00:00:01
Once I started, you know, and there was nothing else like it. [Music] What are you holding in your hands now?
00:00:09
These are items that were seized out of Israel Keys jail cell. Has the public ever been shown this
00:00:15
before? No. These skulls are drawn in blood. The blood? Where do you believe the blood
00:00:25
came from? I think it was Israel's blood. Israel Keys is a serial killer who hid his crimes for many years. He
00:00:33
was meticulous. Uh he was incredibly bright. Uh and he was incredibly lethal. And the significance of the 11 skulls.
00:00:41
What is that? We believe that 11 is the total number of victims. I don't think anybody in his family, his
00:00:48
friends, his relationships, his spouses had any idea what he was doing. It gives
00:00:53
me the chills to think I had talked to him, had known him. That's where I got um my kicks, I guess, was being able to
00:01:02
live two different lives and have no one have a clue. Unless you heard him talk about the murders, you would not know
00:01:11
that he was a serial killer. With Keys, it wasn't about a particular victim. It was about a location. Why did you pick
00:01:18
these folks? I didn't. It was just random. Samantha Koig is an 18-year-old girl who
00:01:26
was uh raised and lived in Alaska. She went to high school here. She worked at the coffee stand. She was a young girl
00:01:34
working her job. I I'm terrified of what she went through. So, at this point, Samantha is just she's making coffee.
00:01:42
She has no idea her entire life is about to change in a horrible way. No. People
00:01:50
never expected stuff to happen to him. He would wait until he had the victims under control. And then that's when I
00:01:59
think the the real monster came out. There's the specific way I wanted things done. Very specific way I wanted things
00:02:09
to happen. And and I have the whole thing planned out. I have everything I need to do it. He
00:02:16
loves to travel. Every time I'd drive, I'd be looking for places, good places to do stuff. You'll see locations in
00:02:25
Seattle, Gresham, Oregon, Port Angeles, Washington. He would rent cars. He would
00:02:30
drive thousands of miles. He would take people from one state and he would bury them in other states. San Diego, Tijana,
00:02:36
Salt Lake City, Utah, Cleveland, Ohio, Edmund, Washington, Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are potential victims wherever
00:02:43
Israel Keys traveled. Do you believe that this weapon somewhere in the United States may have been used to kill
00:02:49
someone? It's possible. I had big plans for that gun. We know that there are families out
00:02:58
there whose loved ones um died at the hands of Israel Keys. Right now, we're just trying to find them.
00:03:07
[Music] [Music] In February of 2012, the residents of Anchorage, Alaska, were shaken by a
00:04:02
frightening mystery. It basically looked like someone just literally walked out of their shift. It
00:04:08
was the evening of February 1st when 18-year-old Samantha Koig vanished after her night shift at this roadside
00:04:16
espresso stand. She went to work that day expecting to go home, go home to her boyfriend and her dad. Michelle Tasker
00:04:24
is a family friend. Her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up that night, but that didn't happen. Multiple calls went
00:04:31
unanswered. Several hours later, her boyfriend's cell phone lit up with a message from
00:04:37
Samantha's phone. The text messages said something to the effect of, "I'm going on vacation. I'm tired." You know that
00:04:43
she was just going away and she'd just left. But we knew she hadn't left. That wasn't her character. So, they knew
00:04:52
something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. And the next day, investigators watched it all unfold on
00:05:00
security camera video. FBI special agent Jolene Goden soon joined the team trying
00:05:07
to find Samantha. What are we looking at? This is Samantha. 8:00 p.m. is closing time. So,
00:05:14
she's doing all of her normal things that she would do to to get ready for closing. That's when a masked man walked
00:05:20
up to the window. He wanted much more than just coffee. So, Samantha's over at the window here. She handed something to
00:05:29
the customer. She backs up and this is where you see Samantha do this. You see her raise her arms.
00:05:36
When you raise your hands like that, it's usually cuz somebody's doing this something. Exactly. What started as an
00:05:42
apparent robbery suddenly took a darker turn. She turns the lights off. Do you think her asalent said turn off the
00:05:49
lights? Yes. At this point, you see an individual jump in through the window. Uh right through the window. Right
00:05:55
through the window. Have you ever seen something like that before? No. And then you see two individuals walk
00:06:03
away. It it looks like an abduction. As the news spread, please help find my daughter. Samantha's father, James Koig,
00:06:15
went public. I don't know if my daughter's being fed, taken care of, if she's still alive, if she's getting any
00:06:21
sleep. As time went on, there was a tremendous amount of fear uh about what happened
00:06:29
and and who was in our community that could do something like this. The FBI joined the Anchorage Police Department
00:06:35
in looking at family and friends. Did you have a sense you were getting to know this young woman? Yes. Yes. FBI
00:06:43
special agent Cat Nelson learned everything she could about Samantha and the people she knew. She seemed like she
00:06:50
had a very good spirit. like she was a very kind individual, caring about others. Um, you could tell that she had
00:06:58
a lot of friends that cared about her a lot. Samantha's boyfriend was quickly ruled out as a suspect. There was no
00:07:07
obvious lead in this case and it posed so many um barriers for us in the beginning as to where to start looking
00:07:16
for her. 10 days after Samantha disappeared, a vigil was held. Hundreds of people came. What else can
00:07:25
we do? Flyers. Hand out flyers. Ask around. If you know somebody who knows something, get them to talk. We just
00:07:33
need some sort. It's that one lead, that one tip that's going to bring her home.
00:07:39
As friends and family fan out across Anchorage to try to find Samantha, the question is, could she also be out here
00:07:48
somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness? Then finally, after three agonizing weeks, that's when the text came in that
00:07:58
said there was a ransom note and where to go. The text to Samantha's boyfriend was as mysterious as her disappearance.
00:08:06
It said to look in Connor Park under pick of Albert. It also said, "Ain't she pretty." We just got up and just ran and
00:08:18
everybody took off to the park. One of the girls kind of noticed something on the bulletin board. I walk up and
00:08:24
there's a picture of a missing dog named Albert and right underneath is a plastic
00:08:29
bag with a looked like a clipping and a photograph in it. Didn't touch it. We called the police. That note contained a
00:08:36
picture of Samantha and a long typed out message that talked about putting $30,000 into Samantha's bank account.
00:08:46
That account was connected to Samantha's debit card, which the kidnapper had. And
00:08:51
the photo, which has not been made public, was of Samantha holding a newspaper. I believe it was dated
00:08:57
February 13th, so well after Samantha's abduction. So, the hope, of course, is that Samantha is alive. Samantha's dad
00:09:06
deposited $5,000 into her account. Several hours later, a man makes an ATM withdrawal using Samantha's card. He has
00:09:16
a covering over his face, um, dark clothing, he has gloves on his hands. I So, it's there's very little you can
00:09:22
tell. Investigators rushed to the ATM, but were too late, missing the suspect by minutes.
00:09:30
One week later, another ATM withdrawal is made. This one is very different. This withdrawal occurs in Wilcox,
00:09:38
Arizona, nearly 4,000 miles away. And then a short time later, we have one in Lordsburg, New Mexico.
00:09:46
Then Um, Texas, and then Shepard, Texas. He's heading east. He's heading east. We
00:09:50
can see that he's moving across the I 10 corridor. But the suspect had made a crucial mistake during the ATM
00:09:58
withdrawal in Arizona. A white Ford focus can be seen in the background. That information was pushed out to to
00:10:05
law enforcement across that entire corridor. Then on March 13th, a state trooper notices a vehicle matching that
00:10:13
description in a Texas hotel parking lot. And a short time later, a man comes out. He gets in the vehicle um and he
00:10:21
starts to drive away. The trooper follows. And once that vehicle exceeds a speed limit, he has his probable cause
00:10:28
to pull that vehicle over. And when he asks the driver for identification, he ultimately presents him with an
00:10:35
identification card for Israel Keys. And who the heck is Israel Keys? Israel Keys
00:10:42
was not even on our radar. That trooper's instincts were spoton. A search of the car uncovers Samantha's
00:10:51
ID, her debit card, her cell phone, and a gun along with a disguise that matched
00:10:57
the man in the ATM photos. At this point, we believe we have our guy. But now, the FBI wanted to know what had
00:11:06
Israel Keys done with Samantha Koig. The race is on because we still don't have Samantha. We have him, but we don't have
00:11:14
Samantha. So if Samantha is alive, then we really need to find her quickly. [Music]
00:11:36
In March 2012, 2 weeks after Israel Keys was arrested in Texas, he was extradited
00:11:43
to Anchorage, Alaska. At the point, we didn't really know, you know, was he the one who took and kidnapped Samantha Koig
00:11:51
or was he someone who was just using a credit card that he found? FBI agent Jolene Goden says investigators
00:11:59
initially didn't know what to make of Keys. What was it like to look into the eyes
00:12:04
of Israel Keys? I spent a lot of time with Israel Keys. You could be in a room with him and it was like you were in the
00:12:11
room with your neighbor. I think I saw it at Walmart. And then there were other times where the hair on the back of your
00:12:17
neck stands up a little bit. Investigators scrambled to learn everything they could about Israel Keys.
00:12:25
The man, did he have a criminal record? I believe he had a a DUI, but that was it. No crimes of violence in his
00:12:32
history, no sex offenses in his history, nothing like that. He's a 34 year old man from Alaska who has a construction
00:12:39
business, small kind of quiet life. Even one of my colleagues at the US Attorney's Office used him as a
00:12:46
handyman. One of your colleagues hired him to do some work. Sure. This is someone you felt comfortable giving a
00:12:52
key to your house so he could go there when you weren't there to fix things. An anchorage resident since 2007, Keys
00:13:00
lived in this house with his girlfriend and his 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Neighbors say he
00:13:08
didn't stand out. Nothing suspicious at all except for that he worked hard. But investigators had suspicions and one
00:13:17
very pressing question. We started off with where is Samantha? No one knew if Samantha Con was still alive. Anchorage
00:13:25
assistant US attorney Frank Russo and his colleagues knew time was of the essence. He would have been sitting
00:13:32
right here. So they confronted Keys about Samantha. Once we heard what he had to say, it went from being a very
00:13:40
happy day as a prosecutor to one of the worst I've ever had. We ended up hearing
00:13:44
a confession. Keys admitted he had killed Samantha. We wanted to find out why he did what he did. But before he
00:13:52
would say more, the lawyers got you this. Keys began what would become a pattern for giving information. He
00:14:00
wanted an Americano coffee from Starbucks. He wanted a Snickers bar and he wanted a particular cigar.
00:14:05
Ultimately, Keys lays out the entire story of of how the abduction of Samantha occurred. The video of that
00:14:11
confession had never been made public before. In it, Keys says he pointed a 22 caliber pistol at Samantha. I remember
00:14:20
asking him, you know, why did you pick that coffee cart at that time? And he just simply said, well, it was open
00:14:28
late. Meaning he chose her completely at random. Keys said as they walked off into the night, Samantha broke free and
00:14:37
ran. He chased after her and tackled her. He indicates that his plan is to hold her for ransom, suggesting to
00:14:43
Samantha that that if she cooperates, he'll release her. She'll be able to to go home. It was all a lie. Instead, Keys
00:14:52
drove Samantha to his home, chained her up in his shed, and sexually assaulted her. Keys then strangled her to death.
00:15:02
Keyy's family, the FBI later determined, knew nothing about the horrors that had
00:15:07
just taken place. He was talking about the murder of this girl like someone else would discuss what they had for
00:15:16
lunch. Within hours of murdering Samantha, Israel Keys left Anchorage for a Caribbean vacation with his family.
