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[Music] My name is Reggie Reed. Salonia Reed is my mother and Regginal Reed Senior is my father.
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My mother, she was the love of my life, my first love. And I was her everything.
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It was very rare I wasn't by her side. Take me back and tell me what you remember about that day. That day we
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went to the mall. That's one of the things to do in Hammond. Just go to the mall. Even though if you're not buying
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anything, window shop, if you will. Went to the mall, came home, and my mom went out and she never came
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home. My beeper went off and it was retinal. and he asked me, "Had I seen Salonia?"
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And I said, "No, not since yesterday." I was a patrol officer for the Ham Police Department. I was dispatched to a
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missing person's call on Apple Street in Hammond, Louisiana. The complainant, Regginal Reie, explained to me that his
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wife had left home the night before and had not returned and he was concerned and wanted to file a missing person's
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report. I had received a description of the car from Reginald that I started to drive up Range Road
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and I noticed the car. walked up to the car and noticed Salonia's body inside the car. It was
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very, very, very obvious that she was deceased. Salonia was 26 years old at the time.
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When I watched the crime scene video and saw Salon's body in that car, immediately I was sad. I was mad. It was
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pretty apparent to me right away that whoever did this homicide hated this woman.
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So I called Regina back. I says, "Regina, have you heard anything?" He told me, he said, "Yes." He said, "They
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found her in her car." And he said that she was dead and that was I was interviewed after she was murdered
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at as a six-year-old. Okay. Can you tell me your name? What's your name? When I watch that video over and over
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again, okay, the day before Sunday, what would you do? What I see is a a six-year-old boy that
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life has been ch changed. He doesn't understand the magnitude of it yet. [Music]
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And you asking me, you trying to find out who killed my mother? Do you remember seeing her movie?
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You did? Anytime a young woman Salon's age is killed the way she's killed, I think most people right away would
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assume the husband did it, right? And that's the easy way. That's the stereotypical way.
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But it's also not out of the realm of possibility that this was some killing for another reason. From that day on, my
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life changed forever. It just begs a question why [Music] [Music] After my mother was murdered, things
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moved fast. Couldn't really understand like why would somebody kill her? Like what did
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she do? It's been decades since Reggie Reed Jr. last saw his mother, Salonia. I feel like I missed out on a huge part
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of life that I'll never get back. Reggie was only 6 years old on August 22nd, 1987.
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One of the last things he remembers is his mother buying him a chocolate chip cookie here at the Hammond Square Mall
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in Louisiana. He told police his mother kissed him when she left the house later that
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night. But the rest, he says, is a blur. When you think about that, what does that feel like? When I think about how
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my mother's life was shortened and how my experience was shortened, I feel empty.
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Somebody says to you, "Who is Salonia?" What do you say? Someone asks me, "Who is Salonia?" I
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would say, "You're looking at her. cuz based on the description, the memories and what things people have
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shared. When I look in the mirror, I see my mother. Reggie's memories are at the heart of
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the memoir he's written about his mother's murder. The day my mother never came home. Within these pages, you will
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find the memories of a six-year-old boy whose mother was murdered. A 15-year-old
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young man searching for his place in the world without the guidance and encouragement of his mother. The night
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my mother went out and never came home. Life for me and my father basically flipped upside
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down. Charles Muse, now retired, was the police officer who found Salonia's body
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after taking the initial missing person's report from her husband, Regginal Reed.
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Salonia's body was in between the bucket seats of the car with her torso over into the back seat of the car.
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She had 16 pinpoint like stab wounds in her upper torso, shoulder, and neck. Her
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blouse had been torn off. Her pants had been removed from her. She had been sexually assaulted as well. Louisiana
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State Police Lieutenant Barry Ward would eventually be assigned to the case years
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later. He was only 16 years old when Salonia was murdered. In 1987, I was a sophomore in Marshall County High School
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in Western Kentucky. When he eventually did pick up the case file, he took note of the lack of blood in the car. It
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would suggest that she was murdered in another location and then transported to where her body was later discovered at
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the John's Curb Market. That market was about 1 and a half miles from the Reed house on Apple Street.
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At the scene, Officer Muse noticed something else about Salonia's naked body. I did see a substance uh that had
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been placed on the body. It was a white liquid type substance on her torso and stomach area.
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Police believe the white lotion may have spelled out a word, but if there was a message, it had become illeible in the
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Louisiana heat. The windows were rolled up. It was August at the time. It was very hot out.
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Detectives bagged any potential evidence, including the butt of a cigarette. A Winston cigarette.
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Police canvased the area, but Ward says they didn't find any eyewitnesses or a murder weapon.
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The following day, on Monday the 24th, a neighbor went to his mailbox and discovered a crucifix and a screwdriver.
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Given the nature of Salonia's injuries, police at first believed the screwdriver
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might be the murder weapon, even though it had no visible blood on it. It was early in the investigation, and
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detectives looked at all the angles, including Salonia's job at Citizens National Bank. She was a teller in the
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commercial section. She was described as being polite, kind, had a nice smile. Here
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she is taking part in a community fashion show just one week before her murder. Selonia and Reginald, who was a Marine
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and later a car salesman, met during their high school years. Salonia was known for being devoted to little
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Reggie, as everyone called him. But the night she disappeared, she left the six-year-old at home with his father.
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According to what Reginald told police, he and his son uh Reginald Jr. were going to stay and play video games while
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she went out to a local bar with her girlfriend. Officer Muse interviewed that friend who denied she and Salonia
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had plans that night. Regginal told police he suspected Salonia had a boyfriend and admitted he
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and his wife had personal differences. But Ward says the police found no evidence of an affair. Based on the
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research that I had conducted, her co-workers, the people that knew her said that she just went to work and came
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home, that she was always seen with her little boy. The day after her body was found, investigators searched the family
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home on Apple Street. The chief of police said that when he went in, it smelled like bleach in the house.
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Detectives looked for evidence that Salonia may have been killed there, but all they found was a freshly vacuumed
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carpet and the gold clasp of a necklace. Reginald gave investigators permission to interview little Reggie, the only
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other person in the home the night of the murder. In this police video, a detective questions Reggie as his father
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fidgets with a bean bag intended for his son. Tell me what you remember about that knife. Reggie Jr. became his
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father's alibi. The boy said he and his father played video games and then slept
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together in the same sofa bed on that August night. Did anybody come over? Did anybody leave?
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Everybody stay home that night. When little Reggie agrees that everybody stayed home, his father looks at him.
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Everybody, everybody see that don't be afraid. Just you know when she don't be don't don't be afraid.
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Just we just talking. She she ask you just a few more questions. You're right. What's the
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matter, baby? He said he didn't want to talk no more. Oh, you don't want to talk
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no more? Just the emotional part of it. Okay, that's all right. Look, didn't I tell you before that I'm I'm your
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friend? Oh, he's here, baby. [Music] Okay, darling. I won't talk no more. You don't have to. I just can't imagine what
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it's like as a six-year-old to have to sit there and looking at that, it's still hard to
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believe that that's me. Watching that video just brings back so so many questions and
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and pain because I see me crying. In the aftermath of Salonia's murder, her family came forward with more
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information. Some of it directed at one of Reginald's friends, Jimmy Ray Barnes.
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Turns out Barnes smoked Winston cigarettes, the same brand found in Selonia's car. And Salonia's sister,
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Gwen Smith, said that Salonia did not like Jimmy Ray. Apparently, she knew Jimmy Ray's voice cuz she started
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screaming, "Come inside. I don't trust him." So, she was scared of him. In the days after Salonia's murder,
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there was one name police kept hearing. Jimmy Ray Barnes, a friend of Regginal Senior. Jimmy Ray Barnes was an
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acquaintance of Regginal Reed. He hung out with him. He worked with him. Lieutenant Ward learned about a
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disturbing incident at a local beach where Salonia was swimming with little Reggie just days before the murder. They
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were on inner tubes. Jimmy flipped Salonia over. She didn't feel that it was a playful thing. She
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felt that it was uh deliberate and intentional. Uh she was not a good swimmer and uh she said she struggled to
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make it to the bank. The next night, her sister Gwen said Salonia became frightened when a relative who was
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visiting Salonia spotted Jimmy Ray Barnes near her home. And she said Salon went into hysterics like, "No, no, don't
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go out there. Don't go out there." And within a few moments, Jimmy Ray Barnes walked around the corner of the house.
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Jimmy told her that he was checking on Stonia and she ran him off. Ward would learn that Jimmy Ray along
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with Reginald came under even more scrutiny 2 days after the murder. A witness came forward to say she had seen
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two men around John's Curb Market on the night Salonia was murdered. She became suspicious and later wrote down on a
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piece of scrap paper the license plate. As it turns out, that was the vehicle that Regginal Reed was known to um
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operate in. That was his car. Some two weeks later, police assembled this photo array and showed it to the witness. The
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witness identified the driver as Regginal Reed and the passenger as Jimmy Ray Barnes. Jimmy Ray was given a
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polygraph test and police at the time said he passed. But it wasn't long before Jimmy Ray left Hammond.
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Reginald denied having anything to do with Salonia's murder, but neighbors told police the marriage was trouble.
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Family members say Salonia had accused her husband of physical abuse, and there was talk of divorce.
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The police continued investigating, but prosecutors never brought the case to a grand jury. There's a lot of
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circumstantial evidence in 1987 that pointed to Regginal Reed and Jimmy Ray Barnes. Um, as far as a a smoking gun,
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it it it was not there at that time. I started feeling like nothing was going to be done about her murder and we would
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not get justice. Time passed and Reginald continued to live in Hammond. He even ran for mayor
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in 1998. Ariel Reggie Reed, number eight. You can count on me. Thank you. He lost that race, but he and little
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Reggie stayed in the family home, which today has fallen into disrepair. So, this is it. What's it like for you to
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just come back here? I know you don't like to, but what does it feel like? I feel numb. Yeah, I feel numb. This is
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where it all started. You know, this is the halls I used to run. This is the TV room. This was the TV room. When you
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were playing Nintendo with your father the night that your mother was murdered, was that here? That was in Israel.
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Reggie went on to attend college and later got an MBA. He moved out of Hammond and began working for a
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pharmaceutical company. There were no new developments on his mother's murder until 2011 when Lieutenant Barry Ward of
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the Louisiana State Police got involved. After I started interacting with Sonia's
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family, her sisters, I realized how important it was. Before Barry Ward came into the picture, I just felt like
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nobody cared about Salon's case. This was just the last opportunity I felt before more witnesses passed away
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that we would have a chance to find justice for this terrible crime that happened to Sloonia.
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As far as Ward could determine, the crucifix and screwdriver found within days of the murder led nowhere. But the
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detective was drawn to several life insurance policies Regginal had taken out on Salonia that paid out more than
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$700,000. Some of those policies were taken out the same month that Selonia was murdered.
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Ward wanted to reinter Reggie Jr. in 2012. Reggie was 31 years old and living in Texas. Ward sent a Texas Ranger to
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begin the questioning. He told me why he was here and it was to discuss my mother's murder. And the
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ranger then told Reggie something he said he'd never heard before. He was not aware that his father was a suspect in
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the murder of his mother. I was like, where is this coming from? Like it's been over three decades. You talking
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about a dad like killed my mom. Like seriously. I remember asking is there any new evidence that was surfaced? And
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it was nothing new. It's true that the insurance policies had been discovered by the original detectives, but
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Lieutenant Ward had organized them in a way that he felt was damning. The Texas Ranger asked Reggie about those
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policies. He showed me a graph, a timeline that showed these insurance policies that were taken out close to
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her death. Did you all of a sudden say, "I need to get to the bottom of this." Or what? It was eye opening cuz I'm
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like, "Well, that doesn't look good. I got to learn what like what's all this?" Reggie struggled to make sense of it
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all. I did talk to my dad about it over the phone and his response was he he took our policies on everyone. Reggie
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said he finds it hard to square what the investigation revealed with the loving father who raised him. I look back I'm
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like, man, he really he really did do some great stuff for me. He was a great provider.
