00:00:08
We ready? That's a question New Yorkers have been asking themselves a lot lately.
00:00:14
Are we ready for another blackout? For a bus hijacking or a bombing or another murder by the .44 caliber
00:00:23
killer? I know that I'm not usually known for any public exhibitions of temper, but I want you to know I'm
00:00:32
damned angry. The city is preoccupied with a killer who in one note signed himself the son of Sam.
00:00:39
He is compelled to kill. I think people are really shook up. >> People wouldn't come out at night.
00:00:43
They're really scared. The whole city was kind of like in lockdown. No one stayed out past 10:00.
00:00:48
>> People were terrified. And girls covered in blood. Oh my god. Oh my god. We've been shot. We've been
00:00:55
shot. I should have been dead. I guess on one hand I'm happy to be alive. A lot of people died
00:01:04
from the same gun. He struck again over the weekend shooting a young couple in a
00:01:08
Brooklyn lovers lane and today the girl died. The killer's sixth victim. He's wounded seven others. It's just scary.
00:01:14
It's frightening. When you're walking, people just look over their shoulder. And all they do is talk about the
00:01:19
killer. Walks up to strangers, usually couples in parked cars, and shoots them with a large bore revolver. Police say
00:01:26
they are nowhere near solving the case. If you're asking whether we have any indication of who he is or where he
00:01:31
might be, the answer is no. To do this to a young girl and a young boy, he's not human. He was writing about a dog
00:01:37
that talked to him, gave him orders to kill. I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to
00:01:44
kill. He terrified the city. I mean, I've never seen people like that. Yeah, I see that
00:02:00
people never understand where I came from, no matter how much I I try to explain it.
00:02:05
They wouldn't understand what it what it what it it was to to walk in darkness. I remember
00:02:34
we were an hour away from the city and everybody was afraid. After all that, to find out that this was a
00:02:42
sort of a you know, what people describe him as this chubby, shy, lonely guy who had the whole city
00:02:51
buckling at its knees, afraid. It's a strange sensation. Serial killer's about to walk in here
00:03:06
and talk with us. I think there he goes right there. I look like him, right? Hello. Hey, God bless you. Maurice T.
00:03:21
Watt. It's an honor to meet you, sir. Glad to meet you. Thank you for talking with us. Sure. Okay, it's a it's a big
00:03:26
step, you know. It's a big step. >> mis- Yeah, mis- misgivings and nervousness and all these other things,
00:03:31
but >> Sure. Understood. Is this a special place for you? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a
00:03:35
place of refuge, you know. Refuge from the storms of life. And you know, if you know anything about prison, there's a
00:03:40
lot of storms. You know, it's not exactly a happy place in prison. And men are walking around uh carrying a lot of
00:03:47
pain. I know I have a lot of pain inside me over, you know, things that happened uh
00:03:52
and uh this is a place where you could come and pour your heart out to to God. My name
00:03:58
is David Berkowitz and I've been locked up since the time of my arrest, just under 40 years. You just turned 64.
00:04:05
Yeah, I just turned 64. Yeah. How do the guys look at you? How do they see you? How do they perceive you? Um
00:04:11
some guys um really again because of the passing of time they're not even familiar with the the case or anything.
00:04:18
They may have heard about it, but it doesn't just another face in the crowd, you know, no special attention, no
00:04:22
special anything. That's the way I want it to be. In the summer of 1977 New York lost its mind.
00:04:37
Well, this was a a city that looked like Berlin after the war. Uh it was devastated. There were
00:04:45
abandoned buildings. There were waves of arson in which people were afraid to go
00:04:51
to bed at night. We had a blackout in which 3,000 people were arrested. It make you really want to throw up when
00:05:00
you look at what's happened and we got to live here. There's no place for us to go. We had
00:05:05
the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group planting bombs in department stores. We had a record heat wave. George
00:05:13
Willig, a mountain climber from Queens, climbing up the outside of the World Trade Center.
00:05:19
You know, it was a very very different time and people were afraid to walk around.
00:05:28
You know, 1977 among other things was the year that Studio 54 opened. Uh it was a time of sexual liberation,
00:05:36
perhaps the last gasps of the anything goes sexual revolution. I like to disco. I'm a single woman. I feel safe here.
00:05:46
This was uh the era of Saturday Night Fever and it was that throbbing music that became the backdrop for all the
00:05:54
wacky behavior that was going on in the city at the time, including a murder spree by a serial killer.
00:06:04
In New York early this morning, a mystery deepened and a manhunt intensified. A young couple was shot and
00:06:10
wounded while sitting in a parked car. Most of the victims have been young women with shoulder-length dark brown
00:06:17
hair who were gunned down as they sat in parked cars or walked the sidewalks of the Bronx and Queen. And you know,
00:06:22
you're dealing with a crazy guy, you know. You know, you go up to two innocent girls sitting in a car and shoot them or
00:06:28
a guy and a girl in a car and you shoot them for no reason. I wanted to know why he did what he did.
00:06:35
>> That's the one thing about all of these girls and in these cases and guys, they
00:06:39
did nothing to contribute to their own demise. They were sitting talking to each other and this guy killed them.
00:06:47
I mean, I I grew up in the Bronx. I had good good day good times and bad times. I had some struggles over certain
00:06:55
issues that happened and I but I also had times of adventure where I ran played ball with my friends. Really was
00:07:01
a many ways a normal childhood but then also wrestled with self-destructive behavior. Why? Well,
00:07:08
when I was about four or five, I I learned that I was adopted and when I asked about, you know, who my parents
00:07:14
were at at birth, you know, my dad and mom, you know, well-meaning told me that my mother died while while giving birth
00:07:22
to me. Later on, I found out that of course she was alive and well. We had a wonderful
00:07:27
reunion. It didn't even It wasn't even true what they told you. >> Yeah, they meant well because they were
00:07:31
told by the experts, that's what you tell an adopted child when they naturally ask questions.
00:07:39
I Look, in retrospect, that characterized much of my life. I struggled with a lot of depression as a
00:07:44
child and obsessions with death cuz I thought I deserved to die. So, take me to when you're 14. Your mom
00:07:52
dies. Yeah, that was a difficult time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just when you lose someone that
00:07:57
you love is is a sense of mourning. You know, I tried to put it out of my mind. I was carrying around a lot of guilt. I
00:08:02
was carrying around a lot of shame that I deserved to be punished. I I can't explain those things. You
00:08:09
>> For your mom's death? Yeah, I maybe I was angry at God and and then well, my birth mother and then of
00:08:16
course my adoptive mother, too, you know, I found it you know, very difficult. >> The victim that's selected usually
00:08:23
satisfies something on a fantasy level of punishing mother. Could be a wife. And so, every time he
00:08:32
commits a crime against a person that has this thing, he's satisfying this basic need of getting back at the
00:08:37
original individual who they had difficulty with. I you know, it was it was it was just a
00:08:44
challenge. It was a challenge. But I mean, I ended up doing okay. I It was my dad really kept on me to
00:08:50
finish school. I graduated from Christopher Columbus High School and uh in 1971 and I joined the army.
00:09:00
He went into the service and a drastic change took place and a different man came out than went in.
00:09:05
What do you mean a different man went out? How did he change? I went to Korea and I'll never forget that. You know,
00:09:10
you see the advertisements on TV of the guys jumping out of planes and all these
00:09:14
exciting things and you know, and you find out army life is kind of a mundane and routine. You just turn 18, I'm
00:09:20
trying to find my way in life. I wanted to see the world. A man that went in relatively mellow, relatively peaceful
00:09:27
turned around and became a man that was more interested in the fantasy in the world than the
00:09:33
reality. Uh after I got out of the service, I uh went to look up a lot of old friends,
00:09:39
the guys I used to hang out with and things, and found everybody pretty much moved on in the 3 years of absence. So,
00:09:46
I came back to find that I was on my own, kind of, you know, and wanted to eventually get my own apartment.
00:09:52
You know, wanted to find a a girl, maybe get married, and raise a family. And I had the all kinds of
00:09:58
normal, perfectly normal hopes and dreams. What would you tell 23-year-old David
00:10:05
Berkowitz today? Uh, turn around before it's too late, because destruction is coming, you know.
00:10:31
Berkowitz lived in Yonkers, north of New York. Police described him as a loner. His neighbors discussed their
00:10:37
impressions with CBS News correspondent Bill McLaughlin. Did he seem strange to you?
00:10:43
Not strange. When he came in, you know, he spoke, "What's happening?" and everything, but, uh, He was friendly
00:10:48
then. >> Yeah, he didn't seem strange. I never suspected him in this building, out of
00:10:51
every building in Yonkers. He's in 35 Pine Street, you know, that shocks me. So, you're living in Yonkers. You move
00:10:58
up to Yonkers. >> Yeah. You have an apartment up on the seventh floor. Yeah. 70 It's a nice spot. You're looking out
00:11:05
over the Hudson River. >> Yeah, the building was not in any way peaceful. >> Not that way. What was it like? It was
00:11:10
just chaotic. It was just a strange place. There was a strange spirit there. You live right here in this building.
00:11:24
Two, three, four. Used to be number 35. Changed the number in hopes of maybe make people feel a little better.
00:11:31
If they don't recognize where the building is, then I say, "Do you remember Son of Sam?" "Oh, I know where
00:11:36
the building is." Really? So, they know. People are familiar with it. Yeah. A lot
00:11:40
of people know what happened. It's still hard to believe that even something like
00:11:45
that exists in this world. I mean, who goes around killing people? I don't know anybody like that. No, you
00:11:50
try not to think of things like that. It's people in the neighborhood that knew him. They say, you know, he was
00:11:55
very, you know, cool with the kids. He used to give them ice cream, things like that.
00:12:00
And like he was a functional man. Just another guy. >> Yeah. What about the idea that he shot
00:12:05
Sam Carr's dog right behind here? This dog his master is a 6,000-year-old being talking to him through this dog, and
00:12:17
he's banging for blood. The dog got on Berkowitz's nerves. Apparently, the dog barked too much.
00:12:29
Berkowitz could hear it from his window. He tried to kill the dog. The dog didn't
00:12:34
die. And then he said, in his own twisted way, that the dog told him to kill. So, Berkowitz lived on the top floor.
00:12:48
He had a clear view right into the backyard here where the dog lived, owned by a guy named Sam Carr.
00:12:58
Hence the name Son of Sam. I wasn't comfortable there. I felt very isolated. Yeah, I didn't really have
00:13:07
much of a social life. I started to get into a lot of satanic stuff. So, I really was opening myself
00:13:14
up to some very dark forces. Sound like he had a friend or anything. There was nobody. He had a hole in the wall in his
00:13:20
apartment. It said that Mrs. Something-or-other and her kids live in the wall. You know, he's he's bonafide being nuts.
00:13:30
Well, there was just a battle going on at side B. In your head? Uh Well, wherever, you know, just a battle
00:13:36
going on, yeah. Right. Yeah. I guess here's the thing. He's a Christian man. Man who knows right from wrong.
