00:00:00
When I first got the case, people were upset, like, you know, why are you letting this guy
00:00:07
run a murder investigation? And it's true. I mean, at the time, somebody said, how many murder investigations have you run? I looked at them and said, this is my first one.
00:00:15
It was May 1997. Ron Bamier was 31, a deputy DA in Ventura, California, a sleepy seaside town 60 miles north of Los Angeles. He was green, just starting out.
00:00:29
And that's when they dumped on his desk an old mystery, an unsolved case that had languished for five years,
00:00:37
the mystery of Katrina Montgomery. It was one of those awful stories, a missing girl, a desperate family,
00:00:46
cops who say they're doing all they can. Was she murdered? She must have been. But how it happened was still a puzzle.
00:00:55
By the time Ron Bamier inherited the case in May 1997, the original investigation, or what there had been of it,
00:01:02
was clouded over by time, and now almost nothing was clear. There was no real good crime scene investigation done at the time.
00:01:10
There was some done, but nobody knew what they had. Nobody knew if they had a homicide, a missing person.
00:01:15
They didn't know, and nobody was talking. For all the efforts of Katrina's family, for years, the case had simply died.
00:01:23
been lost in a bureaucratic shuffle between police in Los Angeles, where she lived,
00:01:28
and authorities in Ventura, where she was last seen. When you hear about a cold case, most people think about a crime that was simply too difficult to solve,
00:01:37
but that isn't always how it works. Sometimes police don't have the manpower to crack a case.
00:01:43
Sometimes bureaucratic things like jurisdiction get in the way. Sometimes it takes an investigation team that simply won't give up, and won't necessarily,
00:01:53
lay by the book. Bamier was determined not to blow his first big case. But of course,
00:01:59
any murder investigation is a complicated business, and this one even more so. Bamier was,
00:02:06
as you might expect, acutely aware of his own inexperience. He knew he would need help.
00:02:12
I immediately asked for Mark. Mark Volpe. He was an investigator with the district attorney's
00:02:17
office at the time, a seasoned detective, and something else. This is going to sound bad,
00:02:22
but he can think like a crook. Thank God he uses his powers for good, not evil. Is that true? Is he right?
00:02:28
Well, I don't know if it's thinking like a crook, but it's being innovative to think like they would think.
00:02:35
Innovative. Innovative. That's the word you're going to use. Innovative. Some innovation.
00:02:39
BAMIE is pushing. You will hear what they did. Their surveillance tapes, their tricks played, their traps set.
00:02:47
It seemed impossible. The pieces of the puzzle were lost. Trying to find them, to put them back together, would become a four-and-a-half-year obsession.
00:02:58
It all started November 29, 1992, when Katrina Montgomery's truck was found abandoned in the Angeles National Forest,
00:03:06
a lonely spot 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles, with an infamous reputation as a place to dump bodies.
00:03:12
But this time there was no body, just a few drops of blood in her truck, and no sign of Katrina Montgomery.
00:03:21
It was almost as if she had never existed at all, though of course she had, had been a vibrant young woman with a mischievous streak.
00:03:30
Tell me about Trina Ukeler, right? Trina Montgomery. She was a 20-year-old aspiring college student photographer.
00:03:41
She was like the spark of the family as a child. She was speaking in full sentences at very early age.
00:03:47
She had a very, say, aggressive sense of humor. She liked to play jokes. She was rebellious?
00:03:53
She was. She had a period of her life where she was very rebellious, but it was a rebellion that was ending.
00:03:58
By 1992, she'd become close to her family again, after years of bad choices. The Montgomerys had lived in Ventura,
00:04:07
and when Katrina was in high school, she fell in with a bad crowd, hung out with members of a racist gang
00:04:13
called the Skinhead Dogs. That gang had wreaked havoc in Ventura for years. What's a skinhead dog? What is that?
00:04:22
The skinhead dogs were a group from Ventura. They were the misfits. They were not popular.
00:04:27
They were not the athletes. They were not the academics. And they get together, and they start drinking and listening to punk rock music.
00:04:33
And slowly they start saying and identifying with white supremacist police. They covered their bodies with supremacist tattoos and became increasingly violent.
