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Tonight on Dateline. He told me that she had been murdered. She was one of my best friends.
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So unnecessary, so senseless, so evil. They found Sue Markham deceased at the bottom of her stairs.
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Professor Markham was such a big part of the community, her energy and spirit. I saw the two shot glasses on the counter.
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We knew this was someone Sue had a relationship with. The first person I'm going to think did this was me.
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They're going to say you're carrying a torch for her? You had a key to her house?
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Yeah. I knew my sister was involved with a yoga teacher. He taught Spanish. He had that whole exotic yoga teacher poet thing going for him.
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Yes. I thought that he was kind of out of the picture. They had discovered some documents.
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She was sinking. She lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm thinking, what the hell?
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Is this a scheme? She hadn't told anybody about it. She hadn't told a soul. It rips your heart out.
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A secret relationship, a stunning crime, and an international manhunt to catch a killer.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Professor and the Poet.
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Sometimes when people find love, they hold on tight. Even when the person they're holding on to is all wrong.
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Because love has a way of quieting doubts and overshadowing logic. If she had said a single word to anybody, we would have just said, are you out of your mind?
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Beverly Myers was close friends with the woman at the center of our story, Sue Markham.
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Sue was smart, poised, and a fantastic friend. When I met her, she was the most successful, accomplished person at that time that I knew.
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Sue was a professor of accounting at American University in Washington, D.C., and always generous with her time and expertise.
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Sunday, October 24, 2010, was no exception. It was a Sunday night, and she was giving an exam on Monday.
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She told her students that she would be home if they had any questions preparing for their exam.
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That was Sue, always ready to help, always a phone call away. In fact, she called her best friend Larry March every single morning.
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She missed my alarm clock. And so she called you every day? She called me every morning to wake me up.
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That Monday was the day of the exam, and Sue did not call. How unusual was that?
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That was extremely unusual. Larry was a teacher and headed to work, then felt so unsettled after not hearing Sue's
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voice that he left before finishing his second period class. I had somebody cover for me and I just told them I'm leaving.
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You knew something was wrong. I knew. There's got to be something wrong. So I had a key and I opened the door and things were just a mess.
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In Sue's normally tidy home, Larry saw broken glass on the floor, her belongings strewn
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about. What are you thinking? I'm thinking somebody's broken in to rob the place or whatever.
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But where's she? I'm calling for her, I'm saying, where is she? There was no sign of Sue Markham on the first floor.
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On the stairs leading to the basement, Larry saw an empty vase, dried flowers, and a pair
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of shoes. As soon as I get to the stairs, I can see her at the bottom of the landing.
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It is an image burned into his memory. His friend Sue lying at the bottom of the stairs.
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So I rushed on to her. She warm or cold? She's cold. He called 911. While he waited for police, Larry
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called a lifelong friend of Sue's, Lisa Colton. And he's like, you need to get over here now.
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And I was like, what? You couldn't bring yourself to tell Lisa that she was dead?
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No, I couldn't. I just told her that she needed to come. Police were outside when Lisa arrived.
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They told her to wait in her car. Nothing more. And so now I'm pretty much in my mind thinking, okay, something is very wrong.
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Lisa watched as officers cordoned off the house. Sergeant Larry Haley of the Montgomery County Police Department arrived just
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before noon. He'd been told it looked as if a homeowner had been killed during a
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burglary. That's certainly consistent with what was happening at the time. A lot
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of break-ins. A lot of break-ins in this area. The houses are worth a lot of money.
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There's a lot of expensive property in the homes. This is Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
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I have probably passed that house a thousand times. That's because, starting back in the 1960s, this was my neighborhood.
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I grew up around here. Now, a lot of things haven't changed that much since my family and I moved here all those years ago I definitely remember the fire station and the public library But look we locked our doors back then That said I don remember anybody with a burglar alarm
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and I don't remember anybody worried about a home invasion, let alone murder. By the time Sue Markham moved here, the world had changed.
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As he surveyed the scene, Sergeant Haley noticed Sue's front door faced a busy avenue,
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with nothing obstructing the view from street traffic. The back of the house was different.
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This is clearly where you would go if you wanted to break in because Massachusetts Avenue, people are going to see you.
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You would not go on the front. There's way too much traffic. And back here, as you can tell, there's a lot less.
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It's a lot quieter. Well, this thing's going to shield you. That's the perfect place.
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And especially at night, it's very dark back here with the trees. It's a little bit offset of the road, and there's not a lot of vehicle traffic.
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In the yard, Haley found a broken window screen. The window that was broken was here in the back.
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It is. It's the one that is right on the side of where the white shutters are. Haley went inside.
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He saw two shot glasses on the counter and some broken glass on the kitchen floor.
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Sue's TVs were unplugged and left near the front door. Were things stolen? There were a number of items stolen to include Sue's cell phone, a couple of her laptops, a TV.
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One of my initial thoughts was that they got some of the property out of the house.
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And so either something spooked the individual where they felt like they had to leave and leave the other items behind, or perhaps the sun was starting to come up.
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There was more broken glass near Sue's body. It looked like blunt force trauma to the head.
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No question this is a murder. The position that she was pushed into the corner and the broken glass that didn't match anything around where her body was, I didn't have any doubt.
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Except, Sergeant Haley knew murders in the course of a burglary are quite rare. Burglars generally run away. They don't attack you.
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They're not interested in having contact with the homeowner, unless they have ulterior motives.
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So this was unusual. It definitely stood out from the pattern. Eventually, this case would stand out for a lot of other reasons.
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And it would require the help of this guy. Very quickly, I knew that we had something big.
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It would lead investigators on a pursuit through the streets of downtown Washington, D.C.
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and across international borders. He said to bring my Kevlar. Bring your Kevlar because Mexico's a dangerous place or he's going to shoot you.
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And it would unravel a relationship filled with secrets. She hadn't told anybody about it.
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She hadn't told a soul. Sue Markham was dead, and Montgomery County, Maryland police were searching her ransacked home.
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Her brother Alan and his wife Barbara live across the country in California. I was at work and I got a phone call from my mother.
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And it was the worst phone call of my life. I hung up the phone, put my head down on my desk and cried.
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Beverly could hardly comprehend that her close friend had been murdered. I've lost other friends.
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If they die because of illness, you don't want to accept it, but you have to. This was so unnecessary, so senseless, so evil.
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Investigators dusted for fingerprints and collected DNA from the crime scene and Sue's body.
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They talked with those who knew the victim best. You knew her, what, forever? I knew Sue for 48 years.
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We were four years old when we met. We were members of the same temple, and we were in the same Sunday school class.
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Sue left her hometown of Syracuse and went to college at American University in Washington, D.C., where she met Larry.
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She was a fun-loving, willing-to-take-risk kind of person. Sue was a foodie before there was a word for that.
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She, Larry, and Lisa spent their time eating, going to the theater. and traveling.
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Mostly Europe, Spain a couple of times, Argentina, Mexico. Sue was single for most of her life, but she was not alone.
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Sue never got married, and I think that it may have been a disappointment for her.
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She had so much to offer. She put all that love and energy into other people. For example, that daily call to wake him sometimes turned into two or three.
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She would call me at 645, and then at 655, and then at 715. So she's not just an alarm clock, she's also a snooze alarm.