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Ward took a deep dive into the case file and focused on that Winston cigarette butt found in Selonia's car. He sent it
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out for DNA testing, something that was not widely available in 1987. There was a match in the National Crime
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DNA database, Cotus, but not to Jimmy Ray. It came back to a man by the name of Billy Ray Barnes. Billy Ray was Jimmy
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Ray's identical twin brother. And the DNA supervisor had another surprise. He let me know that identical twins share
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identical DNA. Lieutenant Ward decided he had to interview Jimmy Ray. And it turned out
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that Jimmy Ray had been holding on to some key information all these years. Jimmy Ray Barnes did tell me that
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Reginal Reed offered him $50,000 to quote unquote knock off his wife. [Music] In July 2012, Lieutenant Barry Ward went
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on the hunt for Jimmy Ray Barnes, who had become a prime suspect in the Salonia Reed murder case after his DNA
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was linked to the crime scene. Ward found Barnes in the Atlanta area, where he said Barnes told him he'd fled
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Hammond because he was afraid of Reginal Reed. Barnes said back then he'd been shot at three times and hit once in the
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neck. Barnes suspected the shooter was Reginal, but had no proof. Jimmy said he was known to carry a gun, but you fast
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forward 25, now 30 years, Reginal Reed was now an old man. We on Barnes was ready to talk about
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Reed without a lawyer. I ain't got nothing to Barnes told Ward that a few days before Selonia was killed, Reed
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asked him if he would quote knock off his wife. Reginald asked you if you would quote by
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your term knock off his wife and that that mean you took that to mean to kill her to murder. What was your response to
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that? Hell no. Did he discuss any money with you? Yeah, he had he discussed the money. Ward
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pressed Barnes to tell him how much money. More than 5,000. Yeah. More than 10,000? Yeah. More than 50,000. 50,000.
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He offered you $50,000. Is is that is that a guess or is that the amount he offered? That was the amount he offered.
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But Barnes told Ward that he would not repeat the story in court. I don't trust the law no more. Ward confronted Barnes
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about that polygraph test from the original case file. Barnes allegedly had passed that polygraph, but Ward
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suspected Jimmy Ray secretly had asked his identical twin, Billy Ray, to take that test.
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I talked to Billy and he said he took that polygraph test and if Billy looked like you and was
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questioned over a murder that you took part in and he doesn't know anything about it, he's probably going to pass
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that polygraph test. Would that be fair to say? I don't know. I'm not going to answer
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that cuz I know I'm the one took the polygraph test. Ward believed he had a solid case to
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finally bring charges. He had Jimmy Ray's DNA connected to the crime scene and his videotape statement about Reggie
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offering him $50,000 to kill Selonia. But Ward said prosecutors always wanted more. I would get phone calls through
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the years from prosecutors who had asked me to rein family members, find out additional information, test more
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evidence. It was busy work. Then in 2018, a newly hired prosecutor, Taylor Anthony, got assigned the case.
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Why reopen a 35year-old case? What was the trigger? Well, why reopen it? It's an interesting question. This was a case
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to me right away when I looked at it that there was a story to be told. Anthony was impressed by all the
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investigative work done by Lieutenant Ward. So, he reached out. But Ward told Anthony he was too busy and that he felt
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he'd been let down by other prosecutors. My initial response was to just get this
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guy off the phone. He said, "Look, I've already poured hundreds of man hours into that case and y'all didn't do
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anything." And he said, "You're wasting your time, kid. Have a nice life," basically. But Anthony was undeterred
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and promised war that this time things would be different. I think he saw what I saw. I think that made all the
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difference in the world. Like Ward, Anthony was sure Jimmy Ray Barnes knew a lot more. So he and Ward
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took a road trip to Atlanta. We're able to locate Jimmy. He was staying in the camper at his employer's
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place. We pulled up early in the morning when the sun was coming up and he was coming out of this camper putting a belt
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in his pants and he said, "Uh, hey, who y'all looking for?" I said, "You, Jimmy." And he goes, "Oh, you again."
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But this time, the new prosecutor had with him an agreement approved by a judge giving Barnes complete immunity if
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he testified to everything he knew about Salonia's murder. So to the lay person,
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you offered him a deal. So I offered him what I would say would be the golden ticket. But Barnes rejected the offer.
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He did not trust me. He did not believe me. He did not want to talk to us. Ward and Anthony were about to drive
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back to Louisiana when Barnes said something that took them by surprise. As Barry and I were getting back at the
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car, Jim Ray Barnes came over to us and he said, "I want you boys to know that I'm the key to it all." And he said, "If
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you think you can indict me for murder, then do it." Anthony was quick to take him up on that challenge. A couple of
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weeks later, grand jury in Tansville Parish returned seconddegree murder indictments for both Reginald Reed and
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Jimmy Ray Barnes. Immediately, we went to Reginald's home. I knocked on the door, identified who I
00:26:06
was, and that I had an arrest warrant for him for the murder of his wife. He really had no emotion.
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The date was June 21st, 2019, more than 30 years after Salonia's murder. When Reginal was arrested,
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it was like it's like a burden just got my chest like a burden was lifted off. I got a call that my father was indicted
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for seconddegree murder and conspiracy along with a codefendant for my mother's murder.
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Reggie Jr. put up his father's $250,000 bail bond. My dad being my rock for so many years, I felt the need to try to
00:26:59
help him. Now that you are both adults, did you ever ask him those questions that you have that you're questioning
00:27:05
even now as we sit here? Yeah, I asked him. I asked him and he he he maintains his innocence.
00:27:13
Sitting in another Hammond jail cell was Jimmy Ray Barnes. He now had a lawyer and asked to speak with Detective Barry
00:27:21
Ward and Taylor Anthony. So Barry and I went and met with him again, and in exchange for him telling us everything
00:27:27
he knew, he was offered a deal to plead to accessory after the fact to murder and was given a 5-year prison sentence.
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The homicide trial of Reginald Reed was scheduled for November 2022, and Jimmy Ray had agreed to testify. Reggie Jr.
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hoped to hear never before revealed details of what had happened to his mother. I want to know what happened.
00:27:52
[Music] in November 2022. The murder trial of Reginal Reed began in Ameat, Louisiana.
00:28:12
Reed was represented by the mother and daughter defense team of Vanessa Williams and Latoya William Simon. What
00:28:19
makes you think that he did not murder Salonia? Their entire case is circumstantial. William Simon says the
00:28:27
state's case was weak. There was no murder weapon. No fingerprints or DNA tying Reed to Salonia's homicide. I was
00:28:35
confused as to how they were really going to prove their case. There's no direct evidence.
00:28:41
But prosecutor Taylor Anthony believed his prosecution would deliver justice to Salonia.
00:28:48
The reason I became a prosecutor is to fight for people like this. I see a woman whose body has been desecrated,
00:28:54
violated, mutilated, and nobody spoke up for her and fought for her. And there's
00:28:58
a quote that I love, and it goes, "The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so for
00:29:05
them." And that's my job. Anthony told jurors about the $700,000 from the insurance policies on Salonia's
00:29:14
life. So, what was your theory once you put all these pieces together? My theory
00:29:19
was that Salon and Reginald were in a marriage that was about to come to an end. There was a history of abuse and
00:29:26
that Selonia was tired of it and she was ready to leave Reginald. I think he was
00:29:32
angry and he saw an opportunity for some money. I think that's why he killed this
00:29:36
woman. the case that they're presenting, which is this man takes out all these life insurance policies on a young,
00:29:43
healthy 26-year-old woman. What is his rationale for having done that? But they're missing the biggest part of it.
00:29:49
It wasn't just on her, was on himself. It was on the child. It was family policies. So, it's not like he just went
00:29:56
and took out policies on Salonia only. Prosecutor Anthony was frank with jurors, telling them that the state
00:30:03
would not produce a murder weapon or the exact location where Salonia was stabbed. He focused on what the
00:30:09
prosecution did have, including that white lotion found on Salonia's body. Later, police were able to find a bottle
00:30:16
of lotion in the Reed household that matched that type of lotion that was on her body. The prosecutor also showed
00:30:23
jurors a photograph of some scratches on Reed's neck taken on the day Salonia's body was found. They wanted to take
00:30:29
photographs of his neck and he was very hesitant. Anthony said Reed told police two different stories about how he got
00:30:36
those scratches, but after forensic testing, it was determined that none of Reed's DNA was found under Salonia's
00:30:44
fingernails. They believe that the killer is Mr. Regginal Reed. So, anything that goes to contradict that,
00:30:50
they're going to completely block out. William Simon pointed to Jimmy Ray's long criminal record of arrests. It
00:30:57
couldn't be introduced at trial. And the reason why his criminal rap sheet couldn't be introduced at trial is
00:31:01
because these aren't convictions. But William Simon says Jimmy Ray's arrests were for violent crimes. False
00:31:07
imprisonment and aggravated assault, aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon, murder, these are things that
00:31:13
the jury had a right to know, but because of the law, they didn't find out. Jimmy Ray Barnes ultimately took the
00:31:21
stand as part of his plea agreement. Jimmy, will you please tell me there were no cameras in the courtroom. So,
00:31:29
this recording is taken from Barnes's police interview conducted by Ward before the trial. He told the same story
00:31:36
when he testified. On the night of the murder, Barnes said he promised to meet Reed in the parking
00:31:43
area outside John's Curb Market where Salonia's body had been found. Oh, when I got there, he was getting out the
00:31:49
little blue car. The blue car was parked there. Barn said Reginald asked for his
00:31:54
help in moving Salonia's body. I said, "No, I wasn't getting involved in that. He wanted me to move the body and I
00:32:00
didn't want to move and I didn't move the body." Barnes says that Salonia was fully clothed when he saw her and
00:32:06
sitting in the passenger seat. I did see the body in there and uh I panic. My understanding after the fact is that
00:32:14
Jimmy Ray Barnes talked to Reggie and said, "Where's the money? You told me $50,000." He says he never got a penny
00:32:20
of it. Prosecutor Anthony contends that after the men drove away, Reed returned and
00:32:27
staged the crime scene, stripping off Salonia's clothes, covering her with that white lotion, and leaving other
00:32:34
evidence to make it appear as a sex crime. And what does your dad say to that? He say it's completely BS.
