00:00:00
[Music] I have lived 44 years with his face etched in my brain. It was everything that you pray
00:00:25
to God never happens to anyone. For me, it's really tough. I'm I'm I'm struggling. I'm struggling to do the
00:00:37
interview at all. We were at our grandparents house and Keith, our first cousin, came over,
00:00:49
asked us if we would come to his house to help him clean. So, we went to his house and when we were done, he needed
00:00:58
gas. So, we stopped at the 7-Eleven. And as we pulled up, there was a um a man standing there. He said, "Well, can
00:01:11
you give me a ride?" Instantly, we knew something wasn't right, but Keith told him he would give him a
00:01:23
ride. I think we just cut off circulation in each other's hands. We were squeezing our hands so tight
00:01:30
because you just have a gut feeling that this is not good. He was telling us the directions on
00:01:40
where to go, which took us to Little California Road. He told us to get out of the car.
00:01:48
He opens the trunk and he puts Keith in the trunk. At that point, he tell us to take
00:01:57
off our clothes. [Music] Did you plan to tell anybody what happened? No. Why? Because we were
00:02:11
afraid he would come back and kill us. [Music] When did the twins actually go to the
00:02:16
police? I think it was about 2 weeks later. A little bit more than 2 weeks. You said the man was black? Yes. Yes.
00:02:24
Did they ever give you a ride? No. Did you ever meet them at a gas station? No. Never. I didn't rape Karen and Sharon
00:02:33
Sadness. I don't know these people. When I saw him in that lineup, I didn't have to think twice. When I looked at
00:02:43
him, I knew him. He got convicted and received two 50-year consecutive sentences.
00:02:52
That's insane. It's horrible. It disgusted me. There's no hairs, no fibers, no blood, no sweat, no semen.
00:03:00
There's nothing. Vincent Simmons is an innocent man who was railroaded by a racist system. Is it possible that you
00:03:11
picked the wrong man? No. No. When I close my [Music] eyes, there's no other face that I see.
00:03:21
Stop it. Stop it. When are we going to talk about the facts? Why did we pick him? Why it was Mr. Simmons? because it
00:03:31
was Mr. Simmons. [Music] [Music] Every time I talk about it Makes me feel like I'm 14 again. For identical twins
00:04:26
Karen and Sharon Sanders, life is broken into two parts. Before May 1977 and after, they say what happened one night
00:04:36
that May changed everything. The limitations it put on our life like with the anxiety, depression, panic attacks,
00:04:46
it's crippling really. It's taken a lot from us. Back in 1977, the 14-year-old twins were
00:04:55
living with their grandparents in the quiet small town of Marxville, Louisiana. And for the most part, they
00:05:01
say they were happy there, staying busy and enjoying the little things in life. I was all about makeup and perfume and
00:05:11
being prissy, and Karen was more uh outside playing in the dirt. This is true. Life was simple.
00:05:20
until it wasn't. What makes it so difficult for you, Karen, 44 years later to even talk about?
00:05:32
Well, it's a lot happened that night. The twins say it all began May 9th, 1977 when their cousin Keith Leort
00:05:42
picked him up so that they could help him clean his house. By the time they finished cleaning, it was just beginning
00:05:48
to get dark. Keith was driving them home, and that's when they say he stopped at that gas station and
00:05:54
encountered a black man. He walked up to the car and told Keith that he almost hit
00:06:03
him and Keith, you know, did not. And Keith was telling him he didn't want to fight. And he said, "I don't fight. I
00:06:11
shoot." The man said this. Yeah. The man said it instantly. Karen went inside to
00:06:17
pay for the gas and me and Keith were talking to this man and we exchanged names and he said his name was
00:06:30
Simmons. The twins say any tension between Keith and the man soon lifted. And that's why
00:06:37
they say Keith agreed to give the man a ride. We were like, "Keith, you know, don't." And he's like, "It'll be okay.
00:06:45
It'll be okay." But they say they knew it wasn't okay when the man directed them to that desolate area of Little
00:06:53
California Road and threatened them. He told us that before we could get a gun, he would shoot us. Mhm. Which we
00:07:04
did not have a gun, so we knew we had a gun. They say the man ordered them out of the
00:07:11
vehicle and forced Keith into the trunk. Keith's how old? 18. So he got in the trunk. Yes, he did. He told us to take
00:07:20
off our clothes. Karen started to run at that point and I yelled and she stopped. He said, "This
00:07:32
one's going to give me trouble." And so he opened the trunk and he put me in the
00:07:36
trunk with Keith and he had Sharon. I took off my clothes. He told me to get in the back
00:07:44
seat and I did. And he told me how to lay and I did. I can hear Sharon crying. And of course I can't take it. So, I'm
00:08:02
banging on the trunk and I'm banging and I'm screaming, "Take me. Take me. Leave
00:08:07
her alone. Take me. Take me." Karen was back there making all kinds of commotion
00:08:16
and things didn't work out for him with me. And he was very frustrated. You could see it and feel it. and he got
00:08:28
very aggravated and told me to put my clothes back on. And when you say things didn't
00:08:34
work out for him, what do you mean? He tried to penetrate and was unsuccessful. But at the time I was 14. I did not know
00:08:46
he was unsuccessful. I really thought you had lost your virginity. I had lost my virginity. I had no clue.
00:08:57
Afterwards, Sharon says she was put in the trunk with Karen and Keith and then the man started driving. We just found
00:09:06
each other's hands and began to pray and then the car stopped and he said, "You out and pointed at you, Karen?"
00:09:18
Yes. He told me to lay in the back seat. He uh he raped me. Then with Sharon and Keith still in the
00:09:31
trunk, Karen says the man just wanted to talk. He was like nothing had happened that we were like
00:09:39
best friends that we were just hanging out. And you went along with it just talking. Absolutely. To keep him calm.
00:09:46
And how long did this go on for? To me, a lifetime. He told me he came from a large family about where he had lived
00:09:55
and all this and he had just gotten back from Texas. She says when they stopped talking, the man raped her again
00:10:02
multiple times. I remember like laying in that back seat and his chest I mean the heav his heaviness on my chest and
00:10:12
the sweat and it was just disgusting. She says he then drove them to a local cemetery where he got out of the car. He
00:10:24
opens the trunk and he lets them out. He's going to let us go. And he told us, "If you tell anyone, I know where y'all
00:10:33
live. I've got friends." He said, "And I will come back." And we all swore to each other that we would not tell a
00:10:43
soul. They say just the fear of what might happen if they told kept them silent for
00:10:49
two weeks until Karen says she couldn't keep it in anymore. She says she confided in Keith's sister. And I said,
00:10:57
"But please, please don't tell anyone. Please don't tell anyone." She said, "I'm not going to tell
00:11:04
anyone." And it just unraveled from there. The next day, Keith's parents found out.
00:11:12
And soon Karen, Sharon, and Keith all ended up at the sheriff's office. Karen and Sharon each gave statements
00:11:20
reporting that they had been raped. And less than 24 hours later, on the morning of May 23rd,
00:11:28
1977, 25-year-old Vincent Simmons was taken into custody as he was walking down the street. Did you know Karen and
00:11:37
Sharon Sanders? Never seen them before in my life. [Music] [Music] It was May 23rd, 1977 when Vincent
00:12:05
Simmons was brought to the sheriff's office, which used to be here on the second floor of the Aoyals Parish
00:12:11
courthouse in Marxville and they took me and put me in a lineup. Karen, Sharon, and Keith were all there
00:12:24
to see if they could identify a suspect. We're all three in the room, but we're not all walking up to the window at the
00:12:32
same time. Keith goes first. Keith writes the number down on a pad. I walk up, I look at him, and I go to
00:12:44
the pad. I write his number down, and then Sharon goes up to the window, looks out,
00:12:51
and writes her number down. What number did you all write? Four. And then they said, you remember that? Oh my gosh.
00:12:59
Yeah. Of course. Then they said to us, "Y'all have all picked the same man." That man they identified was 25-year-old
00:13:10
Vincent Simmons. He was from a big family in the next town over from Marsville. And this wasn't the first
00:13:17
time he found himself in the sheriff's office. I didn't have a daddy, you know. So
00:13:24
basically, I grew up on my own looking out for my little sisters. I was doing wrong. and I was
00:13:33
going in the stores just to get food to feed them. Vincent was convicted of a home burglary at the age of 18. While
00:13:41
incarcerated, he escaped from the jail in Marxville. He lived on the run in Texas for nearly 6 years until he came
00:13:49
back to town shortly before that lineup. And when I walked up to the window and I
00:13:54
looked, I had no second doubt. I know exactly who raped me that night. After Sharon, Karen, and Keith IDed
00:14:04
Vincent, he says he was brought upstairs to the jail where he waited while an officer was writing something down. I'm
00:14:11
sitting on the chair in a handcuff when he gets to. He said, "I want you to sign." I said, "What is that?" He said,
00:14:18
"This is a confessor saying that you uh committed this crime." I said, "What crime?" You know, he said, "Rap of those
00:14:26
two white girls." Said, "I don't even know these white girls." Vincent says when he refused to sign the confession,
00:14:32
the officer knocked him down. And as they struggled, another officer shot him. Boom. I burn it through my chest, you
00:14:43
know, and I fell on the floor. When I woke up, I'm in the hospital. Now, the two officers involved tell a
00:14:50
very different story. They say Vincent grabbed one officer's gun and was pointing it at both of them when the
00:14:58
second officer shot Vincent in the shoulder in self-defense. Whatever the truth,
00:15:04
Vincent was never prosecuted for that incident. Instead, less than 2 months after he was shot, he was brought to
00:15:12
court to face Karen and Sharon. Less than 60 days after he was arrested, Vincent went on trial. Is that a pretty
00:15:19
rapid time? in 1977. I would say for major cases, they went to court quickly. Charles Riddle was not the district
00:15:28
attorney back then, but he is now, and he's very familiar with the details of the case. What was the evidence against
00:15:35
him? The testimony of the witnesses, the victims. Karen, Sharon, and Keith all took the
00:15:43
stand. walk into a courtroom, your parents, everybody that loves you is sitting there and seeing him for the very first
00:15:55
time. We have not seen him since the lineup. And then seeing him face to face was really hard. Of course, I had to put
00:16:06
my hand on the Bible, swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, which is all I had anyway.
00:16:13
They all testified that on the night of the rape, Vincent had told them his last
00:16:17
name. Believe it or not, all night long we called him Simmons. He told us to call him Simmons.
00:16:27
At trial, they all say Simmons. Simmons. The man told us his name was Simmons. What' you think then? I thought they
00:16:33
were crazy. I actually thought they were crazy. You mean to tell me I'm going to
00:16:40
do something to y'all and let y'all know my name? I'mma tell you who I am. No, that don't make sense, man.
00:16:47
The jury got to see Keith's car and a photo that police had taken of Karen, Sharon, and Keith reenacting how they
00:16:54
fit in the trunk. When it was the defense's turn, Vincent took the stand. I told the jury that I was innocent. I
00:17:03
didn't rape nobody. Vincent's lawyers also called three alibi witnesses who claimed that Vincent
00:17:11
was at a bar on the night of the alleged crime. The bar owner said Vincent was there all night. He got into a fight and
00:17:17
police were called. But the prosecution called a police officer who said the bar
00:17:22
fight was on another night. After a two-day trial, I don't think they had much of a defense.
00:17:30
The jury sided with Karen, Sharon, and Keith. Vincent Simmons was found guilty of two counts of attempted aggravated
00:17:37
rape. I was shot. Guilty. I ain't did nothing. When the verdict came back, guilty
00:17:47
unanimously. How did that feel? Sigh of relief. We knew we were free. Vincent was sentenced to two consecutive
00:17:59
50-year terms, 100 years behind bars. We thought we'd never have to face him again.