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Yes. Then the third time it would be get out of bed. I'm guessing you had enough money to afford a clock radio.
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Oh yeah, and I had one, but that wasn't the point. The point was it was nice to talk to Sue.
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Sue had a way of making anything fun, even accounting. Maybe that's why she was hired to do the books for the Ringling Brothers Circus.
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When she left corporate America to teach accounting at her alma mater, she brought that same sense of joy.
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Don Williamson was her colleague She was clearly so compelling a teacher that she made some students want to change their major to accounting Yes Oh yes There are a number of people that went into accounting because of Sue Markham
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There's just no question about it. Emily Stovacek was one of Sue's students. She would start every class with the lights down low.
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She would sit on her desk and she would have all the students close their eyes and take five deep breaths.
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What other professor starts a class like that? I didn't have any others to do. Sue was also devoted to her family.
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She taught our younger son to tie his shoes. I think she taught them both to tell time.
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So, yeah, she did lots of teaching, but she also played. I put up tire swing for our kids and we have a picture of her just in full swing on that absolute enthusiasm leaning into it with a huge beautiful smile on her face.
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That was my sister. In her free time, she took Spanish classes. She even became friends with her Spanish teacher, who also got her into yoga.
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Sue Markham was the opposite of boring. and her home reflected that. Each room painted a different color.
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And we're not talking about one room is taupe and one room is gray. We're talking, you know, bold, beautiful, big blues and greens and oranges and rusts.
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Yeah. That bright, happy home was now a crime scene. There, investigators collected evidence
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and built a timeline of the last night of Sue's life. Sue had sent an email at 10.42 p.m. the night before to a colleague.
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They were working on a final exam together for American University. The 911 call was at 10.52 the next morning,
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meaning there was nearly a 12-hour window in which someone got into her home and killed her.
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Lisa and Larry did whatever they could to help investigators. They wanted us back at the house. They wanted us to get a sense of what was missing.
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What's it like to go back in that house? It was not pleasant. I think the first time I went, quite frankly, I did not go downstairs.
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In the beginning, Larry and I made a pact with each other that there could never be one person in the house alone.
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That there would always be two of us at the house in the beginning, just from a safety and an emotional perspective.
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We just wanted to kind of be there for each other. One thing obviously missing was Sue's Jeep.
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Investigators put out an alert for her 1999 Cherokee like this one. Her car was very unusual looking.
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And I said, they're going to find that car. Because I never saw another one that looked like that.
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And just 10 hours after the alert went out, there was a hit. The Jeep's plate was tagged in northeast Washington, D.C.
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a 30-minute drive from Sue's home. Sergeant Haley asked the D.C. Police Auto Theft Task Force to look for it.
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One of those officers had called us back in our office looking for some more information,
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and he asked us, can you tell me the tag number again? And so we gave him the Virginia tag, and he said, I have to get off the phone.
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The car's right in front of me. The investigation was only a few hours old, and it was about to really start rolling.
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It was crazy good luck. Police in Washington, D.C. spotted Sue Markham's stolen Jeep just as they were getting a description of it.
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That luck did not last. When they tried to pull it over, the driver hit the gas.
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Officers pursued. With lights and sirens, they raced through the streets of the Capitol.
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They end up pursuing the car from that area of northeast all the way across Washington, D.C.
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The driver of the car ultimately tried to make a turn onto New Jersey Avenue, which was a pretty sharp turn at the time.
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Back end of the Jeep slid out. He hit the curb, hit a pole, and flipped several times in the air and landed on the roof in the middle of the intersection.
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Driver still alive? Not only was he still alive, but moments later the door kicked open and he was off to the races.
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This time he was on foot and he made it only a block. Within minutes, cops, EMTs, and reporters from NBC4 Washington were at the scene.
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The missing Grand Cherokees considered a key piece of evidence. The driver was loaded into an ambulance and taken to a nearby trauma center.
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His injuries apparently minor. He was arrested for unauthorized use of the Jeep, but he has not been charged with Professor Markham's murder.
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We were watching the news and they announced that they had recovered the car. They talked about who was driving the car.
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And we thought that this was a person that broke into her home. Killed her. Killed her.
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Stole the car. Stole the car. And was caught. And was caught. And done. The driver's name was DeAndre Hamlin, 18 years old, and by his own admission, a car thief.
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Criminal record plus being in the car plus fleeing law enforcement equals suspect.
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It does. And so he was a very good suspect right from the beginning. police suspected he was linked to a burglary ring operating in sue neighborhood more than 50 break in the last four months alone Do you think multiple crews are the same person We know for sure that there was more than one crew because there had been arrests in some of the Chevy Chase cases and in the cases in Washington D
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And the burglaries continued. And they continued. However, none of those had turned violent.
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Montgomery County police thought maybe this was a first. Detective Paula Hamill worked with Sergeant Haley.
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The easiest thing would have been to say, oh, Mr. Hamill did it, obviously, because he's driving her car.
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It's less than 30 hours later. First, they had a lot of questions for their suspect.
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As they drove D'Andrew Hamill from D.C. to Maryland, Sergeant Haley and Detective Hamill grilled him.
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Anything you say can be used against you. He did not ask for an attorney. And then, D'Andrew Hamill told a fantastic story.
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One that started not at Sue Markham's home, but on a street in Northeast D.C. If I took you to that spot, would you remember?
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Yeah. I mean, the exact spot? The exact spot. He told the cops the Jeep was just sitting there at the curb.
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His brother spotted it first, saw the keys, and called DeAndre. When you talk to Mr. Hamlin, he doesn't know how the car got here.
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He does not. But all he knows is that he got a phone call from his brother who alerted him to the fact that there was a car here potentially to steal.
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He got on the bus and came here and stole the car. And his intention was to what, just drive it around?
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That's it. And it's, in fact, what we know he did. He went joyriding. The joyride ended abruptly, with the cops on his tail and the jeeps spinning out into a pole.
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he told sergeant haley and detective hamill he barely remembered the wreck that's when he tried to get away on foot
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when I was running I'm gonna shoot you you can't shoot me it's just a stolen car
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I'm in my head like it's just a stolen car without it you can't shoot me you're rolling the dice though man
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that's exactly right because it really wasn't just a stolen car was it? DeAndre Hamlin insisted
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he knew nothing about Sue Markham's murder had never been to her house and had no idea
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how her car got to the street where he found it that's the part I'm stuck at Like, if I knew, I would have said it with no hesitation.
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To police, the whole story felt a little too convenient. A way to explain getting caught in the driver's seat of a dead woman's car
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and still deny ever having met her. But as Sergeant Haley assessed his prime suspect,
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a cop's instinct gave him pause. I've encountered a lot of people who have killed people, right?
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And they always have something in their character, or something in their demeanor that leads you to believe, yeah, they could have committed murder.
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He was lacking that. He's just kind of a hapless thief. That was our initial impression.
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Now, that doesn't mean that he wasn't part of a group that did this and somebody else in his group.
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You know, at that point, we don't know. And every murderer at one time was not a murderer.
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Correct. You never know what takes them from never having done that across the line.
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Had D'Andrew Hamlin crossed the line that night, or had someone else? They were about to find out.
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Any trace of Mr. Hamlin in Sue Markham's home or on her body? Hours after Sue Markham's body was discovered, police had a prime suspect in custody.