00:32:43
He say it's it's no way. We were at home playing Nintendo. William Simon had her own theory of what
00:32:51
happened that night. All of the information that we've received about Jimmy Ray Barnes is that he was
00:32:55
borderline obsessed with Salonia. I believe that maybe he encountered her, tried to make a passer, that was
00:33:01
rejected, and that's where you see that anger, that rage, that hatred. Sitting through the trial, Reggie
00:33:09
admitted that the relentless focus on his mother's murder was upsetting, especially as he watched that crime
00:33:16
scene video, which he had never seen before. And it really struck a card by just seeing my mother there um
00:33:26
lifeless and just alone and dead. Regginal Reed never took the stand and after less than a week of testimony, the
00:33:40
case went to the jury. Reggie Jr. braced for the verdict. [Music] As a prosecutor, when the jury
00:34:03
deliberates, it's painstaking. You're just waiting and waiting and waiting. Some of Reginal Reed's brothers and
00:34:10
sisters were waiting as well. Kennedy Reed, Belinda Reed Cox, and Claude Reed. Claude, you don't believe your brother
00:34:18
murdered Salonia? No, I don't. I don't believe Reggie did that. My brother's not a murderer. He's
00:34:26
not. But on this day, November 18th, 2022, Reginal Reed was found guilty of secondderee murder after the jury
00:34:36
deliberated for just over 3 hours. When he was found guilty, I feel like he died
00:34:42
without dying. And I saw myself at that same six-year-old crying out for my dad as I did in that
00:34:54
video. [Music] And I just wanted the end. Reggie tried to recapture the moment his father was
00:35:05
found guilty in his book. My father grabbed me up into a big hug. I wanted to stay there forever. He pulled back
00:35:12
for a moment, looked me in the eyes, and kissed me on the forehead. We embraced once more, and then they took him away
00:35:20
from me. I wanted to tell him, "I'm sorry for the loss of your mother. I'm sorry for your
00:35:28
father going to prison." I can't even imagine the grieving process that he's got to gone through.
00:35:33
Reggie says sitting through the trial was excruciating, but when it was over, he still wanted answers.
00:35:42
This parents room. Lieutenant Ward has told you that one of his theories is that your mother may
00:35:51
have been killed in this room. In this room, I just go back thinking of the manner in
00:35:57
the way which she was killed. If she was killed here, how is that possible that they couldn't
00:36:05
find anything? I mean, it's Where was I? Did you leave the house after I fell asleep?
00:36:14
Questions Reggie cannot answer because he simply cannot remember. On January 30th, 2023, everyone piled
00:36:25
back into the same courtroom where Regginal Reed was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
00:36:32
parole. He did not offer any kind of explanation or statement and said nothing. You know, I want justice, but I didn't
00:36:41
think justice was going to come at the price of my dad going to prison for life.
00:36:47
[Music] So, my question is, do you believe that your father murdered your mother?
00:36:58
I don't know. Another question. Do I think my dad had some involvement? Maybe. I don't know though. I don't know. So
00:37:11
that's where I'm just It's like a tugof-war game. Just knowing the type of father he is. I
00:37:20
can't just turn a page and just look at my father as a complete monster. Salonia's sister, Gwen Smith, always
00:37:32
believe Reginal was Salonia's killer. Although she and Reggie Jr. are stranged. She still worries about him. I
00:37:40
just kind of felt bad for him, you know, because his mom was taken away from him
00:37:47
when he was a little boy. What do you want people to know about this case? If you could sum it up for me. I know one
00:37:57
thing. My brother did not commit this murder. For Barry Ward, who worked on the Salonia Reed case for a decade, the
00:38:05
conviction was just, and he appreciates that Jimmy Ray Barnes agreed to testify.
00:38:10
Jimmy Ray Barnes was the key. Barnes served his sentence for being an accessory after the fact to murder. He
00:38:17
was freed from prison and shortly after on January 27th, 2024, he was killed in a car accident.
00:38:26
He was in Hammond to attend the funeral of his identical twin. There are several cases throughout my
00:38:38
career that stick out to me and this is probably the the main one. Charles Muse, the Hammond police officer
00:38:48
who found Salonia's body, is pleased he got to see the outcome of the case. I mean, her death, you know, didn't just
00:38:56
go and bang. I find some peace in that. You say that you wish you would have gotten to know her better, but then you
00:39:08
realize too, you must, that she's living through you, that she's here because you're here. Absolutely. And I
00:39:19
think about that she's in a place where she's consistently watching over me. As for Reggie's father, he calls Reggie
00:39:31
from a Louisiana state prison once or twice a week. This call is not private. It will be recorded and may be
00:39:38
monitored. Hey Re. Hey. How you doing, man? Good. How you? A 48 hours producer was present
00:39:47
during a recent call. Do you think you got a fair trial? No, of course not. Of course not. Was no
00:39:54
evidence. What you got to tell us about your son? Oh, remarkable. I thank the Lord for him
00:40:03
every day that he was able to understand some something that was going on, but that I would never leave him.
00:40:13
These days, Reggie has his own family. His son, Lean, is nearly the age he was when Selonia was killed, and they often
00:40:22
play games just as Reggie did with his father. And in January 2024, Reggie and his wife
00:40:31
Paula were blessed with a baby girl. When our daughter was born, we both agreed there's
00:40:40
no other name that we should name her except Salonia. You know, give that name an opportunity to live life and be
00:40:50
recognized in a positive way. Wow, it's beautiful. [Music] Something happened at the house. We are
00:41:11
very worried about your dad. A daughter's forbidden love. There is blood everywhere. Turns deadly. We found
00:41:18
several murder plans. Who's the mastermind of all of this? Where were you? 48 hours is all new. CBS next
00:41:25
Saturday, 10:9 central and streaming on Paramount Plus. [Music] When something like this happens,
00:41:44
when somebody goes missing, you want answers. But this case is incredibly unique. When
00:41:51
you started to dig a little bit deeper, nothing is what it seems. Suzanne Morphw went missing on Mother's
00:42:00
Day in May of 2020. And from there on out, it became a nationwide search for her. Suzanne Morphw left for a bike ride
00:42:08
and she never came back. She has two beautiful daughters. The family looks to be perfect from the outside. Every
00:42:14
picture you saw of them, they were smiling, they're laughing, they're looking like they love each other. She
00:42:20
grew up in Indiana. She came to Colorado and she began to mountain bike. We see pictures of a beautiful woman, an
00:42:28
active, physically fit woman taking advantage of the mountains. Barry Morphw was a business owner. He
00:42:38
was an avid hunter and a man's man. On May 9th, Barry was very happy because there had been some marital tension, but
00:42:49
not on May 9th. All we have to go on is what Barry says occurred. That's right. Barry says they had a nice dinner
00:42:57
together. They even made love and then they went to sleep and she was still sleeping the next morning when he left
00:43:03
for work. So the next day, Mother's Day, the daughters are out on a camping trip.
00:43:09
Did that strike people as odd? Family had told investigators that it was odd that their daughters would not be with
00:43:16
their mom. She didn't have anything else to do. and all of a sudden her daughters and her
00:43:24
husband are both gone. Barry Morphe said he texted his wife Suzanne to wish her a happy Mother's
00:43:31
Day. He received no reply. He had contact with his daughters back and forth. Can't get a hold of mother and
00:43:39
then someone contacted a neighbor, right? The neighbor had told Barry that her car is here. She was not home. And
00:43:46
Barry says, "Well, maybe go look for her bike cuz she's an avid mountain biker."
00:43:50
The neighbor said he could not find it. Local law enforcement responds to the scene and they do find her bicycle.
00:44:00
Where was that bike? It's right over here, Peter. The bike was found at the bottom of this ravine right here. The
00:44:06
initial thought is kidnapping. Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this that has you, we'll do
00:44:14
whatever it takes to bring you back. So about 10 days into the investigation, they learn about a piece of technology
00:44:24
that we have an example of right in front of you. What is that? Right. So they find a spy pin. It looks something
00:44:30
like this. And they find it in the master bedroom of the Morphew home. It's like James Bond. It's a pen that looks
00:44:38
like a regular pen. And it records conversations. This pipe pin was given to Suzanne to
00:44:45
record Barry Morphw in hopes of catching him in an affair. It backfired in fact.
00:44:52
As a matter of fact, it backfired. Captured on the spy pen is a conversation between Suzanne Morphw and
00:44:59
somebody named Jeff. And it's clear that Jeff is her lover. They did not know who
00:45:06
Jeff was, but it put a new wrinkle into the case for sure. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Laughter]
00:45:45
[Music] What happened on this road is a real mystery. No one knows where is Suzanne.
00:46:06
[Music] In the days, weeks, and months after Suzanne Morphw was reported missing on
00:46:13
Mother's Day 2020, her trail went cold. But the mother of two's disappearance had become the biggest story in
00:46:21
Colorado. 49year-old Suzanne Morphw remains missing. Home of a missing woman from Chaffi County is now being
00:46:29
searched. Teams are combing the terrain, even brought in boats to search the local waterways.
00:46:37
And we're going to fan out and we're going to work that area very carefully. Okay.
00:46:42
4 months in, Suzanne's brother, Andrew Mormon, organized a citizen search. He said he felt he had to do something,
00:46:50
anything. I'd hoped to find her alive. and and at some point you have to realize when somebody's missing after so
00:46:56
long that the chances of that diminish dramatically. The thought that Suzanne may have been
00:47:03
abducted hit the peaceful picturesque town of Salida hard. I came home every day and my wife asked me, "Have they
00:47:12
found her yet?" Dan Rydenower has covered the story for his local morning show. Hippie Radio 975
00:47:20
with Dan R. Good morning. 827 Barry and Suzanne Morphw were not known well in Salida, Colorado. They had only been
00:47:28
here for a couple of years. Before moving to Colorado in 2018, Barry and Suzanne grew up in the small town of
00:47:36
Alexandria, Indiana, where they met in high school. Suzanne competed for homecoming queen.
00:47:45
Barry was a star baseball player who was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays. Injury ended Barry's dreams of a
00:47:54
major league career. They both attended Purdue University and married in 1994. He started a landscaping business.
00:48:03
Suzanne taught middle school before becoming a full-time mother. They had a couple of daughters, one in
00:48:12
college and they had a daughter in high school. Macy, 16 years old when her mom disappeared, lived at home. Her sister,
00:48:20
Mallerie, attended college, and the morphuse told some friends they moved to a home just outside of Salida to be
00:48:28
closer to their older daughter. But there were also rumblings about the state of the Morphwus marriage. Maybe a
00:48:36
new place, a new home, new scenery around them would strengthen their family and therefore strengthen their
00:48:42
marriage. But the move did not appear to improve the relationship. It was a tough time, says her sister,
00:48:51
Melinda Mormon. My sister had um sent me a text message. It was very lengthy. It was very powerful. It was
00:49:00
very revealing. In this Zoom interview, Melinda said she received Suzanne's text
00:49:07
two days before she disappeared and it was boiling over with anger toward Barry. The text read in part, "He's also
00:49:15
been abusive emotionally and physically. I feel more angry now. Anger at what I've allowed."
00:49:25
Barry was very dominant in the relationship and my sister was a very passive, gentle soul. He had a great
00:49:32
tendency to overpower and intimidate people to get what he wanted. And what kind of boss was he? You know,
00:49:40
he was real quiet, stern. He knew what he was doing cuz that's what he did in Indiana. Cody Cox was part of Barry's
00:49:47
landscaping crew for nearly 2 years when Barry first arrived in Colorado. I talked pretty highly about Barry cuz I
00:49:55
was with him all the time. He's like inspiration to me almost. He was a real cool guy. Cody said he regularly heard
00:50:02
Barry talking to Suzanne as they drove in Barry's truck. They seemed to communicate pretty well.
00:50:10
She is a sweetheart. She is a real kind lady. She's almost like an angel, like something you'd see off a Hallmark
00:50:16
movie, you know, like real nice, almost too perfect. So when I heard about the news,
00:50:23
I didn't believe it. I heard it actually on the radio and I was like, did they just say Suzanne?
