In criminal investigations, forensic evidence such as DNA analysis and physical traces can reveal the true perpetrator even when initial suspects appear innocent. In the case of Francis Craig's murder, investigators initially suspected her fiancé Eric Wolf due to his suspicious behavior at the crime scene, but DNA evidence found on the zip ties used to bind her body ultimately identified the actual killer, Cortez Butler, a convicted murderer on parole. This case demonstrates that thorough forensic analysis and the ability to challenge initial assumptions are essential for uncovering the truth in complex homicide investigations.
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A young mother on the verge of a new beginning.
>> She always used to talk about her wedding. She had everything planned out.
>> She was going to be living the life that she's always dreamt of having.
>> Violently struck down. Not just homicide, but an act of rage. I had no idea why somebody would want to do that.
>> Police chase a deranged killer down a sinister path.
>> He was a big heroin dealer in Jackson.
Someone burnt the house down through a maze of twisted theories.
>> Maybe this was a retaliation.
>> That was probably self-induced.
>> You mean suicide?
>> Yeah.
>> Until the case takes a mindbending turn.
He looked at me and said, "You have it all wrong."
>> That person never was on our radar.
>> Just an epic, epic tragedy.
>> I was almost in disbelief.
That's just something that was entirely unexpected from the beginning.
>> Until we try to rule them in or rule them out, I don't know that any of us are safe.
On Sunday, August 10th, 2014, in an upper middle class neighborhood in Jackson, Michigan, a quiet morning is broken by a desperate phone call.
>> Our dispatch did receive a 911 call from panicked individual.
>> 911.
>> Yeah. Somebody out to my house right now.
Marcia, I think she's I think she's dead.
>> Okay. Well, has she been sick?
>> No. There's blood everywhere.
>> Do you know where it's coming from?
>> I don't know. I don't know.
>> Okay. Can you tell if she's breathing?
>> She's not. She's cold.
Oh my god.
>> Police raced to the home just before 11:00 a.m. where they're greeted by the caller and three young girls. He had said that the deceased body was up in a bedroom upstairs.
There was two bedrooms that we walked past, which were bedrooms where the kids had been sleeping with the three children who lived there safely out of the house and the crime scene locked down. Detectives come upon a grizzly site.
>> As we enter the bedroom, then we do see the body.
It was slumped down between the bed and the wall and there was quite a bit of blood at that point. We see zip ties on her hands and we see what appears to be several stab marks. A zip tie was wrapped around each wrist with another looped through it and cut as though she'd been strapped to the bed and then cut loose.
>> We at that point determined we likely had a homicide. The police talk to Eric Wolf, who placed the 911 call. He tells them the victim is his fiance, 28-year-old Francis Craig.
He also makes a startling admission.
He said that he had worked all night. So when he came home, he after finding uh Franny in the condition she was in, he then went downstairs and slept on the recliner chair.
For whatever reason, he did not call 911 until a couple hours later in the morning.
Francis's two daughters and Eric's little girl were all in the house at the time.
While Eric slept, his 10-year-old child walked into a horrifying scene.
>> Eric's daughter, Lexi, went into the bedroom and clearly could tell that something was a miss.
She even touched her. I could tell that she was not moving. Um, I think she might even have described her as a little cold.
>> Lexi went downstairs and woke up her father. And that's when he finally called 911.
>> We all felt that a normal average individual would at the bare minimum make sure their fiance, the person they're about to get married to and spend the rest of their life with, is okay.
>> Eric's decision to walk away from the murder scene is a red flag for investigators, and so is his casual demeanor. When Eric was interviewed by one of the other detectives at the scene initially, the detective said he didn't seem too concerned, didn't seem too upset about what had happened. Detectives plan to grill Eric about his suspicious behavior. But first, they need to finish processing the crime scene.
>> There was approximately 90 stab wounds, and they were in a very aggressive manner.
It was overkill. Not just committing a homicide, but an act of rage where it's overthe-top.
The rule of thumb is on a situation where there's multiple, and I'm talking more than a dozen stab wounds, it's usually a crime of passion. So, at that point, you typically look at somebody close to the victim.
>> Investigators sift through the bloody mess for clues. There's no sign of a murder weapon, but plenty of signs of conflict.
The crime lab, which is the CSI people, uh, they responded to the scene. They were there for multiple hours collecting a ton of evidence >> while the forensics team works the scene inside.
Shocked friends and family have gathered outside the house.
>> I didn't believe her. I thought I was thought it was a lie.
It's not real. It didn't happen.
I had no idea why somebody would want to do that.
Francis was just an amazing person all around.
Francis and I worked together. We hung out outside of work together. We would hang out with our kids.
>> Investigators learned that Francis had two daughters with an ex-boyfriend.
The oldest is 5 years old and the youngest is three.
Our boyfriends actually were friends and he brought her to my house one day and that was like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It felt like we've kn known each other for years.
She's a wonderful amazing mom. The best mom that I know. She was the best person I've ever met and known in my life.
She would do anything for anyone.
>> Francis and the father of her children broke up, but she still dreamed of getting married.
>> She always used to talk about her wedding and everything. And at this point, she didn't even have a boyfriend.
She had everything planned out.
dreams became reality in 2012 when she started dating 29-year-old Eric Wolf.
>> Eric was a divorced single father, one young child. He had primary custody over her.
>> 2 years into the relationship, Eric and Francis moved in together. Despite working two jobs, Francis did all she could to make time for her children and Eric's daughter, too. She was constantly doing things with her girls when she wasn't working, even with her stepdaughter. She was amazing.
>> Her days were long, but her life was full. Eric proposed and the couple bought a house together.
>> Francis was very, very excited about getting married. Like every day she was tagging me or on Facebook or like sending me pictures. you know, she thought she was going to be living the life that she's always dreamt of having and having that fairy tale wedding.
But when detectives press Franny's friends, they learned that Eric had a dark side.
>> They told me that they weren't super fond of her fianceé.
>> Because my daughter spent a lot of time with Francis, she was like a second mother to my daughter. And my daughter did tell me several times of Eric being kind of like a drill sergeant.
He seemed real cocky.
Just everything was about him and his daughter more so than Francis and her girls.
I felt in my gut from the moment I found out that something happened to Francis, I felt like Eric had something to do with it. I didn't know what. I didn't know how. I didn't know why. I just felt like it was because of him that she's gone.
>> Police are determined to get to the bottom of Eric's suspicious behavior.
>> When we interview him, he stated when he saw her in the condition she was in, he did not call 911 and he didn't seem too upset about what had happened. At that point, he was somebody uh definitely a person of interest in the homicide of Franny Craig.
>> Coming up, Eric's story gets stranger by the minute.
>> I didn't even know if this was, you know, like self-inflicted accident.
>> That's what That's what we need to find out, too.
>> A tiny clue reveals a big surprise.
>> There was DNA found on Franny's zip tie.
And when police find the killer, it shocks everyone.
>> I remember thinking to myself, I'm glad we're sitting down right now.
After calling 911 following the brutal murder of his fiance, Francis Craig, Eric Wolf is questioned by police about how he discovered his fiance's body.
I came home this morning cuz I work 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Mhm.
>> I went upstairs. I checked both the girls' room before going in uh our bedroom.
>> Okay. So, you came around to the foot of the bed >> and kind of looked.
>> Yes.
>> To see where she was at.
>> That's exactly where I did.
>> Okay. Did you see anything on the mattress when you first came in?
it. I saw I guess I might have saw uh that streak, but it wasn't it didn't jump out like blood or anything.
>> Okay. So, you saw something that just didn't jump out to you. This is bad.
>> Eric did not seem to register surprise, anger, hurt, anything that I think we all normally would want to see from a loved one when somebody is killed.
I thought maybe she had been drinking or something because she was in like almost like a funny position on the floor, which she doesn't drink hardly ever. I knew better than to wake her. I know from prior experience whenever I've woken her up, she's not a morning person and I get yelled at. As the interview creeped close to an hour, Eric suggests a much darker reason for ignoring his fiance sprawled out on the bedroom floor.
>> Up until just now, maybe since we've been here, I thought that if it wasn't an accident, then it was probably self-induced.
>> You mean suicide?
>> Yeah. He indicated that he thought maybe she had committed suicide and just did not want to deal with it at that point.
We found that being very odd and a red flag. Typically on a suicide, uh, you'll find one stab wound or one gunshot wound. You won't find multiple stab wounds.
The prospect of Franny inflicting 90 stab wounds with her hands zip tied sounds preposterous to the police.
Even if it was physically possible, why wouldn't Eric have reacted with alarm?
>> So, you didn't want to come to grips with it if she had done so, right?
Because you don't want to do it.
>> To investigators, Eric's shifting story doesn't add up. Why would a woman everyone described as happy and carefree take her own life?
And the only reason I say selfinduces is just cuz of how highrung everything is right before this wedding. And it's a lot of stress.
>> Yeah.
>> Eric's strange comments could signal that he's traumatized over the death of his fiance or that he's hiding something.
Determined to mine the truth, detectives decide to go right at their prime suspect.
Did you?
>> No.
>> No. What?
>> No. I didn't do this. I didn't know anything about it. I walked in and I walked out, went to sleep, got up, went back in and reported it.
>> But that brings me back to questions we just asked. You made it at least halfway into that background.
>> I did make that and I admit that. And I'll admit that in front of whoever needs to hear it. But I want to make that perfectly clear that my stance on this is exactly what I said. I went in for whatever reason it was. I didn't react.
>> Without forensic evidence to hold him, Eric is free to go. But investigators vow to keep their eye on him.
And the deeper they look, the more circumstantial evidence starts to build up.
We did do a pretty thorough background as we always do. And one thing we found out is that Eric did have a little bit of assaultive past with prior uh girlfriends and an ex-wife. It seems like he has some violent tendencies.
>> One of the strangest facts in this case is that Eric Wolf has a father who is serving a life sentence in prison for his own firstderee murder conviction.
He was convicted on a cold case homicide investigation in the '9s and was serving life in prison for murder. So that certainly put up a red flag to us.
Was it possible that violent tendencies run in the family? Even if they did, what possible reason would Eric have to want his fiance dead?
>> The homicide occurred in August. I believe their wedding was planned in September.
We talked with her parents and her friends. They told me that uh Franny had had second thoughts and they were trying to convince her that if she was not prepared to get married um that maybe she should wait. And they also said Eric had had second thoughts.
Eric may have got cold feet, didn't want to get married, didn't know how to end the relationship.
While police work diligently to prove Eric's guilt, Francis's friends wait and wonder.
>> We didn't know what was going on. Um, nobody knew what was going on and what happened um with Francis and how she was murdered. Um, we just knew she was dead.
>> Behind the scenes, police work tirelessly. They obtain a search warrant to collect Francis's and Eric's electronics, but quickly realize that Francis's cell phone is missing. We do find the cell phone near Franny's house.
It had been thrown up against a tree and damaged. Again, we're thinking that the cell phone has some pretty valuable information.
The cellular phone data quite often can be some of the most compelling evidence.
We were able to get the phone records and nothing really stuck out as being her uh Franny communicating with anybody that would give us suspicion.
With no unusual cell phone activity or signs of forced entry on the day of the murder, police stay focused on Eric.
>> Eric Wolf at the time was at work and they investigators went and checked out, you know, what they could to verify his alibi.
Police check the company's security cameras.
They do have one entrance. They do have a time card check in checkout system.
We're able to verify he was at work or allegedly at work when the incident occurred.
The problem with the system is there's some other exits that they're not supposed to use, but the some of them have cameras, but other ones do not.
Was he able to leave his place of employment and get home to commit a murder and have all of that be undetected?
Eric was the only person we could figure who would have any reason to want Franny dead.
Police investigating the homicide of 28-year-old Francis Craig cannot confirm her fiance's alibi since not every exit at his workplace had a security camera.
>> We couldn't rule out that sometime during the night she left and then came back. Eric's shaky alibi and suspicious behavior at the crime scene doesn't give police enough to arrest him, but it does leave them with a drastic course of action.
If you are operating in a murder investigation, thinking that man killed his fiance in the home where the children were, you are thinking we want to keep the children safe. We kept Eric's daughter from him while we tried to figure out what happened to Franny.
>> Both Erics and Franny's daughters are removed from Eric's home and put in the custody of family members.
With pressure mounting, detectives need to move fast to prove their theory or find a more plausible one. At that point, we tried to determine any communication Franny may have been having with someone other than her fianceé.
>> Franny had an exboyfriend.
He no longer lived in the area, but he had returned to the area recently and had some level of connection or interaction with Franny.
>> The police press Franny's ex.
Could he have committed this heinous crime?
That young man was a nice young man.
