00:00:00
That's the hardest part. I can't help him. I'm a mother, I fix stuff. A skinny, a hurt feeling.
00:00:11
I cannot fix this. I can't bring him back. He's on the ground in front of his vehicle. Something, she's very wrong.
00:00:22
It was devastating when they found him. Oh my God. The single dad, so passionate about helping others.
00:00:29
He was a selfless person. He just wanted to do for everybody. So dedicated to his bright young daughter, Sienna.
00:00:38
They were two pieces of fun. She loved being with her dad. She just was every single thing to him. Every single thing.
00:00:45
For police, a puzzle. It was such an unusual murder with a victim who seemed to have no enemies.
00:00:52
Then, the chilling on-camera clue. There's a figure. You see someone wearing a hoodie come out from the dark.
00:00:59
You're looking at the killer, you believe? Yes. You get the goosebumps, you get the hairs on the back of your neck.
00:01:03
A father dead in the garage. Who was behind it? I'm thinking, what? It's mind-blowing.
00:01:09
Lies, delusion, betrayal. You just don't want to believe that people can be that evil.
00:01:18
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with the figure in the garage.
00:01:29
Look closely, top left of the screen. A hooded figure walks away from the camera.
00:01:36
Who is it? What are they doing? Why are they there? Minutes later, a truck pulls in.
00:01:42
A different person walks out. His name we know, Don Fluitt. It appears that his trash can was tipped over.
00:01:50
He pulls it back up. You look at him and he's fine. And he's happy and healthy and picking up his trash can.
00:01:57
and then the garage closes. That's the end of Don Fluitt's life, basically. Yeah.
00:02:06
The neighbor's security camera captured these images and left a mystery. That was one of those moments where you kind of get the chills
00:02:18
and think, I think we know when it happened. Now we just got to figure out who. And why.
00:02:25
There was just nobody that I could think of that would want to hurt him. Albuquerque, New Mexico.
00:02:36
Thousands of people come here every fall to watch the colorful hot air balloons sail through the desert sky.
00:02:42
For others, it's just a pit stop as they continue their trek onto Santa Fe. But for some, it's a place for new beginnings.
00:02:49
Would you just throw a dart at the map and it's Albuquerque? Yeah, pretty much. This is Dennis Fluitt, Don's younger brother, less than a year apart in age.
00:02:58
Born and raised in California, they grew up close, the two of them and two sisters.
00:03:03
We had to rely on each other. You know, I mean, when my parents divorced, it was just my mom, so there was a lot of home time alone.
00:03:10
Like most siblings, the brothers were competitive. Mom, Sharon. They had to outdo each other constantly.
00:03:17
What one did, the next one did. The brothers flew it, led a hard partying lifestyle until Dennis headed east at age 20.
00:03:26
Dennis matured, thought his brother could do the same. He urged Don to join him in New Mexico.
00:03:31
He was on a dead end trail. You know, he wasn't doing anything good or productive.
00:03:35
So I called him, convinced him to come out here. You see your brother change? Oh, yeah.
00:03:40
You know, I mean, he saw complete change. Don turned his life around. At 26, he got married, had two kids, but the marriage didn't last.
00:03:52
His kids moved to Oklahoma with their mom, but daughter Tiffany says Don never stopped being a loving father.
00:03:58
So he really had to go out of his way to keep you two in his life, too. No, and he did.
00:04:03
Albuquerque's a far piece away. It is. He always made the drive, though. When Don was in his late 30s, he decided to pursue a childhood dream, to become a firefighter.
00:04:14
Dennis joked with him, told him he was too old, but that didn't stop Don. Was it the adrenaline, you think, running hot when it's all going down?
00:04:21
Maybe. I just think that he cared for people and he wanted to do his part to save as many lives as he could.
00:04:28
And soon, Don met Dennis' neighbor, a woman named Christine. She made him happy. She was kind of quirky and silly like he was, so I think they got along real well.
00:04:37
And she was like literally the girl next door. Yes, literally. It wasn't long before Don and Christine married,
00:04:44
and just a little over a year later, they had a baby girl together. They named her Sienna.
00:04:51
Don's son Josh says Sienna seemed to complete Don's life. He was above the world, knowing that we were so far away
00:04:57
that at least he can have his own child right there with him every step of the way, every second of the day.