00:15:25
And where did he leave Samantha? Where was she? Where was her body? Samantha was in the shed uh at his house. Keys
00:15:31
didn't return until two weeks later. It was then that he posted the ransom note and texted Samantha's boyfriend, knowing
00:15:40
she was already dead. Keys told investigators he had driven some 35 mi north of Anchorage to Mantusa
00:15:49
Lake, where over the course of three trips, he disposed of Samantha's remains. He had drilled a hole and went
00:15:57
ice fishing in the lake and he had tied it up with bailing wire and weights and he had placed parts of her body down the
00:16:07
lake as he fished. I remember asking him, "Did you catch any fish?" And he said, "Yeah, I caught fish." And I said,
00:16:14
"What did you do with the fish?" And he said, "Well, I took them home and ate them." And for me, that that just
00:16:20
turned my stomach. It took the FBI's dive team 10 hours to recover Samantha's body. I remember I was the one who told
00:16:32
both Samantha's mom and dad and that was that was a bad day. Koig family friend Michelle Tasker. He has a daughter and
00:16:45
you did that to somebody else's daughter. I don't understand. You have the right to talk to a lawyer.
00:16:50
After talking to Keys, investigators realized they had a depraved killer on their hands and that Samantha was likely
00:16:58
not Keyy's only victim. I'm two different people basically. How long have you been two different people?
00:17:07
Long time. 14 years. And that tells you what? That he had been a serial killer for 14 years.
00:17:16
Special Agent Katherine Nelson knew every aspect of Keyy's life needed to be examined. Cleveland, Ohio. So, she
00:17:24
started a deep dive into his paper trail. Cell phone records, financial records, anything we could find out
00:17:31
about his background, his travels, anything that would just tell us a better story about him. It was starting
00:17:36
to look like Keys could have victims across the United States. We know that Israel Keys traveled to places such as
00:17:44
Washington, California, Wyoming, Texas, Vermont. We'll get the whole story eventually.
00:17:51
And he teased his interrogators with details of other murders. I'll tell you about everything or give you every
00:17:59
single gory detail you want. But before Keys would agree to do that, he wanted something extraordinary in return. I
00:18:07
want an execution date for you. Yes. And he said, "I want a promise that I'll get
00:18:14
the death penalty. If you do that, then I'll tell you about all the people I killed." What we said is, "The more
00:18:21
murders you give us, the more likely it is that they're going to want to impose the death penalty on you." But without a
00:18:28
guarantee of death, Keys was reluctant to say anything more. So, give me something to work with. Hold a bunch of
00:18:35
your cards back, but give me a card. Finally, keys folded. All right, I'll give you two bodies and a name.
00:18:48
[Music] Hey, how you doing? No, I'm fine. Candy bar. They are odd moments to see. Swear off
00:19:08
those candy bars. Yeah, it's in the fridge. I'm going to eat it. Investigators casually bonding with
00:19:16
their interview guest. Get him a cigar. So, we got you over here. Awesome. Wow. A cigar for nothing. In some ways, to
00:19:25
the outsider, it looked like you guys were in a way befriending a serial killer.
00:19:31
Yeah. Can you give me like an hour on the internet, maybe? But there was method to this madness,
00:19:38
says assistant US attorney Frank Russo. It was just the act that we had to put on when we went in that room. It was
00:19:45
just trying to kind of do anything we could to get information. Israel Keys voluntarily granted two
00:19:53
dozen interviews to various investigators in the seven months after his arrest. Is
00:19:59
it true he could have walked out at any time? Sure. FBI special agent Jolene Goden. I think
00:20:05
he wanted to tell the story. He wanted to talk about what he did. He my own family pretty much as soon as I did it.
00:20:12
He enjoyed the rush. He enjoyed the thrill of it. That strategy paid off when Keys gave up
00:20:20
the names of two victims, a married couple more than 4,000 miles from Anchorage in Vermont. He gave us the
00:20:28
names of the people. We wrote them down. And what was the couple's name? Bill and
00:20:33
Lorraine Courier. Do your intel guys immediately try to find out if there's a missing couple? Absolutely. What do you
00:20:39
learn right away that Bill and Lorraine are missing and have been missing for some time? Correct. Bill and Lorraine
00:20:45
Courier are a couple that lived in Essex, Vermont. Nothing stands out really about them. They were just kind
00:20:50
of living their life. The Couriers vanished on a night in June 2011, leaving their family bewildered. We love
00:20:59
them both with all our hearts. We're devastated by their disappearance and in fear for their lives. After interviewing
00:21:07
neighbors, police drew this sketch of a possible suspect. Police say this composite sketch of a
00:21:14
man who may have been seen driving the couple's dark green Saturn sedan is a big break. But the case went cold for
00:21:21
nearly a year until Keys laid out the road map of what had happened. He flew into Chicago and he drove east. He
00:21:29
intended on that trip to commit a homicide. He didn't know who it would be yet. On that trip, Keys stayed at this
00:21:37
hotel in Essex, Vermont. While there, he dug up a bucket similar to this one that
00:21:43
he had buried a few years prior. So, this is just the standard orange Home Depot bucket.
00:21:51
For the first time, the FBI is showing 48 hours. These are several boxes of 22 ammunition, the contents of what Keys
00:22:00
like to call a kill cache. So, he would pre-position these caches and then when the urge came upon him, if he happened
00:22:09
to be in that state, he had his tools of destruction ready to go. Correct. Or he'd plan a trip to a particular state
00:22:16
knowing he already had a cash there. He didn't know who he was going to kill, but he already knew that he had the
00:22:21
items there that he needed. We have the silencer for the 22. We have a wood stock for a 22, a plastic stock for a
00:22:28
22, uh, a portion of a 22 rifle, and then we have the drum magazine, the 22. Had a number of 22 caliber bullets.
00:22:37
That's correct. You ever seen anything like this in your career? No. The cash used in the Courier attack has
00:22:44
never been found, but Keys told the FBI where they could find this, a weapon he had used in Vermont. This is a silencer
00:22:54
that he's actually constructed himself. With his murderous tools in hand, Keys went hunting for victims and found
00:23:02
himself outside the Courier House. I decided I was going to look for a house with a couple in it. I was looking for a
00:23:10
fairly easy way to get into the garage and theirs was the first house I found that had all those things. He just
00:23:16
happens to take a walk from his hotel into a neighborhood and this unsuspecting couple just living their
00:23:23
lives is about to have a monster at their door. Yeah, the monster didn't knock. He's
00:23:32
very quickly in the house. He restrains Bill in the rain very quickly. He just makes sure they know right away who's in
00:23:39
charge and immediately tie them up and then he moves them to their car and he drives them to an abandoned farmhouse
00:23:47
that he had scoped out earlier. Keys attacks Lraine first. She's upstairs in the bedroom. He had restrained uh Bill
00:23:54
downstairs, but the couriers were not going down without a fight. Bill's yelling for his wife. Bill ultimately
00:24:02
starts to break free from the restraints and Keys has to go back downstairs in order to restrain him again. And what
00:24:08
happens down there? There's a struggle that ensues. So, I knew I was either going to have to knock him out or just
00:24:13
kill him. He saw the gun. He started to say something and it just pissed me off and I just started pulling the trigger.
00:24:21
Do you think this silencer might have been used in the murder of Bill Courier? I think it's very likely. Keys then
00:24:29
strangled Lorraine Courier and left the couple in the basement of the abandoned farmhouse.
00:24:37
Did anyone ever find these bodies? No. A short time after this happened, the house ended up being demolished and it
00:24:43
was taken to the landfill. We made numerous attempts at the landfill. It was a I believe a 10 or 12 week search
00:24:50
at the landfill. The FBI was searching in an attempt to find them, but we were not able to
00:24:56
recover their bodies. But as meticulous as Keys was in covering his tracks, he slipped up. This is the one item in all
00:25:05
the things that we found that belong to Keys that actually had his fingerprint on it. There's a perfect ripe thumb
00:25:11
print keys. Yeah, right. No, there is. I don't have the lab report. Wow. Yeah, I'm impressed. Well, I'm
00:25:22
disappointed in myself mostly, but I'm What other clues had Keys left behind? What other murders had he committed?
00:25:31
Investigators began focusing on his time in Washington State, where Keys was raised, a place where he would admit to
00:25:39
killing at least four more people. Rose was shot, strangled. We'll get the whole story eventually.
00:25:58
for as far back as I can remember. But, you know, that's where I get a lot of the ideas, either
00:26:06
fishing or out hunting and see somebody in the woods. To understand Israel Keys, you have to
00:26:15
go deep into the vast remote wilderness where he was raised. the place where he lived off and on for more than 20 years,
00:26:23
Washington State. How many people in the state of Washington do you believe Israel Keys
00:26:30
killed? We believe he killed four victims total in Washington state. FBI special agents Ted Hala and Colleen
00:26:38
Sanders first question Keys in 2012. They have spent eight years investigating his life and crimes in
00:26:46
Washington, searching for more victims. This is like a horror movie, isn't it? It's very much like a horror movie.
00:26:54
The opening scenes of Key's life took place in a secluded cabin outside the small town of Cville.
00:27:03
He grew up poor. Uh he grew up in a large family. There were 10 children in all and they kind of lived apart from
00:27:11
society. John, where are we heading now? So, we're heading north out of out of Callville. We're going to go see if we
00:27:20
can find uh where Israel Keys grew up. Just right up here on the right. John Smith and his wife Desiree knew Israel
00:27:29
Keys when he was a teenager. Desiree hasn't been in this area since she was 15. Yes, this could be it. Yeah, I remember
00:27:39
it being long and steep and kind of headed up the mountain side and yet it was completely impassible through most
00:27:46
of the winter. It was built to be completely off the grid, to be completely isolated from society. No
00:27:55
radio, no television, no electricity, nothing. Nothing. The Keys family attended a church that preached
00:28:02
Christian identity theology, a philosophy John and Desiree were also raised on but have since disavowed.
00:28:10
Christian identity theology is very white supremacist. Um they come from the perspective that the other races are
00:28:18
subhuman. So with Israel Keys specifically, he could dehumanize anybody if they rejected his worldview.
00:28:27
Schooled at home, cut off from the outside world, Keys was socially awkward. Very quiet, uh, very lonerish,
00:28:37
uh, standoffish. It's It's hard to explain how he made me feel, but I felt unsafe being near him. So, one specific
00:28:45
conversation about killing a deer, um, he said that the initial shot didn't kill it, and so when he arrived, he
00:28:51
started to gut the thing while it was alive. This is interrogation audio of Keys describing himself. I've known
00:28:59
since I was 14 that there were things that that I thought were normal and that were okay that nobody else seems to
00:29:06
think were normal and okay. Yeah. But just when Keys committed his first murder is still an open question. Whose
00:29:14
picture are you holding? My daughter Julie Marie Harris. She was 12 years old and disappeared on March 3rd, 1996.
00:29:24
Sherry Odigard says her daughter Julie, a Special Olympics athlete with prosthetic feet, vanished from Kovville
00:29:31
while waiting for a ride to church. Then I went up and down every street in this
00:29:36
town and screamed her name and there was no trace. There was no trace. Israel Keys, then 18 years old, lived in the
00:29:45
area at the time. Julie's prosthetic feet were discovered at the mouth of the Cville River. The
00:29:53
next year, her skeletal remains were found. We asked Israel Keys about Julie Harris and her death, and he said he was
00:30:02
aware of it, but that he was not involved in it. I remember the name. I don't remember the details of the story.
00:30:08
Keys told investigators the birth of his daughter convinced him to never target children.
00:30:14
something kind of changed in the way I thought and I didn't want to do anything that would
00:30:21
mess with kids or whatever. But Keyy's daughter was born after Julie Harris was murdered.
