00:00:00
[Music] It is a case that has haunted the public for more than 13 years and many feared
00:00:14
that the Gilgo Beach murders may never be solved. The officer located a body. It seemed to
00:00:24
be wrapped in burlap, which didn't make any sense. The crime scene gets expanded. I'm called and chief, we found
00:00:34
another set of remains. They find another one and another one. We were dealing with a serial killer. Well,
00:00:43
they're available. They're vulnerable and very petite. This killer has a type, right? Does he want the petite body
00:00:51
because he wants to feel more empowered and more in control? I want the world to
00:00:56
know like my sister mattered. I want answers. I just want answers. An arrest more than a decade in the
00:01:06
making in a serial killer case that's baffled law enforcement and the public. 59-year-old Rex Herman plead not guilty.
00:01:14
I dropped my phone. I couldn't believe it. So, just who is Rex Herman? An architect who ran a company called RH
00:01:21
Consultants and Associates. Rex. Hello. How you doing? Good to see you. When a job that should have been routine
00:01:29
suddenly becomes not routine. Yeah. I get the phone call. Rex Herman is a mystery man. Rex is capable of
00:01:38
presenting himself one way to one person, one way to another person. My first memory of Rex was that he was very
00:01:46
big, imposing, scary, angry. He was bullied. He was bigger than everyone else. The kids would gang
00:01:56
up on him. And Rex was very smart, too. He's a smart person. Very smart. He liked to shock people. He was interested
00:02:06
in power games. Rex loved hunting and he loved guns. Going out, shooting, hunting. That was
00:02:14
his passion. All petite, all bound in burlap bags. The burlap on the bodies that's points right at a hunter. It was
00:02:24
DNA collected from a pizza slice he tossed in a Manhattan trash can that came back as a match with hair found on
00:02:32
the victims. That's where we obtained, you know, his full profile from from the pizza crust left in the box. In terms of
00:02:38
speaking to my client, the only thing I can tell you that he did say as he was in tears was, "I didn't do this."
00:02:46
Everyone's just trying to put the pieces together. I want to know what I missed.
00:02:50
I think we all want to know what we missed. [Music] [Music] Not far from this quiet stretch of Gilgo
00:03:44
Beach on Long Island, New York, investigators uncovered the hidden remains of four young
00:03:51
women. The mystery of who they were and how they got here might have stayed a secret if not for a woman named Shannon
00:03:59
Gilbert. [Music] In the early morning hours of May 1st, 2010, 23-year-old Shannon working as an
00:04:11
escort called 911. State police. Yeah, there's somebody after me. The call came from a neighborhood not
00:04:20
far from Gilgo Beach. These people are flying to kill me. Shannon starts running, knocking on doors.
00:04:32
Where are you, Shannon? She screams and then nothing. Shannon was gone. Hello. Hello.
00:04:51
[Applause] K9 searched the area exhaustively for Shawn and Gilbert. Dominic Veron was
00:05:02
chief of detectives at the Suffach County Police Department. Months passed without a sign of the missing woman. And
00:05:09
then in December of 2010, near Gilgo Beach, a police officer and his K-9 named Blue found human remains.
00:05:20
Everyone assumed it was Shannon Gilbert. But it wasn't Shannon. Stunned searchers
00:05:27
would go on to discover the remains of four other women. The women were identified as Moren Brainer Barnes,
00:05:35
Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. Like Shannon, all were in their 20s. All were online escorts.
00:05:45
All petite. Three of the four were wrapped in burlap, the kind you can find in hunting stores. They became known as
00:05:53
the Gilgo 4. It's really, really hard cuz I miss her so much. 48 Hours has reported on this
00:06:03
case since 2010. Over the years, we've secured exclusive interviews with the family and friends of the Gilgo 4. Missy
00:06:13
K will never forget the wintry day when she got the devastating news. The detectives came to my house and just
00:06:21
said that Moren has been positively identified as one of the victims on the Ocean
00:06:27
Parkway. Her sister, Maren Brainer Barnes, a mother of two, was the first to disappear on July 9th, 2007. She was
00:06:37
very smart and very creative. She liked being a mom. She loved being a mom. But life as
00:06:45
a single mom living in Norwich, Connecticut was difficult. Missy didn't know it. But Moren had turned to escort
00:06:53
work and that July went to New York City for a weekend to make [Applause] money. On her way home, she called Missy
00:07:02
from Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan. Attention, please. I could hear the commotion from the train station. From
00:07:10
the time that she called me, it was poof. She was gone. She reported Moren missing. Eventually,
00:07:17
officers would tell Missy that after her sister's disappearance, someone had used
00:07:22
Morin's cell phone to make a call from Long Island. It wasn't known then, but those
00:07:31
two locations, Long Island and Midtown Manhattan, would become important clues in the hunt for a serial killer.
00:07:42
Nearly 2 years to the day that Meen vanished, 24year-old Melissa Bartholomew went missing in July of
00:07:51
2009. Also from Midtown Manhattan. Lyn Bartholomew is Melissa's mother. How often do you think about Melissa? Every
00:08:00
single minute of the day. It just didn't happen to the girls. I mean, it destroyed all of our families. Melissa
00:08:07
moved from Buffalo to New York City to work as a hairdresser. At some point, she also began working as an escort and
00:08:15
then disappeared. About a week after she went missing, Melissa's then 15-year-old
00:08:21
sister, Amanda, started getting calls from Melissa's phone. We agreed not to show Amanda's face. And she answers, you
00:08:30
know, Melissa, where have you been? and this voice is saying, "Oh, this isn't Melissa." Steven Cohen was the
00:08:40
family's lawyer at the time. He was taunting Amanda and he said, "Do you know what I did to your sister? I killed
00:08:48
Melissa." All I can say is he's sick and he's going to make a mistake and we're going
00:08:56
to catch him. Those calls from Melissa's own phone may very well have been that mistake. When police traced them, the
00:09:06
calls placed the person they believed to be Melissa's killer in Midtown Manhattan. The following year, Megan
00:09:17
Waterman, the mother of a three-year-old girl, disappeared from a hotel on Long Island.
00:09:24
Part of you is like missing or it's just like something's always off. We spoke with Megan's
00:09:32
daughter, Liliana, in 2020. I would do anything to bring her back, but I can't and it just like frustrates me so bad.
00:09:41
Megan's family says the 22-year-old was a creative but troubled young woman who loved fashion and was devoted to her
00:09:50
daughter. What would you say to your mom if you could? I would just want to tell
00:09:55
her that like I love her. I just want her to know like she has a special place in my heart. No one can ever replace
00:10:01
her. Like the other two women, Megan disappeared in the summer on June 6th, 2010. She was working as an escort on
00:10:10
Long Island. No matter what her job was, she was a person and she needs justice.
00:10:18
This haunting video from a Holiday in Express is the last time she was seen alive moments before she went to meet a
00:10:27
client. Cell phone records later placed her phone in a Long Island neighborhood called Masipiqua
00:10:39
Park. Amber Costella was the last of the Gilgo fort to disappear. She lived here
00:10:46
just 7 and a half miles from Masipiqua Park. She used to say she was 411, but she wasn't. She was like 4'9, you know?
00:10:52
I mean, she was small. Amber's friend and former roommate, Dave Showler, spoke with us in 2011.
00:11:00
She was an amazing person. She really was. He says Amber was addicted to drugs and used sex work to support her habit.
00:11:08
But as amazing as she was, was as tormented as she was. After Amber disappeared, police say Shaller told
00:11:15
them about her clients. He described one of them as looking like an ogre and having a first generation Chevrolet
00:11:24
Avalanche. On the night she went missing, Shaller says a client offered Amber $1,500 for the night, six times
00:11:33
her hourly rate. This guy was so relentless. He called several times. He was on the phone with her for quite a
00:11:40
while. each time. He says the client got Amber, an experienced escort, to do something she never did, leave without
00:11:48
her purse or cell phone and meet him in his car. I walked out the front door with her. She She gave me a hug. She's
00:11:55
like, "I love you." And she left. It was nearly midnight. Shaller says that when Amber left this house, she
00:12:04
walked down the street and he never saw her again. Shaller told us that he didn't see the
00:12:10
client's face that night, but suspects he had seen him before. So, this is a guy you might have seen.
00:12:18
Yeah, this is somebody that I seen. I might be the one of the only people who knows who he is. It would be more than a
00:12:25
decade before Shallor's description would lead to a break in the case and a prime suspect.
00:12:33
[Music] The shocking developments in a murder case gone cold. My coworker called me
00:12:56
and she said, "Did you hear what happened to Rex?" And I'm like, "No." A husband, a father, an architect stood
00:13:03
before a judge charged as a serial killer. She says it's Rex. I said, "No way." This house was a main focus and
00:13:11
they brought out a lot of evidence. I just didn't think it was real. A Long Island community is still a crime scene
00:13:18
tonight. I even thought to myself, it's crazy that there's two Rex Hermans out there.
00:13:26
Mary Shell and Muriel Henriquez worked with Rex Huerman and couldn't wrap their heads around the news. We never thought
00:13:35
he would be that kind of person. It's shocking. In July of 2023, nearly 13 years after
00:13:43
the Gilgo 4 were discovered, Suffach County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison made the announcement.
00:13:50
Authorities believe Rex Huerman is the Long Island serial killer. Rex Sherman is a demon that walks among
00:13:59
us, a predator that ruined families. The man he calls a demon is a 6'4 architect.
00:14:07
He's charged with killing Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, and is the prime suspect in
00:14:15
the death of Moren Brainer Barnes. What has my client told me? He told me he didn't do this.
00:14:22
Huerman was living about 20 minutes from Gilgo Beach in Masipa Park, the very same town where Megan's phone last
00:14:30
connected with the cell tower. And Huerman worked here at his architectural firm in Midtown Manhattan, just blocks
00:14:38
from where Moren disappeared, the same area where several of the threatening calls to Melissa's little sister were
00:14:45
made. The cause of death with regard to the three victims is homicidal violence.
00:14:54
A married man, Huerman, lived in this run-down house and has a daughter and stepson with his second wife, Assa.
00:15:02
Assa, who was born in Iceland, would take the children to see her family there in the summers. It was
00:15:11
during these trips and others, police believe, that Humeman killed the women. You never got any kind of hint of
00:15:18
another life. No. two to Muriel Henriquez worked at Huerman's company RH Consultants and Associates and spoke
00:15:27
exclusively to 48 hours. She says she saw nothing alarming about the Rex Huerman she saw daily. A little bit of a
00:15:36
nerd in a way. He liked to talk about himself, what he knew. I mean, not a narcissist, but a little bit of a, you
00:15:42
know, I know everything kind of guy. Pompus. Pompus. She remembers him running to and from job sites, eating
00:15:50
fast food on the run. Pizza, that was his number one thing. Police say they found nearly 300 guns in a basement
00:15:58
vault. When she heard that police had recovered almost 300 firearms from a vault in Huerman's basement, she was
00:16:06
surprised only by the number. She knew him as an avid hunter. Going out, shooting, hunting, that was his passion.