00:18:08
But Vincent refused to give up hope. I wanted to prove that I'm innocent. Man, I never know these people. More than
00:18:17
four decades later, Justin Bonis, a newly mended lawyer from Brooklyn, New York, would become involved in Vincent's
00:18:24
defense and was immediately skeptical of the prosecution's case. I looked at the
00:18:29
discovery. I was like, "Well, everything they said at trial is a lie. It's all a
00:18:34
lie. There's nothing that supports what they say. [Music] [Music] Generations of men have labored in the
00:19:00
fields at Louisiana State Penitentiary. It is the country's largest maximum security prison built on
00:19:08
the site of a former slave plantation called Angola. You know, we had to work seven days a week till it get dark.
00:19:18
That's how Angola was. Since the day that cell door closed behind him, Vincent Simmons has been
00:19:27
working to overturn his conviction. In 1993, 16 years after that guilty verdict, he finally succeeded in getting
00:19:37
a copy of the prosecution's case file. Male man came and he gave me this big old
00:19:44
envelope. When I opened it up, I man, I was in shock. Inside that envelope were items that Vincent had never seen
00:19:53
before, including copies of the initial statements that Karen, Keith, and Sharon
00:19:58
gave to police. Remember how all three testified at trial that they knew their attacker's name? He told us to call him
00:20:05
Simmons. But as it turns out, when they first spoke to the investigators, they didn't say that. Defense attorney Justin
00:20:14
Bonis has since reviewed those statements. When the girls initially went to police, they didn't say the name
00:20:19
Simmons. No. What name did they say? They didn't give a name. And Bonus noticed something else in those
00:20:27
statements. Sharon used the N-word to refer to her attacker and said, quote, "All blacks look alike to me," which she
00:20:35
does not deny saying. So, what did you say when they asked you to identify the man? I said, "All blacks look alike."
00:20:41
But still, Karen, Keith, and Sharon all picked Vincent out of that lineup. And Bonus says he may know why. This photo
00:20:49
that was in the file appears to show the lineup. Look at Vincent. He's the only one in handcuffs. When you saw that
00:20:57
lineup photo, what did you think? What? I said, "This is crazy. Nuts." Highly suggested. When you put the cuffs on
00:21:05
him, you're telling them that's who we want you to pick. But Charles Riddle, the current district attorney, says that
00:21:11
photo was taken after the twins IDed Vincent. They call it the lineup. It was a photo of the lineup after he was
00:21:19
identified and placed in cuffs. But how do you know it was after? Because the girls told me that. So when you picked
00:21:25
him out of the lineup, was he wearing handcuffs? No, he was not. Not at all. And Karen says they
00:21:32
initially didn't tell police the name Simmons out of fear. I mean, we were scared of him. And see, I don't know why
00:21:40
I didn't. I mean, I think fear we we're afraid of him. And there's another item in that file that Bonus says is critical
00:21:49
and was never seen at the trial. It's this report from a doctor who also happened to be the local coroner. He
00:21:56
examined the girls 2 weeks after the reported rape, and he did not document any signs of sexual assault. How big a
00:22:04
deal do you think the coroner's report plays in this story? Massive. And Bonus says that report suggests Sharon was
00:22:11
still a virgin. The doctor wrote that her highman was intact. But Charles Riddle says the report does not prove
00:22:19
that the twins were not raped. Because the definition of rape is slightest penetration. And the part about no sign
00:22:26
of sexual assault after 2 weeks, it's very probable that there would be no sign of sexual assault.
00:22:33
Bonus thinks the jury should have had the chance to consider all of that at trial. His attorneys, they had nothing.
00:22:40
They went in there flying blind with their arms tied behind their back in a boxing match. That's that's literally
00:22:46
what it was. So, you're telling me the original statements that the girls and Keith gave to police where they could
00:22:51
not identify this individual, right? That was never heard by the jury. Absolutely not. And the medical report
00:22:58
from the coroner was never heard by the jury. Right. and the lineup photo not seen by the jury? No.
00:23:07
If the statements from the girls had been presented at trial, right? If the coroner's report had been known and
00:23:13
presented at trial, do you think Vincent still would have been found guilty? No.
00:23:17
Absolutely not. Back in 1993, when Vincent first got his hands on that evidence, he made it his
00:23:24
mission to get his case in front of a judge. He filed numerous pleadings over multiple years, but no court ever ruled
00:23:31
in his favor. And not a single judge felt like there was enough evidence. Not the appellet courts, federal courts,
00:23:37
state courts, Supreme Court. Vincent was hoping that the parole board at the prison might have more sympathy.
00:23:46
So in 1997, 20 years into his 100year sentence, he had his first hearing with them. And it was all filmed as part of a
00:23:54
documentary called The Farm, which profiled inmates at Angola. Vincent showed them the evidence that his
00:24:01
defense did not have a trial. We didn't have none of this evidence. None of this
00:24:05
evidence was presented before the jury. You were the only one handcuffed in the lineup. I'm the only one.
00:24:14
Okay. Uh, would y'all step out? We'll discuss the case. Vincent hoped the board would rule in
00:24:20
his favor. Yeah. 20 years. I come up with something. Oh yeah, he did. Ain't no doubt.
00:24:27
But they would not. Mr. Simmons, after uh listening to his testimony, going over the reports, the board has voted at
00:24:35
this time to deny your request for pro. I was hopeless, but I know the truth. And no matter how many times they
00:24:48
knock you down, keep getting up. Almost 20 years later, Justin Bonis watched the farm documentary with his
00:24:57
wife. We were shocked and she told me, you know, you should take this case. She basically said, you need to write him.
00:25:03
And it wasn't really a suggestion. It was write him. And that's what I did. [Music]
00:25:32
You're a Brooklyn guy. You go down to Marksville. I felt like my cousin Vinnie. I mean, it was like country.
00:25:42
Okay. By early 2020, Justin Bonis had become Vincent Simmons lawyer. He had just a
00:25:49
year of experience under his belt and was warned that the odds were against him. It's over. Like, he doesn't have
00:25:56
any more appeals. I was like, "Nah, that's not true. It's never true. Absolutely not." Vincent had been
00:26:02
fighting unsuccessfully for decades to overturn his conviction. All the while, Karen and Sharon remained firm about his
00:26:10
guilt. We have no reason to lie. Why would we lie? Why would we let someone spend their life in prison if we even
00:26:17
had the slightest doubt that it wasn't him? Not long after Vincent's ill- fated parole hearing, documentary cameras were
00:26:25
rolling again in the late '9s when he and the twins agreed to a reconciliation meeting. It's where victims and
00:26:31
offenders come together to try and heal. We came today not to free you from your
00:26:38
prison, but to free us from our prison. Today I am closing the door to my pain. I'm letting go. When the time came for
00:26:47
Vincent to speak, he had questions. My question is going to be directly based on your statement that
00:26:54
you No, we're not going there. And that's when the meeting unraveled. What are you doing here then since you're
00:27:00
innocent? What are you doing here? Y'all putting me here. We did. No. A choice that you chose to make put you here.
00:27:08
Okay. I think I think we've had enough. I think I think think it's kind of going
00:27:13
source. Maybe one day you can get out of your pain if you're misery. They didn't let him speak cuz they don't
00:27:22
view him as a human being. Bonus wanted to put a spotlight on the case and really dig deeper, but he needed some
00:27:29
help. So, he turned to Jason Flam, a recording industry executive known for launching the careers of Katy Perry,
00:27:36
Matchbox 20, and Lord, among others. Flam is also a criminal justice advocate and he hosts a podcast called Wrongful
00:27:45
Conviction which has featured bigname guests like Kim Kardashian. When I heard about Vincent's case, I was just like,
00:27:51
this is another level. I had to do something about it. Flam featured Vincent's case on his podcast. How could
00:27:57
anyone get convicted on the basis of this? This is a man whose life was stolen away from him. And he gave Justin
00:28:06
bonus money to go out and hire a private investigator in Louisiana named Brian Andrews. Justin actually asked me to be
00:28:15
the boots on the ground, take statements, gather information. [Music] Andrews tracked down Diane Prader, the
00:28:22
lone surviving juror from Vincent's trial and the only African-Amean on the jury. Turns out she says she never
00:28:29
wanted to convict Vincent. Prader was in her 20s at the time of trial and says she still remembers her reaction to the
00:28:36
twins testimony. When they told a story, I'm like, ain't no way in the world that
00:28:42
happened like that. Put a black man in your car that time. You didn't believe it because at that period in history,
00:28:50
you just couldn't see white people giving a ride to black people. Correct. Was there a lot of racism in Marchville?
00:28:57
Yes, it was. It was in Marsville. It was everywhere. And she says the jury foreman told her her vote wouldn't
00:29:03
matter. In 1977, Louisiana juries could convict a defendant with only 10 out of 12 voting guilty. Just so said to
00:29:12
myself, well, it ain't going to do me no good to say none, but I never never never believe Vincent was guilty.
00:29:19
The private investigator also tried to talk to relatives of Karen, Sharon, and Keith with me right now that I'm
00:29:26
speaking with. He ended up conducting a videotaped interview with Keith's cousin, Dana Bruette, and she told him a
00:29:33
shocking story. Dana said that Keith told her in a bar long after the trial that Vincent Simmons was never with them
00:29:40
on Little California Road that night. He came out and told me there was never a black man.
00:29:50
Instead, in a sworn affidavit, Dana says that Keith told her he had consensual sex with one of the girls and locked the
00:29:58
other in the trunk. He had gone down Little California Road and he locked Sharon in the trunk.
00:30:07
And he said the sex between him and Karen was consensual. He said, "But the other one
00:30:13
was a little hellcat." That's the one they put scratches on his neck. In the affidavit, Dana said that Keith
00:30:20
had scratches on his neck. She told the private investigator that she believes Keith and the twins made up the story
00:30:27
about a black man. To explain away those scratches, blew my mind the things that she said.
00:30:35
Had Dana ever told anyone that? To my knowledge, I I don't think she had. They should have come forward a long time
00:30:42
ago. I really did think the man got released. And Dana's allegations didn't stop there. She also gave the private
00:30:50
investigator a copy of a Facebook message exchange that she says she had with Karen in October 2020. Karen and
00:30:56
Dana were talking about how Keith had allegedly made sexual advances toward female relatives. We asked Karen about
00:31:04
that. You said, "I didn't realize how sick he was. I thought it was only me." I don't remember saying that. Yeah, cuz
00:31:12
that's the message from you. So, what did you mean by that? Okay, we need to cut right now. Cut
00:31:21
this. Can we cut for a second? Yeah. Yeah. Right then, Karen said she was not ready
00:31:29
to talk about that exchange with Dana. But two weeks later, in a follow-up interview with both her and Sharon, she
00:31:36
admitted that years before she says they were attacked, when she was a child and
00:31:41
Keith was a teenager, something happened. Did you have consensual sex with Keith Leort?
00:31:48
Okay, let's put it like this. We were kids. Yes, ma'am. We experimented. So, yes. How old were you
00:31:56
when it happened? I have I could not honestly I don't know. 9 10 maybe. And is this the first time you're saying
00:32:04
this publicly? Yes, it is. But that has nothing to do with what Vincent did. That's two separate incidents. David,
00:32:14
think about it. If me and Keith have had consensual sex way, way before now, why
00:32:22
is he locking us in the trunk of a car? Why is he taking us down a dirt road? But Bonus believes they wanted to cover
00:32:29
up what happened that night. It gives motive for why they would lie. It shows that Karen always was hiding something
00:32:36
from day one. Keith was 18. Karen was 14. So what do they do? They blame a black man.
00:32:44
To be clear, was Keith the perpetrator that night? No. He was a victim also. Keith was a victim. He was not. He was a
00:32:52
victim. Mhm. He stayed in that trunk the whole time. I went to Keith Leort's house to speak
00:33:03
with him about all of this. No one answered the door, so later I called him. Hello, Keith.
