperation will let him stay in Canada foreign the question for detectives is a single word of a story true [Music] detectives need to find something to verify the informant story really the only evidence that we had was the statement of uh for jailhouse informant so we had to take a close look at that and make sure that what we're getting was was on the up and up they rewind the tape to the part where the informant mentions the burning of ravi's body around 2 am they know that a melted watch had been found by the charred body the watch is forensically dissected to help determine the time of death we wanted to see if we could tell uh get the watches stopped at a particular time we took the walks to the engineer and opened the watch up we found that the workings of the watch had actually stopped at between 211 and 212 in the morning on the 2nd of August this corroborates the 2 A.M time mentioned by the informant police pay a 5 a.m visit to sugvinder shergill now divorced from ravana and I translated his right for Council that he doesn't have to make a statement and he stated that he didn't wish to make any statement Pravana is also arrested as she watches the informants video she breaks down she admits she lied to police and that she did have an affair with Ravi when they worked at the bakery foreign pregnant with her husband's child she wanted a fresh start she quit the bakery and she and her husband moved out to the suburbs but Ravi tracked her down started calling [Music] he said he couldn't live without her foreign ly she told him it was over what he wanted just wasn't possible they were both married she had two young children he had a child on the way still she says he wouldn't let go then he did something truly bizarre unbeknown to her he taped one of their phone calls where he got her to talk about intimate details of their affair and then he gave the tape to shergill maybe he wanted them to break up you know by giving handing over tapes to shergill they'll have a conflict they'll break up and then he'll marry her something like that you know but it was very odd for us to see that handing over tapes but ravi's plan backfired was incensed he insisted his wife Lua Ravi out to the house she was threatened a sheer girl that if she didn't place the call that he would leave her wanting to believe shergill when he said he just wanted to scare Ravi she was waiting for him as he came through the door foreign [Music] divided [Music] [Music] we learn of a coach that was in the living room at the time of the murder and that it had a huge blood stain on the back and he tells us the story of how she was ordered to cut the blood-stained portion of the back of the cutch out and resew another piece of fabric onto it though sugar the ex-cop thought he had successfully covered up with avi's murder he had foolishly kept the couch all these years when police went with the search warrant they they located a couch there were blood drops were still around the sofa and that's what police recovered the DNA of tiny specks of blood they find on the couch proves to be Robbies Ravi Bethal found himself in the oldest trap of all a love triangle this Burning Obsession for another man's wife consumed not only him but everyone around him you can look at the parents the lost a grown-up healthy young man you look at the wife she lost a husband and then you look at the child who doesn't have a father it's a real tragedy because he helped solve the case the informant is acquitted of his role in the murder and given landed immigrant status after his release from jail [Music] Pravana receives two years as an accessory to murder and sukh vinder shergill who tried to commit the perfect murder is convicted and sentenced to life foreign [Music]

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 41,722

Keywords: Real Crime, crime documentary series, crime scene analysis, crime scene reconstruction, crime story analysis, criminal case reenactment, criminal case studies, criminal evidence, criminal justice system, criminal minds, criminal psychology, forensic DNA testing, forensic science, investigative techniques, justice served, murder investigation, murder trial, solved crimes, true crime investigations, true crime series, true crime series 2022

Id: iyAWpA2z8cI

Length: 44min 0sec (2640 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023