00:05:04
There he goes. There he goes. There he goes. He did it. As you can see in this home video that Christine took,
00:05:10
the couple doted on their little girl you can do it keep pushing keep pushing she loved him they
00:05:16
were always doing goofy things they were two peas in a pod life was great until don after eight
00:05:22
years as a firefighter lost his job according to a close friend christine who worked as an x-ray
00:05:28
tech had to shoulder most of the bills the financial strain proved to be too much when
00:05:34
When Sienna was only four years old, Christine filed for divorce. The couple shared custody of Sienna.
00:05:41
Don made sure his life still revolved around his little girl. He wanted to make the best life possible for Sienna
00:05:47
and be the best man he possibly could. This is Amber, Dennis' daughter and Don's niece.
00:05:54
She says Don taught Sienna to help others as he always tried to do They would go to church every Sunday and they would have spaghetti on Sundays and one day they just made too much spaghetti
00:06:06
They decided to find somebody and give them dinner. They started calling it Spaghetti Sunday.
00:06:13
Don and Sienna would hit the streets of Albuquerque and feed the homeless. She's not dragging her feet with all of this, or, oh no, we've got to do this again.
00:06:20
Not at all. I think they were in cahoots. From spaghetti Sundays to silly homemade music videos.
00:06:29
He wouldn't do anything unless he can do it with her. Just a few weeks before Christmas 2016, Don's oldest sister died of cancer.
00:06:39
His mother, Sharon, was devastated. Don and Sienna, then 11 years old, took a road trip to California to spend Christmas with her.
00:06:48
And when the festivities were over... I didn't want him to go. Don, who was now working at an agency that served the developmentally disabled,
00:06:57
told his mom he had a meeting he could not miss. Is that right? So went outside with him, hugged and kissed, and got everything in the car.
00:07:07
After an 11-hour drive, they arrived home in Albuquerque, where Sienna found a new bicycle under the Christmas tree.
00:07:15
But before she could ride it, Don needed to drop her off with her mom, Christine.
00:07:19
The next day, Sienna, who spoke to her dad every day, didn't hear from him. She called her dad's co-worker, Valerie Torres.
00:07:27
She says, I can't get a hold of my dad. And I said, you know, honey, I said, let me try your dad.
00:07:31
I said, don't worry, he's fine. Valerie called, texted, no answer. She and a co-worker went to Don's home.
00:07:38
When I knocked on the door, the door gave a little bit. So the front door wasn't locked.
00:07:43
No. And I was able to walk in the house. Valerie called out Don's name. No response.
00:07:51
So I told my friend, the only way we're going to know whether he's here or not is if his truck's here.
00:07:56
So I opened the garage door. And when I opened the garage door, I found my friend.
00:08:05
When we come back, what had happened in that garage? She's on the ground in front of the vehicle.
00:08:11
Something is very wrong. A clue from the neighbor. She has two cameras in her house.
00:08:16
and she sees Don Fluitt's truck backing out. And another from his ex-wife. Had someone been in Don Fluitt's house?
00:08:25
He said, it's weird when you see a pan in my house. It was December 29, 2016. Even as the Rio Grande, the great but gentle river, ran through this bedroom community north of downtown Albuquerque,
00:08:54
Valerie Torres made a grisly discovery inside Don Fluitt's garage. Her friend called 911.
00:09:03
He's on the ground in front of this vehicle. Something is very wrong. Don had been bludgeoned. His throat slit and stabbed.
00:09:11
Oh, my God. I absolutely knew he was gone. I knew that there was nothing that I could do to help him.
00:09:18
Then she thought about Sienna, who was at her mother's house. And I just remember my heart breaking, like literally.
00:09:24
I've never felt my heart hurt like that. Within minutes, an officer from the Albuquerque PD arrived on scene.
00:09:33
Valerie and her friend were still in tears. His body camera rolled as he walked past Sienna's new bicycle,
00:09:40
still next to the Christmas tree. Then into the garage where Don's body lay. As night fell, the yellow tape went up.
00:09:49
Albuquerque police detective Matthew Kaplan led the investigation. Everything was in pristine order.
00:09:55
The only thing out of order was Don Floyd in the garage. So the house hadn't been tossed?
00:10:00
Not at all. There was no sign of forced entry. Don's cell phone was on the couch, his wallet on the kitchen counter.
00:10:07
Police located all the kitchen knives and sent them off to the crime lab. They also gathered other forensic evidence, including Don's fingernail clippings.
00:10:16
There was immediate blood in the vicinity on the walls, underneath him, on the truck that looked like handprints.
00:10:25
But the detective thought it didn't seem like enough blood, given the injuries Don had sustained.
