Killer Instinct | FULL EPISODE | The FBI Files

a string of lethal carjackings terrorize the washington dc area [Music] ballistics reveal that it's the work of a serial killer who tries to run over one victim with his own car the fbi and police set a clever trap but the killer insists on a violent [Music] shootout [Music] [Music] in the early 90s a serial killer struck lone victims in the dead of night his hunting ground the suburbs of washington dc his target anyone who owned a car i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office the gunman was as elusive as he was deadly he struck quickly and without mercy now the fbi must follow the twisted path of a killer wherever it leads november 13 1991 [Music] silver spring maryland a suburb north of washington d.c montgomery county police respond to a report of shots fired at a car dealership [Music] officers discover the body of a woman shot in the chest and forehead and another gunshot victim nearby [Music] the man is breathing but unconscious paramedics rush into the hospital montgomery county homicide detective ed day coordinates his department's swift response to the slave you saturate the case as fast as you can working as fast as you can get as much information as fast as you can and try to resolve it as fast you can unfortunately homicides time is terrible the more time goes by the less your odds are that you're going to have a satisfactory conclusion the investigation investigators learned the two victims are janitors they were cleaning the building that night and would have come outside around 10 pm to dump the garbage the detectives work to determine a motive for the attack you don't overlook the obvious you have a shooting like this at a car a lot is that a possible uh motive for the killing the theft of a car of course had representatives from the auto dealer come out doing inventory there was no vehicles missing there was no property missing from the inside of the establishment investigators locate the victims car keys nearby and determine neither of their personal vehicles are missing [Music] robbery does not seem to be the motive nothing was taken they had money on them uh there was a single thing missing are you just as far as the tenant position yes i am with almost no evidence to go on detective day hopes to learn more from the critically wounded man he's innovative he's also in a coma and he's just not responding we do that with all any kind of a shooting that's potentially fatal there's a rule in law that a dying declaration does not have to be corroborated it's not hearsay because if the person knows he's going to die he's assumed to be able to be telling the truth so if you can get a statement from somebody in really serious circumstances and it's always a very very powerful piece of evidence but the victim dies nine days later without ever regaining consciousness [Music] during the autopsy the medical examiner recovers the only piece of physical evidence the bullets that killed the victims at the maryland state police crime lab ballistics expert joe capera examines the evidence to determine if there was more than one shooter [Music] there was a microscopic comparison done to determine if these bullets were fired from the same gun and indeed as a conclusion to these examinations i i concluded that these bullets were fired from the same gun examining the scratch patterns on the bullets copera determines the make and model of the murder weapon i was able to ascertain first of all the caliber of the gun which was a 357 and then through the measurements of the unique uh landing groove areas i was able to ascertain that was a ruger 357 with no obvious motive for the slayings detectives explore the victims personal lives for clues you work inside out you try to find out if these people had any enemies if there was any triangle you know thwarted lover or something like that these things take you in 100 different directions and you just have to you have to take care of one thing at a time you eliminate something and you move on to the next issue and just go from there detectives find nothing in the victims backgrounds that could have led to their murders since investigators found the victim's car keys near the bodies they decide to re-examine the slayings as a failed car theft with that possible motive in mind detectives speculate how the crime might have occurred they were cleaning the business was closed for the night they were taking the trash out hey detectives suspect the gunman demanded the victims car keys based on the position of the woman's body relative to her keys they believe she tried to run [Music] and you have to make the assumption that he lost control of the situation and decided to kill the two of them before he identified what car belonged to them he escalated an attempt theft into a murder for no good reason with little evidence to go on the case grows cold then three months later investigators respond to the scene of another homicide they find the body of psychology professor dr shaheen hastriudi lying in a parking lot in bethesda maryland unable to locate her car detectives believe she was the victim of a fatal carjacking noting the lack of blood spatter evidence near the body they suspect his trudy's assailant shot her while she was still inside her car through interviews with her colleagues authorities determined dr hustrudi left her office around 8pm