00:33:26
[Music] Hello, Keith. This is David Begno with CBS News. When reached by phone, Keith,
00:33:34
now 63 years old, denied ever having sex with his cousin Karen. He said they had
00:33:40
just quote played around like children, end quote. And he also insisted that whatever had happened between him and
00:33:48
Karen had nothing to do with what Vincent Simmons did that night. That goddamn is guilty. I don't give and yet
00:33:55
he's a goddamn and you can put that on TV. I ain't scared of him. Despite the allegations concerning Karen
00:34:04
and Keith, District Attorney Charles Riddle says he believes the right man was convicted. I'm firmly convinced that
00:34:11
he's guilty. I don't believe that their cousin was the one. But Bonus was more determined than ever to see Vincent walk
00:34:19
free. And in April 2021, the district attorney made an offer that would allow for just that. Riddle said he felt like
00:34:27
Vincent had done enough time. Vincent could have walked right out the door. But there was a catch. Vincent would
00:34:33
have had to been a sex offender, though. Vincent turned that down and said, "I'm
00:34:38
not a sex offender. I didn't do this. I am innocent. I'm not a sex offender." What do you think when you hung up the
00:34:43
phone? I mean, that's it. We're going to war. Bonus kept fighting. And in February
00:34:49
2022, he finally got a hearing where a judge would decide Vincent's fate once and for
00:34:56
all. The day of the hearing, as Karen and Sharon made their way into the courthouse, they paused to pray. Vinc.
00:35:04
[Music] When Vincent Simmons arrived in a prison van, he was carrying a Bible. A group of
00:35:11
supporters greeted him. They were cheering. [Music] Vincent, how are you feeling today?
00:35:19
Really? How's it going? Something good going to happen. Cameras were not allowed in the
00:35:29
courtroom as Judge William Bennett delivered his decision. What did the judge decide? He decided to
00:35:35
give Vincent a new trial because of the constitutional violation that he didn't receive a fair trial. Vincent's
00:35:40
conviction was thrown out due to the evidence that he himself had obtained almost 30 years earlier and the fact
00:35:49
that his defense team didn't even have it back in 1977. Judge Bennett made it clear though
00:35:55
that he did not place fault on anyone for that. Instead, he found that the speediness with which the case went to
00:36:02
trial, made it likely that the original district attorney on the case, Eddie Null, didn't even have all the evidence
00:36:08
himself at the time. So, just to be clear, you believe that in 1977, the police didn't turn over key evidence to
00:36:16
the district attorney. That's the only explanation feasible and logical after studying everything that I did. That's
00:36:24
it. Are you blaming the police? No, I don't believe anybody intentionally hid anything. It's just the way it happened
00:36:31
because it was fast. In a court affidavit, the original DA Eddie Null said he did not hide or deny Simmons any
00:36:39
evidence, nor did he prosecute him because of bias. And he continues to believe that Vincent is guilty. And he's
00:36:47
not the only one that feels that way. Current District Attorney Charles Riddle. Do you believe a man who was
00:36:54
convicted at a trial that was not fair should have ever served a day in prison? Illegally. Legally. Okay. Legally? No.
00:37:04
But he did? Yes. Decided that. Okay. Let me tell you, he deserved to serve the 44 years.
00:37:12
Why? Because he's guilty. Judge Bennett was careful to say he has no opinion on the guilt or innocence of
00:37:21
Vincent Simmons. With his decision, it was now up to District Attorney Riddle to decide whether he wanted to retry the
00:37:29
case. You stood up and said what? I said that he served enough time and that we're not going to prosecute him again.
00:37:36
In the eyes of the people and the Constitution, he is presumed innocent. And when Charles Riddle dismissed that
00:37:42
case, that presumption of innocence carries. Free. You free. You free. You done. So
00:37:51
happy to see you. I am so happy to see you. God is good to you. Let me get a picture.
00:38:00
Vincent is a free man, but for Karen and Sharon, nothing has changed. He went in
00:38:08
guilty. He's guilty now. And guess what? He he will die guilty. So, I'm I'm happy. I got 44 years. All
00:38:18
right, let's go. The twins say they accept the judge's decision. But they are still hurt by it. The legal system
00:38:27
didn't just fail him, it failed us in many ways also. While Vincent has his freedom, they say they still don't have
00:38:35
theirs. It's frustrating because no one sees our bars. They don't see our prison. We still have our anxiety. We
00:38:45
still have our depressions. We still have our fears. Our bars are real. And if you look deep
00:38:52
enough, you can see them. Judge Bennett is sympathetic toward the women, but he is confident in his
00:39:01
decision. The case holds extra meaning for him because his father, now deceased, was one of the many judges who
00:39:08
denied motions filed by Vincent over the past years. But that was before Vincent
00:39:14
had gained access to the prosecution's file. He and I had talked about the Vincent Simmons case years ago, and uh I
00:39:23
know if he would be here, he today would have done what I did. What's on your heart? cuz I can see
00:39:30
the emotion. I did the right thing. Freedom just hours after the judge delivered his
00:39:45
decision. And right before the sun set, Vincent Simmons walked out of Angola. Yeah. Yeah. He went in when he was just
00:39:54
25 years old and was released 3 days before his 70th birthday. Love you, man. Later that night, he shared a
00:40:08
celebratory meal with his family and friends. Let's go to freedom. Freedom. What's it like being out of prison? Oh
00:40:16
man, this it's a joy that is unexplainable really. But with that joy comes challenge. It's
00:40:26
going to take me a while. Got a phone. Adjusting to life outside prison walls has proven to be difficult. So much has
00:40:34
changed since 1977. Man, new technology. I'm just like a little baby. had to learn.
00:40:48
What are the simple things that you enjoy now? Breathing the free air, walking outside. Basically, it's freedom to just
00:41:02
enjoy the [Music] moment. 48 hours. To miss it would be a crime. Were you at all prepared for what
00:41:15
happened in this case? [Music] 19-year-old Kristen Smart disappeared on Memorial Day weekend of 1996.
00:42:01
For more than two decades, her family, friends, and supporters searched for answers and for justice. In October
00:42:09
2022, the man long suspected in her disappearance was found guilty of murder. His father, charged with being
00:42:17
an accessory after the fact, was found not guilty. We take you back to their arrest and how the saga began.
00:42:27
It's a landmark day in this very highprofile case. appearance of Christianiso County Sheriff's Office is
00:42:34
set to release details about the latest developments in Today is a day that many
00:42:39
had hoped for, wished for, and prayed for. This is where it all began on the campus of Kalpali
00:42:48
University, the last place that Kristen Smart was seen alive. It's my hope that we're able to take the first step toward
00:42:55
justice for the Smart family. [Music] I grew up not far from where Kristen disappeared. The billboard in a Royal
00:43:05
Grande is visible. It's got Kristen's photo on it. Driving past that billboard was a periodic reminder that oh yeah,
00:43:13
they still haven't found that girl. I'm Chris Lambert. I created the podcast your own backyard which focused on the
00:43:19
disappearance of Kristen Smart. Investigators say Smart and two other students left the party that night and
00:43:26
walked back to their onampus dormatory buildings. We're here surrounded by dorms and yet nobody saw anything. It
00:43:34
was a very dead holiday weekend. A lot of people had gone home. In the amount of time that they were alone and
00:43:40
whatever happened that her life ended, I think there was plenty of opportunity to
00:43:44
hide her body without anybody noticing. My sister turned 19 in February. She disappeared in
00:43:52
May. When she disappeared, I was about to graduate to 8th grade, but my parents did a really good job of shielding us.
00:44:00
Stan and Denise, um, they're wonderful parents. Um, a very large group of of friends went down to Calpali to help
00:44:11
search for her. Stan was there. Denise stayed back and I stayed back with her in case Kristen
00:44:19
came home. never would have dreamed in a million years that she would not return.
00:44:24
And Kalpoli is a safe place. You do not think of this happening. This is one of my favorites
00:44:30
of her with this great smile that she has. I just love that. It's just to me that's just that captures her. Remember
00:44:38
her wanting to like travel the world and be an architect. I really miss her. She
00:44:43
should be here. Originally, when we first took the case, I was determined I would be able
00:44:50
to find her in 6 months. If you've ever been on one of these searches, you walk up a canyon here in San Los Aispo
00:44:57
County, and then there's another canyon off that. You get to the end of that one, there's another canyon. There's
00:45:05
billions of places to hide a body. It's important to explain here that Kristen's case has never been declared
00:45:13
cold. A case is only considered cold when law enforcement decides that they've exhausted all of their
00:45:19
[Music] leads. But what makes it interesting to me is that they've had a suspect since
00:45:26
pretty much day one. Hi Paul. Good morning. I'm Jonathan Vigliotti with CBS News. Were you involved in the
00:45:32
disappearance of Kristen Smart? Paul, can you tell us what happened that night between you and Kristen?
00:45:42
It's important that there's an arrest made. You got to move and you've got to do it now. I'm here this afternoon to
00:45:47
announce the arrest of Paul Flores for the murder of Kristen Smart. [Music] [Music]
00:46:39
After almost 25 years of suspicion, on April 13th, 2021, St. Louis Abyispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson announced
00:46:49
the arrest of Paul Flores in the disappearance of Kristen Smart. It's been a puzzle and it's a very slow uh
00:46:58
process to find each of those little pieces. Some of that information came to light through the podcast that many of
00:47:05
you are familiar with. In the crowd, taking it all in was that podcaster, Chris Lambert. It's hard to take too
00:47:13
much credit, but I was one piece of the puzzle that helped to make this all come
00:47:18
together when it did. Lambert was just 8 years old when Christian Smart vanished
00:47:24
on her way home from a college party in St. Louis Abyspo, California. I remember
00:47:29
seeing it on the news. Kristen is a freshman at Calpali, but hasn't been to class since before the Memorial Day
00:47:35
weekend. And Kristen Smart left a party on the Calpali campus. It was something scary and they were talking about it
00:47:41
pretty regularly. But 22 years later, when he couldn't find any recent stories about the case, he decided to do
00:47:50
[Music] something. It's a cold and cloudy winter afternoon in St. in Louis Abyispo and
00:47:58
I'm retracing missing Calpali student Kristen Smart's last known steps. Even though he'd never investigated
00:48:06
anything before, Lambert quit his job to create a podcast. At least once a day, I
00:48:14
asked myself, "What are you doing?" Lambert began looking into what happened to Kristen, collecting articles and
00:48:22
documents, chasing down leads, and tracking down anyone with information. I didn't know the scale. I didn't know how
00:48:30
many people were going to listen, but I knew that I could try to do a small part. I Googled Kristen Smart's name
00:48:35
every few years. He never expected it would be a hit, but his podcast caught the attention of millions of listeners
00:48:44
and sparked new interest in this decades old unsolved case. Back in May 1996, Christian Smart
00:48:54
was finishing her freshman year at California Polytenic State University, better known as Calpali. Her younger
00:49:02
sister, Lindsay, says their mother urged Kristen to go there. You should go to Calpali. They're known for being a
00:49:07
really safe school. And it was only 250 miles from Stockton, California, where she grew up with Lindsay and their
00:49:15
brother Matt. Her parents, Denise and Stan, were both educators who encouraged their kids' passions.
00:49:24
She was who she was because of her parents, for sure. An Marie Christian became friends with Kristen in
00:49:30
elementary school. Her parents reminded me of my parents. Just very involved with their children. A very close-knit
00:49:36
family. Kristen loved swimming and skiing, but Lindsay says her sister was happiest when she was traveling. She had
00:49:46
traveled the world before she even made it to college by herself, which is pretty amazing. She spent a summer in
00:49:52
London, was an exchange student in Venezuela, and a lifeguard at a camp in Hawaii. She definitely like took
00:49:59
advantage of life, seized the day. She was super ambitious and was determined, you know, to find the next adventure, to
00:50:05
find the next challenge. That turned out to be college. Like so many freshmen, Kristen
00:50:12
struggled. Classes were difficult. She was trying to fit in, and she missed her family.
00:50:20
Kristen broke down, begging her mother to let her drop out and go somewhere else. But every Sunday when she called
00:50:26
her parents, they encouraged her to stick it out. Longtime family friend Denise Pierce.