00:10:30
And that's when we noticed an empty bottle of bleach on the washer and dryer and towels that smelled the bleach in the washer.
00:10:37
So there had been some effort of cleanup. That's what it appeared, yes. His team did a test with a substance like luminol.
00:10:43
The kitchen sink lit up with traces of blood. So it looked like either hands or the murder weapon was washed off in the sink.
00:10:50
The floor also lit up. Same with the door. Kaplan and his team had already started going door to door and met Don's next door neighbor.
00:10:59
She tells us she has two cameras in her house. So that's interesting. Yes, there's one which happens to catch a portion of Don Fluitt's garage.
00:11:07
And she told them she'd been home the night before when... She hears the garage come up.
00:11:11
She happens to look at her camera, and she sees Don Floyd's truck backing out and leaving.
00:11:17
The time, 7.37 p.m. Kaplan had the first data point for a timeline. He gathered more when he talked to Don's ex-wife Christine at her home.
00:11:28
Christine confirmed he dropped Sienna off with her at 7.45 p.m., and she remembered something Don told her that afternoon.
00:11:35
He thought someone had been in his house while he was away. He said, it's weird. There's like cat hair in my dryer.
00:11:43
And someone used a pan in my house. Christine also told the detective that Don sometimes suffered road rage.
00:11:52
His sheets had many heated exchanges as a driver before So maybe an angry motorist followed Don home after an argument Or maybe it was someone he knew someone with access to the house
00:12:07
Kaplan spoke to Don's landlord, Benny Ruiz, who'd shown up at the scene. He told Kaplan that Don was a kind-hearted man
00:12:14
and wondered if his murder had anything to do with his work with homeless people.
00:12:18
He opens himself to everybody. You know, he opens his home. Don's mom Sharon out in California
00:12:25
got a call in the middle of the night Detective Kaplan was on the line and he said, ma'am I'm sorry
00:12:31
your son is dead and I think I started screaming just 19 days before she'd lost her eldest daughter to cancer
00:12:42
19 years before that her youngest daughter had also died and now Don and I had to call Dennis
00:12:50
to tell him now you're An only child. Wow. I couldn't get my head around it. It didn't seem real.
00:13:03
Dennis called Amber to let her know about her Uncle Don. I just started screaming no over and over again.
00:13:11
My dad was obviously a mess. And the news soon made its way to Oklahoma, where Don's older children lived.
00:13:19
I was just like, no, this isn't real. The stuff don't happen. You just see this stuff on TV. It was horrible.
00:13:26
This is an intimate murder. This is a hands-on murder. Yeah, very personal. It was up close and horrible.
00:13:32
Very violent and personal. So who would put a target on your brother, of all people?
00:13:37
Mr. Sunday Night Spaghetti. My first thought was Terry. I even told the detective that.
00:13:44
Terry White, Christine's husband, Sienna's stepfather. Don told me a lot about him.
00:13:49
You know, I knew that there had been some altercations in the past. Detective Kaplan went to see Terry the next day.
00:13:56
Terry, a truck driver, was back from his shift and at home with Sienna and Christine.
00:14:05
Sienna and Christine left the room. Kaplan asked Terry about his relationship with Don.
00:14:11
You know, in the beginning, I would say it was rocky. Terry told Kaplan that when they went to court over custody of Sienna,
00:14:19
Don sometimes seemed to want a confrontation. And if he can get me in any kind of way, violent or yell or scream at him, then it would make him look good.
00:14:28
And he would ultimately, you know, win the court side about, you know, he could have thought of him.
00:14:33
So I just I wouldn't bite for that. Terry said to the detective that he mostly avoided Don and hadn't had any contact with him in a while.
00:14:41
We're not going to find any DNA or thing of Prince of Dior's anywhere in his house or on his vehicle or anywhere in that area.
00:14:48
you know i i just would not get in the guy's life it's just to me it's not it wasn't worth it
00:14:54
because i love that book call yeah and i don't want to you know make her make hate me because
00:14:59
she loves her dad caplan asked about the night of the murder terry said he spent the evening
00:15:04
visiting his sister he said he left about nine stopped at a wendy's for dinner then drove to work
00:15:10
and slept in his car until his shift began so you naps that in the parking lot at work yeah
00:15:15
Terry's sister confirmed his story. So did his boss, who said she had security cam video that would show Terry at work that night.
00:15:24
But by then, Kaplan had received an unexpected phone call from Don's neighbor. She had become curious about her own surveillance video. She had looked at it and made a discovery and said,
00:15:35
Hey, detective, you need to look at 741 p.m. Coming up, a mysterious figure captured on camera.