Came from a very, very nice family >> and he did have an alibi where he was at at the time of the incident. We were able to verify that alibi. So, we were able to eliminate him.
>> If no one in Francis's immediate circle wished her harm, what about her co-workers?
Detectives learned that while Francis worked at a retail store, she was involved in a frightening incident.
Where Trinity was working, there was a couple shoplifterss that had stolen some clothing. She confronted them. The confrontation turned to violence when the mother of the two young shoplifters jumped in, attacking Francis.
The assault left Francis with a severe eye injury as well as emotional scars.
The incident at work left Francis really scared, nervous, cautious.
>> The mother of the shoplifterss was actually criminally charged for a crime for the assault, some type of unarmed robbery. She was convicted.
So there was some concern that maybe this was a retaliation for that situation.
>> We did surprise them with a visit.
They did have alibis on where they would have been at at that uh time that the incident occurred.
>> Investigators are able to verify those alibis, eliminating the women as suspects.
Frustrated detectives are still hoping that DNA from the crime scene will help them find the killer.
But while they wait for results from the crime lab, the people of Jackson attend Franny's funeral.
Their emotions raw from the news of her violent death.
her male carrier showed up to her funeral because she left such an impact on that person. That's how loved and how missed Francis Craig is.
>> This was definitely a shock to the community because we don't have that many homicides.
>> I was scared. I just didn't know what to expect.
I was afraid to leave the house. I was afraid to do anything because we still had no answers as to what happened.
The overwhelming feeling was the pressure we were under to get this right.
Determined to find justice for Franny, investigators continue to drill down on Francis's fianceé.
Hoping for an inside look at Eric Wolf, they bring in one of the couple's former roommates.
Ryan Marshall was friends with Eric Wolf. So, Eric and Franny welcomed Ryan into their home to stay with them.
His house had caught on fire and she was trying to help a friend out.
He lived with them until April of 2014.
The homicide happened August of 2014, so he had a pretty good knowledge of the two of them.
He said everything was good. And he actually vouched for Eric, saying Eric was a really good guy and a friend for a long time and doesn't feel that Eric would ever do anything to harm Franny.
Speaking with Ryan doesn't give police new reasons to suspect Eric, but it doesn't clear him either.
3 months in, we've pretty much eliminated everybody of interest, anyone close to Franny other than Eric, but we don't have enough evidence to present to the prosecutor.
But then a new piece of information arrives that brings a new suspect into the spotlight.
>> There was DNA found on Franny's zip tie.
3 months after Francis Craig's murder, the lab results from the crime scene finally arrive. and they provide a huge break in the case.
>> We're notified through a national index.
The DNA located on the zip ties matched DNA in a database.
When somebody commits a felony, they have to submit to a DNA test.
Somebody's DNA showed up on the zip ties that were used in the homicide.
We get a name of Cortez Butler.
>> Who is Cortez Butler?
Police waste no time looking into his criminal record.
>> We find out Cortez Butler served approximately 25 years for murder and was currently on parole in the Detroit area.
>> But we knew almost nothing else. We tried to determine if we could connect Cortez Butler to Franny Craig to Eric Wolf and we came up with nothing. We tried to determine if he had family locally and we came up with nothing.
>> In fact, Cortez Butler appears to have no connection to Jackson whatsoever.
So we look in our database to see if we have any Cortez butlers in any police report we've done any place in Jackson County and we find none.
Then it was this mad scramble of well then how do we even tie Cortez Butler to this? For all we know he may have worked at Home Depot and his DNA may be on these zip ties for a completely innocent reason.
The investigators connected with Cortez's parole officer.
They got Cortez's phone number. A search warrant was prepared and signed for Cortez Butler's phone records.
We learned that Cortez Butler's phone was in Jackson on the early morning hours of August 10th. the actual time of the murder.
The rest of those phone records almost exclusively placed it in and around the greater Detroit area, never in Jackson.
>> But what reason would Butler have to harm Franny?
Eric remained the prime suspect. He was the only dude with a motive.
>> Maybe Eric was not ready to get married and didn't know how to end a relationship.
>> So then the thought process was, did Eric hire this person to kill Franny?
>> The cell phone records also connect Butler to some other shady characters.
We were able to identify a Clifford and Rodney McKe as being connected to Cortez Butler. Clifford McKe lived in the Detroit area. Clifford McKe was in prison for approximately 20 years for murder. We found out that Rodney McKe um he was a big heroin dealer in Jackson.
Um we found out that he had uh committed arson.
>> The arson that Rodney McKe perpetrated was against Donna and Ryan Marshall.
The police are stunned. Ryan Marshall is Eric Wolf's friend.
The one who had been welcomed into Franny and Eric's home after his house burned down.
But what kind of a connection could Ryan possibly have to a drug dealer like Rodney McKe?
Ryan Marshall's mother had been a uh heroin dealer for Rodney McKe.
But after months of dealing for Rodney, Ryan's mother decided she wanted out.
>> Donna Marshall, refused to sell heroin for Rodney McKe.
>> Rodney didn't like to be told null.
>> Ryan's mother, Donna, held her ground, but Rodney retaliated.
Rodney McKe attempted to burn down a house with Ryan Marshall and his mother in it.
Ryan witnessed it all. He then contact the police.
>> What was the connection between Eric Wolf, Cortez Butler, the Marshalss, and a drug dealer from Detroit?
Detectives knew there was only one person who could answer the question, and soon they'd have a chance to ask him face to face.
>> Cortez Butler was arrested for yet another murder.
>> Not Franny's murder, but another murder in the greater Detroit area.
We went down there in Detroit with one sole purpose, to gather information from Cortez Butler on what happened to Franny and hopefully be able to explain to us what Eric's role in this whole thing was.
But Cortez said he wasn't going to uh talk without any kind of a deal.
It was clear that whatever Cortez was going to say, it was not going to be quote unquote on the record.
Investigators have DNA evidence and phone records that link convicted killer Cortez Butler to Francis Craig's murder.
They arrange to talk to him while he's detained for an unrelated homicide, but he immediately tries to shut them down.
Cortez said he wasn't going to talk without any kind of a deal. I said, "No one is giving you any kind of a deal without anyone knowing what you have to say."
Detectives press Butler hard until he finally agrees to talk, but only on one condition.
Cortez very pointedly and specifically asked repeatedly to not have the interview recorded.
If detectives agree not to record the interview, there's a chance Butler's testimony won't stand up in court.
Still, with no other leads in the case, they decide to roll the dice.
We were there interviewing Cortez in the first place because we need to find out Eric Wolf's involvement in this, and it was dire that we did so as the children were about to go back with Eric Wolf. The whole idea for that was to keep these kids safe.
So the detectives tried to read him his rights. He didn't even want to be bothered with the rights. I know my rights. I think it was, "Bro, I know my rights, bro."
>> Butler wastes no time getting right to the point.
>> Cortez looked at me and said, "You have it all wrong."
And I said, "Have what all wrong?" and he at that time let us know that Eric had absolutely nothing to do with this murder.
>> He goes, "I don't know this dude you're talking about. Know nothing about him.
Just just trust me. He was not involved in this whatsoever."
>> The statement contradicts one of the investigators strongest leads. But the next thing Butler says is even more explosive.
Cortez identifies himself as the killer.
I remember thinking to myself, I'm glad we're sitting down right now because I was almost in disbelief.
If Eric wasn't involved, why had this cold-blooded criminal murdered a woman to whom he had no obvious connection?
It all went back to Rodney McKe's arson case.
>> Rodney McKe attempted to burn down a house with Ryan Marshall and his mother in it.
Ryan Marshall was a key witness in his arson case.
>> He made some threats to Ryan that either he not agreed to testify or he was going to be killed.
Cortez told us that he had been hired by Rodney McKe to kill Ryan Marshall.
First, Butler had to find Ryan, who was homeless because of the fire.
So, we found out from Cortez Butler that they had bad information. They had information that Ryan Marshall was living with uh Francis Craig and Eric Wolf.
>> Cortez Butler entered Francis and Eric's house to kill someone who was no longer there.
Franny wasn't even the intended target.
Franny was as innocent of a victim as anybody could ever be.
When he opened the door, he had made the decision that he was killing somebody while he was there.
He doesn't have to force entry. He gets into the house. He noticed the bedrooms have some kids in it. He walks past them and he goes to Franny Craig's room.
When he gets to Franny Creger's room, he asks her where Ryan is. She said he's not there. Cortez tells Franny not to look at him. Uh, in his words, he stated she looked at him, so he had a killer.
The horrific details that Cortez reveals next leave detectives with no doubt about the guilt of the man sitting across from them.
>> He decided to bind her, trying to get information from her, but she would not cooperate.
Cortez um stabbed her multiple times.
>> We will never know how long he took to torture her and and butcher her.
And it clearly took time and effort to stab and slice her in the manner that he did.
She died in the service of keeping Ryan's identity and his location secret andor she quite frankly just didn't know.
>> Cortez Butler's chilling confession is nothing short of a gamecher both for detectives and for Eric Wolf.
>> It eliminated our hypothesis that Eric Wolf was responsible for Franny's death.
Eric wasn't involved. He's an an odd duck kind of guy. Eric was able to regain custody of his daughter.
I took from this case that we can never jump to conclusions. I was pretty convinced that he did it. Um, not to the point that I could charge him, but I was pretty convinced I had the right person.
Now that investigators do have the right person, they're determined to put Cortez Butler away for life. But all of that is in jeopardy.
>> I didn't believe that Cortez's confession would be legally admissible in court because it wasn't recorded.
And if Cortez Butler ever walked free again, I don't know that any of us are safe.
After months of dead ends, investigators finally have a confession from Francis Craig's killer.
But prosecutors are concerned that his testimony may not hold up in court.
>> I was concerned that it would be legally inadmissible because it wasn't recorded.
He was basically told, "We're not planning to use this in court against you." I was concerned that he had not been properly advised of his Miranda rights, but we still had his DNA on the zip ties and the cell phone records.
So, I kept thinking and I finally got myself legally to a point where I was convinced that we need to give this a shot.
In October of 2015, Cortez Butler is charged with Francis's murder.
When the trial begins 6 months later, Butler appears relaxed, almost giddy.
Cortez really seemed to thrive in that trial atmosphere. He would seek out cameras and smile at them, give them this big full teeth smile.
He wanted to fight just because he could. He wanted to run the show just because he could.
But that's just a warm-up for the verbal assault he launches into when he takes the stand.
>> Cortez Butler was a monster at that trial.
He bragged on how many bodies he had.
It was unbearable.
>> Butler gleefully describes his murderous past in gory detail, but when asked about killing Francis, he fiercely denies it.
>> He clearly was so excited to say why he didn't commit this murder, cuz he pleads to all of his murders. And he clearly didn't commit this one cuz he didn't plead to it.
Butler also denies ever confessing to police. But in a victory for prosecutors, the judge allows detectives to testify about Butler's confession.
>> We're able to pass that piece because he wasn't in custody for our case. He wasn't actually entitled to his Miranda warnings.
Eyewitness accounts play a major role in trying to move the jury, beginning with Eric's daughter, who found Franny dead.
Alexis was our first witness up there, and I don't know that I will ever forget the audible gasps and sobs and emotion pouring from the jury just from that first witness.
The physical evidence is laid out.
We have Cortez Butler's DNA on the zip ties that were used in the homicide. And we also have phone tracking information showing Cortez Butler in Jackson.
Prosecutors make a compelling case, but without a recording of Butler's confession. It's the detective's word against Butlers.
When the jury returns with the verdict, there's no guarantee which way the cards will fall.
Cortez Butler was convicted of first-degree murder and he won't ever walk free again.
>> The sentence was life without the possibility of parole for the premeditation murder of Franny Craig.
This was a complicated story to tell to a jury. It is a difficult one for all of us to wrap our brains around. Even still, Cortez goes to look for Ryan at her house and he doesn't find him and murders Franny in her own bed while she's doing nothing wrong. Franny had no connection to her killer whatsoever.
we can rest maybe a little easier that the bad guys won't ever hurt anybody else. At least not outside of the walls of prison.
But none of it brings Franny back.
>> Today, Francis's two daughters live with their father. Those closest to Francis do everything they can to hold on to her memory.
Franny's family I know are they've been lost ever since I've been lost ever since Francis has been murdered.
I want people to remember how happy of a person she was. How generous, how nice and kind she was.
I miss Francis so much and there's not a day that it goes by that I do not think about her. I know that she's watching over everybody and making sure that everybody's good because that's the type of person she was.
I wish I had known her and I hope I honored her in my handling of this case.
For more information on an unexpected killer, go to oxygen.com.
A college student with a bright future.
He was a journalism and history major who planned to go to law school.