00:16:14
What was it about hunting he liked? I don't know. I guess he liked the idea of having a prize. Stalking prey. Stalking
00:16:22
prey and winning. He liked to win, you know. And while she says it never occurred to her that
00:16:30
Huerman could be dangerous, she does remember a time when his tracking skills unnerved her. It was her 40th birthday
00:16:39
and she had booked a cruise vacation. Where are you going? I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be in the middle of
00:16:44
the ocean. You're not going to find me in the middle of the ocean. He said, "Oh, yes, I can."
00:16:51
Muriel didn't think much of the comment until the second day of her trip. There was a white envelope under my door. It
00:16:58
was a note from him. The note said, "I told you I could find you anywhere." He had photos from hunting trips. Mary
00:17:09
Shell worked with Huerman in the summer of 2010. It was the same summer that both Amber Costello and Megan Waterman
00:17:17
vanished. He would talk about, you know, the meat in particular that bear meat could keep in the freezer for months.
00:17:25
Hearing authorities now say that some of the victims were wrapped in a burlap that hunters often use was chilling. The
00:17:34
burlap really got to me. Since Huerman's arrest, Mary has written about her experience with him. She's also talked
00:17:42
to other former female employees who said they weren't always treated with respect. He would have one of them uh
00:17:50
clean the toilet if he thought the cleaning person hadn't done a good enough job. A woman in the office. Yes.
00:17:57
He more than once commented on women's bodies. If someone perhaps had gained some weight, you know, that kind of that
00:18:05
kind of thing. John Perezy grew up with Herman. He says Herman was bullied as a child. I
00:18:15
remember meeting Rex when I was in first and second grade. He was a loner, not many friends. The children
00:18:23
were super mean to him. made fun of him and teased him. But John says he never saw Humman fight back. He was big enough
00:18:33
that if he got upset and started swinging, he would hurt somebody, but he never did.
00:18:41
As Humean got older, John points out things didn't get much better. He was rejected by many girls. We all go
00:18:49
through that awkward stage growing up and it seemed like that awkward stage stayed with him longer than usual.
00:19:00
Still, he says many in the community find it hard to believe that Huerman is the notorious serial killer living a
00:19:08
double life for more than a decade. People were saying, "Oh my god, I can't believe we have a serial killer in our
00:19:16
town and we grew up with and we walked amongst the killer." Another classmate of humor men's, actor Billy Baldwin,
00:19:25
took to social media when the news broke, tweeting, "It was mindboggling." Rex, hello. How you doing? The awkward
00:19:34
Long Island teenager grew up to be a confident and seemingly successful architect. Antoine Amira met and
00:19:42
interviewed him in 2022. Born and raised on Long Island. Okay. Been working in Manhattan since 1987.
00:19:51
There's nothing in my interview that made me think that this person in front of me uh is a dangerous person.
00:20:01
Anwine is a hotel food and beverage manager in New York who loves real estate. He has a YouTube interview show
00:20:09
where he handpicks guests whom he thinks are interesting and accomplished. I'm an
00:20:14
architect. I'm an architectural consultant. I'm a troubleshooter. Antoine says Huerman was well known for
00:20:20
his skill at helping companies and individuals get building permits. When a job that should have been routine
00:20:29
suddenly becomes not routine, Yeah. I get the phone call. Gotcha. Correct. What really stood out for me was he was
00:20:37
very very very smart and known says Antoine for his ability to find loopholes in the rules. He was
00:20:48
pleased when he was doing it that he could that he that he could outwit the the system. That's it folks. That was
00:20:56
Rex. But Antoine says he remembers it was hard to get Huerman to crack a smile. It's selfie time. Selfie time.
00:21:05
Not even during the signature sunglasses selfies he takes with every guest. Two.
00:21:11
Three. Can you smile? That is If police are right, Rex Yur was able to hide a life as a serial killer.
00:21:26
And if he did, his habit of eating pizza on the go would turn out to be his undoing.
00:21:48
[Applause] [Music] For more than a decade after the discovery of the Gilgo 4, Rex Humeman's
00:21:58
name never appeared on a suspect list until a new task force was formed with Suffach County Police Commissioner
00:22:06
Rodney Harrison and Suffach County DA Ray Tyranny. In February of 2022, we formed the task
00:22:16
force and then a mere 6 weeks later, Rex Herman was identified for the first time.
00:22:23
A suspect in six weeks. So, how did they do it? It turns out that buried in the original case files were a number of
00:22:33
critical clues that the new task force was finally able to connect. Remember Amber's roommate, Dave Shaller? She's
00:22:42
like, "I love you." You know, she gave me a hug and she left. He had told police about one of Amber's clients and
00:22:50
his vehicle, just a large built man and that he was driving this this first generation Chevy
00:22:58
Avalanche. A first generation Chevy Avalanche with a description of an ogre-like man and the make and model of
00:23:07
his truck. Police took a closer look at Amber's phone records from 2010. Shaller had told them that before
00:23:16
Amber disappeared, there was one particular client calling incessantly. He called several times. He was on the
00:23:23
phone with her for quite a while each time. Police back then knew the client was using a burner phone. That's a
00:23:30
prepaid phone that anyone can buy and use anonymously. and they knew that Moren, Melissa, and Megan had all been
00:23:38
in contact with burner numbers right before they disappeared. In 2012, with the help of
00:23:46
the FBI, they determined that most of those calls connected to cell towers inside a small area of Masipiqua Park.
00:23:56
They called it the box. So, how large an area is that box? It's, you know, a couple of blocks within within Masipua
00:24:03
Park. The new task force began the search for a large built man who also lived in that
00:24:10
small area and owned a Chevy Avalanche at the time of the disappearances. Was there a aha moment
00:24:19
when all of a sudden his name came up? Once we were able to attach the avalanche inside of that massipa box
00:24:27
which then attached to Rex Herman, that was a moment where we said, "Okay, there's something here." The task force
00:24:33
now had a prime suspect. And when they looked at Humeman's personal cell phone records, they found that his phone was
00:24:41
in the same area as those burner phones when they were used to contact a victim in Masipiqua
00:24:48
Park or in Midtown Manhattan. It was always consistent. Tyranny says this was also true for
00:24:57
those awful calls Melissa's family got from that man using her phone back in 2009. He said, "Do you know what I did
00:25:06
to your sister?" And he said, "Well, I killed Melissa." The task force says that it confirmed
00:25:13
that Huerman does in fact use burner phones. Investigators say he had two different burner numbers in 2022. and
00:25:23
they say they watched and put money on one of those accounts here. And according to court papers, the team also
00:25:31
documented three email accounts using fake names, including John Springfield, Thomas Hawk, and Hunter
00:25:41
1903. And all linked to those burner numbers. And prosecutors say that Huerman was using a burner phone to send
00:25:49
these selfies to solicit and arrange for sexual activity. One of those accounts linked
00:25:57
to Huerman, prosecutors wrote, was used to conduct quote thousands of searches related to sex workers, sadistic torture
00:26:06
related pornography, and child pornography. There was a lot of uh torture, uh porn,
00:26:16
and depictions of women uh being abused, uh being raped, and being killed. Investigators also say that while they
00:26:24
were busy watching Humen, Huerman was trying to watch them, conducting searches on the task force and the Gilgo
00:26:33
victims. not only pictures of the victims, pictures of their relatives, their their their sisters, their
00:26:40
children. Uh and he was trying to locate those individuals. The circumstantial evidence was building, but investigators
00:26:48
also had physical evidence from the Gilgo 4, including one male hair that was found in the burlap used to quote
00:26:58
restrain and transport Megan Waterman's body. and they wanted to see if they could link it to
00:27:06
Huerman. Police tailed Huerman and when he threw out this pizza box in this trash can here in Midtown Manhattan,
00:27:15
they pounced the pizza, which was, you know, obviously very significant. Tierney says that Huerman's DNA that was
00:27:23
found on that pizza crust was consistent with a DNA profile from the hair found with Megan Waterman's body. And that DNA
00:27:33
profile is only found in 0.04% of the population. That was a remarkable day. It was, you know, the
00:27:42
weekend and, you know, you read, you get the report and you read it and then you
00:27:45
read it again and then you read it a third time and then you read it a fourth time. Uh, and then you start making
00:27:50
calls. With the DNA, the search histories, and the burner phone evidence, the team felt it was time.
00:27:59
When we decided to take down the case, we, you know, it was a sudden decision. We did see him contacting a number of
00:28:05
sex workers using a burner phone, which obviously is concerning. Playing clothes, officers arrested him
00:28:17
around the corner from his office. I don't think he had any clue. I don't think he had any clue that
00:28:24
we were going to him. Police spent 12 days looking through Herman's home, pulling those guns out of
00:28:32
the basement and digging in the backyard. They say it will take some time to comb through what they have now.
00:28:40
And they were tight lipped about what they found. Has the search been fruitful? Great question. And the answer is yes.
00:28:49
Can you elaborate on fruitful? You said yes, it's fruitful. There have been items that we have taken
00:28:56
into our possession. That makes it fruitful. And one more big piece of evidence taken into possession. A first
00:29:03
generation Chevy Avalanche Herman once used and it was sitting on property he owns in South Carolina when they
00:29:12
recovered it. We were able to seize that Chevy Avalanche pursuant to a search warrant and we're certainly going to
00:29:18
analyze that. But there were female hairs found on some of the victim's bodies that don't belong to the
00:29:25
[Music] victims. So who do they belong to? [Music] After Rex Herman's arrest, his quiet
00:29:54
neighborhood in Masipeka Park was overrun by investigators and media, focusing intense scrutiny on the
00:30:02
ramshackle home and its remaining residents, his stepson Christopher Sheridan, daughter Victoria Herman, and
00:30:11
his wife of more than 25 years, Assa. Ellerup. Their life going forward is always going to be the wife or the
00:30:19
children of suspected serial killer. That's what it's going to be from now on. Attorney Bob Macedonio represents
00:30:26
Assa Erup who has since filed for divorce from Hurman. He says she was as stunned as anyone by the accusations.
00:30:36
She had no idea any of this was going on. The allegations are shocking. Nobody wants to think that they've been living
00:30:41
with sleeping next to a serial killer for the past 25 years. As it turns out, Assa may have inadvertently helped focus
00:30:48
the investigation on her husband. Investigators say they've identified strands of female hair that were found
00:30:55
on two of the victims. One hair on Waterman comes back to his wife or the DNA profiles are consistent and then the
00:31:03
DNA profile from Costello is consistent with the wife. Although prosecutors have
00:31:09
evidence that Osa was out of town when those murders occurred, they will have to explain how those hairs got on the
00:31:16
victims. Suffach County DA Ray Tierney says it could be as simple as transfer. You live at home with a spouse. A little
00:31:26
bit of your hair falls on your shoulder as well as as your spouse's. Then you go
00:31:30
out and you interact with a third party and that hair gets on them. Assa Erup has not been charged or named a suspect
00:31:38
in any of the murders. You don't believe that Rex Humeman's wife was involved in
00:31:44
this in any way? There's no evidence to indicate that? No. Along with the public
00:31:49
scrutiny of Assa, there's also been support from people that perhaps know all too well what she's going through.