00:04:44
For the skinhead dogs, prison was a badge of honor. Surveillance video shows one of the gang stabbing another prisoner.
00:04:52
How did she associate with such a group? She went to high school with a lot of them.
00:04:56
And they were friends, they became the gang. And then you're young and rebellious and you think,
00:05:00
this is something that's really going to upset the parents. But by 1992, Trina was 20.
00:05:05
She was in college, working as a waitress, hoping to be a photographer. As far as her parents knew, she'd left those friends behind.
00:05:14
There's Trina. Thanksgiving 1992. She sounds happy at a family celebration, unaware of what was about to happen.
00:05:23
I tried to get a hold of you all week. I was going to come to Santa Barbara this weekend. See you.
00:05:27
The morning after Thanksgiving 92, Katrina was off again. But she told her family she'd rejoin them in two days, and she promised to call later that very day.
00:05:37
but there was no call because Katrina hadn't told her mother everything. She hadn't told her family she was on her way to a party thrown by some of those old
00:05:48
friends, those dangerous friends from years ago. It was the old gang, the skinhead dogs Why did she go Her family can explain or forget that secret and fatal mistake Prosecutor Bamier looked through the old case file and read about the party and realized right away
00:06:08
that he already had his first piece of the puzzle. Well, I knew there were a bunch of really violent guys, and that she was at a party with these really violent guys.
00:06:18
And it doesn't really take a genius. She had a bunch of guys who were extremely violent, a girl who's missing.
00:06:22
Hmm, who could have done it? And as he read the record, something else came clear.
00:06:27
Among the gang partiers that night, Bamye believed there were three who could have killed her
00:06:32
because three of those gang members had offered alibis which simply didn't check out.
00:06:38
To Bamye, it was obvious. They're the last three with her. They came up with fake alibis.
00:06:43
You don't come up with fake alibis if you're innocent. The youngest of those three was just a teenager at the time.
00:06:50
His name? Larry Nicasio, from Los Angeles, but already a veteran of the gang. He was the youngest of the group.
00:06:59
He started in his gang at 11 years old, had no real residence, stopped going to school,
00:07:03
was a car thief, and was considered by most to be probably the weakest and most vulnerable member.
00:07:10
Another one had obviously faked his alibi, too. His name was Ryan Bush, 19 at the time, also a skinhead and with a particular reputation.
00:07:21
He was Larry's older cousin, a couple years older. He was considered one of the best fighters in the gang,
00:07:27
considered to be the daredevil, was completely loyal to his gang, had a reputation for doing anything for his brothers.
00:07:35
And there was Justin Merriman, then 20, one of the leaders of the skinhead dogs.
00:07:41
Merriman, the prosecutor read in the file, had a long record even then. At 15, he vandalized a Jewish temple.
00:07:48
At 17, he beat a black teen during class. In juvenile hall, he beat a corrections officer.
00:07:55
So here it was, a short list of three. Bamier believed any one of them could have killed Katrina Montgomery.
00:08:02
But which one? The reward for speaking up is little if none. And nobody pushes the right buttons at the right times.
00:08:10
and the secret's kept, and time passes, Katrina's forgotten. And how would they even find long-lost evidence, let alone prove the case in court?
00:08:18
After all, there was no body, no murder weapon, no apparent motive, and a gang vow of silence.
00:08:26
And that, Bamier believes, is what defeated the Los Angeles police investigation years earlier.
00:08:32
They didn't understand a lot of the gang culture here in Ventura, who was involved, who the players were.
00:08:38
they didn't understand or they didn't have the time or the resources to understand.
00:08:46
I mean, I don't know if you've ever been to robbery homicide in Los Angeles. I've been there a few times now, and you want to talk about some busy homicide investigators.
00:08:53
The LAPD's investigator told Dateline the case never got cold. It just simply sat while other cases, specifically the O.J. Simpson case two years later, took priority.
00:09:06
Why would anyone think they could solve Katrina Montgomery's murder after all those years?
00:09:12
There was Bamier's inexperience. Of course, he was simply too green to know what wasn't possible.