>> He had a huge social group. He was very wellliked.
>> Is found murdered in the middle of town.
The wound was so deep the blade of the knife nicked the spine, sending police hunting for an elusive killer. This case was a true mystery, a true who done it. He was depicted as a promiscuous young man who could have been killed by anybody. And when they catch him, it leaves everyone blindsided. They did not want to believe this was true.
>> And that was pretty surprising. When we figured out who did it, I refused to believe it.
Columbia, Missouri is best known as the home of the University of Missouri.
>> I think many people would consider us a college town. This is a city, small city with 30,000 students, you know, coming in.
>> For the Columbia Police Department, a neighborhood of rowdy kids is usually as bad as it gets. mainly uh a lot of u college related uh crimes such as the parties and uh alcohol offenses.
>> Homicides in general uh were unheard of.
>> That all changes one afternoon in June 2004.
I received a call uh that someone had found a body in the east campus area and because I'm the east district commander, I headed towards the scene.
>> Schwarz arrives to find a team of officers already securing the area.
The body was in between two apartments lying face up and he only had boxer shorts on.
His throat had been slit most probably with a knife. It was a very large and gaping wound. It was very deep. There's a few other abrasions on the upper body. So, it was a very violent action, just a very violent crime.
>> I was a student in college and seeing this in a place I knew really well was tough.
>> The forensics team processes the scene while police search the area carefully, but they can't locate a murder weapon or ID on the body.
We started talking with people in the area to see if anyone knew this particular person.
>> This was a part of town where everybody really knows everybody else. Everybody knows everybody else's business.
>> One onlooker thinks they recognize the dead young man.
>> The body was identified as Jesse Valencia.
He was a young man attending the University of Missouri and we found out that he lived in the neighborhood block block and a half from where we found his body.
The 23-year-old lived alone in an apartment just off campus.
Police need to know if that's where the crime got its start.
We opened it up and started to look for any initial type evidence, trying to figure out who could have done this and for what reason.
>> The forensic team does a thorough sweep of the apartment, bagging Jesse's cell phone, cigarettes, and other items while police canvas neighbors to see if they noticed anything suspicious. The night before, >> his neighbor admitted coming home drunk about 3 in the morning and going to bed.
He was awakened by yelling that was going on next door. This neighbor actually pounded on the door and then went back to sleep.
The neighbor recalls that the shouting was late, almost 4:00 in the morning.
Police are curious who was in the apartment with Jesse and what could they have been arguing about.
>> That obviously started to help us narrow down the time frame of when this may have occurred, but that's all we had to work with at that point.
>> There were no real clues as to who had murdered this young man.
A few hours into the investigation, another young man arrives at the scene in a flood of tears.
This guy named Jack Barry told investigators he was Jesse's former boyfriend who just lived a few blocks away. A friend had called Jack Barry saying that Jesse was dead.
if he had a relationship with Jesse Valencia. He was definitely a person the detectives wanted to talk to.
Jack agrees to come down to the station for routine questioning. But first, he helps detectives track down Jesse's family in Kentucky.
They called me on the phone and a detective told me um that Jesse had been killed and I pretty much just and I just took off running through the house and ran out my front door.
screaming just too much.
Even when he was a little boy, Jesse never had trouble making friends.
Everybody wanted to be around him because he was constantly smiling, laughing. And Jesse told me he was gay when he was 10 years old. He started crying. and he got pretty emotional and he said that he was afraid that I was going to hate him and I told him that there was nothing in the world that could make me hate him. After that, he seemed pretty comfortable with himself.
>> As a teen, Jesse's confidence bloomed.
>> Jesse loved to talk. He loved meeting new people, making new friends.
when he was in high school, he wanted to try modeling. He did really well at it.
And u I always thought that he wouldn't go back to school, but a year from the date that he told us that he wanted to be a model, he said he wanted to be a lawyer. That's what he decided to do, and that's why he went to Missouri.
Lendup said he was a journalism and history major who planned to go to law school.
>> Jesse Valencia was one of those larger than-l life characters. He had such a big personality. He had a lot of friends. He had a huge social group.
Now, detectives need to find out who cut Jesse's life short in such a horrific way. They start by asking Jack Barry about his relationship with Jesse.
>> Jack told them he and Jesse had just split up and he was trying to make Jesse realize it's over. I need to move on.
Jesse still loved Jack, so he was having a hard time letting go. But Jack was already starting to see someone else.
>> Was it a fight with a spurn lover that the neighbor had heard in the middle of the night?
>> It was possible Jack had some type of confrontation with Jesse that led to his death.
>> And when investigators ask Jack for an alibi, it turns out that he doesn't seem to have one.
>> His alibi was, "I was home sleeping alone."
At that point, Jack Barry had become the primary suspect.
>> Coming up, detectives discover a secret romance.
>> They had started a relationship very quickly >> that uncovers a killer's trail.
>> A lie is the next best thing to a confession >> to a surprising culprit.
>> It was shocking on many levels.
Detectives in Colombia, Missouri are questioning a man who had recently split up with murdered college student Jesse Valencia.
>> Jack Barry wanted to end the relationship. He wasn't happy with the relationship any longer.
>> Jack paints a picture of a couple growing apart after 2 years of dating.
But a piece of evidence found at Jesse's apartment makes detectives question his story.
>> The investigating detectives found Jesse's cell phone and the cell phone showed that Jesse had called Jack Barry at about 3:18 that night.
>> The neighbors had heard some type of an argument from the victim's apartment approximately the time frame of when this occurred. So that would be obviously suspicious.
But Jack insists he was nowhere near Jesse's apartment.
>> Jack said that he had already gone to bed that night and that he heard a knock on his door at 3:18 in the morning and then he simultaneously got a phone call from Jesse's cell phone.
It was routine that Jesse would use his cell phone or sort of a doorbell.
Jack said he was tired and he really didn't feel like getting up and talking to his former boyfriend at 3:18 in the morning, so he didn't go to the door.
Jack says he rolled over and went back to sleep, but police aren't so sure and question him for hours.
>> Finally, Jack broke into tears and he said he regretted that he didn't go to the door because what happened might not have happened had he done that. His reaction was so genuine and it was clear that Jack still had a lot of love and affection for Jesse.
>> And it's becoming clear to detectives that Jack didn't kill Jesse, but they press him to see if he might know who did.
>> Jack said that he had no clue as to what would have happened to him and why anyone would have killed him.
>> 23-year-old Jesse Valencia, the MU student. Police found Valencia's body on East Campus, throat slashed.
>> As the story of the murder hits the 11:00 news, it sends shock waves through the city.
>> I would say this was probably one of the most gruesome killings in Colombia. We don't have very many murders here.
>> The murder of a gay young man just a week before the city's first Pridefest horrifies the progressive college community.
For anyone who thinks that they can get away with something like this so heinous is just unthinkable.
We know from past homicides that a majority of them are with people that they know. Anyone who had had contact with him, whether in a sexual relationship or a social relationship, the detectives wanted to talk to.
Police begin to make the rounds of Jesse's wide circle of friends, wondering if there's anyone in his life that might have harbored any kind of grudge.
One name they hear over and over is Zev Finuk, a student that Jesse had met two weeks earlier at a political rally.
>> Jesse's friends have said, "Oh, maybe it was this guy." Because he didn't seem quite normal.
There was something that made him a little bit different from other people.
>> Several of Jesse's friends, they said that Zeb wasn't comfortable in his own skin and that he had a lot of issues with being himself.
There was some contention whether Zeb and Jesse were having a romantic relationship. They were spending a lot of time together.
Rumors about the two young men had been swirling. And after Jesse was murdered, the gossip about Zev began to take a sinister tone.
>> Somebody saw someone matching his description, looking disheveled and crying, walking down the street the morning of the murder, and a car he was known to drive was seen in that area.
That's when the detectives started looking towards him and started talking with him and seeing what he had to say.
Detectives called Zev down to the station, but he denies that the rumors about him and Jesse are true.
>> Zev said they'd never had a sexual relationship, that they were friends.
Then Zeb would come over and he hung out with him.
Police questioned Zeb about where he was between 3 and 5 a.m.
>> His alibi was, "I was home sleeping." He was a young man who still lived with his parents.
>> They subject Zeb to a voice stress analysis test to see if he is telling the truth.
>> It showed untruthful, so deceitful. That did seem to be some evidence of guilt.
>> Detectives quickly follow up with a visit to his parents, but they confirmed that their son was home all night.
>> Zev's parents had said that when Zev would leave, he would always go through the garage door to get to the car and so it made a big racket. They would have awakened his parents and they said there's no way that he would have left that night.
It seemed like he did have an alibi.
With Zev Finuk discounted as a suspect, detectives continue to piece together the last hours of Jesse Valencia's life.
>> The detectives were talking with several of the friends of Jesse Valencia to see where he was on the evening and early morning hours that this occurred.
>> Police learned that Jesse had gone to a party at a friend's house around 11 p.m.
on the night he was killed.
Some friends of Jesse said that Friday night, uh, Jesse was at a party with a young man named Ed McDevit.
>> Ed McDevit was somebody Jesse had just met. Ed was a chef in town. They had met just a couple of nights before and had started a relationship very quickly.
Jesse's friends tell police that the two men left the party together, heading in the direction of Jesse's house, and that was around 3:00 in the morning on the last night of Jesse's life.
>> It appears as though Ed McDev might have been the last person to see Jesse alive.
And it was possible Ed McDev went home with Jesse and then killed him.
12 hours after finding Jesse Valencia's body, detectives track down 22-year-old Ed McDev and bring him down to the station.
Jesse hadn't met Ed McDevit 2 days before his death and invited Ed to come home with him on that Friday night, the last night of Jesse's life. So, he became a suspect at that point.
>> But Ed claims that he and Jesse went their separate ways soon after they left the party.
>> And he was talking with Jesse on the phone at the time he was walking home on the last night of Jesse's life.
Ed says that his roommate was up when he arrived home and invites detectives over to talk to him themselves.
>> There's nothing found when they search his home and everything Ed McDev told the officers. They could verify by looking at his cell phone records, by talking to his roommate. And at that point, investigators let him go.
Police hope the DNA results pending at the lab will help them link one of their suspects to Jesse's murder. Desperate for answers, Jesse's mom grows more despondent. Recalling an eerie premonition Jesse had years ago.
>> From the time Jesse was 7 years old, he had told me that he was going to die at a young age. He said, "I'm going to die at a young age, and I love all of you, and I always will love you, but I'll be okay." He would always end it with, "I'll be okay." And of course, I got emotional and upset over it, but he said, "We've got to make the most of what time I'm here."
A day after Jesse's murder, detectives receive the autopsy report and study it closely for clues.
The medical examiner concluded that Jesse had been murdered in the area of 3 4 5:00 in the morning. The cut to his neck was the only knife wound and it was the cause of death. And it was so deep the blade of the knife had also nicked the spine.
The lack of defense wounds suggests that Jesse had been taken by surprise.
>> The most mysterious thing was that across his breast bone there were bruises and in the middle of his back between his shoulder blade there were bruises.
The evidence suggests that Jesse was easily overpowered in the vicious attack.
Investigators hope that additional lab work will reveal even more and point to a killer.
There were fingernail scrapings collected during the autopsy and also some hairs were found on his chest and that was sent to the crime lab for analysis.
Until the crime lab turns up DNA, police have no choice but to move on to their next lead.
>> A lot of Jesse's friends were being brought in. They were giving evidence.
They were helping out with information.
>> One of those friends is a fellow student named Andy.
>> Andy Shmerhorn was a young man who had what they called a friends with benefits arrangement with Jesse.
Andy was out of town the night Jesse was killed. But the day after the murder, he comes forward to share a shocking story.
Andy Sherhorn told the investigating detectives that Jesse was having sex with a Columbia police officer.
>> He was having a relationship with an officer. I was surprised.
Andy nervously reveals an encounter three weeks prior at Jesse's apartment.
>> Andy Shermanhorn said that on May 14th, he had been at Jesse's home at night and there was a knock at the door and Jesse went to the door and a uniformed police officer was there and Jesse said, "It's okay. Oh, it's okay. He's he's cool. He's cool.
>> According to Andy, the officer took off his gun belt and the next thing Andy knew, the three of them were fooling around.
After it was over, the police officer said, "This has got to be a secret."
A secret affair between an officer and a murder victim is a major red flag.
>> If anyone of our officers had been seeing Jesse Valencia, why is he not being forthcoming if you have nothing to hide?
Why not just tell us?
>> Detectives need to know who this officer is.
>> They said, "Do you think you'd be able to recognize him if you saw him again?"
and he said yes cuz it had only been about 2 weeks since that incident.