00:50:33
Things were going to get better and you know and and they did. Friday, May 24th,
00:50:40
1996 was the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Most students had taken off, but Kristen had stayed on campus. So had
00:50:48
Margarita Campos, who lived in the next room in your hall. They had become close
00:50:53
friends. despite their differences. I was a little bit more um introverted and inhibited and she was like, "No, we have
00:51:03
to go out and we have to go like live life." And she was growing as an individual. She was pushing herself out
00:51:08
of her comfort zone and I was like, "No." So, when they were invited to a party that Friday night, Kristen was excited
00:51:20
to go. Kristen was like, "Come on, let's go. let's go. And I was like, nah, I have to study. And so she pulled me into
00:51:27
this sort of like, oh, come on, let's socialize. And these girls are inviting us out. Let's go. And I was like, okay,
00:51:33
fine. But when we got to the house, it was pretty dead, too. It was a really, it was like a couple roommates hanging
00:51:37
out playing video games. And Kristen was like, oh gosh, there has to be something
00:51:41
better than this. The two girls walked to an area off campus where there were fraternities, sorarities, and
00:51:50
residential housing for students. Margarita soon decided she'd had enough. You wanted to go home and you were
00:51:58
trying to find the way to break it to your friend. That's exactly right. They got to the parking lot of this apartment
00:52:06
complex. I was like, Kristen, I'm going to go back home. I'm going to go back to the
00:52:10
dorms. You can go. And she's like, "Please come with me. Please come with me." I told her I didn't I didn't want
00:52:16
to go. Kristen did not have a purse, money, her ID, or even her keys. So before leaving,
00:52:25
Margarita handed over her keys to get back into Mure Hall. She was absolutely sober when I left her. I'll never forget
00:52:33
her shadow against the building, this apartment complex, just standing like kind of crossarm with a long leg, and
00:52:38
she was just kind of like looking at me like, "You're really walking away now. Like you're really you're leaving."
00:52:47
The next morning, Margarita waited to hear from Kristen. I was expecting her to knock on my door and be like, "Oh,
00:52:53
Margarita, you missed a rager." And here's your key. I knocked on her door and I thought she
00:53:02
was just sleeping or she went out and about, you know. It wasn't until Kristen's roommate returned to their
00:53:07
dorm room that Margarita realized Kristen never came home. How did you know she hadn't been back? Uh, nothing
00:53:15
had moved. All of Kristen's personal belongings, including her purse, her money, her ID, were in the room exactly
00:53:24
where she had left them. I mean, she was gone. She was gone. By the time they called the Cowpali campus police,
00:53:32
Kristen had been missing for more than 48 hours. But Margarita says the police did not seem concerned. The campus
00:53:40
police, they were like, "Are you sure she didn't go out of town? It's like, she has nothing on her. How could you
00:53:45
have gone out of town? They thought she was off possibly having fun. Oh yeah. But they could not have been more wrong
00:53:53
to this day. Like I was like, why why did I just let her go by herself? I did have
00:54:03
guilt about that. But uh you have to understand she's a really independent, free spirit.
00:54:16
[Music] Kristen's mother, Denise SM, spent Memorial Day weekend at a swim meet with
00:54:26
her two younger kids. She was looking forward to hearing from Kristen that Sunday.
00:54:32
And that phone call never comes. The phone call never comes. Instead, on Monday, May 27th, Denise Pierce says the
00:54:40
Smarts got a call from Cowpali's campus police asking if Kristen was with them. Kristen hasn't come home and we're not
00:54:51
sure where she is. We don't know anything. That's when Denise Smart learned her daughter had not been seen
00:54:59
all weekend and all her belongings were still in her dorm room. She was becoming
00:55:05
more and more alarmed. You know, she was she was frantic. I don't understand this. You know, what's going on? It is
00:55:10
every parent's worst nightmare. The Smarts say they tried to file a missing person's report with the local police,
00:55:17
but were told it was too early. And the FBI told them Calpali police were in charge. But as Chris Lambert learned,
00:55:25
the campus police did not act right away. At that point, I don't think they had ever dealt with a missing person, a
00:55:32
possibly murdered person. By the time the Calpali police began investigating, Kristen had been gone for 4 days. As
00:55:42
they soon learned, she had ended up at a party at this house. It's mostly frat guys from the Capakai fraternity. I
00:55:50
don't know if Kristen knew anybody there. Chris Lambert, who worked as a CBS News consultant, pieced together
00:55:56
what he learned from people who were there that night. Kristen became incredibly intoxicated, whether she was
00:56:04
drugged or whether she just had a lot to drink in a short amount of time. She ends up passed out on the lawn
00:56:11
next door. Lambert says Kristen could not stand on her own. So, fellow student Cheryl
00:56:17
Anderson, who was also at the party, began helping her back to campus. They were soon joined by another partygoer,
00:56:26
Paul Flores. As they describe it, Paul Flores just sort of appears out of nowhere and
00:56:32
offers to help. He gets his arm around her torso and her arm around his neck and he's helping her walk.
00:56:40
Paul keeps stopping along the way and letting Cheryl Anderson know, "You can go on ahead. I've got her. It's fine."
00:56:47
She didn't think that was okay, so she slowed down and walked with them. When they reached the turnoff to Cheryl's
00:56:54
dorm, she says Flores tried to hug and kiss her. She left them only after he promised to take Kristen back to her
00:57:02
dorm. I don't think she ever imagined that Kristen would end up dead by the end of the night. Paul and Kristen then
00:57:09
make their way here. What happens next? So, if you believe Paul's story, he goes
00:57:14
into his dorm room here and he leaves her to walk up this walkway. Her dorm entrance is right over here. I
00:57:23
personally think that wherever Kristen went, Paul was there with her. I don't think that she went back to her dorm at
00:57:29
all. Whatever happened in those early hours, one thing is indisputable. Christian Smart has never been seen
00:57:37
again. She had just 40 yards to go and yet she vanished. That's the upsetting part about it, isn't it? The
00:57:46
investigation seemed to be hampered from the start by a series of missteps by campus police, beginning with their
00:57:53
assumption that Kristen was off having fun and ignoring worried friends who said she was missing.
00:58:01
So much was lost in those first few days where if that very first phone call was
00:58:06
taken seriously, answers might have been uncovered the first week. They also did
00:58:11
not focus on Paul Flores immediately, waiting 6 days to formally interview him. Even worse, they never sealed his
00:58:20
dorm room. There was a lot of evidence that could have been gathered that wasn't. Why? I wish I knew why. They did
00:58:27
an interview with the Calpali Mustang Daily and explained that they didn't think there was any evidence that a
00:58:33
crime had taken place. By the time they inspected Flores's room, Kristen had been gone for 16 days. School was over,
00:58:42
so campus police found an empty room that had been sanitized by the university's cleaning crew. Any evidence
00:58:49
that might have been there was long gone. The investigation was completely botched by the campus police. There's no
00:58:57
question about it. And while they did not rush to investigate Flores, Kristen's family says campus police were
00:59:04
very quick to judge her. Just days after she disappeared, an incident report seemed to imply that Kristen's behavior
00:59:12
contributed to her disappearance. There was a lot of focus on how Kristen was drinking. what sounded a lot like
00:59:21
victim shaming, right? 100% that was happening. The report said does not have any close friends at Calpali. Smart
00:59:30
appeared to be under the influence of alcohol on Friday night. Smart was talking with and socializing with
00:59:36
several different males at the party. But while campus police weren't doing much, Kristen's parents were doing
00:59:43
whatever they could to find their daughter. Kristen's father would come down and hike every trail he could find
00:59:51
on the central coast. He'd go anywhere. He'd go through tunnels under bridges looking for his daughter and expecting
00:59:58
best case scenario, he's going to find her body, which is awful for a parent. Early on, a small group of volunteers
01:00:06
also looked for Kristen, but a massive search did not happen until she'd been gone for more than a month. That's when
01:00:14
the campus police finally handed the investigation over to the St. Louis Abyspo Sheriff's Office, but they did
01:00:21
not find [Music] Kristen. 4 months after that feudal search, Paul Flores was brought before a
01:00:29
grand jury. Little is known since the proceedings are kept secret, but no charges were ever filed. Just weeks
01:00:36
later, Kristen's frustrated parents contacted James Murphy, a local civil attorney. It was just a sad phone call
01:00:45
to have somebody say, "Our daughter disappeared and we think she's the victim of foul play and we'd like to
01:00:51
pursue the guy that we think is responsible." Murphy and his wife Garen Sinclair
01:00:58
agreed to take the case pro bono, promising to go after Paul Flores and put pressure on the sheriff's office.
01:01:07
Murphy immediately filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Flores in civil court. And it says wrongful death and
01:01:15
then I put murder. Putting murder on the lawsuit was sending a message to Paul Flores and his family, that we believe
01:01:24
that he killed Kristen and that we're coming for him. But trying to get him hasn't been easy. It just amazes me the
01:01:33
amount of evidence that's available. Yet nothing has happened. The day after my sister
01:01:39
disappeared, Paul Flores had a black eye and scratches on him. [Music] [Music] You look at Kristen Smart every day.
01:02:03
every day. The Smarts attorney, James Murphy, and his wife and office manager, Garren Sinclair, have had Kristen's
01:02:11
billboard in their front yard since late 1997. It's just a motivator for me. I will go
01:02:20
outside at nighttime and I'll look up at the full moon and I'll think that that kid's buried somewhere, real close.
01:02:28
Murphy and Sinclair promised the Smarts the billboard will stay until their daughter is found. I'd love to do
01:02:36
anything to end their suffering. And that weighs on you. Yep. Is there any doubt in your mind
01:02:46
that Paul Flores is responsible for the disappearance of Kristen Smart? No. No. And Murphy and Sinclair believe they can
01:02:55
prove it. They were not able to proceed with this civil case. While there was an
01:02:59
ongoing criminal investigation, but that did not stop them from following every lead and preparing for an eventual
01:03:06
trial. There has been no other suspect. Every piece of evidence points directly at
01:03:13
Paul Flores. like his black eye. You can see it faintly in this mug shot taken by the
01:03:20
Aoyo Grande police just by chance 2 days after Kristen vanished. At the time, they did not know about a missing
01:03:28
college student. They were after Paul Flores for an outstanding DUI warrant. Having a black eye doesn't make you
01:03:36
guilty of anything, but if the person you were with disappeared from the planet, that's physical evidence. Chris
01:03:44
Lambert says 2 days after that when Flores was interviewed by campus police, they asked how he got his black eye as
01:03:52
well as scratches on his hands and knees. He says he got a black eye playing basketball with his friends. But
01:03:59
one of those friends told police Flores already had the black eye when he arrived. He told those friends he just
01:04:06
woke up with the black eye. When authorities later confronted him with the two stories, Flores admitted lying
01:04:13
and offered a new explanation. He actually hid his eye on his steering wheel in the middle of the night while
01:04:19
changing his stereo. So now you've got three different stories about how he got that black eye. He lied to the police
01:04:25
about everything. Flores claimed after walking Christian back from the party, he went to his room in Santa Lucia Hall
01:04:33
while she walked alone to her dorm. But cadaavver dogs told a different story. Just days after taking over the
01:04:43
investigation, the St. Louis Abyspo Sheriff's Office brought several dogs like these trained to detect human
01:04:50
remains to the Calpali dorms. They brought in the first dog and they had the dog go through the dorms. There was
01:04:59
no reaction until the dog reached Paul Flores's room. They let the dog in. The dog makes a beline to the bed of Paul
01:05:09
Flores. Remember, Flores's room had been emptied and thoroughly cleaned. But remarkably,
01:05:16
the same thing happened with three more dogs. [Music] That suggests that something bad
01:05:26
happened in Paul Flores's dorm room. The sheriff's office still wasn't convinced
01:05:32
they had enough evidence against Flores, but Murphy says there were other incidents that should have raised alarm
01:05:38
bells about him with law enforcement from the very beginning. Paul Flores had a reputation amongst the girls that knew
01:05:47
him at Calpali as being a creeper that he was always trying to hit on women. In fact, Cheryl Anderson, who trusted
01:05:56
Flores to walk Kristen back to her dorm alone, told police that her friends called him Chester the molester because
01:06:05
he was known for groping girls. So, with Cheryl's account alone, we have an unsettling picture of Paul.