00:09:18
And neither partner was prepared to leave this case out in the cold, where they found it.
00:09:23
No, they decided they would trick the killer out into the open. How are you doing now?
00:09:29
I'm okay. You can actually take a position on the stands when you do so. Ron Bamier, the Green Prosecutor, and Mark Volpe, his more experienced investigator,
00:09:53
identified three suspects who lied about their whereabouts, all skinheads, who saw Katrina at a party.
00:10:00
Three men who, they know, won't talk. Not willingly, anyway. And so, very carefully, they set up what they hope will be a sting.
00:10:12
Its target, one of the prime suspects, the youngest one, the one they believe might be most vulnerable.
00:10:20
They hope this ex-girlfriend will help them extract a confession. It's late on a Friday night.
00:10:27
The suspect, Larry Nicasio, has been lured by the ex-girlfriend to a Ventura motel.
00:10:32
The girl is cooperating. She's in on the sting. The cops are in the next room. It's been years since they saw each other,
00:10:40
but all during that time, she has suspected Nicasio may have killed Katrina. And so, at considerable risk to herself,
00:10:48
she's agreed to meet alone in a motel this potentially dangerous man, from whom she'll try to extract a confession.
00:10:56
Was she a little nervous? We all were. Yeah, that was a petrifying evening. When you tell a 5'1'' woman
00:11:04
who is 22, 23 years old, and then you have a person you think could possibly be a rapist and a killer,
00:11:12
you know, it's not exactly a good day if, God forbid, something happened to her.
00:11:16
The girl had lured Nicasio to the meeting by telling him she had been subpoenaed to testify against him to a grand jury.
00:11:24
She told him she needs to know what to say. So that was enough for him to get in the car and drive down to Ventura.
00:11:30
To find out what she knew. To make it more realistic, they set up a little scheme.
00:11:34
a trick. They'd shown the young woman what they told her was evidence against the man she was
00:11:39
about to try to trap. Charts, DNA, pictures of a body. So she had something to offer him. Right.
00:11:46
The charts and the DNA were borrowed from police archives of other homicide cases.
00:11:52
But now the girl and Larry Nicasio believe there is real evidence against him The prosecution team is watching desperately hoping for a break And then suddenly there a problem
00:12:05
The suspect, Nicasio, is hungry and wants to go out to eat. And you see cops scrambling like crazy.
00:12:12
You can hear them on the radio. They're moving, they're moving, they're moving, they're moving.
00:12:15
Because they've left the room, Nicasio and the girl are outside the range of electronic surveillance.
00:12:20
The cops can't see them or hear them. All they can do is wait. frantically worried, and later debrief the girl in front of their own hidden cameras.
00:12:30
What happened? And that's when they get a revelation, another piece of the puzzle in the mystery of Katrina Montgomery.
00:12:38
The young skinhead tells his ex he knows something big. And I say, how do you know that they're not going to find the body?
00:12:45
Because I don't know that they're not going to find me. He tells the girl he's afraid she'll implicate him.
00:12:51
So he warns her. He tells her that if she testifies, she ruins the life of three people.
00:12:59
And he tells her, do not testify. And he goes, because all three of us are done for life.
00:13:08
All three? Now they know they have a case. Or at least enough to pull one of them in for questioning.
00:13:14
And so, two days later, the young skinhead, Larry Nicasio, is arrested for the murder of Katrina Montgomery.
00:13:23
BAM YEA AND VOLPE BAM YEA AND VOLPE BELIEVE THE ARREST OF LARRY NACASIO WILL BE A MAJOR TURNING POINT.
00:13:44
BACK AT THE POLICE STATION, THEY'RE HOPING NACASIO WILL TELL THEM WHAT REALLY HAPPENED THAT NIGHT FIVE YEARS EARLIER, WHEN KENTRINA MONTGOMERY WENT MISSING.
00:13:52
We've got things that we want to share with you and things we want to talk about.
00:13:56
Does that sound fair? This is the actual interrogation. You have the right to remain silent.
00:14:02
Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. But Nicasio is not the only suspect in custody.
00:14:09
His cousin, fellow skinhead Ryan Bush, who was also at that last party with Katrina, was brought in too.
