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Tonight, on Dateline. 911, what is your emergency? I thought my girlfriend was missing.
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I think she's dead. She was laying in a back bedroom closet. He said, there's no easy way to say this, we found your mother dead.
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She had let a complete stranger into the condo to take an old computer. Kevin was asking, were there any other people that knew about this computer guy?
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He was the top suspect in my mind. Since most murders are committed by people that you know, this could be a domestic.
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It didn't make sense that Chris would murder his fiancée. He was spending money on online porn.
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Did you meet somebody in the chat room? I've sent maybe two to three emails to her.
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What was the game plan when you go in for this conversation? My plan was to confront him.
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I know what happened, but what I don't know is why. You don't know everything. My mom was my best friend.
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Kevin has shown he's not going to give up. I don't feel like I had a choice. She would have done the same thing for me.
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A mother murdered, and while detectives pursue one man, her son is convinced it's someone else.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Behind the Closet Door.
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If she'd only stayed in the water a little longer, maybe this all wouldn't have happened.
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Maybe she would have been swimming when it all went down. Maybe she'd still be with us.
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Andrea Sincotta always felt safe in the pool. And she loved it there. Almost as much as she loved her son, Kevin.
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Swimming was very important to your mom. Yes, yes it was. Why'd she love swimming?
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It's a total body workout and it's very relaxing and graceful. You feel great for the rest of the day.
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She swam every day if she could. That's how Andrea was, according to her friend Sally.
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Persistent. Also whip smart and endlessly positive. When I think about Andy, I think of her as someone who was happy
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and someone who was comfortable with herself. People who loved her say she knew what she wanted
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and her calling in life was grounded in what she loved to do. She was an avid reader.
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Kermit Frazier had been her friend for years. Andrea was just a brilliant kid. I mean, she was really smart.
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He wasn't surprised Andrea became a librarian. I said to myself, that makes perfect sense. She was very strongly connected to books.
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Then came a hot August day in 1998. Andrea was then living in Arlington, Virginia,
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just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. She shared a cozy two-bedroom apartment.
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with her boyfriend, Chris Johnson. Andrea's son, Kevin, knew their schedules. He went to work at Home Depot a little before 7 in the morning.
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Chris worked in the receiving department there. Andrea had that Friday off from the library.
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Her normal routine, if she was off on a weekday, would be to go swimming in the morning.
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That's just what she did. Andrea headed out for a swim, checking into the high school pool at 7.40 a.m.
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Afterward, she stopped by the public library. She had a special project at the library that she needed to go into work for a couple of hours.
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Even though it was her day off. Right. And then that would have meant she was coming home around 11 or 11.30 a.m.
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The plan was to meet her friend at 1 p.m. for lunch. Andrea and Chris's answering machine suggested the day hadn't gone as planned.
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Just checking to see that you're all right. It's 2 o'clock on Friday. Bye-bye. That's the voice of the woman Andrea was supposed to meet for lunch.
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She made that call because Andrea never showed. Next on the machine was a message from Andrea's boyfriend, Chris.
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Hi, it's me. It's about 2.15. I'm looking to try to get home about 5.30. We can confirm whether we're going to the movies or renting a video.
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Otherwise, I'll see you tonight. Love you. Bye. As the day wore on, multiple messages came from Chris,
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telling Andrea he'd be a little late. Hi, it's me. It's after 5 o'clock. I have to pick up a couple things.
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Hi, it's me. It's 5.39. I've left Home Depot. Chris came home around dinner time. No sign of Andrea.
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He told Kevin what happened next. Her car wasn't there. The door was unlocked and it should have been locked.
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Chris walked in, called out for Andrea, then waited for her to come home. He had a snack, took a shower, did some laundry, and waited some more.
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One of the messages on the answering machine offered a clue as to where Andrea might be.
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Andy, it's Judy. We have some bad news. Give me a call, and I'll talk to you later.
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Okay, bye. Judy was also a friend of Andrea's. A family member of hers had received a frightening medical diagnosis.
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So maybe Andrea was with her. Chris called and left Judy a message. He didn hear back and said he grew alarmed and made more calls He left a message for Kevin and phoned at least one hospital And he called to see if there had been a car accident or if there was somebody there by her name
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He dozed off around 11.30 p.m., then woke up two hours later. Still no Andrea. He told Kevin that's when he noticed the bedroom closet door, usually wide open.
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On this night, it was mostly closed. Chris opened it and found Andrea. I'm LinkedIn 911. What is your emergency?
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I need an officer. A 20-year mystery was just starting. LinkedIn 911. What is your emergency?
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It was August 22, 1998, about 1.30 in the morning. Chris Johnson had just opened the door to his bedroom closet
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and found the body of his girlfriend, Andrea Cincotta. What's wrong? What's going on?
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I thought my girlfriend was missing. I hadn't seen her. We were supposed to go out tonight.
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But I figured I'd give her some time. I think she's dead. You think so? Yeah, in the closet. The door was closed. I didn't look in the closet.
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She's laying over on her side. She's cold. Patrol officers and EMTs arrived at the apartment minutes after Chris's 911 call.
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They found no signs of forced entry and quickly realized this was a murder scene.
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They then called for the homicide detectives in the crime scene, people to come process the crime scene.
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Jim Trainum is a retired homicide detective with the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department.
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He was not there that night, but he studied the Andrea Sincotta case file. When they first got here, they noticed that the apartment itself was pretty immaculate.
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There wasn't really any signs of a struggle. A closer look at the murder scene revealed something else.
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They noted that the apartment had been vacuumed. It was Chris who noticed that and told police.
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He also mentioned a few things were missing from the apartment. A roll of quarters, a jar of coins, and Andrea's purses.
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Nothing of real value, except her light blue 1987 Honda Civic. It was gone. Investigators put out an alert for the car and turned their attention to the victim.
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When they found Andrea, she was in a back bedroom closet. She was laying on top of some boxes and things like that, facing the back of the closet itself.
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There was no evidence of sexual assault and no clear cause of death. No stabbing, no gunshot wounds, nothing along that line.
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So your first inclination is going to be, you know, strangulation, suffocation. If every picture tells a story, then the images from the place where Andrea Sincotta died tell an experienced homicide detective like Traynham a couple of different tales.
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Since most murders are committed by people that you know, this could be a domestic.
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Of course, her car being gone, that's kind of unusual. That kind of speaks more to like a burglary, home invasion, that sort of thing.
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But then again, on the flip side, there were valuables in the house. He was wearing, I believe, a watch and a necklace and things along that line.
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Later that day, Andrea's son Kevin was awakened by a detective at the door of his apartment,
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about three miles from his mom's place. He said, there's no easy way to say this, we found your mother dead.
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She was 52. Kevin Sincotta was 24. And she meant the world to him. I was just trying to process it, and I was thinking or hoping there must be some mistake.
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Remember, these were the first hours of a murder investigation. According to Kevin, nothing the detective said made sense.
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The detective didn't even tell Kevin Andrea had been murdered. And you thought, accident? Heart attack?