01:06:13
Just 5 months before Kristen disappeared, St. Louis Abyspo police received a call from a student living
01:06:21
off campus. There was a man climbing her trellles and trying to get inside her balcony, very intoxicated and refusing
01:06:28
to leave. When they showed up, it was Paul Flores. No charges were filed, but Lambert discovered Flores's troubles
01:06:36
started at a young age. In high school, he was known as a loner. Chris Lambert spoke with some women who knew Flores
01:06:44
back then. They asked him not to use their names. Well, his nickname was scary Paul. You wouldn't want to be
01:06:50
alone in a room with him. He wouldn't let any of her friends be drunk around him. Those were kind of unspoken things.
01:06:56
And they told Lambert they weren't surprised when they heard about Flores's connection to Kristen's disappearance. I
01:07:04
wasn't surprised, but there's also that shock value of kind of, oh my god, I knew it. Although suspicions surrounded
01:07:11
Flores almost from the beginning, any hopes for an arrest were dashed in May 1997 when then Sheriff Ed Williams made
01:07:19
an admission to the St. Louis Abyspo Telegraph. Quote, "We need Paul Flores to tell us what happened to Christen
01:07:27
Smart. So absent something from Mr. Flores, I don't see us completing this case." How significant was that? I think
01:07:36
that might have been the biggest misstep that investigators have made to this day
01:07:42
to declare to the public, if you stay quiet, you will get away with this. And 6 months later, when Flores was deposed
01:07:51
by James Murphy for the Smarts civil suit, he kept quiet. Would you state your full name for the record, please?
01:07:58
Paul Ruben Flores. The only thing he would confirm on tape is that his name is Paul Flores. What is your present
01:08:05
resident's address? On the advice of my attorney, I refuse to answer that question based on the fifth amendment of
01:08:11
the United States Constitution. Everything else, he took the fifth amendment. He wouldn't answer a single
01:08:16
thing. In May of 96, were you a student at Calpaly? On the advice of my attorney, he invoked
01:08:23
the fifth 27 times. What is the name of your father? On the advice of my And it worked. You just don't talk and you get
01:08:32
away with it. Flores wasn't talking, but was there evidence possibly placing Kristen Smart
01:08:40
at his mother's home? Somebody found an earring that they say was Kristen Smart's jewelry in the driveway.
01:08:49
An earring that appeared to match the necklace Kristen is wearing on this billboard.
01:09:06
[Applause] When Christristen Smart disappeared, Paul Flores's parents, Susan and Reuben,
01:09:14
were separated and living apart. 4 months later, while attempting to reconcile, Susan rented out her house in
01:09:21
a Royal Grande. A young couple moves into it with their kid. The mother is washing her car in the driveway at one
01:09:28
point. Something shiny catches her eye next to the front driver's side tire. A single woman's earring. That mother,
01:09:35
Mary Lacader, described it to Chris Lambert. It was like a red thing and it was like a smudge like fingerprinted
01:09:42
look on the back just red like maroon like old looking and a smudge that it was like a half a fingerprint. It was
01:09:51
turned over to a detective with the St. Louis Abyspo Sheriff's Office. But Garrett Sinclair says the Smarts never
01:09:58
knew it existed until the Lacers were deposed in January 1997. He never once turned to the Smart family and said,
01:10:06
"Hey, we have an earring. We'd like to show it to you to see if it matches any of your daughter's jewelry."
01:10:12
The Smarts then demanded to see it. And that's when they're told that earring has been misplaced. Misplaced. It was
01:10:21
never marked as evidence apparently. But Mary Lacer says the earring matched the
01:10:26
necklace Kristen is seen wearing on this billboard. If it was in fact a piece of jewelry
01:10:33
that matched Kristen's jewelry, it would have been blockbuster evidence and might
01:10:39
have connected Kristen to Susan Flores's house, says James Murphy. There's no way
01:10:45
to get evidence back once you've lost it. Another frustration for the Smarts. At
01:10:52
the time Kristen disappeared, investigators weren't aware that Paul Flores's parents were separated and
01:10:59
living apart. So, they did not immediately get a warrant to search Susan Flores's
01:11:04
home. Even more difficult to understand was why they waited two months to search
01:11:10
this house, the family home where Paul Flores was living with his father, Reuben. And when they did, they didn't
01:11:18
bring cadaabver dogs with them. They didn't bring a forensics team. They didn't look at the Flores family's
01:11:24
vehicles. They might have found evidence in those vehicles. Paul Flores did not have a car
01:11:30
on campus. So Murphy surmises he had to have had help. And it's 2:30 and 3:00 in
01:11:37
the morning at Calpali. This is not a location from which Paul alone could easily move a body without a vehicle.
01:11:47
But further investigation of the Flores's two trucks seemed impossible. In the months after Kristine's
01:11:54
disappearance, one truck was traded in. The other was reported stolen. But it's Susan Flores's concrete
01:12:03
backyard that initially received a lot of attention. It had been the focus of widespread speculation for more than two
01:12:11
decades, especially her planter boxes. Around the time Kristen disappeared, they cut out planter boxes in the
01:12:18
backyard. So, they cut out big chunks of concrete and filled it in with soil. In
01:12:23
one of Paul's police interviews, he mentioned that he wanted to be let out of the interview because he needed to
01:12:30
help clean up concrete at his mom's house. So, what was being done in Susan Flores's backyard in the weeks after
01:12:37
Kristen went missing? Susan's house was finally searched in March 1997, 9 months after Kristen
01:12:45
disappeared, but nothing was found. It would be three more years before the property was searched again.
01:12:53
At 8:00 a.m. on June 19th, 2000, a team of sheriff's investigators knocks on the
01:12:59
front door of Susan Flores's East Branch Street home. With them is a group of FBI
01:13:05
evidence response team members and a search warrant. That warrant allowed them to dig up the backyard, but
01:13:12
deputies chose not to excavate. Denise Pierce says that was a crushing blow for the Smart family. to be almost there to
01:13:21
think that you know you're going to finally get some resolution and then you know it doesn't happen the way it's
01:13:27
supposed to. Devastating. And there would be more disappointment in 2007 after the Smarts legal team searched a
01:13:35
small portion of Susan Flores's backyard with ground penetrating radar and did not find any evidence. They just have
01:13:44
never given up and are never going to give up on their daughter. Ruben Flores and his aranged wife Susan have always
01:13:51
denied any role in Kristen Smart's disappearance. And do you have any information as to where Kristen Smart's
01:13:58
body is located? Of course not. Does your husband have any information as to where Kristen
01:14:06
Smart's body is located? No. When they were deposed by James Murphy, they also insisted their son was not involved.
01:14:15
Does your son have any information as to where Kristen Smart's body is located? Nope. Has your son ever told you that he
01:14:25
did not kill Kristen Smart? We never asked that question. We just think about it. He says no.
01:14:41
Through the years, the Smarts have kept pressure on the Flores family. But the Flores's have fought back, suing the
01:14:48
Smarts for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Like the Smarts civil case, theirs was also on
01:14:57
hold. In the meantime, Paul Flores moved to Southern California, where he's bounced from job to job. But as Chris
01:15:05
Lambert learned, Flores's pattern of behavior with women didn't stop. A couple times I would take a moment and
01:15:12
he would just, "Oh, come on. Just give me a kiss. Just give me a kiss." Paul Flores may have wanted a
01:15:26
fresh start in Southern California, but Chris Lambert says he could not seem to break old habits.
01:15:33
Paul worked with a number of women that he made incredibly uncomfortable. Girls who he tried to make a pass at sexually.
01:15:40
Um, girls that he tried to force to kiss him. Some of those women who did not want their real names used told Lambert
01:15:48
about their encounters with him. So, I walk him up to his sister's apartment. All of a sudden, he just like picked me
01:15:53
up, carried me inside, turned around, he shut the apartment door, and locked it.
01:15:59
So I said, "You better turn some lights on right now and let me out or I'm going
01:16:02
to scream." So eventually he unlocked, you know, the apartment door and and I left. Lambert also interviewed a woman
01:16:10
who dated Flores until she says he became physically and verbally abusive. And he had like a butter knife and he
01:16:18
like held it to my neck and I was screaming and my roommate actually kicked down the door to make him stop.
01:16:25
But Paul Flores was never charged with any of these incidents. Back in St. Louis, Abyspo,
01:16:32
the Smarts, feeling ignored by the sheriff's office, continued a relentless campaign to get them to do more to find
01:16:40
their daughter. What toll over time did this have on your parents? I think they're like carrying boulders on their
01:16:47
back. Then in 2011, Ian Parkinson was elected sheriff. If you were making a film about a new
01:16:55
law enforcer who's coming to a small town to save the day, you'd probably cast Parkinson.
01:17:02
He promised the Smarts that solving Kristen's case would be a priority. I committed to them that I was going to go
01:17:10
back to the beginning and re-examine every piece of evidence that we had. But Parkinson acknowledges it hasn't been
01:17:16
easy. There was early mistakes made that you can't recover from. when you're missing those vital pieces. Is this a
01:17:25
case that takes a miracle to solve? I hope not. Since Parkinson came on the scene, investigators have dug up
01:17:34
hillsides, searched the homes and properties of all the Flores, collected evidence, seized Paul
01:17:41
Flores's computers, monitored his cell phone and text messages, and found new witnesses, some with the help of Chris
01:17:49
Lambert. I brought them a number of witnesses that they were very interested in. I also brought them witnesses that
01:17:54
they had no interest in whatsoever. And then months and months later, they'd reach back out and say, "Can you get us
01:17:59
in touch with this person again?" In April 2021, investigators finally put the pieces of the puzzle together and
01:18:06
decided they had enough to charge the then 44year-old Paul Flores with Kristen's murder and his then
01:18:13
80-year-old father as being an accessory after the fact. The allegation against Reuben is that he helped to conceal
01:18:21
Kristen's body after the murder was committed. St. Louis Abyspo County District Attorney Dan Dao. We don't have
01:18:29
uh evidence sufficient to charge anyone else at this time, but the investigation
01:18:33
is ongoing. And for the first time, clues about what may have happened to Kristen Smart. Forensic physical
01:18:41
evidence was located. And yes, we believe it's it's linked to Kristen. Um, and yes, we did find physical evidence
01:18:49
at at least two homes, like what may have been discovered in March 2021 when investigators searched Ruben Flores's
01:18:58
house using cadaavver dogs and ground penetrating radar. They did a significant amount of digging underneath
01:19:04
the house. They took in soil, I assume, for some kind of analysis. According to a county probation bail report obtained
01:19:12
by the St. Louis Abyspo Tribune. Biological evidence was found under Reubin's deck. The question for decades
01:19:20
was, well, where did the body go? Murphy has filed an additional civil suit against Ruben Flores and others for the
01:19:28
intentional infliction of emotional distress. And the complaint has some claims about what led investigators to
01:19:35
focus under Ruben's deck in the first place. The podcast is out. People are watching Ruben Flores and Susan Flores
01:19:45
and Paul Flores. Suddenly, major pieces of evidence came forward. An important tip came in after a February 2020 search
01:19:56
of Paul, Susan, and Reuben's properties. Murphy alleges four nights later, strange activity was seen at Reubin's
01:20:05
house. An eyewitness actually documented the fact that throughout the night there
01:20:12
was activity in the area of the underside of that deck. I'm not at liberty to describe how it was
01:20:20
documented, but I've seen it. That witness initially came forward to Chris Lambert, who passed the
01:20:27
information to the sheriff's office and Murphy. In his complaint, Murphy alleges
01:20:33
along with Reuben, there were two other unnamed individuals, but he says they are Reubin's ex-wife Susan and her
01:20:41
boyfriend. So why would Susan Flores, her boyfriend, and and Reuben Flores be up all night long working under that
01:20:52
deck? The lawsuit claims they were moving Kristen's remains. The location where all this activity occurred is
01:21:00
where they found the biological materials and the body's not there now. And there are more horrifying
01:21:08
allegations about what may have happened to Kristen after she was last seen with
01:21:13
Paul Flores. It is alleged that Mr. Flores caused the death of Kristen Smart while in the commission of or attempted
01:21:22
rape. Because of the statute of limitations, Dao says Paul Flores cannot be charged with rape, but the allegation
01:21:30
that he was committing or attempting to commit a rape when he killed her is the basis for which we are able to file
01:21:37
first-degree felony murder charges. Authorities made clear that they plan to use Flores's alleged predatory behavior
01:21:45
against him. We intend to use evidence of other sexual crimes in this prosecution to prove uh the facts
01:21:52
necessary for the attempted rape in this case. And according to that probation report, dozens of women have recounted
01:22:00
Paul Flores's sexual assaults and predatory behavior that document his 25 years as a serial rapist. He has not
01:22:09
been charged in those incidents. We have evidence that we do believe there are other people that are not yet identified
01:22:15
that have had a some kind of a criminal act perpetrated on them by Mr. Flores. 48 Hours has learned these suspicions
01:22:24
center around evidence found during that 2020 search of Paul Flores's home. Sources tell us investigators discovered
01:22:32
photographs and videos on Flores's computer showing him engaged in sexual activity with at least 10 different
01:22:39
women. apparently in various states of consciousness. Paul Flores and his father both pleaded not guilty to all
01:22:48
charges at their arraignment. Reubin's attorney, Harold Messik, dismissed the evidence against his client as quote,
01:22:55
"So minimal as to shock the conscience." He later argued that the biological evidence found under the deck was not
01:23:04
conclusively human blood and DNA evidence could not be found linking any other evidence to Christristen. Susan
01:23:12
Flores and her boyfriend were never charged in the case. Ruben Flores was released on $50,000 bail to his ex-wife.