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His name was D'Andrew Hamlin, caught driving Sue's car. Now the question was whether he was also the person who had robbed Sue's home and killed her.
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In the abyss of our despair, let her light shine for us. As police worked, Sue's family, friends, and colleagues gathered at American University to mourn.
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Her brother Alan spoke. And I also smiled when I remember having paid my sister to make my bed every morning.
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and I liked that they made it a small way. I helped her get her started in accounting
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when she was keeping track of what I paid her. I remember thinking about, you know,
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her and her brother, two siblings, and thinking about how horrible it was that he lost his sister
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and his only sibling and her parents. Susanita La Gordita, we will miss you and hope that you are at peace.
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Her friends thought about the what-ifs. For example, Sue had just moved from Virginia to that home in Maryland the year before.
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I actually lived very close to where she lived in Virginia before she bought the house in Maryland.
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And I thought, if only, if only she hadn't moved. As they focused on their suspect, police obtained warrants and searched DeAndre Hamlin's home.
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We executed a number of search warrants at any residence associated to him, where he lived, any place he had laid his head,
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but we never found anything related to Sue Markham in any house. None of her property.
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Nothing. They interviewed friends, family members, anyone tied to DeAndreux or his brother.
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Police never found any proof DeAndreux was part of a burglary ring. They did review burglary arrests in the area
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near Sue's home, looking for possible suspects. We really kind of went around the world and back,
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investigating them with regards to Sue Markham's death. They looked at DeAndrew's phone data.
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It put him nowhere near Sue's house on the night of her murder. And in a surprising twist,
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DeAndrew was doing all he could to help police. It's a camera, it's a camera right there on the wall,
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He takes us to the place where he found the car. And at that location, there are surveillance cameras that he can see, that we can see.
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And he has no idea what's on them. He doesn't know. Because if it's him and somebody else walking up to the car and a guy handing him the keys, right, that's going to disprove his story.
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He has no way of knowing whether that's on camera or not. He doesn't. And that would seal his fate one way or the other.
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Police checked those cameras, and unfortunately, they were not working. So investigators pivoted to DNA collection.
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They asked Sue's friends to provide samples and said it was to eliminate them. You were fingerprinted, swabbed for DNA.
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Yes, yes, yes, I was, as was another friend. We spent a lot of time in that house.
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Police badly wanted a DNA sample from D'Andrew Hamlin. They wrote a warrant for that and got a swab from him.
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Five weeks later came the results. Any trace of Mr. Hamlin in Sue Markham's home or on her body?
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There was nothing. We did extensive fingerprinting inside and outside the home. We processed her body for DNA completely.
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We processed a number of items for DNA in the house, and there was never any trace of him.
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The DNA on Sue's body was from a man, a man who was not D'Andrew Hamlin, not his brother either, and not other known burglars in the area.
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So whose was it? It was not anybody that we had identified in the investigation to that point.
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It looked as if D'Andrew Hamlin's unlikely story might be true after all. He insisted time after time that he found the car on the side of the street.
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He doesn't know how it got there. As if somebody was begging for it to be stolen.
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It's a great move on the part of the suspect because, as he probably calculated,
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it took us in a direction completely away from him. Him, whoever he was. Investigators had made a great leap forward.
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they now knew they were being played by a murderer who was thinking about them and their investigation someone who had left his DNA on Sue's body and then
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probably left her Jeep at the side of the road trying to frame the Andrew Hamlin or anyone else foolish enough to get behind the wheel it was time to come
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up with a whole new theory of this case I walked along that that outside wall myself. The lights went on and I said, no one's going to break in here.
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It was December 2010, more than a month after Sue Markham's murder. Investigators had what they
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thought was the killer's DNA. But his name remained a mystery. It's someone whose DNA isn't
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in the system. It's not anybody who we might have expected. It's not anybody that's in the system.
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Even before the DNA results ruled out the Hamlin brothers and other known burglars,
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investigators had been re-evaluating the crime scene. There, something bizarre from a pair of
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sunglasses led to a new round of questions. So you know how on the side of Ray-Ban sunglasses,
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they have the little Ray-Ban signature on the arm. It's one of those pieces and it was placed
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on the inside of her lip on top of her teeth. And so, you know, while we were searching her
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body and processing her body, we found that. This was no accident. That little chip of metal
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had to have been placed there by Sue's killer. So what did it mean? Cops asked her BFF, Lisa.
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You'd get this innocuous question, oh, were Sue's glasses Ray-Bans? And I'm like, I don't think so.
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What do you make of the piece of Ray-Ban sunglasses? I think that's something in this case
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that we all wanted to know or understand. Part of the misdirection, maybe? Maybe.
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I mean, I definitely felt like it was something phony. And she didn't own any Ray-Bans.
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And there was no, you know, crushed pair of sunglasses next to her body or anything like that.
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Correct. The investigators reached out to the FBI, which keeps a database on serial killers.
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And the Ray-Ban logo or sticker or pieces of sunglasses, that doesn't turn up in any other case.
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The FBI had no other reports nationwide of that being a thing. Why it was placed there, we don't know.
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There's no Ray-Ban killer out there. We never got any leads. Another dead end, just like the burglary gone bad theory they had been chasing.
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From the very beginning, I was suspect about there being a burglary. Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy walked through the scene the day Sue's body was discovered.
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He noticed an outdoor light right next to the forest window I walked along that outside wall myself The lights went on and I said no one going to break in here
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The people right next door can watch you break in. It's not going to happen. It looked as if that window screen had been cut and pushed out.
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Maybe that's how the killer escaped. Or maybe it was evidence of something else.
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You'd have to already be in the house to do that. Exactly. Sue's friend Lisa noted that while some things were stolen, a diamond necklace Sue wore was not.
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If it was a burglary, wouldn't someone take it? Sorry. I'm like, hello? That's why I never, after a certain point, it's like, this was not a burglary.
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Another clue was discovered when Sue's body was moved. Broken glass lay under and next to her.
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The blood object used to kill her was a liquor bottle. And there was more. She had a dual cause of death, which was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.
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And in this case, asphyxiation means strangling. And that's not something that happens in an instant, is it?
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No, that is a very up-close and personal way to kill someone. There was something else truly strange.
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Something that did not fit with a break-in. Those two shot glasses in Sue's kitchen.
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When I looked into the shot glasses, I could see that there was a residual amount of liquor in the bottom of them.
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So I knew they'd been recently used. And she's killed with a liquor bottle. She is killed with a liquor bottle.
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Those shot glasses were swabbed and tested. The lab found Sue's DNA and that of an unknown male.
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That unknown profile also matched DNA on her fingernails, apparently from her killer.
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That DNA tells a story. These two people have a drink. Something goes wrong. There's a fight.
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He chokes her. She's clawing at him. He hits her with the bottle. That's correct.
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That's how his DNA gets under her fingernails. Under her fingernails. And then his DNA is also on the neck of the bottle that is used to hit her on the head.
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Correct. And I think that that explains exactly what happened. It was inconceivable to me that Sue would have had a drink with someone who had broken into her home.
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And the entire investigation shifted at that point. Now this investigation was not about a random intruder.
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It was about the victim and about the secrets she held close. She ever tell you she was in love with him?
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She was over the moon. Sue Markham was working from home on that final Sunday night of her life.