>> Detectives asked Andy if he'll look through a book containing the photo of every officer in the Columbia Police Department.
They were having him walk down the hall where he was going to look at the yearbook.
Andy Sherman flipped through it without even looking. The pages closed and Shimmer began trembling and he said, "I passed him in the hallway just now. It was him.
The day after the murder of Jesse Valencia, detectives in Columbia, Missouri learned that he was allegedly having a relationship with a local police officer.
Jesse's friend Andy Sherhorn told the investigating detectives that he was an eyew to this sexual activity.
Sherhorn began trembling and he said it was him that I passed in the hallway just now and that was Steven Arthur Rios.
>> Steven Rios's commander believes Andy must be mistaken about the officer's identity. When the detectives told me that maybe Steve had been having a relationship with the victim, I told the detectives, "You're absolutely wrong. He was married to a wonderful young lady, and they had just had uh their first child."
>> Schwarz knows the 27-year-old Rios well.
The 5-year veteran is one of the department's rising young stars.
Steve was very outgoing.
He communicated well, very ambitious.
>> He was a young officer who was on his way up in the department because he was a go-getter and a very, very popular officer.
Detectives don't know if Andy is telling the truth, but they're certainly anxious to get Rios's side of the story. If he was having a relationship, that does not mean that he had killed Jesse Valencia.
>> Rios is out of town for a couple of days on a camping trip with co-workers. So, they begin tracing Rios's steps the day Jesse's body was found.
>> He went in for his work shift uh later in the afternoon like he normally did, and at that point, the body had been found.
The sergeant on duty that day had told me that Rios was coming to the scene to help identify the body.
He had contacted the on duty sergeant but said he could help.
>> Rios said that I met Jesse Balenci when I gave him a ticket back on April 18th.
>> Investigators pull a copy of the incident report to see if it backs up Rios's story.
April 18th of 2004, some friends of Jesse's were having a party and the party kept getting loud and the police showed up to get him to quiet down and Jesse, this intelligent pre-law major, said, "What's your probable cause?" Well, that got him arrested and Steven Rios gave him a municipal court summons for obstructing a governmental operation.
A call to Jesse's mother cooporates the report. And >> Jesse told me that when he was arrested that the cop that drove him down to the jail was really nice and that he talked to him all the way down to the station.
And he said, "I kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable because he kept asking me personal questions about my life that I didn't really feel like he should be asking me when he was trying to arrest me for something."
>> But the arrest wasn't the end of the officer's interest. The very next day, he turned up at Jesse's apartment. After he got arrested, Jesse called me on the phone and he said, "The cop that arrested me last night showed up on my doorstep."
He said he had to ask me some more questions, but the questions he was asking Jesse were more of a personal nature.
They went out um a few times after that and he would come to Jesse's apartment and just show up unannounced even when he was in uniform.
>> Linda doesn't know much more than that, but thinks that Jesse's friend Joan Sheridan might.
When they track her down 2 days after the murder, Joan confirms that Jesse saw the officer more than once after the arrest.
He had told her that the officer would typically come by sometime after 3:00 and before 6:00 in the morning just for sex and then leave.
>> Joan reveals that she got a close-up look at the officer one night when he showed up at Jesse's place.
They showed her a photo lineup and she was able to pick the person that came by to Jesse's apartment that night and it was Steven Rios.
Detectives now have more evidence that Rios was having a scandalous relationship with Jesse.
And when they hear what Jones says next, they suspect he may also have a motive for murder.
Jones said that when he went to court for his municipal court summons, Jesse assumed it would be dismissed since he was having sex with the arresting officer and it had not been dismissed and that had angered Jesse. So Jesse had told Joan that the next time the police officer comes over, I'm going to tell him that I have a little secret the chief of police might want to know if he doesn't get that ticket dismissed.
The detectives called me and told me that Jesse was threatening to contact the chief and expose Rios.
Finally, the light bulb went off.
You start looking at who had a motive to kill Jesse Valencia. Rios was very worried about his job. He was very worried about his reputation.
He would be very devastated. He would be embarrassed. by this information coming out.
>> That's when Rio's became the suspect.
>> It's a serious matter to accuse one of their own. Investigators quickly regroup to plan the best approach.
>> They didn't feel they were ready to interview him yet. They were wanting to have the DNA evidence come back before they actually confronted him. But all of a sudden, Rios showed up at the police department and said, "Oh, uh, could I talk to you for a second?"
>> He had this look on his face, like he was very upset.
Very upset.
>> Coming up, detectives get a devastating phone call. Steve called me crying, very upset, and he said, "I've done a bad thing."
>> And the investigation takes an unexpected new turn.
>> The officers found him on the fourth floor of a parking garage.
>> What was he thinking?
Detectives investigating the murder of college student Jesse Valencia are preparing to confront their suspect, police officer Steven Rios.
But Rios goes on the offensive first.
Rios said he was hearing from other people uh that Jesse was having an affair with a Columbia police officer.
and I just wanted you to know that I did give him a ticket, but that's the only contact I had with him. And it's it's certainly not me.
>> But detectives tell him flat out that they've heard a different story.
>> They said, "We've talked to a woman who said that she was at Jesse's apartment one night when you showed up." Rio sat there for a minute. Then Rio said, "Well, you know what? Uh, we did become social friends, but it never became anything like a sex relationship. They said, "You know, we've talked to another young man who says he was actually having sex with Jesse and you came by that night and actually came in and joined them on the bed."
And Rio said, "What sex?" Like it was the most astounding and false accusation you could ever heard.
He was getting very agitated with the detectives. He's a very prideful person and he was very upset because they didn't believe him.
>> It's easy to see that Rios is lying.
Detectives bear down hard and finally their suspect breaks.
Finally, Rios admitted that he had sex with Jesse.
He tried to claim it was just that one time and then it evolved into that he had had sex with Jesse as many as six times.
>> It's a stunning admission and a strong motive for murder.
He was embarrassed.
He obviously did not want this information out if he was keeping a secret to begin with, especially from his wife and his family.
Police may not have the physical evidence to prove the Rios is a killer, but they do have something that's almost as good.
>> We were able to prove that he was lying.
>> There's an old saying in law enforcement that a lie, a provable lie, is the next best thing to a confession. And that Steven Rios was caught in lots of provable lies.
But detectives aren't finished interrogating their suspect.
They asked for his whereabouts the night that Jesse was killed.
>> He said he had been at work and he got off at 3:00 in the morning like he normally did. And he said that that night he'd gone on to the rooftop of the parking garage with a few other officers and they had drank a few beers before they went home. and he said he got home about 5:15 to 5:30, took a shower, and got in bed.
>> Detectives grill Rios for over 3 hours, looking for any cracks in his story.
>> He still maintained he'd had nothing to do with Jesse's death. At that point, investigators let him go.
He was definitely a suspect, but the question remained, can we prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?
>> Investigators next step is to create a timeline for the night of Jesse's murder and see how Rios's alibi fits in.
>> His wife corroborated that he had gotten home in that 5:15 to 5:30 time frame.
Other officers confirm Rios worked until 3:00 a.m.
and then had some drinks with them on the rooftop that night.
The security door records reveal that Rios left the roof at 4:37 a.m. 45 minutes before he got home.
One of the detectives actually drove from the parking garage to Jesse's home the same time of night and it was 3 and 1/2 minutes. He then drove from the scene of the murder to Rio's home and it was 10 minutes.
This gave a window of time of 20 to 30 minutes that were potentially unaccounted for at the time that Jesse Valencia was apparently killed.
And this gave us a timeline that could show that Rios could have done this murder within that time.
Investigators search Rios's home, car, and work locker, but they uncover nothing to tie him to the crime.
Then, out of the blue, Captain Schwarz receives an alarming phone call.
Steve called me crying, very upset, and he said, "I've done a bad thing."
The first question I asked him was, "Where are you?" And he said that he was in Kansas City and that he had bought a shotgun.
I really thought he was going to kill himself.
And my first reaction was, "No." I said, "You need to just stop what you're doing. Just come back. Just come back to Columbia." and we'll get through it.
>> Captain Schwarz is able to talk Rios into driving the 150 mi back home where police take him into custody. He >> still wasn't under arrest, but he was put on a 96-hour hold for an involuntary commitment to a mental facility just for observation to make sure that he wouldn't kill himself. But Steven Rios is still despondent. He manages to evade hospital security and soon the entire Columbia police force is on alert.
>> I got a phone call that Steve had escaped and was on top of the parking garage threatening suicide.
>> One of the officers found him on the fourth floor of a parking garage. Mario climbed up on the wall claiming he was going to jump.
>> When they called me and said, "He's on top of the garage. She's threatening suicide.
What was he doing?
What was he thinking?
Police officer Steven Rios, a suspect in the murder of Jesse Valencia, has escaped protective custody and is threatening to leap to his death.
This is one of the busiest parts of campus. It's about 7:00 at night. He goes to the roof of the parking garage, starts threatening to jump.
>> There's a crowd below. There are people watching this. People are videotaping this, taking pictures. It's just it's bizarre.
>> Police arrive on the scene to try to talk Rios off the ledge.
>> All I could think of was, "Here we go again. Why are you putting everyone through this?" It was just putting everyone through a nightmare.
>> After a tense 45minut standoff, they finally managed to tuck Rios back from the break.
He was taken back into custody and again put into a mental facility and put on a suicide watch while we were finishing our investigation to determine whether or not he would be charged with Jesse's murder.
>> 3 weeks after Jesse's murder, the analysis of the hairs found on Jesse's chest give police the evidence they need to charge Rios with the crime.
They were able to say the persons who left those hairs on Jesse's chest, limb hairs that would have come from somebody's arm, those hairs matched to Steven Rio's.
And that's when we realized that they teach Columbia police officers at the training academy how to administer a chokeold. And that cuts off the blood flow to the brain and renders a person unconscious in 3 to 8 seconds.
That could account for these limb hairs in addition to the bruises that went across the front of his chest and in the middle of his back.
On July 1st, 26 days after Jesse Valencia's body was found, Steven Arthur Rios is arrested and charged with firstdegree murder.
>> Did you kill Jesse Valencia?
>> No, I did not.
>> During the week-long trial, prosecutors lay out their theory of how the murder went down.
Rios came by after his shift was over.
Thinking they were going to have sex, Jesse confronted him.
>> Jesse was threatening to contact the chief and expose Rios.
>> And he knew his career and his happy marriage would probably be over. And that had angered Rios. The neighbor heard this argument going on and Jesse yelling, "Stop it. Stop it." Jesse then clad only in his shorts and barefoot ran out being chased by Steven Rios.
The semarios caught him from behind and choked him into unconsciousness, put him on the ground, cut his throat, and that's what I believe happened in the last minutes of Joseph Valencia's Prosecutors know they have a strong case, but convincing a jury that a police officer is a murderer is sure to be a hard cell.
>> If even one of the 12 jurors feels like it's not the person, then you have a hung jury or a not guilty verdict.
After eight long hours, the jury returns with a verdict.
>> The jury find the defendant Steven Arthur Re guilty of murder in the second degree.
>> I did feel a great sense of relief and even pride when the case was over and Steven Rios had not gotten away with murder.
Steven Arthur Rios receives a sentence of life in prison for the slaying of Jesse Valencia.
I don't feel like that Jesse really got justice because I I wanted the death penalty for him.
He took my whole life away from me.
Anytime you have an officer who has done a heinous type act like this and taken someone's life, it is a huge stain.
and for law enforcement everywhere.
>> For Jesse's mother, her son's legacy is in the way he lived his life, not the way it ended.
>> I want people to remember the Jesse that was constantly laughing and and trying to make other people happy because that's what Jesse lived for.
He didn't want anybody to be sad.
There's always the empty space.
Everybody still misses him and we talk about him daily.
For more information on an unexpected killer, go to oxygen.com.
A devoted couple building the perfect family.
>> They were both very committed to adopting children that had a difficult past.
>> Everybody in the family loved her.
>> Murdered in a night of unspeakable horror.
>> She saw a man with what appeared to be an axe.
>> Her skull was split with a mo.
Who could have wanted Bob and Kate Schwarz dead?
>> This person had threatened to kill them.
We couldn't rule out anyone. We just didn't know.
>> And what detectives uncover has everyone blindsided.
>> I didn't have a single suspicion. I would have never thought.
>> The relatives were in disbelief. The uh expected killer hadn't done it. The unexpected killer had done it.
>> Nobody in a million years would have expected them to commit one of the most heinous crimes in the history of Annapolis.
On a cold winter morning in 1984, >> Colorado County police.
>> Police in Cape St. Clair, Maryland, receive an eerie call.
>> I believe to my house.
>> Okay. What is the problem, sir?