00:14:16
You are suspected of committing the crime of murder. Do you understand that? Bambi and Volpe ping pong between the interrogation rooms putting pressure on each suspect.
00:14:27
As much as you want to go away it's not going to go away. Never go away. All night they question their suspect believing that eventually one will make a deal and turn on the other.
00:14:40
Can you show us tonight where the body of Katrina McCormley is? I don't know where the f***ing body is. I have no idea.
00:14:44
Larry, did you kill Katrina? No. We had to focus on one. We knew we had to roll one of the three over.
00:14:49
and we all pretty much said it has to be Larry. I'm telling you to put it on the table.
00:14:55
But the rookie homicide prosecutor is just now realizing he's made a huge mistake.
00:15:01
One of the mistakes we made is we arrested Larry and Ryan together, and we didn't anticipate how fierce their loyalty would be for each other.
00:15:09
So now the interrogators lie. It's an old cop trick. They tell one of them that the other has betrayed him, has spilled the beans.
00:15:18
but it doesn't work. So now the detectives try another trick. They bring in another girlfriend of the youngest suspect, Larry Nicasio.
00:15:33
Girlfriend number two believes Nicasio was involved somehow but did not kill Katrina.
00:15:39
And just like the first girlfriend, this one has also offered to cooperate but for a different reason.
00:15:45
She wants him to make a deal to save his skin. We couldn't break through to Larry, so we asked Brandy, would you like to talk to him?
00:15:54
She's absolutely... I told him. He was angry that she had shared what had happened.
00:16:04
She tells Nicasio she's talked to the cops. She tries to get him to confess his involvement, and he, angry, resists.
00:16:11
You don't know what they have on you, Larry. You know what they might have lied to you?
00:16:20
I don't care anymore. I don't care. Do you care what happens to me? I do, and that's why I did that.
00:16:29
Because I do care about you. Now she tries another tack. She tells Nicasio that he is not the main suspect in the murder of Katrina Montgomery,
00:16:37
and that by turning on others, he can still get a deal from the prosecutor. They don't want you, okay?
00:16:44
You think that's true? Yeah, I do. They want everybody, okay? What? They want the three of us, okay?
00:16:51
No. Now, listen, as finally out rolls one intriguing nugget. You're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
00:17:05
What if I help this person? Dispose of the evidence? Was that his way of saying he didn't kill her but did get rid of the body?
00:17:14
The prosecutor is skeptical. I mean, I did not believe he did not participate in the homicide.
00:17:19
You know, and who would? And I, you know, I told Mark we left there. I go, he's lying about that.
00:17:26
I don't believe it. And we lied to her because who's going to tell their girlfriend?
00:17:29
You know, I was there and I raped and killed her too. After all that, all night, there is no usable confession.
00:17:37
But key pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. That girlfriend helped a lot.
00:17:42
Not only did she talk to Nicasio, she told investigators what she already knew. That Katrina had gone to the house of one of the suspects after the skinhead party.
00:17:52
Had probably breathed her last breath there, too. And she knew which gang member it was The suspect who lived in Ventura the one they had not yet questioned His name Justin Merriman On Monday morning we the Ventura SWAT team went to Justin Merriman house and we served a search warrant
00:18:13
In that house was something quite chilling. A few days after the arrests of the first two suspects,
00:18:34
on November 23, 1997, the prosecutor and his chief investigator, Mark Volpe, arrive at the home of Justin Merriman with a search warrant.
00:18:43
Merriman is the eldest of the three suspects and the one with the longest rap sheet.
00:18:48
What did you find? Well, what we found was all the gang literature, of letters, hundreds of letters, hundreds of pictures of the gang culture.
00:18:57
What we found were weapons everywhere. We found dope because he was a heroin addict.
00:19:02
Of course, they expected all that. But then they try something that once would have seemed like science fiction.
00:19:07
We had a lab technician in there, and he sprayed the room with this chemical called luminol.
00:19:12
Luminol in the dark glows, indicating that there's blood present. When he luminoled the wall of Justin Merriman's room, the whole wall lit up.