00:15:46
There's someone in a hoodie, and the individual walks off camera towards where Don Fluid's door would be.
00:15:52
Did you think that surveillance camera had taken a picture of your killer? I did.
00:15:56
When Dateline continues. January 2017 Instead of celebrating the start of a new year
00:16:13
Don Fluitt's family was making funeral arrangements His niece Amber made posters with photos of Don
00:16:20
His ex-wife Christine pitched in She brought some pictures over that she had had
00:16:25
that I could add to the boards and she said, can I help you? I said, yeah, absolutely, let's do this.
00:16:31
And so we had a glass of wine and put the picture boards together. Sienna helped too.
00:16:38
She lost her best friend, and she wanted to be a part of it. Sienna picked out most of the music and readings for the service.
00:16:46
It was held at the church she attended with her dad. Meanwhile, the murder investigation continued.
00:16:53
Detective Kaplan spoke to Don's neighbor. who said she'd found something on her home security video.
00:16:59
I start looking at the clip she's talking about, and believe it or not, there's a figure.
00:17:05
A figure? A figure. There's someone in a hoodie walking to Don Fluitt's trash can.
00:17:10
They lay the trash can down on its side, and the individual walks off camera towards where Don Fluitt's door would be.
00:17:17
Don Fluitt returns and pulls into the garage. You see him walk out of the garage.
00:17:22
He walks to his trash can, picks it up, and then walks into his garage again. At this point, said Kaplan,
00:17:30
you could see the light from the garage diminishing as the garage door closed. And then inexplicably,
00:17:36
the garage shoots back up, and you see a series of flashes. I'm the hooded figure.
00:17:42
Yes. We went to the scene of the crime to understand how this could happen. It's as easy as that, huh?
00:17:50
So where is Don? He's in the house now? I believe he's in the house now. And there's the flashing light.
00:17:54
And there your series of flashes that you see on the surveillance video Kaplan believed that hooded figure tripped the sensor and sneaked into Don garage the door closing behind him
00:18:05
Did you think that surveillance camera had taken a picture of your killer? I did.
00:18:09
A tantalizing image, but no face to go with it. Do you see the figure depart? No, never.
00:18:15
The garage closes and Don Floyd's found dead the next morning. Even as he puzzled over the hooded figure's identity,
00:18:24
the detective started to hear about someone else, Don's brother, Dennis. Just days after the murder, Dennis got the keys to Don's house.
00:18:33
Don's children from Oklahoma wondered what he was up to. They felt that it was odd that Dennis was there and sort of kind of taking control.
00:18:41
Taking over his brother's life. Yes, that was a concern to them. Kaplan also learned that Dennis and Don had had a falling out a year before.
00:18:49
Dennis had moved away, lived in Arizona for a while, but he'd moved back to Albuquerque just a couple of months before Don's murder.
00:18:57
It kind of puts up a red flag for me. You're in the process of reconnecting. You had a falling out before, and now Don's inexplicably been murdered.
00:19:06
Tiffany and Josh had the same feeling. Did you think maybe your uncle, his brother, had something to do with this?
00:19:13
There was talk of it just because of the estranged relationship and what had happened.
00:19:19
And when you're hurt and you're grieving, you don't know what to think. Kaplan interviewed Dennis, who said it had all started after their father died.
00:19:26
I got a little bit angry with him about that because he took a lot of my dad's stuff.
00:19:31
There were just disagreements, just like I'm starting to see with my brother's death.
00:19:37
Kaplan had learned that Don had lost his job as a firefighter because of a drug test.
00:19:41
He asked Dennis about that. That's true? Marijuana. Marijuana, okay. Nothing heavy. I guarantee my brother hasn't touched heavy drugs in 30 years.
00:19:51
Then Dennis came up with a name. Someone else he thought detectives should be taking a look at.
00:19:56
You know, and it makes me mad. I mean, you know, I'm no investigator. I'm no cop.
00:20:01
You know, but this guy spends two hours in my brother's house the other day. You're talking about the landlord, Benny?
00:20:06
Benny, the landlord. Dennis said just days after Don's murder, he found Benny inside Don's home.
00:20:13
Benny claimed he was feeding the dog. Dennis claimed, well, I don't know if he's messing with the crime scene.
00:20:18
Dennis told Kaplan that he had heard that Don was upset with Benny over a hole in the ceiling that hadn't been repaired.