00:30:30
48 Hours tracked down friends of Julie who had never spoken with law enforcement. One of those friends told
00:30:37
us she remembers Keys talking to Julie at the pool where she often swam. And that Julie ended up giving him her
00:30:47
address and phone number. Have you heard this? No, I did not know that. Does that
00:30:53
sound tantalizing as a possible clue? Like any other lead that we have, we would want to investigate it fully. We
00:31:02
would certainly be be interested in talking with her. People have wondered if your daughter was the very first
00:31:07
victim of Israel Keys. And I'm wondering that too. Despite the intrigue surrounding Julie Harris, Keys claims
00:31:16
his first attempted murder came in 1997 or 1998 when he abducted and sexually assaulted a young woman near Bend,
00:31:26
Oregon. It was weird. I mean, she was scared but also just talking. So, it's like about random stuff. I don't know.
00:31:32
It was weird. I I was just convinced that I had screwed up that time in Oregon because, you know, I I I let her
00:31:39
go. He indicated he never let another go after that. Sometime after that assault,
00:31:47
Keys joined the US Army. Our investigation lent us to believe that he was a model soldier and excelled in the
00:31:53
army. Keys told investigators he waited until he completed a three-year stint in
00:31:59
the army before he stalked his next victim. And you told us it wasn't long when you got out of the military that
00:32:06
you killed somebody and it was that sort of feeling that you needed to do something.
00:32:12
It was hard to resist town. Nia Bay at the farthest northwestern tip of Washington is best known as home to
00:32:24
the Macau tribe. Legendary whale hunters. Keys moved here after marrying a tribe member he met online. They
00:32:33
started a family. He lived there. He rented the house out. Eric Johnson worked with Keys at the parks and
00:32:40
recreation department. This is a shop here. The blue part. The blue part. That was his shop. That's where he worked.
00:32:46
Yeah. There are reminders of Keyy's skilled carpentry all around town, including this structure. He was a great
00:32:55
family guy, a smart guy, gifted carpenter, you know, well spoken, an upstanding member of the community.
00:33:03
Standing member of the community. Yeah. I would do something and then I would go back like business
00:33:10
as usual and go out with friends, go out to bars, you know, for all the years they've known me, they actually don't
00:33:17
know me at all really. About 60 mi southeast of Nia Bay is another spectacular location. One of the
00:33:29
deepest lakes in the United States, which investigators suspect is also a watery grave. You guys know about Lake
00:33:38
Crescent in Washington. He revealed to us that one of the Washington State victims was actually uh their body was
00:33:45
sunk in this particular lake. I think that lake is 5 to 700 ft deep. Here's a picture of Israel Keys's boat. Sometime
00:33:54
in 2005 or 2006, Keys had a body in this boat. Any idea who this person may be? Any idea how
00:34:02
this person was killed? No. How long does the body last in a Freshwater Lake? In the last months of 2012, special
00:34:12
agents Hala and Sanders were hopeful that Keys would give them more information on who is at the bottom of
00:34:19
this lake. But the killer had another plan. I can't be satisfied sitting in prison for all my life. I'd rather go
00:34:26
out while I still have some sanity, good memories. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]
00:34:53
You really think I would feel like when you need more information? After seven months of interrogations,
00:34:59
seven months of teasing investigators with bits and pieces of his violent past, Israel Keys decided to take one
00:35:07
more life, his own. Serial killer Israel Keys was found dead at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.
00:35:15
[Music] We received a call early in the morning that on December 1st, 2012, Israel Keys
00:35:22
had committed suicide in his jail cell. He used a disposable razor to split his wrist and Keys attempted to strangle
00:35:28
himself with bedding. And what was your reaction to that? My reaction was a lot of these secrets were going to die with
00:35:35
him. Now, for Samantha Koig's loved ones, the news hit like a gut punch. He should have
00:35:44
been executed. Now, he killed himself. That's great. It's not what we wanted. We wanted him to stand trial. We wanted
00:35:51
him to answer for what he did. But the world's better off. He's gone. [Music] Inside Key's cell, jailers discovered a
00:36:01
bizarre blood soaked suicide note with passages like, "Crush like a bug, you still die." We had hoped that that note
00:36:10
was going to be clues and tips for us on and that he was finally going to give us
00:36:14
all of the information on the homicides, and it really wasn't. It was kind of a rant.
00:36:20
But the end of Keys was by no means the end of this case. A few months before his suicide, investigators found those
00:36:28
Macob drawings. He drew a series of 11 skulls and these were found underneath his bed
00:36:40
in his jail cell. Drawn in Israel Keys own blood. You have 11 skulls. What does this mean?
00:36:49
I think this is the entirety of of his crimes. And it indicates that there are seven victims we don't have identified.
00:36:57
Prior to his death, Keys had pointed the FBI to another victim. There's one in New York. He refused to provide that
00:37:06
victim's name, but investigators believe it happened when Keys took a road trip through New York State in the spring of
00:37:14
2009. So they comb through missing person's reports and keys computer. Is this the
00:37:22
person buried in New York? No. Her name was on your computer. Which computer? Mine. When they confronted him with
00:37:30
photos, one in particular rattled him. It was a photo of a woman named Deborah Feldman. given the way he looked at it
00:37:39
and he started shaking a little bit. Um, I would say she is definitely one of his
00:37:45
victims. Deborah Feldman is a a woman who went missing from New Jersey. It was in 2009. Her body has never been
00:37:52
recovered. We're relatively confident about Deborah Feldman. However, we do not have any forensic evidence to to
00:37:59
make that connection. According to the FBI, that would make Deborah Feldman Keyy's fourth known victim along with
00:38:06
Samantha Koig and Bill and Lorraine Courier. Agents are now determined to identify the remaining seven and there
00:38:15
are clues that point to at least two other states. Tell me about Wyoming and what was there for him.
00:38:23
The Green River in Wyoming is where Keys had buried his cashmere. Is there a sense that there may be a
00:38:30
body somewhere near that river? We have a strong suspicion that Keys may have a victim located in that area.
00:38:39
In the late 2000s, Israel Keys also spent time in California's wine country, including visiting the posh Sonoma town
00:38:48
of Heelsburg in May of 2007. Keys has often talked to investigators about using boats and also kayaks in the
00:38:59
disposal of bodies. We know that he rented a single person kayak in Heldzburg near a campground during that
00:39:07
time in 2007. But Keyy's road trips weren't limited to the US. In 2007, he drove along the Alcan Highway by himself
00:39:16
for about a week of that year. The Alcan Highway goes through Canada up to Alaska. Yes, correct.
00:39:23
We know that Keys traveled to Canada quite extensively and specifically said that he would go to Montreal. When he
00:39:30
was asked about whether he'd killed anyone in Canada, what did he say? He said, "Canadians don't count."
00:39:36
It's been several years since Israel Keys killed himself. The FBI hopes investigators across the
00:39:44
country will take a second look at suspicious deaths in their area. They're also hoping the public can help. If
00:39:53
anyone has any information on Israel Keys and his travels or if they have a family member that they think may have
00:40:01
been potentially a victim of Israel Keys that they come forward to the FBI with that information. That includes the Lake
00:40:08
Crescent area of Washington State where Keys told investigators he had dumped a body. We absolutely want people to come
00:40:16
forward who think they may have seen something connected to Israel Keys, especially on this lake.
00:40:22
And what about those kill caches buried throughout the country if anyone out there comes across one of these? What
00:40:31
should they do first? for people not to not to touch too much and not to contaminate it too much and definitely
00:40:37
contact local law enforcement in their community who can then reach out to us. For the FBI, their focus is clear. For
00:40:47
me, the important thing is Samantha and Bill and Lorraine and Deborah and all the victims that we don't have
00:40:53
identified. That's what this case is about. And their commitment unwavering. Do you have an optimistic streak that
00:41:01
says we can find answers to the other seven cases? I do. I absolutely do. And it won't be easy by any means. And it
00:41:12
may take a long time, but I'll never give up trying. [Music] [Music] I loved you before this ceremony and I
00:42:14
love you more because of it. You may kiss your brow. They were inseparable. Tex absolutely
00:42:22
adored Diane and Diane adored Tex. I feel like the prosecution has tried to make this out to be about someone who is
00:42:34
successful and powerful trying to get away with something like murder. They don't know Tex and Diane personally like
00:42:42
I do. A woman died after she was shot inside a car on this block. Previously on Breakdown. Welcome back.
00:42:53
Before we plunge back into the story of Tex MacGyver, I want to tell and I'm a reporter with the Atlanta Journal
00:42:58
Constitution and we've been covering the Tex MacGyver case since day one. This was a enormously high-profile case. They
00:43:07
were big-time power couple. We're going to have plenty of beverages over here. So, just everybody start walking,
00:43:13
please. Tex owned a ranch out in Putnham County, which is a pretty nice place for a
00:43:19
vacation home. [Music] They woke up that morning, Tex made sausage biscuits and coffee and took
00:43:31
them upstairs to Diane and Danny Joe, her longtime friend. They spend the afternoon playing golf and they drive
00:43:38
back to Atlanta. They're on their way back to their condo in Buckhead. They stop on the way at
00:43:46
Longhorn to get something to eat. They have some wine at dinner. Danny Joe is driving because she didn't drink. My
00:43:54
name is Bruce Harvey and I represent Tex McCyver. Texas seated right behind his wife in
00:44:00
the back passenger seat. They're going to hit traffic that just stops them still.
00:44:08
So, they're thinking, "We got to get off of the interstate. We got to find a better way to get to Buckhead.
00:44:14
According to texts, he had been asleep, but when they go down this ramp, he wakes up
00:44:20
and says, "I think this is a bad idea, ladies. It's a dangerous area. Will you hand me my gun, honey?"
00:44:28
And she does. Text told police that the people quote rose the hair on the back of your neck, unquote.
00:44:37
I'd say they drove another 5 to 10 minutes and they are coming close to Pedmont Park. He fell back asleep. I
00:44:45
think he fell into what he said was sort of a between being fully asleep and being fully awake. According to text,
00:44:54
the car comes to a stop. He was jolted awake. I was handling the gun. Did not realize
00:45:02
it was in my lap ready and it went off. [Music] Can a 38 special just accidentally go
00:45:10
off? Never known it to happen. You have to pull the trigger. Jiminy. Ooh. The gun would be right here in his lap
00:45:18
according to what he said. So he was startled. He pulls the trigger and the bullet goes just to the left of the
00:45:25
middle here. If you're trying to kill someone, you know that's going to be devastating to whoever is sitting there.
00:45:31
Especially if you're trying to make it look like an accident. Yes, I would think so. Yes.
00:45:37
I think there are people who absolutely believe that he killed his wife for whatever reason, probably for money.
00:45:45
People get killed over money all the time. That's the dumbest plan on the history of the planet. And anybody that
00:45:52
thinks that that is the way that Tex Mccyver deliberately killed his wife is just living in a fantasy world.
00:46:04
[Music] [Music] 48 hours. The last ride home. [Music] [Music] They drove back to Atlanta on a Sunday
00:46:40
night. They were headed to Tex and Diane's luxury condominium in Buckhead. On the night of September 25th, 2016,
00:46:49
Tex McCyver shot and killed his wife Diane. They'd been together for 16 years, married for 11 years. I remember
00:46:58
the first time I ever met Diane. She just had such a commanding presence about her. According to close friend
00:47:06
Anne Schwall, Diane was the love of Texas life. She was beautiful and there was such an energy and electricity about
00:47:15
her. The year was 2000. 47-year-old Diane was recently divorced with no children and a thriving career as the
00:47:25
executive vice president of a real estate and advertising company. In search of a fresh start, she moved into
00:47:32
this luxurious condominium in Atlanta's swankying neighborhood, Buckhead. Everyone in the building was talking
00:47:40
about her. Linda and Rance Winkler say their new neighbor was hard to miss. She wore St. John and Chanel on the golf
00:47:48
course. She wore hats just about every day. And she had a presence and a way of carrying herself. But says Linda, no one
00:47:58
paid more attention to Diane than another popular divorce in the building, wealthy labor lawyer Tex McCyver. Before
00:48:07
he met Diane, did he have a a love life that you knew of or a dating life? No. He was so consumed with his work. He'd
00:48:17
been through a very um painful, difficult divorce. It wasn't until Diane came along that he was interested in
00:48:27
having a romantic life. Tex was a decade older than Diane, but they soon became inseparable, spending much of their free
00:48:37
time at Texas weekend home, fondly known as the ranch. where the couple was known for throwing
00:48:45
parties for Atlanta's rich and powerful says friend and Putnham County Sheriff Howard Sills. They were big
00:48:53
entertainers. They were always having somebody there for some kind of party or some kind of political thing like that.