she's obviously accosted at some point gets in her car [Music] get out she's taken out of the car dumped on the on the lot and the suspect steals her car gunshot wound to dead large caliber no witnesses [Music] the only solid evidence is a pair of bullets recovered from the victim's body investigators send the bullets to the maryland state police crime lab to compare them with the bullets from the double homicide it is a match the two crimes are connected [Music] homicide detectives begin examining unsolved cases involving similar circumstances [Music] one detective recalls a recent homicide which occurred a month before histrudi was killed that victim was also shot in the head with a large caliber gun as in the silver spring double homicide responding officers found the victim's keys near his body [Music] but this victim didn't own a car which leads investigators to question whether car theft was the motive or if the case is even connected to the other shootings but we said you know this is looking like they're definitely links for some reason let's even get some voices on so authorities locate the bullet from that case and send it to be tested ballistics expert joe capera compares the bullets from the four homicides i did a cross-comparison examination to the previous bullets and as a result of that examination i found that that all the bullets were fired from the same weapon so we're starting to see a pattern here guys investigators have connected the four homicides through the ballistic evidence and an apparent car theft motive but they cannot understand why the killer chose to murder his victims none of these people were armed stature-wise none of these people i thought were particularly a threat to the suspect two possibilities that he lost control of him and felt the best way to regain control of the situation was to kill him or there was some psychological reason that he didn't like these particular people detectives believe they are dealing with an extremely violent and unpredictable criminal and suspect he may still be in the area montgomery county was his basis of operation that's where he felt most comfortable that's where he did all his murders that's where he did his in his most risky business that's where he laid and wait for people said it was obvious he had some strong tie to montgomery county [Music] investigators suspect he will strike again and hope to stop him before he does but they have no clues that can help identify him [Music] and the killer's weapon is the only thing that can connect him to the murders the best evidence we got is bullets and if we can get him and get the gun then we have definitely have a very very strong case authorities don't want to give the killer a reason to destroy his gun and with it their only evidence so they decide to keep the ballistics match away from the media if we supply the information to the press that all the bullets came from the same gun be a good likelihood that he would dispose of the weapon or he would in worst case scenario obtain a different weapon and keep committing the crime [Music] a man wearing a stocking mask and latex gloves robs a bank in chantilly virginia [Music] the bank's video security system captures his image [Applause] a witness tells the fbi that the bank robber fled in a late model white vehicle and gives them the license plate number the description of the getaway car matches the vehicle stolen from histrudi attracting the attention of montgomery county detectives but the license plate is not the strudis investigators trace the plate and discover it had been stolen from a vehicle in annandale virginia for detectives this leaves open the possibility that history's car was used in the bank robbery montgomery county task force which now includes agents from the fbi requests copies of the bank's surveillance tapes to learn what they can about the robber investigators watch the crime unfold and notice the robber is carrying a revolver of the same make and caliber used in the four homicides they think he could be the killer the footage is the best lead they have in identifying a suspect according to fbi special agent robert coffey we had a great piece of video that actually showed the individual the handgun that picture was actually put on the news locally and and regionally to try to see if we could spark some interest as far as someone identifying them investigators also release information that their suspect the money he stole and the vehicle he was driving may be covered in red dye if you do anything a phone call anything i'm going to shoot somebody the teller managed to slip dye packs into the bag of money and a die pack is a device that once it goes through the door of the bank it's electronically activated there's a timer on it it gives a person a little bit of time to get away from the bank and then it explodes spewing this terrible red dye it stains it's very difficult to get off it gets on the money and it can't will not come off the money it takes a while to get it off you personally days after the bank robbery police in northern virginia find an abandoned car bearing the stolen plates reported by the witness a check of the vehicle identification number proves that it is a strude's car [Music] the officer peers inside examining the interior we had the red dye stains in it from the dye packs from the bank we had proof positive that had been used in the bank