00:50:29
And I was like, oh my gosh, who would even want to hurt her? The first day authorities searched for
00:50:36
Suzanne, they found her mountain bike close to the Morphw home. Where was the mountain bike found? It
00:50:44
was found right over this little cliff right here, resting on these boulders. She was new at mountain biking, so an
00:50:50
accident is certainly plausible. I would only ask where's Suzanne. She would have been injured. Yeah, she
00:50:57
would have been injured. Investigators believe the scene was staged. And days later, they discovered Suzanne's helmet
00:51:04
roughly a mile away off Highway 50. The helmet was found on the south side of the road, this side of the road, which
00:51:12
would be to our left. So, is the thought somebody threw it out of a window? Perhaps. That's the
00:51:18
thinking. Yes. It appeared as though Suzanne could have been abducted. And that's when Barry made that public plea.
00:51:27
Please, we'll do whatever it takes to bring you back. In those early days, Barry had a theory about what happened
00:51:33
to Suzanne that he shared with Tyson Draper, who has his own YouTube channel. They happened to meet at the site where
00:51:41
Suzanne's mountain bike was found. And Tyson secretly videotaped Barry. Um, the first night there was a mountain line.
00:51:49
The officer seen it walk by the car. So we thought maybe she got attacked by a lion. A mountain lion killed her. If
00:51:57
that happened, there would have been signs of that. There would have been blood. There would have been struggle.
00:52:03
So that was a very short-lived speculation. Authorities began to doubt that Suzanne
00:52:10
even took a bike ride, especially after her sunglasses and hydration backpack were found in her car. Investigators
00:52:18
also found her driver's license and credit cards in her Range Rover, but her cell phone was missing. Did Barry Morphw
00:52:28
cooperate with investigators during the course of this? He had been interviewed by investigators through the course of
00:52:35
it and he talked to investigators almost every time. 11 News reporter Ashley Franco is live at the Chaffi County
00:52:40
Court. Ashley Franco, who reported on the case for the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, has read the police
00:52:47
documents, and she says Barry has repeatedly told the same story. He came home around 300 p.m. on May 9th, 2020,
00:52:56
and had a pleasant evening with Suzanne. The next morning, Mother's Day, Barry says he drove to a job some 3 hours
00:53:04
away. He says the last time he sees his wife is when she's sleeping in their bed. As investigators began trying to
00:53:13
verify Barry's alibi, they were pulled in a new direction. Suzanne's spy pen had surfaced with that intimate
00:53:21
conversation. Now they needed to figure out the identity of Jeff, Suzanne's lover.
00:53:29
Could this man have had something to do with Suzanne's disappearance? It was just days after Suzanne Morphw
00:53:54
went missing when investigators make that intriguing discovery. They discover a spy pen. A spy pen. a
00:54:03
spy pet. A Gruber is a professor of law at the University of Colorado and a former defense attorney. She has closely
00:54:13
studied all the public investigative files in the Morphw case. She knows it was not easy for investigators to find
00:54:21
Suzanne's secret lover, a man named Jeff. She hid that affair so well that it took
00:54:29
agents 6 months to find the man she was having an affair with. Jeff turned out to be Jeff Libler and he had a wife and
00:54:38
six children in Michigan where he lived. He and Suzanne had a one-time fling after high school. Decades passed until
00:54:46
Suzanne reached out to Jeff out of the blue in 2018. When Suzanne and Barry moved to Colorado, Suzanne messaged him
00:54:56
on Facebook. And what did she message him? Howdy, Stranger. And from that moment, they had talked almost every
00:55:04
single day non-stop. In the months after Suzanne went missing, Jeff kept quiet. He only began
00:55:11
cooperating after he was located by investigators who learned Jeff had taken steps to hide the nearly 2-year affair.
00:55:20
What he did was delete all his social media accounts that he had used to communicate with Suzanne. He's got a lot
00:55:27
to lose if revelations of this affair come out. Jeff told agents he only took those steps because he did not want to
00:55:36
tarnish Suzanne's memory and worried he might lose his family and job. He was also worried agents considered him a
00:55:45
suspect. He asked the agents, "Am I a target?" Although he did not come forward on his own, Jeff did assist
00:55:53
agents after they found him, he agreed to provide access to his DNA, phone records, and his passwords for those
00:56:01
deleted accounts. By looking through the couple's iCloud accounts and phone records, agents were able to piece
00:56:08
together their relationship, including the times they met in person. Investigators also found that Suzanne,
00:56:15
on several instances, had gone on vacation to meet up with Jeff in many different states, ranging from Louisiana
00:56:23
to Florida. Investigators also discovered they'd sent intimate photos to each other, talked of becoming
00:56:30
husband and wife, and even mentioned leaving the United States. Jeff and Suzanne had talked about moving away,
00:56:38
moving to Ecuador at one point. If you were an investigator instead of a law professor, what would you want to know
00:56:45
about this Jeff Libler? Everything. I'd want to know everything about what he was doing, what he was thinking. Here is
00:56:52
somebody who arguably had the last communication with Suzanne before she went missing. The love affair between
00:57:00
Suzanne and Jeff became a key part of the investigation as agents tried to figure out what happened to her on that
00:57:08
Saturday, May 9th. the day before Mother's Day. Records show that Suzanne and Jeff messaged each other 59 times
00:57:17
that day, much more than usual, authorities say. At one point, Suzanne sends Jeff this selfie. Investigators
00:57:26
dub it her last proof of life photo. Barry was not home as the lover's texts heat up.
00:57:35
At 2:05 p.m., Suzanne writes, "I'm just in love with you. What you up to?" Jeff's response at 2:06 p.m., "Want to
00:57:44
strip down and get naked?" LOL. She responds by saying she'll load up her WhatsApp account. And then at 2:11,
00:57:54
Suzanne writes, "Okay, I'm on WA." Then at 2:26 p.m., Suzanne gets a text from Barry that he's heading home. Done.
00:58:07
Headed back. No one knows if Suzanne saw that text or was preoccupied with Jeff,
00:58:14
but she does not answer. Barry follows up, appearing to wonder where Suzanne is. Did you leave?
00:58:22
There was still no response from Suzanne and investigators speculate the next few
00:58:27
moments are when Barry returned home. They noticed that Barry's cell phone appears to be pinging all around the
00:58:34
outside of his house. Was he chasing Suzanne before a final and fatal confrontation?
00:58:42
Investigators asked Barry to explain that unusual phone activity. And he says, "Well, let me think about that. I
00:58:50
was probably walking around my house shooting chipmunks. You heard right. It was perhaps the world's first chipmunk
00:58:58
alibi. Barry says the chipmunks were a constant nuisance at his house and he'd been running around shooting them that
00:59:05
day. And then that confession to shooting chipmunks becomes a major piece of incriminating evidence against him.
00:59:14
There was no evidence of any chipmunk shootings around Barry's house. Part of his problem, Aas says, is that Barry
00:59:22
granted between 30 and 40 interviews, all without a lawyer, to everyone from a county detective to members of the FBI.
00:59:31
Would you have allowed him to do all these interviews? No. Absolutely not. Meanwhile, Jeff Libler was cleared. He
00:59:39
told agents he was in Michigan that weekend and his alibi checked out. When investigators tell Barry of the affair,
00:59:47
he denies knowing anything about it. But if Barry knew nothing about Suzanne's affair, what motive would he have to
00:59:56
kill her? One clue may be a deleted text that investigators found on Barry's phone sent by Suzanne just days before.
01:00:05
I'm done. I could care less what you're up to and have been for years. We just need to figure this out civily. So, the
01:00:14
only thing that makes sense is that Barry Morphw lost it when Suzanne finally said, "I'm leaving you."
01:00:23
Barry knew that his daughters would be away on their camping trip that Saturday afternoon, and authorities say he took
01:00:30
advantage of that opportunity to kill Suzanne and clean up the crime scene. From 2:47
01:00:38
p.m. until 10:17 p.m., just under 8 hours, Barry's phone goes into airplane mode. What do
01:00:47
authorities believe was happening during that time? Authorities say that they believe when his phone went into
01:00:52
airplane mode that he was disposing of possible evidence. Unable to track Barry's cell phone, investigators tapped
01:01:01
into a relatively new investigative technique, digital vehicle forensics, to pull a
01:01:09
stream of data out of Barry's Ford truck. And Barry's truck told a different story
01:01:16
than what he was telling investigators. They were using Barry's own car against him.
01:01:40
Ben Lamir is an expert in the new field of vehicle forensics. Give me a sense of how your technology
01:01:49
from your company helps solve criminal cases. So, a lot of times it's used to, you know, locate bodies, brings Lamir is
01:01:56
the CEO of the Burla Corporation. helps uh get people convicted. Um and it's helped get people not convicted.
01:02:05
Investigators from Scotland Yard to the FBI have learned how to use Burless software to tap into the dozens of
01:02:13
computers in a car. It's accurate enough to be used as evidence in court cases. Correct. Yes, sir. It's uh it's used
01:02:21
every day in cases around the world. cases like the disappearance of Suzanne Morphw. Investigators created a burla
01:02:29
report, meaning they tapped into the data in Barry's Ford truck to track its movements after his cell phone went into
01:02:37
airplane mode. A couple of the pieces of evidence that I think are very harmful to his case um come from the data in the
01:02:45
car. The prosecution's case is that Barry snapped at one point the day before Mother's Day.
01:02:55
Authorities believe Barry killed Suzanne that afternoon. He told agents he went to bed around 8:00 p.m. that night, but
01:03:02
the data pulled from the truck shows that the truck was put in reverse and moved some 96 ft closer to his house
01:03:11
around 9:30 p.m. Investigators think that's when he could have loaded Suzanne's body.
01:03:20
Initially, Barry told police that he set his alarm for 4:30 a.m. on Mother's Day
01:03:26
and left the house by 5 to drive to a job site in Broomfield, a town near Denver, 150 mi from Salida.
01:03:36
But the truck's computers showed that someone was opening and closing the truck's doors around 3:30 a.m.
01:03:44
Investigators believe Barry began driving toward Broomfield much earlier than he claimed. But there is a 4-hour
01:03:52
window, approximately 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. when no activity was recorded by the vehicle's computers. There are
01:04:01
events in the car that aren't recorded, so they can't give sort of a full chronological picture. And if Barry hid
01:04:09
Suzanne's body during that 4-hour window, the truck's data does not provide answers. Why is data missing
01:04:17
sometimes? Well, it gets overwritten. Um, you know, it is a computer and you know, log files, they only last so long.
01:04:24
But Barry helped fill in some of the missing data. He told agents he took a left upon leaving his home instead of a
01:04:32
right because even though it was dark, he remembered seeing some elk. He saw a herd of elk and he's a hunter, so he was
01:04:40
interested and he wanted to get an uplose look. That admission was significant to agents because it put him
01:04:46
in an area where a key piece of evidence had been recovered. Investigators found
01:04:52
Suzanne's bike helmet up that road. So, they believe at that point when he turned left instead of turning right
01:04:58
that he could have been ditching her bike helmet. At 8:10 on Mother's Day morning, the
01:05:05
truck's computers again began recording data, and by then, Barry's cell phone had also come back to life. Agents are
01:05:14
able to track Barry's cell and truck movements and can see that he first pulled over at this Broomfield bus stop
01:05:22
where he discarded something in a garbage can. And then he moves on to a hotel trash can, a McDonald's trash can,
01:05:29
a dumpster in a Men's Warehouse parking lot, and then back to the hotel and dump
01:05:34
stuff in a dumpster there. Investigators believe that during these trash runs, he
01:05:39
was disposing of evidence in different places within the Denver area. This is a surveillance shot of Barry on one of
01:05:47
those trash runs, but investigators could not see what he was throwing away. It may have looked incriminating, but
01:05:55
Barry claims it was just another day at the office. He told agents he was merely
01:06:00
being cheap, not criminal. and his claim, well, I just always have a lot of junk in in the vehicle. I don't like to
01:06:07
pay to have it uh disposed at a landfill. I This is just what I do. But it's suspicious that you would go to
01:06:16
five different trash areas to dispose of several things. Why not just do it at once?