00:19:21
It's eerie. The luminol makes it obvious that something very bloody happened. But there's no usable DNA.
00:19:28
No way to use this in court without more of the puzzle. Back at headquarters at the bottom of the old case file he inherited,
00:19:37
Bamier has discovered something that seems to him explosive, even though apparently it led nowhere in the first investigation.
00:19:44
It's a package of letters from Justin Merriman to Katrina Montgomery. As Bamier reads through them, he comes to a new understanding of his case.
00:19:54
Katrina Montgomery had hardly known the two suspects already arrested and questioned,
00:19:59
Nicasio and Bush, but this was proof that she did know Justin Merriman very well,
00:20:05
and as maybe more than just a friend. What Katrina did, unfortunately, was when Justin went to prison,
00:20:12
she started this relationship through the mail with him. It seemed bizarre, self-destructive.
00:20:16
In letters she herself saved were the secret desires of a skinhead gang leader, a man known for a violent temper, Nazi tattoos, and disrespect for women.
00:20:29
They started off very general and they were very platonic. And you can see in Justin's writing, he'd keep asking for more.
00:20:35
He writes, you're my ideal. He writes about having Nazi babies with her. And he writes, I know you're interested in me,
00:20:44
but at the same time you think you're better than me the letters are enduring silent evidence it's
00:20:51
apparent the two of them are getting close but what he wrote made it seem that she wasn't yet
00:20:56
completely sure about him she would give him the idea once in a while that there's a potential for
00:21:02
more but every time he would express that she would shut him down and he would tell her quite
00:21:07
openly that listen you don't know who you're messing with uh he tells her in a letter oh he
00:21:12
It tells her in the letter very clearly. Don't mess with pops. Yeah, don't mess with pops.
00:21:17
Justin Merriman was released from prison in February of 92. Nine months later, Katrina was dead.
00:21:23
Did something in their emerging relationship provide a motive for murder? Still, they needed more to prove a case against Merriman.
00:21:32
It was time, they decided, to try another ruse. They arranged for a lie, a false rumor to get to Merriman.
00:21:40
What lie? that the young skinhead Larry Nicasio is talking and might be implicating Justin Merriman.
00:21:48
You put a lot of pressure on people. They make mistakes. They make statements. And we're always going to create the pressure.
00:21:52
It's just a matter of time. We're coming. It's inevitable. You really can't stop it.
00:21:56
You're pretty much defenseless here. It's just going to happen. I'm following to the house so we can drop off the car.
00:22:01
And how do they get the message out? Once again, they dream up a sting. In the local jail, they found a gang member
00:22:09
who offers to help in exchange for a favor. The man agrees to meet Merriman in a car
00:22:15
to tell him that Nicasio is talking to the prosecutor. First, of course, they have to get their volunteer out of jail temporarily.
00:22:24
He has secretly shuffled out the back door into the custody of Investigator Volpe
00:22:28
with a warning that if this informant doesn't come back... Mark Volpe would be taking a space until he did come back.
00:22:35
Now, tape rolling. The message is delivered. that Larry Nicasio is talking to police.
00:22:41
But I don't know, for some reason, I think they got Larry, dude. The bottom line is, when we did this case,
00:22:46
we created the illusion that everybody's talking to us. I think Larry went and ran his mouth too much.
00:22:51
But Merriman doesn't buy the story. He smells a rat. Before the day is out, this volunteer is back in jail,
00:22:59
having barely escaped a beating or worse. The sting has backfired, and now Merriman must know the cops are closing in.
00:23:07
He won't be talking anytime soon. You can see yourself like you're this close to doing it,
00:23:12
and then when it's over, you're like farther away than you were. I mean, that hurts.
00:23:17
The investigation had been moving fast. It's been only a month since the sting back of the motel,
00:23:23
then the two arrests, then the search of Merriman's house, and then everything just stops.
00:23:29
They've been trying hard, but they're not getting anywhere, and they begin to realize they could wind up just like the LAPD before them.
00:23:38
Stuck. Merriman, now the chief suspect, is still out there. The two other suspects are still in jail and still not talking.