00:13:45
>> Yeah. Who's had loving parents, right? Who's very thoughtful. Um yet at some point there
00:13:54
you killed two people to start this whole thing. She was 18-year-old Donna Lauria who was
00:14:05
sitting in a parked car with a friend late at night when her parents heard the shots. I went down. By the time I got
00:14:11
down, she was dead in the street. My daughter was 18 years old and that's what he took out of my heart at 18
00:14:16
years. It was very difficult time, yeah. Right. But then he did it again. It started out as a typical Friday
00:14:24
night. Drove to 159th Street, 32nd Avenue. Basically, we started making out and like 2 minutes later
00:14:32
Yeah, I was shot in the back of the head, but you know, on the top. The windows just shattered, so I had pieces
00:14:37
of glass all over my arms. I didn't know I was shot, but I knew something terrible had happened. My skull was
00:14:42
blown away. The only thing protecting my brain from the outside world was a flap
00:14:47
of skin. Well, things happen, yeah, but that's that's that's it, you know. And then
00:14:53
again. Then we get to November. We have Damascene and Lumino. They're shot. Yeah, they're standing on the
00:15:01
stoop and he walks up and he fires at them. So, at this point, you have nothing.
00:15:06
What are you thinking? We're thinking we got a tough case here. >> Police have been engaged in intensive
00:15:12
hunt for a man known as the .44 caliber killer. There's widespread apprehension that his crime spree is not over.
00:15:18
>> I mean, it just it just kept going for more than a year. The hardest cases in the world for
00:15:26
homicide detectives are strangers, stranger on stranger. You have very little to go with because you don't have
00:15:34
a motive. You may not have any witnesses, right? So, you you're at a dead standstill. Was there any common thread
00:15:41
with all of these families, victims of Son of Sam? Well, the common thread was these were their
00:15:47
you know, 20-year-olds, they're young, you know, the children. We've got Christine Freund. Again, this
00:15:57
shooting Right. Is there any suspicion? Yes. >> At least two witnesses say the gunman
00:16:02
walked up to the car, crouched, then fired four shots. One of the detectives come over to me
00:16:08
and he says, "You know, that's a big bullet." He says, "And we had a shooting in the 105 with a big bullet." And then
00:16:15
they also had one in Queens. So, that stood me up a little bit. The .44 bullet is big, nearly twice as
00:16:23
big as the conventional .38 caliber police handgun ammunition. The .44 is designed, they say, to kill.
00:16:30
Then we get to March, Virginia, the student. Shoots her right in the face. Starts to get a little curious now
00:16:39
because that shooting is only a block away from where Christine Freund was murdered.
00:16:44
We don't really get into the serial killer until the incident in the park. >> April 17th, 1977. That will go down in
00:16:52
infamy. Until then, you just had a series of of shootings without any real sense.
00:16:57
>> you know, at that time probably, I don't know, 1,500 homicides a year. The big
00:17:01
thing about this one was the .44 caliber bullets. Now, it's not just a bullet. He left a letter to me.
00:17:29
>> I was home in bed and I got a call. Looks like our boy Why? Big bullet. Big bullet. So now I got
00:17:37
dressed and I went to the park. You get to the scene, you get this letter, you read the letter. What do you
00:17:44
think? To me it looked like some kind of a psychopath wrote this letter. Mr. Borelli, sir.
00:17:51
I don't want to kill anymore. No, sir. No more. But I must honor thy father. I am deeply hurt by your calling me a
00:17:59
woman hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam. As far as I'm concerned, that that was
00:18:06
not me. That was not me. This even the that name I hate that name. I despise that name.
00:18:13
>> Which name? That moniker, Son of Sam. That's that that that was not That was a demon.
00:18:20
That that was that was the a demonic entity that I was serving in in my ignorance and my shame. This is no
00:18:27
longer a city case. This is now going to get nationwide attention. No one in the city of 8
00:18:34
million knows who is next. In New York early this morning, the .44 caliber killer tried to kill again.
00:18:44
That was just a a break from reality thought I was doing something to uh appease the devil. I'm sorry for it, but
00:18:53
I I really don't want to talk about it anymore >> Appease the devil? Well, I was at this time I had
00:18:59
was serving him. Yeah, I was serving him. I feel that he had taken over my mind and body and I just
00:19:05
surrendered to those very dark forces. I regret that with all my heart, but you know, that was like 40 years ago.
00:19:11
Effectively, it was him winning over us each time he got away with it. The only substantial clues so far have
00:19:18
been two letters, including one mailed to the New York Daily News. >> The killer chose Jimmy Breslin as his
00:19:24
conduit to a larger public. >> Jimmy Breslin was a great columnist for the New York Daily News. He was
00:19:30
sort of the voice of the people, related to people on a very visceral level. And it was no accident that the Son of
00:19:38
Sam killer started writing to him. Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale
00:19:49
wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by
00:19:57
the sweeper trucks. JB, I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest
00:20:05
in those recent and horrendous .44 caliber killings. In '77 is when the newspapers, you know, started to cover
00:20:13
this. The .44 caliber killer. Whatever. Son of Sam. You would see this stuff. It was on
00:20:19
a newspaper, on the TV, on the radio. It was everywhere. >> I I I I don't want to discuss that. You
00:20:24
know, yeah. Well, when we realized that this was an authentic letter that he had sent to the
00:20:30
Daily News, on one level, we were thrilled because it gave us access to the killer. What I thought was one of
00:20:37
the most disgusting episodes I've seen in journalism. Are you suggesting that murder isn't a big story? I think murder
00:20:42
as a story became in the papers, it was a blown ludicrously out of proportion and with very unhealthy social results.
00:20:48
Jimmy Breslin wrote one to him. Figuring that would trigger Berkowitz to respond again. And I didn't mind that
00:20:56
because I said, "The more he responds, the more the opportunity for us to solve the case." Jimmy was engaging in this
00:21:03
written dialogue with the killer for any number of reasons. One, because there might be more clues as to his identity,
00:21:10
and two, because it was an ongoing tabloid story that obviously would sell newspapers.
00:21:17
I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill. Did
00:21:22
you ever have a moment saying, "Geez, did I cause this? Did this column trigger this?" Not No.
00:21:28
Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the police department was put under a lot of pressure by the press.
00:21:32
>> Slow Sunday Sam Newsday would be 7 or 8 pages. Detectives would walk out and they'd have a TV crew following them.
00:21:39
The New York Mafia is trying to track the killer down. The press stoked Berkowitz, but it also incited 20
00:21:45
million people. >> We used to stay in front of my house and walking, you know, and kiss goodnight,
00:21:49
but we can't do that no more. An element of fear pervades neighborhoods which have not known fear before. People
00:21:55
wouldn't come out at night. They're really scared. And I mean, when they're scared, that's all they do is
00:22:00
talk about the the killer. Civilian patrolling has been stepped up in the neighborhood.
00:22:06
Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder-length dark brown hair.
00:22:11
>> People going out cutting their hair and dying it. >> They were bleaching their hair.
00:22:17
Becoming blondes. Literally, at night, sometimes a thousand, two thousand guys who would
00:22:22
just out there patrolling, looking for this guy. Those phones rang 24 hours. But you guys were everywhere. You shut
00:22:31
down lovers' lanes. I think all the motel owners in the city loved us. We forced everything indoors.
00:22:43
I'm leaving my house, and I'm walking down the steps, and my mom turns to me, and she says, "Robert, be careful." And
00:22:51
I turned around, and the next thing I said was, I'll never forget this. "Ma, don't worry. I'm going out with a
00:23:01
blonde tonight. Good evening. In New York early this morning, the .44 caliber killer tried to
00:23:20
kill again. Robert Violante, 20 years old, Stacy Moskowitz, also age 20, blonde. Both
00:23:30
shot twice in the head as they sat in their car near the ocean in the Brooklyn section of New York.
00:23:35
It was their first date. She was just a very bubbly alive, full of life young lady. Now, it's Saturday night,
00:23:46
the 31st of July, 1977. Correct. And we went to see the very popular movie back then, New York, New York with Liza
00:23:58
Minnelli. And it was a great movie. And it was a just a great night. What what happens after the movies?
00:24:06
So, now we decide to drive to one of the as they call it a lover's lane. Now, we're sitting there a couple of
00:24:13
minutes and we're just talking, you know, kissing a little bit and talking and Stacy turns to me and says, "Robert, you
00:24:20
know what? I'm getting a little nervous." She said, "Robert, let's go." And I said, "Five more
00:24:27
minutes." And in that 5 minutes is when we got shot. I'm screaming now, blowing the horn.
00:24:40
Help us. Help us. We've been shot. We've been shot. The horn died. >> What do you remember from
00:24:47
the shooting itself? The bullet totally destroyed the left eye and most of my right eye.
00:24:54
And uh you know, full of blood, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see Stacey. She's sitting
00:25:00
right next to me. I heard some moaning coming from Stacey. This evening, hospital officials said
00:25:11
Ms. Moskowitz remains in critical condition after 8 hours of surgery. She is given a 50/50 chance of living.
00:25:18
Violante's condition is guarded. He has lost the use of his left eye and probably will retain only 10% of the
00:25:24
vision in his right eye. What can you tell me about your son? We brought him up the right way.
00:25:36
Good boy. Never any trouble. Never involved in any dope. Never involved in any arrests.
00:25:44
What can I say? You told him to stay out of Queens. >> I told him to stay out of Queens. He
00:25:50
says, "Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens." Cuz he used used to go to Queens. He says, "I'll do it for you and
00:25:56
Mom. I'll hang around in Brooklyn." And that's where they found him. Violante, I remember his father was just
00:26:10
destroyed, totally destroyed because he had seen the results of what had happened to his son.
00:26:17
He was my best friend in the world. He was there for me every minute of the day when I was in the hospital.
00:26:29
I think it was my dad that told me about Stacey. At 5:22 p.m. Monday, Stacey Moskowitz
00:26:37
stopped living. The doctors said they had not turned off the life support. It was just that the horrible damage done
00:26:43
by a .44 caliber bullet in the brain was too much. She wasn't worried, you know, cuz she
00:26:53
says, you know, I got blonde hair and you know I told her I don't know how many times
00:27:03
to be careful. My daughter's dead, but I would die right here and now to see this man
00:27:08
punished. To do this to a young girl and a young boy. Find with the child. That woman has a son that's blonde.
00:27:16
To do this to young people, he can't be normal. He's not normal. Man, that's the saddest part that I
00:27:24
never got to really know Stacie. You still think about it to this day? Yeah, that was
00:27:35
really, really the sad part. But when Stacie Moskowitz was killed Berkowitz got a ticket for parking his
00:27:50
car in front of a fire hydrant. >> Yeah. There was a woman there who said, you know, I did see somebody get a summons
00:27:55
on a fire hydrant in front of my house. We immediately started looking at the summonses.
00:28:00
All right, they run the plate and the plate number comes back to David Berkowitz, his address in Yonkers. Comes
00:28:06
out to David Berkowitz, 35 Pine Street. They now decide, again thinking it's a witness, to call him. So they called the
00:28:13
Yonkers Police Department. The girl on the switchboard, she says, "Who too?" Uh David Berkowitz, 35 Pine She says,
00:28:20
"That guy, he's crazy. He shot my father's dog. I know that guy." What's your father's name?
