[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NARRATOR: This time, on
"Killers Caught on Camera," in the United States, Colorado,
an abandoned car full of trash is cause for suspicion. There was a distinct odor. Every police officer
knows the smell of death. NARRATOR: The SWAT team
moves in on a suspect. And in Michigan, a
young couple disappears. Two black bags in a shed
put police on the path to a double murderer. MAN 1: It just
sounds like something bad is happening to her. WOMAN: We know what
happened because the video tells us what happened. MAN 2: I heard some gunshots. POLICEMAN: Drop it. Whatever it is, drop it. That does not prove
that I killed my wife. MAN 3: The camera doesn't lie. NARRATOR: Arvada, Colorado. Just a few miles northwest
of the state capital, Denver. Home to 38-year-old
Veronica Sarinana, one of five children who grew up
to love music and cheerleading. She went on to have
two sons of her own, her firstborn arriving
when Veronica was 20. Later, she worked at a bank. By June 2019,
Veronica was living back home with her parents. But in the early hours
of Wednesday, June 19, Veronica went missing. On the same day, 911
dispatchers received a call from an employee at a church
with a tip about a body in an obscure location. In the background, someone could
be heard prompting the caller. Sergeant Kate Herrlinger
responded to the call to investigate the claim. She said that there
was a man in the church and that she wanted
to report a crime. Essentially, the crime
was that his brother had killed his girlfriend
and placed her into the trunk of a vehicle near his home. As soon as we heard we possibly
have a body in our car, we're thinking we
have a homicide. We need to treat
this as a homicide. NARRATOR: It was a serious
allegation with a named suspect who lived close to the car. When the police arrived at
the address they'd been given, they found a white Ford Escort. It was abandoned,
unregistered for two years, and stuffed full of trash. When police
questioned neighbors, they thought the visible
limbs and the abandoned car were part of a mannequin. There was a distinct
odor of rotting, of death. Every police officer
knows the smell of death. There was a female
body in the car. Her head was down
near the floorboard. Her feet were almost
up on the seat. My initial response is we
need to get our CSIs out. We need to get the lab out. We were concerned with
the rising temperatures that we would start to
lose physical evidence, DNA off of the body. NARRATOR: Detective Chris
Steiner was called in to capture a 3D scan of the crime scene. CHRIS STEINER: The
car is a critical part in this particular
scene because that's where the body is located at. We use a 3D terrestrial
laser scanners. It allows us to make a
virtual copy of a crime scene. And we can go back to that
crime scene any time we need to. NARRATOR: They needed to
examine the body buried beneath the bags of garbage. MATT ARCHULETA: Upon
death, the body continues to change as it decays. So we ultimately
sealed the car and then had it towed with the body in
it back to the police station. NARRATOR: The question was, how
did the body get in the car? They only had one lead-- the man named in the 911 call,
Frank Moffat, who lived just around the corner from the car. The police moved in. Frank Moffat was arrested
and taken into custody. He basically said that he had
nothing to do with the homicide, had no idea how she ended
up inside this vehicle that he was using at the time. NARRATOR: The police
quickly got to work, searching for evidence in
and around Frank's house. They also canvassed the area
for surveillance footage. KATE HERRLINGER: We need to
knock on every single door and then get as much footage
as we possibly could. Everybody has
cameras these days. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the
crime scene investigation team got to work on the white car. This was not just a
female placed in the back of an empty vehicle. The car had a rolled-up rug. It had trash bags. It had car batteries. It was packed full of stuff. Each item had to meticulously
be taken out of the car. We processed some of
the items for DNA. It was a very
lengthy, slow process. NARRATOR: They
used the 3D scanner to ensure that
every possible piece of evidence was documented. Detective Matt Archuleta had to
examine the evidence in the car and what the body
itself revealed about the cause of death. MATT ARCHULETA: There
was a small trickle of, like, a bloody
substance coming out of one of the eye sockets. And it had a downward
shape to it in the sense that it had run down
the nose and then dried. Following gravity,
that would indicate the head was in an
upright position when that drop came out. It was fairly obvious that the
death had occurred somewhere else, that the body was put