00:23:47
But every day, Bamier makes sure they're reminded, especially the youngest, Larry Nicasio,
00:23:52
that the only way they can avoid the worst kind of punishment is by talking. And finally, the pressure.
00:24:00
works. The date is March 30th, 1998. I'm Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Bamiere. We sank
00:24:07
the deal with Larry and it was a big high. I mean, for me, we were walking on air.
00:24:12
Dicasio has offered a deal. He'll plead guilty to accessory to murder after the fact and get
00:24:17
three years in prison as long as he tells the truth. Years after the murder, years after the
00:24:23
first investigation of that murder simply fizzled out, these investigators have finally pushed hard
00:24:28
enough, a long-held secret is about to be revealed. Finally, they hear the whole grim tale of the
00:24:35
death of Katrina Montgomery. She showed up, and she came in, and she had a chat overnight day with her.
00:24:47
He tells them he was asleep on the floor of Merriman's room when Katrina arrived,
00:24:52
when she made the biggest mistake of her life, when she got into sweats and got into bed with Merriman.
00:24:59
Laying right on the floor, about five minutes into it, they hear Justin climb on top of her.
00:25:06
Maccasio calmly tells them how he and the third man, Ryan Bush, lay there on the floor pretending to sleep
00:25:12
as Justin Merriman brutally raped Katrina Montgomery. She's the same. She's being in front of me to stop her.
00:25:19
They can hear her whimpering. They can hear her crying. she's in a great deal of pain she's scared and she can't stop them and they won't help her
00:25:31
merriman went on for hours until says nicasio finally he did stop but his brutal assault wasn't
00:25:38
over and she was um on the floor thing she's on and um justin was kind of next to her and all of a
00:25:48
I seen him hit her like this. Merriman pushes a knife into Katrina's neck. Larry describes how her hand went over her neck,
00:25:57
and he could see the blood coming through her fingers, and she fell on the ground.
00:26:02
And Ryan starts saying, don't do it, don't do it, and she's begging Justin not to do it.
00:26:08
And Justin's saying she's going to rat, she's going to rat. You know what happens to rapists in prison, she's going to rat.
00:26:13
She'll go to the police, he told the others. She'll report the rape, and then...
00:26:18
I heard two loud bumps, and I was scared to turn around. Nicasio told them Justin Merriman bludgeoned Katrina with an old wrench.
00:26:29
He had her by her hair, and I remember her eyes were open, and there was a lot of blood around her neck.
00:26:34
November 29, 1992, the sun was barely up, and 20-year-old Katrina Montgomery was dead.
00:26:42
And then, said Nicasio, the three of them dumped her body, abandoned her truck, and left.
00:26:49
And they go back, and then everybody lies, and everybody keeps quiet. The murder of Katrina Montgomery is no longer a mystery.
00:26:57
But no court would give them a conviction if they couldn't prove Larry Nicasio was telling the truth.
00:27:03
To do that, he'll have to show them where she's buried. Our plan was for Larry to show us where the body was.
00:27:22
And our plan was that if we had the body then we could prove with physical evidence what had happened to her It now been six years since Katrina Montgomery was killed since Justin Merriman and Larry Nicasio and Ryan Bush dumped her body way out of the edge of Los Angeles County
00:27:38
Would the body still be there after all that time? And if they couldn't find it without a body to corroborate Nicasio's statement,
00:27:47
would his testimony stand up in court? and he shows us on the map an area called Sunset Farms.
00:27:52
And we were concerned because we had all been up to Sunset Farms and there was a lot of construction,
00:27:56
but there was construction only on certain parts of it. On the left side, it was pretty much pristine as it was in 92.
00:28:03
There may be a shot. So they go. Watch your head, go in and in. We get in the car, the sheriff with, I don't know,
00:28:15
there's all kinds of guys with guns. half our office we had FBI guys out there a helicopter forensic people coroner standing by
00:28:24
sure SWAT team SWAT team we're just saying let's please let's hope it says left not right at the
00:28:30
end of this road we get to the top of the road and Larry goes right and we knew we were in trouble
00:28:36
Larry took us up a dirt road that at one time was right here where we're standing
00:28:42
and adjacent the dirt road was a ravine. Larry and I are walking up and down this dirt road
00:28:48
trying to determine in his mind if in fact we're on the right road. We're just scrambling.