00:20:25
Detectives asked Benny for fingerprints and DNA. But as Kaplan questioned him, Benny told the detective he was uneasy about Dennis.
00:20:34
Benny said Dennis wanted to rent another townhouse Benny owned, just a few blocks down from the murder scene.
00:20:40
He said he was going to move all the Don stuff over there and set it up. Did he tell you why he wanted to do that?
00:20:45
for Sienna. He wanted to sit up for Sienna, for Don's little daughter, which is kind of weird.
00:20:51
Benny said he didn't rent to Dennis, not after a background check revealed that Dennis had a
00:20:56
criminal record for assault and disorderly conduct. Kaplan, of course, already knew about
00:21:01
Dennis's record, but more importantly, I wondered why he had suddenly taken a massive interest in Don Fluid's affairs with the condo and with Sienna.
00:21:12
out. When we spoke to Dennis, we wondered that too. Coming up. They kept talking about an
00:21:19
estrangement between the two of you. The brother, the landlord, the stepfather, three possible
00:21:27
suspects. These were names that I just, I couldn't eliminate. And one of them is about to change his
00:21:33
story. To say Don Fluitt loved the Christmas season would be putting it mildly. He was obsessed.
00:21:52
We're talking lights, music, you know. It was everywhere. A month after Don's murder, his family was still grappling with the fact that he would never see another Christmas.
00:22:07
No one more distraught than his daughter, Sienna. How was she doing? She was strong. She said she just was praying about it. She would cry.
00:22:17
Meanwhile, Detective Kaplan was looking very closely at the apparent bad blood between Don Fluitt and his brother, Dennis.
00:22:24
They kept talking about an estrangement between the two of you. Do you know what they're referring to?
00:22:28
Oh, yeah. When my dad passed, we all came to an agreement on the few assets that he did have.
00:22:35
Yeah, there was a set understanding. A set understanding. Well, Don didn't keep to his part of the deal and kept one of the trucks that we were going to sell.
00:22:44
According to Dennis, that led to radio silence between the two brothers. Dennis said he tried to reach out to Don just a couple of months before his murder, but Don never returned his call.
00:22:56
And when he heard about Don's death, he only wanted to help. I knew him better than anybody, and he knew me better than anybody,
00:23:02
and I made a promise to him and Sienna early on that I was going to do everything to bring justice and protect him.
00:23:09
He said if some people found that suspicious, so be it. Dennis remained on Detective Kaplan's list of potential suspects.
00:23:17
Benny, Dennis, Terry, these were names that I just, I couldn't eliminate. So he kept the heat on all three.
00:23:26
Kaplan had already questioned landlord Benny Ruiz and obtained a sample of his DNA.
00:23:31
He also took another look at Sienna's stepdad, Terry White. Remember, Terry initially told the detective that on the night of Don's murder,
00:23:39
he stayed with his sister until 9 p.m., then drove to work and took a nap in the parking lot.
00:23:45
But when Detective Kaplan checked the security cam video... You can see Terry White pull in and immediately get out of his truck and walk to the front door.
00:23:54
So now there's a discrepancy in his story. Again, thank you for coming down. No worries, I'm sure you're busy now.
00:24:01
Detective Kaplan asked Terry to stop by the station, go over his timeline one more time.
00:24:07
And? His story changed. He didn't pull into the parking lot, as it originally expressed.
00:24:13
He went around the corner to a dark area and fell asleep there. And then he pulled into the parking lot.
00:24:20
That wasn't the only discrepancy. Remember, in his first interview, Terry said he'd only stopped at a Wendy's on his way to work.
00:24:27
But now? I stopped. at Walmart. Walmart. Now, what's he doing at Walmart? That was an interesting story.
00:24:37
I'm going to stop to get a new sweatshirt for me for work because my wife bought me one for Christmas.
00:24:43
I said, I'm not going to wear that to work, so I wouldn't have bought this one. Kaplan asked Terry about Dennis.
00:24:48
He never met the guy, he said, but he'd heard about his troubled relationship with Don
00:24:52
and that Dennis had moved into Don's home. Now he's back, and he's, like, trying to protect Sienna from whatever.
00:25:00
And it's just, it's making people feel kind of off. Terry willingly gave a DNA sample, and Kaplan sent him on his way.
00:25:10
Two days later, the detective went back to Dennis. I took his DNA, and I took his fingerprints.
00:25:16
Dennis, too, was cooperative. He told detectives he worried about Sienna, and he felt bad for Christine.