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I mean, does he let you speculate about what it is, or he just tells you? he very much encouraged me to speculate i was in shock and i said what happened
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and he said well what do you think happened and that's sort of how our conversation went
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because he's trying to find out whether you know anything about it then for whatever reason i said
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was it a car accident he and the officer looked at each other and he said do you know where the car
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is. And I said, well, if she had a car accident, then it's probably near the body. And that's when
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they said that the body was in her closet. That's when Kevin realized his mom did not die from some
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accident. I said, if her car is missing and her body's in the closet, you shouldn't be here. You
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should be out looking for the car. For her friends, there was no softening this agony. Kermit couldn't believe it. I was breathless. What? What? No. How? Why? Who?
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When and where? Sally worked with Andrea at the library and she had the same questions The police came and told us that Andy was dead and I was just crying I was just sobbing At the apartment crime scene techs did a forensic scrub of the scene What DNA they found didn lead anywhere and no prints from anyone but Chris Now
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police narrowed their focus to those who knew the victim best. So, the last conversation you had with your ex-wife was a fight about money.
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Yeah. Andrea Sincotta's body was discovered after midnight on a Saturday. The next day, her ex-husband, Howard Sincotta,
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found himself sitting across from Arlington police detectives. Standard procedure is they're going to at least look at you as a suspect.
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No question. I'm an ex-husband who lives in the area. They would have been negligent if they hadn't looked at me.
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Detectives wanted to know all about Howard's relationship with Andrea. I met her in high school, and, you know, she was smart, small, dark-haired, attractive.
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Five years after high school, they got married. Eventually came Kevin, and the family settled in Washington, D.C.
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Howard landed a good government job. Andrea became a stay-at-home mom. It looked like the start of a happily ever after life.
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You're married, you got a good job, she sounds happy, you got a baby, something goes wrong here.
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Yeah, I mean the short version is I had an affair and I left. Andrea see this coming?
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No. Andrea was always hurt and resentful and I can't fault her for that. Investigators learned Howard and Andrea divorced in 1983.
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Andrea became a single working mother, devoted to her young son, Kevin. My parents split up when I was three and I was an only child, so it was mostly my mom and me.
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When Kevin was 15, his mother met Chris. They all moved in together and built a happy life.
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and in the beginning she was putting herself through library school part-time. By 1988, the year she was killed,
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Andrea had found her passion for swimming and seemed content at work and at home.
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The anger over her bitter divorce looked like ancient history. Well, maybe. Police discovered the old resentment started to percolate once again
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when Howard was thinking of putting in his papers and asked Andrea to accept a smaller portion of his retirement money
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than she was entitled to. Her response? Angry. You can't seriously expect me to just sign a piece of paper,
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you know, depriving me of income that the law says I'm entitled to. So that kept you from retiring?
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Yes. And maybe you were angry about that? I was very upset. So the last conversation you had with your ex-wife was a fight about money.
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Yeah. For police, all of that was a good reason to take a close look at Howard Sincotta.
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When they did that, investigators learned on the day Andrea was murdered, he was camping in rural Maryland.
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Police questioned Kevin, too. And he also had an airtight alibi. And he was clearly a son, grieving his mother.
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My mom was loyal and loving and intelligent, very, very supportive of me and my independence.
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She was my best friend. And it was clear to her friends how proud Andrea was of Kevin.
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How smart he was, how clever he was, how handsome he was. And I was so impressed by her relationship with Kevin.
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There was one more person on the short list of those closest to Andrea, her boyfriend Chris.
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In these cases, the boyfriend is almost always a suspect. For Kevin, the thought of Chris as a murderer made absolutely no sense.
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How was Chris toward you? I mean, stepfather, older brother? Sort of a combination, yeah, a combination of stepfather and older brother.
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Chris was kind of nerdy. According to Kevin, he sometimes called himself an engineer,
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even though he was really a geologist who worked at engineering firms. Chris was very handy around the house,
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and Kevin has fond memories of living with them. Chris used to grill right there behind that tree in front of those bushes on the right.
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He would bring the grill out. We'd have barbecue on Sunday nights. It was really nice.
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I also really appreciated that he taught me how to drive. And that's really my biggest memory with him.
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Kevin says Chris was always kind and supportive and had a great partnership with his mom.
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They were building a dream vacation house together. Chris had construction skills.
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And Kevin says his mom contributed sweat equity and cash every month for supplies.
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She had put in half the money and half the physical labor. Half the money being how much money?
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$250 a month over a period of years. After 10 years together, it was a relationship that seemed to work for both of them.
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She sort of wore the pants in the family. He seemed to be very supportive. He allowed my mother to do 90% of the talking and emoting.
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You described Chris as sort of this passive guy That for sure Kevin described that behavior as endearing When police started taking a hard look at Chris
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that laid-back, passive personality would land him in a world of trouble. As they began their hunt for Andrea Senkata's killer,
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Arlington police immediately focused on her boyfriend, Chris Johnson. That wasn't just because he was her significant other.
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Chris's calm demeanor on that 911 call had them wondering from the start. We were supposed to go out tonight.
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Uh-huh. But I figured I'd give her some time. I think she's dead. You think so? Also an issue, the freshly vacuumed apartment.
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Police wondered if Chris had cleaned up. And one big question, how could it possibly have taken so long for Chris to notice Andrea's body in that little apartment?
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This is where Chris and Andrea were living back in 1998. Different people living here, but the layout and the floor plan are the same.
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So let's take a look. It is less than 900 square feet. This is the living room. That's the kitchen.
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Through here, one bathroom, two bedrooms. This was Kevin's room here. This is the bedroom.
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Now, Chris's story is that he was here for roughly seven hours before he opened the closet door and found Andrea's body.
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Just a few hours after that, Chris was answering questions at police headquarters.
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He was interrogated for more than four hours. Later that day, a break in the case.
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Andrea's car turned up on the shoulder of an interstate, about nine miles from the apartment.
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And out of everyone in the metro area, it was Chris who spotted it as he was driving home.
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He called me at my dad's house and said that he had found the car. Good news. Yeah, maybe there was blood or DNA or something.
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But he said, this is going to be the last nail in my coffin. They're going to think I did it because I found the car.
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Still, Chris did call the detectives to report seeing the car, and he waited on the highway for them to arrive.
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They did tow it in and have it processed forensically. No DNA or fingerprints were found in the car, as if it had been wiped down.
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Apparently, the last person to drive it had trouble with a stick shift. The Honda's clutch was burned out.
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That next day, Chris spent more hours being questioned. The following day, Monday, he was interviewed for a third time.
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Unlike the first two interviews, police have video from that session. By the way, the police added that black mask over the video.
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Okay, Chris, tell me, how did you and Andy get along? We got along very comfortably.
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It wasn't a mad, passionate beginning. It was just a real comfortable beginning, and we just, we clicked.
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Then the detective asked Chris about the night he came home and found Andrea gone.
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and what started as a routine recounting of events would soon border on the bizarre.
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I think I called out her name but didn't hear anything. I went, I took a shower.
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Chris's story was loaded with granular detail, like exactly how he did the laundry.
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I picked up all the baskets, held it over to one side, dropped the bottom one, which is a blue one.
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Or what he did while waiting for Andrea to come home. I grabbed the last A&W root beer.
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I eat approximately three, I mean four crackers. And then I lay down on the bed.
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Then he talked about waking up and noticing how the closet door was mostly closed.