00:49:00
We have had the best yet party. Diane was always the life of the party. She was always the boss of the party,
00:49:09
too. text was uh usually very reserved, a consumate gentleman. If a lady walked in a room, he was up like a jack in the
00:49:16
box. After five years together, Diane agreed to become Mrs. Tex McCyver. He cared about her, which was probably the
00:49:26
very first time she had that experience in a lot of years. He didn't need that. That somebody cared about her for her.
00:49:33
Just for her. Just for her. Not for her money. He had as much as she. In fact, in terms of liquid assets, he was
00:49:42
further along than she. So, having both suffered through painful and expensive divorces, the couple decided to keep
00:49:50
their finances separate. I don't know anyone actually who's combined their assets having married at the age that
00:49:59
that they married. And you have to remember that Tex had this terrible, painful, expensive divorce and he was
00:50:10
never going to put himself in a situation like that. Was there an issue of money between them? Not in the
00:50:17
conventional sense, but when they started building this place, you can see this place, you see what it's like. Show
00:50:23
place. Yes. Linda is talking about this guest house on Texas property. Before the wedding, they say Diane insisted on
00:50:33
building the massive party house that she named the saloon. Tex really didn't want all this. Diane wanted it. The
00:50:41
scale of it and he told her that if she wanted it, she would pay for it and she said fine. But money and who paid for
00:50:50
what in that relationship would come back to haunt texts becoming a possible motive for murder. Is there any scenario
00:50:59
where you can think that Tex would have shot Diane intentionally? Never. Never once. Anne Schwall says she
00:51:08
admired Diane and Tex so much that she asked them to be godparents to her youngest son, Austin. They just adored
00:51:16
him and they just poured so much love into him. Tex was all the family Diane had. And after his divorce, he was
00:51:25
estranged from two of his children. Too old for children of their own, Anne says
00:51:30
they focused all their attention on Austin. I just wanted so much to show him all the great things that he could
00:51:39
do and how he could grow up and be such a responsible young man. Teaching them how to ride horses and how to fish and
00:51:46
how to be a good steward of the land and of animals. And how did um Austin feel about them? Oh, he adored them. The
00:51:55
ranch was their special place. And every year it's where Tex and Diane insisted on hosting extravagant birthday parties
00:52:04
for Austin. Happy birthday, Austin. Happy birthday. I hope you have a great birthday. The birthday parties were
00:52:11
legendary. A sign of how much they loved him. tell me when you heard about what happened. So he called me. It was in the
00:52:25
middle of the night and as soon as I heard his voice and he said we lost Diane and my immediate reaction was
00:52:36
how am I going to tell Austin? Anne says Austin never once blamed texts for Diane's death. He actually was just
00:52:45
really worried about, you know, how Tex was doing. He's never said I didn't shoot her. He's never said I didn't kill
00:52:53
my wife. He is profoundly regretful. He talked to me a couple of weeks ago and he said I I it's like I smell her and I
00:53:02
break down. I cry. It was all a tragic accident according to Texas defenders. But here's the biggest problem. No one,
00:53:13
including texts, can explain how his gun went off and killed his wife. We just asked him that day before yesterday. He
00:53:22
still cannot give an answer to exactly what happened. Who do you remember after the gun?
00:53:31
[Music] 2 days after Dian's death, texts and his then lawyer met with Atlanta Police
00:53:38
Department homicide detectives. I immediately called out. I said, "Is everybody all right?" And Danny Joe
00:53:45
said, "Yes." And Diane head was kind of slapped. She said, "Uh, I've been shot."
00:53:52
As detectives set out to investigate the shooting of Diane McCyver, they focused
00:53:58
on their best witness. You ever taken any like safety glasses or anything like that?
00:54:06
No. Nothing. I don't worry about it very long. and they focused on their best piece of evidence.
00:54:18
[Music] Here we are in a almost new SUV with two women in the front seat. I said, "Yeah, I'd like to if you don't
00:54:34
mind, please hand me my gun." There is no doubt that Tex McCyver pulled the trigger on the gun that
00:54:42
killed his wife Diane. The question is why? Was he asleep as he said he was and he was jolted awake and pulled the
00:54:50
trigger or did he want to kill his wife? Previously on Breakdown, reporter Bill Rankin's Breakdown podcast takes a deep
00:54:58
dive into the Shakespearean drama surrounding Tex McCyver. He's a 48 hours consultant on the case. Holding a loaded
00:55:07
handgun, pointing it at your wife, falling asleep seems pretty reckless. Using a similar car, Ranken showed us
00:55:15
how the bullet that killed Diane McCyver traveled through the passenger seat of Texas SUV. It hits there and it goes
00:55:23
from right to left through the seat and exits out here, right? goes down slightly downward path through his
00:55:32
wife's body. The bullet went through Diane's left rib cage and diaphragm, severed a vein and
00:55:39
artery in her spleen, and then hit several organs, including her left kidney and stomach.
00:55:47
And she started breathing funny and and she, you know, kind of passed out. That night, detectives were
00:55:56
anxious to hear Danny Joe Carter, the car's driver, explain what Tex did after he shot his wife. All I could think of
00:56:05
was FEMA hospital, and I thought, I don't know how to I don't know how to get there. And he says, no, Emry is
00:56:09
closer. Tex decided to go to Emery University Hospital. There were four hospitals, all
00:56:18
approximately less than 5 miles from where the shooting is believed to have taken place. Emory was the farthest at
00:56:25
about 4.3 miles, but one of the best trauma centers in all of Georgia. Grady was only about 3.2 mi away. Anybody who
00:56:37
lives in Atlanta knows about Grady Hospital and it's a level one trauma center. There were people who have said
00:56:43
that he went to Emery Hospital because it was going to take her longer and maybe let her bleed out.
00:56:50
Family friend Sheriff Howard Sills, who is not involved in the case, says, "No way." And explains that Grady just was
00:56:58
not on Texas radar. If you're rich and you're affluent, then you don't want to go to Grady Hospital because Grady
00:57:05
Hospital is where indigent people go. The people in that car that night, they would have thought Emmery.
00:57:12
This dramatic surveillance footage shows the SUV arriving at Emory's emergency room and texts helping Diane into a
00:57:21
wheelchair. Then before surgery, Diane made a critical statement to her doctors. Her
00:57:30
husband did not mean to shoot her. She said it was an accident. But 2 hours later, Diane Macyver died on the
00:57:40
operating table at 12:49 a.m. You want to have the worst feeling in your life is to be sitting in one of the
00:57:49
waiting rooms, two surgeons and scrubs in a chaplain come around the corner and start walking toward him. Now, it was up
00:57:58
to detectives to determine, was it truly an accident or was it coldblooded murder?
00:58:05
This Smith and Wesson 38 caliber revolver that killed Diane was in the car's center console inside a plastic
00:58:13
bag when it was handed to text by Diane. We've had some breakins in our office and in response to that, I had wrapped
00:58:20
my gun in a public grocery. The gun was still in the bag when it went off. The gun was still in the bag. Yeah. I mean,
00:58:28
he might have had his finger on the trigger. The first rule of firing a gun is don't put your finger on the trigger
00:58:34
until you're ready to pull and you have your target in sight. Law enforcement analyst and former police officer
00:58:41
Vincent Hill says a guy like Tex should have known better. So to wake up out of this sleep, you're
00:58:49
startled. Your finger's automatically on the trigger. You pull this trigger and you do one shot, a kill shot. In my
00:58:56
mind, it's not likely. Lean into it. [ __ ] the weapon. And Hill is not alone in his opinion.
00:59:06
That's why I asked former Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Bert Davis to take me out to a gun range not far from
00:59:13
Texas Ranch. I wanted to understand the gun. See how well you're doing? You know, the
00:59:22
revolver can be fired two ways. The handgun, which only shoots one bullet at a time, can be fired in two very
00:59:30
different ways. Single action or doubleaction. Either way, it does not look good for
00:59:37
texts. Because experts say this gun only goes off if the trigger is pulled. In single action, the shooter pulls back
00:59:48
the hammer like this. With the gun already cocked in this position, it hardly takes any effort at
00:59:56
all to pull the trigger. It only takes about two pounds of pressure to actually pull the trigger,
01:00:03
which is why experienced gun owners say you only [ __ ] this gun if you know you
01:00:09
are about to use it. No one that I know of would just sit with your gun with a gun in single action. A double action is
01:00:17
a different story. This gun is not loaded, but I want to show you what happens in double action. You pull the
01:00:24
trigger, and the gun automatically pulls the hammer back, rotates the cylinder, and fires. But it's not easy because it
01:00:32
takes about 12 lbs of pressure to actually pull the trigger, making it much harder to fire it accidentally. It
01:00:40
would be difficult, but not impossible. But not impossible. But somehow that gun
01:00:45
was fired. And to this day, text cannot answer this question. Was the gun in single action or double action? Good
01:00:52
question. Do you have an answer? Do I have an answer? Why do I have to answer these? Why does Tex McCyver have to
01:00:59
answer anything? Texas lawyer Bruce Harvey is one of Atlanta's most successful and sought-after defense
01:01:07
attorneys. What is your challenge with this gun? Clearly, a trigger was pulled, right? The question is, was that a
01:01:15
voluntary knowing and intentional action or an involuntary action based upon an accident?
01:01:25
But Tex was clearly no stranger to guns. Out at the ranch, he had what many would
01:01:31
consider an arsenal of weapons. After Diane's death, Tex asked his buddy, Sheriff Sills, to go out to his ranch
01:01:39
and collect his guns for safekeeping. So, you cleared out how many guns? As I recall, it was about 35 guns, including
01:01:47
rifles, handguns, and AR-15s. Would you describe him as a as a gun guy? Yes and no. Here in the South.
01:01:59
Everybody's got a lot of guns. We're getting ready to put on a rodeo demonstration with real cows. But the
01:02:06
idea that Tex MacGyver should have known better was about to become a central and
01:02:12
recurring theme for the 75year-old lawyer. It gets really crazy. I think we've called it a textbook example of
01:02:21
what not to do after you kill your wife. [Music] Bruce Harvey is one of the most
01:02:34
distinctive members of the Atlanta Defense Bar. He has worn a braided ponytail down his back for decades.
01:02:40
Bruce Harvey was not Tex McCyver's first attorney. How did you first hear about it? It was all over the media. It all
01:02:48
started September 25th. Startling new information in the shooting death of Diane Macgyver. Harvey, who knew text
01:02:54
through mutual friends, says he watched the news coverage for almost a year, while Nick made a mess of the case and
01:03:01
his reputation. A complete ongoing disaster, mismanaged from day one, I think, resulting in the reason that
01:03:11
we're sitting here to start with. It started right after the shooting. Atlanta's media immediately began
01:03:20
clamoring for an answer to why on earth Tex had been sitting right behind his wife in his SUV with his finger on the
01:03:28
trigger of a loaded gun. 4 days after the shooting, Tex had an explanation in a statement made through
01:03:36
a spokesman. He said that text told him that he asked for the gun because there were either homeless people, carjackers,
01:03:44
or black lives matter protesters. What do we want? Justice that gave Tex an air of being rich, white, and oblivious,
01:03:54
igniting a real life bonfire of the vanities. Why would you equate Black Lives Matter protesters with carjackers?