00:31:57
Carrie Rosson, the daughter of serial killer Dennis Rder, who named himself BTK, tweeted, "Asa and her kids are also
00:32:07
victims. I can tell that they are going through hell." And from Melissa Moore, the daughter of Keith Jesperson, a
00:32:16
serial killer known as the Happy Face Killer, for taunting authorities with letters signed with a happy face. She
00:32:24
reached out immediately to myself and we put her in contact with Assa. At a press
00:32:29
conference, Macedonia announced more set up a GoFundMe page for Assa, which raised over
00:32:36
$50,000. Money he says will largely go to medical bills. Assa is battling breast and skin cancer. And because Rex
00:32:44
Huerman was a sole provider for the family, Macedonio says she will soon lose her health insurance. Assa would
00:32:52
like me to express her thanks for the support she's received. Um, she's going through a very difficult time. Assa's
00:32:59
children have also paid a heavy price. Her daughter Victoria, who worked for her father at the architectural
00:33:06
consulting firm, and her son Christopher are both now unemployed. Assa struggles
00:33:12
to support them, says Macedonio, while she's also trying to figure out how to start over. How is she getting through
00:33:19
every day? Honestly, yeah. Minute by minute, she has no one else to turn to. At this time, family and friends have
00:33:28
been hesitant to have her come over because they don't want the media attention. She gets followed wherever
00:33:33
she goes. For the moment, she and her children continue to live in the house in Masipiqua Park, which the family says
00:33:41
was excessively damaged during the police search seen in these photos provided by Osa's attorney. It's a daily
00:33:50
reminder of the unimaginable crimes her estranged husband is charged with and the investigation that continues into
00:33:58
what else he may have done. [Music] Rex Huerman awaiting trial is locked inside a Suffach County jail in a 60s
00:34:24
square foot cell. He denies killing Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, and Amber
00:34:38
Costello. Their voices now silent as the sand where they have been ruthlessly discarded.
00:34:49
How sure are you as you're sitting here now that Rexerman is the Long Island serial killer? So, we're just at the
00:34:56
beginning stages of this case, but we would not have brought this indictment if we weren't confident in our case. He
00:35:03
took away somebody's mother, somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, and not just one person, multiple
00:35:13
individuals. Huerman is currently the prime suspect for the murder of Moren Brainer Barnes. And for investigators,
00:35:21
an obvious question still hangs heavy. If Huerman is a killer, are there other victims?
00:35:29
I mean, isn't there a real concern that there may be other victims out there? Always. Who's to say that there's not
00:35:36
more bodies out there that we need to investigate? In 2011, police did find other bodies
00:35:45
along Ocean Parkway. After finding the Gilgo 4, there is victim number five, Jessica Taylor, an escort who went
00:35:54
missing in 2003. Another set of remains police called Jane do number six is now identified as
00:36:04
Valerie Mack, also working as an escort. Number seven, to investigators surprise, they found a toddler
00:36:14
girl. Number eight, an Asian male dressed in women's clothing. Number nine, a female skull belonging to
00:36:24
Karen Vada, an escort who disappeared in 1996. Number 10, female remains from a victim cops nicknamed Peaches because of
00:36:37
a tattoo on her torso. Although her remains were found six miles away, police say DNA confirms Peaches is the
00:36:46
mother of that toddler. None of those victims has been linked to Huermen. Is it that you can't connect
00:36:56
him yet or you believe he probably isn't the person who killed these other other
00:37:03
individuals? I don't know. Investigations also spread to Las Vegas in South Carolina where Huerman owns
00:37:11
property with detectives there taking a fresh look at cases of missing women. And then there's Nikki Brass. I
00:37:22
remembered him because one, he's massive and how many massive like 6'5 architects work in Manhattan, live in
00:37:30
Masipa. You're going from brown and blonde. Now a hairdresser, Nikki claims she may be one that got away. She told
00:37:40
us she used to work as an escort. And while we cannot substantiate her story, Nikki claims she can't shake her memory
00:37:48
of the night she says she was solicited for sex by Rex Herman and says she fled the restaurant where they met. I had
00:37:58
never gone anywhere and like felt fear. My gut was telling me I needed to get away and I've never had that before.
00:38:06
Nikki says what she found most disturbing is that Huerman himself brought up those bodies bound in burlap
00:38:13
by Gilgo Beach. He wanted to like really get into it. Like he asked me how I thought they could get rid of the bodies
00:38:20
without being caught in that area. And I said, "I've never been over there. I've
00:38:24
never even seen Gilgo Beach." And his response was, "Well, it's really dark and desolate.
00:38:35
I'm John Ray and I'm the lawyer. Nikki is now represented by John Ray, an attorney who is also representing
00:38:42
Shannon Gilbert's [Music] family. In December of 2011, investigators finally found Shannon here
00:38:56
in the marsh, not far from Gilgo Beach. But they don't believe she was murdered.
00:39:02
It's an unfortunate incident, but right now we believe that she just ran into the marsh and unfortunately drowned. A
00:39:08
former investigator told us that he believes Shannon was high on drugs that night and says her death was an
00:39:15
accident, something John Ray just can't believe. While he doesn't think Shannon was a victim of humor, he does believe
00:39:23
she was murdered and points to that 911 call. It absolutely makes no sense that she's
00:39:32
found where she is except that someone else put her there or killed her there. While questions remain about Shannon's
00:39:43
last hours, there's no question she's the reason so many families may finally be getting answers they have long waited
00:39:52
for. We spoke to her sister Sheree in 2011. If my sister, you know, didn't make that
00:39:59
911 call, I don't think that these other women would have been recovered either.
00:40:04
Now, investigators hope that with an arrest, they can give the victim's families who stood with them a sense of
00:40:15
justice and of peace. I've gotten to know the families and I'm inspired by them and I'm
00:40:24
impressed by their patience. [Music] A local legend has it that this place, Gilgo Beach, was named for a skilled
00:40:35
fisherman called Gil. These silver gray waters, once his secret hunting ground. Today, this beach area is better known
00:40:47
for a relentless hunter of human prey, a serial killer whose chilling presence can still be felt in the ocean air.
00:41:04
[Music] [Music] a 35year-old case. His father was indicted for killing his mother. Whoever
00:41:30
did this hated this woman. Their entire case is circumstantial. But can he find the truth? I want to know what happened.
00:41:37
48 hours is all new. CBS next in streaming on Paramount [Music] Plus. I think Forest wanted to become a
00:42:00
legend and I actually think he succeeded. He was described as a modern-day Indiana
00:42:07
Jones. Forest came up with the idea to hide a bronze chest filled with gold somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
00:42:17
I bought this beautiful little treasure chest and I started filling it up with wonderful things. There's 265 gold
00:42:23
coins, hundreds and hundreds of gold nuggets. He wrote a 24line poem guiding people to
00:42:31
the location of the treasure. Yeah, that's exactly it. He created effectively a treasure map in the form
00:42:37
of that poem. I'm going to read the poem. So, here it goes. As I have gone alone in there and with my treasures
00:42:46
bold, I can keep my secret wear and hint of riches new and old. There'll be no paddle up your creek, just heavy loads
00:42:55
and water high. So hear me all and listen good. Your effort will be worth the cold. If you've been brave and in
00:43:03
the wood, I give you title to the gold. And I read that poem and oh god, it was like a hook. No place for the meek. The
00:43:13
bug got in me and I couldn't let it go. I tried to climb up into that cave there. I couldn't sleep. I thought it
00:43:20
was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. How much was that treasure worth? I I think that 1 million is a pretty good
00:43:26
mark to use. [Music] I made at least 85 trips. I didn't find the treasure yet. We had
00:43:38
so much fun. It was crazy. Since there's a mountain lion in the area, we don't want to take any chances.
00:43:44
So, we're bringing our gun. I have spent over 2,000 hours. This is where I ran into my rattlesnake.
00:43:52
Searching for forest fence treasure. Well, I made it hard deliberately. If it was easy, anyone could do it.
00:44:02
For at least five people, the search for Fen's treasure was the last thing they ever did. Yes. Unfortunately, you know,
00:44:10
this treasure hunt did claim at least five lives. Randy Bill was the first. Paris
00:44:17
Wallace also died in the Rio Grand River. Eric Ashby died in the Arkansas River. There was a
00:44:28
gentleman who was hiking in Yellowstone and ended up falling off of a cliff. Two men who went out with
00:44:36
snowmobiles. I've got him in sight still. One of them froze to death and the other one was
00:44:43
hospitalized. Of course, Finn was a bad person. He could have stopped this madness before it became what it
00:44:54
became. It wasn't worth it. How does Forest Fen respond to that? By to some degree digging in his heels. He
00:45:04
didn't like the idea that anyone would tell him to bring his hunt to an end because of a few deaths.
00:45:10
And he said that if somebody was murdered because of the hunt, that would probably be too much.
00:45:19
[Music] [Music] [Music] High at top a ridge near Dinosaur National Monument, 53-year-old Mike
00:46:11
Sexon froze to death. This is the last known photo of him taken in March 2020 as he hiked in that remote area. Days
00:46:21
later, Mike's body was airlifted off the mountaintop. Okay, he's coming up. All right, he's about halfway. Mike became
00:46:29
the fifth person to die while searching for Forest Fen's hidden treasure. Mike was full of life. Mike was an adventurer
00:46:38
and always smiling, always laughing, a big deep chuckle. Friend Liz Keyi struggles to reconcile Mike's love of
00:46:46
adventure with his terrible loss. I'm glad that he took this adventure. I am very sad that he's gone. I miss Mike
00:46:55
every day. I miss his hugs when I'm stressed. I miss his support. I miss his voice, his laughter.
00:47:07
Beth Van Oz today is forced to cope without her longtime boyfriend. Mike had been her rock after she suffered a brain
00:47:15
injury. He was more than just my partner. He was in some ways my caretaker. After Mike's death, Liz felt
00:47:24
compelled to send Forest Fen an anguished email. How many people have to die before your game is done? I had
00:47:33
received an email back and and he just gave his condolences to Beth. First, Fen was a very complicated
00:47:42
person. Dan Barbaresi explores Fen's complexities in his new book, Chasing the Thrill, Obsession, Death, and Glory
00:47:50
in America's Most Extraordinary Treasure Hunt. He believed in stories that were bigger than just your run-of-the-mill
00:47:58
standard tale. And he dreamed big. He believed in big things. And Fen had lived a big life, beginning
00:48:05
with his days in the Air Force when he was shot down twice in Vietnam and later as the owner of a well-known
00:48:13
southwestern art gallery. How did a retired fighter pilot reinvent himself in Santa Fe, New Mexico with not just an
00:48:22
art gallery, but one of the most famous art galleries in America? I think he would tell you it's about the show you
00:48:29
can put on. And there's no question that Fen put on a good show. His gallery attracted
00:48:36
celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy Onasses, Steve Martin, and Ralph Lauren. But there were recurring
00:48:45
whispers that Fen may have built his impressive collection by plundering ancient Native American PBLO. There were
00:48:53
certainly some questions about how he came in possession of some of those artifacts over time. In 2009, long after
00:48:59
Fen had sold his gallery, his home was raided by federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management. And it ultimately
00:49:06
turned out that Fen was not charged with anything in that case. The next year, Fen self-published his
00:49:14
memoir, The Thrill of the Chase. To get families into the great outdoors, Fen put a little incentive
00:49:21
inside his memoir, that distinctive 24line poem. He claimed it contained clues that would lead one clever person
00:49:30
to the 10 by 10 inch chest of gold he'd hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
00:49:35
If you can follow the clues in the poem to the treasure chest, you're going to be amazed at what you find.