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It's probably open about that much. She keeps the door of her closet open. So I get up, open the door, look down.
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I look in the closet and I think I see something on the floor. And I look in and I find her body in the closet.
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Are you buying this story? Because police were not. They realized Chris must have walked by the closet at least a few times as he did the laundry.
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The laundry baskets were on either side of the door. Did you already know that Andy was in the closet?
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No. And you're sure about that? From what I know, yes. Now, why are you defining that?
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Why are you kind of qualifying from what you know? Because what Detective Brennan's partner said was that my fingerprints were on her body
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and that her time of death was after I got home. You heard that right. Chris said the detectives told him they had evidence against him.
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His fingerprints on her neck. And they told him Andrea died after 6 p.m. That does not jive with what I believe happened.
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What he believed happened? Didn't he know? What exactly was going on here? Did you place Andy in that closet?
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Did you place Andy in that closet? I do not remember placing her in the closet based on what I've been told in this building
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I can draw no other conclusion, i.e., that I must have placed her in the closet because they said my fingerprints were on her body and not just on her arm.
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They said her time of death was after I got home at 6 o'clock. Cops wouldn't accept that answer, and they leaned in.
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The lead detective came in. Now it was two on one. Tell the truth. If what happened was an accident, tell me that was an accident.
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I have no idea what happened to her. At this point, cops encouraged Chris to imagine what happened that night.
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And he just went along, explaining how he did something bad to Andrea. That's when this interview went through the looking glass.
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I hit her. And when you hit her, how do you hit her? Show me how you hit her. Cross the neck.
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With your hand open like that? Yeah. It's like, no. And when you hit her like that, what does she do?
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She falls. Chris described Andrea hitting her head and how they both fell to the floor.
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I try to reach for a pulse. Do you feel a pulse, Chris? No. There's no pulse? No.
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It all sure sounded like a confession. So, end of story, right? Wrong. There was just one little problem.
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The story Chris told? That's not what happened. Arlington police had been suspicious of Chris Johnson almost from the moment he reached out
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to them on 9-1-1. And after hours upon hours of close-quarter interviews, detectives were
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only more convinced they were on the right track. Especially when Chris seemed to just
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go along with something police had told him. Based on what I've been told in this building, I can draw no other conclusion
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that I must have placed her in the closet. So what exactly was he told? First off, it was a lie.
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In the United States, investigators lying to suspects is a common practice, one that is routinely upheld by the courts.
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Cops tell a suspect they have evidence that they don't actually have. And sometimes, a lot of times, it works,
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both with people who aren't frequent flyers in these interrogation rooms and also with people who are in fact actually guilty.
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The result is often a confession. And usually, those confessions hold up. Tell the truth.
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If what happened was an accident, tell me that was an accident. In this case, Chris says police told him in their first interview
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they knew Andrea died after he got home and that his fingerprints were found on her neck.
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When you look at that interrogation, what do you say? Old school. Veteran homicide detective Jim Trainham is an expert on police interrogation techniques.
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You basically tell them, you know, we know you did it. The evidence is there. There's nothing that you can say that will prove otherwise.
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All we want to know is why. And Trainham says that's exactly what he sees when he watches the tape.
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After more than 20 hours of questioning over three days, Chris seemed to be almost in a trance,
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less denying and more accepting of the detective's version of what happened. And show me again how you did it.
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She's standing right there. Chris said Andrea hit her head as she fell. Except, once autopsy results came in,
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police realized Andrea did not have a significant head injury. She died of cervical compression.
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In other words, strangulation. And contrary to what they told Chris, detectives had determined Andrea died sometime before 1 p.m.
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because she had missed that lunch date. Cops checked Chris' timesheet and talked with his co-workers.
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He was at Home Depot all day. So, despite their suspicions, police didn't have enough evidence to arrest Chris Johnson.
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And when you hit her like that, what does she do? She falls. Chris did not tell Kevin about his odd statements to police.
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He did tell him his interrogators thought he was guilty. Kevin was certain Chris was no killer.
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He was upset police were focusing on Chris and thought there was someone else who should be on the suspect list.
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Someone he'd already mentioned to a detective. He said, if she was a victim of foul play, who do you think might have done it?
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And right away I said, the computer guy. The computer guy, a man Andrea met several weeks before her death.
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Kevin didn't know his name. He was just a nice young guy Andrea met one day when she was home alone.
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She had this computer to get rid of, and she walks out of the condo, and there's a big truck that says Trashmasters.
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and there's a nice seeming guy right there with the truck. And she says, can you want this computer?
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And he ends up saying, oh, well, we don't recycle computers, but I would like it for my personal use.
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So Andrea invited the young man in and he carried away her computer and printer You weren there You never met the computer guy This is all her telling of the story Correct And Chris wasn there when it happened
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He spoke to him later on the phone. That's correct. Yes, Chris told police Andrea asked him to phone the young man a few days later
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because he was having trouble hooking up the computer. If all of this seems a little above and beyond what you'd do
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after giving away a computer to a total stranger, You're not alone. And both you and Chris said,
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why are you letting somebody into your house that you don't know? Yeah, more so me.
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Chris agreed with me, but as usual, he was very quiet about it. But yes. After the murder, Kevin says he kept thinking about that encounter
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his mom had with the computer guy. Had Andrea's trash become a murderer's treasure?
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It kept playing back in Kevin's head, but he just couldn't seem to get the lead detective on board.
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I really tried to make the case that they needed to look harder at the computer guy
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and she just sat there the whole time, sort of like a deer in headlights. And then when I got done, she said,
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OK, what do you make of the fact that Chris found the car? Isn't that interesting?
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Chris. I was ready to pound my head into a table. A few months later, police were back in touch.
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It turns out they had been looking into the computer guy. Detective Brenneman called me to announce that the computer guy had been officially eliminated and gave no other information.
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We eliminated him and that's it. Yeah, and that's it. I was pretty shocked because he was the top suspect in my mind and I kept pressing her as to why.
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And she wouldn't tell you why? No. And police still wouldn't give Kevin the computer guy's name.
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So on the one-year anniversary of his mother's murder, Kevin took things into his own hands and hired a private investigator.
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You didn't think police were moving quick enough? Correct. However this comes out at that point, it's not going to bring your mom back.
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That's right. Why were you so invested? I don't feel like I had a choice. It's like when someone sees someone drowning and they don't really think about themselves
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and they just instinctively jump in to try to save them. You don't think. You just have to do it.
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You had to know. I think she would have done the same thing for me. Kevin was 25,
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past the age when most young men want to build lives of their own. He was working as a cost analyst for a defense contractor.
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And now, he had a mission. Finding his mother's killer became a quest that would take over his life.
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He did everything that I think you could do to get the case moved forward. It took a while, but eventually that private eye
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learned the name of the computer guy. And it turns out, he had a past. A frightening one.
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Kevin Sincotta was so frustrated with Arlington police that he'd hired a private eye.
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Nearly a year after that, and two years after his mother's murder, Kevin finally had the computer guy's name.
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According to the P.I., the criminal guy might have been a better title. Meet Bobby Joe Leonard, registered sex offender.
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I first became aware of him after he was arrested in Fairfax County, Virginia. Tom Jackman knows all about Bobby Joe Leonard.