01:04:02
Why would you inject race into this? That put the story into a whole another realm. and it went national because of
01:04:08
that. You have this very rich, very powerful white guy in a city that's predominantly
01:04:19
black. I think that's why this case is so appealing to the public. Texas attorney at the time publicly
01:04:27
denied that his client ever said he was afraid of black protesters, but the damage was done and things were about to
01:04:36
get even worse. CBS 46 has an exclusive look tonight at the diamonds, the furs, and the designer bags about to go on
01:04:43
auction. This was pretty stunning. Just two months after shooting his wife, Tex started selling off Dian's extensive
01:04:52
collection of valuable belongings, her most expensive jewelry, fur coats, and handbags would go to the highest biders
01:05:01
at an auction. I understand it was advertised as her stuff, right, to bring in more buyers.
01:05:09
And it wasn't just one auction. It looked like a Nordstrom department store, if not better.
01:05:15
The district attorney's office filed motions to block the sales, but a judge denied their requests. And as the
01:05:22
executive of Dian's estate, Tech said he had no choice. According to text, he said that in her
01:05:30
will, Diane had left a lot of money to some of her employees and some of her friends. So, he needed that money to pay
01:05:38
them. Now, all that money went into the estate and not to him. But timing in this case
01:05:45
was everything. Text has come under fire for holding the two sales while still at
01:05:49
the center of the homicide. Should it have gone forward at that time? Could it have waited? The answer clearly is yes.
01:05:56
And it's something we just have to deal with. At least Tech still had Danny Joe Carter.
01:06:04
And that's it. Danny Joe was his best witness, the only other person in the car when the gun went off. The night of
01:06:11
the shooting, Danny Joe told detectives in no uncertain terms she believed Diane's death was an accident. There is
01:06:21
not a doubt in my mind that it was completely a horrible accident. But on February
01:06:29
2nd, 2017, a little over 4 months after the shooting, Danny Joe changed her story.
01:06:37
He's not been nice to me and tried to manipulate me. In a third interview with investigators conducted inside of Texas
01:06:45
SUV, Danny Joe alleged that on the night of the shooting, Tex told her to lie. He tried to get me to lie supposedly to
01:06:57
protect me from getting all wrapped up in this. Danny Joe said walked up to her and said, "Why don't you just tell
01:07:04
police you weren't in the car? There's no question she was in the car. There's no question she was driving.
01:07:10
There's videotape at Emory Hospital. Bruce Harvey concedes that it is possible text was just trying to protect
01:07:19
his friend. Danny Joe at that particular time was beingounded by the media. And I
01:07:26
think a lot of this effort was to try to allow her to avoid the media crunch. not
01:07:35
designed for her not to talk to the police or not to give a particular statement, but there was no media yet at
01:07:42
the hospital. There there was going to be. Are you saying that text may have told her to tell the cops she wasn't in
01:07:48
the car so that people would stopounding her? Yes. So Tex may have told her that
01:07:53
if he did, but there is no denying this. Days after the shooting, text orchestrated a meeting with his lawyers
01:08:02
and two reporters where Danny Joe was to make a legal and public statement that the shooting was an accident. When she
01:08:11
was a no-show and stopped taking his calls, text left this frantic voicemail for her husband. Let me just be plain.
01:08:18
Danny is about to send me to prison. Please erase this this voicemail message, but call me right away. You all
01:08:25
have no idea the problem this is causing. It's innocent, but it's absolutely nuclear for me. It doesn't
01:08:32
sound good when he says, "Please erase this voicemail message, but call me right away." So, what does he mean? When
01:08:38
we examine what Well, we don't have to explain what he he means. They have to explain why it is a crime for him to do
01:08:45
that or how it relates. Bruce Harvey was still watching from the sidelines when on December 20th, 2016, Tex got some
01:08:55
good news. The Atlanta Police Department concluded the shooting was not an intentional act. Based on their
01:09:02
findings, the Fulton County District Attorney charged Tex with involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct. After
01:09:10
spending his birthday behind bars, Tex McGyver bonds out of jail just before Christmas weekend.
01:09:19
But with the case now in the hands of the district attorney's office, they decided to launch their own
01:09:25
investigation into the shooting. There was a bond hearing where the lead prosecutor, Clint Rucker, strongly
01:09:33
hinted that they didn't believe it was accidental. That made everyone think, "Wo, okay, this is getting even more
01:09:40
serious now." [Music] A little over a week after Tex Macyver was charged with involuntary
01:09:50
manslaughter, there was more breaking news in this case. Startling new information in the shooting death of
01:09:57
Diane Macgyver. Our Atlanta affiliate CBS46 uncovered evidence that at the time of
01:10:04
Dian's death, tax owed his wife $350,000. He was supposed to pay her back with interest by December of 2014. That never
01:10:15
happened. Tech said that the money was Dian's contribution to the construction of that saloon on his ranch and that for
01:10:24
tax purposes, Diane wanted it to look like a loan. There was $350,000, but it wasn't ever actually going to be
01:10:33
paid back by him. The $350,000 was a function of nothing more than taxes. But on paper, it does look like a loan
01:10:42
and one that Tex was expected to pay back. That could be argued that he didn't want to have to pay that off.
01:10:50
Meanwhile, the Fulton County DA's office was looking for a possible motive for murder. When they heard that Diane may
01:10:57
have had a second will, subpoenas were obtained to search the couple's financial records. And that's when this
01:11:05
happened. During a search of their condo, Tex was found to be violating the terms of his
01:11:11
bond with, of all things, possession of a gun. They found a gun in his sock drawer that he probably went to all the
01:11:19
time when he was getting dressed and then found ammunition in the drawer right above it. Tex insisted that the
01:11:25
condo had already been searched for and cleared of any weapons. So, the Glock pistol, which he claimed had once
01:11:32
belonged to Diane, must have been planted. The judge didn't buy it. Mr. Macgyver possessed
01:11:40
the gun. I am going to revoke Mr. Macgyver's bond. After 4 months out on bond, Tax was back
01:11:50
behind bars. When the very next day, there was yet another stunning announcement by the DA's office.
01:11:58
A grand jury that had been hearing testimony for weeks concluded there was enough evidence to charge Tex McGyver
01:12:06
with the murder of his wife. It was surprising that it leapt so far from an accident to
01:12:15
cold, cruel, intentional killing. Tex would spend the next 8 months in jail, seeing loved ones only through
01:12:25
video screen visitations. Here he is. Hello, Austin. Mommy, how are y'all? And desperately trying to get out on bond
01:12:34
again. Well, I love y'all and I hope to see everybody on Wednesday if things work out. I love you, Austin.
01:12:42
Then Bruce Harvey took over the case. I don't believe I don't believe in my heart of hearts. I don't believe as
01:12:48
we're sitting here that Tex Mccyver had any deliberate intent to do any harm to his wife. We're going home. Harvey got
01:12:58
text released and put on house arrest. Then he set about preparing for trial on a case where there had been one public
01:13:06
blunder after another. Are you concerned about being able to seat an impartial jury? Yes, I am. I think Texas has been
01:13:16
unfairly vilified in the court of public opinion. Jury selection in the trial of Tex
01:13:23
McCyver began on March 5th and took a whole week. Well, today jury selection got underway in a Fulton County
01:13:29
courtroom and a pool of more than 140 potential jurors. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. When the trial
01:13:37
began, Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney Celita Griffin delivered the state's opening argument. The day that
01:13:45
the defendant shot his wife in the back, his life was spinning out of control. And what became fairly clear is that the
01:13:52
prosecution believes Tex McCyver's motive for murder was money. The easiest way for him to gain control
01:14:02
was to kill Diane. Is money a motive here? No. Very simple answer. He is much worse off
01:14:11
without her. I think that is a huge red herring. You know why? because they've got nothing else. Now, this is a case
01:14:20
about maintaining an image of wealth and power that the defendant created for himself and the links that he went
01:14:26
through to keep it. What if Tex didn't mean to do it? Or what if Tex did mean to do it, but the
01:14:39
prosecution fails to prove it? All rise for the jury. Testimony in the murder trial of Tex Macyver began on March 13th
01:14:48
and lasted 20 days. By closing arguments, the jury had heard two very different theories of why Tex
01:14:59
Macyver shot his wife. I'm going to talk to you about the facts. Prosecutor Clint Rucker and his team
01:15:06
painted an ugly picture of a man who they say was broke and so desperate for money that he murdered his wife. He was
01:15:14
taking her money and he was regaining control. Evidence showed that Macyver's salary at his law firm had been cut by
01:15:22
more than half while the state says he was living way beyond his means. And remember, the Macyver kept their
01:15:29
finances separate. Remember this email? This a couple of months before the murder. This is what the defendant says
01:15:37
to his wife. I am seriously trying to reduce my monthly expenses. Why? Cuz his monthly expenses at the
01:15:45
ranch alone were 20 to $25,000 a month. What does he say? I plan on hitting the lotto
01:15:52
sometime this week. Diane joked that Tex might want to think about becoming their
01:15:58
new ranch hand. Read his job description. because that is your next life chapter.
01:16:06
This what he said in response. Oh well, back to Jigalowing. The state believes that Tex was using
01:16:14
Diane for her money. But what drove him to murder is this. Before they were married, Tex borrowed $750,000
01:16:24
from Diane. As payment, the state says he deeded her half of his ranch. What that meant was that now the property was
01:16:33
no longer owned solely by the defendant. In 2011, Diane loaned Tex another $350,000,
01:16:42
but this time she made Tex sign a promisary note that gave her the right to foreclose on the ranch if Tex didn't
01:16:49
pay up. So, when the loan didn't get paid, she said, I'm going to put another clause in here that says, you know what,
01:16:57
it's not that I don't have to uh wait until you don't pay me. I can foreclose at any time. And as we sit here today,
01:17:05
the loan is in default. By killing Diane, the defendant will regain sole ownership of the ranch. The jury heard
01:17:11
Danny Joe's claim that Tex asked her to lie. They also heard about the Black Lives Matter statement and the auction.
01:17:19
But there was more. They heard what happened to Diane's ashes after she was cremated. Took him 42 days. Pick up his
01:17:28
wife's remains. That's what I found. Tucked back in a closet in a cardboard box. It's just not right.
01:17:38
But the defense team told a very different story. A love story. They were him. Nobody ever saw them arguing.
01:17:46
Nobody ever heard her say, "I'm going to foreclose if you don't pay me my money."
01:17:51
This is the big one. Bruce Harvey and the defense team tried to show that Tex did not need Dian's money. Texas was not
01:18:00
broke, nor was he in dire financial straits. The state's calculation put Texas net worth at 1.7 million before
01:18:09
Diane died. But what the defense tried hardest to hammer home was that the shooting was
01:18:16
nothing but an accident. And remember, that's what Diane said before she died. The three people that were in the
01:18:25
vehicle all said it was an accident. And as for the gun, remember the expert with the firearm?
01:18:36
Harvey used the state's own gun expert to show that anyone can fire the gun accidentally.
01:18:43
It was remember him demonstrating um the weapon in pulling the trigger when he testified right here. You notice
01:18:53
the trigger? [Music] Oops. He's demonstrating it for you on the witness stand. He accidentally pulls the trigger.
01:19:13
He says, "Oops." The shooting could not have been premeditated, says the defense, because
01:19:22
it was Diane who told Danny Joe to take that exit when they hit traffic. And after Tex was handed his gun, he fell
01:19:30
back asleep. The defense also presented an expert who said Tex suffered from a long documented
01:19:38
sleep disorder, which might explain why he unintentionally pulled the trigger and can't remember how. Often times when
01:19:47
people arouse from these, they don't arouse quickly. They frequently have amnesia for this.