01:23:20
He was required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet, but Paul Flores remained behind bars without bail. To see them in
01:23:29
custody was a feeling of great joy for me. My job was to hunt them and that's what I've been doing for
01:23:39
a long long time along with a lot of other people. Well, that's been our goal. It is also what the smarts have
01:23:48
been waiting for for more than a quarter of a century. Chris Lampbert says they're cautiously
01:23:58
optimistic. They're hopeful, but they've also been let down so many times before.
01:24:02
I think they are just waiting to see what the outcome is going to be. They're interested in seeing Paul Flores get
01:24:09
convicted and Ruben Flores get held accountable. Most importantly, they want to find
01:24:18
their daughter. [Music] 48 hours. Don't miss an episode. Heat. Heat. [Music] here with the fabulous Mo Wilson. You
01:25:43
are like ready. I'm ready. Yeah. I'm so excited to be here. Um, feels like the first big race of the year. So, um,
01:25:51
yeah, I'm ready to kick it off. I'm still getting better. I'm still learning. It's an exciting time. There's
01:25:58
still so much for me to learn. Her name was Mariah, but everybody called her Mo.
01:26:04
My name is Polar Melendez, and I am a senior reporter with the Daily Beast. Funny and friendly and smart and
01:26:13
driven. Mo was a rising star. She graduated from Dartmouth in engineering. Everyone thought she was
01:26:20
about to make her big break in cycling. I have always relied on other people to push myself.
01:26:35
What happened to Mo was a tragedy. They found Mo inside the residence. It was pretty grizzly scene. She had been
01:26:46
shot multiple times. At first, detectives thought it was a robbery. You're looking into this possibility of
01:26:52
a robbery or a burglary, but parallel to that, there is this name Colin Strickland. Sure.
01:27:01
My name is Colin Strickland. I am a bicycle racer. [Music] Colin Strickland was a top biker and he
01:27:10
was also friends with Mo. I mean, Colin, you know, he was an interesting character, had a lot of
01:27:17
like, you know, cool qualities about him. Motorcycles, professional athlete. I mean, Colin had dated like a few girls
01:27:25
in the cycling scene, you know, girlfriends here and there, but, you know, pretty standard
01:27:30
stuff. Colin's relationship with Mo like was like they were both bike racers. They had like a romantic relationship.
01:27:40
There had definitely been something romantic between them. Colin said they had broken
01:27:48
up. The situation was complicated. There was another woman in Colin's life. Her name was Caitlyn
01:27:55
Armstrong. Caitlyn, you know, first impressions, she was really nice, globe hopping
01:28:04
around the world, was, you know, really interested in yoga, like very attractive
01:28:09
person, uh, both inside and out. At least the Caitlyn I, you know, initially knew.
01:28:15
[Music] Homicide detectives were very interested in talking to Caitlyn Armstrong. He's
01:28:22
starting to get this sense that there could be some jealousy to it. She has a gun. Few things like that start to paint
01:28:29
a picture of like it could definitely be her. We were still trying to figure out,
01:28:35
are they gonna have enough information to sit down and scratch out a war? At this point, she kind of
01:28:41
disappears. No one knows where she is. [Music] Caitlyn Armstrong vanished, seemingly in
01:28:54
a thin air, sparking what would become an international manhunt. First leading authorities across the United States and
01:29:00
then eventually here to the beaches of Costa Rica. Along the way, she used multiple identities and changed her
01:29:07
appearance, even getting plastic surgery. How smart was Caitlyn Armstrong? She did some pretty
01:29:16
intelligent things. The thing that people don't know is you don't have to be just smarter than one, two, three, or
01:29:24
four of us cuz there's a team of 20 plus people. You have to be smarter than a lot of people to get away with it. It
01:29:33
almost worked. It almost [Music] worked. Heat [Music] [Music] [Laughter] up here.
01:30:12
[Music] Hello. I'm here with the fabulous Mo Wilson. You are like ready. I'm ready.
01:30:27
Yeah. Hey, in March of 2022, up and cominging progravel bike racer, 25-year-old Anna Mariah Wilson, known as
01:30:36
Mo to some, appeared on the pre-ride show, an online program about cycling. So excited to be here. Um, feels like
01:30:43
the first big race of the year. So, um, yeah, I'm ready to kick it off. Just two months later, Mariah was found
01:30:53
murdered. The news shocking the cycling community. I don't think anybody could really
01:30:59
believe it at first. You know, why would anybody want to hurt or harm or kill this lovely, talented young woman? Lisa
01:31:08
Goslin Lynn is the editor of Vermont Sports Magazine and Vermont Ski and Ride magazine. She's also a CBS News
01:31:15
consultant. Mariah Wilson right there coming in. Lynn had been following Mariah Wilson's career for many months
01:31:21
before her tragic death. It is all Mariah Wilson as she is snaking through into the finish of Mariah was pretty
01:31:30
much winning every race that she entered. Mariah Wilson, the winner of round one of winning or finishing in the
01:31:39
top two. And the races that she entered were top tier. First place, Mo Wilson. Mariah had the potential to be one of
01:31:48
the top bike racers definitely in the country and probably in the world. Mo phenomenal race. Remarkably, Lynn says
01:31:57
that Mariah was new to the pro cycling world. Her first passion had been downhill ski racing, a love shared by
01:32:04
her close-knit family. She was born into a family of really great athletes. Her father, Eric, had been on the US ski
01:32:12
team, and Mariah's aunt actually was a two-time Olympic Nordic ski racer. And it's no surprise that Mariah was drawn
01:32:20
to outdoor endurance sports. She was raised in Northern Vermont next to Kingdom Trails, a mecca for skiers and
01:32:27
mountain bikers, and that was her playground. Mariah attended Burke Mountain Academy, an
01:32:34
elite ski school that produced Olympic greats like twotime gold medalist Michaela Shiffren. Mariah had hoped to
01:32:40
make the US ski team, but knee injuries eventually ended her skiing career. That's when she switched sports. She had
01:32:48
used cycling as a way for rehabbing and kind of building back her strength. What
01:32:54
was fascinating to me was she then went on to Dartmouth. She got an engineering degree. And after doing that, she went
01:33:01
to her mother and said, "Hey, mom, I think I want to be a professional cyclist."
01:33:08
And Mariah told the podcast we got to hang out that she wanted to do much more than just win races.
01:33:15
How can I inspire people? How can I give back to the cycling community? How can I
01:33:19
bring more people into the sport? How can I make it more inclusive? Like I want to find meaning and purpose in
01:33:25
cycling that goes like far beyond the the results. Mariah eventually moved to San Francisco
01:33:33
where she focused on cycling and quickly rose to the top of the sport. Mariah was
01:33:38
forging her own path. She knew what she wanted to do and she was working hard to
01:33:43
pursue it. [Music] On May 10th, 2022, just one week before her 26th birthday, Mariah arrived in
01:33:54
Austin, Texas to prepare for the Gravel Locos bike race, a race she was favored to
01:34:00
win. Mariah stayed with a close friend in this Austin apartment. But the next evening, just
01:34:07
before 1000 p.m., the friend returned home and discovered Mariah, who had been shot multiple times. She called 911.
01:34:16
She's laying on the bathroom floor and there's blood everywhere. Mariah's friend tried CPR, but it was too late.
01:34:24
It sound like started off near the door and went backwards like she was trying to get away or there was some sort of
01:34:30
struggle or Austin police officers Mark McCloud and Jonathan Riley worked the case from the beginning. Whoever shot
01:34:38
her at that point stood over top of her and shot her at least once. Charlie 7, you're in 13. Investigators wondered who
01:34:45
could have murdered this promising young athlete. As they canvased the immediate
01:34:50
area, police discovered a possible clue. I located the bike. Mariah's expensive racing bicycle had been discarded in the
01:35:00
bushes. So, at that point, okay, is this a burglary, a robbery gone wrong? But that theory was quickly dismissed
01:35:07
because there was no sign of a break-in. Then police learned that just hours before Mariah was found murdered at
01:35:14
around 8:30 p.m. she had been dropped off by another professional bike racer named Colin Strickland. So obviously the
01:35:22
focus would be who's this Colin Strickland. Colin Strickland was a very good grapple
01:35:28
racer. He was at the top echelon. Colin Strickland who was 35 was considered a pioneer in the sport. He had won some of
01:35:37
the most prestigious races and was sponsored by the industry's top brands like Red Bull. My name is Colin
01:35:44
Strickland. I am a bicycle racer and general entertainer. In 2020, he appeared in an online video
01:35:53
called Wahoo Frontiers about his long and successful career. Pretty early on, I looked up to Colin when I was coming
01:35:59
up in the scene. Please welcome Chris Tally. Chris Taly is friends with Colin Stricklin. They met on the racetrack. He
01:36:09
was the one to beat. He loved to kind of create a show around bike racing. Uh kind of selling bike racing. He was
01:36:16
really passionate about it. And Tali said although his friend had been popular with women, he eventually
01:36:23
became serious with a woman named Caitlyn Armstrong. However, in a social media post after the crime, Strickland
01:36:30
wrote that about 6 months before Mariah's murder during a short breakup with Armstrong, he did have a brief
01:36:37
romantic relationship with Mariah that spanned a week or so. He said that it ended and their relationship had turned
01:36:45
into a platonic and professional one. He just wanted to be friends with like someone who was going to do great things
01:36:52
in cycling. The day after Mariah's murder, police visited and spoke to Colin Strickland at
01:36:59
his home. My personal take was he was being very cooperative, being very forthcoming. Um, obviously he was in
01:37:06
shock. Being very transparent at times, very transparent. Yeah. And investigators say when he agreed to go
01:37:12
down to the police station to be interviewed, he didn't seem to hold back when telling them about the day he spent
01:37:18
with Mariah, a day that would end up being her last. That day in May, it was hot in the 80s. And this story started
01:37:27
with a swim right here. It's a famous old outdoor pool. And Colin Strickland told detectives he took the victim, Mo
01:37:33
Wilson, on the back of his motorcycle here to cool off. They went swimming, then they got food. Mariah and
01:37:41
Strickland are seen here on the restaurant's security camera. I know he's being transparent at this point
01:37:47
during this questioning, but what he's saying is starting to sound a lot like a date. Oh, yeah. 100%.