00:28:30
Sam Carr. Which Carr? Who's Sam Carr's daughter? Lives next door to David Berkowitz. Owns the dog that
00:28:44
Berkowitz was >> So, you know, that was like, you know, all of these things fell in in one fell
00:28:50
swoop. Everybody's antenna goes up. When they get up there, they swing by his house
00:28:57
and they see his car. They look in the car and they see a letter to the Suffolk Police Department and they see a duffel
00:29:04
bag that had a gun in and a big rifle. And here comes Berkowitz with a little brown paper bag with his .44 gun in it.
00:29:11
Goes to the car, they jump him. And he says, "You got me." He's on the Son of Sam.
00:29:21
At about 1:00 this morning, 24-year-old David Berkowitz, who detectives believe is the Son of Sam, was brought to police
00:29:27
headquarters in Manhattan. He was wearing frayed jeans and an open sport shirt and he was smiling slightly.
00:29:36
They caught him. They caught him. They caught the piece of garbage. I'll never forget that. My friend Nicky.
00:29:43
What'd you say? I was so elated, so happy. I should thank God he's off the streets. He's not going to
00:29:52
ever be able to hurt anybody else again. I really can't describe how I felt. It was I guess a little bit of everything,
00:29:59
a little bit of excitement, a little bit of relief, a little bit of closure. When
00:30:03
I saw the front page, I was like, "Wow, I didn't expect him to look like that." Police ran ballistics tests this morning
00:30:11
on the .44 caliber gun they say Berkowitz bought from someone else who got it in Texas.
00:30:16
It's an infamous gun. I I could picture the damage that this thing did. You know, when you're looking
00:30:21
at the at the scene of the crime. The ballistics section has just called and told us that the .44 caliber gun
00:30:38
recovered tonight has been tested and the bullets match the bullets recovered from Stacy
00:30:44
Moskowitz. What does this mean? It means we have the gun that killed Stacy Moskowitz.
00:30:55
I mean, these were beautiful young people. >> I understand that, but again, there's
00:30:59
there's no you know, it's just the way it things turned out. It's regrettable, but
00:31:04
that's it, you know. Did you do all these crimes alone? Well, Now, years later, he tells everyone
00:31:30
that he was part of a cult and he was merely one of the shooters. You know, he's he's wacky, you know, I
00:31:37
mean, he's So, for him to say that he's part of a cult, you know, it was just something he came up with
00:31:43
like everything else, you know. Well, I felt that there were demons with me, but that was I'll have to save that for
00:31:50
another time. >> But you were the sole person who pulled the trigger, correct? Well,
00:31:55
a lot of things would happen in that in that case, but I take responsibility, you know.
00:31:59
And and that's it, yeah. You take responsibility for all these senseless murders.
00:32:04
>> yeah. There was nobody else involved. Uh let's just put it this way, there were demons and that was it. You leave
00:32:10
the door open or is that Well, one day maybe I can have a chance to share more, but that's that's we'll leave that at
00:32:16
that, you know. We shot all that down, you know, and I think I told you the biggest claim to fame was when they used
00:32:22
to say that, the cult, I said, "Did we have an incident after we locked up Berkowitz?" The killing stopped. Did
00:32:29
the killing stop? >> Yeah. For him to say years later that he was part of a cult, you know, it was
00:32:33
just more attention. That's all it was about with him. But there are people who believe it. I'm just telling you, the
00:32:38
people that say they believe in it never interviewed David Berkowitz. They never
00:32:41
sat the way I did. In this room? In this room, in this corner. To step back for a second, you walk in I
00:32:48
walk in. >> You lay eyes on him. What are you thinking? What do you see? What does he
00:32:51
look like? >> first I'm looking at him to see what he looks like. I said, "So, what happened here, you
00:32:55
know? How did it start?" 30 minutes, he goes from beginning to end, tells me the whole story. He was
00:33:01
relaxed. >> What kind of demeanor? He's saying this with a straight face? >> it the way you would talk about making a
00:33:06
pastrami sandwich. Uh to to just talk about it like that was scary. I I thought he absolutely
00:33:12
felt he was certifiably wacky. And I thought they would just put him in an institution. The accused killer is
00:33:19
now undergoing a court-ordered psychological examination at the Kings County Medical Center in Brooklyn, where
00:33:25
he will be held in maximum security for up to 30 days. We will engage in uh a normal psychiatric examination.
00:33:34
>> Dr. Shaw What's? He was a court-appointed psychiatrist to analyze him to see if he was
00:33:41
uh fit to stand trial. And he determined he was fit for trial. So, this insane business that goes out
00:33:47
the window. There was no outward sign of emotion, no expressed remorse today as David Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a
00:33:54
Brooklyn, New York court to six random Son of Sam murders, slayings which terrorized New York for more than a
00:34:00
year. So, you you show up in court when Berkowitz was going to be sentenced for the first time.
00:34:08
Yeah. He said some foul things about Stacy. Oh, yeah. To a weird nursery rhyme-like
00:34:14
tune, Berkowitz, who had never known Stacy Moskowitz, sang, "Stacy was a whore."
00:34:19
Mrs. Moskowitz bolted out of her seat and screamed back, "You animal!" And then, Robert Violante, Stacy's date the
00:34:26
night she died, rose and shouted, "You creep!" I reacted, called yourself, you piece of
00:34:34
You should die. You should rot in hell. I was Oh, I just went off on him. David Berkowitz explained his courtroom
00:34:42
outburst. Total anger. Total anger. That's it. Just total outrage and I really couldn't control myself.
00:34:51
Three weeks after his wild courtroom outburst, which led to a delay for further psychiatric evaluation, David
00:34:57
Berkowitz again judged competent to face sentencing arrived to learn his fate. Berkowitz, who just turned 25, was given
00:35:05
a total of six sentences for murder of 25 years to life. What do you say to the victims'
00:35:11
families, to the victims who are still living today? Well, I I've I've apologized many times
00:35:17
and I just always let them know that uh I'm very sorry for what happened that uh
00:35:22
I wish I could go back and change things and that I I hope these people are getting along in
00:35:27
life as best as possible. I never forget, you know, where I came from and what my situation was like some four
00:35:35
decades ago. People that were hurt, people that are still in pain, suffering loss because of my criminal actions.
00:35:44
And I I never forget that. That sometimes weighs very heavy on me. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of took over my
00:35:50
personality. And wherever I went, everything would just stop and everyone and you just hear
00:35:56
whispering. That's the guy that was shot by Son of Sam. And it got to the point where it it was
00:36:01
it became disturbing for me. And um I really felt like I was losing my identity. Didn't have any children
00:36:08
cuz I never got married, never had children. Unfortunately, he ruins not just my
00:36:13
life, 12 other lives plus two families. So, how do you forgive something like that,
00:36:22
somebody like that? You don't. You When you think about the irony, I mean, here's a kid who lost his
00:36:27
mom at 14. And you think about the depth of the pain that you felt. And then, years later,
00:36:35
because of you, Yeah, sure, right. >> six people have that same kind of pain. All right.
00:36:40
>> Seven others injured for life. Mhm. How's that strike you? It's very painful. It's very painful.
00:36:48
I carry around the pain, too. Not not not the same kind, but one that I'm aware of what happened.
00:36:55
Yeah. Yeah. I I draw a comfort, uh, if you can call it that, from from reading about in the in the
00:37:04
scriptures about some of the, uh, well-known Bible characters that, uh, did very bad things and how God forgave
00:37:13
them and God was able to use them in in very special ways, very unique ways, and
00:37:19
they became what what we'd call champions of the faith. And what did a lot of work in my life,
00:37:30
you know. That's why I try so hard in my messages to give a cautionary tale to young people
00:37:36
about not getting involved in in Satanism or the occult or you know, those kind of things, because
00:37:41
I feel that they they too could maybe take a bad path. >> Does it give you satisfaction to reach
00:37:46
young people? Yeah, sure. I get I get letters all the time. I have a a calling to just write to
00:37:53
encourage people from all walks of life. It's something I do on my own on my spare time and, uh, I get a lot of
00:37:58
satisfaction from it, but most of all, I believe that that's what God has called
00:38:02
me to do. Berkowitz is a born-again Christian. He's a minister in prison. He takes a lot of pride in helping
00:38:15
people. That's his thing. What do you think of that? >> I think that's a lot better road to go
00:38:20
down than serial killer. You're in jail. What what else you got to look forward to? You might as well say, "Yeah, I
00:38:24
found God." Why not? But, um I really think he did. You know, that that doesn't mean he's exonerated. If
00:38:31
he's trying to do better with other prisoners, so be it. That's God's way of probably
00:38:42
making him understand how wrong and bad of a person he was. And now God's giving him a second chance
00:38:53
to do right by other people. But, it still doesn't change the fact of how I feel.
00:39:00
I will I'll never forgive. Why not? Why not? Cuz he snuffed out six people's lives,
00:39:07
ruined another seven, plus all the families involved. For people that didn't do anything
00:39:13
to him. You know, didn't bump into him, didn't say nothing to him. So, I I just can't forgive.
00:39:24
Yeah. But, when you look at the front picture right there, those are two yous. Right. Two pictures
00:39:30
of you. That's right. Mhm. Well, what do you see? I see a I see the old man and I see the new man in Christ.
00:39:38
Yeah, I see the one man that was tormented by demons and I see the man that that has the peace of God radiating from
00:39:46
him. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's where I'm at now. Mhm. That's that that's the way I was always
00:39:55
supposed to be. A mayor of hope. You know? Yeah. What is a life worth? I don't know.
00:40:15
Mr. and Mrs. Lauria might feel totally different. You know, they lost their daughter 40 years ago. Does parole is
00:40:22
that attractive to you at this point? >> As a realistic hope, I don't see any hope for parole, no.
00:40:28
I personally I feel there has to be justice for the death of those people. And that's the justice.
00:40:35
Life in prison. 48 hours to miss it would be a crime. Were you at all prepared for what
00:40:51
happened in this case? Tortola is a beautiful mountainous island in the Caribbean.
00:41:39
It feels really exotic but really safe at the same time for a tourist. The ocean all around Tortola is
00:41:47
beautiful clear crystal water that you can see for several feet in. Tortola is gorgeous.
00:41:56
My name is Jen Bloom and I'm the oldest child of David Swain. In March of 1999 my father and his wife
00:42:03
Shelley put together a trip to Tortola. I felt so lucky that her and I had found
00:42:09
each other and connected. She was just a phenomenal, wonderful woman. Shelly was absolutely passionate about
00:42:19
diving. It excited her on every level. She loved adventure. That was one of the attractions.
00:42:25
I'm an adventurous person. She's an adventurous person. On the last day of the trip, my father
00:42:32
and Shelly and their friends decided they wanted to dive this site called the Twin Tugs.
00:42:38
My father and Shelly decided to go into the water first. At some point they separated. They usually separated on
00:42:44
dives. Shelly is specifically interested in her fish counting project. She had a
00:42:50
slate and she would mark the kinds of fish she would see underwater. And I'd go off and take pictures.
00:42:57
He was enjoying himself. It wasn't a lot to see. I was a little chilly and it wasn't that great of a dive, so I
00:43:02
decided to surface. And my father asked him had Shelly surfaced yet cuz he didn't know where she was.