00:49:43
Then launched a modern-day treasure hunt, but it was slowgoing at first. It felt like a small little treasure hunt
00:49:51
for a few people who knew about it. When did that change and why? It got noticed
00:49:57
by the larger media. There were a few big pieces. One in Hemispheres magazine, one in
00:50:04
Newsweek. I think the name of that reporter was the same as my name. Whatever it was was a very hard name to
00:50:10
pronounce, but I'm pretty sure it was Tony. That much I've got. It's pronounced Dopal, by the way. It really
00:50:16
started to raise the profile of it in a significant way. It wasn't long before tens of thousands
00:50:22
of people were on the hunt. In 2015, months before any of the searchers died, Ben spoke to CBS News about the
00:50:31
likelihood of anyone finding his treasure. It isn't impossible, but you're not going to stumble over it. You
00:50:37
have to deliberately go to it. Fen said the spot he chose was so beautiful he could imagine it as his
00:50:45
final resting place. An original version of the poem actually talked about his bones being there next to the treasure
00:50:51
chest itself. Fen dropped that idea. The searchers had their own reasons for going on the hunt and it became clear
00:50:58
that many were seeking more than a box of gold. I think a lot of people really wanted to be part of something bigger
00:51:05
than themselves. Maybe there was something missing in their lives and for others it was that they felt that people
00:51:10
hadn't believed in them to the extent that they should have. Searchers shared their passion and began
00:51:16
to compare so-called solves, their interpretation of the clues in the poem. It was all online until some got the
00:51:25
idea to meet in real life. And so of that was born Fenbury. Exactly what it sounds like. It's a Forest Fen Jamboree.
00:51:34
Each summer, Fen's fans flocked to Santa Fe where Forest Fen was her star attraction. The guy described it as as
00:51:41
meeting a beetle. You know, it was that kind of thing. Everybody just lined up literally to get their their brief
00:51:46
moment with Forest Fen. People use the word eccentric, but I don't think that's the right word for him. He was just his
00:51:52
own man. Sasha Dent was living in Albuquerque when she took up the chase. I probably searched for Forest Fence
00:51:59
Treasure about 300 times. She became an insider. Forest was such a a major part of my life. And Sasha saw firsthand the
00:52:08
good that came from Fen's game. There was account after account of families who were brought together because of
00:52:16
Forest Fence treasure hunt. There were relationships built on the treasure hunt and marriages and that includes her own
00:52:24
marriage. Brea out. [Music] Another of Fen's favorites was Katya Luc, a singer songwriter who knew Fan in
00:52:36
the9s before he wrote his memoir. When she later came across Finn's book, well, gold fever struck that very night.
00:52:46
I couldn't sleep all night long. I'm either Google Earth, Googling, reading the book again, underlining,
00:52:52
highlighting. She estimates she spent $75,000 over 7 years of searching. It was a great time, she says, even during
00:53:03
some dangerous moments. I had a very close encounter while I was searching for the treasure with a
00:53:12
cougar and I just froze. But then I lifted up my hoodie really tall and made myself
00:53:20
bigger. I went marching really strong and did like a pseudo chant really loud. Hey.
00:53:32
[Music] Katya came away unscathed, but others were not so lucky. This is not some disnified hunt where at
00:53:42
the end of it everything turns out okay. The reality is if you don't take this thing seriously, it will get you.
00:54:01
Look just to the right of that tree off in the distance. You see it? That's where we're going. For 5 years, no one
00:54:06
could find the location of Ben's treasure. But the searchers had become a tight community. If it's snow covered,
00:54:13
it's pointless. I think we were like a support group for each other. You're among people who get that it's not just
00:54:20
about the money. He says it cannot be stumbled upon. It's about being the one who cracked the code. I have looked and
00:54:26
I have looked and I have looked and the other people they get it. I know at least probably 30 places where it's not.
00:54:32
You would talk about your solve, as they called it, but you never gave the exact
00:54:37
location. I told you we're not going to be in Yellowstone. The distances didn't work
00:54:43
out really well for me. Toby Ununis hosted a popular YouTube show about the hunt. Everybody believed they were going
00:54:51
to find their treasure. There was no acceptance of the idea that someone else would find the treasure.
00:54:57
[Music] And divorced grandfather Randy Bill was convinced he had as good a chance as
00:55:05
anyone. I met Randy a couple times at some of the Fen gatherings. Randy was always my protector.
00:55:14
Randy grew up on Long Island, New York, and his sister Kathy Leebold remembers he loves sports and animals. Randy
00:55:22
learned of Fen's treasure in 2013 and started searching the next year. I think he was excited about the adventure of
00:55:30
the hunt and um he thought if he found the treasure that he would use the money to help his family. And if you knew
00:55:37
Randy, you knew Leo, his long-haired Jack Russell. Leo was his best buddy and he took him everywhere. Randy and Leo
00:55:46
moved to Colorado to be closer to the search area. And at the beginning, Kathy says he was good about letting his
00:55:53
family know when he was going out on the trail, but later that changed. I think he thought he was getting really
00:56:01
really close to it and um he just wanted to, you know, excite us all with the news that he had found it. On January
00:56:10
5th, 2016, Randy and Leo headed out to the Rio Grand northwest of Santa Fe with a small raft. Temperatures hovered
00:56:20
around freezing. He was gone for 10 days before he was reported missing. I had a sinking
00:56:27
feeling that something was really very wrong. Flight nurse Aaron Johnson was part of a medical helicopter crew sent
00:56:34
out to look for Randy. On the initial search, they found nothing and headed back up river.
00:56:42
And that's actually when we found his raft. That's a raft. It's uh blue. They landed on a sandy bank of the river and
00:56:52
were in for a surprise. There was a small dog that was there and barking at us. He had a sweater on which was pretty
00:57:02
dirty, but I'm quite certain that that sweater saved his life. There were three of us on the ground the whole time.
00:57:09
Aside from the raft and his dog, we could find really nothing else. No backpack, nothing.
00:57:17
Leo seemed frightened, but Aaron eventually coaxed him to eat a cliff bar the pilot had on board. And at the point
00:57:25
where we had to leave, I had a big thick jacket and I just threw it over him and
00:57:30
scooped him up and brought him on the helicopter. Kathy saw the heartbreaking news on TV. Only Leo had been rescued.
00:57:41
It was uh probably one of the worst days of my life. The treasure hunting community got word
00:57:50
of this and many of these people wanted to help. Determined to find Ry's body, drone
00:57:58
pilots shot hours of footage that was posted online so the treasure hunt community could go through it frame by
00:58:04
frame looking for signs of Randy. Other searchers put boots on the ground. It was rugged. I mean, it was
00:58:14
harder than any treasure searching any of us had done. It was rough. We searched very very hard every day for
00:58:24
over a month. Forest Fen rode in a helicopter to look for Randy. Fen also met with Kathy when she came to Santa
00:58:32
Fe. Fen was sympathetic, but told her he wasn't willing to call off the treasure
00:58:37
hunt. I think a lot of people could argue that his priorities are perhaps not what they should be. That instead of
00:58:43
the people or the human cost, he cared a lot more potentially about his treasure
00:58:47
hunt. And the treasure hunt was everything to fend. Even though it put his family at risk. Forest was harassed
00:58:55
over the years. His family was harassed. There's a man who's done prison for stalking Forest's granddaughter.
00:59:03
Get on your knees. Get on your knees. And this man, Robert Miller, was arrested for burglary in 2018 at Fen's
00:59:10
Santa Fe home. So, what the hell is going on? I thought the poem directed me into here. I thought it said poem. Yeah,
00:59:17
the the treasure map, the treasure hunt, you know. So, you came on the property because of the poem? Are you serious?
00:59:25
Yeah. What did his family think about all this? Uh, I think his family had a hard time with it, honestly. Even with
00:59:31
all of that, Forest saw how much good his treasure hunt did for how many people, and he know that the good far
00:59:39
outweighed the bad. The search for the treasure continued as did the search for Randy. 6
00:59:46
months after he went missing, his body was found on the riverbank. Obviously, we were devastated that he
00:59:56
wasn't alive. He was a great father, grandfather, and uncle to my son. With Randy gone, Leo was adopted by none
01:00:08
other than Aaron Johnson. Leo, the nurse who rescued him. Good boy. In the five years with his new family, the ultimate
01:00:16
rescue dog has even learned some new tricks. Okay, turn around. Kathy is happy he's found a new home. Good boy.
01:00:24
But she thinks about her brother every day. I wished he'd been more careful. I wished he hadn't gone out that day, but
01:00:32
you know, he was enjoying what he was doing. Randy was not the last to die searching for Fen's
01:00:38
[Music] gold. The next year, the hunt claimed three more lives. He had become obsessed by Ven's
01:00:53
treasure, and that was the only thing that mattered to him. In June 2017, a year and a half after
01:01:15
Randy Billu died, three more men lost their lives in a matter of weeks. Jeff Murphy was searching in Yellowstone
01:01:23
National Park, very tragically just misststepped and ended up falling off of a cliff and passing away.
01:01:32
Around the same time, writer Dan Barbaresi went on his first search with his treasure hunting partner Jay Rener.
01:01:40
What was it like going from 4 months of research on a computer to being out there in the wilderness? The first thing
01:01:49
that stood out to me, how much bigger a point on a map is in real life. You know, you look on a map, oh, this isn't
01:01:56
that big. I can cross this area with just my finger alone. Once you're actually out in the wild, you see how
01:02:01
big those distances are and how much land there actually is out there pretty quickly. It really hits you in the face
01:02:06
pretty fast. Reality wasn't the only thing hitting Dan and Jay in the face. We're out there thinking that we're, you
01:02:15
know, adventurers, explorers, and all of a sudden it starts hailing. And we very
01:02:20
quickly realize that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Days later, in that same exact area, a Colorado
01:02:27
pastor named Paris Wallace set off to search the Rio Grand near the Tal Junction Bridge. As you move through
01:02:35
life, there are those points where you have to seek God to find out what he wants you to do. And he crossed the
01:02:44
river by himself, and it was high waters. Then Paris's body was recovered 4 days later
01:02:52
a few miles down river. His death spurred the New Mexico State Police Chief to ask Fen to call off the hunt.
01:03:00
Fen refused. There was a huge amount of anger at Fen over this. I mean, you can understand
01:03:06
why. I mean, this is a treasure hunt. It doesn't need to exist. And yet, he wouldn't stop it even after multiple
01:03:11
people had died. That's a pretty hard stance to take. Fen justified continuing the hunt by
01:03:18
pointing out that any outdoor activity came with risks. In the summertime, we jump in a swimming pool. But if somebody
01:03:26
drowns in the swim pool, should should we drain the pool or should we teach people to swim? That's the way I feel
01:03:32
about it. And the treasure community rallied around Fen in support of the hunt. Here I go.