01:19:55
As the case was about to go to the jury, the defense suggested that the state had
01:20:00
not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. We do not convict people in fogs of speculation,
01:20:13
but on the bedrock of fact. D tried to stand up for herself and on behalf of the state, Clint Rucker pleaded with the
01:20:21
jury to punish Diane Macyver's killer. Who will stand for Diane Macgyava? A great woman she tried to be. Will you
01:20:32
stand for Diane Macgya as she cries out who will stand for me? [Music] The jury deliberated for about 29 hours.
01:20:50
At one point, each sat in the back passenger seat of Macyver's SUV holding the gun that killed Diane. Some of the
01:20:59
jurors were actually clicking the trigger. So, I think it could have made a huge difference in the outcome of this
01:21:04
trial. On their fourth full day of deliberations, the jury sent a note to the judge saying they were deadlocked.
01:21:11
We don't see it happen. to overcome our differences. But the judge told them to try again. Then just two hours later,
01:21:19
they reached a verdict. Was it malice murder? Meaning Tex intended to kill Diane. Felony murder. Tex shot Diane
01:21:29
with the intention of causing her bodily harm, but had not intended to kill her.
01:21:34
Felony involuntary manslaughter. He acted recklessly or not guilty. On count one, murder, we find the defendant not
01:21:44
guilty. Well, when the jury came back and the foreman read not guilty on malice murder, I was like, "Oh my
01:21:51
goodness." But then they said this, "We find the defendant guilty of felony murder.
01:21:58
Guilty of felony murder." Tex was clearly stunned. The jury felt that he shot Diane without malice of forethought
01:22:07
but intending to do bodily harm. Might have been a compromise for the jury is no compromise for Tex MacGyver because
01:22:15
uh malice murder and felony murder both carry a life sentence. A mandatory life sentence. It's a a complete tragedy. I
01:22:24
mean that closes the circle. Everybody loses. Tex handed over his belt and was handcuffed.
01:22:33
Fulton County DA Paul Howard brought it back to the victim, Diane. We would like
01:22:39
to say to Diane, we hope that you are watching and we hope that you felt that we stood for you and we stood for the
01:22:48
things that you represented. given these shackles. If you don't mind, I would like to sit at his sentencing
01:22:57
hearing. Tech spoke directly to Diane. I know she's here. I feel her presence. Darl brought me more joy and fulfillment
01:23:08
that few men on this earth could ever know. But it's what he didn't say that stood out. I didn't ever hear you say
01:23:17
you're sorry for what you did. To me, that silence speaks volumes. Prosecutors say this is justice for
01:23:29
Diane. Text Macyver supporters disagree. She didn't need justice when it's a terrible accident.
01:23:39
She's in heaven right now. I'm just heartbroken. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] A key witness takes a stand in the trial
01:24:48
of Patrick Frzy. Investigators believe Patrick Frzy killed Kelsey Barth in her town home on Thanksgiving last year.
01:24:56
Day two of the murder trial for the man who allegedly killed his fiance. Day seven of the trial. Investigators
01:25:02
revealed the moments they found. Surveillance video of Kelsey Barth and her one-year-old daughter at a Woodland
01:25:07
Park supermarket is the last anyone seen of the 29year-old mother. If convicted,
01:25:12
Frezy could face life in prison. We can certainly sense that we are in the final
01:25:16
days of this trial and it is certainly Criple Creek is a small town. Teller County is a small county. We're up in
01:25:22
like a minute. They have never seen anything to this magnitude in [ __ ] Creek. Ashley
01:25:28
Franco, KKTV 11 News. You've covered every second of this trial. What has the feeling meant inside that courtroom?
01:25:35
It's been cold. It's been very heavy and chilling. During the first week, we learned about some of the evidence in
01:25:42
the case. Crystal Lee, Patrick Frzy's ex-girlfriend is set to be the prosecution's star witness.
01:25:49
Okay, it's uh 11:15 again on the 21st December 2018. Um we're inside Kelsey's apartment with
01:25:57
Crystal. You are seeing what the jury saw. Remarkable evidence. The heart of the prosecution's case. When you came
01:26:07
in, what did you see? Um, when I first walked in, I saw um blood all over the floor. I saw blood up
01:26:22
the wall. Who is Crystal Lee? Crystal Lee is a rodeo queen from Idaho. She's very wellknown
01:26:28
and she's Patrick Frzy's ex-girlfriend. They'd known each other for over a decade.
01:26:34
She's the bread and butter to this case. That's Crystal Lee wearing a police jacket and hat. Can you point to the
01:26:43
area where you saw and clean blood up on the wall? She admits to cleaning up the
01:26:51
crime scene and tells the prosecution the whole entire story of what happened. The spray was
01:26:58
from here all the way. She's the only person in the world that they have to possibly convict Patrick
01:27:06
Crazy. We did a deal with the devil. There's just no if ends or buts about it in this case. But it's a deal that we
01:27:13
made in order to move this case forward and to solve this crime. Sometimes in order to solve a case or
01:27:20
move a case forward, we have to give a deal to the devil. Uh, that's exactly what we did here. Did you say that you
01:27:27
cleaned off some of the appliances? I did. I wiped the There was blood on the front of the dishwasher. There was blood
01:27:33
on the front of the stove. Crystal Lee was obviously the star witness for the prosecution and she testified to things
01:27:41
that the prosecution needed her to say in order to establish this case. I am a Gruber. I'm a professor of law at
01:27:48
University of Colorado Law School. I think there were doubts about Crystal Lee's testimony coming into it. Crystal
01:27:55
Lee has trafficked in lies. Crystal Lee is saying he has been planning on killing Kelsey and he had
01:28:04
called me multiple times about it. There's poison coffee. There's a baseball bat, scented candles,
01:28:12
a blindfold, phones that are pinging all over Colorado and and in Idaho. I got to
01:28:18
tell you, it's one of the most emotional trials I've ever been through, and I've
01:28:21
been through a lot of trials. Uh the roller coaster everybody was put on. There wasn't anybody on this team that
01:28:27
at some point uh didn't have tears running down their face. We just got word that a verdict has been
01:28:33
reached in the case against Patrick Frzy. Tell them try to take it. We're the we're the only ones out here.
01:28:39
There's always a little bit of nervousness and question in the back of your mind. Just hours ago, we were
01:28:44
hearing closing statements. And now, now we have a verdict. [Music] [Music] Patrick Frzy sits in this grim [ __ ]
01:29:37
Creek, Colorado jail, put here by his former girlfriend, Crystal Lee. There's blood on the wall here. There's
01:29:44
blood on the wall here. And there was blood right here. In disturbing evidence that you will see throughout the program
01:29:52
tonight. She tells her story about a crime scene cleanup. I moved the couch. I wiped the couch off. Um there was
01:30:01
blood behind the couch down the wall. A plan to transport a body. We brought the
01:30:06
tote here. Okay, we unloaded the tote and her help in making sure there would be no trace of it left behind. The
01:30:14
things that were thrown into the fire by me were the um the belongings from Kelsey's house, the curtains, the
01:30:21
pillows, the stuffed animals. The tale begins when these haunting images were captured. A mother in the
01:30:31
grocery store shopping with her baby. Thanksgiving Day 2018. The last time Kelsey Barth was seen in public. It's
01:30:41
not the kind that runs off. This is completely out of character. It was Cheryl Barth who reported her
01:30:50
29-year-old daughter missing after trying to reach her for days. Kelsey, we just want you home.
01:30:59
Call us if you can and we won't quit looking. At that time in early December, Woodland
01:31:06
Park police had not publicly named a suspect. We are treating Kelsey's disappearance as a missing person's case
01:31:13
at this time. Can't eat and you can't sleep and the stress won't end until we find her.
01:31:20
Usually, it was us four altogether all the time. Ashley Cogburn, Amanda Smith, and Nicole Haywood had an unbreakable
01:31:28
bond with Kelsey. They grew up together in Moses Lake, Washington. From the pictures, she's gorgeous, obviously, and
01:31:35
very put together. And so, you might think that she's, you know, this prissy girl, but she was not. She She was
01:31:40
raised on a hay farm and very much a tomboy country girl. Yeah, she was out there driving tractors and and bucking
01:31:46
bales in flying planes. She was a flight instructor. She a good pilot. Oh, yeah.
01:31:52
She was really good. She wasn't afraid to challenge the the typical boundaries. So, it wasn't a surprise when a Colorado
01:32:02
cowboy named Patrick Frzy caught Kelsey's eye on a dating website in 2016. He was like a country boy and that's
01:32:11
what she was used to. That's what she liked. They started a long-distance relationship.
01:32:19
Patrick Frzy lived on a 35 acre ranch in rural Florison, Colorado. These are four
01:32:26
dogs that be our dogs to train this fall and winter. In this video, Patrick can be heard training cattle dogs. Pepper.
01:32:35
That'll do down. He also shoot horses and groom donkeys. The black and white one is uh
01:32:44
Flash. Clint Klene has known Patrick for seven years. Patrick is uh the frier for
01:32:51
the donkeys. People call them horseshoeers and all that, but our donkeys don't have shoes. So, he trims
01:32:56
their feet. He trims their feet. It's he he gives them, as we call it, donkey manicures. Klein says Patrick was quiet
01:33:03
and dedicated to his work. He's kind of a laidback, you know, kind of stays to himself. Uh he had his ranch to take
01:33:12
care of. Eventually, Kelsey moved to Colorado from Washington State to be closer to
01:33:18
Patrick. And they were expecting a child. Her mother, Cheryl, says they were engaged. Does she have a dress yet?
01:33:25
No. I don't think she cared about the big wedding kind of thing. It was between them and God.
01:33:32
Even after their daughter Kaye was born in October 2017, the couple still didn't
01:33:38
live together, but shared parenting duties. He never came to see her, but um she would like on her days off, she
01:33:46
would go back and be with him. Friends say Kelsey was struggling to balance the baby, her job, and a long commute. Her
01:33:54
relationship with Patrick seemed strained. She seemed to be kind of stressed out from the whole thing that
01:34:02
she couldn't make him happy. Was Patrick emotionally abusive? Um, it appeared that way from uh what I
01:34:14
saw and it seemed like it was just knocking her spirit down. Did Kelsey ever say he was physically abusive? No.
01:34:21
Ashley says Kelsey once mentioned there may have been another woman in Patrick's
01:34:27
life. I think Kelsey had mentioned one time about an ex-girlfriend who still kind of wanted to be with Patrick.
01:34:35
Kelsey wasn't worried about it. I don't know if it's cuz she knew she lived far away. Kelsey didn't seem all that
01:34:41
worried about it. After Kelsey was reported missing, police talked to Patrick. He told them
01:34:49
that the day before Thanksgiving, Kelsey said she wanted to end their relationship.
01:34:56
KKTV reporter Ashley Franco. He said that Kelsey wanted to go their separate ways and things weren't working out
01:35:05
between them. They wanted to split custody 50/50 and they were just not meshing anymore. Patrick told police he
01:35:14
and Kelsey met to exchange the baby on Thanksgiving Day. He also returned Kelsey's belongings. A purse, um, keys
01:35:22
to the car, keys to the town home, and then a gun that Kelsey owned. It was a gun Patrick says he had once taken from
01:35:28
Kelsey for her own protection. Police say Patrick told them Kelsey struggled with depression, hinting that she may be
01:35:36
suicidal. When you hear that Patrick said Kelsey was unstable, that she was maybe suicidal.