00:28:53
We're walking him up and down that road hoping he can find some clue, some area where,
00:28:57
oh, there she is. I don't know what we were thinking. We were done. We should have known.
00:29:00
Sunset Farms isn't what it used to be. Earth has been moved. Buildings built. The last remains of Katrina Montgomery.
00:29:08
Dumped all those years ago could be anywhere. She had disappeared into a vast construction project, gone.
00:29:18
That went from the best day in law enforcement that I've ever had to the worst day,
00:29:21
in about five minutes. I mean, it was hard. When I came back, I turned to Larry.
00:29:28
I just start yelling at the guy. And I just start telling him, I go, you listen.
00:29:31
I go, you didn't find her, you told us you would, you owe us. I go, I don't care what it takes.
00:29:35
You're going to prison for the rest of your life. I don't care what kind of deal we have with you.
00:29:37
If you don't produce, you're going to prove that Justin Merriman did this. And he was horrified.
00:29:43
Now they need to prove the truth another way, a riskier way, with another trick.
00:29:49
They want the young skinhead Larry Nicasio to wear a wire and get Justin Merriman to talk about the rape and murder of Katrina Montgomery.
00:29:59
Then they have a bit of luck. Merriman has been sent to jail on unrelated charges.
00:30:04
So they wire the young skinhead and send him into the lion's den. don't make this statement in the hall if i go to trial what am i going to say
00:30:13
do not make that statement in trial he tells nicasio not to bring his name into it another
00:30:19
bit of evidence but they need more and then merriman who has no idea all this is being recorded
00:30:26
gives the investigators exactly what they need so don't tell me that narrative you're making me
00:30:32
I'm nervous. He can just haul this shit, you know what I mean? It's subtle, but there it is.
00:30:38
A key piece of the puzzle falls into place when Merriman hisses that Nicasio helped haul the body,
00:30:44
helped get rid of the evidence. The prosecutor knows it the instant he hears it In his own crude way Merriman is confirming Nicasio credibility He doesn say you killed her you didn rape her or nothing like that He says you the guy who buried her You liable And that what Larry had told us why he was culpable because
00:31:01
he had buried Katrina and hid the evidence. With this, they knew they could prove to jurors
00:31:06
that Larry Nicasio was telling the truth. Then finally, loyalty obviously useless now,
00:31:13
Ryan Bush, who, by the way, is never charged in this case, confirms Nicasio's story, too.
00:31:19
They're ready to move. But Merriman might also be ready for them. A strange and desperate conspiracy is about to begin.
00:31:28
Another murder plot is being hatched. Even though they don't know it yet, there is one more trap to set.
00:31:42
Justin Merriman has been rattled. So rattled, he has given investigators a virtual admission of his own guilt.
00:31:56
He has unwittingly corroborated a key detail of Larry Nicasio's story. Why was he rattled?
00:32:03
First, there was the matter of his own sister and what she couldn't hide. This is Mark Holpe.
00:32:09
Hello. Good morning. I'm Robert. Glad to meet you. How are you? This is Ember. Hello, Ember.
00:32:13
Hello, Ember. Though she wouldn't be charged with a crime, Ember Merriman has admitted she helped clean up blood
00:32:19
in the house where the Merrimans lived. When did you clean up blood? When? Oh, in the morning.
00:32:26
And then, even more important, she implicated her own mother. Was your mother already in the process of cleaning the blood when you woke up?
00:32:34
Yeah. Ember tells them her mother was with her cleaning up the blood on the stairs.
00:32:40
Investigators used Larry Nicasio's last meeting with Justin Merriman to get the message across.
00:32:45
Your mother and sister are in trouble. You can't break me. My mom is involved in this.
00:32:51
You know what I mean? They're trying to get along on that. Finally, this cold case, this forgotten murder, looks like it's solved.
00:32:58
Time to move. Justin Merriman is charged with the rape and murder of Katrina Montgomery.
00:33:04
We had him. I mean, it was a done deal. I mean, the whole murder case. But not so fast. All that compelling evidence is just talk from informants, witnesses, criminals who want to make deals, other women who say they were raped.