01:03:41
99.9% of people who go out looking for his treasure make it home safely with tons of memories and new experiences to
01:03:49
treasure. And Fan did keep warning searchers to be safe, be more careful, be more mindful. He constantly reminded
01:03:58
everyone to not go anywhere a 79 or 80-year-old man couldn't go. Many searchers, Dan says, set off on the
01:04:05
treasure trail with great excitement, but sometimes were unprepared for how wild the wilderness can be. Searchers
01:04:13
like Eric Ashby understood the risks and were willing to take them. Fear was not part of his game. He didn't
01:04:21
know how to be afraid. Paul Ashby raised his son Eric as a single father in the mountains of
01:04:28
Tennessee. Eric grew up playing sports, riding motorcycles, and was taken by the
01:04:34
quest at the center of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Eric was a great kid. Everybody who knew him loved him. In
01:04:42
2016, Eric moved to Colorado. He told his dad he was headed west to take part in his own quest. Fen's thrill of the
01:04:51
chase. He became obsessed. Dad, I can do this. Was he motivated by the money the treasure represented or by
01:05:04
the recognition solving it? Oh, sincerely the recognition. The money to him was totally irrelevant.
01:05:11
Eric told his father he was going out to search the Arkansas River outside Canyon
01:05:16
City, Colorado. More than a week later, Paul got a phone call from a woman who said her name was Becca.
01:05:24
She told me on the phone, "Mr. Ashby, your son is drowned." And she says, "I'm sorry, Mr. Ashby, your son is dead." And
01:05:32
she hung up. Becca turned out to be Rebecca Ny, who had worked with Eric. She and three men were with Eric at the
01:05:40
river and they had drawn up this contract outlining exactly how they had split the treasure. She later told
01:05:48
police what happened that day. He said he had swam the river that we were about to cross 10 times before. And so, you
01:05:56
know, we we figured though we should be fine. Becca said they'd bought a twoperson
01:06:01
raft, but Eric got in alone and had no life preserver. So, he just um jumped out. It looked like he had made it to
01:06:10
the rock, but then we didn't see him anymore. And that was right where the rapids, you know, would have taken him.
01:06:17
Becca told police two of the men went down river to look for Eric, where they saw a photographer who told them he
01:06:24
called 911. The photographer also captured this photo of Eric's empty raft. Hearing someone had called police,
01:06:33
Becca and the others went back to their car and went home. A decision Becca tried to explain. I want to know why why
01:06:41
no one stayed there to tell us this information because again now I'm easily harm to see what we should
01:06:48
have done. But in the moment, we never been involved with things like that. Eric stepped into a situation that was
01:06:57
impossible. Nobody could have done it. The thing that makes it worse is that nobody stopped him and that
01:07:05
it was just a case of oh well. Eric was worth so much more to me than oh well. After Eric's body was recovered, Paul
01:07:25
traveled to the river to see where his son had died. I took the excursion train that comes down the gorge and one of the
01:07:34
company managers was on the train with me and he went into the bar, the lounge car, and come back with
01:07:42
a beer. He says, "This is for you and your son, and we shared our last beer right
01:07:49
there." Paul says he never heard from Forest Finn. If you had been able to reach Forest Fen, what would you say to
01:07:58
him? Say, "Mr. Finn, is this something one day you're going to have to go to whoever our maker is and say, "Yes,
01:08:07
these people were drowning or dying, falling off cliffs, whatever." And I could have stopped it, and I chose not
01:08:14
to. I was honestly surprised that it didn't end in that summer of 2017. But the hunt did not
01:08:22
end. And in March 2020, a fifth man died. About 2:00 in the morning, I looked up, the stars were out. I looked
01:08:32
over, you know, to my left, and there was Mike. It was like, "Oh, I I I remember telling myself, "Oh, no, Mike."
01:08:40
What do you think of Forest Fen's decision to continue the treasure hunt? Learn more about the search for the
01:08:45
treasure at 48 hours.com. [Music] Mike was the kind of guy that walked into a room smiling and made everybody
01:09:00
feel better just by coming around. Beth Van O says her longtime boyfriend Mike Sexon knew about Randy, Jeff, Paris, and
01:09:10
Eric, the others who died while searching for Fen's treasure. I think Mike knew of the dangers. He just maybe
01:09:19
ignored a little bit of it or thought he could get around it. It had been nearly 3 years since any
01:09:28
searchers had died. I think people thought that maybe they had gotten past that point where people aren't going to
01:09:34
die anymore looking for this. Mike was convinced he knew where the treasure was along the Colorado Utah
01:09:41
border in Dinosaur National Monument. He made nearly a dozen trips there, but he
01:09:48
needed someone with a four-wheel drive truck to help. That's how his poker buddy, Steven Enloow, got involved with
01:09:54
the hunts. I was very excited to be with Mike on these trips. I just enjoyed traveling with him.
01:10:00
This is the first time Steven has spoken publicly about their ordeal that began in late February 2020. The men rented
01:10:09
snowmobiles in Denver and set off for Mike's spot. The snowmobiles proved to be too heavy for the depth of snow that
01:10:16
we had. Mike and Steven got stuck, but managed to call 911. Is anybody injured? No. No, we're not injured. Just stuck.
01:10:26
Looks like I've got a pretty good location on you. I'm going to get you some help headed your way. Okay.
01:10:32
They were rescued, but the close call didn't deter the pair from going back out just a few weeks later on March
01:10:40
17th, 2020. Days into the COVID pandemic, Mike was adamant that he wanted to make another trip before the
01:10:49
quarantine started. Mike and Steven drove to Salt Lake City where they rented snowmobiles they
01:10:56
thought would be better on the terrain. On the second day in the wilderness, they left their truck 5 miles from the
01:11:03
main road and headed off for a day trip on the snowmobiles. We left a lot of our
01:11:08
provisions back in the truck thinking we were just going to be gone three or four
01:11:12
hours. We take off from the snowmobiles and we're on the south side of the mountain this time and we ran out snow.
01:11:18
It became dry. They left even more supplies on the snowmobiles and set off on foot with a
01:11:26
sled to carry home the treasure, which Mike believed was close. We had some some candy bars, a couple of energy
01:11:33
bars, and uh maybe a gallon and a half of water between the two of us. It didn't look that far away, but it proved
01:11:40
to be uh ridge over ridge over ridge that took a a lot longer than I thought it was going to take. By 6:00 on
01:11:47
Wednesday, I was kind of nervous. I hadn't heard from him. When the men hadn't returned the
01:11:54
snowmobiles Wednesday night, the rental company called the police who called Beth and Steven's wife. Not
01:12:02
knowing was just the worst. Just the most awful thing. Mike tried to hike to higher ground to
01:12:13
get a cell signal, but hours later returned unsuccessful. At that point, both men
01:12:20
were so exhausted, all they could do was lay where they were. The next day, it began to
01:12:28
snow. They had no more water. I remember my hands and knees eating the snow crystals and blood was
01:12:37
dripping from my mouth, staining the snow. I cried for help. I asked God. I asked Jesus. Just anyone call 911. We
01:12:44
need help. Desperate for hydration, Steven began drinking his own urine and felt warmth
01:12:52
spread throughout his body. And I I could just feel that was a moment that I'm going to live. And I told Mike he's
01:12:59
got to quit eating the snow when he was shivering and told him what he needed to
01:13:02
do. And he said he'd rather die. On Friday, we could hear helicopters on the other side of the
01:13:08
mountain side and we knew they were out searching for us. And so that gave us hope, but we never saw the helicopter.
01:13:15
That night, I woke up about 2:00 in the morning and Mike was about 6 feet away from
01:13:20
me. He was on his hands and knees with his arms cupped around his head, his head flat on the ground, and he had no
01:13:27
shirt on. And so I knew he had died and I knew why. Hypothermia. [Music] People suffering from extreme cold can
01:13:37
feel hot in the moments just before they die. I I remember telling myself, "Oh no, Mike." Later that Saturday, Steven
01:13:45
heard the helicopters again, louder this time, and saw them down in the canyon below. With all the strength he could
01:13:52
muster, he grabbed the orange sled and he waved it toward the helicopter. And then just like in the movies, the
01:13:59
helicopter rose up above the cliff and I knew I was saved and I passed out. Next
01:14:04
thing I knew, two guys were picking me up, asking me if I could walk. I couldn't even stand. And I I just
01:14:10
remember whispering, "Goodbye, Mike." Mike was later taken off the mountain in a body bag. Beth got the devastating
01:14:20
news that afternoon. I mean, you can say I love you, but until somebody's really
01:14:27
gone and you can't say it anymore, you just don't realize you have more than that to say.
01:14:38
A year later, Beth and Mike's friend Liz Key finds solace in that last photo. His
01:14:45
grand smile, the look in his eye of yes, this is where I want to be. I am very sad that he's
01:14:52
gone, but I'm glad that he he did what he loved to do. Mike was the fifth person to die
01:15:03
seeking Fen's treasure. He was also the last because only 3 months later, Forest
01:15:10
Fen made a stunning announcement. The message was very short and simple. It said, "The treasure has been found.
01:15:23
[Applause] Early last summer, just as thousands of treasure hunters were about to begin
01:15:34
looking yet again for Forest Fen's chest of gold, they got a piece of news that left
01:15:41
them reeling. My heart stopped, honestly. I was like, "Oh my god." Uh, I cannot believe this has actually
01:15:46
happened. Did somebody really find it or you know and if so who? The news broke on June 6th, 2020 when
01:15:56
Fen made the stunning announcement in a brief post he sent to a blog used by the
01:16:01
searcher community. Fen wrote, "The treasure has been found and had not moved from the
01:16:08
spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago. I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to
01:16:16
the precise spot. Overnight, the gold rush that had sustained the searchers was over and many were left feeling a bit
01:16:30
cheated. We didn't have a name. We didn't have where it had been found. We didn't have any other any other
01:16:36
information other than it had been found where he had left it. And is it really really really true that they found it? I
01:16:44
want to see, you know. So the guy did send pictures. For the first time, searchers could see Forest pouring over
01:16:52
the contents of his famous treasure chest. It looked pretty authentic to me, you know, very authentic.
01:17:01
But like everyone else, Katya yearned to know the finder's solve. How had he deciphered those clues in the poem? The
01:17:10
finder wouldn't say, but a month later, Fen revealed the treasure had been found
01:17:16
in Wyoming. Then two months later on September 7th, 2020, Forest Fen died at his home where
01:17:29
he had just turned 90 years old. I find myself thinking of Forest often and um I
01:17:36
miss our conversations very much. The Finder may have remained anonymous forever, except for a lawsuit that
01:17:46
required the Fen family to reveal his name. The Finder knew it was only a matter of time. So, he came out to Dan
01:17:54
Barbaresi, who wrote an article for Outside magazine. Who did find the treasure? A man named Jack Stew found
01:18:01
the treasure. and he was uh you know a medical student who had gotten obsessed with this chase uh around 2018. He you
01:18:10
know was very very committed to his sol. Hey guys, this is Jack in this online message to other searchers. Our
01:18:17
challenge is to try not to make guesses. Jack Steuf had shared his approach to cracking fence poem. It is simple and
01:18:27
clear and straightforward. You need simplicity in yourself. Dan says Jack had been searching for at least two
01:18:37
years. And then one day in a Wyoming forest, Jack says he uncovered the chest. It had almost been covered by
01:18:46
leaves and debris, but Jack said the lid was still visible. He became very paranoid that somebody was going to
01:18:53
stumble upon him in that moment. Jack says he hightailed it to Santa Fe where these photos were taken. They seemed to
01:19:01
back up Jack's story, but fan watcher Toby Eunis was skeptical. Here is my theory. The hunt was moving forward.