into the car by someone, and then that the
body was covered with trash to hide the body. NARRATOR: Once the police
were able to remove the body from the car, they
used a fingerprint scanner to identify the victim. Her name was Veronica
Sarinana, the same woman who'd been reported missing. The police notified
Veronica's family of her death and started to try and
piece together how she died. We contacted family, more
specifically her mother, and started to get details. We wanted a time frame
of her whereabouts. NARRATOR: Doorbell footage
showed the last time Veronica was seen, at her mom's house
on the afternoon of June 18, the day before she
was found in the car. Speaking with Veronica's
family, the police discovered that she'd
been in a relationship with a man named Chris Moffat,
the same man who initiated the 911 call about the body in
the car and blamed his brother, Frank Moffat. Veronica's mother said it was
a very tumultuous relationship. There were plenty of times that
Chris put his hands on Veronica. There were times
he strangled her. He went to jail for this. He had just gotten out of jail. There was an active
restraining order attempting to keep him away from her. He had possibly killed
one of her cats. His behavior was very erratic. I think she was
very scared of him. However, for whatever reason,
she kept going back to him, and they kept this
relationship going. There's a psychological effect
known as trauma bonding, which is when you are in a
domestic violence situation, and you keep returning
to your abuser. And the reason for that is
because they're violent, and then they're
really nice to you, and then they show
a lot of love, and then they're violent again. And in those nice
moments, you develop this response where you almost
accept the bad with the good. And you keep going back,
hoping for the good. NARRATOR: Kyle McElroy was a
detective for the Arvada police department. Veronica's family were
worried about her safety. She had come back to her family. She had told her,
I don't feel safe. I can't be around Chris anymore. She even made the statement, if
I disappeared, look at Chris. NARRATOR: Two months
before Veronica's death, Chris Moffat had posted a
series of strange videos online. A lot of people
who are perpetrators of domestic violence,
we know that they have issues with anger management. We know that they don't have
good conflict resolution skills. So it's not that someone is
sitting there planning the cycle of, I'm going to do something
terrible to this person, and then I'm going to make up. It's more that someone is unable
to regulate the emotions when they feel angry
and then goes back and overwhelms
someone with love. So I think it's from both sides. It's a very broken
relationship structure. But I think people often blame
the woman for going back when we should obviously be focusing
on the men who keep engaging in this violent behavior. NARRATOR: Chris's violent
behavior was an ongoing concern. Veronica's texts
showed that they were seeing each other right
up to the day she went missing. The messages reinforced
that she was fearful of him. Chris was now a key
person of interest. The police needed to find him. KYLE MCELROY: About that
time is when we also realized we are missing her car. We're going to
try and notify all the other law enforcement
agencies around the state at this point that-- it's called a BOLO. Be On the Lookout
for this vehicle. NARRATOR: Veronica's car was
a blue Mitsubishi Gallant. It was tracked down the same day
as Veronica was discovered, just 24 hours after she disappeared. KATE HERRLINGER: On June
19, late in the evening, around 11:30-ish, Glenwood
Springs Police Department locates Chris sitting in a
Walmart parking lot, and he is in Veronica's vehicle. So they arrested him and
booked him into the county jail up there. NARRATOR: Inside Chris's
wallet were recent receipts. They gave the police
critical information. Those paper receipts
being in the car were huge for us because all
the receipts are time-stamped. And what we found was
it looked that Chris and Veronica had taken a
trip to Lake Dillon together. NARRATOR: A hotel
room keycard led them to cameras and their first
sighting of Veronica. This is the surveillance
footage from the Luxury Inn. And this was really important
because, as you can see here, this is the first time that
we saw Chris and Veronica together up at Lake Dillon. And it gave us a really
great starting point to try and develop the
timeline from here. One of the other things
we learned in this video, as you can see, it's Veronica,
and then you see the purse that Veronica is carrying here. And that is a purse
that continued to come up in this investigation. NARRATOR: The same
purse was filmed by a camera pointing directly
at Frank Moffat's house. The purse was hung on the front