00:25:22
You know, she's a mess. I mean, I talked to her for half an hour on the phone this morning,
00:25:26
and there was probably four or five times she started to cry. And he was still very vocal with his suspicions about Benny Ruiz.
00:25:33
I mean, how do we know that Benny didn't go over there? And Don might have just let him in and everything,
00:25:37
like everybody knew each other and then it went bad. Kaplan didn't think Dennis was helping himself.
00:25:43
Was he receding as a person of interest for you? No, unfortunately not. Do you have your eye on anybody in particular?
00:25:50
Oh, you know, I can't tell you that. Come on, man. Oh, I can't tell you that. Oh, that's right. I'm still not clear who's a suspect.
00:25:58
Nobody is. In my opinion, nobody is. As the weeks passed, Don's kids began to worry.
00:26:05
Did you think it was going to be cold and not solved? That someone was going to get away with murder here?
00:26:10
It scared me for a little bit that it may be that way. But that was about to change.
00:26:16
Remember, fingernail clippings from Don's body had been taken for testing. Three months after Don's murder, the lab reported a hit.
00:26:24
Someone else's DNA beneath Don's fingernails. I remember just kind of jumping out of my chair.
00:26:30
Well, whose DNA is it? Coming up. That's a bingo moment, huh? Yes. A final suspect at last.
00:26:39
We do have a suspect and we do have an arrest warrant. Yes! But can they get to him in time?
00:26:47
The deputy immediately thinks, oh no. When Dateline continues. One murder, three potential suspects.
00:27:04
Something had to break the tie. Then, about 12 weeks into the investigation, the crime lab called with some major news.
00:27:12
The foreign DNA under Don Fluitt's fingernails belonged to none other than his ex-wife's current husband, Terry White.
00:27:20
That's a bingo moment, huh? Yes. It all started lining up. Terry's strained relationship with Don, his shifting timeline, his sudden need for a new hoodie.
00:27:30
The fact that he's amended his second story to include buying a hoodie, what does that tell you?
00:27:36
In hindsight, a lot. It tells me that there was probably a lot of blood on him and that he needed something to wear when he went to work.
00:27:45
And above all, Terry's DNA where it simply did not belong. Maybe we're not going to find any DNA or fingerprints of yours anywhere in his house or on his vehicle or anywhere in that area.
00:27:58
No. No? Okay. So if we did, it'd be weird. Yeah, I would say that would be weird.
00:28:07
At this point I 100 sure that Terry is our guy Kaplan spoke to Don mom Sharon and his brother Dennis We do have a suspect in this case and we do have an arrest warrant
00:28:19
Yes! Perfect. It's Terry White. The case seemed to be solved, but there was a problem.
00:28:27
Before Kaplan could find Terry, he got a call from Christine. She said Terry was missing.
00:28:32
You're putting the noose around Terry's neck, but you're also finding out he doesn't seem to be around anymore.
00:28:37
Right. Kaplan asked Christine to stop by the station. He thought she might have information that could help him find her husband.
00:28:45
And you're having a contentious kind of relationship now with Christine. Right. And I think at that point, her willingness to cooperate with me was sort of gone.
00:28:55
Kaplan got a search warrant for her car and phone, hoping to find clues that might lead him to Terry.
00:29:01
Interesting enough, we find her cell phone in the glove compartment, and there's a last will and testament right next to it.
00:29:09
A last will and testament in the glove? Yes, it's Terry White's. I found that to be extraordinarily unusual.
00:29:16
And how old again was it, the document? Three days after we took his DNA. Kaplan started to wonder if Terry would be gone permanently.
00:29:24
Then, a few days later, he caught a break. A sheriff's deputy had happened on a pickup truck
00:29:29
at an Arizona rest stop more than 200 miles from Albuquerque. There's a hose traveling from the exhaust into the cab.
00:29:37
So the deputy immediately thinks, oh no, it looks like someone's trying to commit suicide.
00:29:41
In the cab of the truck, the missing murder suspect. Terry White is red-faced, probably from the carbon monoxide, looks a little bit drowsy and out of it.
00:29:51
Deputy runs his name and realizes he has a warrant for homicide. So he is arrested right then and there.
00:29:57
Detective Kaplan and his partner made a beeline for Arizona to see if Terry would talk.
00:30:02
Do you want to talk to me today? I need an attorney. Okay. You guys, obviously you were thinking something, so I've got to protect myself.
00:30:11
So Terry didn't feel like talking, not to the police anyway. But once he was transferred back to Albuquerque, he did talk to someone.