01:06:25
After checking out the work site, Barry headed back to his room at the Holiday Inn. And investigators say he stayed
01:06:32
there from 12:42 to 6:03 p.m. By then, he'd already spoken to older daughter Mallerie, who told him she could not get
01:06:42
in touch with her mother. That's when the Morphew neighbors were contacted and could find no sign of Suzanne. Barry
01:06:51
asked him at that time if the bike was there to go check on her. Her bicycle is not here. Barry asks his neighbor to
01:06:58
call 911 and that's when the call to 911 was placed that Suzanne is missing. Barry doesn't head home immediately and
01:07:09
he is dropping some tools off for his co-workers. Tools including a shovel. With Suzanne now officially reported
01:07:18
missing, Barry tells his workers there's a family emergency and arranges hotel rooms with one of those workers taking
01:07:26
over Barry's room. When the employee was interviewed, he told investigators that
01:07:32
the room that Barry checked out of it had a strong smell of chlorine or bleach, which suggests what? That he
01:07:40
could be cleaning up a crime scene. Just after 6:00 p.m., Barry starts driving back to Salida. On the way, Barry speaks
01:07:50
to sheriff's deputies who advise him they found Suzanne's bike, and he arrives at that ravine at around 8:40
01:07:58
p.m. And investigators say that when he arrived there, he was pretty emotional for a few minutes.
01:08:06
By Sunday night, Suzanne's daughters were back home, but Suzanne is nowhere to be found. no questions asked, however
01:08:14
much they want. Barry offered a $100,000 reward for information that was later doubled to $200,000.
01:08:26
Investigators later discovered many texts from Suzanne to a close friend that apparently revealed her tormented
01:08:34
feelings about Barry. He won't speak of divorce. I feel no peace when he's here.
01:08:41
I wouldn't feel safe alone with him. Barry became the prime suspect. And investigators think they know how he
01:08:50
killed Suzanne. [Music] The large Morphew home remains sealed off and disappearing. While
01:09:10
investigators searched the Morphw home and the family's cars and trucks, Barry continued to talk seemingly to anyone
01:09:18
with a badge. Weeks and months went by and Barry remained at the center of the investigation.
01:09:27
Police are absolutely correct as a statistical matter to look at intimate partners when they suspect that a woman
01:09:36
might have been harmed or murdered. It's something like eight out of 10 times when a spouse dies, the other one's
01:09:41
involved. Absolutely. Sometimes the smallest item will turn an investigation. And in this case, agents
01:09:49
seized on this clear plastic cap that a forensics team had found in the family's
01:09:54
dryer. Prosecutors believe the cap was from a syringe used to fill a tranquilizer dart. How do prosecutors
01:10:03
interpret that? The prosecution's theory is that at some point when Barry came home on the 9th and snapped and decided
01:10:12
to murder Suzanne, he used a tranquilizer dart that you would use on animals. There was no working
01:10:20
tranquilizer rifle found in the Morpheuse home, but Barry told investigators he was an experienced
01:10:27
tranquilizer dart gun shooter. He knew how to load darts with paralyzing chemicals, having used them to illegally
01:10:35
sedate deer and remove their antlers to sell. This is a photo of the inside of Barry's
01:10:43
garage with his collection of deer heads and a pile of antlers. We asked Dan Rydenower to read some of
01:10:52
what Barry told investigators. Barry said, "The first thing I thought of when I came here and saw deer in my yard with
01:10:59
big horns, I'm like, I'm getting them horns. And I'll tell you exactly what I did. I shoot them. They go to sleep. I
01:11:06
cut their horns off. It's totally illegal. But you're going to find tran darts around my property because I've
01:11:13
done that." Experts say it can take between 4 and 20 minutes for an animal the size of a deer to drop after being
01:11:21
shot with a tranquilizer dart. Agents theorized that Barry's phone had pinged from various locations around the house,
01:11:29
not because he was shooting chipmunks, but because he was chasing Suzanne after he shot her.
01:11:37
And what are you holding? What I'm holding is a Teladart model uh 706 rifle. They use this a lot in parks
01:11:44
throughout the country. Andrew Kaders, owner and CEO of Animal Care and Equipment Services, showed us a
01:11:52
tranquilizer rifle he'd typically use on animals. So, if Suzanne had been struck by one of
01:12:03
these darts, it's right here. Would she have time to run around, try to escape? She could, but I don't think she would
01:12:10
get very far. For a human being, it could be lethal, for sure. Bolstering the theory that Barry and
01:12:18
Suzanne had a confrontation the day she disappeared were apparent scratches seen
01:12:24
on Barry's left arm. Agents took the circumstantial evidence they gathered, Barry's apparent suspicious behavior,
01:12:32
his contradictory statements, the puzzling data from his truck, Suzanne's disturbing texts, and those five trash
01:12:40
runs, and brought it all to the district attorney. On nearly the anniversary of Suzanne's
01:12:48
disappearance, Barry is arrested. The moment captured on a cell phone by a passer by in May 2021. Tonight, the
01:12:56
husband of Suzanne Morphw is behind bars accused of killing her. The Chaffi County Sheriff says Barry Morphw was
01:13:02
arrested this morning. Suzanne's body has never been found and prosecutors assume she's dead. Despite
01:13:11
the lack of a body, Barry was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and a variety of
01:13:18
other allegations. He was held without bail and eventually pleaded not guilty. In their arrest affidavit, prosecutors
01:13:28
spelled out what they believe happened to Suzanne. It had become clear that Barry could not
01:13:33
control Suzanne's insistence on leaving him and he resorted to something he has done his entire life. Hunt and control
01:13:42
Suzanne like he had hunted and controlled animals. Suzanne's sister Melinda reacted to the
01:13:50
news of Barry's arrest. There are no winners in this story. There are two families who are suffering deeply.
01:13:59
Barry ultimately hired high-profile lawyers from Denver. And in the summer of 2021, Judge Patrick Murphy heard the
01:14:07
prosecution's evidence in open court. He decided to hold a preliminary hearing to see if this case had enough evidence
01:14:16
to go to trial. The defense tried mightily to blunt the state's case, countering that the clear
01:14:23
plastic cap found in the dryer means nothing because no one could say how long it had been there. Furthermore,
01:14:32
Barry's DNA was not found on that cap. And as for that chlorine smell in Barry's hotel room, one of the managers
01:14:40
from the Holiday Inn had actually communicated to agents that this smell of chlorine existed before Barry Murphy
01:14:47
was there because that room's directly above an indoor pool. And there was one more crucial issue the
01:14:54
prosecution had to deal with, one that its own forensic team uncovered. DNA evidence made public for the first time
01:15:03
now threatened to destroy the case against Barry. This DNA discovery is so significant. The agents swabbed the
01:15:14
inside of Suzanne Morphw's car and they found male DNA on the glove box and it wasn't Barry Morphw's DNA. He was
01:15:22
eliminated. The DNA also did not match Suzanne's lover, Jeff Libler. But it was a partial
01:15:31
match to the DNA of an unknown male who had attacked other women. And it raised a disturbing question. Had Suzanne
01:15:39
fallen into the hands of a sexual predator? [Music] In September 2021 at the Chaffi County
01:15:58
Courthouse in Salida, Judge Patrick Murphy heard arguments about whether there was enough evidence to try Barry
01:16:04
Morphw for murder. The judge named off three different scenarios, saying Suzanne Morphw left willingly. Barry
01:16:12
Morphw could have killed his wife or someone else abducted Suzanne and killed her. He said it was unlikely Suzanne had
01:16:19
run off on her own, even though she and lover Jeff Libbler had discussed moving to Ecuador. The judge says that because
01:16:27
of the evidence that's been presented about how loving Suzanne was toward her daughters and toward her family that she
01:16:34
could never do that. But the abduction theory could not be so easily dismissed, especially after that mysterious DNA was
01:16:42
found in Suzanne's Range Rover. Investigators learned that DNA at least partially matched the profile of an
01:16:50
unnamed man connected to three unsolved sexual assault cases in Tempee, Phoenix,
01:16:58
and Chicago. So, how can that DNA end up in her car? Well, that DNA can end up in her car if
01:17:06
she was the victim, for example, of a serial killer or there could also be potentially an innocent explanation. But
01:17:14
it is very very curious. Barry Morphw can stand up and say, "I'm not your killer.
01:17:24
The man whose DNA is in my wife's car tied to past sexual assaults, that's your killer." Barry Morphew absolutely
01:17:32
could say that. And that's what his defense is banking on in this case. In frank language, Judge Murphy gave his
01:17:40
opinion of the state's evidence. I find that the proof is not evident, nor is the presumption great that Mr. Morphew
01:17:48
committed first-degree murder. Despite that, the judge ruled there was probable cause to go to trial. But this
01:17:56
judge was very careful to say, "Look, I'm finding probable cause here, but it's only because I am looking at all
01:18:04
the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution." At that point, Barry had spent months in
01:18:13
jail. The judge says $500,000 cashonly bond. And are they monitoring him in some fashion? Barry Morphw is wearing an
01:18:22
ankle monitor for them to track him to make sure that he is staying in Chaffi County. A few days later, on September
01:18:29
20th, 2021, Barry Morphw and daughters Mallerie and Macy are all smiles as they leave the jail. Barry, how does it feel?
01:18:37
How does it feel to be out? They stand firmly behind their dad. Barry declined our request for an interview.