door by an unidentified male. It was recovered from the front
door and taken in as evidence. That was a really
key piece for us because we now know
that this is the purse that Veronica is carrying. She has with her in some of the
final moments when she's alive, and then it pops
up back in Arvada. NARRATOR: Veronica was
also captured on camera at a nearby liquor store in
Lake Dillon in the early evening on June 18. KYLE MCELROY: We see that
Veronica is still alive, buying items that correspond
directly with the receipts that we found in her car. So all of this is
just narrowing down a timeline of when we're
trying to determine when this crime happened. It was one of the
highest-quality videos that we were able to recover. And we get really
lucky here in that we get a clear shot of the purse. NARRATOR: She was also filmed
withdrawing money at an ATM. Every single time we could
catch Veronica alive on camera, we knew that we needed to
keep going because the crime would happen soon after that. This is the last video
where we see Veronica alive. NARRATOR: The cash withdrawal
was in the early evening. And with Chris now in
custody, detectives questioned him about
his trip to Lake Dillon with Veronica on June 18. Chris described
the whole evening with Veronica on the Tuesday
night in Lake Dillon. Chris then suggested
that the police investigate the nature
of Frank's relationship with Veronica. The police wanted
to understand why Chris persisted to link his
brother with Veronica's death. Chris was under the impression
during his time in jail, his brother and Veronica
had started a relationship and were seeing each
other all the time. We knew that wasn't true,
but Chris was convinced of it. JULIA SHAW: The
thing with jealousy is that it doesn't
matter if it's true. What's particularly
pernicious when it's not true is that you take
every single protest that that partner is offering
you as further indication of their deception. And so it's this vicious cycle
where the person keeps saying, no, I'm not cheating
on you, and you go, that's exactly what
a cheater would say. And we know that jealousy is a
major contributor, especially when combined with poor
conflict resolution skills, to domestic violence and also
to intimate partner homicide. NARRATOR: While Chris and
Veronica were at Lake Dillon, there were a series of texts
sent from Veronica's phone. They were to Chris's brother,
Frank, just after 8:00 PM. We began to notice that the
night before the discovery of the body that the
tones and the words that are used within
the text messages are fundamentally different
than all of the text messages we see before. NARRATOR: The language
used was suspicious, and it was unclear why
Veronica would be texting Frank when she was with Chris. The police decided
to confront him. KYLE MCELROY:
Ultimately, he said that his brother had told him
that he had murdered Veronica. And Chris was
saying that he felt guilty about ratting
his brother out, and that was the
reason that he fled. He basically
claims, hey, I took her down to my brother's
house on the 19th. I dropped her off. I don't know anything
else about that. And then he asked
for an attorney. NARRATOR: As a
result, the police became increasingly reliant
on surveillance footage. It showed inconsistencies
in Chris's testimony. Veronica's car was
captured on camera leaving Lake Dillon just before
8:00 PM on Tuesday, June 18. The change in tone in the texts
coincided with Veronica's car leaving Lake Dillon. KYLE MCELROY: When we see that
car coming out of Dillon Dam Road over by Lake Dillon, we
start to get the idea she's not using the phone anymore. NARRATOR: Her car was
picked up again at 10:40 PM at a Walmart near Frisco. It parks in the
parking lot of Walmart. You see Chris get out. You never see Veronica get out. And we can watch as he
comes into the store. We can clearly see
him on surveillance. We identify him by the
clothes he's wearing. His physical features
are the same. We don't see Veronica again. From the minute that
they leave Lake Dillon, Chris is the only one
seen exiting that vehicle. NARRATOR: The next
morning, Chris was seen at another
Walmart, just nine miles from where Veronica's
body was found in the unregistered white car. This was the camera angle
that we used to definitively say that all the features that
we can see in the video are consistent. The text on the front of the
shirt, the white collar, the hat that he's wearing, and the
physical features that we see on him continue to be consistent
with who we know to be Chris Moffat walking out
of the Walmart just about an hour before
the 911 call is made. NARRATOR: Detectives compared
all the different surveillance footage over the three days. The clothing was a direct match
with what Chris was wearing in the Luxury Inn, the clothes