00:30:19
Dennis received a Facebook message from a woman. She's like, you don't know me, but my boyfriend is in jail with a guy by the name of Terry White.
00:30:28
And you can imagine, I'm thinking, what? The boyfriend's name, Roderick White. No relation, of course.
00:30:34
Rod and Terry shared the same last name, the same birthday, and for three days in April 2017, the same jail cell.
00:30:43
Soon, Terry's former cellmate was in the interview room with Detective Kaplan. From what I understand, you want to talk about kind of what Terry's confiding you in.
00:30:51
Yes. According to Rod, Terry made a full confession. He tells him everything. He tells him how he snuck in.
00:30:58
He tricked the garage door and I thought I was boasted right then. But he ended up getting underneath the guy's book.
00:31:06
Terry told Rod that Don was a smoker whose routine was to smoke in the garage. So he waited for Don to come out.
00:31:14
I got up and I was waiting right there by the door. Rod said Terry then described in gruesome detail what took place inside the garage away from the neighbor's security cam.
00:31:26
He's a truck driver, so he has a tire thumper. He normally matched the tires with.
00:31:30
He said, as soon as he came out, he said, I hit him as hard as I could with that tire thumper.
00:31:35
He said, I hit him so hard I split the tire thumper in three pieces. Kaplan showed us how the cellmate's story matched the evidence at the crime scene.
00:31:43
He explains that he hits Don with this tire thumper. Don continues to fight. It continues in here.
00:31:50
We know this because there's a coat rack that would have been right here. There's blood on a jacket that belonged to Sienna.
00:31:55
there's blood on the garage door and then we find and then what the action moves back out here matter
00:32:01
what it moves back up here and this is a very narrow space because the bumper of he's got a
00:32:06
big old truck and i would have used every inch of this to about right here um what we do know is
00:32:11
there's bloody handprints on the hood of the truck there's handprints and blood swipes on the wall
00:32:16
so we know that don had fallen on his back uh this way he even described how don got terry dna on and he says and I know exactly when it happened It was when I was raining down on the bus He reached up and his finger caught the inside lip
00:32:33
Then Rod continued that Terry hit him so hard, Don finally went down. Then, according to Rod, Terry finished the job. He said, I went inside the house
00:32:45
and I got a steak knife. And he said something about hitting the side of his throat.
00:32:52
And if the knife didn't work, Terry told Rob that he had a backup plan. I had plan B.
00:32:58
He said there was an axe there on the wall of the garage. He said that was plan B.
00:33:03
Which you can clearly see in the crime scene photos. There's no way you would know that
00:33:07
unless you were there. Now, importantly, were any of those details, detective, that you just listed,
00:33:12
were they online? Were they in the newspapers? No. So this cellmate is telling you a story that exactly matches your evidence, huh?
00:33:20
Or the observations at the scene. Yes. Not only is it matching the evidence, it's filling in some of the gaps.
00:33:26
The case against Terry White was starting to look airtight. But Rod, the informant, wasn't done talking.
00:33:34
Coming up. She's the one that told him, we've got to do this now. You've got to do this for your family.
00:33:40
She? She said, we all have our dirty little part in this. One more jaw-dropping revelation to come.
00:34:00
He was arguing as he fought for his life. Informant Rod White gave detectives a virtual play-by-play of how Terry White murdered Don Floyd.
00:34:08
One revelation after another. I had plan B. She said there was an axe there on the wall of the garage.
00:34:14
But just when they thought they'd heard everything, Rod had one more revelation to offer, a big one.
00:34:21
Terry told him on several occasions that he did it for her, that she's the one that told him, we've got to do this now.
00:34:29
You've got to miss your family. According to Rod, the she in question was Terry's wife, Don's ex, the mother of his darling Sienna, Christine.
00:34:39
Rod said, and would later testify in court, that Christine was the prime mover of the murder plot.
00:34:46
So Terry told you that Christine told him to do it for the family? Yes. They've been looking for an opportunity for a while.
00:34:54
The cellmate said that Christine and Terry called Don the black cloud. And with him out of the way, they'd have Sienna all to themselves.
00:35:03
Of course, any dreams of a happily ever after had gone belly up once police zeroed in on Terry.
00:35:09
But Terry did have an ironclad life insurance policy. So the reasoning would be then that I, Terry White, am in the can.
00:35:16
I'm going to go down for this thing. They got me. But I can do you, Christine, and the little girl a final bit of good by killing myself,
00:35:23
and the insurance will be paid off to you. Having you collect $250,000. Rod told the detective that Terry's suicide attempt in Arizona was his third.