00:43:08
The other diver decided to go in. And 10 minutes later he came up with Shelly's body.
00:43:13
My father went to start the whole CPR process, but she was already gone. She was not responding to anything.
00:43:22
Nothing. I know she's dead. He loved her so much and he loved diving so much and then to lose her to
00:43:31
something he loved, no one deserves that. In most diving accidents, for all intents and purposes, appear to be just
00:43:40
that, accidents. My name is Jeff Morgan. I'm an underwater forensic investigator.
00:43:47
Shelly's equipment, the mask was broken, the mouthpiece from the snorkel was dislodged. That lends
00:43:55
itself to believe that a struggle may have ensued underwater. It is very suspicious.
00:44:02
She had a couple medical things that could have gone wrong. Was it a mild stroke or a mild heart
00:44:08
attack? Yeah, I didn't read anything in the autopsy report that would lead me to
00:44:13
believe that it was a heart attack. Could have been a seizure. It could have been a headache. She could have
00:44:18
panicked. Once panic sets in, almost every rule that you can think of is out the window. We don't know what happened
00:44:25
to Shelly Ann in 75 ft of water. I would characterize it as an accident. I truly
00:44:29
do not believe that this was an accident. In my opinion, it was murder. Shelly's last breath.
00:45:22
It was the Caribbean vacation Shelly Tyre had been looking forward to. Sunny, sailing, and scuba diving with her
00:45:29
husband and friends in Tortola. And in March 1999, it finally happened. They put together a
00:45:37
really fun trip. Got to do a lot of different things where they were sailing all around the British Virgin Islands,
00:45:43
and they were diving off the sailboat they were living on. But on that fateful last dive, something
00:45:49
went horribly, mysteriously wrong. Now, Shelly was dead. And the Tortola police wanted to talk to her husband,
00:45:57
David Swaim. He called his daughter, Jen. And he said, "I'm so sorry. I wasn't with her.
00:46:04
I don't know what happened, but Shelly died today." And he was crying and he was very upset and he was doing his best
00:46:12
to get her home. He said, "The autopsy's going to happen. There was cops." Tortola police began questioning David
00:46:20
about every detail of the dive. And the local medical examiner performed the autopsy. But no one could figure out
00:46:27
just how Shelly died. So, after a few days with no evidence of foul play, authorities ruled Shelly's death an
00:46:35
accident and released her body to her husband. It had been a really rough flight. He
00:46:41
had to load the coffin onto the plane himself. And he came off the plane. >> David's son, Jeremy. Came over to me and
00:46:47
Jen and he gave us a hug and he said, "It's all right. It's going to be all right." And he was genuinely
00:46:53
hurt. Shelly Tyre was small in stature, but her impact on David and his children was
00:47:00
enormous. And 10 years after her death, David still remembers why he fell in love. She had a a heart bigger than her.
00:47:08
She had passions and drive that had no equal. A middle school principal at prestigious
00:47:19
Thayer Academy outside Boston, Shelly was anything but straight-laced. The Penguin Plunge.
00:47:27
Every New Year's Day on a frigid Rhode Island beach, 500 to 1,000 people all go racing into the 37° water. Shelly
00:47:35
stripped down to her swimsuit. The water hit you, you get that that sort of shock. Shelly turned this beet red
00:47:41
color, goosebumps head to toe, shaking uncontrollably with a ear-to-ear grin. With such a love of adventure, it was no
00:47:50
wonder Shelly found David so attractive. When she met him in the early '90s, the
00:47:55
divorced father of two teens was running a dive shop in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
00:48:00
The ocean was his passion. Then way back with this one to push and then you pull
00:48:04
this one in a lot. >> My father is a teacher. He's a naturalist by nature. >> And you only have so much energy anyway.
00:48:09
>> He taught me and my brother that the most important thing in the world is to teach and share what you know and be
00:48:15
excited about the ocean. What we'll do is we're going to paddle out around this point so that On one of his kayaking
00:48:20
tours, Shelly went along. Suddenly there was this lightning storm going on and my father just took charge
00:48:26
the whole thing and attached his boat to her boat and rode them out of it. Shelly
00:48:31
was impressed by David's courage and leadership. He moved in and in October 1993, they were married. Back then,
00:48:39
Shelly earned far more money than David. >> Well, here we are at Ocean State Scuba
00:48:43
pool side. He says he sank nearly every dime into the dive shop. All the training necessary Shelly's parents were
00:48:50
worried. So David signed a prenuptial agreement. He would get no money if he and Shelly divorced. Dad never cared
00:48:57
about money. Shelly herself couldn't have cared less about money. >> No. She just decided this is it. This is the
00:49:05
guy I want to be with. He loves adventure. He's not afraid and he'll always be there. But on that dive in
00:49:11
Tortola, even David admits he wasn't there when Shelly needed him. While their friend stayed on the boat,
00:49:19
David and Shelly dove into the water. Swam our course that we had all agreed upon.
00:49:26
Got to the wrecks. And we went our separate ways as we always did. David says he has no idea how Shelly
00:49:33
died because he wasn't with her. And that's exactly what he told her parents, Richard and Lisa Tyre. We got a
00:49:39
telephone call and um it was David. He said Shelly's no longer with us and he indicated he wasn't there
00:49:48
and didn't know what had happened. I knew that they were unhappy with me when I made the phone call that night.
00:49:55
We just assumed that divers always had buddies, the buddy system, and I kept saying, "Well, weren't you her buddy?"
00:50:02
And he said, "No, I left her." You said you split up during the dive, which you said you normally do. But doesn't that
00:50:07
go against standard practice? I'm not I'm not a diver. I understand that. How many times have you broken the speed
00:50:14
limit? Every diver at one time or another is diving alone. Shelly had done solo dives
00:50:22
before, and David says he tried to help her parents understand what could have happened, explaining that even something
00:50:28
small like a headache could have caused Shelly to lose control underwater and make a mistake.
00:50:35
Do you think it's possible that she just panicked? >> Sure. Panic is the end result of
00:50:39
something else. I don't know what factor got Shelly, but I think some factor got her started.
00:50:46
Who knows what it was? In fact, Shelly had panicked on previous dives. She even wrote about it in her
00:50:53
dive log, which David gave to her parents, but it didn't seem to help them. Because
00:50:58
they're not divers. You know, unless you're a diver, that this is going to be so foreign.
00:51:03
It would be very foreign. But what was really foreign to her parents was how unemotional and
00:51:10
matter-of-fact David seemed about Shelly's death. I'm just not I'm not an out outwardly warm fuzzy guy.
00:51:18
But your wife just died. And your behavior didn't seem appropriate for a man in mourning. My daughter saw it. My
00:51:25
son saw it. But around Jamestown and at Shelly's school, the talk was about how well David was doing without Shelly.
00:51:32
>> This isn't right. He's too elated almost about this. This guy is too happy. Don
00:51:38
Badger taught at Thayer Academy. He says David didn't appear to be in mourning even at the school's memorial service
00:51:45
just weeks after Shelly's death. It wasn't any solemnity to what he was saying and it bothered so many of us
00:51:52
there. It It really did. Then, when David collected more than $600,000 from her estate, he started
00:52:00
spending a lot of money very visibly, making pricey renovations to the dive shop, taking vacations, and even dating.
00:52:08
People were looking for answers. David's friend and fellow scuba instructor, John Langella, says despite
00:52:15
appearances, there's no doubt in his mind that David was grieving. >> he was upset. He was not right. He
00:52:22
didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know if he could ever go back in the water. He called me and he said,
00:52:26
"I'm not doing well. When is this pain going to go away?" Sandy Wheeler is David's ex-wife, Jen and Jeremy's
00:52:33
mother, and has known him for 40 years. He was in a lot of pain and he didn't know how to handle the pain. But if he
00:52:42
was in pain, the people who needed him to express it most of all were Shelly's parents. And for whatever reason, David
00:52:49
just could not do it. In the year or two after Shelly's death, he was not able to say the things that the Tyres needed
00:52:57
to hear. >> When I heard through the grapevine that they were starting to throw the word
00:53:01
"murderer" around, I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. Every cell in
00:53:08
my body wanted to go over there and just like knock on the door and say, "Are you
00:53:12
insane?" Diving is a beautiful sport that's inherently dangerous and it went horribly wrong. And
00:53:28
accidents happen. This is just a horrible accident, a mister. I don't have the answers.
00:53:37
David Swain says his inability to explain Shelly's death led her parents to assume the worst.
00:53:45
That he murdered their daughter. How did that make you feel knowing that your in-laws thought you had killed
00:53:52
their daughter? >> Sad. I mean it made me sad, but Not angry? They didn't know diving.
00:54:00
One year after Shelly's death, the Tyres hired an attorney and sent him and his team of experts to Tortola in search of
00:54:08
the answers David didn't have. We just wanted to know the facts. He never told us the facts.
00:54:14
Over the course of several months, the team uncovered evidence they believe proves David was lying.
00:54:21
We asked a leading expert in underwater investigations to examine their findings.
00:54:27
In reviewing the facts in this case, this was much much more than just a simple scuba diving accident.
00:54:33
Sergeant Jeff Morgan with the San Bernardino, California Sheriff's Department offered to sit through case
00:54:38
documents provided by 48 hours. He also attempted to replicate underwater key parts of Shelly and
00:54:46
David's fatal dive. Anywhere right around in here with What first troubled Sergeant Morgan about the case was the
00:54:52
short amount of time David performed CPR on Shelly. Typically, you don't start CPR until as a rescuer you can no longer
00:55:02
perform it till you're exhausted. How long did you perform CPR? Hm, that's the big magic question.
00:55:08
Minutes. Was it 5 minutes? Was it 10 minutes? Was it 4 minutes? I don't know. It was
00:55:14
minutes. David was very emphatic that she's gone or she's dead. I don't think that's uh that's an
00:55:22
inappropriate response. I don't think that you can declare a person dead in a in that short of a time span. There was
00:55:29
nothing left to do. Nothing. If you are performing CPR on somebody that is responsive,
00:55:37
sure, I would have gone until hell froze over. But, she was not responding to anything.
00:55:44
But, it wasn't just David's behavior that afternoon that raised red flags. Tortola police discovered Shelly's
00:55:51
equipment was damaged. The police didn't make much of it, but the expert hired by
00:55:56
her family's attorney did. Engineer Bill Oliver designs scuba gear. What was unusual
00:56:03
about Shelly's mask is the strap was broken from the side of the mask here, and where this pin here is intact on
00:56:10
this mask, it was missing from hers. Shelly's snorkel, attached to the same side of the mask as the broken pin, was
00:56:17
also missing its mouthpiece. My belief is something pulled the mask off of her face, and I
00:56:26
can see in a scenario where she resisted that, she held onto the mask, and in the
00:56:31
tug-of-war, some things gave. Bottom line is, somebody intervened besides Shelly Tyre with this equipment
00:56:40
to uh to get it in that condition. Sergeant Jeff Morgan agrees. Shelly didn't die in an accident.