robbery officers impound the vehicle and transport it to the police garage for processing technicians find blood stains inside the car and collect samples as evidence [Music] but they do not find anything that can identify the killer lab examiners extract dna from the blood evidence and compare it to histrudis it is a match finally investigators are able to look at the various crimes and understand their suspect's overall plans it's gelled into something that makes a little bit of sense you went from a situation where you had a whole bunch of motives that really didn't make sense to now a concrete motive this person is killing people to steal cars to commit bank robbers although authorities now understand why the suspect is murdering innocent people they have no clue who he is investigators face the nearly impossible challenge of identifying and catching a ruthless gunman before he kills again the fbi and maryland's montgomery county police are hunting a killer who has already committed four homicides as well as a bank robbery [Music] several fbi agents are part of the task force pursuing the gunman including special agent robert coffey [Music] one of the main roles of the fbi specifically in this type of a crime is that we work with many different agencies to corral all of the investigators and bring forth the information in one kind of a think tank this multi-agency approach is an invaluable investigative resource for montgomery county homicide detective ed day when you start working with multiple jurisdictions on different cases well the more jurisdictions are involved the more jurisdictions have an interest the more assets you can draw from the task force now understands their suspect's crime pattern he steals a person's car at gunpoint killing his victim then uses the vehicle in a bank robbery investigators continue to look for past unsolved cases that involved a similar pattern nothing occurs in a vacuum somebody doesn't just start killing people so that's when we really started doing the research they identify an incident that occurred in their county almost a year earlier our victim was a maintenance man an hispanic male 1 he was accosted by a white male carrying a large caliber dark handgun when the masked gunman asked for the victim's car keys the man claimed he didn't own a car the suspect demanded to know which car belonged to him he was told to turn around and face away from the suspect get down on his knees put his hand behind his head where's your car where is your car our victim at that time felt quite certain that he was going to be executed suspect fired three shots one of the shots hit him in the forearm the victim managed to flee down an alley and hide behind a bush and spent some minutes there waiting for the situation to calm down after 10 minutes the victim returned to the street and waved down the first car he saw hoping for assistance to his horror it was the gun winner an alert neighbor had called police the victim's life was spared the following day a witness reported seeing a masked gunman leaving the scene of a bank robbery in centreville virginia police later recovered the getaway vehicle and determined it was the car stolen from the maintenance man investigators examine the evidence gathered at the scene of the carjacking all they have is a bullet fragment that was lodged in the victim's arm ballistics expert joe caperra one does not necessarily need the whole bullet as long as the fragment that is left that he is examining has enough ballistic evidence on it that he can use he tests the fragment against the other recovered bullets to determine if that case is connected to their current investigation the bullet fragment matches but the task force is still no closer to identifying their suspect the lab's not getting anything out of these cars with little hard evidence investigators study the killer's behavior as exhibited through his actions searching for clues to his identity [Music] authorities examine the newly linked case and determine he is unusually bold and cocky when the investigators got together and discussed the commitment level of this individual to stay at a crime scenario for 10 minutes waiting for a witness to come back raised our level of concern about the subject itself he's not in a big hurry it feels pretty comfortable that the police aren't going to be there anytime soon investigators also believe the suspect has a quick temperate vengeful personality he's very upset with his victim he's decided that he has been himself wronged in some way and he's going to make him pay for it but authorities cannot understand why the suspect uses what appears to be an unnecessary level of violence during the carjackings it does not make sense to kill somebody in the least risky part of the crime the biggest risk he's taken is when he goes into those banks as far as getting captured being identified or running into any real obstacles taking these people you know innocent people off in the middle of the night and in the ground of his own choosing where he can isolate him i mean he's safer at that location than he is anywhere else and anything else he does it just doesn't make sense why he chose to kill these people your suspect is not only dangerously disturbed but also clever yeah one of the more interesting parts of the mo that this individual used was the number of jurisdictions through which he perpetrated his crimes