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As usual, she made herself available to students preparing for an exam the next day.
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She was all about giving her time, her energy to other people. And it doesn't surprise me at all.
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The evidence inside her home suggested Sue was not alone as she worked. In her kitchen, those two shot glasses told a story.
00:33:16
Had Sue Markham shared a drink with her murderer? You need to put a name and a face to that DNA profile.
00:33:26
We do. How do you do that? So we went back and started trying to look and say, okay, well, who were the romantic interests in her life?
00:33:35
Sue never married, and as far as her friends knew, she was not dating anyone special.
00:33:41
Of course, love gone bad is always intriguing to police. So what about her former love interests?
00:33:49
Turns out she and her platonic best friend Larry March, friends since college, had been romantic years earlier, after Larry's divorce.
00:34:00
And I knew the first person I'm going to think did this was me, because, number one, I'm the one that found her.
00:34:08
You're the one that found her. They're going to say you're carrying a torch for her.
00:34:12
You were involved with her, right? You had a key to her house. I mean, it would have been police malpractice
00:34:19
for them not to be looking at you. Right. Oh, they looked. Larry's got a person police look at in that situation.
00:34:25
Well, of course, absolutely. He's a prime suspect. He's, you know, because he's a jilted boyfriend.
00:34:30
They asked Larry for an alibi, took pictures of him at the scene and got swabs of his DNA.
00:34:37
Larry was not a match. I think pretty quickly we were able to rule Mr. March out.
00:34:44
He had been at school that morning. There was nothing to indicate that he and Sue were still romantically involved.
00:34:52
His general demeanor on the scene, his willingness to help, and his willingness to provide his DNA for us to compare
00:35:00
are generally not things that suspects do. With Larry ruled out, investigators looked elsewhere.
00:35:08
During the search of Sue's home, they had discovered a document with a man's name,
00:35:14
Jorge Rueda Landeros. We'd reached out to Lisa Colton, who's Sue's friend, and we made an inquiry as to who he was in her life.
00:35:23
When detectives ask you about Jorge Landeros, what do you say? I say, yes, Jorge was part of Sue's life, and I was a little surprised about why are you asking me about him?
00:35:35
I think he's in Mexico. Jorge was Sue's Spanish teacher, the same guy who also taught yoga and got her into that.
00:35:44
Lisa remembers when they first met five years earlier. And what'd she say? That she really liked him as a teacher and they became friends from that Jorge shared Sue interests in traveling and finance He said he been a day trader and was now a poet and published author In addition to him having all these interesting
00:36:08
creative ideas, you know, he spoke, you know, in these very philosophical, esoteric,
00:36:16
using big words. And you could tell though that she really liked him. Yes. He was quite a bit
00:36:23
younger but she I don't know what it was but she just wanted him in her life over time sue and Jorge
00:36:30
developed a close friendship and maybe something more she ever tell you she was in love with him
00:36:37
she was over the moon I never saw her talk about a man in the way she talked about him that she just
00:36:46
was beside herself. She did put him on a pedestal like he was a genius. He was a stockbroker and
00:36:56
yoga teacher, poet. Yes, poet and published poet. I get the feeling Sue was more impressed with all of that than you were.
00:37:07
Yeah. She brought him to a class and in some ways maybe he was her spiritual advisor or something.
00:37:16
But I remember him coming to class and sitting cross-legged on the desk. And I remember thinking, wow, this is odd.
00:37:26
Jorge told people he was the son of a diplomat, that he'd studied yoga in India, worked on Wall Street.
00:37:34
And Sue told her friends, Jorge had his future all mapped out. and she started telling me about him and that he was going to sell all of his worldly possessions
00:37:46
and live in a cave with a yogi when she says to you you know jorge's gonna divest himself of all
00:37:53
his worldly possessions and live in a cave were you able to keep a straight face no i said sue
00:38:00
that's crazy and she threw her head back and laughed i know right and she's laughing about it
00:38:07
But it's like, no, no, it's crazy. Nobody said this is a guy with some issues. Maybe take it easy.
00:38:15
Oh, there were more issues. And she knew about them. He ran hot and cold. His moods, he went very, very low.
00:38:23
And one day for one of her themed birthday parties, I walked in and there was this angry painting on the wall.
00:38:31
Blue and red and black, harsh, dark lines. It didn't go with anything in her life. It wasn't her.
00:38:40
It wasn't her, but it was Jorge, Beverly thought. As he began spending more and more of his time in Mexico,
00:38:48
Sue registered for an online PhD program to study Spanish. She was hoping the bilingual Jorge would help her.
00:38:57
And I think he basically said, I can't commit to helping you perhaps as much as you want.
00:39:02
And so that was very upsetting to her. That's him pulling back. Correct. Time passed.
00:39:10
And as it did, Sue rarely brought up the name Jorge Lenderos. You're thinking she's moved on.
00:39:17
Yes, she was. I believe that she was. And we learned that Mr. Lenderos had moved back to Juarez, Mexico, to that area roughly about a year before.
00:39:29
and that as far as anyone knew, he and Sue weren't involved anymore. Well, how much can any of us really know about the people we love?
00:39:39
She didn't tell you, I'm in a very bad place here. No. Or about a suspect who became a phantom and he vanishes.
00:39:48
And he did. Could she be his next victim? Did he ever mention the name Sue Markham to you?
00:39:59
Sue Markham's parents asked her good friend Lisa to help organize Sue's estate in order to pay the bills like the mortgage on the house in Bethesda.
00:40:20
Lisa needed to log into Sue's email. There was just one problem. No one knew Sue's password.
00:40:28
Someone's got a laptop up and we're trying to figure it out. Someone suggested they try her cat's name, Scooter.
00:40:37
And lo and behold, we figured some stuff out, put some numbers in there, and we figured out the password.
00:40:43
A lucky guess, indeed. Lisa opened Sue's email, took care of the bills, and began sorting Sue's banking information.
00:40:52
She went through Sue's contacts and let a number of her friends know that Sue had died.
00:40:59
Sue's Spanish and yoga teacher, Jorge, had already heard the news from a friend and reached out to Lisa.
00:41:05
Kind of typical Jorge in this philosophical, weird kind of, you know, way, you know.
00:41:11
Here's Jorge writing to Lisa about Sue. We told each other the story of our lives,
00:41:17
and woven in those stories the little sweet drops of our deepest yearnings, that we both knew we had found something, and something big, and wonderful, and spacious.
00:41:28
That is what is gone for me, from me, and I don't think I will ever recover it, rediscover it.
00:41:36
Jorge also told Lisa he last spoke with Sue in September. That would have been just one month before Sue died.
00:41:44
And that was news to Lisa. who thought of Jorge only as part of Sue's past. Hadn't their involvement ended a long time ago?
00:41:54
Now in Sue inbox Lisa took a closer look and found a whole folder labeled Jorge And there just you know hundreds and hundreds of emails you know in there
00:42:08
Back and forth. Back and forth. You didn't know they were still in touch like that?
00:42:11
Not to the extent, no. When you're reading those emails between Sue and Jorge, what jumps out at you?
00:42:18
There's something is, clearly there's something financial that, you know, was going on.
00:42:23
It looked as if Sue, the accountant, was somehow mixed up with Jorge's finances.