00:56:48
She was murdered. What's more, he says only one person could have been responsible. In our
00:56:54
reality, there was nobody else in the water at the time of Shelly's death but David
00:57:01
Swain. I think that David swam up behind her and shut off the air supply, held onto
00:57:10
her until she was struggling, uh reached up, grabbed the mask, ripped the mask from her face, and held onto
00:57:19
her until she stopped struggling. Did you kill Shelly Tyre? Did not, would not, could not. This
00:57:28
thought, this craziness that I would do something like that to Shelly is just it's just so revolting.
00:57:36
But the Tyr's insist David had a motive. Right before the trip to Tortola, Shelly
00:57:42
decided to change jobs and take a substantial cut in pay. The dive shop that David had
00:57:49
was very much supported by Shelly's income. If Shelly was going to take a pay cut, his business may not survive.
00:57:57
According to Sergeant Morgan, that along with the couple's prenuptial agreement meant Shelly was worth more to David
00:58:04
dead than alive. That provides for a motive to commit murder. Everybody keeps thinking that I'm doing
00:58:12
all this for money. I'm just as happy being flat broke as I am when I'm fat and rich.
00:58:18
Probably happier flat broke. Less hassle. The Tyr's weren't buying it. They were
00:58:24
now convinced David murdered their daughter. But authorities in Tortola still refuse to rule Shelly's death a
00:58:31
homicide. So in 2006, the Tyr's sued David in a Rhode Island civil court for wrongful death. Is that part of the
00:58:39
reason why you're fighting this to keep Shelly's memory alive? Yes. Yes. Very much so.
00:58:46
In a videotaped deposition, David testified he and Shelly swam together for 10 to 15 minutes before they
00:58:53
separated. I have a vague recollection of circumnavigating the wrecks, poking around the wrecks, and seeing
00:59:02
Shelly still interested in looking at something around there. And that's the last time I saw her as I
00:59:07
swam off towards the reef. But the Tyr's attorney tried to prove David was with Shelly when she drowned.
00:59:14
Based on the air left in Shelly's tank, he calculates she stopped breathing just
00:59:19
8 minutes into her dive. She battled for her life at the point and place and time exactly
00:59:29
when he was with her, she was burning her air. Right up to the point where he shut it off.
00:59:40
He then showed the jury a videotape demonstration that he and his team prepared illustrating their theory of
00:59:46
how David Swaine swam up behind Shelley, turned off her air, and killed her. In less than 3 hours, Do you have a
00:59:57
verdict? the jury found David Swaine responsible for Shelley's death and awarded the Tyres $3.5 million.
01:00:05
But the Tyres say this has never been about the money. Money has nothing to do with it.
01:00:13
Nothing. It's We just want Shelley. Armed with a civil court victory, the Tyres' attorney convinced Tortolan
01:00:24
authorities to reopen their investigation. A year and a half later, island prosecutors charged David Swaine with
01:00:31
the murder of his wife. David did not fight extradition and wound up in a Tortolan jail.
01:00:38
What? Now what do we do? How do we Who does this? With his trial now looming, Jen and
01:00:46
Jeremy will travel to the island to help prove their father is innocent. But before they can do that, their father
01:00:53
will first have to explain this woman. 10 years after his fatal vacation with Shelley, David Swaine again has a
01:01:12
Caribbean view. But this time, it's from inside a jail cell in Her Majesty's Prison on Tortola.
01:01:22
He has been here awaiting trial for nearly 2 years. It's a journey that I didn't want to take, but if I'm forced
01:01:28
to take it, I'm going to do the best I can with it. His children, Jen and Jeremy, have come to Tortola to help him
01:01:34
prepare his defense. He's very hopeful. He believes, he has to believe. We all all of us have to put
01:01:42
100% of our belief into that this will be okay. This is a man's life we're talking about.
01:01:48
Even as Jen and Jeremy are fighting for their father, their stepmother Shelly is
01:01:53
still very much on their minds. I wanted to go to a place that would be special to me, where I could
01:02:01
pay my respects in peace, doing something that Shelly and I shared, because Shelly and I used to dive
01:02:05
together, too. See you in theater. We went down the line. And I had her wreath up on my arm.
01:02:19
There is a pipe, and I put the wreath down on top of that. That was that I said goodbye.
01:02:29
Jeremy said goodbye, but could not let go of a troublesome detail. I went back a couple more times,
01:02:36
because what was coming up really bothered me. He was most bothered by claims that his
01:02:41
father was with Shelly when she stopped breathing. Prosecution experts claim that the amount of air left in Shelly's
01:02:48
tank showed that she was alive for only 8 minutes. I went down to the site. I used that amount of air that she
01:02:56
consumed, and it took me 15 minutes. Jeremy says the prosecution's 8-minute calculation doesn't add up. He says
01:03:05
Shelly just wouldn't breathe air that quickly. Not if she was running a marathon under the water, which she had
01:03:11
ever used up air that fast. The only explanation, according to Jeremy, is that Shelly was alive a lot longer than
01:03:19
prosecution experts believe, meaning David would have been long gone and nearly back to the boat at the time of
01:03:25
Shelly's death. The only thing that everybody can agree on is that there was some external force
01:03:32
applied to her equipment. For his criminal trial, David has the help of two experienced Boston defense
01:03:39
attorneys, Tim Bradl and Neil Tassel. They argue that Shelly could have ripped off her own mask in a panic. It's right
01:03:45
in the PADI beginners manual. Panic divers are prone to reject their gear. In other words, rip their mask off. You
01:03:53
believe that she panicked underwater? >> Absolutely. That's what all the evidence
01:03:57
appears to be. Now with these lawyers helping to prepare for the criminal trial, David's children are feeling
01:04:04
hopeful about their chances. We know the truth is on our side, so we actually have the upper hand. If you
01:04:09
just stay with the truth, it's all going to be good. But staying with the truth will mean talking about another possible
01:04:16
motive for murder. About a year before Shelly's death, David got very friendly with a chiropractor who visited his dive
01:04:23
shop named Mary Basler. Mary Basler came along, bright, happy woman, willing to talk.
01:04:30
Mary Basler might have been willing to talk, but when David kissed her one summer night, she told him she was not
01:04:37
willing to get involved with a married man. I'm as guilty of being curious beyond I what I should have as anybody.
01:04:45
Perhaps still curious, David wrote Mary that fall, inviting her to spend the weekend with him in Killington, Vermont.
01:04:52
The letter said, "I promise to return you in a rejuvenated state or in need of rest,
01:04:58
whichever strikes our fancy." You invited her to Killington for the weekend. Wasn't that going to be the beginning of
01:05:05
something? No. It was just going to be a a friendly weekend in Killington? You make it sound like a guy can't have
01:05:13
a girlfriend. Does your wife know that you invited her? No. Mary didn't go to Killington, but
01:05:20
soon David wrote Mary again, telling her, "I'm wanting to be with you, but I can't change this mess I've got anytime
01:05:28
soon." You made a reference to a mess that you need to get out of. Well, I think I made a mess by
01:05:37
letting my curiosity get the best of me. You weren't describing your marriage to
01:05:41
Shelly as a mess. No. David addressed that letter to soulmate Mary. You thought Mary was your soulmate?
01:05:50
It's a nice word, isn't it? Did you envision a future with Mary Basler? At that time, no.
01:05:56
But according to both David and Mary, after that kiss, nothing happened between them. It was a stupid,
01:06:03
inconsiderate mistake. That is until Shelly Tyre died. Two months after the fatal trip to
01:06:10
Tortola, David Swaine and Mary Basler started a relationship. When my father started dating Mary soon
01:06:18
after Shelly's death, I remember thinking he's running. He's never dealt with emotion in a strong
01:06:25
way. It's starting to come up, and so he's running to this woman. David and Mary dated for
01:06:32
about a year. I don't think it's about whether he was having an affair or not. It's about whether he killed his wife or
01:06:38
not. David's ex-wife, Sandy Wheeler. I asked him straight out, "Did you do this?" And he said, "No, I did not do
01:06:45
this." And I believe him. What prompted you to ask him did he kill Shelly Tyre? I think I just needed to
01:06:53
hear it from him. I never thought he did it, but I think I just needed to hear it
01:06:58
from him. You were married for 12 years. Yeah. And within that time, did you ever see a
01:07:03
violent side Never. >> to David? No. Never. But it turns out David's early life was
01:07:11
far from peaceful. >> David was a person who kind of wanted to leave things the past is the past.
01:07:17
And now with his life on the line, David Swains defense will delve into secrets he has protected for decades. His mother
01:07:27
died the first year we were together. From what? She was killed. They went from respecting him as the man
01:07:49
that their daughter chose to spend the rest of her life with to calling him a murderer.
01:07:58
They basically made him the scapegoat for a mystery that can't be solved. While the mystery may never be solved
01:08:07
Jen and Jeremy are hoping at the very least evidence presented in a Tortola court can convince the tyers that their
01:08:15
father is an innocent man. He's never given us reason to doubt him. He's a quiet guy. He's a reserved guy.
01:08:26
He doesn't express himself particularly well. I really feel in a big way that those things put him in jail.
01:08:34
It was after all David's unemotional, strangely detached response to Shelly's death that first raised the suspicions
01:08:42
of her parents. But Jen says that's the way her dad has always been. My father was uncomfortable around
01:08:52
emotion and emotional experiences. And I never ever saw him upset. >> That dispassionate demeanor says Jen is
01:09:01
the product of an unspeakably horrific past. He grew up in a very complicated and abusive household.
01:09:09
There was sexual and verbal abuse going on. When David was 9 years old, his father,
01:09:22
Donald Swain, was convicted of sexually abusing another young family member and sentenced to 2 years in prison.
01:09:31
He grew up learning to not speak about things because you it just made it worse when he did.
01:09:41
David says he, too, was preyed upon by his father. What happened to you at the hands of your father?
01:09:49
Horrible things. Can you share some of them? >> No, I'm not going to share those.
01:09:58
In the early 1970s, Donald Swain began living as a woman and changed his name to Diane. It seemed to leave another
01:10:06
scar on David. But it was in 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that David's already fragile world
01:10:19
completely shattered. His brother murdered his mother when I was a baby. 47-year-old Betty Swain was bludgeoned
01:10:31
to death by her own son, David's 8-year-old brother, Richard. Your own brother killed your mother.
01:10:39
Yes. How did that affect you? Horribly. That was just another incredible loss. David was 20 years old when his mother's
01:10:56
body was found in the family's station wagon 5 miles away from her home. Sons don't kill mothers. Former
01:11:04
Minneapolis assistant district attorney Jim Erickson remembers Betty Swains murder for its brutality.
01:11:11
I think a garbage bag was put on her head and she was then hit again and again. There was plastic
01:11:18
embedded deep in her head in her skull. After a 9-day long trial a jury found Richard Swaine guilty.
01:11:29
This kid killed his mom. He just snapped. 33 years later David Swaine, just like his brother,
01:11:39
stands accused of murder. No shortage of tragedy in our lives. I don't know if you've had the occasion
01:11:46
to suffer a loss where you didn't get to say goodbye, but I've had two now and then that's just
01:11:52
that's just wrong. As David's trial approaches his attorneys Neil Tassell and Tim Bradl
01:12:01
hope to use the traumas of David's past to explain how his bizarre response to Shelly's drowning
01:12:09
turned an accident into an accusation of murder. He is a peculiar personality who because
01:12:19
of his traumatic upbringing deals with emotional events in a very stunted way. And it was misperceived by
01:12:27
Shelly's parents who essentially started a boulder rolling down off a mountain that was not going
01:12:35
to stop. But the defense's biggest worry what will happen when this emotionally crippled man takes the stand to defend
01:12:43
himself in court. I can't control what's going to happen. I just have to let it happen.