he exploits the fact that no single police department can readily see his entire crime pattern we have a carjacking in one jurisdiction we have a stolen tag from a second jurisdiction we have a bank robbery and a third jurisdiction and then we have the car abandoned in a fourth jurisdiction the gunman's efforts to stymie police do not stop there each time he abandons a stolen car he leaves it unlocked with the keys in plain view one of the difficult parts of recovering the vehicles following the robberies is that they were being driven by other people by leaving the vehicle with the keys in it the vehicles were then subsequently restored leaving the vehicles to be restored destroyed whatever forensic evidence would have been left behind so the only thing we had to match all the crimes was the forensic evidence from the ballistics investigators continue to look for additional unsolved carjackings in which the vehicle was later used in a bank robbery and then robbing the bank in virginia they identify a case that occurred within miles of the other thefts a woman was walking out of a doctor's office and realized that she was being followed she turned to try to go back to the doctor's office but was confronted by the individual and then asked for her keys come on come on [Music] and upon starting a vehicle had her get out and kneel down next to a wall on your knees upon kneeling down he had her weight there for a short period of time she's described as 30 or 40 seconds passed you have to wonder how long much that time did he spend thinking about whether or not he was going to shoot her she was very compliant did everything she was told to do right when she was told to do it that might have saved her the next day her vehicle was used in a bank robbery the investigators wonder why their suspect allowed this woman to live yet killed the others they come up with several theories the fact that she was a caucasian female might have had something to do with it he might have had harvard some malice towards uh hispanic people or foreign people or it could be something simple about he lost control in those situations in fact the best way to gain control was to kill the task force has little to work with but is determined to go on the offensive now we're trying to figure out how can we get ahead of him how can we be in a position where we can be waiting for him when he does something or we can be prepared to mobilize very quickly with the resources necessary to get him [Music] the investigators focus on the one aspect of the suspect's crime pattern that they can anticipate we could not predict when a carjacking would take place they were too random we did however know that following the carjacking we would have a bank robbery if authorities can only predict which banks he will rob or where he will be traveling they might have a chance to catch him a masked gunman strikes again and again in suburban maryland just north of the nation's capital he shoots his victims while stealing their cars which he later uses to rob banks in the spring of 1992 the fbi and montgomery county police analyzed their suspect's habits in hopes of trapping just identify why this guy is picking these banks homicide detective ed day we had people take aerial photographs of every crime scene and the different uh escape routes and things of that nature trying to find some logical pattern to what he was doing something that would maybe give us a clue what are consistencies what are inconsistencies is there anything like that that we can use to our advantage to to foretell what he might do next on the surface the list of crime scenes appears random but a closer look by investigators reveals all the banks he robbed share a single trait [Music] everywhere he went he had access to a major roadway that would take him pretty quickly to a thoroughfare like 495 or 270 or something like that the task force shifts their focus from predicting where the suspect will strike next to catching him when he makes his escape after a bank robbery they decide they will cast a dragnet on all highway exit ramps in the area fbi special agent robert coffey we developed a plan where we would cast a net using all of the jurisdictions law enforcement within the washington area to where once the bank robbery were to take place he would have to pass through some points of the net meeting with officers from every police department in the area the task force details their plan a couple reports from the murders they will watch for any carjacking reports resembling their suspect's mo officers from each jurisdiction will then prepare for a quick response if a bank is subsequently robbed they will immediately stake out pre-assigned highway exit ramps targeting the stolen car once he's carjacked the vehicles there was enough support at each particular location that he could be followed we could bring to bear enough additional manpower to make a stop of our choosing and of course effect on arrest if we were lucky enough to spot them ready to cast their net investigators wait for the suspect to steal a car let's get them at 5 00 a.m each morning special agent coffee begins his day by reviewing the reports of all the area car thefts from the night before he looks for the one that matches their suspect's mo if the suspect stole a car the task force needs to identify it before banks open at nine but months pass with no sign of their