00:42:30
Two years before the murder, Sue brought Jorge to a meeting with her colleague Don Williamson for help with some tax trouble Jorge was having.
00:42:39
Don says Jorge had not filed tax returns in years. When you see him, what do you think?
00:42:46
Thug. No question about it. Heavy jacket, hood over it, unshaven, not very well kept at all.
00:42:55
I said, why didn't you file tax returns? I was probably too coked up. I will remember that for the rest of my life.
00:43:01
Did he have any kind of financial records to show you? No, no. Then I knew, you know, if they don't bring some stuff in for you to look at,
00:43:08
then you know that they're not serious about it. Don says he got a very bad feeling.
00:43:13
I didn't really interfere in Sue's personal life, but I couldn't help myself at that time.
00:43:18
I was chair of the department. She's on my staff. And so I met with her because she's my friend.
00:43:23
Without Landeras. Oh, yes. The next week. And I said, you know, this is not the man for you.
00:43:29
This isn't the guy. Yeah, this is not the guy. Oh, Don, you don't understand him.
00:43:34
You don't understand him. He's so smart. He's so intelligent. I'm sitting back in my chair.
00:43:38
I said, oh, my God. Sue Markham, an intelligent woman, a good business person, knows her way around.
00:43:45
Is nobody's fool. Is nobody's fool. And here she is, totally taken in. At the end of the meeting, I said, okay, Sue, I understand.
00:43:53
I wish you the best of luck, but do one favor for me. Don't give me any money. As Lisa read through that folder, filled with hundreds of emails between her late friend and Jorge Landeros, one truth stood out.
00:44:08
By that point, Sue had already given Jorge money. A lot of it. I'm learning about aspects of their relationship that I wasn't aware of.
00:44:20
It looked as if Sue and Jorge had opened an investment account together. Jorge had been managing the account, and he had not done that well.
00:44:30
Either he had lost nearly all of Sue's money in the market, or he had spent it. Another thing that emerged from the emails was how anxious that made Sue.
00:44:44
Sue writes to Jorge, my body and my mind are at war, and it has made me physically ill.
00:44:50
It's heartbreaking. The heart and the head. Lisa thought the emails looked to her as if Sue's heart wanted to believe the best about Jorge,
00:45:02
but her head was starting to come to terms with bottom line reality. It wasn't clear if Jorge was being honest with Sue about the money she had willingly handed over to him.
00:45:15
It was obvious how Sue was becoming more and more desperate as she wrote to him looking for answers.
00:45:22
If I had any magic powers, I would wish for you to be everything that you have been to me over the past few years
00:45:28
and everything that I know you are capable of being, with a sufficient amount of money thrown into the mix
00:45:33
so that you could spread your soul and insight with many others. You are an incredible person, Jorge,
00:45:39
someone who can enrich many people's lives. I thought the investments would be our vehicle for getting you to that place,
00:45:45
but the effect of this interim activity has really taken its toll on me. Wow. He was using her.
00:45:52
Sue would get poetry from him. There's a famous poetry book he has around here somewhere.
00:45:57
My wife and Sue were pretty friendly, and so she would show my wife the poetry. and ask, do you think he cares?
00:46:06
Do you think he cares? And that's heartbreaking. We read some of that poetry Jorge wrote,
00:46:13
maybe part of the bad boy alchemy that drew Sue to him. I drink from that cup where your lips have drawn a red moon of gibbous passion,
00:46:24
90 pounds of hope. Sue knew her friends disapproved of Jorge, and while she shared his verses
00:46:32
she learned not to share much else about him and she apparently made the same decision
00:46:38
about her financial issues involving Jorge even after she gave him the money and even after it was clear that that money wasn't coming back
00:46:48
and she was in serious financial trouble she never talked to you about that she didn't tell anybody about that
00:46:54
none of us knew this she didn't tell you I'm in a very bad place here no Sue never told anyone, but Lisa sure would.
00:47:04
The police. Looking through her murdered friend's inbox, Lisa had just discovered the relationship between Sue and Jorge was more complex and more current
00:47:28
than she ever knew. Lisa took the emails she found to police. That's the email of somebody who's having trouble sleeping
00:47:38
and who can't think about anything else. I agree. I agree. Financially, her world was falling apart at that point,
00:47:46
yet he was still in her life, and I think she still wanted him in her life, sadly.
00:47:52
That was in October of 2008, so that's about two years before she was killed. Correct.
00:47:57
So this has been going on for a long time. Yeah. And I don't know if she felt that at some point she would maybe be able to recoup some of the money from him if she stayed somehow connected to him or if that she was just really still felt like she loved him.
00:48:14
Investigators already had an inkling Sue and Jorge had some financial relationship.
00:48:20
Because that document with his name on it found in Sue's home on the day she was murdered came from a life insurance policy.
00:48:29
Jorge was listed as the beneficiary. And the payout, half a million dollars. Linderos and Sue were not married, never had been.
00:48:40
Correct. They're not related in any way. No. Why would she have a life insurance policy in which he's the beneficiary?
00:48:48
We learned that the declared purpose of the policy was because Mr. Linderos and Sue Markham were opening up a joint yoga business together.
00:48:57
So he had a policy on her and she had a policy on him. Correct. As detectives unraveled the financial entanglements between Sue and Jorge,
00:49:07
they learned Sue had recently lost more than $300,000, money that came from Sue's savings.
00:49:15
Investigators suspected Sue had been the victim of a swindle. However, it was also clear Sue and Jorge's relationship was more complicated than that.
00:49:27
They had spent a lot of time together, doing yoga and traveling to Lake Tahoe and a month in Argentina.
00:49:36
It does seem Sue Markham looked at Jorge Landeros and saw love. Her friends looked at the two of them together and saw a bouquet of the reddest of flags.
00:49:51
Do you think he ever loved her, or was this all about her money? I think he had feelings for her. I don't know if it was love or, you know, a friend love, a kind of love.
00:50:03
I would say yes. And again, I don't know when in his mind did it flip to, oh, I can get something out of this.
00:50:12
Who knows? Alan's wife, Barbara, says Sue confided in her about the relationship.
00:50:19
When I was visiting her one time, she did say that she knew that it was a one-sided relationship in terms of romance.
00:50:30
She loved him, and she knew he wasn't ever going to return that love. Sergeant Haley thought all of that made Jorge Landarros a person of interest.
00:50:42
he started digging around and found no evidence Jorge ever worked on Wall Street or was a child
00:50:50
of diplomats. He was a dual citizen of both the U.S. and Mexico, and he crossed the border frequently.
00:50:59
When you start looking for Mr. Lenderos, you don't know whether he's in this country or not.
00:51:05
We didn't know. We knew that his mom had lived or was currently living in northern Virginia.
00:51:10
We knew his father lived right outside of El Paso in Texas. We could see that he was regularly in the Juarez area of Mexico,
00:51:20
sometimes once every three or four days, sometimes a little bit less than that. He's crossing into the United States for a period of time.
00:51:30
Haley checked to see which country Landeros was in the night Sue was murdered. The border records that they keep and that we obtained only show entries, they don't show exits.
00:51:43
And so while we knew that he had entered the country on October 21st of 2010, which is roughly four days before the murder, we don't know when he went back.
00:51:54
So he could have still been in this country? Absolutely. Until the point, of course, in which he next enters, which was in November.