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He covers crime for the Washington Post and has reported on Leonard's criminal career.
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Bobby Joe Leonard is a man born and raised in Washington, D.C., moved into crime in his teen years, and by the time he was an adult,
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he was robbing and assaulting people and doing time. He was in and out of jail and prison into his 30s.
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Leonard was back on the street when Andrea Sincotta was murdered. Less than a week later, he was arrested again for assaulting his wife.
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Bobby Joe Leonard is arrested in Philadelphia where he's gone to try to reconcile, he says, with his wife.
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Instead, he chokes and beats her and is arrested for assault in Philadelphia and is in jail when the Arlington police locate him.
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So it's a relatively short period of time later that they identify him as the computer guy and talk with him.
00:34:50
That's right. And whatever happens in that interview, they don't think it's him.
00:34:54
Yeah, he convinces them that he wasn't there. Police took samples of Leonard's DNA and fingerprints and didn't find any evidence connecting him to Andrea's murder.
00:35:07
Leonard served about two months for the assault on his wife. About nine months after his release,
00:35:14
He attacked someone else, a 13-year-old girl. And this time, Leonard's M.O. sounded somewhat familiar.
00:35:23
The crime had one pretty significant similarity with Andrea Sincotta's murder. He had placed his victim in the closet after choking her.
00:35:33
And you think, okay, now this is the guy. Yeah. Yep. So for a second time, Kevin says he tried to persuade Arlington police to look at the computer guy.
00:35:43
Bobby Joe Leonard. And for a second time, he says, they declined. I tell them everything that I know.
00:35:52
They don't take any notes. And at the end she said we way ahead of you We know all about Bobby Joe And it isn him Well she didn say that but that was the implication
00:36:06
They're still looking at Chris and away from Leonard. Right. That must have driven you crazy.
00:36:12
Breathtaking incompetence to say that the computer guy was eliminated. In the summer of 2000, Kevin actually went as far as taking days off from work to attend Bobby Joe Leonard's trial for the rape and attempted murder of that young girl.
00:36:31
Bobby Joe Leonard was appearing pro se as his own attorney. I saw what my mother must have seen.
00:36:39
He can be charming and I could sort of see how she might have felt okay offering him the computer.
00:36:46
Despite his charm, Leonard was convicted. And that got him life. That did. In part because of his prior record, which was very long at that point.
00:36:56
Kevin's father, Howard, attended that sentencing with his son and told him it was time to move on.
00:37:03
So I could argue to Kevin, look, there's a rough justice here. Let this go. Move on with your life.
00:37:11
Leonard's in jail probably for life. I know it's not for your mother's killing, but it's not like he's out there scot-free.
00:37:19
And Kevin would say, no, not good enough. Not good enough. After that, the Andrea Sincotta case went cold, ice cold, for a very long time.
00:37:32
Kevin wasn't happy about it. Maybe as a release for his frustration, he took up running, and it stuck.
00:37:41
I've done three marathons and probably a dozen half marathons. Kevin's personal marathon to find his mother's killer continued.
00:37:51
So did his relationship with Chris Johnson. Over the next couple of years, we kept in touch,
00:37:58
and he helped me with handiwork kind of stuff. Eventually, Chris met a woman at the movies,
00:38:05
and they ended up getting married. After that, he and Kevin spoke less often. Chris moved with his new wife to another D.C. suburb.
00:38:14
They got a dog. Chris took up running himself and made friends with a neighbor named Anna.
00:38:21
When I first met Chris in 2002, I thought he was a very sweet person, very helpful.
00:38:30
Actually, I didn't know about what had happened with Andrea when I met him. I only knew that he'd had a fiancé and that she had passed away and that he didn't want to talk about it very much.
00:38:43
It made him very, very sad. Chris was trying to move on. Kevin was still trying to find his mom's murderer.
00:38:53
It would take decades, but eventually he would confront the man he believed to be her killer.
00:39:05
Arlington, Virginia police remained convinced Chris Johnson had something to do with Andrea's murder.
00:39:21
They were equally sure they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. 20 years passed with few new leads.
00:39:29
Not too long after Andy died, we planted a tree in her memory. And so every time I would walk through that parking lot, I would just kind of think about Andy.
00:39:43
By 2018, Andrea's son Kevin was 45 and was still making sure everyone knew about his mother's case, including Andrea's old friend, Kermit.
00:39:55
I was really happy to hear from Kevin. I also felt kind of sad because he was so obsessed still.
00:40:02
and I could hear it in his voice. Kevin was still convinced police were looking at the wrong man.
00:40:10
He thought seriously about contacting Bobby Joe Leonard on his own. The man he suspected of being the murderer.
00:40:18
The man who was locked up for a different crime. So I had an idea to talk to him once his appeals were exhausted.
00:40:27
Somebody talked you out of that? Yeah. Who was that? My dad. He said, don't do it because...
00:40:35
It's dangerous. You're crazy. He'll play mind games with you. This is not the movies.
00:40:40
You don't just go interviewing somebody who you think might have killed your mother.
00:40:46
Stop talking crazy. What do you think? You're going to do it and wear a wire and end up on Dateline?
00:40:51
Kevin took his dad's advice. He did not speak with Bobby Joe Leonard. And for many years, neither did the Arlington PD.
00:41:00
He just wasn't their main suspect. I think that they had made periodic attempts at Leonard, who was in prison for life.
00:41:08
But yes, Chris Johnson was still their main suspect. And that's where things stood when a new cold case detective dusted off the file and took a fresh look.
00:41:18
She reached out to Kevin. I was skeptical, like, here we go again. Would this be another session with police telling Kevin Chris was their prime suspect?
00:41:29
Kevin wanted no part of that. He's not the guy. Yeah. You didn't want it to be him.
00:41:35
No. And I know others have said that I'm biased or I can't be objective in this case because of my involvement.
00:41:43
And I am biased. I'm biased in Chris's favor because I had such a good relationship with him.
00:41:51
Sure enough the detective shared suspicions about Chris Except this time she showed Kevin something he never seen before The video of Chris interrogation in the days just after the murder
00:42:05
I think I called out her name. And they're asking him questions. Did you move Andrea's body into the closet?
00:42:13
Did you place Andy in that closet? It seemed like forever, like 10 or 15 seconds.
00:42:21
and then he says, well, not that I have a direct memory of. I do not remember placing her in the closet.
00:42:30
Oh, my God. You don't know? You're not really sure whether you put her in the closet?
00:42:37
Are you kidding me? That was the moment when everything turned upside down for Kevin Sincotta.
00:42:46
After years of defending Chris, He now thought that the man who'd been his friend and a second father
00:42:53
might have been involved in his mother's murder. Just watching that, it didn't seem like he was acting like an innocent person.
00:43:03
That sea change in Kevin's thinking gave the detective an idea. She asked him to secretly record a conversation with Chris.
00:43:13
So in June of 2018, Kevin arranged a restaurant lunch with Chris. police wired him with a hidden mic.
00:43:22
They'd been in touch but hadn't seen each other for a while. I was going to say you look different. I probably look different too.
00:43:28
No, you look exactly the same. On the menu was deception. This is the first conversation you've ever had with Chris
00:43:37
in which you are 100% certain that he is involved in your mother's murder. That's right.