01:35:42
No, no, not at all. It doesn't match up with Kelsey. Police searched Kelsey's home, but turned up no signs of foul
01:35:49
play. Then Cheryl and her son went to the house to check it out. [Music] There was a mat a like a rug of some
01:36:00
sort in the bathroom and it's gone. And she had also noticed that the refrigerator looked like it had been
01:36:05
wiped down recently. You could see streaks. Later, her son is in the bathroom and
01:36:13
notices blood on the base of the toilet and the alarms go off in their minds. Alarms go off.
01:36:21
Kelsey's mother, Cheryl, alerted investigators who returned to the house. This time, they used chemicals to detect
01:36:28
the presence of blood. They found trace amounts of blood everywhere in the bathroom. Do we know whose blood? DNA
01:36:35
results showed it was Kelsey's. Investigators believed Kelsey had been murdered, but they needed more evidence.
01:36:44
A closer look at Kelsey and her fiance's cell phone activity Thanksgiving weekend
01:36:49
would lead them to her suspected killer. [Music] [Music] Patrick Frzy was taken into custody this
01:37:12
morning in Florison, Colorado, just after 7:00 this morning, Mountain Standard Time.
01:37:18
Nearly a month after Kelsey Barth vanished, Woodland Park Police Chief Miles D Young made this grim
01:37:25
announcement. Today we arrested Patrick Frzy on charges of first-degree murder of Kelsey
01:37:32
Barth. As a reminder, Patrick Frzy is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Patrick, what do you have to say?
01:37:40
Despite the murder charge, Kelsey's body had not been found. As you can tell from
01:37:46
the arrest, sadly, we do not believe Kelsey is still alive. Kelsey's daughter, Kaye, is in
01:37:52
protective custody and will be re reunited with Kelsey's family. Patrick Frzy entered a plea of not
01:37:59
guilty. But from the beginning, investigators had questions about Patrick's story. Starting with his
01:38:06
initial claim that the day before Thanksgiving, Kelsey told him she wanted to break up and quote, "Go their
01:38:13
separate ways." So this is Woodland Park. This is Woodland Park. Yet there she was shopping the next day
01:38:21
for the family dinner. You see her grab a cart and and put Kaye in the cart and then go off. And that's the last time
01:38:28
publicly anyone had seen Kelsey Barrett. What does she buy here at Safeway? She buys ingredients for a sweet potato
01:38:35
casserole. Investigators wondered if Kelsey had broken up with Patrick. Why would she send him this text? I bought
01:38:44
some sweet potatoes in case you wanted sweet potato casserole. Kelsey didn't tell her mother she and
01:38:50
Patrick were breaking up when she spoke with her Thanksgiving morning. Did she sound normal? Did she sound Definitely.
01:38:57
She She sounded happy and normal mom daughter talk. Yeah. Yeah. Another big question investigators had was when
01:39:05
Patrick said he last saw Kelsey. Patrick told officers that he hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving November
01:39:12
22nd when he exchanged their daughter, Kaye Barrett. In images from a neighbor security
01:39:18
camera on that Thanksgiving day, Patrick and Kelsey are seen at her door with a baby carrier after Kelsey returned from
01:39:26
the store. You can see her holding a poinsettia. Later, Patrick is seen at that same location alone. We don't know
01:39:35
whether he's coming or going. He doesn't have Kaye. Um, and he's not with Kelsey.
01:39:41
And then that's it. University of Colorado law professor Ya Gruber has followed the case. The critical question
01:39:48
is what happened in between around 1:30, 1:45 and 3:30 when they get that picture
01:39:55
of him. Police say this is likely when Patrick killed her. Investigators have recovered um a number
01:40:04
of items that make us suspicious that the crime did occur at Kelsey's residence.
01:40:09
Patrick told authorities he drove their daughter Kaye to his ranch for Thanksgiving dinner. He said Kelsey
01:40:15
wasn't with them. But investigators discovered that her cell phone was. They pulled cell phone records and found that
01:40:25
on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd, all of a sudden Kelsey's phone and Patrick's
01:40:31
phone started traveling together, but Patrick and Kelsey were not together. Investigators say Patrick took Kelsey's
01:40:40
cell phone after he killed her as part of a scheme to cover his tracks. They believe he faked 19 calls between the
01:40:48
two phones over Thanksgiving weekend and was sending texts between them, including this one from Kelsey's phone.
01:40:55
I'm going running. I'll call you guys when I get home. His response, okay, be safe.
01:41:03
The theory that the prosecution's going to put forward is that that was Patrick with her phone and he's texting
01:41:10
pretending to be Kelsey. 2 days after Thanksgiving, authorities believe Patrick concocted this conversation. Are
01:41:18
you awake? Sorry, I didn't hear my phone. Going to jump in the shower. I'll call you guys when I get out. Okay. Then
01:41:27
investigators believe to keep up his ruse that Kelsey wanted the breakup, Patrick sent this message. If this is
01:41:34
truly what you want, I'll respect your wishes and give you space. On Sunday, 3 days after Thanksgiving,
01:41:43
there was a bizarre development that would send this case in a very different direction. Phone records show while
01:41:50
Patrick Cell stayed near his ranch, Kelsey's phone was on the move, heading west out of Colorado.
01:41:59
There was a text from Kelsey's phone to her supervisor at Doss Aviation saying, "I won't be at work." So, people had
01:42:07
thought maybe they heard from Kelsey. The next text from Kelsey's phone said, "Do you even love me?" That text pinged
01:42:14
off a cell phone tower 800 miles away. Reports are correct that Kelsey's phone gave a location near Gooding, Idaho on
01:42:22
November 25th. When that came out, I think everyone was was just shocked. And where's Kelsey?
01:42:32
And where's Kelsey? No one knows where Kelsey is. So, how did her phone end up in Idaho?
01:42:40
This woman may have the answer. [Music] It was startling news when investigators
01:43:13
revealed that 3 days after Kelsey Barth was last seen, her cell phone had pinged
01:43:19
in Gooding, Idaho, 800 miles from her home. Tonight, we have new information about a 32year-old Twin Falls woman that
01:43:27
may have helped Patrick Frzy cover up the disappearance and alleged murder of his fiance, Kelsey Barrett.
01:43:35
At the time of Kelsey's disappearance, phone records show that Patrick was in touch with this woman, Crystal Kenny
01:43:43
Lee. Crystal was a nurse and avid horsewoman who grew up here. This is Crystal's world. KMVTt news director and
01:43:52
weekend cowboy, Cade Atwood. We work hard to be able to do this on the weekends.
01:43:59
Crystal and her family are a big part of the rodeo community, a very prominent family.
01:44:08
Talk horses and that's you're speaking her love language, you know. Michelle Stein is Crystal's best friend. Horses
01:44:16
are her life. She loves horses. Take a look at this. And in Idaho, where rodeo rules, Crystal was royalty. In
01:44:28
2008, she was crowned queen of the Magic Valley Rodeo. She was so loud. Laura Stzman has known Crystal since she was a
01:44:36
teenager. Crystal was so kind with everybody that it was just so difficult to turn her down in any way. Crystal had
01:44:47
a reputation of getting what she wanted. No, I wouldn't say it was a reputation of getting what she wanted. Crystal
01:44:55
worked so hard at everything she did to try to do everything completely correct.
01:45:03
Authorities believed that it was Crystal who traveled to Idaho with Kelsey's phone. But when the FBI made their
01:45:11
initial call to Crystal, she said she had no idea who Kelsey Barth was. She also denied knowing Patrick Frzy. Then
01:45:21
she changed her story. They asked her, "When was the last time you talked to him?" And she said, "I don't know. I'd
01:45:26
have to look at my phone." And then says, "Oh, in the last month." And investigators are thinking, "Okay, but
01:45:31
we already know that your phone has called his phone multiple times in the last few weeks." She says, "I don't have
01:45:40
a personal relationship with Patrick Frzy. I've gone to Colorado and looked at a few of his horses, and that's the
01:45:46
extent of our relationship." She lies. She lies. Turns out Crystal Lee and Patrick Frzy
01:45:52
had a long history. They met after high school. Then eight months before Kelsey disappeared, Crystal and Patrick's
01:46:00
relationship heated up. Crystal was recently divorced with two children. She had been out here multiple times to see
01:46:07
him and it was type a type of affair. What did Crystal say about Patrick? Was she in love with him? I think she was to
01:46:15
a point. During the investigation, the FBI got a tip that Michelle had explosive
01:46:22
information about the case. She says Crystal called and confided in her about a disturbing conversation she and
01:46:29
Patrick had a month before Kelsey disappeared. She was very, very upset, very distraught. She had told me that he
01:46:38
had asked her to take care of his baby mama. And you took that to me or she took that. So I was
01:46:45
like, well, I was in shock at first because people, who says that? Nobody says that. So I was like, wait, what?
01:46:56
And she said, yeah, he asked me if I would kill the mother of his baby. I mean, what are you thinking at that
01:47:04
point? I was just in shock and disbelief. What was Crystal's tone when she was telling you this? She was
01:47:11
balling. She was crying. She was extremely upset and scared. Michelle says she asked Crystal why Patrick
01:47:20
wanted to kill Kelsey. He had told her it was because she wanted to take him back to court to get custody of the baby
01:47:30
and he was in fear that she was going to harm the baby. Investigators found no proof Kelsey had harmed her daughter,
01:47:37
but did find evidence that Patrick had planned to challenge Kelsey for custody and believe that may have been his
01:47:44
motive for murder. Michelle says she pushed Crystal to call the police. I kept telling her, "I think you need to
01:47:51
call and tell somebody." See, you got to understand, I'm trusting her to do the right thing. But I think Michelle,
01:47:56
people watching will say, "Call the police. Say, you need to talk to my friend. Someone's asking her to kill
01:48:03
someone. You're right. Okay. Of course the viewers are going to think that. But do you have regret? Of course I regret
01:48:08
it. I regret it every day. Oh my god. I would do anything to have stopped that somehow.
01:48:16
Kelsey had been gone about a month before Michelle talked to the FBI. And when the FBI went back at Crystal a
01:48:23
second time, she too was ready to talk. I think at that point she kind of knows I have to come clean.
01:48:32
But first, Crystal wanted a deal. In exchange for her testimony against Patrick, she agreed to plead guilty to
01:48:39
evidence tampering. She admitted to getting rid of the gun to tossing Kelsey's keys in a canyon and destroying
01:48:46
her phone. It's a tampering with evidence charged, which is a minor charge compared to murder or um you know
01:48:55
accessory to murder or attempted murder. She only faces at max three years in prison. This is a pretty good deal that
01:49:04
she gets. What Crystal revealed to investigators would become the center of the prosecution's case against Patrick
01:49:13
Frzy. When I first walked in, I found blood all over the floor. I saw blood up the wall.
01:49:22
[Music] When Crystal Lee finally started talking, she didn't stop for 4 and 1/2 hours. Her story was stunning. She
01:49:38
claimed Patrick tried to get her to kill Kelsey three different times. The first
01:49:44
idea was to get a caramel macchiato from Starbucks, Kelsey's favorite drink, and
01:49:51
put poison in it. Two months before Kelsey went missing, Crystal says she drove 12 hours from
01:49:58
Idaho to this Starbucks near Kelsey's home in Colorado. Hi, welcome to Starbucks. What can I get started for
01:50:05
you today? Crystal, a nurse, told investigators she suggested the perfect potion, a lethal dose of ambient and
01:50:14
Valium. This is the drink. That is the drink Crystal Lee had ordered to put poison in to give to Kelsey Barth.