01:37:56
Investigators had a lot of questions, and their prior visit to Strickland's home had raised even more. On the night
01:38:03
of Mariah's murder, police discovered an important clue on video from a neighbor's security camera. The video
01:38:10
was taken just 1 minute after Mariah was dropped off. There's a video from a Ring
01:38:15
doorbell camera that clearly shows like a black SUV with a bike rack. Can't see the license plate because of the bike
01:38:21
rack on it. So, it was obviously like we need to focus on this. And a vehicle that fit that description was outside
01:38:28
Strickland's house. Who was driving the black Jeep SUV with the bike rack? The answer would lead directly to
01:38:38
another woman. The day after Mariah Wilson's murder, investigators quickly had an answer to
01:38:59
who could have been driving that black Jeep that was seen on security cameras shortly before her death.
01:39:06
Investigators had spotted a similar looking Jeep in Colin Strickland's driveway when they spoke to him. They
01:39:12
see a black Jeep with the bike rack on the back of it. So at that point, we run the license plate and it comes back that
01:39:19
it's registered to Caitlyn Armstrong. Caitlyn Armstrong, Colin Strickland's girlfriend. Chris Tally says he knew her
01:39:28
very well. You know, we connected pretty early on. Caitlyn and I became friends.
01:39:33
They were both from the Midwest. So, we kind of had a similar uh like upbringing
01:39:38
and so I think that kind of uh you know helped us become like even better friends. She'd come over to parties I
01:39:43
would have. Armstrong had a background in finance and loved yoga. She had a really strong you know kind of uh you
01:39:51
know love for travel love you know she spent time pretty much you know globe hopping around the world really you know
01:39:57
kind of interesting person. Armstrong got certified as a yoga instructor in Bali. After she met Colin Strickland in
01:40:04
2019, she also started getting into cycling. He was very willing to kind of show her, you know, what his passions
01:40:11
were and how passionate he was for cycling and, you know, get her involved with it. And she also became, you know,
01:40:17
kind of addicted to cycling along with Colin. Armstrong even started racing on an amateur level. At the end of the day,
01:40:24
like I feel like they had a pretty like normal relationship. They both ride bikes together. They would you know do
01:40:29
fun stuff and you know then 2020 happened and the pandemic started so everyone was kind of you know forced
01:40:35
with uh you know close quarters with their significant others. The couple eventually moved in together. The moment
01:40:41
I I saw the relationship become more serious is you know they talked about uh that they purchased a house recently uh
01:40:48
together which I thought you know was a pretty big indication that it's you know
01:40:50
a serious relationship. They also started a business together restoring classic trailers. I think she was
01:40:57
helping with the finance side of things. Colin was doing a lot of the operations.
01:41:01
Their relationship went from, you know, just a normal couple to also owning a business together. But things got bumpy
01:41:08
in late 2021. The breakup, I personally didn't know like they were split up at the time. Neither of them mentioned
01:41:16
anything to me. It was during this time that Colin Strickland and Mariah Wilson had briefly dated. Although Strickland
01:41:23
had said they had broken it off, Mariah seemed confused in the aftermath. Polar Melendez covered the
01:41:30
case for the Daily Beast. Around this time, I think Mo was pretty confused about her the status of her relationship
01:41:37
with Colin. And she literally wrote, "This weekend was strange for me. If you just want to be friends, that's cool."
01:41:45
Honestly, my mind has been going in circles. It sounds like someone who's in her early 20s who just wants to know the
01:41:51
status of a relationship with someone that's confusing her, and it seems totally reasonable that she might be
01:41:58
confused. Strickland had a lot to say about his relationship with Caitlyn Armstrong. He
01:42:04
starts to portray her as being the jealous type, even saying things like, "I can't keep people in my phone. like
01:42:12
Mo's not in my phone as Mo. Strickland told investigators he kept Mariah's phone number under an alias in his
01:42:19
contacts. And on that evening after he'd been out with Mariah at the pool, he texted Armstrong that he'd been running
01:42:26
an errand and that his phone had died. That was not true. Investigators say there were other
01:42:34
clues pointing toward Caitlyn Armstrong. On the night of the murder, Caitlyn Armstrong's phone was not connected to a
01:42:43
cell network. Not connected. Correct. So whether she powered it off, whether she
01:42:48
put it in airplane mode, uh there's some something happened that her phone was not communicating with any cell phone
01:42:55
towers. Do you think this was on purpose? Absolutely. In this day and age, if your phone is off and not
01:43:02
connected to a network, you're either the victim of a crime or you're probably committing one. A silent phone speaks
01:43:09
louder in some cases than actions. Oh, absolutely. Strickland also shared that he had
01:43:15
bought handguns for Armstrong and himself for personal security. He talks about how they purchased guns and that
01:43:23
there are these two guns and that she has a gun. um they've taken lessons and that the these guns are back at the
01:43:30
house. And so few things like that start to paint a picture of like this could it
01:43:36
could definitely be her. Police worked quickly. That same day, investigators picked Caitlyn Armstrong up on an old
01:43:43
warrant for failing to pay for a Botox treatment. She's just kind of sitting there and she's not showing very much
01:43:50
emotion at all. What were you doing yesterday? I would like to leave. I think typically when we see some
01:43:56
interviews going on and if you didn't do it, this is your like you're going to be
01:44:00
like, you know, not me, not it. I want out of this room. What do you want to know so you don't come back looking for
01:44:06
me? And there was none of that. Is there any explanation as far as why the vehicle would be over there? I would
01:44:13
like to leave. She was almost completely disinterested in in hearing what the detectives had to say. So, it sounds
01:44:19
like this is a big red flag immediately. Oh. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But investigators had to let Armstrong go.
01:44:26
There was a problem. Armstrong's birth date did not match the date on the warrant. So, the warrant wasn't valid,
01:44:32
and police didn't have enough to charge her with anything else. 2 days after that interview,
01:44:40
police got an unexpected call. It was from a friend of Caitlyn Armstrong. Police say the caller told them that
01:44:46
Armstrong was so angry about Strickland's relationship with Mariah that she wanted to kill her. It was yet
01:44:53
another indication that they were on the right track. A few days later, an arrest
01:44:59
warrant was issued. But when police went looking for Caitlyn Armstrong, she was [Music]
01:45:15
gone. After Caitlyn Armstrong vanished, US Marshalss got the job of tracking her
01:45:25
down. Plain and simply, the Marshals are manhunters. Chris Godsick hosts and produces a podcast with the US Marshall
01:45:34
Service. I'm Chris Godsick and this is Chasing Evil. His podcast tells the stories of some of the US Marshals's
01:45:43
biggest cases, including the hunt for Caitlyn Armstrong. Nobody thought Caitlyn Armstrong was
01:45:50
going to run and she surprised them all. She disappeared. Caitlyn Armstrong ran from a murder charge, but the US
01:45:57
Marshals Lonear Fugitive Task Force had a different plan. So, take me through this. Where do you
01:46:04
begin when you're looking for somebody that does not want to be found? You know, it depends on the case. Honestly,
01:46:10
we look for friends. Sometimes we look for family. One of the things that I did was collect as many photos as I could.
01:46:17
Damen Fernandez and Amir Perez are deputy US Marshals. They joined Austin police officers Jonathan Riley inside
01:46:25
the res and Mark Mloud on the case. The team based in Texas is known as the Lonear Fugitive Task Force. With no sign
01:46:35
of Caitlyn Armstrong, the task force suspected Armstrong may have left town, headed for her sister Christiey's place
01:46:42
in upstate New York. We were thinking maybe she's driving cross country. We didn't know.
01:46:48
Their instincts were right. In upstate New York, another deputy marshal managed to track down Armstrong's sister. What
01:46:55
did the sister say? The sister ultimately said that her sister had come to visit her, had stayed with her a
01:47:01
couple of days, but that she had dropped her off at the airport in New York and uh last she heard she was going to board
01:47:09
a flight back to Austin, but then called her back later and said that she decided
01:47:15
that she was going to drive back, which made absolutely no sense to any of us that you would just drive
01:47:23
back. When the task force checked outbound flights at Newark airport, no reservations had been made in Caitlyn
01:47:31
Armstrong's name. We never got a hit on Caitlyn Armstrong's passport. But the team had a hunch unaware of because
01:47:39
Christy told the deputy marshall in New York that she didn't know where her passport was. So they checked with her
01:47:45
contact at Homeland Security. And within minutes of reaching out to him, he got back to me and he's like, "Yeah, we're
01:47:51
showing uh Christy Armstrong traveled out of Newark, New Jersey International Airport on a one-way flight to Costa
01:47:57
Rica." You knew it. And I said, "There's no way that the sister left and we're looking for him. We can't find Caitlyn."
01:48:05
No, that's Caitlyn. The marshall suspected that Caitlyn Armstrong had used her sister's passport
01:48:11
to flee. Christy Armstrong later emphasized to authorities she did not give her sister the passport. She has
01:48:18
never been charged with any crime related to this case. And this is where Caitlyn
01:48:32
Armstrong landed. Costa Rica, gem of Central America, home to mountains, tropical rainforests, and white sand
01:48:41
beaches as far as the eye can see. But she didn't spend much time here in San Jose. Shortly after arriving,
01:48:51
Caitlyn Armstrong disappeared again, and she had a huge lead on the US Marshalss.
01:48:59
Marshalss Amir Perez and Damen Fernandez arrived in Costa Rica a month after Armstrong.
01:49:07
This is you guys now on the hunt. How intense is it once you touch down in Costa Rica? What happens? You're on a
01:49:14
timeline. I hear timeline and I hear the pressurees on. Pressure's on. I know we
01:49:20
were sitting in the plane and we're talking what's the game plan? Although they would have help from the
01:49:27
Costa Rican authorities and US State Department officers on the ground, they knew finding Armstrong was going to be a
01:49:34
big challenge. We had other intelligence indicating that she was staying in hostiles in Costa Rica. And I don't know
01:49:43
if you know anything about Costa Rica, but Costa Rica has a lot of hostiles. A lot. An unbelievable amount of hostiles.
01:49:51
The Marshals wouldn't tell us exactly how their intelligence gathering worked, but their team back in the States had
01:49:57
managed to track down the phone number for an American businessman they believed had connected with Caitlyn
01:50:03
Armstrong at some point. We didn't know what city he was in, so we decided, hey,
01:50:08
let's just cold call him. So, we call him and we're on the conference room and he answers and we're like, hey, it's the
01:50:13
US Marshalss. My name is Mark. And he goes, I don't want any click. Just hangs up like it's a like a telemarketer.
01:50:19
Telemarker I am call. Yeah. After three or four call attempts, the businessman finally stayed on the line to answer the
01:50:27
marshall's questions. And we actually end up sending a picture of Caitlyn while we're on the phone with him. He
01:50:33
looks at it and he goes, "Yes, but she doesn't look like that." And she not using that name. And did he tell you her
01:50:40
new name? He did. It was Beth. She was born by Beth. And the businessman said Armstrong no longer looked like this.
01:50:49
She had cut her hair and changed its color. Brown instead of red. She dyed her hair. The businessman told the
01:50:56
marshals he had no idea that the woman who called herself Beth was actually Caitlyn Armstrong. But he did tell them
01:51:04
where they might find her. He's like, "Well, I met her at a yoga studio in Hakaco."