00:43:41
I'll have the grilled grilled chicken salad. Gyro salad, no tomato, no onion. I had an idea of what I now knew that was not consistent with what he had told me,
00:43:54
and my plan was to confront him about those things in the hopes that he would tell me the truth.
00:44:01
Kevin used the 20th anniversary of the murder to ease into the conversation, suggesting a memorial service for his mother.
00:44:09
Maybe finally enough time has passed. I could do something. We could do something.
00:44:15
Kevin asked Chris detailed questions about what he did the night of the murder. Things he once believed were insignificant.
00:44:25
Did there come a point that evening that you did laundry? That evening, yes, I did.
00:44:32
Did there come a point that you vacuumed? Yes. Back in 1998, Chris told police he noticed the apartment had been vacuumed.
00:44:45
Now his story changed by saying he was the one who vacuumed. Kevin believed Chris had unwittingly admitted cleaning up the crime scene to get rid of evidence.
00:44:56
And then Kevin's new feelings about Chris started bubbling to the surface. Kevin told Chris he'd spoken with police.
00:45:05
The police opened the file to me and I saw everything. Okay. Then you don't know everything.
00:45:14
And Kevin made it clear he now believed Chris was the killer. I know what happened, but what I don't know is why.
00:45:22
Chris denied any involvement. What does she do? And insisted whatever he'd said in that interrogation room was coerced by detectives.
00:45:32
I was so f***ed up by their interrogation. The lack of sleep. Three days without sleep.
00:45:40
But they hadn't believed that I had them. So the things they introduced, it didn't happen that way?
00:45:46
Not at all. How did it happen? I came home, didn't even find her until 1.30 in the morning.
00:45:54
I'll do that, Chris. Do you think my mom would be proud of that? Yes. Actually, she's probably not proud of me,
00:46:01
but how I was paved in under Arlington County Police. This unofficial interrogation went on nearly two hours.
00:46:10
At least you know what happened. I don't have that. And I can't give it to you. Yes, you can.
00:46:18
Because you were there. Stop it. I did not give it to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
00:46:25
Several times, Chris denied killing Andrea. He did it quietly and politely, in between bites of his grilled chicken salad.
00:46:37
All of it in that same casual tone Chris used in the 911 call. The tone that never quite matched the gravity of what was being discussed.
00:46:49
You're going to have to live with this for the rest of your life. And you had a chance to do the right thing for me and you didn't take it.
00:46:56
I'm really sorry. I can kind of hear you getting angry on that tape. He was insulting my intelligence, and I don't like it when people do that.
00:47:11
Chris came close to admitting something back in 1998. But lightning wouldn't strike twice.
00:47:20
Kevin Sincotta's legal marathon was still a long way from the finish line. And then, an unexpected confession changed everyone's thinking
00:47:30
about what had really happened to Andrea Sincotta. When she came to the front door, she was kind of surprised to see it.
00:47:52
From the beginning, Arlington police knew there was a problem with any case against Chris Johnson.
00:47:58
Despite his observation, odd behavior, and his statements to police. Chris had a solid alibi.
00:48:05
He was at work all day, and the coroner's time of death meant he couldn't have strangled Andrea.
00:48:12
Twenty years later, Kevin still felt the original detectives hadn't thought it through.
00:48:18
They had tunnel vision, as far as only looking at one theory of the crime. Which was Chris.
00:48:24
Which was a theory that Chris killed her directly, to the exclusion of almost everything else.
00:48:31
The new detective told Kevin she was still leaning toward Chris as a suspect, but also had concerns about Bobby Joe Leonard.
00:48:40
That could be because of what she found in the case file. First chart's about to begin.
00:48:47
She discovered detectives had polygraphed Leonard twice. On both exams, he'd shown potential deception when asked about Andrea's murder.
00:48:57
Here he is back in 1998. Do you know for sure if that woman was strangled? No. So in 2018, the cold case detective drove to Wallens Ridge Prison,
00:49:10
a high-security castle on a hill in rural Virginia, to speak with Bobby Joe Leonard.
00:49:16
He was serving a life sentence for the attack on that 13-year-old girl. The detective made sure there was an audio recording.
00:49:26
I probably wonder why I'm here. At first, he had nothing to say about Andrea Sincotta,
00:49:32
and then suggested he might, if he weren't facing the death penalty. If this was not a capital case, I would probably talk to you honestly about this case.
00:49:47
The prosecutor made that deal and took the death penalty off the table. Six days later, the detective returned to the prison with a colleague.
00:49:56
And Leonard talked. My only request is that please go to you. You will be. Leonard spoke about meeting Andrea, how she gave him the computer,
00:50:07
then called him later to see if he was having any trouble with it. And then this career criminal described how he took the D.C. Metro back to her home a few weeks later.
00:50:19
When she came to the front door, she was wearing like a really little skirt type of thing.
00:50:27
You know, she was kind of surprised to see me, but she asked me how I was doing.
00:50:31
He said she talked about a friend. And then... I told her I have to go, you know, but would you mind if I get something to drink before I leave?
00:50:41
She came back with like a root beer. And as soon as she walked to the door, I just reached out with both of my hands and grabbed her by the throat
00:50:48
and started choking her. And she just laid down on the ground. I mean, there was literally no struggle or fight or anything.
00:50:58
In his statement, Leonard gave up details police had held back, leaving no question in the detective's mind.
00:51:07
Those were his hands around Andrea Sencata's neck. Leonard said he put Andrea's body in the bedroom closet
00:51:15
and left the apartment. Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman. And he takes her car keys, and he knows what car she's driving from having worked there.
00:51:28
Leonard said he started driving home. Driving down 295, and the car broke down. The clutch, something was like really wrong with the clutch.
00:51:38
And it broke down. I pulled it over to the side. I wiped down what I felt like I had to wipe down and got out the car and left.
00:51:47
It was a matter-of-fact confession to murder, the kind police hear all the time.
00:51:53
What came next was something out of the blue or out of a movie, and it was something police had never considered.
00:52:01
Leonard said it wasn't his idea to murder Andrea. He said it began on that midsummer day,
00:52:10
when Andrea called him to help hook up the computer in his southeast D.C. apartment.
00:52:16
He asked me was I able to hook it up and everything. We had a talk for a little while.
00:52:21
After that, a gentleman called me. The caller didn't identify himself, but Leonard said the man first asked about the computer.
00:52:30
But after that, he just asked me kind of like personal questions, you know, family, work.
00:52:35
And he said that he would be back in touch. A few weeks later, Leonard said the same man did call back.
00:52:43
And this time there was no talk about computers. Instead came something more sinister.
00:52:50
It was more along the lines of he knows me pretty well. He said that he knew that I had been locked up from 1993 until earlier that year, 1998.
00:53:03
Leonard said the man still would not give his name, saying only he was an engineer.
00:53:09
And he told me that if I wanted to come back over to the apartment and take care of something
00:53:17
for him, he would give me $5,000 in cash and $100 bills. Leonard said at first the man wouldn't say what he wanted done to earn that money.
00:53:28
I just had to keep on pushing him as to what is it that you want done. and he started to tell me about, you know, the woman that gave you the computer,
00:53:39
you know, that she was what he wanted done. How was it clear that he wanted you to kill her?