found in Veronica's car, and crucially,
the figure hanging the bag on Frank's front door. KYLE MCELROY: This was
the clip that really kind of tied it all together. We see a man. We know his physical features
are the same as Chris. And you can clearly see
him hanging a purse. We had seen this purse
appear over and over again. It has been with Veronica
every time we've seen it. NARRATOR: Chris
Moffat was clearly identified planting evidence. We're sure that Chris was
trying to frame his brother. NARRATOR: The
surveillance footage also confirmed Frank's alibi. We noticed that the brother
had come in 12 to 18 hours or a long time
before, and he never leaves again, which was
consistent with what his statement was. NARRATOR: Back at the crime
scene investigation lab, Matt Archuleta had
another breakthrough. Chris Moffat's fingerprint
was found on a trash bag inside the white
car, contradicting Chris's version of events. One of those stories was
that he wasn't in the car, he didn't put the
trash into the car, and he had nothing
to do with it. The fingerprint on the
trash bag told us otherwise. Now we know Chris
was in that vehicle. When he claimed to have nothing
to do with Veronica's death and nothing to do with being
in or around that vehicle, we now have him placed
inside that car. NARRATOR: The fingerprint
and the footage were vital for proving
that it was Chris Moffat who killed Veronica. KYLE MCELROY: Seeing Chris
on camera planting evidence in his brother's house
allowed us to focus on him as a suspect within
24 hours of this crime occurring, which is so vital
in any homicide investigation. We knew how Veronica
had been killed, when she had been killed. We felt confident
that an argument had broken out
like it had before, and it had turned physical. We knew from looking
at Veronica's body, the most likely cause of
death was asphyxiation or being strangled to death. And so that would be consistent
with an argument breaking out. NARRATOR: There are 65 miles
between Lake Dillon and Arvada with plenty of
places to pull over. KATE HERRLINGER:
Up at Lake Dillon, there are some pull-off
spots that people sit, and they can enjoy
the views of the lake. And we believe that's where
he actually murdered her and then drove
her back to Arvada to dump her body in the
car at his brother's house. JULIA SHAW: Framing someone
for a crime that you committed is incredibly difficult to do. We almost always see it in
organized crime circumstances and basically nowhere else. And the reason for that is
that it takes a lot of planning to successfully frame someone. And most murder is committed
as an impulsive or bad decision in the moment. In this case as well, he wasn't
planning to kill her probably. It happened because it
was a domestic violence situation where he lost
control, and he went too far. But if you don't plan
it, you can't plan also who you're going to frame,
how you're going to make sure that they don't have an alibi,
how you plant the evidence like a purse on a handle. It's going to be really hard to
successfully frame that person. NARRATOR: The question remains,
why did Chris kill Veronica? KATE HERRLINGER: He
believed she was having an affair with his brother. I think he was jealous. I think he was angry. And I don't think he
wanted her to ever be with anyone else but him. NARRATOR: Chris Moffat pled
guilty to second-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced to
55 years in prison. JULIA SHAW: It must have been
a terrorizing force in her life to have this relationship and
to be drawn back in repeatedly, knowing that she was
likely to be strangled again, to be hit again. In some ways, this
is a case study in intimate partner homicide. And what we should take
from this isn't, wow, why did she keep going back? What we should take
from this is, wow, why did nobody intervene and
take him aside and train him on conflict management and
make sure that his anger management was under control? NARRATOR: Veronica
Sarinana was trapped. Extreme violence in her
relationship became the norm. This is a global issue. JULIA SHAW: Femicide, which is
the killing of women and girls, it's a form of
gender-based violence. Every single day,
133 women are killed in the world at the hands of
family members and loved ones. So there's even more
women who are killed, but just by people who
allegedly love them, 133 women and girls are
killed every single day. NARRATOR: In our
next case, someone you'd expect to be loving turned
out to be quite the opposite. Detroit, Michigan. 20 miles northeast
of downtown Detroit lies Clinton Township, home
to the Marzejka family. The father Robert
Sr., his two sons Robert Jr. and Kevin, and
also the youngest child, daughter Danielle, and her
boyfriend, Seren Bryan. Ava Glass is a crime