suspect investigators begin to worry that the killer has gone underground and may never be caught we assume he's obviously stressed at this particular point he's feeling the the heat of the notoriety of what he's done october 9th 1992 i get notification from our baltimore agents that another carjacking is taking place we've got a white male with a ski mask latex gloves and a handgun uh it's taking place all the way up in baltimore at approximately 7 a.m a 15 year old girl walked to her mother's car suddenly an armed man approached her and demanded the keys [Music] housing police officer heard this and came to our aid get away from the car get away from the car get away from the car there was an exchange of gunfire and the carjacker took her vehicle and fled the scene we were feeling very good because we had very very fresh information and we knew he was on the move and he was in baltimore and more than likely on the way back here the task force determines there is no need to wait for a bank a robbery based on that information the task force casts the net around the washington metro area hoping that he's going to come back through that net patrolmen and swat units from jurisdictions throughout maryland washington dc and northern virginia raced to pre-arranged locations on freeway exit ramps to watch for the stolen car since police cannot be sure if the suspect has had time to switch the license plates they pull over every vehicle matching its description [Music] each time they know they may face a shooter who has already taken four lives [Music] the fbi and police departments throughout the washington dc area hunt a suspected killer they stop every vehicle matching the description of the one they believe he stole an hour earlier police pull over dozens of cars could come up empty what's going on as the search continues 50 miles away in western maryland brunswick police officer gary klein is on routine patrol i observed a small black and colored passenger vehicle i saw that there was no front license plate on it and as the vehicle passed me i looked over and observed the driver had a nylon stopping pulled down over his face kind of shocked man i was like not really sure what's going on here but kind of drew my attention real quick i turned around caught back up to the car radioed my dispatchers and uh the 911 center requested uh information on the tag and the subject in the small black car sped off and wouldn't pull over for me then i'm informed by our dispatchers that this subject is wanted for shooting at a baltimore city officer [Applause] the hundreds of officers mobilized in the dc area are too far away to assist officer klein is alone against a ruthless killer [Music] the adrenaline's pumping now because i'm pursuing this vehicle knowing somewhere in there i'm going to have to confront this individual the speeds that we maintain in some places were 90 mile per hour to a little over 100 miles per hour officer klein chases the suspect from maryland into virginia he was very intent on getting away from me he just went straight down the middle of the bridge just forcing people east and westbound out of his way i had to back off because i didn't want to endanger myself or the denison people or citizens out on the street where he was actually able to gain a good bit of distance on me but once the roadway cleared up a little bit where i could safely get through the vehicles i was able to catch back up to pursues the him into west virginia made a right off about 340 and he went down this small asphalt road and when he hit that he was going too fast with the rain and everything and lost control and struck the curb [Music] stepped out of the vehicle with my weapon drawn and i seen him kind of lean over in the car towards the passenger seat and i've seen the gun come up in inside the car officer klein is concerned about firing his gun in a public place when you discharge your weapon you just don't want to around just going out there somewhere and you could strike somebody innocent you have a split second to make this decision and whatever decision you make can affect you for the rest of your life at that point he placed the car in reverse and sped backwards quickly towards my cruiser and what i believe was an attempt to ram my car or strike me he proceeded down a small access road and i proceeded after him he sped into the little dead end gravel area and he tried to go behind this bulldozer and wrecked into it there's nowhere for him to go and now i have to confront him at that time i see the gun coming up which just kind of made my heart jump out of my chest while the suspect ducks for cover officer klein strategically moves to his right you don't want to stay in one position especially after he already knows where you're at klein's tactic works the suspect fires at the position where klein used to be i actually fired more shots at him as he ran to get to the back side of his car for cover with backup units still minutes away the lone officer fights to stay alive in a violent face-off with a vicious killer the suspected killer is in a desperate shootout in harpers ferry west virginia with lone police officer gary klein i see him start to come up from behind his car through the passenger side window with the gun raised and he's coming up i remember firing at him and striking the car and he dumped down behind the car again several seconds passed he raises