00:53:45
Well, he did because he eventually told me, I don't want you to use a gun, it's too loud.
00:53:51
When he said don use a gun I knew that what he wanted me to do right there was kill her Leonard said the man told him to come to the apartment the next day to do the job He told me that she would be home after 1 I think it was either after 12 or after 1 p that following day
00:54:14
Andrea had scheduled a rare day off. She was at home and not at the library. That was something very few people would have known.
00:54:23
You know, if I took care of what he wanted me to take care of, I could have the money.
00:54:32
Leonard said the man promised the money would be inside a shoe in the bedroom closet.
00:54:38
After he strangled Andrea, Leonard said he dragged her body into the bedroom and looked for the money.
00:54:43
And then describes going through the closet looking for the $5,000, which is not there.
00:54:49
And so there's a big jar of coins, which he takes. I just felt like I got tricked really bad by somebody.
00:54:57
You must have been pissed. I was. That you didn't get your $5,000. I was very pissed.
00:55:01
Did you try to find this guy? No, I never did because I got arrested in Philadelphia.
00:55:07
If not for the fact that I had gotten arrested, I definitely was going to find that person.
00:55:12
You know, no doubt about it. To police, it all finally made sense. They believed Leonard was Andrea's killer.
00:55:21
And now they thought they knew who had hired him to do it. If Leonard was telling the truth, he'd been stiffed out of $5,000.
00:55:31
So the detectives set up another sting. I'm kin to Bobby, Bobby Leonard. He said that you would be able to help us out, that you owe money from before.
00:55:48
I knew that's what he wanted me to do right there was kill her. After all those years, Bobby Joe Leonard's confession had upended this case.
00:56:04
He admitted killing Andrea and said a gentleman on the phone had hired him to do it.
00:56:10
You may have figured out by now. Leonard told police he was sure that gentleman was Andrea's boyfriend.
00:56:18
And that raised one very big question. Exactly why would Chris want Andrea dead?
00:56:26
It is hard to comprehend. Why hire a dangerous, violent guy to kill your fiancé or girlfriend?
00:56:35
Promise him $5,000 and then not pay him. I just can't answer those. It's hard to understand.
00:56:43
This is someone who was not willing or able to speak up for themselves in any kind of oral confrontation.
00:56:53
Chris, you mean? Yeah. He's not a violent person. So he would need somebody else to do something violent for him.
00:57:00
We certainly would not have done it himself. There was not a lot of evidence to support Leonard's accusation about Chris.
00:57:10
So police decided to try to get Chris himself to confirm Leonard's story by running another sting operation.
00:57:17
They tried to corroborate Leonard's confession by getting Chris to talk. Remember, Leonard said he never received that $5,000 for the hit.
00:57:31
Police built the sting around that. In December 2018, 20 years after the murder,
00:57:37
a wired-up undercover officer posed as Bobby Joe Leonard's relative and approached Chris as he was leaving his house.
00:57:46
I'm akin to Bobby, Bobby Leonard. He said that you would be able to help us out, that you owe money from before.
00:57:53
I don't owe him any money. Okay. He just said that you did. It doesn't have to be right this second, but if you could help us, that would be it.
00:58:01
Excellent. This is very, very strange. It really was strange. If Chris thought this was a shakedown from somebody in Leonard's family,
00:58:13
it was a very polite one. And what exactly did Chris mean when he said he didn't owe any money?
00:58:21
He doesn't say, okay, here's the $5,000 I promised him for killing my girlfriend.
00:58:25
But he also doesn't say, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't know that guy anything. Get away from here.
00:58:31
You're right. He's not violently rejecting them or dramatically rejecting them. And he doesn't call the police the minute they get off his lawn,
00:58:38
which I certainly would do if I had nothing to do with it. Did not call the police.
00:58:44
The conversation might have been suspicious, but nothing about it screamed out that Chris was guilty.
00:58:50
So police staged a second sting designed to amp up the pressure. An imposing 6-foot-4-inch officer was sent to Chris's house.
00:59:00
It was early morning, before sunrise. I think you know I'm here on behalf of my brother Bobby.
00:59:07
Actually, no, I don't know why you're here. Okay. Well, are you going to pay my brother the money?
00:59:18
First of all, I need my lawyer. Okay. In case you're from Arlington County Police.
00:59:25
Okay. Well, I'm definitely not the police, so I have no business with the police.
00:59:31
My business is too. I never even heard about your brother until after he was in jail.
00:59:36
Okay. Well, again. There's no way there's any way that I could do or ever. Listen.
00:59:43
Never. I'm a little bit more listening, less talking. Okay? Are you going to pay my brother the money or not?
00:59:51
Because I'm not going to keep coming up here from **** with me. To be doing these People reach out to you How much money is it There is no agreement I don know I don owe your brother anything It must be something substantial if he set me up here
01:00:08
If I, are you threatening me that if I don't pay this money, you'll do something?
01:00:14
I have no reason to threaten you. Well, right now, you are threatening me. No, I don't need to threaten you.
01:00:20
So, I'm in this conversation. Once again, some of what Chris said was open to interpretation.
01:00:28
He still did not call police. He did reach out to this man, criminal attorney Manuel Leyva.
01:00:36
He was worried, even though I was telling him, I'm pretty sure this is a police operation.
01:00:41
He was worried, what if this is really the relatives of Bobby Joe Leonard? Leyva told Chris to stop speaking about the case with anyone.
01:00:50
During the sting operations, Chris had already opened his mouth a lot. And despite their suspicions, police still had one big unanswered question.
01:01:02
What would be the point here? It's sort of hard to see what Chris's motive would be if it's him.
01:01:08
Right. They'd live together without any problems. No history of violence or really even arguing between them.
01:01:15
There's no life insurance that he gets. There's nothing like that. Right. Even Kevin, who was by now convinced of Chris's guilt,
01:01:23
could not understand what would be in it for Chris to set up a murder for hire. If Chris was involved, we do not, or at least I don't understand the exact motive.
01:01:34
That's true. So what was this all about? The mystery was only getting deeper. I think that she would have perceived it as infidelity.
01:01:48
Over two decades, police investigating the murder of Andrea Sincada had focused on two possible suspects, the boyfriend or the computer guy.
01:02:07
I don't know what I did. Suddenly in 2018, police were working off a new theory.
01:02:14
It was the boyfriend and the computer guy. Murder for hire. It was a little hard to figure.
01:02:24
We're supposed to believe that Chris risked his future, prison term, the rest of his life, hiring a killer who he'd never met, who he'd only spoken to on the phone.
01:02:39
Right. And why? Why would Chris want Andrea dead? They weren't married. No estate to inherit.
01:02:48
No life insurance. Even so, Kevin and police thought this came down to money. Remember, Chris told police Andrea was contributing $250 a month
01:03:00
toward the construction of that vacation house. Back in 1998, that would have been a lot of money for Andrea.
01:03:07
So we're talking, what, thousands of dollars, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:03:11
That's right. Also, Chris wasn't just spending money on the construction of that vacation home.
01:03:18
Back in 1998, he admitted to police he'd been spending time and money in some expensive live camera sex chat rooms.
01:03:27
You give them like a credit card number and they do whatever, take their clothes off or whatever.