01:18:47
Barry Morphw's homicide trial was to begin on April 28th, 2022. But in the months leading up to that date, Judge
01:18:56
Murphy recused himself and Judge Ramsay Lama replaced him. and Barry's defense team, led by attorney Iris Eton, filed
01:19:06
motions asking that prosecutors be sanctioned for failing to produce discovery in a timely manner, including
01:19:14
some potentially exculpatory evidence, like the male DNA found in Suzanne's Range Rover. There's DNA
01:19:23
that is placed on all the critical items of evidence in this case on the bike, on
01:19:29
the bike helmet, in the house, in the car that is linked to unknown males. In April 2022, Judge
01:19:39
Lama ruled that prosecutors repeatedly had missed deadlines and had failed to turn over important information in the
01:19:47
discovery phase. The judge wrote that while he did not find those actions quote willful, the court does find this
01:19:55
pattern to be negligent, bordering on reckless unquote. The judge's penalty was to knock out 14 prosecution
01:20:04
witnesses, including experts in DNA and cell phone and vehicle data recovery. They would not, he said, be allowed to
01:20:13
testify. This case is incredibly unique. Law professor Ya Gruber said the case was going to be an uphill battle for
01:20:22
prosecutors even before she heard about the most recent sanctions. There are not
01:20:28
many murder cases where the defendant has been charged with first-degree murder where there is no body, no blood
01:20:37
evidence of any foul play, no eyewitnesses. On April 19th, 2022, as a pre-trial hearing was about to begin,
01:20:47
District Attorney Linda Stanley filed a motion to dismiss the murder charges against Barry Morphw without prejudice,
01:20:55
meaning the case could be refiled at a later date. In her motion, the DA pointed to the court's decision to bar
01:21:03
several key witnesses. Without this crucial evidence and without the victim's body, the people cannot move
01:21:10
forward at this time in good faith. Neither Barry, his daughters, nor his lawyer had any advanced warning. I
01:21:20
didn't know a dismissal was coming today, although the writing was on the wall. In her motion for dismissal, DA
01:21:29
Stanley told the judge that officials believe investigators are close to discovering the location of Suzanne
01:21:36
Morphw's body. Court papers specifically mention a remote and mountainous region
01:21:43
nearby the Morphew residence that will be excavated after 5 ft of snow melts. Where is Suzanne Morphw's body? That is
01:21:52
the million-dollar question. Remember, there was an approximate 4-hour gap not recorded by the computers in Barry's
01:22:01
truck on Mother's Day morning 2020. Whether investigators ultimately were able to recover some of that missing
01:22:08
data or received a tip about the location of Suzanne's remains is not known. The San Isabel National Forest, again,
01:22:17
is 1.1 million acres. There's plenty of places to dispose of the body. Defense attorney Eton denies Barry has any
01:22:28
involvement in his wife's disappearance. Barry Morphw loves Suzanne Morphw. He loves her and he misses her and he wants
01:22:37
to know where Suzanne Morphw is. After the judge granted the motion to dismiss homicide charges against Barry,
01:22:47
he walked out of court a free man, flanked as usual by his loyal daughters. Suzanne's sister Melinda says she agrees
01:22:57
with the request to dismiss charges against Barry at this point. She said she hoped that with more time, searchers
01:23:05
will find Suzanne's body and win a solid conviction in her murder. This would dispel all rumors of her whereabouts.
01:23:15
And whatever else happens with the case, Melinda says she hopes her nieces keep one thing in mind. Mallerie Macy, your
01:23:25
mother would have laid down her life for you girls. She would never leave you. She would never forsake you.
01:23:32
She loved you with her whole being. [Music] 48 hours. Don't miss an episode. [Music]
01:24:25
Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] To most Wisconsinites, Green Bay is a magical place.
01:24:46
It's where the Packers play. It's a fun town and everybody knows everybody. Drinking is part of the Wisconsin
01:24:55
tradition. Green Bay is a great downtown pulse and I feel it's relatively safe. Nobody
01:25:04
would ever think that something like this would happen in our community. Continuing coverage tonight of a death
01:25:10
investigation in the village of Belleview. When I had gotten the news, I just shook. I just shook. There is police
01:25:20
activity in a field. I was a good friend of Nicole Vanderhidens. She was my neighbor. We watched each
01:25:28
other's kids. She just was a ball of fire. Nicole Vanderhiden was 31 years old. She
01:25:34
was living with her boyfriend Doug Dietri and they had just had a baby together.
01:25:40
It was Friday, May 20th of 2016. Doug and Nicole decided to go out that night. This was an opportunity for them to go
01:25:50
out and have a great time. The night didn't end in a great time. It ended in a nightmare.
01:26:00
Nikki walked off into the darkness that night. She just walked off. She vanished.
01:26:08
That was the last anyone saw of her. About where was she found? Right down this embankment. When we arrived on
01:26:15
scene on this one, we kind of knew right away it was probably going to be different. At the scene, that was the
01:26:21
most apparent thing is the trauma to the left side of the face. When you came here, there was no way to identify her.
01:26:26
You had no idea who she was. Not right away. No. Doug Dri, he woke up in the morning. Um
01:26:34
eventually later that afternoon, he had called uh the sheriff's officer 911 to report that um his girlfriend did not
01:26:41
come home from the night before. They're here for a missing person's report. We sent some officers over to uh
01:26:49
her residence to take the missing person report. So this is not normal behavior for her? Not at all.
01:26:56
And this is where Nicole was living. Correct. And you believe that she was killed here? Correct. Across the street
01:27:02
um in the roadway. A large quantity of blood that was determined to be Nicole's. Everything's pointing to Doug
01:27:08
Dietri. Yeah. So that so then Monday night right now I'm going to be taking you into custody. We felt we had
01:27:14
probable cause to arrest Doug Dietri. I'm a I'm a I'm I'm a decent guy. Okay. I'm I'm a decent guy, too. And I get
01:27:19
that. I'm sure you are. I think people were shocked. People are wondering, could he have done
01:27:26
it? Did Doug do it? His alibi was his Fitbit that he had been wearing all night and that supposedly proved that he was
01:27:38
asleep at the time of her murder. The technology is really what drew me to this case.
01:27:45
We had this evidence wanted to check out, have tested at the lab. The DNA evidence starts to come back
01:27:51
and it belonged to an unidentified male. Subject outside on the porch. That was our goal is to figure out who who is
01:27:59
this mystery person. It's definitely a who done it. There's lots and twists and turns to it and it's hard to know who's
01:28:07
telling the truth. [Music] 48 hours. The Fitbit Alibi reported by Aaron Morardi.
01:28:38
Green Bay is supposed to be a really safe place. You know, mothers don't go missing and
01:28:45
police don't find their bodies in farm fields. February 2018, friends and family of Nicole Vanderhiden
01:28:58
gather in a packed Brown County courtroom, seeking justice for her brutal, senseless murder two years
01:29:05
earlier. What happens in this case could definitely come down to the technology.
01:29:12
Kate Brickle covers crime for the Daily Beast. Who would do this? Who would do this to Nikki?
01:29:20
I was just it's not real, you know. That can't be. Tiffany Hoffman was a close friend of Nicole's who everyone called
01:29:29
Nikki. They have been friends for years and shared a love of the outdoors. What's the first thing that comes to
01:29:36
mind when you think of her? Light, spirit, um, a verb and a zest and zeal. She was close with her family and loved
01:29:44
her children. Nikki was a mom to three, Michaela and Tyler from a previous marriage, and six-month-old Dylan, whose
01:29:52
father was her boyfriend, Doug Dietri. The two had met in January 2015 and soon moved in together. She was really,
01:30:02
really happy. When she talked to me, she said they both were excited. Yeah. That
01:30:05
they both were excited to have a baby. On the night of Friday, May 20th, 2016, Nikki and Doug make lastminute plans to
01:30:14
get a babysitter and join friends at a bar called The Watering Hole to see a Steel Panther concert.
01:30:27
I think Nikki was really looking to let loose and have a good time. As the concert is ending, Nikki decides
01:30:34
to go with Doug's friends to another bar called the Sardine Can and leave him. Doug agreed that he would finish his
01:30:42
conversation he was having and and find her at the next bar. [Music] As seen on this sardine can security
01:30:52
camera, Nikki appears to be having a great time talking and dancing with friends.
01:31:01
But as the night wears on and Doug still hadn't shown up here at the sardine can,
01:31:06
she gets upset and begins sending him angry texts. They were scorching and they were all
01:31:16
but accusing him of infidelity. Sometime after 11:30 p.m., Nikki tries calling Doug, but he doesn't answer.
01:31:27
So, another friend calls Doug and he answers. And this enrages Nikki. And so, she gets up and leaves the bar.
01:31:36
One of Doug's friends runs after Nicole, begging her to come back to the bar, but
01:31:41
she refuses. Instead, Nicole walks down this street, turns left, and vanishes into the night.
01:31:50
When Doug finds out that Nikki has left, he and his friend Greg drive around looking for her. When they can't find
01:31:58
her, they go into the sardine can where Doug, seen here in long pants, has more to drink before the two of them head
01:32:06
out. Park County 911. What is the address? Uh, we just found a human body laying in
01:32:12
some weeds. Okay, sir. Early the next afternoon, farmer Richard Vanderhigh makes a gruesome discovery
01:32:19
over this hill right over here. Yep. At first, I thought it was a deer because of the rust color in her hair. Then I
01:32:26
realized it was a young lady. She was naked other than socks that were on her feet and a pink wristband. Other
01:32:36
than that, we had no form of identification. Brown County Sheriff Sergeant Rick Lopn now is among the
01:32:42
first to respond to the scene. There was a lot of blood. There's obvious injury um trauma on the side of her face.
01:32:49
Obviously, the first step of the investigation is to identify who the person is. Sergeant Brian Slinger is the
01:32:56
lead detective on the case. That in itself was difficult due to the severity of the injuries.
01:33:03
Brown County Public Safety, this is Terres. Deputies get their first lead at 4:30 that afternoon when Doug Dietri
01:33:10
calls 911 to report Nikki is missing. And her date of birth, uh, March 29th, 1985. Her description matched what we
01:33:21
had found in the field as far as age, approximate size, um, hair color. Slinger sends officers with a hidden
01:33:28
camera to Dietri's home, which is just a little over three miles away from where the body has been found.
01:33:36
Okay. So, you left the Sardine Canon drove around for another 30 to 40 minutes. Yeah, we didn't get back here.
01:33:41
I don't even know what time it was. It was that it was late. 2:30. Doug tells deputies that after Greg
01:33:49
dropped him off, he fell asleep around 3:00 a.m. and except for getting up to check on the baby, he was asleep until
01:33:57
after 6. Did you do anything to cause her to go missing? No, not not at all. That night,
01:34:04
Doug's parents watch baby Dylan while Doug is further questioned at the station.
01:34:11
It's here they tell him that Nikki has been murdered. Ky, please no. [Music] As Dietri is being questioned,
01:34:26
detectives get a warrant to search his and Nikki's home. They find blood on the floor of the garage and in Nikki's car,
01:34:34
on the headboard, on the side, and then in the back seat area. They also discover a pair of Air Jordans in the
01:34:41
garage that appear to match the shoe print found on Nikki's back and seem to have blood smudges on the bottom. For
01:34:49
us, it's adding up. Okay, this this is our guy. Just before dawn, an offduty patrolman
01:34:57
reports items scattered along a highway ramp less than 2 miles from where Nikki's body has been found. There's a
01:35:05
purse as well as her cell phone and items that she was wearing that night. And there are more damning clues found
01:35:11
in a neighbor's yard who lives across the street from Doug and Nikki. And what was found here? A large quantity of
01:35:18
blood that was determined to be Nicole's, as well as some clumps of blonde hair. And then there was also a
01:35:24
cord, which I would describe as like a phone charging cord. This was a huge discovery. Now they had a murder scene
01:35:31
and it was 118 ft from Dietri's front door. More than 70 pieces of evidence are sent to the state crime lab.
01:35:40
Now detectives had a theory about how Nikki had died. There was some sort of argument between her and Doug. Maybe
01:35:48
when she got home somehow it ended up out in the street. Right now I'm going to be taking you into custody. Sheriff
01:35:54
deputies are recording when they arrest Doug Dietri, who quickly becomes emotional. I just want to answer
01:36:01
everything in this cleared up. Dietri isn't charged with murder, but deputies hold him on a $1
01:36:09
million bond while they wait for DNA results. Is there DNA on the bottom of the shoe? Is that blood on the bottom of
01:36:16
the shoe? 18 days later, investigators are stunned. Crime lab tests show the blood in the
01:36:25
car isn't Nikki's. The blood in the garage isn't human. And tests on the shoe stains are inconclusive, but appear
01:36:35
not to be blood at all. We had nothing on Doug, so he was released. What's more, on the night Nicole
01:36:44
disappeared, Doug just happened to be wearing a Fitbit, a personal tracking device. It goes on your wrist just like
01:36:51
this, like a watch, and it tracks your activities, the steps you take, your heart rate, even your sleeping patterns.