01:13:07
He's scared as anyone would be. Thousands of miles away from home accused of murder.
01:13:12
10 years after Shelly Tyre's death, David Swains murder trial in Tortola is finally underway.
01:13:20
Shelly's elderly parents have flown in determined to see justice done. They lost their daughter.
01:13:28
And we'll never know how. They know they'll never know how. For Jen and Jeremy, seeing the two people who they
01:13:34
once considered their grandparents is particularly painful. The times that I tried to connect with them over the
01:13:41
grief of losing Shelly, I was rebuffed. They don't want anything to do with me. But they were forced to sit
01:13:47
uncomfortably close to each other in the tiny courtroom. Cameras were not allowed, but
01:13:52
microphones recorded the moment when prosecutor Terrance Williams laid out David's motive for murder. Money and
01:14:00
another woman. This man here, his wife is killed and all his dreams came true. All his dreams came true.
01:14:10
Most damning, says the prosecutor, within months of burying his dead wife, David rekindles his relationship with
01:14:17
Mary Basler. The wife dies in March and by May, they're having intimacy. It painted
01:14:25
David Swaine in a very bad light. David's defense team is working with local council
01:14:31
Hayden St. Clair Douglas. It was a jury of nine people, seven of whom were women. Women jurors who he believes
01:14:40
won't like the idea of David dating Mary so soon after Shelly's death. But that's not the defense team's only
01:14:47
worry. Prosecutors show the jury Shelly's damaged diving gear, tell them how David
01:14:52
stopped giving her CPR, and present their theory that David held her down and turned her air off.
01:14:59
They had to come up with some kind of scary story that would make the jurors who are not divers all say, "Oh, that's
01:15:07
what happened." David's only chance, take the stand to defend himself. His defense attorney questions him
01:15:15
first. Did you kill Shelly Tyre? I did not, could not, would not dream of taking
01:15:22
the rock of my life out of the world. No, I did not. Did you in any way deprive Shelly Tyre of air?
01:15:30
The last thing in the world is I would deprive Shelly of anything. That's why I certainly didn't deprive
01:15:35
her of air. Then the prosecutor tries to rattle David. You held her down. I did not. And
01:15:42
made her become unconscious. I did not. David begins to lose his patience when Prosecutor Williams pushes him about
01:15:49
those letters he wrote to Mary Basler, calling her his soulmate, and inviting her to spend the weekend. You desired
01:15:56
her. I certainly desired her friendship. You desired her in a sexual nature. Not to where you're suggesting, no. Do
01:16:04
you often write love letters to ladies? No. This is not a love letter. It's not love
01:16:12
letters? This is not a love letter. Okay. You came off as arrogant, a little hostile,
01:16:20
smug. What were you thinking when you were up there? I mean, this is a moment for you
01:16:26
to win sympathy from the jurors, to make a connection with them. And how well do you know me?
01:16:31
Not well at all. But I know how you're supposed to comport yourself if your life is on the
01:16:37
line. So, you would want me to be something I'm not. I am what I am. I think people would
01:16:43
want the truth. In what seems like a fatal blow to the defense, the judge refuses to allow
01:16:48
certain testimony about how long Shelly was alive underwater. We had data on her air consumption that
01:16:57
was derived from her own dive logs. A defense expert was prepared to testify that Shelly's last breath occurred more
01:17:05
than 20 minutes into the dive, long after David says he left her side. Unfortunately, the judge viewed our data
01:17:14
with suspicion. And I don't know why. But the prosecution does present its evidence that Shelly died 8 minutes into
01:17:22
the dive, when they say David was still with her. That's when I started to get really
01:17:27
scared. That was the first day I thought we could lose. Now it's all up to the jury. It takes
01:17:35
them only 4 hours to reach a verdict. Up until I saw the jury walking in, I was pretty hopeful.
01:17:42
Guilty of the offense of murder. David Swaine has been found guilty of the murder of his wife, Shelly Shelly Tyre.
01:17:48
David Swaine is sentenced to life behind bars. As authorities take their father away,
01:17:57
his children are stunned and angry. I have never doubted my father's innocence. He is completely innocent.
01:18:03
>> man. The jury made a mistake today. They made a mistake today. >> did not allow our witnesses to say their
01:18:10
full share. Our father is an innocent man. But Richard and Lisa Tyre say that they know the truth. And they thought
01:18:17
their long journey to get justice for Shelly had ended. We feel extremely good that people like David Swaine
01:18:27
won't be able to hurt any more women. From his Tortola jail cell, David Swaine could still see the ocean he loved so
01:18:36
much. He could even taste the salt in the air, but he wondered if it would ever wash over him again.
01:18:46
Do you think you'll ever walk? Will I ever walk out of here as a free person? Yeah.
01:18:55
To not think that would be to give up. I'm not going to give up. Swain did not give up.
01:19:05
Two years after his conviction, a three-judge panel overturned his guilty verdict
01:19:11
because the trial judge had refused to let the jury consider accidental death as a defense.
01:19:17
The judges also decided there would be no new trial. Too much time has passed and witness memories have faded since
01:19:24
Shelley's death more than a decade ago. David Swain walked out of court a free man.
01:19:32
No judicial body has declared him innocent. The Tyre's attorney, Wren Olin, spoke for the family.
01:19:39
And two distinctly different juries have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of
01:19:46
Shelley Tyre. Swain quickly returned to the United States and issued a written statement still insisting Shelly's death
01:19:54
was an accident. But for the Tyre family, David Swain is still a guilty man. For a parent whose daughter has been
01:20:05
murdered, it will never go away. >> Aaron, this is Florida. Nothing strange here.
01:20:56
The house was beautiful. It was 4,000 square feet. It had a pool, a garage apartment.
01:21:05
It was a great house. The only problem was upstairs, some of the rooms were too small and just the functionality did not
01:21:12
work for some families. I could understand why they'd want to renovate it. When did you first meet Shanti and
01:21:20
David? >> David just called me on the phone and asked if I'd come by and take a look at
01:21:23
the project. He said that they had done some work. I wasn't at all prepared for what I saw when I got there.
01:21:32
They had fully disassembled this house to a degree that I'd never seen before. It was rather astonishing.
01:21:41
It was largely wide open, like you're inside of a giant shoebox. This house became more than just a
01:21:48
project to David Tronnes. It was his life. He obsessed on it. This house is the center point to the story and
01:21:58
ultimately led to Shanti's demise. This case all started with a call to 911 placed at approximately 3:51 p.m. on
01:22:09
April 24th, 2018 by David Tronnes. Hello. And David says that he came home and found Shanti floating in the bathtub.
01:22:25
Is she not pretty? Did that story make sense? Absolutely not. Shanti was extensively beaten.
01:22:39
It makes me emotional. I feel bad for her family and for her son. It's upsetting that she won't get that
01:22:47
life with him. Clearly David Tronnes, from the very beginning, is a suspect. Absolutely.
01:22:59
Dave was asked to go to the station Thank you. and voluntarily remain there for hours. Just have a seat there.
01:23:06
It'll be a little bit. He did not request counsel. He consented to swabs, to clippings,
01:23:14
to a search of his person. Dave went into that interview with an agenda. They'd never been more in love.
01:23:22
We were so happy. And he just started getting confronted and confronted and confronted. I told
01:23:27
you she was murdered. Murdered. Someone took her life from her. And there's nothing you can't even fake it. That's
01:23:36
how much you could give it. And it became a war of wills in that room. I don't have any explanation for
01:23:43
her the severity of her injuries. And didn't David win that war of wills? He was not
01:23:50
broken. Well, Dave didn't confess. Am I boring you? It seems pretty clear these two detectives, they went into
01:23:59
this room, decided that David was a murderer, and then went the extra mile to try to put a file together to prove
01:24:06
such. >> Did you guys get into an argument? Was she It's about the house? No. Is it possible that without this house
01:24:18
Shanti might still be alive? I think that's completely true. Delaney Park is a well-established
01:25:14
neighborhood. It's been around for over 100 years. Tara Stevens knows Delaney Park inside
01:25:20
and out. She's a realtor who buys and sells homes there. It's a great place to live, to raise a
01:25:26
family. A lot of outside activity, great school system. It's a It's a great neighborhood.
01:25:34
So, Delaney Park is a mile or so from downtown Orlando. Ryan Vescio, a former prosecutor with
01:25:42
the Orlando State Attorney's Office, got to know the area well when he led the investigation into the death of Shanti
01:25:49
Cooper in April 2018. Did Shanti ever indicate to any friends or family that she was afraid of anyone?
01:25:59
No. So, you guys knew each other approximately 5 years this month? Vescio and investigators dug in to learn
01:26:07
all they could about Shanti and her husband, David Tronnes. The couple had been married for more
01:26:14
than a year. Everybody we spoke to about Dave and Dave's background said that he was
01:26:19
highly intelligent. That's what made him successful when he worked in business. And how would you describe Shanti?
01:26:27
Shanti Cooper was a hard-working, dedicated mom who cared deeply, deeply about her son. Her son was her world.
01:26:39
Shanti's son, Jackson, was then 8 years old. She shared custody with his father,
01:26:44
Jim Cooper, whom Shanti had divorced in 2013. She launched a lucrative financial
01:26:50
software business and worked out of her home office. How did she meet Dave Tronnes? Dave was
01:26:57
outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time. They met over the internet and started exchanging messages and
01:27:05
profiles, and that turned into emails. Investigators later found this document on Shanti's computer that shows just how
01:27:14
smitten she was. Dave, I will have to say I think this will be a delicious, detour, amazing,
01:27:22
magnificent, life-changing detour. I've had a pep in my step since we started this little email affair.
01:27:32
In Minnesota, David had just ended a long marriage, but within months of meeting Shanti online, he moved to
01:27:40
Orlando. Dave fell in love with Delaney Park and the house at 218 East Copeland Drive, a
01:27:47
house that came complete with its own gargoyles. We sold it to him for 607,500, which was a really, really good deal.
01:27:56
How did he pay for it? Cash. Dave put the house in trust for himself and his mother, and soon introduced
01:28:02
Shanti to Tara. They seemed very happy. She was a beautiful, very nice person. I
01:28:08
enjoyed meeting her. Tara did not feel quite the same about Dave. Dave's personality
01:28:14
changed a little bit after the contract was signed. I just saw a very different side of him. He was like a a guy or a
01:28:23
child who wants to get their way and they don't stop until they do. You were glad when the deal was over? Absolutely.
01:28:30
I was very glad. I didn't get a good feeling from him. Cindy and Dan Dow are Shanti's relatives
01:28:39
by marriage. They didn't like Dave at first, but it wasn't long before Cindy had a change of heart.
01:28:47
I love her, so I grew to love him. We absolutely adored him. The first time we had lunch, he walked in and he said,
01:28:56
"How lucky am I? I get to have lunch with two of the most beautiful women that I know."