00:52:02
So at some point between October 25th and a month or so later, he could have been anywhere.
00:52:10
Investigators had no idea if or when Jorge Landeros would ever return to the United States.
00:52:17
Three months after Sue's murder, requests to flag his passport went out to the border and local police in El Paso.
00:52:27
Just eight weeks later, they got an alert. He gets stopped at the border crossing.
00:52:33
The man police very much wanted to talk with was on American soil. What would he have to say?
00:52:40
The New York Times Markham's murder. And he had just returned to American soil. Local El Paso police were on their
00:53:19
way to speak with him. He gets stopped at the border crossing. Our El Paso contact goes out
00:53:25
and meets with him, fights him to come back to their headquarters for an interview. And he does it.
00:53:30
And he does it. Jorge went along willingly. All the detective told him was that they needed to
00:53:36
talk with him about what had happened to his friend, Sue. I'm guessing that neither you nor anybody else associated with this investigation put
00:53:44
out a statement saying, we have unknown suspect DNA. That was very close to the vest.
00:53:49
Yeah, we did not tell anybody that. Because if he's the guy, you don't want him to know that what you really need is his DNA.
00:53:54
You want him to think they still looking at a burglary Correct Because I don think he would have cooperated had he known that So he goes back to the El Paso station He comes back They talk to him for a little while
00:54:05
One of the things that we had asked him to do was get a DNA swab of the inside of your cheek.
00:54:09
Mr. Landero signed a written consent form saying he was agreeing to do it freely and voluntarily.
00:54:15
And he provides us with his DNA. It was almost too easy. He just said yes and provided the swab.
00:54:23
That said, police did not have enough to hold him. So just as easily as he came, he went.
00:54:31
The sample went to a lab, and a week went by, then five more. And then finally came the moment investigators had waited for.
00:54:41
He's identified as the contributor of the DNA under Sue's fingernails on the murder weapon and on the shot glasses.
00:54:48
And suddenly your suspect has a name. He does. At that point, he's getting charged.
00:54:53
For Sue's family and friends, it was a long time coming. The main thing for us was that whoever it was at that point is apprehended so that they can do no more damage to anyone else.
00:55:06
The day he got the DNA, March 2nd, do you know what March 2nd is? It's his birthday.
00:55:13
A warrant for murder was issued, and it came complete with one more huge problem for investigators.
00:55:22
You don't have him. We don't have him. And he vanishes. And he did. His name is Jorge Landeros, wanted in connection with the killing of Sue Ann Markham.
00:55:33
Jorge Landeros, a man with two passports and one murder charge, was in the wind.
00:55:41
Before Sue Markham was murdered, Landeras used to regularly travel between the U.S. and Mexico.
00:55:47
That ended right after he gave that DNA swab. He keeps going back and forth until he stopped and asked for his DNA, which he freely gives.
00:55:58
Correct. And after that? After that, he never came back. He never crossed the border again.
00:56:03
You would have known. We would have known. Investigators added Landeros to the FBI Most Wanted website.
00:56:11
It included his fugitive poster. They also reached out to him directly via email, posing as American University faculty
00:56:19
and working on a story about Sue. Landeros did not take the bait. What did he say in those emails?
00:56:27
It was pretty wordy. I think he's a pretty verbose person. He invited me to come to meet him at a cafe in Juarez if I wanted to talk.
00:56:35
But he said to bring my Kevlar, which I took as a bulletproof vest. Bring your Kevlar because Mexico's a dangerous place or he's going to shoot you?
00:56:44
Right. I'm not sure. I didn't go. American law enforcement has no jurisdiction in Mexico.
00:56:51
So while investigators believed Landeros was in the Juarez area, they couldn't just go look for him.
00:56:57
He was technically a fugitive, but he wasn't exactly hiding. Someone with his exact name published online writings titled Poemas Profugos, or in English, Fugitive Poems.
00:57:13
Now the FBI wants my bones because of domestic matters and corrupt convictions of its great nation.
00:57:20
Very well. When they finally find me, they will grasp shadows, a brief obituary, salty, and with pieces of coral.
00:57:31
There was also this. Sometimes it's your turn to die. Sometimes it's your turn to kill.
00:57:39
Karma is like that. And then time started ticking by. A lot of time. Over the years, you got calls about him.
00:57:49
We did. Was it him or were these tips that were maybe well-meaning but it wasn't him?
00:57:54
None of them turned out to be him. Investigators in Maryland worked with the State Department and Interpol.
00:58:02
They also requested help from Mexican authorities. Despite that, Jorge Landeros remained a free man.
00:58:10
I knew he was highly intelligent. I knew he spoke multiple languages. I knew kind of some of his previous work experience, like that he was a yoga instructor.
00:58:19
This is an FBI agent. We agreed not to show his face because he still works undercover.
00:58:26
In 2022, 12 years after Sue Markham's murder, he was assigned to run down tips that still trickled in about Jorge Landeros.
00:58:37
We had a potential sighting of Landeros in Brazil, that he was going by the name Guillermo and saying that he was from Venezuela.
00:58:46
We tracked that down and found that to be untrue. Somebody else said they saw him in Texas.
00:58:51
Correct. That was the second tip I received. And that he was homeless. Yes. That kind of doesn't sound like him.
00:58:58
No, no, it's not. Authorities in two countries may have had no idea where he was.
00:59:06
But this woman did. Sometimes karma arrives in unexpected ways. I met Leon as my yoga teacher.
00:59:16
Leon was his name. A new name, a new city, and a new woman in his life. Investigators didn't know where Jorge Landeros was.
00:59:40
This woman knew something they did not. Her name is Rocio. And while investigators were searching for Jorge, he was living with her.
00:59:54
She is worried about her privacy and her safety so she asked us not to show her face or use her last name Charming guy Attractive
01:00:05
I think he was very attractive. He was very charming. Rocio met him while doing yoga in Guadalajara, Mexico.
01:00:15
Tell me what it was like to take a yoga class from him. He seemed like a wise man.
01:00:21
Like he could teach us not just yoga, but he used to give advice about life and philosophy.
01:00:32
The man she knew as Leon told her he had lived all over the world and studied at top universities in America.
01:00:40
He'd worked as a day trader and was now ready for a more spiritual life. He was going to give up all his material possessions and just teach yoga.
01:00:50
Yeah. Sound familiar? Familiar? It's the same story he told Sue and her friends years earlier.
01:00:58
Only the names have changed. Well, only his name. At the beginning, he was just my yoga teacher.
01:01:04
And eventually, you get involved. Yeah. Were you in love with him? Yeah. At the beginning, he was very sweet with me.
01:01:17
And actually at that moment I was in a very vulnerable place. I had just lost my mother.
01:01:25
I'm a divorced mom of two. I felt lonely. He and his dogs moved in with Rocio and her children.
01:01:35
He came along at just the right time. I believe so. Along with the dogs, he brought yoga, meditation, and music.
01:01:47
I thought he was what I needed. When did you realize he was not what you needed?
01:01:52
A few months later. Rocio says the relationship turned quickly. First, he cheated on her.
01:02:00
Then, his moods darkened. I thought he was going through some kind of personal crisis or depression or something like that.
01:02:12
And later, the violence started. She says that during sex, he would put his hands around her throat and choke her.