00:33:18
Their evidence in court will only be as good as their testimony. But what if something happens to the witnesses? They're all cooperating, but there's a danger no one has thought of.
00:33:29
And we find out that, to our surprise and to our horror, that Merriman had gotten out every witness's name to everyone in his gang.
00:33:40
We find letters in prison cells. We find letters at women's houses. We find anybody connected with Skinhead Dogs had one of these letters.
00:33:46
Identifying the witness? Identifying the witnesses by name, any information they had in terms of description, like, you know, tattoo here, look here, this is where she lives before.
00:33:55
It looks like Justin Merriman is trying to have witnesses killed. And we knew right away that the only way anybody would kill anybody is that they could get paperwork.
00:34:03
Paperwork? Paperwork. Court transcripts saying that this person testified. Grand jury transcripts saying,
00:34:08
you know, Keith testified. Here's his transcript to the grand jury that Keith was testifying.
00:34:13
Well if you a gang member and they got your and they got a transcript showing that you cooperated with law enforcement well now they can kill you But how How would Justin Merriman get copies of sealed grand jury transcripts
00:34:25
And how would he send them out to other gang members? Another informant has the answer.
00:34:31
Merriman calls our guy who was out of prison and says, see my mom, she's going to give you some paperwork.
00:34:38
And now we knew where the paperwork was. It is Justin Merriman's own mother. Turns out she's gotten her hands on sealed transcripts
00:34:45
and is sending them to Merriman's gang associates. But how is it possible that Merriman from his jail cell
00:34:52
is telling his mother what to do? Listen as Merriman's mother greets her son in jail.
00:34:57
The prosecution team has set up for one last sting. Good morning, Mom. How are you doing?
00:35:03
Good to see you. At first, they seem to be talking like any mother and son. Turn your neck, honey. Straighten your neck up.
00:35:11
And then they play a very dangerous game of charades. Hey, did you get the... Yeah.
00:35:24
On the glass that separates him from his mother, Justin Merriman is drawing the initials of informants he wants taken out.
00:35:34
Really? He outlines victim's name. He outlines informants at this point. He's telling her, get the word out.
00:35:41
He writes a name earlier we saw on the piece on the glass. And he says, you've got to get the word out.
00:35:46
You've got to get the word out. They need to know. Because he understands getting the word out that these people are informants,
00:35:52
or in his term, rats, that they'll be dealt with. In the nick of time, the witness intimidation scheme is shut down.
00:35:59
Merriman's mother, Beverly Sue Merriman, pleads guilty to conspiracy to intimidate witnesses.
00:36:05
And that charge is added to her son's docket, too. The puzzle is finally complete.
00:36:11
After four and a half years making a case, they go to trial. Now, I will tell you, when we proceeded to the indictment,
00:36:19
our evidence wasn't as good as it eventually became because he gave us more evidence.
00:36:24
I mean, he went out trying to kill the witnesses. I mean, it's hard to say I'm innocent, but I want all these people dead anyway.
00:36:29
On February 13, 2001, Justin Merriman is convicted of the rape and murder of Katrina Montgomery.
00:36:37
At his sentencing hearing, against the advice of his own attorney, Merriman takes the stand to ask the jury for compassion.
00:36:45
As he's sworn in, he gives the Nazi salute. And then he tells the jury he isn't the cold-blooded killer
00:36:51
the prosecution has made him out to be. He tells them his lawyer hasn't done a very good job.
00:36:57
He tells them he is innocent. The jury doesn't buy it. Justin Merriman is sentenced to death.
00:37:06
By then, Katrina Montgomery had been dead nine years. For fully half that time, for four and a half years,
00:37:13
Ron Damier, who began as a neophyte in the homicide division, and Mark Volpe, the innovative investigator, coaxed the truth to come out.
00:37:23
Some said they were obsessed. They prodded with tricks and lies and fakery. Yet don't regret it for a moment.
00:37:32
How fast do you run when you're chasing evil? I mean, how hard? When do you say, okay, we're going to let this guy walk away, we're not going to run after him?