01:03:37
Did you meet somebody in the chat room and meet with them? Did I meet them? No. I've talked with a girl that I've met in the, they call it the Intimate Friends Network,
01:03:50
and I've sent maybe two to three emails to her. Online chats at $2 a minute can easily add up.
01:03:58
Chris told police he used his own credit card, presumably to keep Andrea from finding out.
01:04:04
Now Kevin wondered, what if his mom had found out Chris was throwing away their money on a live porn site?
01:04:12
You think that if she'd found out about that, what? Big fight? They break up? She throws them out?
01:04:20
I think that she would have perceived it as infidelity. Let's say that she did perceive porn as infidelity.
01:04:26
And let's say the worst case scenario is she says, you're essentially cheating on me with this porn website and you're throwing our money away.
01:04:33
And I'm throwing you out. Right. And then she says... And the way out of that is murder?
01:04:39
What if she says, I want my half of the beach house. I won't rest until I take you to court and get my half.
01:04:47
And so then his options at that point would have been a life of fighting her for half the beach house or not.
01:04:57
I mean, it's thinner than some murder motives that I've heard. If Chris was involved, as Leonard says, that he is, we do not, or at least I don't understand the exact motive.
01:05:11
That's true. Of course, prosecutors didn't need a motive to put the evidence before a grand jury.
01:05:18
So they moved ahead without one. And that grand jury came back with indictments.
01:05:24
Bobby Joe Leonard for murder. and Chris Johnson for Murder for Hire. It was like this huge cloud had been lifted.
01:05:36
Now storm clouds were gathering over Chris Johnson. Do you have anything on you that you need to be aware of?
01:05:41
Any guns, drugs, weapons, anything that the Alexander officer... In November 2021, he was arrested as he left his house
01:05:47
and spent a few days in the lockup before bonding out. Chris was under house arrest
01:05:54
when his friend Anna went to see him Chris had an ankle monitor on him and he told me what had been going on and my heart just went out to him He seemed so trapped in that house
01:06:09
Chris was confined to his house for almost a year. In the fall of 2022, his trial began at the Arlington County Courthouse.
01:06:19
Bobby Joe Leonard had pleaded guilty to murder and would testify against Chris. who faced a possible sentence of life in prison.
01:06:28
I think the trial was incredibly hard on him. We had to relive what had happened to Andy
01:06:35
and go through the trauma of being in a trial where he's basically fighting for his life.
01:06:43
The prosecution's case. Chris hired Bobby Joe Leonard to kill Andrea Sincotta, then never paid him.
01:06:51
I went to 911. What is your emergency? Prosecutors played Chris's 911 call. What's wrong? What's going on?
01:07:00
I thought my girlfriend was missing. I hadn't seen her. We were supposed to go out tonight.
01:07:07
But I figured I'd give her some time. The question is, was he looking for help or setting up an alibi?
01:07:15
Police told the jury they found Chris's tone oddly calm and detached. I think she's dead.
01:07:23
You think so? They played the police interview with Chris's bizarre behavior. Yeah.
01:07:30
It's like, no. The state wasn't arguing Chris himself killed Andrea, so what was the point of playing it for the jury?
01:07:39
Prosecutors argued it showed Chris was deceitful. And the prosecutors said, look, he's lying.
01:07:46
Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman covered the trial. You can't believe this guy. He's a liar. We want to present this to the jury to show him lying, which was very odd logic.
01:07:58
Because the lie is, I didn't do it, but then he confesses to doing it, and even if that's not true, which it isn't, somewhere in there Chris is lying.
01:08:09
Right, and somehow the prosecution thought that was a good idea. The jury heard about the various stings. The lunch sting with Kevin.
01:08:18
I think you know I'm here. And the fake relative stings with the undercover detectives.
01:08:23
Well, right now, you are threatening me. Ma, I don't need to hurt you. But in the end, the prosecution's case pretty much rested on the testimony of Andrea's confessed killer, Bobby Joe Leonard.
01:08:37
It was, oof, it was shocking. On the stand, Leonard spared no detail. He told the jury how he strangled Andrea.
01:08:49
Then, you know, something that none of us knew to that moment, which was dragging her body to the bathtub, filling the bathtub with water, and then putting her head in the bathtub to make sure she's not breathing.
01:09:03
And then came the true purpose of Leonard's testimony, to convince the jury he was hired by Chris Johnson, that gentleman on the phone.
01:09:12
He said in his testimony that that voice told him, she'll be home that day. That does suggest that he had a conversation with somebody who knew her routine.
01:09:23
Because that probably wouldn't have been in the newspaper or on the news. Was not.
01:09:28
Right. Leonard also told the jury he recognized the phone number as the same one Andrea had called him from.
01:09:36
That was something he had not told police originally. How was Bobby Joe Leonard as a witness?
01:09:42
He was pretty darn good. He's respectful. He gives detail. He tells a story. start to finish, that seems quite believable when you, you know, sit there and listen to him tell it.
01:09:55
According to the prosecution, the evidence was clear. And according to Chris's lawyers,
01:10:03
what was clear was that there was plenty of evidence Bobby Joe Leonard was the murderer,
01:10:07
and there was none that he was a murderer for hire. He's going to take the word of someone on
01:10:15
the phone that he's never met who promises that $5,000 would be left in the closet if he does the
01:10:21
job. Nothing of it made sense. On a warm autumn day in Arlington, Virginia, Chris Johnson's
01:10:39
attorneys laid out his defense. Attorney Libby Van Pelt told the jury Chris is a nice guy.
01:10:45
who endured years of suspicion. Chris is kind, he's loving, he's hardworking, and he's just a normal dude.
01:10:55
He's had his life picked apart by teams of police for 24 years, and it's a shame.
01:11:01
She said the whole case was upside down. It's about the manipulative Bobby Joe Leonard
01:11:07
and the trusting Chris Johnson, where the police believe the guilty guy who lies to them,
01:11:14
and they disbelieve the innocent man who they lie to. She's talking about the lies police told Chris from day one of the investigation.
01:11:25
I do not remember placing her in the closet. The defense said Chris made his statements only after cops questioned him for more than 20 hours
01:11:35
over the course of three days. You can begin by telling the truth, Chris, from the very beginning to the end.
01:11:43
and no doubt it's painful I believe it you loved her she loved you did I push her?
01:11:52
did I hit her? can I still play those mighty games? I don't know what I did You do. You absolutely do.
01:12:02
Attorney Frank Salvato said he was thrilled when prosecutors showed Chris's vague imaginings about hurting Andrea.
01:12:09
We never thought that the prosecution would ever play a false dream vision confession that their own experts have told them was a false dream vision confession to a jury of 12 people.
01:12:25
When they did, it was kind of a Christmas gift to us. One of the experts he's referring to is retired homicide detective Jim Tranum.
01:12:35
The prosecution talked with Tranum about the case, then didn't put him on the stand.
01:12:41
The defense did, and the jury listened as Tranum explained what he says cops missed during their interrogation.
01:12:49
Based on what I've been told. He showed us, too. That I must have placed her in the closet.
01:12:55
I must have put her in the closet. I must have put her in the closet. When you start seeing those qualifiers like that, that's a classic sign of an internalized false confession.