01:02:40
Did he apologize? Did he say he was sorry? How many times did that happen? Rocio says Leon isolated her from her friends.
01:03:12
He also talked her into letting him open an investment account using her savings.
01:03:18
He was persuasive. Yeah, very. Would he have access to that account? Total access. He managed that account.
01:03:26
I didn't know how to manage that account, but it was in my name. Just as he did with Sue Markham, Jorge either mismanaged or just spent Rocio's money.
01:03:38
She says she lost a total of $20,000. After three years, Rocio knew she needed to get away.
01:03:46
She threw Leon out of her house and eventually obtained an order of protection. I hope not see him again.
01:03:54
You think you'll ever see your money again? No, but that's a loss. The important thing is that me and my children, we are alive.
01:04:04
Did he ever mention the name Sue Markham to you? Never. No. What about the name Jorge Landeros?
01:04:13
Never. That was in 2022. Rocio had no idea the man she knew in Mexico was wanted for murder in the United States.
01:04:23
Or that friends and family of a woman named Sue Markham were holding on to hope he would be caught.
01:04:30
I sent Detective Haley an email and I included a picture of her and I was like, I hope you're not forgetting her.
01:04:37
I said, I don't know how long it's going to take, but it's going to happen. I was sure that, you know, God would take care of it and there would be justice.
01:04:48
Beverly wasn't so sure. We never thought the person would be caught. You never expected this to go to trial?
01:04:54
No. All of it added up to years of frustration for Sue's loved ones. And freedom for a man who police believed was literally getting away with murder.
01:05:05
until one day an anonymous tip came in to the FBI. He had a new name. Correct. But he was still teaching yoga.
01:05:15
Yes, yeah. I said the life of a yoga instructor on the run, it must be a good one because he looked exactly the same.
01:05:22
A decade had gone by since Jorge Landeros had waxed poetic about running from the FBI.
01:05:41
All that time, prosecutor John McCarthy kept a box of documents under his desk. a quiet promise that if and when Jorge returned to the U.S., he would be ready.
01:05:54
Never left underneath my desk It was at my feet for 10 years Because you thought one day we going to get this guy We going to come back I was hoping at some point we would get him back here And then came a tip The tip The one that changed everything
01:06:10
I remember it very vividly. I came in like any other day to the office and logged into my computer.
01:06:16
And very quickly, I knew that we had something big. What made this lead so plausible?
01:06:21
So the information was specific, and then it also provided a Facebook profile with some pictures, of course.
01:06:29
And it was very easy to tell that the person in the pictures was visually consistent with what I knew Linderos to look like.
01:06:37
He was still teaching yoga. Yes, yeah. The agent called Detective Hamill back in Maryland.
01:06:43
They said, we got a tip, and we think this is your guy, and they gave us his Facebook page.
01:06:49
Of course, I'm scrolling down and I look and I say, that's 100% him. There's no doubt that that's him.
01:06:54
I said the life of a yoga instructor on the run, it must be a good one because he looked exactly the same over like all those years.
01:07:03
Investigators were able to figure out where Jorge was living and surveilled his residence, photographing him as he came and went.
01:07:12
FBI Special Agent Marco Acevedo was assigned to Guadalajara, Mexico and oversaw the operation.
01:07:18
It was one of those deals that we had to make sure that it was him. It looked like it was him.
01:07:25
By now, the FBI had cooperation from Mexican authorities, who positioned themselves on the street and waited.
01:07:34
There was kind of a small market or kind of like a corner store down the street from where he was residing.
01:07:38
He was on his way there, and that's ultimately where the surveillance team moved in and took him into custody.
01:07:43
And during the arrest, somebody says to him, are you Jorge Landeros? He self-admitted that he was indeed Jorge Landeros.
01:07:53
He's not denying it anymore. No. Tell me, when you heard Jorge had been arrested.
01:07:58
That was a Tuesday night. Larry Haley calls me and says, he's been arrested. I was like, wow. It was pretty amazing. I was very excited and relieved.
01:08:09
I almost fainted. It was so many years later. We thought it was never going to happen.
01:08:15
I couldn't believe it. Jorge Landero spent the next several months in a Mexican prison, waiting to be extradited to the U.S.
01:08:26
I think relationships between the Mexican government and the United States had improved in terms of extraditions.
01:08:32
And it was in relatively short order that we got him back after that. Must have felt pretty good to take that box out of your desk and give it to your prosecutors.
01:08:41
and say like, yeah. Yes. FBI agents brought Jorge Landero's back to the United States in July 2023
01:08:49
and handed him over to Montgomery County Police. We'll leave these on. We're going to take that off.
01:08:56
We're just going to wait for some other detectives. Okay, so we're going to get you some water.
01:09:00
That's nice. As Jorge Landero's waited to be questioned, he had some questions for them.
01:09:06
Where's the camera? I think it's... If there's no cameras, people get tortured by federal agents.
01:09:14
Nah, nobody's got tortured. You never know? It's audio video. There's no... Where is it?
01:09:20
It's in one of these things. Wow. Yeah, there's no secrets. It's pretty well hidden.
01:09:25
Yeah. The agents left him alone for nearly an hour. It turned out this was where interrogation met introspection.
01:09:35
Ever the yogi, he meditated silently. did some stretching and some strengthening
01:09:42
poses. Then in walked the detectives who had been looking for him for so long. Hey, I'm
01:09:50
Sergeant Haley. Mr. Haley. Yep, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. This is Detective Haley. Hello
01:09:56
sir, how are you? Fine to you. What's it like to finally see Jorge Landeros in person after all those years?
01:10:02
We've been waiting a long time. How are you? Good, thank you. Good, I'm sorry to meet you under the circumstances.
01:10:08
Whatever could be. Nothing else. Well, we've, uh, it's been a long time. They were off to a friendly start.
01:10:16
So I'm going to read you an advice of rights form, okay? Most definitely. How would you describe your physical condition right now?
01:10:23
It's perfect. Perfect. I saw you doing some yoga in here when I came in. You were doing stuff I don't think I could do.
01:10:29
Okay, so you have the right now and at any time to remain silent. Do you understand that?
01:10:34
Yes, I do. Okay. Anything you say may be used against you. Do you understand that?
01:10:40
And will be used. I really didn't expect him to talk to me about the case, but we, of course, have to give it a try.
01:10:47
So now would be the time I'd like to talk to you. So, you're reading my rights? Yes.
01:10:53
Which means that I can affirm them right now. Right? Sure. So I affirm my Fifth Amendment right to the right side.
01:11:01
Okay. And my Sixth Amendment right to have counsel present. Okay. Jorge wouldn't answer their questions without a lawyer,
01:11:09
but that did not stop him from offering his own observations about how the detectives were doing their job.
01:11:17
Well, you guys seem so polite that it is disarming. It is really beautiful. So I want to protect myself against your charms.
01:11:25
My charms. Interesting that in that interview, Mr. Landeros, a man who charmed a woman out of essentially her life savings,
01:11:33
accuses you of trying to charm him. It was interesting because I had been waiting a long time to talk to him.
01:11:40
I said, I'm really not trying to do that. I was like, no, no, you're the charming one here, not us.
01:11:45
You guys don't look or talk like heart-nosed detectives, you know, Philip Marlowe types.
01:11:50
Well, I'll be honest with you. What good does it do me to sit and yell and scream at you?