back up you can hear it the actual sound of the bullet striking the car the metal and ducts back down behind the car again finally backup arrives when they put their hand on my shoulder and i knew who they were it was this big relief burden was lifted off my shoulders because now i knew i had fellow officers there within the next 10 minutes police officers from several jurisdictions were on the scene the gunman realizes he is outnumbered then the suspect stood up and walked out in front of myself and my cruiser probably about 15 yards and put the gun to his head and i continued to yell at him to drop the gun to throw the gun on the ground which time he told me he wouldn't do that [Music] listen hold on a minute hold on a minute west virginia state police corporal john jeffries begins negotiating with the gunman we can work through this let me help the only thing after several minutes of negotiation the suspect then pulled the nylon stocking up on the top of his head still wasn't able to really get a good clear look at him the suspect begins to talk he says he's an unemployed house painter he said that he was just upset he had had some relation problems with his girlfriend that he'd done some things he wasn't real happy about and just all these things had piled up and just troubled him and he didn't know why he was doing the things he was doing after a 45-minute standoff the gunman makes an unusual demand i remember him saying he wanted to talk to his mother so he gave his mother's name and phone number several tense minutes pass as police attempt to reach the suspect's mother he advised the suspect that they had his mother on the phone the woman on the line asks the negotiator for the suspect's name he identified himself as alan newman he wasn't real sure of the police he didn't know if we were just lying to him or what we were he doing well ask my mom what my favorite cookie is i remember corporal jeffrey saying your mom said your favorite cookie is chocolate chip and he started crying it really shocked me because i thought he was just going to drop the gun and give up you see the hammer coming back and everything's like slow motion you see the hammer drop you're waiting for the gun to go off and it didn't seizing the opportunity officers rush in and subdue the gunman ending the standoff after it was all over and done very relieved very appreciative of all the guys that were there that day i was able to help to get this person off the street and put him where he needed to be so that nobody else would be would be hurt police take allan newman into custody and confiscate his ruger 357 as evidence [Music] it is the same model used in the murders according to fbi special agent robert coffey from the prior ballistics we knew what type of gun it would be it would have been a specific ruger make and in fact that's what he was carrying the same types of bullets that were used and the shootings and the homicides were in fact still in the weapon you have told us that over and over after nearly a year of hard work investigators finally meet the killer face to face we no longer have someone running throughout the counties killing people for cars we were very excited about getting the chance to talk to the individual to find out why go ahead while newman admits to the baltimore carjacking he refuses to admit to any of the murders according to homicide detective ed day throughout the interview process he remained pretty cocky and uh you know he thought he was pretty cool [Music] investigators continue to press newman while at a firearms laboratory a ballistics expert fires newman's gun into an 800-gallon tank of water the examiner compares the unique markings on the fired bullet to those on the bullets recovered from the four murders and the attempted homicide [Music] ballistics expert joe capera it is a scientific certainty that this is the firearm that fired these bullets and no other firearm could possibly do that you want to hear it again after hours of interrogation investigators received the ballistics report [Music] that's like the magic piece of evidence so that's the one that you really knew would seal the whole case [Music] we had physical undeniable evidence that we could put in front of a jury that he could not refute in any way shape or form we could convict him without much trouble and we could have gotten the death sentence with the information that we had which put it over the top and he decided it was best to make a deal for life rather than take the chance on being executed [Music] alan newman pleads guilty to all the charges against him and is sentenced to five life terms without parole plus 100 years for handgun violations looking back it was the collective efforts of more than a dozen police agencies contributing interviews and evidence that led to the successful conclusion of this case the accomplishment for all police officers and all investigators is to to arrest the bad guy and put them in jail and when you do that you get a nice warm feeling for about 10 minutes until the next case comes in and you have to start all over again [Music] but for now every investigator who worked this case is content to know they have ended one man's violent rampage [Music] you

Channel: The FBI Files

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

Id: c_SjCcAymIQ

Length: 49min 23sec (2963 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021