01:13:05
What's more, the defense said the tape was irrelevant, since the prosecution wasn't accusing Chris of killing Andrea himself.
01:13:14
They argued the entire investigation was botched from the beginning. Former FBI agent Dan Riley testified for the defense.
01:13:22
The crime scene was mishandled. I saw no indication that any effort was made to recover.
01:13:27
trace physical evidence, which is, in my opinion, extremely important in every case,
01:13:33
especially a murder case. As an example, the defense pointed out police never examined the contents of the vacuum bag.
01:13:40
If their theory is that Chris Johnson cleaned up some crime scene evidence, open the damn bag. See what's inside there.
01:13:52
As for the star witness against Chris, Bobby Joe Leonard, The defense told the jury Leonard was just trying to get a better deal in prison.
01:14:02
What we heard consistently from any inmate that dealt with Bobby Joe Leonard is that he wanted off that mountain.
01:14:10
And that mountain was Wallens Ridge, one of the most secure and difficult prisons to do time in.
01:14:18
And on the stand under defense questioning, Leonard told the jury the cold case detective was the first to mention murder for hire.
01:14:28
During her prison interview with him, these were her words. I had murder for hire case my most recent case three co And they take the penalty off That where he catches on That where he latches on to the murder for hire Remember Leonard testified he recognized the voice on the phone
01:14:49
as well as the number that showed up on his caller ID. But his ex-wife, Frances, testified on the stand
01:14:57
that they never had caller ID back in 1998. The defense argued Leonard knew Andrea was home
01:15:05
because he'd staked her out, not because Chris told him. And that Leonard's story about Chris Johnson was just too incredible.
01:15:16
He's going to take the word of someone on the phone that he's never met who promises that $5,000 would be left in the closet if he does the job.
01:15:26
Nothing of it made sense. The defense argued Leonard didn't need to be paid to kill.
01:15:32
He'd assaulted women before for free. Now Chris's attorneys rested, but they were pretty far from relaxed.
01:15:42
Every case that I do is difficult if you take it seriously and you care. But when you have a guy like Chris, you don't sleep.
01:15:52
And now this mystery went to the jurors. Who would they believe? One thing that stuck out in my head was, how did Bobby Joe Leonard know to go through that day?
01:16:14
The prosecution argued mild-mannered Chris Johnson was, in reality, a heartless killer.
01:16:21
The defense argued, you've already got the killer, the only killer, and it's Bobby Joe Leonard.
01:16:27
And while neither side presented evidence about motive, jurors definitely talked about it when they began deliberations.
01:16:35
Chen Ling was jury foreman. During deliberations, we talked about possible motives for Chris Johnson.
01:16:41
We talked about possible motives for Bobby Joe Leonard, why he would tell the story that he told.
01:16:46
Ling thought some of Leonard's testimony rang true, like how would he know Andrea would be home that afternoon?
01:16:53
One thing that stuck out in my head was how did Bobby Joe Leonard know to go there that day, right?
01:17:01
It's a detail Chris would have known. So how did Leonard know if Chris didn't tell him?
01:17:07
He's telling the truth, and Chris Dungeon did hire him, right? That's one possibility.
01:17:12
And there are other possibilities that he didn't, and he just made it up. And the question is, why would he make it up?
01:17:17
This juror agreed with prosecutors that Chris behavior that first night was hard to understand There was a lot of question of how did he miss the closet door being closed and he obviously walked past it multiple times
01:17:33
And then how did he just wake up in the middle of the night realizing whatever, right?
01:17:36
It's easily believable that that's exactly what happened, right? And it's just as easily believable that he knew that her body was there
01:17:42
and didn't react to it and didn't know what to do with it because he might be feeling guilty at that time.
01:17:48
What jurors focused on, he said, was the evidence, or lack thereof. Chris Johnson and Bob J. Leonard never met in person,
01:17:55
that they didn't find any bank records of money transferred, that didn't establish a good enough motive, right,
01:18:02
regardless of how good or how believable Bob J. Leonard was. This wasn't 12 Angry Men.
01:18:10
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour. And then people started filing back in because they got the text saying that there had been a verdict.
01:18:20
Chris's friend Anna. And then the jury came out and they rendered their verdict of not guilty.
01:18:28
Not guilty. Andrea's friend Sally couldn't believe how quickly the jury had done its work.
01:18:36
This was a complicated case. So I was shocked because I didn't feel that the jury could have possibly reviewed the evidence in that short of time.
01:18:48
What was Chris's reaction? He was, you know, stunned. He's a pretty stoic guy in general, so he didn't show a lot of emotion.
01:18:56
But he and his team started hugging and that was it. They were done. It was over.
01:19:03
Outside, the defense celebrated. Chris is innocent. This prosecution has bankrupted him in every way that you can bankrupt a man,
01:19:12
financially, spiritually, emotionally, otherwise, or so. Happy justice was done today.
01:19:20
This is a case that the prosecutor should never brought in the first place. More than one juror apparently agreed.
01:19:27
They didn't think it should have gone to trial. They didn't think Chris should have been indicted.
01:19:31
They didn't understand it. The Arlington County attorney declined our request for an interview,
01:19:36
saying she had to respect the jury's verdict. Police also declined, saying they remained committed to seeking justice for Andrea Sincotta.
01:19:45
And while they appreciate our interest in the case, they'll let the court record stand.
01:19:50
Neither wanted to answer questions about why this case was brought or how they missed the
01:19:56
obvious suspect from the beginning. Arlington County Police say they did their best to investigate this case And despite his criticism of the police Kevin says he grateful for the cold case detective
01:20:12
I think her efforts were heroic in bringing this case as far as she did. I don't need a guilty verdict
01:20:19
to know the truth about what happened to my mother. I'm obviously saddened and disappointed,
01:20:25
but I accept the result. Mr. Johnson, any reaction? I'm relieved, but it's still a very sad thing that she's gone.
01:20:37
Chris Johnson also declined an interview. He did email, saying in part, Arlington made up their minds on August 22, 1998 about this case.
01:20:49
The only way that Arlington could proceed with this case was if they drove a wedge between Andrea's family and myself.
01:20:56
It took over 20 years, but that is what Arlington accomplished. The case is sure to put a spotlight on police lying to suspects,
01:21:07
something many civil liberties groups have criticized. Chris has hired a civil attorney and says he's planning to file a suit for false arrest and prosecution.
01:21:18
Bobby Joe Leonard, already serving a life sentence, received another life term for Andrea's murder.
01:21:25
He declined our interview request as well. At his sentencing hearing, Leonard told the judge he was sorry for what he'd done.
01:21:33
He says, I killed a woman who was nothing but nice to me. In the end, Leonard got nothing for his testimony.
01:21:41
He's still doing hard time in that maximum security prison. You're 49? Your mom was 52?
01:21:50
She didn't get to live the rest of her life. What are you going to do with the rest of yours?
01:21:53
I don't know, but I would like my legacy to be someone who never gave up and was relentless in finding out the truth about what happened to my mom and holding the people who are responsible accountable.
01:22:18
I think that already is your reputation. If that's how I'm remembered, I would be very at peace with that.
01:22:29
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:22:35
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.
01:22:40
For all of us at NBC News, good night.