01:19:10
Forest was aging. The family, Forest's family, was frustrated with the state of the search.
01:19:19
Their houses had been broken into. Their children had been threatened with kidnapping. They were never lovers
01:19:27
of the Forest Fen treasure hunt. Toby has no evidence, but believes that Fen, knowing he had only months to live,
01:19:35
looked around for someone who was close to finding the treasure. Toby believes Fen reached out to Jack. I imagine this
01:19:44
is how it went. I want you to know that I'm dying. I want you to know that I don't want to leave this treasure hunt
01:19:50
to my family and I'm going to ask you for a favor. Forest had a a saying that he used often. There's an old saying,
01:19:58
two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Jack refused our request for an interview, but denied he had any
01:20:06
help from Fen. As he wrote online, "I am not and was never employed by Forest, nor did he pick me in any way to
01:20:16
retrieve the treasure. I was a stranger to him and found the treasure as he designed it to be found."
01:20:24
I do not believe it is part of a conspiracy engineered by Fen to give Jack the treasure or anything else of
01:20:30
that sort. Dan is in a unique position because he's the only journalist who has interviewed Jack. Jack even allowed Dan
01:20:38
to examine the treasure. These photos have rarely been seen. You were able to actually hold the treasure, to touch it,
01:20:46
to see it in person. Yes. You know, I have seen and touched and felt and gone through the chest. It was kind of an
01:20:52
incredible moment. Honestly, Jack told Dan he will not reveal the exact spot where he found the chest because he
01:20:58
fears it would become a tourist attraction that would ruin the area's serenity and natural beauty.
01:21:09
I think we will never find out truly where it was found. And there could be another
01:21:17
reason. Fen's original intent to lay down and die at the very spot where he hid his treasure.
01:21:24
I don't want to be buried. If I had my way, I'd lay down under a tree and go and
01:21:33
uh just like a big old buffalo lays down and dies. Go back to nature. Become become part of the earth again.
01:21:44
Jack says he offered to put Fen's ashes in that special spot, but will not say if the family accepted his offer. Dan
01:21:53
says he doesn't know what Jack intends to do with the treasure, whether he will sell it peace meal or as one, or perhaps
01:22:01
lease it for display. What is in the end the legacy of Forest Fen? I think the legacy of Forest Fen is extremely
01:22:10
complicated. I think that there were a lot of good things that happened because of it. There are also some really bad
01:22:14
things that happened because of it. But if you're Paul Ashb who lost his only son Eric to the hunt, one of the five
01:22:21
men to die chasing the thrill, Fen's legacy is not complicated at all. He was reckless. He was willing to
01:22:33
ignore the fact that people were dying because all these other people worshiped him.
01:22:44
A lot of people still do look up to Forest Fen and maybe that's not so surprising when you feel a dream you
01:22:55
know live your dream out follow your heart and okay so I didn't find the treasure but I found many treasures this
01:23:03
in itself is the biggest treasure of all that I found so many magical wonderful things I could never replace um without
01:23:12
that treasure hunt. I'm so grateful for Forest. Thank you. Thank you, Forest. [Music]
01:23:31
CBS next Saturday. 48 Hours brings you backtoback episodes all summer long. This week, killer contestants. He is the
01:23:40
serial killer that we always suspected him to be. You just want to wake up and have it not be real. 48 hours prime time
01:23:45
double feature next Saturday 98 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount [Music]
01:24:00
Plus. Hi, this is Conrad Rug and I'm going to talk to you about social anxiety. social anxiety, depression,
01:24:08
it's controlling me. There's people that love me. I have a great mom, great dad, but I'm so
01:24:19
depressed. We spent the day walking the beach and we had a conversation and I asked him about school and he's like,
01:24:26
"Um, I'm not sure what I'm going to do." And I said, you know, don't worry about
01:24:30
it. Everything is going to be okay. It was a nice day out with the family. Nothing to give any hint of what was to
01:24:39
come later in the day. There was no indication anything was going on. I've created a monster out of
01:24:46
myself past few years because of my depression. Racing thoughts, suicidal thoughts.
01:24:58
Do you remember when is the last time you saw your brother? He was like going at the door. I thought he was just going
01:25:04
to his friend's house. You got up in the morning and how did you know he hadn't come home? He wasn't there and we just
01:25:13
like couldn't find him. This is not like Conrad not to come home. Then they found his body
01:25:20
and around 5:30 in the afternoon and he died in his truck. carbon monoxide poisoning. I will live with this
01:25:33
forever. Um the pain. Right away we heard from investigators that medical examiner found that it was
01:25:41
a suicide. It wasn't until they started looking at his phone that they realized that there was something else going on
01:25:47
here because on that phone were hundreds and hundreds of texts from Michelle Carter to Conrad Roy urging him to end
01:25:55
his life. You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were going to do it. Like, I don't get why
01:26:02
you aren't. And Michelle Carter admittedly said, "Do it." She was kind of making fun of him for for not taking
01:26:11
his own life. I thought you really wanted to die, but apparently you don't. I feel played and just stupid. You're
01:26:19
going to have to prove me wrong because I just don't think you really want this.
01:26:23
And she kept pressuring him to do it. You're ready. and prepared. All you have to do is turn the generator on and you
01:26:32
be free and happy. No more pushing it off. No more waiting. There was one point where he
01:26:39
actually got out of the truck. Mhm. And changed his mind. Yeah. He was scared and she told him to go back in the
01:26:46
truck. Yes. Carter charged with involuntary manslaughter. She faces up to 20 years
01:26:54
in prison. This is totally out of left field. I coached Michelle. I know her as a good kid. I don't believe that she has
01:27:01
a conscience. She knew exactly what she was doing and what she said. Hang yourself, jump off a building, stab
01:27:12
yourself, I don't know. There's a lot of ways. And it's the texts that become the
01:27:18
weapon. How could she cause a death when she was 35 m away? In these circumstances, this is almost akin to
01:27:26
loading the gun and handing it over. Who knows? Who knows when you have your hand
01:27:29
in the trigger when you're sending a text? [Music] [Music] [Music] It's not realistic what what's going in my head
01:28:36
that keeps on piling and piling and piling. One month before 18-year-old Conrad Roy
01:28:43
took his own life, when the minds of many teens wandered to carefree summer days, Conrad's thoughts were more
01:28:51
serious, introspective. I need to be comfortable with my skin. Sitting at his computer and his home in
01:28:58
Fair Haven, Massachusetts, Conrad recorded his thoughts on coping with his depression. I need
01:29:06
to relax. I really do. He wanted to excel. He was just wanted to be this like great person. But in my eyes,
01:29:18
Conrad's mother, Lynn, explains that her son could be his own toughest critic. It
01:29:23
was rough on himself. He really really struggled with um just disappointing I think myself and his
01:29:32
dad. The sooner I like myself, the better I'm going to be. Lenroy thought her son was getting
01:29:39
better. I I do have a lot going for me. He was getting professional help and on an anti-depressant, Selexa. He had been
01:29:48
licensed to be a tugboat captain like his dad. That's a huge accomplishment to be a captain. had just
01:29:58
graduated high school and college with a scholarship was on the horizon and he was doing everything that was positive
01:30:06
that was, you know, looking towards his future. But on July 12th, 2014, Conrad drove to a parking lot and
01:30:16
using a gasoline powered water pump, sat in his pickup truck as it filled with carbon monoxide, knowingly inhaling the
01:30:25
deadly fumes, killing himself. All the while, his friend Michelle Carter, then 17, was
01:30:32
encouraging Conrad from more than 30 miles away on her phone to take his own life. I don't understand why you would
01:30:41
want someone that was so beautiful inside and out, that had so much that was such a kind
01:30:49
person to die. How do you describe what this young woman did? I cannot only only she she can. The
01:31:00
intersection of the lives of Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy has left a trail of heartbreak and questions about the
01:31:08
circumstances that led to such a tragic death. He's one of the kindest persons. He grew up very sensitive, very humble
01:31:19
and kind, happy child. Very happy. Many pictures of him smiling, laughing until he became a teenager. And I don't know
01:31:29
if it was the hormones, he just, you know, became anxious. Conrad was the oldest child in the family with two
01:31:38
sisters, Morgan and Camden. Lynn and Conrad's father separated when Conrad was 16, and their divorce hit him
01:31:48
especially hard. I think he was just more worried about me. That's what boys do. They worry about their moms um a
01:31:55
lot. Conrad would confide in his friend Ariana Taylor as they spent hours walking along the water. He didn't
01:32:02
really wasn't able to explain it to me in a way that I could understand. So, he kind of just described it as a darkness
01:32:09
and how there would be times where he just kind of wanted to isolate himself from everybody. Conrad's anxiety and
01:32:15
self-doubt had troubled Lynn since he was 16. He started uh having trouble sleeping and we got him treated and then
01:32:26
he had his first uh suicide attempt a year after the age of 17. Conrad had overdosed on acetaminophen.
01:32:35
I worked in a psychiatric hospital and I never imagined that one of my children would um have those feelings. Do you
01:32:44
think he really intended to kill himself at that point? He did contact a friend.
01:32:49
That friend was Ariana. He told me that he was really sick and that his mom had just left and that he wanted her to come
01:32:56
back. Ariana immediately got in touch with Conrad's parents who brought him to the hospital. He told me, "Mom, I will
01:33:05
never do that again." He was sorry, and I was sorry as well that he felt that way. The fact
01:33:14
that he wanted you to call his mother, what does that say to you? It just says that he was calling out for help, that
01:33:22
he didn't actually mean what he was doing, but he really needed help and that this was the only way he kind of
01:33:28
thought that he would really get help. And that help seemed to be working. He actually was getting a lot better. He
01:33:35
told me about how he was going out and he was going to like, you know, the high school parties and just hanging out with
01:33:40
everybody. I was like, "That's amazing." Michelle Carter was another friend of Conrads. They met in 2012 while both
01:33:48
were vacationing in Florida. Conrad and his sisters were visiting relatives who happened to know Michelle. How would you
01:33:57
describe Michelle? Friendly. Yeah, she's really friendly. She always made Conrad
01:34:01
laugh. As it turned out, Michelle lived just a few towns over from the Roy in Massachusetts. And the relationship
01:34:09
continued after the vacation. But while Michelle called Conrad her boyfriend, his family says the two
01:34:17
rarely saw each other. And like so many teens, their interactions were mostly over text messages.
01:34:26
Had your son ever mentioned Michelle Carter? Yes. After they met in Florida? I met her 2013 at his baseball game and
01:34:35
that was the only time I ever met her. Second time was at his week. Michelle and Conrad shared something in common
01:34:41
that Lynn did not know. Michelle had her own struggles, including an eating disorder, and both teens at times took
01:34:50
anti-depressants. You know, probably the interaction was they both had their issues. Softball
01:34:55
coach Ed McFarland has known Michelle Carter and her family for a decade. The Michelle he knows is an ideal teammate.