journalist with a fascination for family dynamics. AVA GLASS: Danielle and
Seren were a young couple. She was 18. He was 19. Danielle was a
little more outgoing, a little more vivacious. She was a free spirit
who didn't always like to do the things everybody
else did, whereas Seren was described by his
friends and his family as quiet, introspective,
and artistic. He liked to express
himself through drawing more than he liked talking. But Danielle, he could
talk to all the time. And everybody who knew them saw
them as a close and very happy couple. NARRATOR: Danielle and Seren
worked and lived together. AVA GLASS: Danielle and Seren
both lived with Danielle's father and her two brothers. They shared a mobile home. It was quite crowded, but
everything seemed perfectly normal, until one night,
Danielle and Seren returned from their all-night job
at a local restaurant, were dropped off by
a colleague, and then they completely disappeared. NARRATOR: On August 26,
2018, 911 dispatchers received a disturbing
call from Danielle's brother, Kevin Marzejka. Police responded to the scene,
recording on body-worn cameras. Kevin Marzejka and
his father Robert Sr. met them on the
steps of their home. The patrol officers prepared
to deal with potentially sensitive evidence. They see inside these
large plastic bags, two really large plastic
bags shoved at the back, and they see a leg. NARRATOR: The home was
considered a crime scene. An investigation was
launched to find out who the body parts
belonged to and how they ended up in the shed. They searched inside
the home for evidence. In Danielle and Seren's
bedroom were key items Danielle would normally
carry with her. ROBERTA BABB: Danielle's
phone charger was still there. Danielle was someone who was
always on her phone to the point that she needed to have a phone
charger to top up her battery, and it was something that she
would never leave home without. NARRATOR: Danielle had diabetes
and was dependent on insulin to maintain her
blood sugar levels. Not only was her phone
charger still there, but also, her insulin
was still there. NARRATOR: Outside,
police guarded the shed. The bags of what appeared
to be human remains couldn't be removed until the
scene had been fully documented. Danielle's father Robert
Sr. and brother Kevin could only watch and
wait for the police to confirm who was
inside the bags. The police needed to
work out what happened. Kevin Marzejka was convinced
that the human remains in the shed were his
18-year-old sister Danielle and her boyfriend Seren. But the police still had
to confirm it was Danielle and Seren's remains in the shed. Forensic investigators
use luminol, a chemical that reacts with
hemoglobin, to detect blood under black UV light. A luminol test
inside the bedroom that Danielle and
Seren had shared found evidence of blood spatter. Extensive blood
spatter, in fact. And then also, cleaning
fluids that had been used to try and eliminate it. NARRATOR: As they removed
furniture and carpet, it became clear
that there had been a violent struggle in
Danielle and Seren's bedroom. Danielle's father Robert
Sr. and her brother Kevin were taken to the police
station for questioning. Kevin was asked about
the strength of Danielle and Seren's relationship. During the police interview,
it became clear that Danielle's brother Robert Jr. was missing. Dr. Roberta Babb is a
clinical psychologist. Robert Jr. in 2011 developed
symptoms of mental illness to the point that his family
became incredibly concerned and sought medical intervention. After evaluations
and discussions with medical
professionals, Robert Jr. was diagnosed with
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and paranoia. What we also know is
that from 2011 onwards, due to his erratic behavior, he
was hospitalized two or three times over a nine-year period. NARRATOR: Kevin had no idea
where his elder brother was. The police spoke with
Robert Sr. to try and work out where Robert Jr. had gone. Robert Jr.'s phone
records revealed that he'd called
a cab to pick him up from the home on
Thursday, August 23, the same day Danielle
and Seren went missing. The cab driver told detectives
that he'd taken Robert Jr. to Walgreens and then Wendy's. By analyzing the
route the cab took, the police found
surveillance footage that tracked Robert Jr.'s movements. After going to
Wendy's on August 23, he was caught on
camera taking a bus. He traveled for an hour and
20 minutes before getting off. Five minutes later, he was
picked up on surveillance cameras entering a Tim Hortons. Shortly afterwards,
Robert Jr. returned home. The video footage
of Robert Marzejka Jr. was incredibly helpful. Every place he was
picked up on camera, he was obviously not injured. He was obviously not kidnapped. He was shopping,
and he was eating. He wasn't a victim. NARRATOR: Robert Jr.