>> Um, my parents are dead.
>> You think your parents are dead?
>> Yeah.
First responders race to the scene and make a horrific discovery.
>> When I arrived, there were uniform officers that were protecting the crime scene who told me, "We had a 17-year-old and a 9-year-old who just learned that their parents, Bob and K. Schwarz, were killed."
>> The children are visibly shaken and in shock, but agree to answer a few questions.
>> My partner and I met with a young man by the name of Larry Schwarz.
and his sister Annie. Both of them were very calm. This young man, he said that he had gotten up that morning and that Annie, who was nine, told them that she didn't know where their parents were.
He then looked out the dining room window and saw his mother's body in the backyard.
He told me he immediately shielded Annie's eyes so Annie wouldn't see her body and called the police.
Detective Bar leaves the kids in the care of the attending officers and moves to the backyard. It's his first grim look at the scene of the crime.
>> K. Schwarz was found outside. She was a few feet from the sliding glass door in the snow.
She only had one sock on her right foot.
Her left foot was bare.
>> The blood in the snow was horrific. It was just horrific.
>> The blood had created a slush in the snow.
K. Schwarz had puncture wounds around her neck and she had a massive wound to the top of her skull.
Detective Bar then heads inside.
>> I looked in the basement area and I found a black vinyl chair that had pulled blood beside it. It appeared as though she had been attacked sitting in that chair and she bled heavily onto the floor and there was blood from that chair leading out back. Just when it seems the crime scene can't get any more grizzly, detectives discover another ravaged body.
>> We found a small office adjacent to the landing of the stairs. The door was closed. We opened the door, looked inside, and found Bob Schwarz's body.
There was an inordinate a number of stab wounds to Bob Schwarz. There were defensive wounds in the body.
We theorized at that point it was very possible that Kay was attacked first and then Bob heard the noise and started to come out of the room giving Kay the opportunity to flee out the back door.
As the killer killers went after Bob.
>> As detectives make their way through the rest of the house, they see no signs of forced entry.
Did Bob and Kay know their attacker? Or did an intruder sneak in through an unlocked door?
>> As I viewed this crime scene, the enormity was off the chart. There was blood found everywhere.
It was extraordinarily gruesome.
>> Investigators collect blood evidence, but there's no sign of a knife or any kind of murder weapon.
Then toward the back of the house, they spot a critical clue.
We found a bloody palm print on the sliding glass door near Kay's body.
We wanted to figure out who it actually belonged to. Bob obviously never left the computer room. He died where he was attacked. And Kay's body was outside and neither one of her hands had blood on the palms. That palm print probably belonged to the killer.
While concerned neighbors whisk Larry and Annie away, detectives get a chance to talk to some of Bob and Kay's grieving friends who have gathered at the house. When I found out that Bob and Kay had been murdered, I said, "What?
You're numb.
You don't know what happened." And I just I just couldn't believe that Bob and Kay were gone.
Bob and K. Schwarz met at the University of Maryland outside Washington DC. They were both getting their master's degree in education. They both wanted to be teachers. He was 35, she was 27.
She fell in love with him and maybe 18 months later they married.
They were very involved in all kinds of church activities.
Kay and Bob were intimately involved.
Everybody seemed to know them. Everybody felt a connection with them.
>> Bob was an engineer of sorts. Worked at NASA GDDARD down in Greenbt, Maryland in the space program on some level.
>> Bob had to be a pretty clever man because he was involved in computers back in the dark ages, 1984.
>> He was always very positive. He was funny. quick sense of humor.
>> Kay was the fun-loving, carefree spirit, beloved by everyone who knew her. Always wanted to be a teacher, became a teacher.
They wanted children, but Kay was unable to have children.
>> Far from breaking their spirit, Bob and Kay's disappointment only seemed to strengthen their bond and gave them a loving sense of purpose. They decided they wanted to open their house and their hearts.
>> In 1973, Bob and Kay embarked on their dream.
>> That became part of their mission in life and adopting children that had a difficult past to provide some some substance and some guidance.
>> Larry Schwarz was 6 years old when the Schwarzes adopted him. Six years later, they adopted a four-year-old girl, Ann.
>> Annie was born in Korea, did not speak much English when she first arrived.
Annie and Larry were happy to be part of that family.
>> Kay and Bob wanted to be the best parents ever to those children.
>> Now, Larry and Annie were orphans again, and detectives need to find out who committed such a heinous crime and why.
Police begin by talking to neighbors, hoping to find a witness who might lead them to the killer.
>> We were alerted by a person approximately a block away on a parallel street that he had found what appeared to be a blood trail leading into the woods at the end of that street.
And as we followed that trail, we found what appeared to be a barefoot footprint and a socked footprint. Were these Kay's footprints?
If so, how did they end up in the woods when her body was found in the backyard?
We also found a pair of footprints made by shoes.
Footprints suggesting a chase through the neighborhood.
>> The trail of footprints ran for quite a distance through the woods and the neighborhood.
>> The footprints seem to suggest that after stabbing Bob to death, the murderer went after Kay one last time.
My opinion, it appeared as though K.
Schwarz was fleeing from her killer and at some point a person caught up with her and then walked her to the back of the home where she was killed.
>> At the end of the trail, detectives make one more pivotal discovery.
>> Searching through the woods, my sergeant found what appeared to be a murder weapon.
It was a woodsplitting mall.
There appeared to be blood on the mall along with hair, but the handle appeared to have been wiped clean. There wasn't any blood on the handle at all.
>> Detectives send the mall to the lab, but find no trace of a knife anywhere. It's a puzzling scene that offers them few clues. It was a very difficult crime scene to try to put together in your mind what may have happened. How did this occur? At this point, we only had two children, Larry and Annie, who could provide any information.
>> When detectives circle back to them at the neighbor's house, they do their best to help.
>> Annie related to us that she had awakened in the middle of the night to her father's screams of help me, help me. She continued to tell us that she went to investigate and she walked to the door that exited to the carport.
At that point, she saw a man walking away with what appeared to be an axe over his shoulder.
And she described the person as very tall with curly hair and asked, "Was that person as tall as me?" She said, "No, he was taller.
Detectives speak to Larry next. But suddenly, the 17-year-old seems nervous.
Does he know something about the man Annie saw in the yard?
>> When we pressed Larry, he said that Michael was 6'4"?
>> Detectives stopped cold. Who is Michael?
>> And very quickly, I established that Michael Schwarz was a brother of Larry.
As it turned out, Bob and Kay Schwarz had adopted three children.
>> Michael, who was also 17, no longer lived with them, but it wasn't clear why.
So, at that point, we were very, very eager to talk to Michael.
>> Coming up, investigators uncover bad blood and dark secrets. They sent him to a state mental hospital.
>> Detectives uncover startling clues.
>> Nobody expected anything like this to happen.
>> It became almost unbelievable.
>> Was there more than one person with a score to settle? This person said, "I could stick a knife in his back."
>> We didn't know what we were dealing with.
When they appear to have no suspects in the homicides of Bob and Kay Schwarz, police learned the couple's adopted children have an aranged brother.
>> Both Annie and Larry related to us that Michael no longer lived with them, but had been getting into a lot of trouble.
>> Detectives are anxious to know more.
Could Michael have possibly wanted to harm Bob and Kay? As we spoke to relatives during the investigation, Michael was quickly identified by them as someone we should look at very closely.
Michael had made threats internally in the house.
>> Detectives interview the Schwarz's friends and family to get more insight into Michael's history.
Larry was the Schwarz's first adopted child.
But long before Annie, Bob and Kay provided Larry with a brother.
>> Michael was 8 years old when the Schwarzes adopted him. The boys were only 6 months apart in age.
>> The Schwarz's second adopted child had arrived at their home, a troubled boy.
>> As they interviewed everybody, detectives found that Michael's mother abandoned him when he was an infant. and Michael was relinquished to the custody of the state and became a foster child.
He went through a series of six foster homes before the Schwarzes adopted him.
>> Bob and Kay were determined to turn Michael's life around, but the boy's difficult past wasn't easy to shake and the problem started almost immediately.
Michael was so antisocial in his approach to life. Michael was having behavioral issues at home, not obeying his parents on a consistent basis, smarting back, profanity.
As the boys grew older, Michael continued to struggle.
But that didn't stop Bob and Kay from having high hopes for both their children.
>> I think Bob and Kay expected Larry and Michael to apply themselves very diligently to their studies and to do well. I think that Larry had a desire to please people. He had kind of a a softspoken shyness to him. He seemed to want to engage with people. But I think Michael was a challenge from the get-go.
I think Michael, he had some deviencies that probably would have precluded anybody from having any type of relationship with him on any level.
>> 2 years after Michael was adopted, Bob and Kay found a new ray of hope when they adopted Annie.
>> Annie was cute as a button when she arrived. Um, everybody loved her.
>> Bob adored Anne. Annie became the apple of her father's eye. And suddenly Annie, the baby, became the favorite child.
Everybody in the family loved her.
>> The more attention Bob gave Annie, the harder he was on his two boys. Larry seemed to be able to turn the other cheek, but not Michael.
Michael had been getting into trouble more increasingly over the last year or so.
>> Michael began to have problems of a fairly serious nature.
Tension between he and his father, tension between he and the other family members.
By 1980, Michael's rebellious nature pushed his parents to their breaking point.
One night, Michael asked to go out and they said no. So, he sneaked out, went out with his buddies.
When he came back home at about midnight, he pounds on the door. His mother comes to the door, looks at him, and says, "No, we're not letting you in."
He goes over to a neighbor's house, spends a night, goes to school the next day on his own, and while he's there, his parents had called social services said, "We can't handle him anymore."
>> After 5 years of struggling with Michael, Bob and Kay were so concerned about his volatile behavior that they asked the state to place him with another family.
>> He never lived at home again.
It was just a very difficult situation.
Bob and Kay loved him, but they felt there was nothing they could do for him.
While Bob and Kay tried to stay focused on Larry and Annie, Michael's state of mind seemed to deteriorate.
Michael had been in a reform school and he got in a fight and got in some trouble. So, they sent him to a state mental hospital for evaluation. And that was just a few weeks before the murders.
He was staying at this facility.
>> The Crownsville State Hospital Center was terrifying, faceless, institutional, decrepit buildings. Straight out of a Stephen King nightmare.
Had Bob and Kay's rejection led Michael Schwarz to commit a cold-blooded murder.
Detective Bar and his partner decide to make the short drive to Crownsville and ask Michael for themselves.
>> He was interrogated by these talented homicide detectives.
You know, Michael's denying Michael's words say one thing, but to the detectives, his appearance tells a different story.
>> They did notice it. Michael had very noticeable marks on his long neck, and he clearly had an injury of some kind there.
but he said they were hickeys.
>> Detectives keep pushing, but Michael is adamant that he was at the hospital on the night of the murders, and the hospital records back up his claims.
>> We learned from the staff that their logs indicated that Michael had been there all evening.
>> He has what appears to be uh an ironclad alibi. I mean, he is in a locked ward in a state mental hospital.
The police weren't so sure. A lot of people weren't so sure. It was very lax at this Crownsville State facility. It's not a prison. It's just a hospital.
>> Detectives aren't completely convinced of Michael's alibi, but they don't have enough to arrest him either. And soon after that interview, Michael Schwarz lawyers up.
Of course, I finally got to him. I did what all defense lawyers do, which is to say, "Don't say a word to anybody about anything." He was never interrogated again.
>> Michael won't talk, and the lab has found no useful prints on the handle of the splitting mall, but detectives know one key piece of evidence from the crime scene that could tell them everything they need to know.
>> During the investigation, there was a bloody palm print recovered from the sliding glass door.
We examined both victims. Neither one had blood on the palms.
>> If detectives can prove Michael Schwarz left that print, they'll have their murderer.
But that's easier said than done.
>> This evidence was difficult to analyze.
We were very limited in 1984 with what we could do.
This would involve the evidence being sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington.
Detectives investigating the savage double murder of Bob and K. Schwarz are hoping one of their most promising pieces of evidence will help them catch the killer.
>> A bloody palm print was lifted and sent to the FBI laboratory for analysis.
We knew that it would probably take a long time to get those results.
>> While the feds in Washington do their careful work, the shocking news of the murder spreads.
>> There was a tremendous uproar in the community about this murder. A couple were murdered in her own home. A crazed killer chasing a woman through the neighborhood.
There was a lot of pressure to solve the case.
That pressure only mounts when detectives receive the coroner's report.
It's a grim account of a seemingly psychotic attack.