01:50:28
So Crystal brings this Starbucks caramel macchiato right here. Waits in the alleyway, walks up to Kelsey's door,
01:50:36
knocks on the door, and Kelsey Kelsey opens it. Kelsey opens it. Tells Kelsey this elaborate story. She says, "I'm new
01:50:44
to the neighborhood. someone had told me that you had helped get my dogs out of trouble and Kelsey says, "No, I didn't
01:50:50
do that." Does Kelsey take the coffee? Allegedly, Kelsey takes the coffee inside and closes the door. And from
01:50:58
there, we don't we don't know what Kelsey does with the coffee. But Crystal says she couldn't do it. She didn't
01:51:04
poison the coffee. And when Patrick found out, he was angry. He was furious. He was not happy that
01:51:14
she didn't go through with it. He would play head games with her a lot. Crystal's best friend, Michelle Stein.
01:51:24
He just had a way of manipulating her into doing things. After Crystal said she couldn't go through with the poison
01:51:31
plan, she told investigators Patrick came up with a different idea. He says, "Um, I have a metal pipe
01:51:40
that I'll leave outside my property that you can come pick up and I want you to go wait for Kelsey at her town home and
01:51:49
when she comes, hit her on the back of the head." The way Crystal tells it, she drove to
01:51:57
Kelsey's house with that metal pipe, but didn't attack her and drove back to Idaho. A week later, she says Patrick
01:52:05
called with a new murder plan. Once again, Crystal drove from Idaho to Kelsey's Colorado townhouse. Crystal
01:52:13
claims she waited for Kelsey outside her home, this time with an aluminum baseball bat. But just like her earlier
01:52:21
attempts, she says she chickenened out. It's just hard to believe these stories.
01:52:29
They seem outlandish and wild. Phone records show Patrick called Crystal in Idaho around 4:30 on
01:52:38
Thanksgiving Day. Crystal said he told her, "You need to get out here now. You got a mess to clean up." Crystal says
01:52:47
that she can't come out that same day, um, but will come out a few days later. Um she's in Idaho, loads up the car with
01:52:56
cleaning supplies, bleach, um hairetss, you know, gloves, trash bags. She basically brought the equivalent of
01:53:06
a hazmat suit and every sort of cleaning product that one might see in one of those uh TV shows about how to clean up
01:53:14
a crime scene. Two days later, on Saturday morning, Crystal says she drove 800 miles to Patrick's ranch to pick up
01:53:22
a set of Kelsey's keys he left for her outside. Then she says she drove to Kelsey's
01:53:29
home. Crystal tells authorities she opens the door and the scene is horrific. There's blood everywhere.
01:53:36
According to Crystal, Kelsey's body was not inside. and then spends, you know, three to four
01:53:43
hours cleaning and scrubbing the the murder scene. She takes some of the things that she couldn't clean and puts
01:53:49
them into trash bags and loads them in the back of the car she was driving. Crystal claims Patrick was back at his
01:53:55
ranch during the cleanup. There was a point in time when Patrick Frzy had told Crystal Lee, "When you go to clean up
01:54:03
her town home, there is possibly a tooth somewhere." Crystal said she found that tooth and
01:54:09
put it in a trash bag. Crystal told investigators after the cleanup she met with Patrick. She
01:54:18
described to them how he said he lured Kelsey to her death. Crystal claims Patrick invited his fiance to play a
01:54:26
guessing game with candles. She says that he takes a sweater from Kelsey's room and blindfolds her with
01:54:35
the sweater and has candles sitting out in front of Kelsey and is telling Kelsey
01:54:40
to guess the scent of each candle. During her interview with investigators, Crystal said Patrick told her while baby
01:54:48
Kaye was in another room, he took a baseball bat and quote, "He went to swinging."
01:54:55
After killing Kelsey with that baseball bat on Thanksgiving Day, Crystal says Patrick told her he put her body in a
01:55:04
black tote. This surveillance image shows Patrick at an ATM earlier that day with a black tote in his truck.
01:55:14
Crystal went with investigators to Patrick's ranch. She told them that she and Patrick went there together and she
01:55:22
watched him burn that tote. He poured gasoline in the bucket and pitched it into the fire. I believe yesterday you
01:55:30
said that you also collected wood and put into the burn pit. Yes, I did. Police later examined the spot where
01:55:38
they believe Kelsey's body was burned. Crystal also went with investigators to Kelsey's home. She's wearing that police
01:55:48
jacket and hat. The floorboards had been removed for testing. And can you point if you remember where the tooth was
01:56:01
around the tooth? What was there? If anything, just blood, right? There was blood on the chairs. There was blood on
01:56:07
this chair. There's blood on the table. There's blood on the Hobby Lobby bag that was sitting there. She pointed out
01:56:13
where she claims she intentionally left blood for them to find. Right there. On December 21st, 2018, Patrick was
01:56:27
arrested at his ranch and charged with Kelsey's murder. This is a case without a body. Uh, this
01:56:36
is a case without a lot of physical evidence. So, what we mainly have connecting Patrick Frzy to an incredibly
01:56:45
brutal and violent crime is Crystal Lee's testimony. Crystal, who had cut that deal with
01:56:52
prosecutors, seemed shaken when she appeared in court after she turned herself into authorities.
01:56:59
The Crystal I knew could do no wrong. But the Crystal that has done the things that came out
01:57:08
of her mouth is somebody I don't know. And that leaves Laura Stzman with one question. Why?
01:57:17
[Music] [Music] Almost a year after Kelsey Barth's disappearance, there was a long line to
01:57:35
get a seat in the courtroom at Patrick Frzy's murder trial. Uh, I had a lot of people that knew Patrick. They don't
01:57:42
think that the candle story adds up. Frzy's friend Clint Klene was there almost every day. I don't know of any
01:57:52
guys that would have thought of going out and buying candles and having their girlfriend be blindfolded and then smell
01:57:59
the candles. You think that had to be a woman's idea? I think so. Freezy was driven from the jail in a
01:58:08
black SUV. He entered the courthouse through this white tent, out of sight from the media. Security was tight. No
01:58:16
cameras in the courtroom. District Attorney Dan May. I I got to tell you, it's one of the most emotional trials
01:58:23
I've ever been through, and I've been through a lot of trials in my career. Prosecutor Beth Reed painted a picture
01:58:28
of Patrick Freezy. Very charming, very manipulative, and controlling. All traits consistent
01:58:40
with being a sociopath. Ashley Franco summed up the defense case. No body, no murder weapon, and no
01:58:51
clear motive. They had said, you know, Patrick wasn't involved. There's no evidence to show he was involved. And
01:58:57
Crystal Lee had already lied to law enforcement, so she's the one to blame for this. On day four, the prosecution
01:59:05
star witness, Crystal Lee, took the stand. Her credibility was on the line. I don't think we would have known what
01:59:12
happened to Kelsey without Crystal Lee. I started picking up things that were blood splattered.
01:59:18
For 2 days, prosecutor Jennifer Vehman asked Lee to describe Frzy's plan to kill Kelsey Barth. They bolstered their
01:59:27
case with surveillance videos and photos. This one shows the black tote in the back of Frzy's truck that Lee says
01:59:34
he would use to dispose of her body. When you came in, what did you see? Blood all over the floor. I saw blood up
01:59:44
the wall. Saw blood on the roof wall. Most disturbing. Prosecutors played that video of Lee inside Kelsey's home,
01:59:53
showing investigators how she cleaned up the crime scene. Did you say, correct me
01:59:59
if I'm wrong, did you say that you cleaned off some of the appliances? I did. I wiped the There was blood on the
02:00:05
front of the dishwasher. There was blood on the front of the stove. Um there was
02:00:11
um that cinnamon roll pan had blood on the um tin foil. They had pulled up the floorboards where
02:00:19
they found Kelsey's blood. They showed video of a hay barn where Lee says Frezy hid Kelsey's body in that
02:00:28
tote overnight. A cadaavver dog alerted to the area. This is a surveillance image of Frezy at
02:00:36
a gas station. Lee says he was buying gas to start a fire. We brought the tote here. Okay. We unloaded the tote.
02:00:45
Okay. Kelsey's body was moved to Frzy's ranch. Were you present when he started the fire? Yes, I was. Okay. This is the
02:00:54
video that shows how Lee says she helped Frezy burn Kelsey's body in that black tote. What about the accelerant gas?
02:01:03
Okay. And burned evidence, including Kayle's toys and Kelsey's bloodstained Bible. Do you remember what the books
02:01:12
were by just one of them was her um I would imagine it was a Bible. Experts say a human female tooth
02:01:22
fragment was recovered from Frzy's ranch near the burn site, but there wasn't enough DNA to determine a profile.
02:01:33
[Music] At the end of her testimony, she told the jury Kelsey's chilling last words,
02:01:40
"Please stop." But he didn't. He keeps beating her and beating her and beating her. The jury needed to hear that. They
02:01:48
needed to hear how brutal this was, how uncaring he was, how senseless this was.
02:01:53
Why would Lee help Frzy? She claimed she feared for herself and her children. She
02:01:59
was in love with Patrick Frzy and had been for a long time. As the trial went on and and we saw that
02:02:06
dark side of Patrick Frzy that Crystal saw, that Kelsey saw, I think you can understand some of that fear.
02:02:16
I I don't know that we'll ever understand entirely why she did what she did. It's it's fairly inexplicable.
02:02:24
Perhaps the most shocking testimony came from a surprise prosecution witness. Your last witness, I think, jaws dropped
02:02:31
when he started testifying. Tell me about him. We didn't know about him. Prosecutor Beth Reed says the surprise
02:02:38
witness was an inmate at the same jail where Patrick Frzy was being held. He actually had started calling our office
02:02:45
while we were in the middle of trial. The former inmate had watched a 48 hours episode on Kelsey Barth's murder.
02:02:54
Turns out he says Frezy gave him a hit list. Some of the names handwritten on paper towels he was instructed to flush.
02:03:04
Describe to me what was in the 16 notes passed between Patrick and the former inmate.
02:03:11
Well, they were requests that a certain number of witnesses needed to disappear, but it was very
02:03:18
specific as to Crystal Lee. Graphic descriptions of what needed to happen to Crystal Lee.
02:03:25
He described putting a bullet in her head. Also on Frzy's hit list, Crystal Lee's
02:03:31
best friend, Michelle Stein, and Kelsey's mother, Cheryl Barth. What does that say about Patrick Frzy?
02:03:40
It says that Patrick will do whatever he wants to get whatever he wants. The defense called no witnesses. Frezy
02:03:48
chose not to testify. The case went to the jury. After 3 and 1/2 hours of deliberations a
02:03:56
verdict. A verdict is in in this 11 breaking news alert. The jury says they unanimously found Patrick Frzy guilty of
02:04:04
first-degree murder. Frezy was found guilty of firstdegree murder. sentenced to life in prison plus 156 years.
02:04:15
Do you think if Patrick hadn't involved Crystal, he would have gotten away with Kelsey's murder? Yes, I do. I think it's
02:04:21
very possible he would have gotten away with it. Involving Crystal was that was a stupid plan. The whole plan was
02:04:28
stupid, but he wanted Crystal Lee to pin it on. As for Crystal Lee, she's facing
02:04:34
a maximum of up to 3 years in prison. I think a lot of our viewers are probably thinking Crystal Lee, given
02:04:44
what she's admitted to, got a really good deal. She did. And um uh it's it's not right. And I'm not
02:04:52
going to try to justify in any way. Uh it's unfortunately a part of my profession that sometimes in order to
02:04:57
solve a case, we have to give a deal to the devil. Uh that's exactly what we did
02:05:01
here. If you could sentence Crystal Lee, what would it be? uh heck of a lot more time than three
02:05:08
years. She could have saved Kelsey so many times over so many months and it's totally inexcusable.
02:05:16
Is this justice for Kelsey and Kaye? Can there ever be justice? Justice in this case,
02:05:24
Kelsey be sitting here talking to you, not us. Excuse me. Um, so we can c certainly seek a certain
02:05:36
amount of justice, but not the justice that this case deserves. [Music] [Music]