01:11:55
It just puts you on the defensive, you know what I mean? Yeah, but this is actually more obsidious.
01:12:00
Um, I'm not trying to be in two. I've just been waiting to talk to you for a long time.
01:12:05
That's all, to be honest. Okay. Um, not likewise. And with that, the interview was over.
01:12:15
Take care. Welcome back. Thank you very much. Jorge Landeros would tell his side of the story through his lawyers and in a courtroom.
01:12:26
As to count one murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant. I was sick. I just felt he's going to walk.
01:12:35
Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even breathe. Jorge Landeros was charged with first-degree murder, which means premeditation.
01:12:58
It carries a life sentence. It was October 2025, 15 years after Sue Markham was killed, when the trial began in Maryland.
01:13:08
You went every single day? I went every single day. Because of her? Because of her.
01:13:15
And you just wanted to stare him down. Sue's brother Alan came from California. I remember each day as he walked into court,
01:13:24
and I did not want to look him in the eye because I didn't want him to see what I had in my head and in my heart.
01:13:34
The state said Jorge Landeros was a master manipulator who exploited Sue's affection to the tune of $300,000.
01:13:45
Those emails were evidence of Sue's stress as her savings evaporated. Prosecutors Debbie Feinstein and Ryan Wexler.
01:13:55
He would minimize her anxiety around the financials. We see in her email saying, you know, you aren't answering me. You aren't responding to this.
01:14:04
and he made it seem like a game in some ways. And this was her life. But she's only expressing those worries to him
01:14:13
as far as we can tell. No one else knew. And he would push back and tell her to be freer
01:14:18
and knew kind of the buzzwords and what to say that would keep her entangled. Was the motive ultimately that life insurance policy?
01:14:27
It's hard to say. The state's theory of Sue's final night was that Jorge came over was somehow triggered and exploded into violence Did he go there to kill Sue Markham that night We don have any evidence that tells us that he did
01:14:43
We also don't have any evidence that tells us that he didn't. But the fact that they were having a drink together
01:14:49
suggests that there was some sort of friendly something happening at some point during that night.
01:14:56
And she either, what, wants her money back or says, I'm not giving you any more money.
01:15:01
so what she snaps at him she yells at him she says i'm gonna tell someone in authority about you
01:15:07
maybe part of our theory was when this argument started at some point he touched her physically
01:15:15
either he hit her or he threatened her or something and then went too far to come back from
01:15:23
and he finished the job they argued jorge then staged the break-in and dropped sue's jeep in
01:15:30
downtown D.C., hoping a car thief would steal it. Was that little piece of metal from the Ray-Ban
01:15:37
sunglasses part of that misdirection? Maybe. It does fit the theory that Landeros was trying to
01:15:44
throw police off his scent. I think he believed that he had staged a perfect burglary. I don't
01:15:51
think that he thought that his DNA was going to be found on anything. And he just thought he was
01:15:57
smarter. Now the defense stepped up with a completely different narrative. Mr. Landeros
01:16:05
is an innocent man who's been accused of a crime that he just did not commit. Jorge Landeros was
01:16:12
represented by public defenders Megan Brennan and Tatiana David. They insisted their client
01:16:17
was no manipulator and that he did not swindle Sue. They said she was too smart for that
01:16:24
and that she and Jorge lost money in the market at a time when a lot of investments went bad.
01:16:31
The evidence does not support the notion that Mr. Landeros ever stole Ms. Markham's money.
01:16:37
They lost money during the second greatest financial crisis that this country has experienced, like so many other Americans.
01:16:45
They reminded the jury Landeros was never charged with any financial crime. And they said this was not about Sue's life insurance policy,
01:16:55
the one listing Jorge as the beneficiary. His attorneys say he never even attempted to claim it.
01:17:03
And Jorge's DNA? No surprise to them that it was in Sue's home and even on Sue body These two were friends They had been romantic at times They had a longstanding friendship So we embrace the notion that Mr Landero DNA would be in this home
01:17:23
And while prosecutors argued Jorge's DNA on Sue's fingernails was evidence of a struggle,
01:17:29
the defense disagreed. If you scratch yourself and there's DNA from a hug, a kiss,
01:17:36
it transfers. DNA is incredibly transferable. The defense also asked why no trace of their client's DNA was ever found in Sue Markham's Jeep.
01:17:48
Mr. Landeros' fingerprints were nowhere in that Jeep. Mr. Landeros' DNA is nowhere in that Jeep.
01:17:54
The only person's DNA that they could identify or the profile that they could identify belonged to D'Andrew Hamlin.
01:18:02
D'Andrew Hamlin, the man found driving Sue's Jeep hours after her body was discovered.
01:18:08
The defense offered him as an alternate suspect. They also wanted to talk about the burglars menacing Sue's neighborhood.
01:18:16
Within the three months of the burglary of Ms. Markham's home, there were approximately 60 burglaries within a five-mile radius of her home.
01:18:27
Except the judge ruled those burglaries could not be mentioned to the jury. which inhibited us from putting on a very viable defense.
01:18:41
The jury took only about five hours to reach a verdict. The audio recorded in court.
01:18:47
As to count one murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant. Not guilty.
01:18:53
Not guilty of first degree murder. And you thought... I was sick. I just felt he's going to walk.
01:19:03
couldn't breathe, couldn't even breathe. However, the jury had the option to consider a lesser charge of second-degree murder,
01:19:13
intentional but not planned. As to murder in the second degree, we the jury find the defendant guilty.
01:19:19
Guilty of second-degree murder. I started to cry. Oh, thank goodness. Just the relief that they would hold this person accountable.
01:19:30
I believe he committed first-degree murder. And I fully understand why the jury found not guilty for first degree murder and guilty for second degree murder.
01:19:40
And I'm at peace with that. It was done. I've watched Dateline. People say when the right verdict comes in it was a good day And I would sit there watching the show and I say how is it a good day They still gone But that day I said it a good day We will maintain we do maintain
01:20:00
we have always maintained that Mr. Landeros is wrongfully convicted. At sentencing, the judge
01:20:06
said Jorge Landeros was Sue's Achilles heel and called her murder a heinous act. Then the judge
01:20:14
sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Landeros will be almost 70 before he is eligible for parole.
01:20:23
Rocio, who once saw a future with Jorge, only found out about Sue Markham's murder after he
01:20:29
was arrested. She reached out to investigators and shared her story. What's the message here
01:20:36
to other women, do you think? I think it's important to know that this can happen to anyone.
01:20:44
and I think we have to be careful. Anyone could be manipulated. And so I think the lesson is if somebody shows you who they are,
01:20:59
and it's not a good thing, walk away. If somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
01:21:07
Absolutely. Sue Markham, a woman with a huge heart, who cared about everyone, maybe too much, maybe too easily.
01:21:18
You hate that she's going to be remembered this way. Absolutely. I want people to know that she was funny, that she was smart,
01:21:25
she was spontaneous in a good kind of way. It was just a great friendship to have,
01:21:30
and it's horrible that she's not here anymore for other people to experience. I want her to be remembered as someone who loved life and loved family,
01:21:40
who gave a lot of herself to the world. You think about her a lot? Yes. All the time.
01:21:49
We live through, you know, because we don't want to forget her. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:03
And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.
01:22:10
Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:22:18
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.