>> The wounds to Mr. Schwarz numbered 17 in total and in fact were lethal. Both his right and left corateed were severed during the attack.
on case works. The autopsy showed that she was stabbed seven times around her neck area, but they were very light wounds, tentative, and then her skull was split with a m >> detectives still haven't been able to locate the knife used in the attack, but the coroner's report does appear to confirm that they're on the right track.
According to the medical examiner, we had the right theory about how this may have occurred. Kay was stabbed in the basement, got up to flee. The killer would have chased K. Schwarz as she ran from the neighborhood and into the woods, then back to the house where she was killed.
>> Is it possible Michael Schwarz eluded security at the Crownsville Mental Hospital and committed this crime? If so, detectives need to understand why. I think it's fair to say there was tension in the house. Bob had a bit of a shorter fuse than Kay and had a little bit less willingness to be tolerant of of some of the children's shortcomings.
>> Neighbors tell detectives a story they remember from a few years before when Michael was still living with the Schwarzes.
>> Michael got in trouble for some sin, fighting on a school bus, something like that. and his father decided physical labor would was what he needed.
So he gave him this heavy woodsplitting mall and said, "Take this stump out of the front yard, a dead tree stump. It was massive, a massive thing. There was no way Michael could get it." But he just swung it again and again and again.
Neighbors told us that Michael chopped at that tree every evening for up to three hours. And approaching a month later, the stump was still there. This boy had blushers on his hands.
Michael was seething and getting more and more angry. Everybody said Michael had threatened to kill his parents.
Could the mall that was used to teach Michael Schwarz a lesson have been the same one that ended Kay's life?
>> Michael told his mother Kay that I could walk up to Bob and stick a knife in his back, kill him, and no results would befall me because I'm a juvenile.
The logical assumption on all of our parts was Michael had made good on his threat.
He had said he would do it and now he's done it.
>> 4 days after they were found brutally murdered, Bob and Kay are laid to rest.
>> The funeral, I had replays of of having moments with them. I always admired them. Like why would somebody kill them?
>> The couple's obedient children, Larry and Annie Schwarz, have been staying with friends of the family while their brother still resides at Crownsville.
>> Michael Schwarz was allowed out of the hospital to come to the funeral. And at the cemetery, both boys stood over the grave and shook holy water, one end of Kay's grave, the other into Bob's grave.
Off to one side, the two detectives on the case stood in their suits with their sunglasses in the cemetery.
>> Everyone gathered around, gave them their support. Uh, but most people believed it was Michael who had done it.
>> Many note the suspicious red marks still visible on Michael's neck. Talk spreads through the community.
The newspapers were saying that Michael was a suspect, but even though he was in Crownsville at the time, there was some question about the accountability there and maybe he could have gotten away and done it.
>> With lingering concerns over Michael's alibi and the security at Crownsville, detectives decide there's only one way to find the truth once and for all.
Wanting to make sure that we had crossed every tea and dotted every eye, my partner and I decided that we were going to follow up and visit that mental hospital again. We wanted to make sure that it was impossible that Michael would never have been able to leave undetected.
So, we asked the staff to lock us in the ward where Michael was committed.
If Michael could have gotten out of that, there was a chance Michael had done it.
Detectives are about to put Michael Schwarz's alibi to the test by locking themselves in the room where he stayed at the Crownsville Mental Hospital. If he had killed his parents, Michael would have had to leave undetected, return, and get back in without someone discovering that.
And we went through every door and every window, and there was no possible way we could have gotten out of that without help.
So, it was very convincing to us that Michael was not at the scene of the murder.
Michael's been eliminated as a suspect.
>> It's good news for Michael, but a setback for detectives. The young man was their strongest lead.
Undaunted, investigators reach out to the public, hoping to cast a much wider net. As we conducted our investigation, we methodically went through a list of possible persons that may have intended harm to the Schwarzes. We started the hotline for people to call in tips and we got phone calls from various neighbors and acquaintances.
>> One of the many calls that come in immediately piques the detective's interest.
persons we interviewed told us that Bob steadfastly picketed an abortion clinic in Annapolis for four years, never missed a Saturday.
And he would approach women entering the abortion clinic and attempt to change their mind about what they were going to do.
He would intensely try to dissuade women from coming into the clinic. He would get up in their faces.
Detectives confirmed that a few of those women filed police reports against Bob.
So, they begin interviewing every complaintant and witness connected with those reports.
>> The police were called on several occasions by the clinic. Bob is never arrested, but he caused the abortion clinic a lot of grief.
>> Could the killer be someone Bob confronted or someone with a grudge against Kay?
>> Kay was a school teacher at Broadneck High School.
>> In her classroom, she was known for Lazy Far, not a strict disciplinarian.
>> According to witnesses, Kay was wellliked in school. She was an easygoing teacher.
>> Detectives pursue every credible tip that comes in.
>> Our investigation revealed that there was no evidence that anyone would have a vendetta against her. In fact, there was no motive that we could establish where anyone would have been that angry or vengeful to want to kill either of them.
8 days after the brutal double murder, investigators have hit a wall. With no fingerprints on the splitting mall and their single most promising piece of evidence still under analysis, detectives are all out of options.
Undaunted, they decide to start fresh, pouring over every piece of evidence they do have, starting at the very beginning.
>> Colorado County Police come to my house.
>> Okay. What is the problem, sir?
My parents are dead.
>> You think your parents are dead?
>> Yeah.
>> This time, investigators hone in on something they didn't notice before.
>> When I listened to the 911 call, Larry Schwarz said, "My parents are dead."
>> My parents are dead.
>> However, he told the first police officer on the scene that he hadn't gone downstairs.
His father's in the basement.
At that point, he was only known that his mother was dead, not his father.
So, there's an inconsistency there. It didn't make sense. The discovery leads Detective Bar to take a harder look at Larry's version of events, and he finds several contradictions.
>> For an example, Larry telling us that he saw his mother's body from the window.
Yet, I looked out the dining room window and couldn't see her body. I thought perhaps he was confused and meant to say the kitchen window, which turned out to be even worse. I climbed on the kitchen counter and looked out the window and still couldn't see her body.
Detective Bar had chocked it up to the extreme shock the boy had suffered that morning.
>> Larry's demeanor wasn't unusual at the time. Various people react differently under stress. He could have very well been in shock, repressing his feelings.
I didn't know.
Bar wants to give Larry a chance to clear up his story, but that isn't going to happen.
>> Larry had gotten an attorney. The attorney had advised him not to talk to us.
>> At last, word comes in from the FBI.
Test results on their key piece of evidence from the crime scene. The bloody palm print on the sliding glass door. The one detectives believe was made by the killer.
>> It came back. Finally, we could find out who it could possibly belong to, what we were dealing with.
>> Coming up, it's a twist that no one saw coming.
A chill just went up my spine. It just didn't seem right.
Detectives working to catch Bob and K.
Schwarz's killer finally had the results of their key piece of crime scene evidence from the FBI's forensic lab in Washington, DC.
>> I was notified by the FBI laboratory that they had positively identified the bloody palm print recovered from the sliding glass door. The results confirm what detectives believed months earlier.
The palm print belongs to one of Bob and Kay's own children, but not the child they suspected.
>> It came back belonging to Larry Schwarz.
At that point, the state's attorney for Anal County authorized an arrest warrant be obtained for Larry Schwarz.
Authorities charged young Schwarz as an adult with two counts of first-degree murder.
When the news gets out, it causes an uproar in Cape St. Clair. Michael Schwarz was known as the bad kid in the family, not handsome, likable Larry.
>> A chill just went up my spine. It just didn't seem right. I didn't have a single suspicion.
It was very difficult to accept that Larry had that type of violence within him.
>> Larry was seen as this model, mildmannered son. Nobody in a million years would have expected him to commit one of the most heinous crimes in the history of Annapolis.
>> The community was in denial. The majority of them were convinced that Michael Schwarz had done this.
There was certainly a lot of speculation about whether we had the right person or not.
>> It was very hard for people to believe that he could have done it. I think that they just felt there was more to this.
There was more going on than any of us could understand.
>> Why would a docel youth beloved by everybody explode in a rage and stab both his parents? Why?
Everybody wanted to know the answer.
>> Authorities want answers, too. But Larry, at the direction of the defense team hired by Concerned Family Friends, is not talking and has neither admitted nor denied guilt. So, for the next 15 months, while Larry waits it out in jail, detectives spend every waking moment trying to build an airtight case.
>> We lacked a confession. the state's attorney for Analog County had me reassigned to his office to work exclusively on this case.
We had to make sure that we had every piece of evidence we could get to close this case.
>> Without Larry's confession, detectives need to find out what led this soft-spoken boy to such violent extremes.
>> I continued to interview people, collect statements.
Investigators soon realized that Michael wasn't the only son who had a hard time at home.
>> I believe that Larry was under tremendous pressure.
He was repeatedly chastised for the poor grades. He was restricted from leaving the yard.
>> I think it was more of a protection thing. You're trying to keep him away from the wrong crowd. And uh I think Larry could have been pulled in many ways. I think they were afraid of that.
>> I believe personally that he was angry.
He was frustrated. It was cumulative that he was holding rage inside him and whatever may have happened that night set him off.
>> But some speculated that there was another reason why Larry turned on his parents.
>> Michael kept contact with Larry. He changed Larry's view of the family and in a negative way. He was telling him that they just got rid of me. They want nothing to do with me. You know, Larry, he didn't want to be left like that. He didn't want to go into foster home again.
>> Larry was extremely worried that what happened to Michael would happen to him.
>> Then it changed where he was afraid he was going to be put out.
>> Despite what may have led to this violent act, 17-year-old Larry Schwarz is about to be tried for firstdegree murder.
15 months after the crimes, the prosecutor had witnesses ready lined up, psychiatric witnesses who said Larry was saying and he knew what he was doing and he actually planned it.
And they had a case to present that showed premeditated cold-blooded murder.
Larry Schwarz looked unconcerned as he arrived this morning from the county jail where he had spent the last 15 months.
More than 60 witnesses have been subpoenaed to testify at Larry Schwarz's trial, which is expected to last two weeks.
>> I was at the courthouse expecting a trial.
There was no trial.
Nobody expected anything like this to happen. It was shocking.
After detectives and prosecutors have labored more than a year preparing their case against Larry Schwarz for the murder of his parents, a lastminute maneuver by Schwarz's legal team has brought everything to an unexpected, screeching halt. The trial is called off.
>> Larry had confessed to his attorneys.
>> He broke down. He broke down sobbing and heaving and he said he did it. He was guilty and he just killed them.
>> Finally, authorities have their confession, leaving behind any doubt of Larry's guilt.
>> Ultimately, the expected killer hadn't done it. The unexpected killer had done it.
>> Now, the state's attorney's office has to decide what punishment could possibly fit this crime. The state agreed to a plea of seconddegree murder.
>> The prosecutor recommended a 20-year sentence with all but 12 suspended.
>> The judge agreed to make it concurrent as opposed to consecutive. I've never seen a case that lenient.
The state's attorney wanted me to take Larry to the confinement facility.
He knew that if I took Larry, there was the potential for Larry to tell me why he did this.
and how did it really occur? And I sat down with him and asked him to tell us, "Aarrie, why did you do it?"
He didn't answer me.
And I pressed him again and he said, "I just lost it."
He said that he had come home from school that day and later in the evening his mother had asked him how he had done on his tests and he knew that he had failed Spanish and she had been writing him about not doing well in school and she made a costic remark about his grades having you probably failed them meaning the tests So he took a knife and he stabbed her repeatedly about the neck.
And then Bob was alerted to the activity, the noise, and he attacked Bob.
Larry never did explain or admit to chasing Kay through the neighborhood.
I found out during the autopsy that she had been stabbed through her esophagus, so perhaps she couldn't scream.
was sheer terror, running for her life.
Larry did admit to putting the splitting mall into her mother's head.
After committing such a violent act, Larry knew there was only one way to cast off suspicion.
>> I don't want to tell police. We came the realization that throughout the interview with Larry, he was trying to steer our investigation.
He forcefed us information about Michael.
>> The whole time that his brother Michael was a suspect in the killings, Larry played the victim card. When we were here for the funeral, Larry wanted to hang out with us essentially, which we were perfectly prepared to do, not believing for a minute that he was involved. We viewed him as a victim, a kid who didn't have any parents at this point in time.
It's to this day hard to fathom.
Though Larry's adoptive brother, Michael, had been exonerated, he nonetheless met with a tragic end. When it turned out that he didn't commit the murders, he had nowhere to go. His parents are dead. His brother's in prison. His sister's been adopted by another family and he has no one in the world. He starts doing drugs.
And while he's taking drugs, he and his buddies go rob a man. And in the course of robbing the man, they stabbed him to death.
Michael is sentenced to prison for life.
None of the leniency his brother got life.