01:37:00
When the Fitbit data stored in Doug's phone is examined, it corroborates his story. He had a few footsteps throughout
01:37:08
the night, getting up to go to the bathroom, check on the baby, whatever. His story that he told us was absolutely
01:37:14
100% true. So, who killed Nicole Vanderhiden? Will more high-tech forensics blow this case
01:37:24
wide open? [Music] Nicole's mother and her brother Brandon struggled to understand how anyone could
01:37:48
murder their beloved Nikki. It was a horrendous theme and it's just so hard to let that out of your heart. What do you
01:38:00
miss the most? I'm I I'm waiting for her to come walking through my door again. You know,
01:38:06
I miss her the most. I miss her. I have a picture of me and her when we were younger.
01:38:17
Just look at every night and all the time. Remember, the evidence appears to clear
01:38:28
Doug Dietri. So, in June of 2016, his focus turns to raising his son Dylan, while Nicole's two older children live
01:38:37
with their father. The case torments Sergeants Brian Slinger and Richard Lop now. They are
01:38:47
back at square one with no idea who did this. Two of you have this horrific murder on your hands. What are you
01:38:58
feeling at that moment? We needed to figure out how Nicole got home. We pulled video cameras from every single
01:39:05
bridge in the city of Green Bay because in order for her to walk home, she would
01:39:10
have had to cross a bridge. They rein witnesses, re-examined phone logs. It was getting
01:39:17
to the point where, you know, we had looked at each other and said, "I really hope this isn't a cold case." Their
01:39:24
first big break comes over the course of the summer. DNA results trickle in and they are tantalizing. The investigators
01:39:33
learned that many of the samples taken from Nicole's clothing and from the neighbor's yard have DNA from an
01:39:39
unidentified man on dozens of samples. The same partial profile, but never enough for a positive ID. We had this
01:39:49
one consistent mystery guy, I guess you'd call it, and our job was to try and find out who that was. It was just a
01:39:55
very confusing time. Nobody knew who would have done this to Nikki. And then finally, that August, almost 3
01:40:04
months after Nicole disappeared, the investigators get a call from the crime lab. One of the socks Nicole have been
01:40:12
wearing has enough DNA to run through the national database and they get a name. The excitement was amazing. The
01:40:22
DNA belongs to a man named George Steven Burch. I was a hit out of the state of Virginia. Virginia? Yeah. Virginia. So,
01:40:31
it was like, okay, who is who is George Burch and and why is he in Green Bay, Wisconsin of all places? Yes, we have a
01:40:37
name now, but now we need to start digging on who this person is. Burch moved from Virginia to Green Bay on
01:40:44
March 1st, 2016, looking for a fresh start. A longtime friend gave him a place to stay and helped him find a job.
01:40:53
He also loaned him a car, a red Chevy Blazer. That red Blazer would provide crucial evidence. It had been involved
01:41:02
in a hit and run accident and destroyed in a fire a few weeks after Nicole's murder. So, when detectives run Birch's
01:41:10
name through the local police database, up pops the accident report, which leads
01:41:16
them to an address for George Burch. Swear to God, drive by the first time, who's standing out in front of the house
01:41:24
smoking a cigarette? George Burch. My hair stood up on the back of my neck. I had goosebumps. It was like, "Oh my
01:41:32
god, there's our guy." They videotape his movements and keep their suspicions to themselves. And they
01:41:42
learned that when Bur was questioned about the hit and run, he handed over his cell phone. And on it, a high tech
01:41:51
treasure trove. He gave them consent to search his phone. They extracted the entire thing. So I requested a copy of
01:41:59
that. It's an Android phone that had a a Gmail account associated with it. We were recently made aware of this Google
01:42:05
dashboard data that could potentially give us GPS data. You may not know this, but chances are if you have an Android
01:42:12
device with a Google account, your exact location gathered via cell phone towers,
01:42:18
local Wi-Fi hotspots, and GPS locators is constantly tracked and stored within Google's servers. The information can be
01:42:28
viewed with a tool called Google Dashboard. The investigators obtain a warrant to
01:42:35
view Birch's Google Dashboard. What they get back is astonishing. Birch started the night that Nicole
01:42:42
disappeared at Richard Craniums, a bar a half mile from the sardine can. The data tracks Burge at 2:30 a.m.
01:42:52
leaving Richard Craniums and driving to Nicole's house, the crime scene, where he stayed for nearly an hour.
01:43:02
It was very obvious that here's our guy. He is next tracked at the field where Nicole's body was found.
01:43:11
Then near the off-ramp where her bloody clothes were discarded and then at 4:22 a.m. back at his home.
01:43:23
I mean, when you saw that he was right there, what was your reaction? I mean, it's a huge piece of evidence,
01:43:29
obviously. Finally, enough for an arrest captured on police dashboard cameras. We
01:43:36
sent one guy out to the house a little bit earlier to get eyes on and he called me and he's like, "Oh my god, he's on
01:43:42
the move. We got to go now." We all had to rally up, get in our cars and drive. On a drizzly September day, 4 months
01:43:52
after Nicole's murder, George Burch is arrested and charged with firstdegree intentional homicide.
01:44:01
The reason you're here is in reference to a homicide investigation into Nicole Vanderhiden. So if I read your Miranda
01:44:08
rights, you don't want to talk to me. So I prefer a lawyer. Okay. Nicole's former brother-in-law, Shawn
01:44:16
Vanderhiden, says the news came as a big surprise. I had no clue who he was or where this guy came from, but I was just
01:44:25
happy to hear that they had they had someone Nicole's family and friends have a new
01:44:34
anguish, waiting for a trial. In March 2017, on what would have been Nicole's 32nd birthday, they came together on
01:44:44
Lake Michigan to release lanterns in her honor. It was so cold. So cold. But her
01:44:51
memory, you know, warmed us. We all went out on that dock on that pier and lit our lanterns and sent them off into, you
01:44:59
know, her memory. Why lit lanterns? Why was that used to honor her? The light, her light.
01:45:09
She was a light for so many in this world. [Music] All right. Nearly one year later on February 19th,
01:45:21
2018, George Burch goes on trial for Nicole's murder. The prosecution has a strong case. Mr. Bur must be held
01:45:30
accountable. But according to the defense, prosecutors have the wrong man. You will know
01:45:39
that Douglas Dietri, Nicole's boyfriend, murdered Nicole. [Music] For Nicole Vanderhiden's family, every
01:46:06
day of George Burg's murder trial is agony. Vicki, how did you get yourself to go every day to that courtroom? I
01:46:14
don't know. God, you must have just taken our hands and led us there because I mean, we wanted
01:46:21
we wanted answers. Friends say it's agonizing for Doug Dietri, too. Especially once he learns that George
01:46:30
Burch's defense team is planning to blame Nicole's murder on him. He was nervous, and I would be too. You know,
01:46:38
you were accused of a murder and it's so many things going through your head. And now Doug Dietri's testimony is
01:46:46
critical to the prosecution. Kind of interesting that the man who you first thought
01:46:53
might have killed his girlfriend is going to be one of the most important witnesses at this trial. Right. Right.
01:46:59
He will be very important. Just as important would be the technology evidence data collected from
01:47:06
both Doug Dietri's Fitbit and George Burch's phone. Prosecutors say that Dietri's Fitbit shows he couldn't be the
01:47:15
killer. The autopsy results, the DNA identification, the Google dashboard data, the records from Fitbit, that is
01:47:23
the evidence that will drive you. You will follow that evidence and you will find the truth.
01:47:29
Doug's Fitbit is seen here in this video captured by officers on their very first
01:47:34
interview, the day he reported Nicole missing. Prosecutors say downloaded data showed
01:47:42
Doug barely moved in the hours they believe Nicole was killed and left in the field. And is that based on the data
01:47:50
that you obtained directly from Fitbit? Yes, it is. Everything that I could view
01:47:55
directly on the device and lined up with um what had previously been stated. Did
01:48:00
you ever during this trial or have you thought much about it that how lucky it was that Doug happened to be wearing a
01:48:08
Fitbit that night and the next morning? Yeah, that was huge in this case. I think right there that pretty much said
01:48:15
he he wasn't there when this all happened. [Music] On day three of the trial, Dietri takes
01:48:24
the stand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing? Prosecutors aim to present him as a
01:48:30
normal guy, not the best boyfriend maybe, but an unlikely killer. Can you tell us about your family? Um, I my
01:48:39
mother, uh, my father, my amazing little son, Dylan, Dedri tells the jurors he and Nikki dreamed of getting married one
01:48:47
day. And early on in the night she disappeared, they were having fun. [Music] Nikki didn't usually drink, he says, but
01:48:59
that night they were both partying hard. What was the pace she was drinking that
01:49:03
night? Pretty quickly. I think she had like two down and I was still on my first one. Once they got separated and
01:49:11
Nikki went ahead to the sardine camp with friends. Doug continued drinking and smoked some
01:49:17
marijuana. Before long, Nikki sent him her first angry text, wondering where he was.
01:49:26
Nikki's texts got angrier and she accused him of being with other women at any point in response to those
01:49:35
messages. Did you get upset with Nikki? Uh, no I didn't. The texts kept coming. Doug said he offered to pick her up, but
01:49:46
her phone died. Were you concerned that Nikki was missing at that point in time? I was uh
01:49:53
not concerned that she was missing. I was kind of concerned like why is she upset? Did you have absolutely any
01:49:57
involvement in Nikki's disappearance or death? Uh no I did not. Under crossexamination, George Burch's
01:50:07
attorney, Lee Sugar, pushed Doug on whether things at home were really as good as he said they were. Burg's lawyer
01:50:14
shows jurors a text Doug sent to his mom 10 days before Nikki died saying, "I'm very seriously thinking about telling
01:50:23
Nikki and the kids they have to move." So, in May of 2016, though, there were times where you were seriously
01:50:30
considering breaking up with Nikki and the kids. I never really like seriously thought about it like like made plans or
01:50:38
anything like that. It was just a lie to your mom. What the jury would never hear
01:50:43
is that several of Dedri's past girlfriends accused him of being jealous, abusive, and controlling.
01:50:51
One girlfriend claimed that he put a tracking device on her phone so he'd always know where she was.
01:51:00
In her barrage of angry texts to Doug that night, Nicole also accused him of being abusive. Did you hurt Nikki that
01:51:08
night? Uh, do you mean physically or what? I No, I mean, did you physically beat her
01:51:16
in the past? No, I never physically beat Nikki. Had you cheated on her in the past? Uh, no, I have not. You know, Doug
01:51:25
is not an angel. Isn't that going to be a problem in this jury? Doug Dri is not on trial. George
01:51:33
Burch is on trial. Defense attorneys asked the babysitter who took care of Dylan that night to recount an odd
01:51:40
conversation she had with Dietri the day after Nicole died. I just asked what happened you know like what happened and
01:51:49
uh he just replied um I don't know she hit her head and then she just wanted to walk home. So specifically when you had
01:51:55
asked him what happened he said I don't know she hit her head. Correct. It came out of his mouth that comment. Would the
01:52:02
questions raised about Doug make jurors wonder if the right man was on trial? And would they buy George Burch's
01:52:10
stunning version of what happened that night? It was fairly dark. I saw someone was standing behind me. Who was it?