was last seen by one of Danielle's friends at
home on the 24th of August, two days before the human
remains were found in the shed. The police urgently
needed to find him. NEWS PRESENTER: 26-year-old
Robert Marzejka is a person of interest in this case. He was driving a
white 1999 Ford E250 van with blue duct tape around
the driver's side rear window. NARRATOR: Police
circulated Robert Jr.'s photograph across the country. Meanwhile, the medical
examiner's report confirmed the bodies in
the black bags in the shed were Danielle and Seren. It also revealed
exactly how they died. Both Danielle and Seren
had been violently beaten. A rubber hammer covered
in blood was found along with the plastic bags, and they
believe that was the weapon that they'd been attacked with. They were both wearing
T-shirts and underwear. So authorities
believed they'd been asleep when they were attacked. They didn't die from the
violent blunt force trauma that they suffered. According to forensic analysis,
they actually suffocated. They were wrapped in
plastic and their mouths and nose duct-taped. And then the plastic bag was
duct-taped around their necks. NARRATOR: On August
27, Robert's white van was spotted in Toledo, Ohio, 80
miles south of Clinton Township. The police found the van,
but it was abandoned. Robert Jr. was
nowhere to be seen. When the police got the DNA
and fingerprint results back from the crime scene,
they were a match for Robert Jr. The police
were now on the hunt for Danielle's brother. Police notified
employees and security at bus stations and
airports, warning them to be on the lookout for
a potential murder suspect. NARRATOR: August 28, two days
after the bodies were found, Danielle's brother was caught
on camera but looked different. Robert Jr. develops,
creates, finds a disguise. It's a sort of rudimentary
disguise-- a wig, a baseball cap or a hat of
some sort, and sunglasses. NARRATOR: The next day, he
walked into a bus station in Toledo and bought a
ticket to Cincinnati. People working there
believed it was Robert Jr. and reported him to the police. AVA GLASS: These attempts
to disguise his identity had the unintended
opposite effect of making everybody notice him
because he looked so strange. NARRATOR: When
Robert Jr. arrived at Cincinnati Bus Station,
he asked employees for access to a computer. They directed him
to the library. He was relaxed and friendly. He scanned the news, unaware how
closely he was being watched. In reception, the
police were waiting. Unmasked and identified, Robert
Jr. was taken back to Detroit. In search of answers,
Robert Jr.'s brother Kevin called to speak with him
in the interview room. Psychiatric reports
declared Robert Jr. was sane and fit to stand trial. AVA GLASS: He pleaded not
guilty by reason of insanity. Despite his long
mental health struggle, the argument of the
state in this case was he covered up his crime. He attempted to hide
all evidence of it. And then he fled. And they said those were not
the actions of an insane person. NARRATOR: Robert Jr. did
not offer up an explanation. All the surveillance
footage could provide was an insight into
his state of mind. AVA GLASS: He doesn't
seem panicked. He doesn't seem deranged. He doesn't seem to
be lost or confused. In fact, he seems
calm and rational. He seems to know
where he's going. There's nothing in
the footage that seems to indicate his mental
illness is so severe he should be forgiven for beating his
sister and her boyfriend to death with a
hammer and suffocating them in plastic bags. NARRATOR: Defense counsel
claimed Robert killed his sister and her boyfriend because he
thought they were conduits for voices in his head. The jury deliberated
for just 40 minutes before finding
Robert Jr. guilty-- murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to life
in prison without parole. The family never got
a full explanation. But Dr. Roberta Babb
feels the family dynamic offers some insight. From what we know, the
children responded differently to the loss of their mother. Kevin and Danielle
appeared to grieve but managed to continue
with their life. It didn't disrupt it unduly. Robert Sr. had lost his wife. He was sleeping on the
sofa, drinking excessively. Robert Jr. had lost
his mother and was sleeping in his own room on his
own, left with his own thoughts. And that must have
been incredibly lonely and isolating for him. It may not have been that
Robert Jr. felt a physical sense of threat from his
younger sister, but her presence, her
relationship, her getting on with life did pose a
threat to his own sense of his identity, his agency,
potentially his own masculinity. And that may have
been something that activated very murderous
thoughts in Robert Jr. AVA GLASS: They
were heartbroken. They were devastated. Danielle's brother Kevin, he
said, I don't hate Robert, but he's not my brother anymore. And I think that gives us a very
good picture of how strongly he felt about what happened. [THEME MUSIC]