He's now in his 50s still in prison in the state of Maryland. 35 years later.
>> This just had to be one of the worst lose-lose destructive situations that uh you know, society can see happen.
Looking back over this case, I have empathy for both Michael and Larry. I know that they they struggled yet the parents still tried to do the right thing. Kay and Bob had adopted children who had been through a a lot of bad times.
And so I think they were trying to heal the wounds that they came to the family with. We're >> both Michael and Larry. I can understand the frustration, the anger, but I couldn't understand the murder.
That's the part I didn't understand.
For more information on an unexpected killer, go to oxygen.com.
a generous soul. She was a very giving person and a very sharing person >> who helped neighbors in need.
>> When they needed extra money for baby food or diapers, Janor was always there.
>> Is found brutally murdered.
>> This homicide was one of the most violent homicides that I've worked.
There was blood from basically the floor to the ceiling.
>> It was something that shocked the community. Police uncover a sinister trail of deception and hate.
>> He had some strange tendencies. He seemed to be stalking there.
>> The polygraph came back with some clear signs that he was being deceptive to unveil a killer no one expected.
>> He made her believe that he was her night and shining armor. So, she never saw it coming.
>> He had two completely different faces on him. He was just the devil incarnate.
One hot summer morning in the sleepy rural town of Clinton, Louisiana, the sheriff's office gets a call that sends him to a farmhouse just outside of town.
It belongs to a woman named Janora Gillery.
>> When Janora didn't show up for work on Monday morning, her co-workers started to get nervous. They called her cell phone. She didn't answer. They called her landline and it was busy. Stayed busy.
At that point, a friend at work called the sheriff's office in East Leanne and said, "Would you please go check on our coworker, Janor Gillery?"
The deputy that worked for the East Lana Sheriff's Office. And he went to the residence to look for the door was unlocked and he discovered the body.
He backed out of the house and he said he threw up outside. He could barely even speak to the dispatcher. He was so upset by what he found.
>> Detectives are called to the scene.
>> You could tell something had happened at the very entrance of the door. There was blood right there on the door handle.
The blood on the floor leads detectives inside the house.
There you could follow the blood trail and it went into the kitchen.
There were several knives that were had blood on them inside of the drawer.
There was also uh evidence like someone tried to use the phone and there was blood on the side of the phone.
The blood leads to the bedroom where detectives are met with a gruesome sight.
In the middle of the floor lies the lifeless body of 42-year-old Janora Gillery.
Uh you could see evident tears in her skin, which I mean we knew at the time were deep stab wounds.
She was beaten severely.
There was blood from basically the floor to the ceiling.
>> The lamp was broken and uh stuff knocked over in the bedroom.
I've seen other homicides that I've worked that this one was more brutal.
The body was also half closed, legs opened, and she was pinned against the wall.
There was possibility that she had been raped.
>> Detectives in this small parish don't investigate many homicides, let alone one this brutal.
They call in the Louisiana State Police to help process the scene.
>> They took some DNA samples of the material that was found under her fingernails.
The samples are sent to the lab to see if there are any traces of the killer's DNA.
>> We didn't find any type of murder weapons.
We found that it was actually no force entry. We pretty well figured that it was somebody that she knew and had a little bit of trust in to open the door.
As police collect evidence, Janora's neighbors, Philillip and Amy Skipper, arrive on the scene.
>> They were, of course, shocked.
Philip's wife, Amy, she was really destroyed and she was um a friend of Miss Giller's.
>> Police informed Janora's family.
Her brother-in-law, Elbert, is the first to get the terrible news.
I received a call from the sheriff's office indicating that uh Janora was dead, had been murdered, and obviously um it was just an unbelievably bad moment to Janora's sister, my spouse at that time, Ivonne.
That was probably the single most devastating moment in her life.
>> The family rushes to the scene. When they arrive, detectives ask them for any details they can provide about Janora.
Janora grew up in Ununice, Louisiana, a small town in St. Landry Parish.
From the time that Janora was a young girl in in school, she was a very giving person.
She was a very intelligent woman, filled with love for life, filled with love for animals.
Janora worked at an insurance company in Baton Rouge, but chose to live in rural Clinton, where she could indulge in her passion for animals.
She had 30 dogs. She had three or four horses. She had rescue animals. She took care of friends. Animals if they couldn't. Animals were a big part of her life.
>> Friends were a big part of Janora's life, too. She was thrilled when a sweet couple moved in across the street and they immediately headed off.
Philip and Amy Skipper moved into her neighborhood and I felt very comfortable that she had developed this warm relationship with the Skippers.
>> Over the years, Janora and her neighbors became close friends.
Janora told me how reliable they were and how hardworking they were.
Janora really liked her neighbors and she thought of the skippers almost like family.
>> Now her friends are heartbroken over Janora's violent death and police are faced with the puzzle of finding her killer.
>> It made no sense. Janor had no enemies and she wasn't involved in anything shady or suspicious.
When the autopsy report comes back the next day, it concludes that the murder took place between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., it also reveals just how brutal Janora's final moments were.
She was shot five times with a 22 caliber gun and stabbed five times, but neither of these attacks caused her death.
A severe blow to the back of the head severed her brain stem from her body.
She was actually alive and she was fighting back and was stabbed and shot.
This was one of the most uh violent homicides that I've worked.
It was a very much overkill.
um which usually mean it is a crime of passion.
This was a particularly brutal, dastardly deed.
We all stood outside Janora's house uh that morning and talked about who could possibly have done this.
Despite the concern of Janora's family and friends, detectives can't rule out anyone as a suspect.
>> We began talking to the neighbors and um co-workers, the ones that showed up, and just started trying to get information.
>> One person in particular draws investigators attention, Janor's neighbor, Philip Skipper.
>> Philip was real calm. Um, what really got me was his over wanting to help too much. You know, we just had a feeling Philip knew something.
>> Coming up, investigators uncover a dark obsession.
>> He was infatuated with her and couldn't take no for an answer >> and menacing secrets.
>> They called her names behind her back all the time, but never to her face.
there was an incentive for them to actually murder her.
>> That leads them to a suspect they never expected.
>> They went on a tour of the murder scene and he described the whole thing.
>> He just blurted out, "Do you have a woman named Mrs. G that was murdered over there?"
After 42-year-old Janora Gillery is found savagely killed in her home, detectives in Clinton, Louisiana suspect that her neighbor Philip Skipper might know something about the murder.
>> Philip was over helpful at the crime scene and it is something that we wanted to check out more.
Police decide to bring in Philip Skipper and his wife Amy for an interview.
Janora really liked her neighbors and the Skippers had a young child and their stepson who was 15 years old at the time.
Philip Skipper tells investigators that when his young family first moved to Clinton, they were down on their luck, but their neighbor Janora kindly helped out.
>> She started to take them under her umbrella and make sure that they had food and made sure that they had electricity.
When the skippers needed extra money for baby food or diapers, Jor was always there.
The trailer they were living in, for example, was really dilapidated. So, Janora helped them buy a new trailer.
She helped them improve their lives as as much as she could.
Janora's kindness didn't stop there.
She started to employ Philip to do all of the work uh in her yard and around the house and employed Amy Skipper to do the work inside her house.
Janora treated the skippers like family and trusted them with keys to her property.
>> She was just a very, very generous neighbor.
>> Detectives want to know if the Skippers ever argued with Janora.
Amy Skipper said their relationship had recently been strained by an unfortunate incident.
Philip Skipper was raising pitbulls and there was one dog that was not a pit that didn't get along with his other pitbulls and Janor agreed to keep that in her kennel with her dogs. Well, that dog somehow got loose during the day while Janor was at work. The dog ran back to the skipper's trailer and killed a goat that he kept as a pet.
Amy Skipper ran over to Janora's house, got on the phone, called Janor at work, and was upset with Janor.
Now, that's witnessed by a couple of Janora's co-workers who heard Janor's end of the conversation.
She was crying by the end of this phone call. That's how upset Janor was.
And Janor told Amy Skipper on the phone, "Leave the key at my house. get out of my house and never come back.
>> When police question Philillip about the conflict, he tells them that he and Amy had since patched things up with Janora and they were back on friendly terms.
>> Philip Skipper was dismissive about the falling out. He said it was just a, you know, a dispute among neighbors and they worked it out and there was no lingering after effects.
Police are skeptical about Philip's version of events and when they notice scratches on his arms, they wonder if they were made by Janora while trying to fight for her life.
Question him about that. He said it was from him and his stepson wrestling in the yard.
Not convinced by his story, investigators asked Philillip where he was on the night of the murder, and he said he was asleep uh at the time that the murder happened.
To confirm Philip's story, police asked to interview his 15-year-old stepson, John Balio.
When you interview with the juveniles in Louisiana, you had to have permission of the guardian or the parent, which we had. I mean, they they did cooperate there and let us talk to them.
When detectives questioned John, they noticed scratches on his arms, too.
Is it possible Janora fought back against two attackers?
>> John Balio had marks on him. He gave us the same story.
>> John corroborates his stepdad's story, but police are still suspicious.
>> The marks on their arms was really something that we wanted to check out more if they was being truthful. So after that interview, we we did decide to have a polygraph set up.
>> Philip and John agree to take the test.
But before it can be scheduled, investigators uncover a critical detail.
During the course of investigation, we did learn about an insurance policy Miss Gillery had taken out on herself and the money would go to the skippers.
>> Was an insurance payout reason enough for the skippers to kill their friend and neighbor?
With a lack of motive, it's really hard to find the killer.
>> The insurance policy was an incentive for them to actually murder her.
Police have just discovered that murder victim Janora Giller's neighbors, the Skipper family, are the beneficiaries of Janora's $25,000 life insurance policy.
And it's just kind of unusual that the neighbor would have an insurance policy and list the other neighbor as a beneficiary. They're not related.
>> The insurance policy raises eyebrows for investigators, but Janora's family is well aware of the policy and does not suspect foul play.
Janora wanted to make sure that the skippers had the food that they needed, had the clothing that they needed for at least a period of time should she meet an untimely departure.
The skippers after Janora's death did not know how to collect. They contacted me and asked me to assist them and I did.
Still, police believe the insurance money is a possible motive. That coupled with the scratches on Philip and John's arms convinces detectives to take the next step.
Philip Skipper and John Balgo showed up at the Baton Rouge Police Department, which has a polygraphy unit, and uh they both took separate polygraph tests.
The Polygraph interrogator asked 15-year-old John Balio for an alibi.
>> John Balio said he was at home asleep when the murders occurred.
Both John and Philip are asked about their knowledge of the murder by the examiner.
And when their responses are analyzed, detectives are surprised by the results.
Both of their tests came back with no real signs of deception.
>> The results on the polygraphs, they was inconclusive and the officer that was doing the polygraph didn't think that they had done the murder.
>> The results are a blow to the investigation and lead detectives dropped the skippers as suspects.
We still didn't have no physical evidence and the polygraph made us think, well, you need to start looking elsewhere.
>> Detectives interviewed Janor's friends and co-workers about anyone she may have dated recently.
>> A friend of Miss Gilleries did give us the name of Tommy Alexandra.
>> Police tracked down Tommy at his home in a nearby town.
He agrees to talk to police.
Tommy tells investigators that he met Janora months prior at a feed store where she was stocking up on food for her animals.
Janora agreed to meet Tommy for a drink, their first of several dates.
Tommy and Janora had dated on and off for some time.
>> But it soon became apparent to Janora that Tommy had other love interests.
It turned out Tommy Alexander was not just dating Janor at the time. He was dating a couple of different women.
Janor really liked him, but Tommy didn't want to settle down. He He wasn't going to commit to one woman.
>> Is it possible that an argument between Janora and Tommy could have turned deadly?
>> We interviewed Tommy about the homicide.
>> On the night Janora was murdered, Tommy says that he was at home. Police talked to his girlfriend who confirms his alibi.
They were able to eventually eliminate him as a suspect.
As far as physical evidence to tie a specific suspect to the scene, there really wasn't anything. They kept trying to dig for facts, but they were hampered by the fact that once again, they couldn't figure out why anyone wanted to kill her.
Determined to get justice for Janora, investigators interview her co-workers and discover that she had an ongoing conflict with a man in her life.
>> Learned about another friend, Steve Williams, from co-workers. And basically what we learned is that he wanted to date Miss Gillery.
>> But the feeling is not mutual.
Steve Williams um managed to persuade Janor to go out one time and that was enough for her. She didn't want to go out with him again and and she let him know, but he didn't take that no very well.
Miss Gillery had really got concern about him. According to her friends, he would sit out in parking lot and wait for her to get off from work. Would show up unannounced.
Steve Williams showed up out of the blue while she was working her horses.