01:52:18
Where's that beach tree? It's day eight of the George Burch murder trial. Judge, at this time, the
01:52:34
defense calls George Steven Burch to the stand. And with it comes the testimony everyone has been waiting to hear.
01:52:42
George Burch's version of what happened the night Nicole Vanderhiden was murdered.
01:52:49
Let's start from the beginning. Okay. Prompted by his attorney, Burch tells jurors he's a hardworking family man
01:52:57
with an easygoing nickname. Most people call me Big Country. Public defender Scott Stevens takes Bir back to the
01:53:05
night of the murder. Burch claims he ran into Nicole at the local bar called Richard Craniums. How were you acting
01:53:13
towards her? I was flirting. And how was she acting towards you? Somewhat the same, pretty much. Um, flirting back and
01:53:20
forth with each other. According to Burch, they continued flirting until closing time around 2:30.
01:53:29
And just as the Google dashboard evidence showed, he drove Nicole the 8 miles to her house and pulled up to the
01:53:37
curb across the street. We sat there and talked for a few minutes. Okay. What happened after that? Started just
01:53:45
fooling around, messing around a little bit, started kissing. Burch then detailed what he says was
01:53:52
consensual sex. Nicole was in the back seat and Bur too big to fit in the back seat with her stood just outside the
01:54:00
rear passenger door. I was standing outside the blazer. Nikki's family and friends had to sit there silently and
01:54:08
listen. Anyone who knew Nicole knew that that was nothing that she would ever ever do. That was not her. She was. But
01:54:16
it's what Bur says happened to him while he says he was having sex that was perhaps the most difficult to accept. He
01:54:24
says he was knocked out. The next thing that I remember apart from us having intercourse was
01:54:33
literally waking up on the ground outside the truck. Did you hear anything? The first thing I heard was,
01:54:44
"Don't even think about it." Burch said he turned and saw someone standing behind him holding a gun. At
01:54:53
that point, did you know who that individual was? Never seen him before in my life. Do you know who that individual
01:54:58
is now? Now I do. Who was it? It was Doug Dietri. Burch says he saw Nicole laying on the
01:55:05
pavement. I didn't know if she was alive. Um there was a lot of blood. The 6'7", 250 lb Birch said Dietri told
01:55:15
him to put Nicole's body in the blazer and then drive to the field. Dietri, he said, ordered him at gunpoint to carry
01:55:23
Nicole's body down an embankment. That's when I turned and with everything I had,
01:55:29
I lunged at him and pushed him as hard as I possibly could. Bert said he ran back to the blazer and
01:55:36
headed for home, throwing Nicole's clothes out the window on the way. The next day, he met up with friends and
01:55:43
went fishing. You didn't call 911? No, sir. But he didn't tell anyone else either.
01:55:51
You don't tell them people. People get killed all the time where I'm from for that.
01:55:57
As Bur told his story, two women were in the courtroom listening to every word. They have traveled more than a thousand
01:56:07
miles to be here every day. We just wanted him to see our face every day and know that we haven't forgotten what he
01:56:14
did and we've never forgotten Joey. Joey is Joey White. It's Joey and Audrey. In 1997, he was murdered in Newport
01:56:26
News, Virginia. The man accused of killing him, neighborhood rival George Burch.
01:56:33
But this jury will never hear about it. He was out on bond when he killed Joey. Shaina Stowe was Joey White's fiance and
01:56:41
the mother of his child. I'm 16. Joey's 22 there. He was my first love. He was it. Carla Rhodess is Joey's sister. I
01:56:52
miss him a lot. Birch testified at that trial, too. He looked at us, laughed at us the whole time. Smirked. And what
01:57:03
happened? Not guilty. It was shocking when they said not guilty. Neither was surprised that Bur had been accused of
01:57:12
another murder. I'm not shocked. at all. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he's
01:57:18
killed other people. Look what he did. I mean, it's brutal. When it was finally District Attorney
01:57:24
David Lassay's turn to cross-examine Bur, he had one thing in mind to show how ridiculous his story was. And he
01:57:33
says he had plenty to work with, like Burch's claim that Nicole would have agreed to have sex in the car. So Nicole
01:57:42
would rather have sex with you in front of her neighbor's home with your butt hanging out the door of the car than ask
01:57:49
the babysitter to go home. Sir, I don't know. I wasn't the one making decisions.
01:57:56
And if Bur was hit hard enough to knock him out, why didn't anyone see bumps or bruises on his head when he went fishing
01:58:04
the next day? I'm I'm 6' 7, so it's hard for someone to see the top of my head. And why would Dietri murder Nicole and
01:58:13
let Birch get away? So rather than just beating you or killing you in the middle
01:58:19
of the street, he decided to enlist you, a total stranger, to help him dispose of
01:58:25
the body of his girlfriend. I don't know what his plans were. At one point, lay pushes Bur on a
01:58:33
possible motive. What really happened was you drove Nicole home fully expecting that you were going to have
01:58:39
sex, right? I was hoping that we would. And when you get there and it becomes clear that Nikki isn't going to have sex
01:58:46
with you. When she attempts to go into her house and leave your vehicle, that's when your mood changes, right? No, sir.
01:58:54
That's when things get aggressive, don't they? Not at all. That's when you grab that cord and strangle her, don't you?
01:59:00
No, sir. Not at all. That's when Nikki gets slammed on the ground repeatedly when she's trying to run toward her
01:59:05
house. None of that is true. And Bur loses his cool when lay presses him on an inconsistency in his story.
01:59:15
So, clear this up for me. You're backing down the embankment with Nicole's body in a fireman's carry position. Right.
01:59:22
No. What are you doing? I told you before and I'll say it one more time for you, sir. I was carrying her over to
01:59:29
this area. I think there was a big turn when you saw him lose his temper. I think we both said, "Well, there's the
01:59:36
real Steve Burch coming out. Not George, not big country. This is how we know him." You're assaulted. You're held at
01:59:44
gunpoint. You carried the mangled body of a woman to her final resting place. And the next day, you're going fishing
01:59:51
with your buddy with a smile on your face and not a care in the world. I wouldn't say not a care in the world.
01:59:57
That definitely would not be something I would say. Who will the jury believe? No further
02:00:02
questions. [Music] [Music] Morning everyone. Be seated. [Music] Does the state have any rebuttal
02:00:23
witnesses? The prosecution got one last chance to present witnesses to rebut the story
02:00:30
George Burch told the jury. During George Burch's testimony, he specifically said, if I recall, that
02:00:37
they were having sex. Her pants were off already at that point. So during the rebuttal, we brought those
02:00:43
pants to enter into evidence and make sure they were viewed. If she had been disroed in her car, how do those clothes
02:00:49
get not just bloody, but dirty and hairy? Those clothes are filthy and they're demonstrative of being worn
02:00:55
during a struggle. Carefully and respectfully, Sergeants Brian Slinger and Rick Lopn now
02:01:02
unwrapped and displayed the pants that Nicole wore the night she died. Found blood soaked and muddy on the highway.
02:01:10
It goes to George's credibility, which is zero, that this was not a consensual act. She fought, escaped the vehicle. He
02:01:18
bludgeoned her, strangled her, and um with her clothes on, and then transported her body to the scene. His
02:01:24
story was a lie. He disroed her at the scene and forgot her socks. And then the final arguments. Go right
02:01:34
ahead. Thank you. The prosecution reminded jurors of the weight of evidence against George Burge. Whose DNA
02:01:41
is on her socket? Who's with Nikki at the four key areas of Brown County? Their explanation is ridiculous and it's
02:01:49
insulting to your intelligence. While the defense hoped to plant doubt, justice for Nicole is not going to be
02:01:57
delivered by a wrongful conviction of George Burch. Doug Dri had the motive, the
02:02:06
opportunity, and the connection to this crime. The man that met this woman in a bar and admitted admitted by his own
02:02:15
account to dumping her body in that field looks like this the next day. Who does that? Ladies and gentlemen, the
02:02:24
bailiffs will escort you to the jury room. Good luck. What was the feeling in the courtroom as the case went to the
02:02:31
jury? It was very tense and I was surprised that I think 45 minutes later, I mean, not even an hour
02:02:41
later, the jury had a question. The jury asked to see the bloody wire used to strangle Nicole as well as cords
02:02:50
found in Doug Dri's garage to see if they were possibly a match. You know, the fact that they're thinking
02:02:58
about that is telling me, okay, are they actually believing George Burch's story
02:03:02
here? It really made me wonder where this was going to go. After a 9-day trial and more than 50
02:03:11
witnesses, the jury took just over 3 hours to reach a verdict. I just had this horrible feeling that was coming
02:03:19
back, not guilty. It just was really hard. I could not breathe and you could feel everybody was like shaking. We the
02:03:26
jury find the defendant George Steven Burch guilty of firstdegree intentional homicide is charged in the information
02:03:34
it is signed by our four person indictated this first day of March 2018. Everybody was just like oh my god thank
02:03:41
god he was killed me. Thank God. What sticks out in my mind was the gas hearing that from the family and knowing
02:03:48
the relief that they had at that moment. Um, that'll stick with me in a good way,
02:03:54
right? Absolutely. I know Joey was there for this. It's just 20 years later. It was his 20 year
02:04:01
anniversary of his death in October. It's just try not to get upset. Could you see Doug Dri? Doug Dree, I
02:04:13
think, was relieved. Doug Dree was holding his mother. Doug wasn't even on trial in this case, but he was finally
02:04:20
free of any suspicion. Doug, what's your reaction? So, what you found from this case is
02:04:28
that this technology can do more than connect someone to a crime. It can actually exonerate a person. Absolutely.
02:04:34
Yeah. I feel bad that he sat in jail for 18, 19 days. I mean, technology is very
02:04:39
important and our goal is to exonerate people just as it is to find them guilty.
02:04:45
If we didn't have these Google data locations on George's phone, if we didn't have the Fitbit, would it be Doug
02:04:53
Dree sitting in prison as opposed to George Burch? Back in court two months after the
02:05:05
verdict, the judge speaks to George Burch before sentencing him while Doug Dietri and his mother look on. This
02:05:14
family is destroyed. It's ruined. It'll never be like this again. In a state with no death penalty, the
02:05:24
sentence is as harsh as possible. Life without parole. This is a crime that I believe merit the death penalty. And for
02:05:33
that, you have to die in prison. It is what the families wanted. And yet, this is no time for celebration.
02:05:42
To Vicki, to the Dietri family, prayers of support of this community are with you. Good luck and God bless.
02:05:50
This court is in recess. [Music] The only comfort for Nicole's family is that George Burch can never destroy
02:06:04
lives again. When they convicted George of being guilty, I still like it was a feeling of
02:06:10
happiness, but yet still like somewhat of realization that he's she's actually gone now. And it was hard. What's the
02:06:17
first thing that comes to mind when you think of your daughter? Her big smile. Her big gorgeous smile. She just
02:06:24
radiates. She just does. She's always happy. What do you all tell her children? Nicole is looking over them all the time
02:06:34
and that she loves them and she'll see him again. And every night I know Tyler and Michaela always say a prayer and
02:06:39
talk to their mom and say good night. We gained an angel. We lost a breath of fresh air. The memory lives on through
02:06:47
the stories we share, things we never forget. And and she's okay. She's okay. I love you.
02:06:59
She had a passion for life, for living. She had good morals. What more can a mom
02:07:04
ask for? [Music]