00:35:34
And according to Rod, Christine was not exactly thrilled when Terry survived. when he called me the phone and said what the f**k why are you still here
00:35:43
why basically why did you not kill yourself the cellmate's tale got even stranger he said after
00:35:49
he was released from jail he met up with christine and made up a story he told her he would smuggle
00:35:55
some pills into the jail so terry could make good on his suicide promise and i said i need to buy
00:36:02
the pills and i just i don't have money blew into her bank and got out to the north rod said he never
00:36:07
bought the pills or completed the scheme. What did you do with the money? The money I spent, to be honest with you,
00:36:13
I just got out of jail, I was f***ing broke. But he said he had a vivid memory of the last time he saw Christine.
00:36:20
She was crying and she grabbed my hand and she was patting my hand and she said,
00:36:24
we all have our dirty little part in this. Detectives had heard enough. A few days after the interview,
00:36:31
we arrested her. Christine was charged with first degree murder and conspiracy she was upset but resigned to what was happening But the case against Christine was flimsy It rested on the word of a felon It wasn strong enough to move forward
00:36:48
with her. The charges against Christine were dismissed. In June 2018, Terry White went on
00:36:56
trial, the sole defendant. The prosecution's star witness was Terry Selmay, Roderick White,
00:37:01
back in jail by then on an unrelated charge. He told the jury everything about how Terry killed Don.
00:37:09
But even this career criminal couldn't seem to understand why. Why did you kill him?
00:37:14
I said, was he touching the little girl? And he was like, no, no, he wasn't touching her.
00:37:19
And I said, okay, well, was he beating her? No, he said, no, he wasn't. And I said, well, why'd you kill him?
00:37:26
And he said, the mother**** just wouldn't go away. As a result of his testimony, Rod, a meth addict, avoided prison time and enrolled in a drug rehab program.
00:37:38
He insisted he didn't come forward in hopes of a deal, but rather because he believed Don's murder was wrong.
00:37:45
They killed him because he was a good father. That's why they killed this guy, because he was a good dad.
00:37:49
It took the jury a little over six hours to reach a verdict. Guilty. A first-degree murder.
00:37:56
Guilty. It was just instantly relief. That this man wouldn't be able to just walk freely ever, you know, that he wasn't going to get to take my dad's life and have his own still.
00:38:07
In August 2018, Terry White was sentenced to 42 years in prison. But for Don's family, it's not over.
00:38:15
The puppeteer is still pulling the strings, though. Who's the puppeteer? Christine. And the puppet is Terry.
00:38:21
I mean, think about it. She manipulated that man into killing himself. Think about that for a second.
00:38:26
I mean, it's one thing to talk somebody into murdering somebody for you, but to talk that same person into killing themselves that they got caught,
00:38:35
I mean, how do you do that? Christine White did not attend the trial. She declined our request for an interview,
00:38:41
but wrote us a letter saying she and Don had no custody battle in December 2016,
00:38:47
only different ideas and school choices, tuition. Regarding Don's murder, Christine wrote,
00:38:52
I knew nothing of the events that occurred until I got a call from the co-worker of Don who found him that night in December.
00:39:00
It was an awful and unbelievable thing to hear and even harder to have to tell your child.
00:39:06
Prosecutors Natalie Strubb and David Wehmeyer say the investigation into Christine is no longer open.
00:39:12
But if new information comes to light, that could change things. We would have to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she intended all along for Terry White to do this.
00:39:22
And more than that, that she actually did something concrete to aid and abet to help the crime be committed.
00:39:29
Natalie, can you get there? I'm hopeful. I would like to say yes. But if the evidence isn't there, we can't charge her for something we can't prove.
00:39:38
Anyone who knew him will tell you Don Fluitt enjoyed helping people. He loved being a firefighter, feeding the homeless and helping people with disabilities find work.
00:39:49
But what he loved most was being Sienna's dad. A bond so tight, people stood in awe of it.
00:39:57
She loved being with her dad. I mean, she reveled in it. She loved that man. You know, to this day, I think about that void that's in her life.
00:40:09
Terrible loss, certainly, with your uncle. But its primary victim here, in a way, seems to be Sienna.
00:40:15
I would say so. Tiffany and Josh and myself too we got to live our childhood with him
00:40:22
we got to go to him for advice and to share those milestones in life with him what about Sienna?
00:40:36
my dad is still here you know and hers is not that's all for now I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.