01:35:03
I've never seen her do a mean thing. I've never seen her be mean. Michelle's high school yearbook paints a
01:35:10
picture of an active, well-liked student, one voted class clown, and most likely to brighten your day. But that
01:35:19
would not be how her actions would be described on the last day of Conrad's life. That day started out seemingly
01:35:30
happy for Conrad, spending time with his family. That morning on the 12th, what was his mood like? It was
01:35:38
fine. He wanted to, you know, go to the beach with the girls. While there, Camden at one point noticed her brother
01:35:45
sitting alone texting. Did you know who he was texting with? No. Now you think he was texting with Michelle Carter?
01:35:53
Yeah. But you didn't know that at the time. And what was his demeanor? I don't know. He I don't know. He kind of seemed
01:35:59
like anxious like when he was like texting. Conrad then took his sisters out for ice cream where his mood seemed
01:36:07
to lift. I mean, when you think back on that, would you have ever guessed there was anything wrong that afternoon?
01:36:16
After going home, Conrad left at about 6:00 p.m. telling his mother he was going to see a friend. And I asked him
01:36:24
if he was going to be back for dinner, and he said he didn't think so. And that was the last words that he spoke to me.
01:36:36
It was July 12th, 2014, the heart of summer in New England. Conrad Roy had headed out in his pickup truck around
01:36:45
6:00 p.m. As the evening passed, Lynn checked to see when he'd be home. And I texted him, I don't know, before I went
01:36:54
to bed, maybe around 10:30, 11. And then I texted him again in the middle of the
01:36:58
night. Conrad didn't respond. Still, Lynn figured everything was okay. She believed he had beaten back much of his
01:37:07
anxieties. That night, Conrad's sister, Camden, unexpectedly heard from Michelle
01:37:13
Carter, that 17-year-old who had battled her own mental health issues and lived about an hour away. How surprised were
01:37:22
you that you suddenly got a text from Michelle? And I thought she was just like just like his friend. And but in
01:37:29
the text she said like we're boyfriend and girlfriend now. And I was just like I looked at my mom I was like they are
01:37:36
whether teenage love or something else. Michelle was sending out the word. Had anyone heard from Conrad Roy? And what
01:37:46
did she text you exactly? She was like um hey Camden like do you know where your brother is? Was that unusual for
01:37:52
him not to come home? Oh yeah, absolutely. That was not like him at all. It was sunrise and still not a
01:38:01
word. So in the morning I went to by Ariana's house and he wasn't there. And so that's when I began to
01:38:09
search where is he? What happened? We went by dad's house. There's no sign of him. Maybe an hour later, I felt like
01:38:19
like this um rush go through my body that I've never felt in my life. And I felt at that point that he wasn't with
01:38:27
me. On the afternoon of July 13th, police found him inside his pickup truck parked at the local Kmart, his cell
01:38:38
phone right next to him. And he died in his truck. Carbon monoxide poisoning. like got in the car and my mom was just
01:38:46
like crying like the most I ever seen her cry and she was like, "He's gone." And like she was just like, "Your
01:38:55
brother's gone." It still hurts just as much as it did then, doesn't it? I will live with this forever. Um the
01:39:05
pain. I don't get why it happened. Why did it happen? Why did it happen to him? And
01:39:13
Michelle seemed to take Conrad's death as hard as anyone. Once again, a text was her choice of communication. This
01:39:22
time to Lynn. I am so very sorry. Conrad meant so much to me. No one questioned the suicide until cops got a hold of
01:39:34
Conrad Royy's phone. It would prove to be an investigation like no other. No gun, no knife, no crucial DNA in this
01:39:45
case. Only this, a trail of words starting with those on the cell phone. Messages with Michelle Carter. And once
01:39:55
investigators found this dialogue, they knew that there was something else up and they wanted to get
01:40:03
to the bottom of it. Former Boston Herald legal columnist and 48 Hours consultant Bob McGovern. And so this
01:40:10
thing turned from a suicide investigation into a homicide investigation. Michelle seemed to be
01:40:17
encouraging Conrad not to live, but to die. Text flew between the two of them for more than a week, right up to the
01:40:26
moment he took his own life. I'm determined. I'm happy to hear that. When you get back from the beach, you got to
01:40:34
do it. No more thinking. Yes. No more thinking. you need to just do it. But now with Conrad Roy dead, Michelle
01:40:44
seemed devastated, acting as if his death was a total surprise. When it came to the funeral, she sat up close to kind
01:40:52
of where the family area was. I always described her seen as the grieving widow. She was just
01:40:59
um constantly like sobbing. And two months later, Michelle even held a fundraiser to honor Conrad in her town
01:41:06
of Planeville. That fall, investigators interviewed Michelle Carter at her high school. Did you do you think you had
01:41:14
contact with him that day? I think so. But Michelle's story was riddled with holes and police weren't buying it. They
01:41:21
poured through her cell phone. Her texts ranged from urgent to ominous. Like one
01:41:28
sent to her friend Samantha Boardman on July 12th at 8:02 p.m. Just minutes after police believe Conrad killed
01:41:36
himself. He just called me. I heard moaning like someone was in pain and he wouldn't answer when I said his name.
01:41:45
That text was followed by another. I think he just killed himself. Michelle was texting her
01:41:53
friend, but what she wasn't doing was calling for help. And there was at least one more text found on Conrad's phone
01:42:02
that now seems telling. Only moments before he died, Michelle asked him this. Did you delete the messages? Police
01:42:12
would extract more than a thousand deleted text messages between Conrad and Michelle. Some showed his fear and
01:42:19
reluctance to take his life on the very day he died. I don't know. I'm freaking out again. I do want to, but like I'm
01:42:28
freaking out for my family. But even as Conrad panicked and considered abandoning his plan to die,
01:42:36
Michelle egged him on. She described it to her friend Samantha that September in
01:42:42
this text. Sam, his death is my fault. Like honestly, I could have stopped him. I was on the phone with him and he got
01:42:50
out of the car because it was working and he got scared and I effing told him to get back in.
01:42:58
The road to justice would be complicated. Massachusetts has no law against encouraging or assisting
01:43:05
suicide. And Michelle was miles away when Conrad died. People don't realize in our generation texting does a lot.
01:43:14
It's like having the person right there in front of you when you're texting somebody. And the Supreme Court of
01:43:18
Massachusetts seems to agree. In the summer of 2016, the court ruled that even though Michelle was an hour away
01:43:25
when Conrad Roy died, she had a virtual presence that night in that pickup truck. It's a controversial legal theory
01:43:34
born out of a digital world. And so nearly 3 years later, Michelle Carter will stay on trial in this courtroom for
01:43:43
involuntary manslaughter. Michelle's attorneys, fearing how the text would play, advised her to wave her
01:43:51
right to a jury trial. She put her fate in the hands of a veteran judge, Lawrence Monz. Are you doing that of
01:43:59
your own free will, known only involuntarily? Yes. See more of Michelle Carter's texts to
01:44:07
Conrad Roy on Facebook at 48 hours. [Music] [Music] She assisted and devised and advised and
01:44:30
planned his suicide. Inside this Massachusetts courtroom, Michelle Carter, now 20 years old, looks more
01:44:37
like a prep school student than a criminal defendant. And on July 12th, 2014, as his truck was filling
01:44:48
with carbon monoxide, he was scared. He got out. It was the defendant on the other end of the phone who ordered him
01:44:58
back in, then listened for 20 minutes as he cried in pain, took his last breath,
01:45:04
and died. The alleged weapon in this case, Michelle Carter's own words. What she did in theory, according to
01:45:13
prosecutors, is she recklessly caused Conrad Royy's death. The state's case revolves around Michelle's chilling text
01:45:21
messages to Conrad as he was apparently having second thoughts the day he took his life. The defendant texted Conrad,
01:45:29
"You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were going to do
01:45:32
it. I don't get why you aren't." And then there was this. 10 days before he died, Michelle sent him this text
01:45:40
message assuring him not to worry about his family's feelings. Yeah, they'll probably blame themselves for a while,
01:45:48
but they will get over it and learn to accept it. A notion that baffles and upsets Conrad's mother. I think she
01:45:55
needs to be uh held responsible for her actions cuz she knew exactly what she was doing. Linroy testified that on the
01:46:02
last day of his life, Conrad was in a good frame of mind. He was eating tortilla chips and guacamole on the way
01:46:11
to the beach. In um July of 2014, did he ever mention he wanted to harm himself?
01:46:17
No. I knew he was a little depressed, but I thought he was he was doing great. But prosecutors contend
01:46:26
that Michelle and her incessant texting had immense influence over Conrad. Even though Michelle was more than 30 miles
01:46:33
away from him when he took his life, that her virtual presence caused him to do it. She helped him devise a plan to
01:46:41
kill himself using a combustion engine to poison himself with carbon monoxide gas. Michelle sent Conrad this text
01:46:48
message. I'm not going to sleep until you are in the car with a generator on. Your honor, this case is a suicide case.
01:46:56
It is not a homicide. But defense attorney Joseph Cataldo painted a very different picture. The evidence of the
01:47:04
texting is overwhelming that Conrad Roy was on this path to take his own life for years. Michelle Kata was not
01:47:13
present. Michelle Kata had been texting with him. She did not physically see this individual for over one year. The
01:47:22
defense brings up Conrad's acetaminophen overdose when he was 17 and claims he had been suicidal for years, in part
01:47:30
because of his parents' divorce and he had a contentious relationship with his father. And if the judge is considering
01:47:38
Michelle's text messages, he should look at all the messages between the teenagers. Even up to a month before
01:47:45
Conrad's death, Michelle seemed like a concerned friend, trying to help a socially awkward and emotionally fragile
01:47:53
Conrad. On June 19th, Michelle texts Conrad, "Are you 100% positive you're never going to commit suicide? Be honest
01:48:02
with me. Do you think about doing it?" "No, I'm not." In other messages, she talks about wanting to take him to a
01:48:10
therapist or a mental health hospital. But on July 1st, 11 days before his suicide, text between Michelle and
01:48:18
Conrad took a sinister turn. Prosecutors let the words tell the story. She talked
01:48:25
him out of his doubts point by point. She assured him that his family would understand why he did it. She researched
01:48:32
logistics. Michelle had been sending Conrad suggestions on how to kill himself for weeks. Hanging is painless
01:48:39
and takes like a second if you do it right. But what would drive anyone to send a text like that? Prosecutors say
01:48:48
Michelle was desperate for friends and attention. And she got it when she talked about her suicidal boyfriend.
01:48:55
Just days before he died, she sent texts to girls she wanted to be close with in
01:49:01
an effort to get their attention and sympathy. Lexi Elyn, please. Pretending Conrad was missing. Do you remember
01:49:08
getting a message about Conrad being missing? Yes, he's missing like they don't know where he is. Prosecutors say
01:49:15
Conrad still being alive presented a problem for Michelle. She could be exposed as a liar. So, it was important
01:49:23
he kill himself. On July 12th, the night he did take his life, Conrad drove to a Kmart parking
01:49:31
lot and texted Michelle, "Leaving now. Okay, you can do this. Okay, I'm almost there." That was the last text Conrad
01:49:42
ever sent to anyone. But there was also a 46-inute phone call. Michelle called him. She was
01:49:50
the last person to speak with him. After that call ended, Michelle texted her friend Samantha. I'm going to ask
01:49:59
you to read that text message, please, aloud. Sam, he just called me and there was a loud noise, like a motor, and I
01:50:05
heard moaning like some was in pain and he wouldn't answer when I said his name.