>> He pursued her a little more aggressively than was comfortable for the family.
>> From co-workers uh explanations over there, he seemed to be stalking Janora.
>> Janora said, "He's bothering me. He needs to stop."
When detectives look into Steve Williams, they're shocked to learn that their potential suspect is one of their own.
Steve Williams was a Baton Rouge police officer.
Detectives have learned that Steve Williams, who had been repeatedly contacting Janora Gillery in the months before her murder, is a fellow police officer.
Steve Williams had recently gotten a job with the Baton Rouge Police Department, and he was a probationary police officer in the next jurisdiction over.
He was infatuated with her and he was just a a guy who couldn't take no for an answer.
>> Janora's friends knew that she was not interested. And of course, after the murder, when the police are asking, well, who may have been upset with Janora, he became a focus of the investigation.
When you investigate uh law enforcement officers, it's harder than most because they know the law is as good as you do. But we did have good cooperation through Baton Rouge City uh police department.
Whatever we needed, they was willing to provide.
As investigators gather more information about Steve, they uncover an intriguing tip from one of his colleagues, 29-year-old officer Tabitha Mccants.
>> Tabitha came forward during the investigation and she had worked with Steve Williams at Baton Rouge police office.
>> Uh, it turns out she got kind of a bad vibe from him.
Tabitha tells investigators that she overheard Steve having heated phone conversations with a woman on several occasions while at the police shooting range.
>> She said they make multiple phone calls.
>> Police need to check Janora's phone records to find out if Janora was the person Steve had been calling.
Tabitha also tells investigators that Steve mentioned shooting targets at his mother's home. And when they asked Tabitha if Steve mentioned the type of gun he used, her answer sets off alarm bells.
>> She says he used a 22, which by this time we found out that uh 22 was used in the shooting of Miss Gillery.
as a police officer. Of course, uh Steve Williams had firearms, the 22 caliber pistol, which is certainly not a police gun, but he did have a 22 and he shot it at his mother's house >> based on the history of him stalking Miss Gillery and the access to 22.
That's when we decided that we would check Steve Williams out a little bit more.
When detectives check Janora's phone records, they quickly discover an alarming pattern.
>> Looking at the phone records, Steve Williams, in my opinion, was stalking Miss Gillery.
The phone records showed 35 calls to Janora's home from the shooting range in 4 months and an escalating pattern of calls and messages.
Steve Williams had left several messages for Janora the weekend that she was killed. In fact, he told her in a message that he was stopped by her house on the day she was killed.
Investigators don't waste a second bringing Steve in for questioning. And when they do, his demeanor has them instantly suspicious.
>> Steve was real nervous. It was just something about him, like he was hiding something from us.
>> Steve insists he had nothing to do with Janora's murder. and claims he stayed at his mother's house the night Janora was killed.
>> Steve's mama's residence about 40 minutes away from where the homicide was.
>> Police believe Janora was murdered between 11 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. Could Steve have slipped out undetected while his mother was sleeping?
>> Janora was shot with a 22 caliber pistol. and the fact that he had a 22, was nearby on the day she was killed, it really put him very high up on the suspect list.
That's when we had him take a polygraph.
>> Steve's answers are analyzed and the results sent to detectives.
Steve Williams polygraph examination came back with some clear signs that he was possibly being deceptive.
His polygraph basically told us that he may have known something about the murder made me really think that he had something to do with this.
That's when Steve advised he wasn't going to talk to us no more. He wanted a lawyer.
>> Despite Steve's refusal to cooperate, detectives continued to investigate him.
>> He looked like a good suspect. Now the question would be can they find the evidence to prove it? They got a warrant for his house. They got warrants for his personal cars and they got a warrant for his police car. Now to do that they had to work with the Baton Rouge Police Department and the detectives were hoping to recover a 22, you know, knife, anything with blood stains, anything to link him to the crime scene. They didn't find anything.
It's a major setback, but detectives still have one last piece of forensic evidence that they believe could connect Steve Williams to the murder.
They get a search warrant for a DNA sample from Steve to see if it's a match for genetic material found on Janora's body.
>> We had those fingernail scrapings that were taken off her from the state police crime lab.
It was determined yes, there was some male DNA under her fingernails.
>> Coming up, investigators zero in on a vicious killer.
>> I picked out the worst photo that I could find of the crime scene and I threw it in front of his face and made him look at it. Said, "Did she deserve it?
Police hope to use DNA evidence to link Baton Rouge police officer Steve Williams to Janora Giller's murder.
Steve's DNA is compared to material found under Janora's fingernails.
>> His DNA was not actually determined to be under her fingernails.
The DNA also doesn't match any known criminals in the FBI database.
>> The fingernail scrapings came back to a known male genetic profile.
>> With no physical evidence linking Steve Williams to the crime, he's ruled out as a suspect, leaving investigators at a standstill.
The case had gone cold and they had no other leads to check into.
>> The case stays cold for an entire year.
There was great disappointment and great frustration on the part of the family when the case went cold.
The shock of Janora's murder may have faded, but the community lives in fear of a killer who's still at large.
When a murder occurs, it's very alarming. Everybody's on edge, especially after the case was at a standstill.
>> Then on July 27th, 2001, a tip comes in that changes everything.
And I got a call on the telephone straight to the office.
It was Detective Mark Aerson from Tangaho Sheriff's Office. And he he just blurted out. He's like, "You have a woman named Mrs. G that was murdered over there." And uh I just kind of looked over at Don and I said, "Yeah, we do have a woman named Miss G that was killed."
>> The detective there was working a uh domestic violence battery and the victim had came in and told him that her boyfriend knew something about a murder in Clinton.
>> The woman tells detectives her boyfriend's name is Donnie Fischer.
>> We rode over there and found Donnie Fiser. We brought him over there to the Tanchaho Sheriff's Office.
>> But Donnie Fiser is not in the mood to talk.
You could tell he knew something.
That's when I picked out the worst photo that I could find of the crime scene and I threw it in front of his face and made him look at it and said, "Did she deserve it?"
>> Reluctantly, Donnie looks down at the gruesome photos and moments later his whole demeanor changes.
He started to break down and cry and he looked at it and then he told us basically it's confession.
>> Donnie says he heard a detailed account of the murder from one of Janora's neighbors.
>> The neighbor took Donnie Fischer on a tour of the murder scene.
He said once they got there, he took them and said, "This is how it happened."
>> Investigators are stunned. They questioned all of Janor's neighbors at the outset of the investigation, but it didn't uncover any useful information or lead to an arrest. Detectives demand that Donnie reveal the neighbor's name.
>> He said it was John Balio, Philip Skipper's stepson.
>> Detectives are shocked. They press Donnie for details and he claims that Jon told him about the murder while cleaning up Janora Giller's house.
Janora Giller's family had hired John Balio to go clean up the crime scene.
Donnie Fischer, he was out there helping. So, as they're cleaning up the house, John Balio was bragging to Donnie Fiser about how he killed Jor Gillery.
John Balio took Donnie and said, "Here's what we did here. Here's what we did here." And he described the whole thing.
Investigators don't know whether to believe Donniey's story, especially since John Balio's polygraph was considered truthful.
Yet, every word of it lines up with the evidence.
>> John actually showed Donnie how Miss G ran through the house. And talking to Donnie, he described everything that we had put together from what we seen at the crime scene.
>> Detectives want to know why would Balio want Janora dead after all she had done for his family.
>> Miss Gillery would would rather help somebody than hurt somebody. Um she would do anything she could to help the skippers.
It was kind of heartbreaking.
Police now believe that Donnie is telling the truth.
So they quickly file an arrest warrant.
We picked up John Valio late late on a Friday evening and we brought him back to East Fleiana Sheriff's Office for charges of first-degree murder.
Investigators now believe the key to cracking this case is a confession from the alleged killer.
Luckily, a recent change in Louisiana state law allows them to question a minor accused of murder without a lawyer or guardian present.
>> The police had to get John Balio to come clean and tell the truth.
We brought him to my office and advised him of his rights.
>> He bounced from here to there during his statements at first when we initially questioned him and then we started talking about the brutality of this homicide.
>> After probably an hour, hour and a half interviewing, he finally came and told the story about how they killed Miss G.
But first, Balio needs to get something off his chest.
>> He didn't do it by himself.
>> Pointed the finger right back at Philip Skipper.
Detectives are speechless. John Balio just implicated his stepdad, Philillip, in the murder of Janora Gillery. And that's not all.
>> He pointed to several other people, too.
Detectives in Clinton, Louisiana, have just arrested Philip Skipper's stepson, John Balio, for the murder of 42-year-old Janora Gillery.
>> John started basically telling us how this went down.
>> And John claims he didn't act alone. He points the finger at his stepdad, Philip Skipper, and two other people.
>> Johnny Hoy was a brother-in-law to Philip Skipper. And uh Lisa Skipper Hoy was a sister to Philip Skipper. He said they killed this woman together.
>> Lisa and Johnny. That's the first time we their name had ever came up.
And we were of course shocked.
John Balio gave a detailed confession on videotape to exactly what happened.
John claims that Philillip, Johnny, and Lisa had formed a white supremacist gang called the Brotherhood and that killing Janora was meant to be Jon's initiation into the group.
>> It would be much brotherhood.
>> It was a skin head gang. Actually, they were very antilack and neo-Nazi.
>> Philip Skipper, he had two completely different faces on him. I mean, he had the one he presented to Janor Gillery, which was, you know, the nice neighbor.
And then behind her back, he called her all kind of names. He hated black people.
He basically made her believe that he was her night and shining armor. She never saw it coming.
>> Killing Janora would not only initiate Balio into their gang, but also bring a financial windfall.
>> Philip Skipper was smart enough to figure out that, hey, if she doesn't like us anymore, it's not going to be very long before she changes that insurance policy and names someone else's beneficiary.
Balio tells detectives that on the night of the murder, the group had been drinking heavily. They arrived at Janora's door at 2:00 a.m.
>> When we got there, Lisa walked up to the door and knocked on it and told Miss G that she needed some money to get the baby some diapers.
And um Miss Ged the door open. That's when Johnny hit her and forced his way in there.
They just jumped on her like a pack of hyenas.
>> She ran through the house down the hall screaming for him to leave her alone.
Then she ran into the kitchen and got to the knife to trying to get her knife so she could cut him to make them leave her alone.
>> Eventually, she ran to her bedroom.
John told us that they took turns stabbing her and they took turns beating her and they took turns shooting her >> and then somebody threw the final blow that according to the medical examiner killed her instantly. It was a blow with a bat to the head.
Philip started hitting her with the bat and after Miss G stopped breathing, they started raping her.
>> John Balio said that they used condoms.
There was not an indication of any siminal fluid or any semen at the scene that night.
>> With no evidence to back up John Balio's claim of sexual assault, the rape charges are dropped. But detectives are still determined to bring Janora's killers to justice.
>> John Baleio's confession gave us enough probable cause to make sure this case got prosecuted.
>> For cooperating with police, John is given a deal. He pleads guilty to secondderee murder and receives a juvenile life sentence to expire when he turns 21.
Lisa Hoy also takes a plea agreement and is sentenced to 25 years.
That leaves Johnny Hoy and Philip Skipper to face justice in separate trials.
When news of the arrests gets out, Janora's family is devastated. When the family found that Philillip and John were involved, they were really really upset and angry that the the people that Janora had taken care of so diligently were the ones involved in her murder.
The prosecutors are determined to bring Janora's killers to justice, but they have a problem. There's no concrete evidence linking either Philillip or Johnny to the crime scene. There was some male DNA under her fingernails, but it did not match the samples that we had from the three males in this case.
>> Both cases rest entirely on the testimony of John Balio.
John Balio walked us through what happened that night and that was crucial for our case. He actually brought everything together and and made the whole situation make sense to a jury with Philip Skipper Straw. The jury came back with a unanimous verdict. He was guilty of seconddegree murder.
>> Philip Skipper is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Philip's wife Amy is not charged with any crime.
>> A lot of time people ask, "What about Amy? What about Amy?" Amy Skipper had no idea what her husband was doing.
I genuinely believe that Amy Skipper did not have any knowledge of what was going to take place. I believe that she had nothing to do with this.
Johnny Hoy was found guilty of secondderee murder and sentenced to 25 years without the possibility of parole.
But for the family of Janora Gillery, no punishment could possibly make up for the pain they suffered in the wake of her murder.
Janora's father died of a broken heart.
It was just a very, very difficult time for everyone in that family.
I'd like for people to remember Janora as we knew her. Warm and happy and someone who would give the shirt off her back to anyone who needed it.
We are all happy to have had our lives enriched by her passage through this life.
For more information on an unexpected killer, go to oxygen.com.
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