01:51:14
This is Hakaco, a popular tourist destination known for its nightife and its beaches and the perfect place to
01:51:21
hide. It was the marshall's first real tip, so they rushed out here. They canvased the area, combed
01:51:30
through hours of surveillance video, but could not find a single sign of Caitlyn
01:51:34
Armstrong anywhere. It was a bust. But the marshals have one more solid lead and that takes them to a beautiful
01:51:45
touristy beach town, a one street town called Santa Teresa. [Music] [Music] [Applause]
01:52:08
[Music] One month after Caitlyn Armstrong disappeared, the US marshals were in hot
01:52:18
pursuit of her and another area of Costa Rica. A source had suggested she might have gone to a small village on the
01:52:27
Pacific coast. The marshals took a ferry like this one to reach a remote peninsula. Once there, they drove by car
01:52:35
through those mountains to the tiny town of Santa Teresa. But when they finally arrived, they ran into an unexpected
01:52:44
problem. Get to Santa Teresa. Was it easy to identify her there from the other people that were there? I think
01:52:53
from the get- go, we were told, "You're going to be in for a surprise cuz a lot of the women in Santa Teresa look just
01:53:00
like Caitlyn." A lot of them. And it turns out that advice was right. The town was full of foreign
01:53:08
tourists. Deputy marshals Fernandez and Perez arrived in Santa Teresa after dark. So we get there and he starts
01:53:16
walking down a main strip that's there uh like down the street. There's only one road on on that town and he sees
01:53:23
main road. He sees a girl and he says, you know, that looks just like her. Well, couple of minutes later, we see
01:53:29
another one and it's late at night and we're like, well, oh man, that's two. And then there's another one.
01:53:37
As the marshals tried to find Armstrong, they even had one of their female operatives start going to yoga classes
01:53:44
to see if they could spot her. She actually did three different classes for us. And they tapped into local
01:53:51
contacts. Oh, yeah. We made friends with people there that would send us pictures. Oh,
01:53:57
look. I I think I saw her at this restaurant yesterday, and she's in the back in the background of a photo that I
01:54:02
took. Stuff like that. In fact, people had seen Caitlyn Armstrong at local spots in Santa
01:54:10
Teresa, but they didn't realize who she was. Armstrong was hiding in plain sight, using different names.
01:54:18
She had like multiple names. Yeah. Um, she came in Beth. Um, Beth. It wasn't Beth. Ari. Ari. Ari. Ari. Right. So, she
01:54:28
came in as Ari. Greg Habber is an American from the New York area who owns a restaurant called Cooks Smokehouse and
01:54:34
Bar here in Santa Teresa. Ari, what did Ari look like? Did she stand out to you? Pretty came in,
01:54:42
introduced herself as a yoga teacher, which is basically anybody else down here. Hey, I moved here teaching yoga
01:54:48
down the street and that was it. What was her general vibe like? She definitely seemed like she was trying to
01:54:53
establish roots here, like this was going to be her new home. And Haber says one day he noticed something different
01:55:00
about her. I saw her on the beach. I walk my dog on the beach every night for sunset and you're walking through and
01:55:05
you see the bandage on her face. It's like, "Ah, what happened?" She like, "A surfboard hit me in the face." It's
01:55:09
like, "Well, happens to everybody, right? At least once." So, you wouldn't even question that story here. Like, you see
01:55:17
people all the time. Turns out that bandage would later prove to be an important part of this story and one of
01:55:24
the reasons the marshals say Armstrong was so hard to find. So you're this close to giving up? Yes. Yeah. Finally,
01:55:32
they decided on one last tactic. They turned to a local Facebook page. We decided we were going to put an ad out
01:55:39
for a yoga instructor and see what would happen. So this is the equivalent of Craigslist. Yes. Correct. Right. Pretty
01:55:46
much. and a little bit more lively, but yes, and just saying, "Hey, we're this hostel. We're looking for a yoga
01:55:53
instructor as soon as the possible. Please contact us at this number." But after almost a week of hunting, even
01:56:00
that didn't seem to be working. Sunday, we decided we haven't gotten any response back from anything. We're so
01:56:08
Sunday, we're like, "Okay, we're done. None of them have panned out. So, we're going back to San Jose." Now back in San
01:56:15
Jose, the marshals were getting ready to head home when suddenly we got a bite. Somebody that identified
01:56:23
herself as a yoga instructor and said that wanted to meet with us at a particular hostel and we said this is
01:56:31
this is our chance. Deputy Marshals Perez and Fernandez rushed back to Santa Teresa just ahead of a tropical storm.
01:56:44
Tourism Police Lieutenant Juan Carlos Solanos's team helped the marshals in their search for Caitlyn Armstrong. They
01:56:50
did surveillance on a hostel called Don John's where the yoga instructor, the one who answered the online ad, was
01:56:57
believed to be. So there is this massive international manhunt and of all places
01:57:03
in the world, it ends in this very discreet hostel. It was now time for the marshals to make
01:57:14
their move. So, I walked up and I got in. They decided that Deputy Marshall Perez would approach the woman alone.
01:57:23
They didn't want to scare her off. He would pretend to be a tourist and try to get a really good look at her face. And
01:57:30
I saw two individuals sitting there at a table off to the left uh as soon as I walked in. He says one was a woman. She
01:57:39
looked like Caitlyn, but not 100%. So, I thought, well, how can I approach her or
01:57:45
get close enough where I start asking questions where she doesn't suspect something? So, I decided that I was
01:57:51
going to speak to her in Spanish. So, I spoke to her in nothing but Spanish. So,
01:57:56
you're communicating. She goes to use her phone for Google Translate. And then, so I got a little closer cuz I saw
01:58:01
that she was trying to get to Google Translate on her phone. and she'd raised it up to me and I got even closer and I
01:58:08
noticed that she had a bandage on her nose and possibly her lips were swollen and I saw her eyes. The eyes are the
01:58:16
exact same ones that I saw in the picture and this is her 100%. He gets in the car and he's like, "That's her.
01:58:23
She's in there." Local police moved in to make the actual arrest. And soon the marshals discovered
01:58:31
why Armstrong had been so hard to find. She had been getting plastic surgery when they first arrived in Santa Teresa.
01:58:40
At the hostel, they found a receipt. The receipt for surgery. Plastic surgery. Plastic surgery. In
01:58:48
these sidebyside photos, you can see that Armstrong changed the shape of her nose.
01:58:54
The deputy marshal said their female operative, the woman they sent to yoga classes to try to find Armstrong, told
01:59:00
them Armstrong's new look, would have tricked her. And she told me, "I think if I would have run into her at the yoga
01:59:07
studio, I don't think I would have recognized her." Wow. It almost worked. It almost worked.
01:59:15
The marshals took Armstrong back to Texas where she was charged and held in jail. But just weeks before she was due
01:59:23
to stand trial for the murder of Mariah Wilson, Caitlyn Armstrong escaped again.
01:59:44
Almost 3 weeks before her trial, former fugitive Caitlyn Armstrong somehow managed to escape from custody. She was
01:59:53
at a doctor's appointment and tried to escape as they were walking out. Parendes from the Daily Beast says
01:59:59
Armstrong didn't get far before deputies caught her. It was pretty astonishing that she did that given the fact that
02:00:06
she had tried to escape prosecution prior. This was just more evidence of her guilt. Joseé Garza is Travis
02:00:14
County's district attorney. He says his team of prosecutors, Ricky Jones and GMO
02:00:19
Gonzalez, were more than ready to try the case. When we learned that um she had tried to escape, um it just added to
02:00:27
our confidence level in the facts of this case that we would be able to secure justice for Mariah and her
02:00:33
family. On November 1st, 2023, Armstrong's trial began. The last thing Mo did on this
02:00:44
verdict was scream in terror. In opening statements, Jones told the jury about chilling audio from a security camera
02:00:53
that captured the last moments of Mariah's life. No screams are followed by two gunshots. Kayen
02:01:05
Armstrong stood over Mo Wilson and put a third shot right in Mo Wilson's home. Prosecutors said Armstrong had been
02:01:15
tracking Mariah Wilson using a sports app. Caitlyn, prior to the murder, had been following Mo on a Strava app, which
02:01:22
is basically an app that athletes use to track their miles, running, biking, and
02:01:27
she knew exactly where she was. And they said that Armstrong on the night of the murder was most likely
02:01:34
tracking Colin Strickland as well. She did have the ability to monitor his communications. She had access to all of
02:01:43
his password, so she had access to um his Instagram account. I believe that when Mo sent Colin a text letting him
02:01:53
know the address where she was, I believe that Caitlin Armstrong was at home on Colin Strickland's laptop. She
02:02:02
saw that message. After murdering Mariah and before leaving the scene, Jones told
02:02:08
the jury that Armstrong took Mariah's bike and discarded it in the bushes just yards away from where her Jeep was
02:02:16
parked. Our belief is that she maybe staged it to look like a robbery or something. Or another theory is Mo
02:02:25
Wilson's bike is a tool of her trade. It might have been like the bullet shot in the
02:02:33
heart. I'm going to shoot you in the heart. I'm going to throw away your bike. But they said Armstrong made one
02:02:41
big mistake. She left her DNA behind on the handlebars and seat of Mariah's bike. And that's not all the evidence
02:02:49
prosecutors had against Armstrong. There was that receipt that showed Armstrong had received plastic surgery while
02:02:56
hiding out in Costa Rica. Everything she does, it's all consistent with trying to
02:03:01
evade the authorities. But when it was the defense's turn, attorney Jeffrey Purrier told the jury there was no
02:03:08
direct evidence, including security footage that actually showed Armstrong was at the scene of the crime. Not one
02:03:15
witness saw Caitlyn Armstrong allegedly commit this murder. Then why would Armstrong flee and hide from the
02:03:25
authorities? Defense attorney Rick Kofur pointed the finger at Colin Strickland.
02:03:30
Was she scared? What do you think? Do you think that she may have been concerned a little bit that her
02:03:38
boyfriend had killed someone? Fear results in fight or flight. And it was flight. But Jones said there was a big
02:03:47
problem with this theory because Strickland had nothing to do with the murder of Mariah Wilson.
02:03:53
In fact, at the time of the murder, he was actually on the phone speaking with someone. It wasn't counter stricken.
02:04:02
Armstrong's defense team did not respond to our request for an interview. After a twoe trial, the
02:04:09
defendant will please rise. It took the jury around 2 hours to decide Armstrong's fate. We, the jury, found
02:04:18
the defendant, Caitlyn Armstrong, guilty of the offense of murder. As a prosecutor, the first row right
02:04:26
behind you is the family and you begin to feel their pain and their desire for a just outcome for their loved ones.
02:04:38
One day after her conviction, Armstrong was sentenced to 90 years behind bars. You may be seated.
02:04:47
But before the case came to an end, Judge Brenda Kennedy allowed Caitlyn Cash, Mariah's close friend, whose
02:04:54
apartment she'd been staying at and who had found Mariah's body, to take the stand and speak directly to Armstrong.
02:05:02
So many people in this room have lost so much. I'm angry at you, at the utter utter tragic
02:05:13
nature, at the senselessness, at not being able to hear Mo's voice again. I feel deep sadness for the road
02:05:22
ahead. Then it was Mariah's mother's turn. I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter. It was very selfish and
02:05:33
cowardly. that violent act on May 91. It was cowardly because he never chose to face
02:05:43
her woman to woman in a civil conversation. She would have listened. She was an amazing
02:05:53
listener. She would have cared about your feelings. But despite the pain, Karen Wilson
02:06:00
closed with words of love and optimism because she said that's how Mariah would have wanted it. You killed her earthly
02:06:09
body, but her spirit is so very much alive and you can never change that. Today in Kingdom Trails in Northern
02:06:22
Vermont, a place that was sacred to Mariah, a trail was built in her honor. It's called Mariah's Ascent.
02:06:31
Mariah was a verter. She was giving. She was hardworking. She was honest. She was
02:06:38
caring. And she came from a wonderful family. And that family really wants that legacy and all of her good
02:06:45
qualities to inspire [Music] others. 48 hours. Don't miss an [Music] episode. [Music]
02:07:20
Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] No.