01:50:10
I stayed on the phone for like 20 minutes and that's all I heard. Then 27 minutes later, Michelle sent Samantha
01:50:18
another text message. I think he just killed himself. Prosecutors say Michelle within hours
01:50:25
began building a virtual alibi. Knowing that he was likely dead, she began acting like a concerned friend, sending
01:50:33
Conrad this text message. I'm scared. Are you okay? I love you. Please answer. Michelle showed little emotion
01:50:42
at the trial. Her defense relies on this psychiatrist, Peter Ban, to explain her
01:50:49
behavior, even though he was not treating Michelle at the time. He testifies that she was involuntarily
01:50:56
intoxicated by an anti-depressant drug she started taking 3 months earlier. Selea, she was imshed in a delusion
01:51:05
where she's thinking that it's a good thing to help him die. But prosecutors completely dismiss that theory. She does
01:51:15
not tell the Roy family about being on the phone with Conrad the night before, does she? His dead body is in a car 24
01:51:24
hours, and she withholds that information. Inexplicably, Michelle sent more than 80
01:51:30
texts to Conrad after he died. In some, she even apologizes for not saving him. But it wasn't just Conrad she texted.
01:51:40
The prosecution is hoping the judge pays particular attention to this text that she sent to her friend Samantha a week
01:51:48
after Conrad's body was discovered. They have to go through his phone and see if anyone encouraged him
01:51:55
to do it on texts and stuff. They read my messages with him. I'm done. His family will hate me and I could go to
01:52:04
jail. [Music] Her actions, your honor, on July 12th, 2014 caused the death of Conrad
01:52:26
Roy. They were reckless, and she knew it. According to the prosecution, Michelle Carter helped put Conrad Roy in
01:52:35
his grave. It was a felony and she caused serious bodily harm. According to the defense, she didn't know what she
01:52:43
was doing. Good morning. She was psychotic, delusional, involuntarily intoxicated from taking the
01:52:51
anti-depressant Selexa. Michelle Carta underwent an involuntary intoxication in June and July to prominent child and
01:52:59
adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Harold Coplowitz. That makes no sense at all. Though not a witness in this case, he
01:53:08
says those drugs called SSRI are remarkably safe. They don't make you delusional. They don't make you
01:53:16
psychotic. And they don't make you intoxicated. They don't make you drunk. Dr. Coplowitz believes the act of
01:53:24
texting was more mindaltering than any drug. And the problem with text is that it separates you. It makes you feel less
01:53:33
responsible. But no amount of distance can explain her behavior, especially the prosecution's contention that Michelle
01:53:41
ordered Conrad back into the truck, says the doctor. It's very hard to understand
01:53:47
where the man says to a friend, listen, I'm feeling pain. I don't want to do this. I'm going to get out of the car.
01:53:56
There there's no way to seem to make sense of the fact that someone then says a friend says get back in the car and
01:54:02
kill yourself. This really has a vicious and a very very malicious quality to it.
01:54:08
No matter how malicious, Dr. Copit says Michelle really couldn't have convinced Conrad to kill himself if he hadn't
01:54:16
already been suicidal. So while Michelle could not force Conrad to kill himself, she could enhance his
01:54:27
risk of killing himself. She could encourage him to complete the act because he was already on his way. And
01:54:34
simultaneously, she could have screamed out for help, which might have prevented
01:54:39
this deadly outcome. I want to recover from this, and I feel like I haven't recovered from it yet. I feel like I
01:54:47
still have a long way to go. Clearly, these heartbreaking videos now posted on YouTube show a young man looking for
01:54:56
that different outcome, says Dr. Coplowitz. You expose yourself like this. It says, "Please help me. I've
01:55:04
created a monster out of myself past few years because of my depression." Sadly, Conrad Roy is not alone.
01:55:16
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we lose approximately 4600 young people between
01:55:24
the ages of 10 and 24 to suicide each year. One reason is that teenagers are simply more prone to depression. Another
01:55:35
reason, they're more susceptible to peer pressure. which is why the Netflix show
01:55:42
13 Reasons Why has caused such an uproar. In the show, a teenage girl dies by suicide and leaves 13 recordings to
01:55:51
other teens whom she blames. I think it's one of the most dangerous programs on the air right now for the simple
01:55:58
reason that it glamorizes suicide. Unfortunately, suicide's very contagious. We know that teenagers who
01:56:05
watch these kind of TV programs are more likely to think about suicide, are more
01:56:09
likely to attempt suicide, are more likely to commit suicide. It appears that Michelle Carter may have
01:56:16
been one of those teens influenced by what she saw on TV. Not 13 Reasons Why, but perhaps an episode of Glee. When an
01:56:26
actor on Glee died of an overdose in real life, the show wrote his death into the script. Listen to the similarities
01:56:34
between what the character Rachel says about the loss of her boyfriend and what Michelle later says about losing Conrad.
01:56:42
I had it all planned out and we would live happily ever after. It's a good plan.
01:56:51
[Music] Did you tell him? I didn't have to. He knew. Michelle's text to a friend after
01:56:58
Conrad's death is almost word for word. I had it all planned out. He knew, too. I didn't have to tell him. He was my
01:57:08
person. Michelle writes the exact same line. He was my person. Poor her. Her boyfriend died. They were going to get
01:57:18
married one day, and now she's the grieving girlfriend. According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it all
01:57:27
boiled down to that starring role as the grieving girlfriend. The Commonwealth's
01:57:32
position, your honor, is that she wanted attention. After six days of testimony, closing arguments begin.
01:57:43
The defense is up first. The evidence actually establishes that Conrad Roy caused his own death.
01:57:51
Joe Cataldo reminds the judge that Conrad had attempted suicide before and points to a text Conrad wrote to
01:57:59
Michelle. There's nothing anyone can do for me that's going to make me want to live.
01:58:07
It's very bad to hear, but I want to let you know that truthfully. The decision to die was Conrad's, not
01:58:15
Michelle's, says Cataldo. He created this situation, your honor. Most importantly, Michelle was nowhere near
01:58:24
Conrad when he killed himself. There's no evidence that Michelle Carter has any physical actions whatsoever in this case
01:58:32
with Conrad Royy's decision. It was all of his physical activity. But prosecutor
01:58:39
Katie Rburn gets the last word. Although she wasn't physically present, she was in his ear. She was in his mind.
01:58:48
She was on the phone and she was telling to him to get back in the car even though she knew he was going to die. She
01:58:56
absolutely knew it was wrong. And she absolutely caused the death of this 18-year-old boy. And I ask you to find
01:59:03
her guilty. [Music] Three days after Judge Monz began his deliberations, two families prepared
01:59:25
themselves for his verdict. Mr. Roy. For the Carter family, freedom is at stake.
01:59:32
For the Roy, it's about justice for their son. She instructs Mr. Roy to get back into
01:59:38
the truck. Well knowing of all of the feelings that he has exchanged with her, his ambiguities, his
01:59:47
fears, his concerns. The judge said Carter caused a dangerous environment. And under Massachusetts
01:59:55
law, she had a duty to save him. She called no one. She did not issue a simple additional instruction. Get out
02:00:04
of the truck. Miss Carter, please stand. This court, having reviewed the evidence and
02:00:15
applied the law there too, now finds you guilty on the indictment charging you with the involuntary manslaughter of the
02:00:25
person Conrad Roy III. Guilty. This court comes a verdict that is groundbreaking in terms of recognizing
02:00:33
the deadly power of words, but one that leaves no winners, just heartbreak. I know we all wish that he had the
02:00:42
opportunity to grow up into adulthood to become a tugboat captain and to enjoy his future.
02:00:50
Nearly seven weeks after being convicted, Michelle Carter, who is out on bail, arrives for sentencing.
02:00:59
Where hostile words greet her. She could face 20 years in prison. Please remain standing for one moment
02:01:08
while US one. First, Conrad's father and sister recall a life cut short. Not a day goes by with without him being
02:01:18
my first thought waking up and my last thought going to bed. Michelle Carter exploited my son's
02:01:24
weaknesses and used him as a pawn in her own well-being. She has not shown any remorse. Where was her humanity? The
02:01:35
prosecutor reads a statement from Conrad's mother, Lynn, who found it too difficult to speak. I do not know where
02:01:43
to begin. I pray that his death will save lives someday. Lynn wants to make it a crime to encourage suicide. I pray
02:01:52
that a law comes so forth so that another mother does not have to endure what I am. I do not believe that another
02:02:00
can go on to encourage someone to take their life and it can be okay. The prosecution asks that Carter serve 7 to
02:02:08
12 years behind bars. She has shown no remorse and in fact after Conrad's death she sought
02:02:16
attention and sympathy for herself. All she had to do was say get out of the car. Michelle Carter does not speak at
02:02:24
sentencing, but her attorney does and ask for probation. Miss Carter does regret what happened. She also sent a
02:02:34
letter to the probation department where she accepts uh responsibility. This is a
02:02:40
terrible, terrible tragedy and uh she very much regrets this and praise your honest judgment of leniency. Then
02:02:48
Michelle Carter learns her fate. Miss Carter, please stand. He sentences Michelle Carter to 15 months behind
02:02:56
bars. A sentence that does not please the defense who appealed the conviction. We're asking you, your honor, to stay
02:03:04
the jail sentence until we can have our day in court. The judge takes the request seriously, recognizing the
02:03:13
significance of this case. The conviction may be reversible, but the time spent in prison is not. and then
02:03:22
makes a stunning announcement that a grant of a stay through the Massachusetts court system
02:03:30
only is warranted. A stay meaning Michelle Carter would be out on probation, not in jail, while her appeal
02:03:38
made its way through the Massachusetts courts. It was a decision that disappointed Lyn Roy and her daughters.
02:03:45
We're just going to honor his life um and do it in the most best way we can. We want him to be proud of us. All
02:03:52
right. In February of 2019, Michelle Carter's conviction was upheld. Miss Carter will now be taken into custody
02:04:01
and she began serving her 15-month sentence. Her lawyers appealed to the US Supreme Court. The court declined to
02:04:09
hear that appeal. In response, her lawyers issued the following statement. We are deeply disappointed that the
02:04:16
Supreme Court has decided not to review Michelle Carter's wrongful conviction. Lyn Royy's focus now is on
02:04:25
changing laws. What would you like there to be? What kind of law? I would love one in honor of him. Uh his name
02:04:34
Conrad's Law. There's people that love me. I have a great mom. My son mattered. He matters. Will always
02:04:48
matter. Someone that had a family and future and mom and dad. I will never get over him.
02:04:59
[Music] a beautiful ballerina. A troubled marriage, a deadly confrontation. She tells the neighbor, "I shot Doug in
02:05:26
self-defense." Was she genuinely afraid or just trying to get her way? Underneath those white feathers, she's
02:05:32
an evil woman. She's the black swan. 48 Hours, Saturday at 10:9 central on CBS.