01:29:02
I mean, that's charming. In 2015, Dave and Shanti moved into their new home and attempted to remodel
01:29:11
it with Shanti footing the bill. What did Dave do all day? It's a great question. If you ask Dave,
01:29:19
he says that he worked on the house and worked on the renovations and took care of the property and cleaned the pool.
01:29:26
Contractors came and went. Demolition went on and on, but the renovation was an expensive failure. By 2018,
01:29:38
the main part of the house was unlivable. Shanti was reduced to working and sleeping above the garage in a small
01:29:46
apartment. Where did Dave sleep? I think he slept downstairs with the dogs. Maybe not all
01:29:53
the time, but I'm pretty sure he was down there. Desperate to resolve the housing
01:30:02
situation, Dave turned to Keith Ori, a local house renovator who also appeared on a reality TV show called Zombie House
01:30:11
Flipping. Neighborhoods are under attack from zombie houses. What is Zombie House Flipping? Zombie
01:30:20
House Flipping is a house flipping TV show where we take houses that are the worst of the worst.
01:30:29
Is anything broken? I think we have a termite problem. And what we do is bring them back to
01:30:34
life. I looked at the house, I realized that the structure was suspect, and uh politely stepped outside. An engineer
01:30:44
discovered the only thing holding up the house was 2 in of stucco. It was rather
01:30:51
astonishing. They took away all the interior dividing walls, and basically what was left was a two-story shell.
01:30:59
Weren't you tempted to just run for the hills? Yeah, but at the same time, you rarely come
01:31:05
across a challenge that's that uh that bold. Keith was up for the challenge and began shoring up the
01:31:15
interior. And then, he got the go-ahead to use the house in the next season of Zombie House Flipping. This
01:31:23
is Zombie House Flipping. It was mid-April 2018, and filming was set to begin in early
01:31:32
May. But there was a problem. Getting Dave and Shanti together to talk in fit in person
01:31:41
was proving to be really difficult. Keith went to the house to meet with the couple one last time to be sure they
01:31:48
were on board. And they both said, "Yes, we understand." And then, she took off immediately just and left. I got a sense
01:31:57
that she was pissed off at him. Fasciano said Shanti had been trying for years to get her name on the trust that
01:32:04
owned the house, but Dave never followed through. And it seemed like things just
01:32:09
sort of culminated to a boiling point. It was only days before Shanti's murder. She desperately wanted stability in her
01:32:18
life, but was living in a house that was anything but. Her name was not on the deed, and she'd
01:32:25
already spent a lot of money on what was essentially Dave's house. >> Shanti was the bankroll, the sole
01:32:33
bankroll to almost a quarter million-dollar renovation. >> What did she get for her $250,000?
01:32:41
Well, a lot of headaches and heartaches. Thank you. Shortly after Shanti was pronounced
01:33:06
dead, Dave Tronnes went to Orlando Police Headquarters. Look at her as soon as I
01:33:13
can. Where he remained without a lawyer for 14 hours. We got to figure this out together,
01:33:21
okay? >> Of course. He didn't attempt to conceal anything. Richard Selesky is Dave's
01:33:26
attorney. He gave the law enforcement access to everything that they needed, everything that they wanted, and he laid
01:33:32
himself out there for examination by all. We want to say how sorry we are for your loss. At the start, Detectives
01:33:41
Teresa Sprague and Barb Sharp seemed sympathetic. Take a minute, okay? I know this is
01:33:49
super tough. They're very good at building rapport and have a tremendous amount of experience. If you have a
01:33:56
suspect who's willing to talk, you just hit play and sit back and let them go on
01:34:01
and on and on. And that's what Dave does. Dave sticks with his story. He took the dogs to a park in the
01:34:09
afternoon, and after he returned, he found Shanti, still wearing her pajamas, floating in the tub. So,
01:34:19
I could hear the water is running. See her laying. One of her legs is kind of sticking up
01:34:25
and out a little bit. And it's just extremely awful. I need you. Can you tell me what your
01:34:35
address is? He tells the detectives that he tried to perform CPR, but couldn't get Shanti to
01:34:41
breathe. She was dead when first responders arrived. Dave has a lot to say, and a lot to say to try to convince
01:34:51
the detectives that he wasn't involved in his wife's death. That means something like
01:34:57
well, either she slipped or she fell, or she blacked out. Why did he agree to sit
01:35:05
down and talk to these detectives without an attorney? Because he had nothing to hide, and he didn't think
01:35:11
that it would hurt him. But the veteran detectives began to pick at his story and question how Shanti's
01:35:18
bloody cheek and bruised eye came from a slip in the tub. And this is This is what I found.
01:35:27
Somebody who slips and falls doesn't receive the amount of blunt force trauma to focused areas in the head. Detectives
01:35:36
also had spotted blood on Shanti's bed and suspected that's where she had been killed. But Dave says the blood likely
01:35:45
was from Shanti's period. It did get on the bedspread, and it did get on the foot of the bed. There was
01:35:52
lot of other evidence that would be inconsistent with this being blood associated with a
01:35:58
menstrual cycle. Detectives also suspected, and Shanti's autopsy later confirmed, that she was strangled.
01:36:07
But Saleski says, as frustrating as it may have been to authorities, Dave can't explain Shanti's injuries.
01:36:18
Not because he's lying, but because he simply doesn't know. He took his best guess based upon what
01:36:25
he come to find. He doesn't know what happened, is the point. The detectives press on for hours,
01:36:32
taking turns and peppering Dave with tougher and tougher questions. Did you two argue? No, absolutely not. Did you
01:36:41
fight? Absolutely not. Did you harm Shanti in any way? Absolutely not. Sharp and Sprague also question his
01:36:52
timeline. Dave says that he called 911 about 5 minutes after he found Shanti. You've got to help us understand. But
01:37:01
detectives insist that doesn't match what they found at the house. There's no splashing of water anywhere in the
01:37:08
bathroom. The inside of the tub is dry, completely dry, and she's damp. She's not even wet. So, you've got to help us.
01:37:18
Can you do that? I've tried to tell you everything. They're drawing conclusions based upon
01:37:23
observations, and they're moving forward based upon these assumptions. They try to zero in on a possible
01:37:30
motive. Did she catch you with another woman? Did she have a boyfriend? Did Was she about the house? No. But given
01:37:40
the sorry state of the house, detectives begin to wonder if that had something to
01:37:46
do with Shanti's murder. I can't imagine how stressful it must have been. You know, not living in the home you
01:37:52
want to live in and it's taking two plus years, three years. Um I'm I'm sick to death about what
01:37:59
happened, but nothing happened today because of there was no animosity between us
01:38:04
whatsoever. And he says Shanti wasn't upset that her name wasn't on the trust that
01:38:12
owned the house. So, we had kind of talked about it and debated it and we finally just said it doesn't really
01:38:18
matter. Let's just move forward. Teresa and Barb are tenacious. They don't stop. They're well versed in
01:38:25
interrogation techniques. You know, we saw the good cop, bad cop. We saw manipulation. Barb Sharp even moves her
01:38:32
hand to Dave's knee and adopts a more subtle tone. It'll be okay. We can't help you until you help us.
01:38:43
Before Teresa Sprague begins another attack. She treats you like a landscaper, like the pool boy.
01:38:49
Probably because she's bringing in the money. As the hours tick by, What do you want your mom to think about
01:38:56
you? They try anything they can to get him to confess. You just want to talk, right?
01:39:04
This almost became a game of psychological warfare in that interview room. Dave began the interview by saying how
01:39:11
happy he had been with Shanti, but almost eight hours into the interrogation, the detectives aren't
01:39:18
buying it. You claim to love that woman? I would be under the table in a ball if I was in love with
01:39:27
that woman and she was dead. I I would be inconsolable. Do you think that he was penalized because he didn't
01:39:34
act the way detectives wanted him to act? Oh, time time and time again. You know, you fake cried for about seven or
01:39:42
8 hours today. Not one tear came out of your eyes, not one. There's a lot of conclusions being
01:39:48
drawn off of what they considered to be an odd affect of Mr. Tronnes. And I think that that's a dangerous thing to
01:39:55
do because we all react to stress differently. We all grieve differently. Dave even agrees to take a polygraph,
01:40:02
but by then it was the middle of the night. And investigators couldn't find anyone
01:40:09
to administer it. They had to let him go at the end of the interview. How did they feel about that?
01:40:19
>> You always want to make the arrest right up front. You do. With Dave Tronnes free, police would
01:40:25
have to keep digging for clues. But even they were surprised by what they found. Is it fair to say that Dave
01:40:34
Tronnes was living a double life? >> At least two lives. She didn't slip and fall. It's not a
01:40:52
possibility. Even though detectives were outright accusing Dave Tronnes of murdering Shanti. He strangled her.
01:41:00
Some of her relatives, like Cindy Dow, believed him. Are you kidding? My bet my last dollar that it wasn't
01:41:09
him. I thought he was innocent. You honestly did, Cindy. Why? I think it was just the growth of our
01:41:17
relationship and how she adored him. Absolutely adored him and it looked very mutual to everyone. Did she ever express
01:41:28
any concern or fear of Dave? Never. >> Never. After being questioned by detectives,
01:41:38
Dave headed straight to his home in Delaney Park, and that's where Cindy found him.
01:41:45
I stood him up and turned him around and looked at his arms and there was not a scratch on him.
01:41:52
There was nothing. Cindy, did you ever ask him point-blank, "Did you have something to do with the death of
01:41:58
Shanti?" I did. What did he say? No. I would not kill the love of my life. Defense attorney Richard Zaleski says
01:42:09
the problem with this case is that detectives and prosecutors were convinced from the start that Dave
01:42:16
Tronnes was Shanti's killer. Zaleski says the bias of the investigators is clear from the police
01:42:23
report. They've already suggested that they have it figured out, like bull in a china shop trying to make this work at
01:42:30
all costs because they've done nothing to develop other suspects. But Vecchio denies that. He says detectives checked
01:42:37
out every possible suspect and got lucky when an important lead fell into their laps. A worker from Club Orlando called
01:42:47
and shared that they knew of Dave Tronnes because he was a patron at the club. What is Club Orlando? Club Orlando
01:42:56
is a same-sex bathhouse. Did Dave have a membership at Club Orlando? Several memberships. Every 6 months, Dave
01:43:05
renewed his membership. Detectives headed to the club to investigate and found a long-time club
01:43:12
employee who in this police-recorded interview says he witnessed Dave having sex at the club. I was just walking
01:43:20
through and I saw David uh he was giving oral sex to this guy. From what everybody who
01:43:28
knew Shanti has said, she would absolutely have not tolerated it, put up with it, endorse it. It just wouldn't
01:43:37
have happened. There's a significant possibility that Shanti knew all about it. And why do you believe that? Because
01:43:44
none of her family members seem to know anything about it. And and her family members seem to indicate that if Shanti
01:43:51
did know, she'd be upset. >> And and I appreciate that. But what you tell your mom and dad about your sex
01:43:57
life and what you do behind closed doors, you know, people are people, adults are adults, and life is messy.
01:44:05
But Veshia wonders if Shanti ultimately did discover Dave's duplicity on the night she was murdered. Had that
01:44:13
revelation made Shanti threaten to turn off the money spigot once and for all? But she would be killed because of a
01:44:21
house? Well, what would somebody do when they were about to lose the most important thing in their life?
01:44:30
Because in April of 2018, the most important thing in Dave's life was that house.
01:44:41
Dave told Cindy and others that he believed Shanti may have been murdered by a burglar. And the defense claimed
01:44:48
that $5,000 in cash was missing from the house. Also missing, Shanti's diamond engagement ring, valued at approximately
01:44:58
$15,000. >> That was highly, highly suspicious. The detectives wanted to get to the bottom
01:45:05
of it. Why couldn't it have been exactly as Dave said, that he leaves and someone
01:45:11
breaks into the house, beats her, leaves her there, and Dave comes home? Why doesn't that fit? Well, the lack of
01:45:20
forced entry, this scene did not have any sort of evidence of a struggle. There's thousands of dollars of
01:45:27
valuables that are left in plain sight. A private investigator hired by defense lawyers canvassed neighbors asking them
01:45:38
about a particular homeless man who reportedly had been seen around Delaney Park. It was said he resembled the actor
01:45:45
Woody Harrelson. What about the transient that everyone describes who looks a lot like Woody Harrelson?
01:45:53
I mean, when you got nothing better, you throw everything against the wall and see if something sticks.
01:46:00
This home is at 218 East Copeland Drive. Detective Teresa Sprague tracked Woody down and recorded this interview. You
01:46:10
see there's a large blue dumpster in the driveway. Have you ever been there? No. Nothing placed Woody inside Dave and
01:46:18
Shanti's home, but Vecchio says his interview shows police chased down every lead including checking out her
01:46:27
ex-husband. Shanti had had a bad divorce. This was not an easy end of the marriage. Did you look at Jim Cooper?
01:46:37
Yes. Mr. Cooper was interviewed and Jim Cooper was eliminated as a suspect very early on.
01:46:46
He had an alibi. On August 29th, 2018, 4 months after Shanti's murder, Dave Tronnes was arrested on a charge of
01:46:57
first-degree murder and held without bail. And how did the two of you react when
01:47:03
you heard that? I wasn't believing it whatsoever. I thought they were just trying to solve a
01:47:08
murder easily. I always had the suspicion. Dave's arrest gave prosecutors another
01:47:16
piece of the puzzle. Shanti's missing engagement ring. The ring is probably one of the most powerful and damning
01:47:24
pieces of evidence in this case. As long as that expensive ring was missing, Dave
01:47:29
Tronnes could argue that a burglar had murdered Shanti. But the day he was arrested, police found it among his
01:47:37
possessions. We searched the room in his mother's house where he was living, and lo and behold, we found the rings in
01:47:44
his suitcase in his bedroom. Still, Dave's arrest was not the end of the investigation.
01:47:52
It led to a cascading series of new revelations that surprised even a veteran prosecutor like Ryan Vecchio.
01:48:01
This was a case that had so many twists and turns, I would no longer make assumptions of anything.
01:48:08
You don't learn this stuff in law school. After the arrest of Dave Tronnes, investigators received a tip that took
01:48:38
them completely by surprise. It led them to Minnesota and back in time to when a
01:48:44
much younger Dave was married to a woman named Carol. Former close friends of Carol told detectives that they believed
01:48:54
Dave may have been poisoning her. >> As soon as Carol got married to Dave, she started suffering a bunch of unknown
01:49:01
health issues. That made prosecutor Ryan Vecchio wonder if Shanti could have been poisoned.
01:49:10
>> In Shanti's case, she had appendicitis and had to have an appendectomy. Shanti
01:49:15
had had that emergency appendectomy eight weeks before her death. Appendicitis and poisoning have similar
01:49:22
symptoms, and Dave told detectives that Shanti had digestion problems right up to the day she died. She hasn't found
01:49:31
since the appendectomy a diet that she can eat regularly and feel good. Vescio needed more information, so he
01:49:43
and Detective Teresa Sprague went to Minnesota in November of 2018 to meet Carol face-to-face
01:49:51
and recorded this interview. I have issues with chronic pain and immune system issues that are not
01:50:01
necessarily definitive. Carol told Vescio she also struggled with gut issues and that Dave cooked
01:50:09
most of their meals. >> Has it ever come into your frame of thought that your marriage to David Tronnes or him
01:50:18
cooking or making you drinks was making you sick? No. Have you ever thought that
01:50:22
any of your issues related to your health problems was him poisoning you? No. Carol said her health issues continued
01:50:32
even after her divorce from Dave, yet Vescio says he remains suspicious. >> It very well could have been a scenario
01:50:40
to where Dave was providing both of them with items that caused them to be ill. We
01:50:47
just could never have real concrete proof of it. Vescio wondered if there was another
01:50:57
reason Carol seemed to be protecting her former husband and whether it had anything to do with Dave's finances. We
01:51:05
saw thousand pages of bank records belonging to David Tronnes. One thing that we
01:51:10
noticed was that Dave and Carol still had a joint bank account together. That account at times contained hundreds
01:51:19
of thousands of dollars, but Carol said she simply had forgotten to take her name off that account.
01:51:25
>> People who are divorcing each other don't leave assets on the table and they sure as heck don't leave them together.
01:51:32
It's unclear where that money came from. Vessio believes that Carol, who was not
01:51:37
charged with any crime, could be helping Dave manage his money while he's in jail.
01:51:44
I think that Carol is involved in David's finances and has some level of control.
01:51:51
The surprises in the case kept coming. Soon after Shanti's death, detectives had placed a surveillance camera pointed
01:51:59
toward the outside of Dave's house. Detective Sprague was interested to see who was coming and going out of the
01:52:05
house and that camera ended up actually turning into a pretty valuable piece of evidence. That camera captured images of
01:52:13
private investigators hired by Dave's original law firm coming and going. Detectives believe that when one of
01:52:21
those lawyers, Robert Mandel, realized that the PIs were on camera, he placed a call to Vessio. I never ever expected
01:52:30
that he was going to tell me that he in fact had an item of physical evidence that he had been holding on to
01:52:38
for 11 months. Never would have expected it in a thousand years. And what was that evidence? They were a set of
01:52:47
purported bloody sheets and it literally literally took my breath away. That defense attorney,
01:52:55
Robert Mandel, told Vessio that the defense team had acquired the bloody sheets from the garage apartment where
01:53:03
Shanti was found dead, but had never turned them over to the prosecution. But Ryan, as shocking as that is, that
01:53:13
wasn't the only evidence that later turned up, was it? No, I ended that call with the defense attorney and said,
01:53:20
"Listen, if you have anything else, now is the time to tell me." And about 10 12 hours later, the next
01:53:33
morning, I got another call from him. And that's when he said, "I have one other item that I think we have to turn
01:53:42
over." That item turned out to be a green cord. Mandel told Vecchio that a private
01:53:50
investigator removed it from the house and preserved it in an evidence bag because Dave was threatening to kill
01:53:57
himself. Does that make sense to you? No, makes zero sense to me. Why go get the item and then treat it as
01:54:08
if it were a piece of evidence? Remember, the autopsy revealed that Shanti had been strangled and Vecchio
01:54:17
believed there was a real possibility that the green cord could be the murder weapon.
01:54:33
With the prosecution now in possession of that green cord, tests were conducted to see if indeed it was the murder
01:54:40
weapon used to strangle Shanti. Is there any evidence to indicate that in fact that cord was used to kill Shanti? No,
01:54:49
that cord did not have any DNA on it. But the cord wasn't picked up until weeks after Shanti's death and
01:54:59
authorities believed Dave had plenty of time to clean it. Investigators had spent months examining
01:55:06
all the evidence leading Vecchio to craft his own theory about when Shanti was killed.
01:55:13
We found one single earring was placed on the nightstand. The other earring was in Shanti's ear.
01:55:20
And what does that say to you? That tells me that Shanti was most likely sitting on the side of her bed preparing
01:55:27
for bed taking those earrings out and that's when the attack happened. The sheets and bed frame did have
01:55:37
Shanti's blood on them and Shanti didn't use her phone after 11:30 p.m. The scene
01:55:44
was consistent with this attack happening somewhere in the midnight to 2:00 3:00 a.m. time period. But David
01:55:51
called 911 late in the afternoon saying he had just found Shanti floating in the
01:55:56
tub. Salesky says investigators are jumping to unfair conclusions. A few hours of time off the grid doesn't allow
01:56:06
them to shift the timeline. Prosecutors continued to build their case even as Dave sat behind bars
01:56:15
listening to anyone who had information about Shanti's death no matter how surprising the source. I met David
01:56:22
Trennis in three whiskey. Three whiskey is a housing unit in the Orlando jail where Edward Gismondi
01:56:31
shared a cell with Dave Trennis. He slept next to me and I slept next to him. After getting out of jail, Gismondi met
01:56:39
with Vecchio and Sprague. He says that he and Dave began talking and bonded over a shared interest in obscure
01:56:46
hallucinogenics including Sapo, a poison derived from a South American frog. He said that you could use Sapo to put
01:56:55
in people's salsa and killed them quietly. Killer salsa might sound ridiculous, but
01:57:03
not so far-fetched when you consider that authorities suspected that David poisoned both his wives.
01:57:10
Gismondi supplied even more information that if true was truly damning. He says David admitted that he and Chantel had a
01:57:19
fight before she died. He just said there there was an app on his phone that there was messages on that she had found
01:57:25
apparently that suggested he was having sex with men and she was going to show everybody. And what did Dave say he did?
01:57:34
He snapped. He said he freaked out. And did what? He didn't specifically say that what he did, but that he had killed
01:57:41
his wife. Investigators were unable to corroborate Gismondi's story about the app. We
01:57:49
didn't have any purchase records of apps and we did not see it on Dave's phone. I've read your statement and at no point
01:58:00
do I see anywhere where you had told them that David actually said I killed my wife. But sitting here
01:58:08
now you said Dave told you I killed my wife. Yes, ma'am. In jail he said I killed my wife. Word for word
01:58:16
is what he told me. But why wouldn't you tell the state's attorney's office that?
01:58:20
>> I did. I told them that he had snapped. That's the word that I used. I don't remember if she had asked me did he
01:58:26
admit to murdering her? Like word for word like that? One of the few things both the
01:58:33
prosecution and the defense do agree on is that neither is sure they can believe
01:58:39
Gismondi. He pled guilty to one count of lewd or lascivious behavior and is now a
01:58:45
registered sex offender and still on probation. This individual certainly has credibility issues.
01:58:54
Zaleski took over Dave's defense in early 2020 after the original attorneys withdrew
01:59:01
from the case. Raising doubt isn't going to be difficult here. But Shanti's family has no doubt about
01:59:12
what should happen to Dave. He has to be found guilty. He is guilty. Cindy Dow, who once found Dave so
01:59:23
charming, feels very differently about him now. He should be sentenced to death.
01:59:32
I want him to remember when he looks at me. I want him to remember every lie. Every lie.
01:59:43
When Cindy remembers Shanti, her heart still breaks. >> She was happy, giving, kind,
01:59:54
fun, loving person who had a mission in this life. And she didn't get to fulfill it.
02:00:53
>> Woo!