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Something is not right. I just flipped out. I lost it. We could not understand how anybody would want to murder him.
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He looked like he was sleeping, except for the bullet hole. He was in bed. His head was on a pillow. His entire upper body was tucked in.
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The first guess was suicide, but... There's no gun on the scene. Hard to have a gun suicide with no gun.
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That's correct. And this was a man who had everything to live for. Eric loved life.
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He loved his family and women too. Many women. Did one of them love him too much?
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Jealousy leads to murder. No shortage of lovers to question. I knew he was a ladies' man.
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I'm not stupid. No sign of a break-in either. Someone either had to have a key or been let in by Eric.
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So it must have been someone he trusted. or maybe someone who didn't trust him. Inside the safe was a .380 handgun.
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That's the same kind of gun that killed Eric. It's the same kind of gun. Everybody loved him, so who killed him?
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We knew in our hearts that this murder was going to be solved. We believed that justice was going to be served for Eric.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with While He Was Sleeping.
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He was the life of every party. At 34, Eric Samoa was charming, magnetic, successful.
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In 2012, he was living the kind of life that young men like to brag about to one another.
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Call it the good life, the lush life, the fast lane. It's a world without too many rules.
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one in which you get close in a hurry to a lot of people you don't know too well.
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And it was perfect for Eric. Living just outside the nation's capital, Eric Samoa was not only living the American dream,
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he was selling it too. The son of immigrants from Ghana, Eric was a top salesman,
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delivering luxury cars and the fantasies that come with them. at this Jaguar dealership in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Eric's older sisters, Susie and Cynthia, spotted his drive and business savvy at an early age.
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And he started a lawn cutting business in our neighborhood. The neighborhood kids, they were actually working for him.
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And he would pay them, I think, what, $2 to cut the grass? A born capitalist. Yeah, I mean, he'll tell me, Susie, I'm going to be really rich one day.
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You know, he wanted to go all the way to the top. From the day he was born, Eric was a charmer, and his sisters and big brother Michael always adored him.
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He was just a wonderful, wonderful joy to our family and to my sisters and I. Eric was the baby of the family, but we all enjoyed him because he was very vibrant.
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It was just the three of us, and then he came along. So he was sort of our little doll.
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Yeah. Then Eric grew up and became a living doll to the women of the nation's capital.
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He was a ladies' man. It's no secret. He loved women. He walked in a room and everyone liked him. Like, oh, who's this guy?
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He's so nice, had a beautiful smile, and he'll just start a conversation with anyone.
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I mean, he just had that type of personality where women liked him. But his sisters hoped their playboy brother would finally settle down.
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In fact, they were counting on it. We were waiting for a huge wedding that my sister and I were planning for.
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The bride hadn't been picked out yet. No, the bride hadn't. But the wedding planning was already going.
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The bride had not been picked out yet, but we already knew pretty much how the wedding was going to be.
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Eric's sisters admit they knew little about his dating life. His big brother knew much more.
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Our relationship was very, very close. Even though he's my sibling and my younger brother, he was my best friend as well.
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We talk about everything. Eric's thousand-watt charm and his work ethic had earned him success on the job,
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a high-rise apartment in the D.C. suburbs, and a busy and exciting social life. He was a young man on top of the world.
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But his big brother still felt the need to occasionally offer advice, like that playing the field has its risks and can't last forever.
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He really respected me, the fact that I've been with my wife. We've been together 28 years.
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He always would communicate and say, hey, I want to be that, but I just can't find the right one.
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Even as the youngest and the only one who hadn't married, Eric was the glue that bonded his family.
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Eric was the person that kind of brought the family together. He remembered everyone's birthday.
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He made everyone feel really special. So it wasn't just his customers he was charming.
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No, he was charming his family too. His family as well. All of you. You know, he wanted everyone to come together.
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In June 2012, he brought them together again. But this time it wasn't for a holiday or birthday.
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It was because they were worried sick about him. June 5th, a Tuesday. Eric didn't show up for work at the Jaguar dealership.
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No one had heard from him. Now you're really worried. I'm really worried. Cynthia took a deep breath and called 911.
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Police were dispatched to check out Eric's apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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His family raced to meet them Eric Samoa a man about town who lived life at full throttle had seemingly fallen off the map What had happened to him
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When we come back, an unanswered knock and lots of questions. We were all in shock. We were just shocked.
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I said, there's no way. There's no way. It was just alarming when we heard that he hadn't shown up for work.
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Wow, that's not like Eric at all not to show up for work. As his sister Cynthia and other family members arrived at Eric Samoa's building,
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their fear level was off the charts. They stood vigil in the lobby as police went up to Eric's six-floor apartment.
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What do you think's happened? I was just trying to figure out, well, where could he have gone?
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Sister Susie was still on her way when Cynthia got her answer from a police captain who'd been in Eric's apartment.
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When the captain came and gently placed his hand on my arm and said that, ma'am, I'm sorry, it looks like your brother has taken his life.
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I mean, I was raging with screams. I said, there's no way, there's no way he took his life.
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Eric loved life. Through her grief, Cynthia managed to call her sister. And she was screaming and she was bawling.
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And then when she told me Eric was dead, I just flipped out. I just lost it. And you show up how long after that?
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We showed up about 40 minutes later. Detective Dimitri Reuven led the second wave of Montgomery County, Maryland police
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after patrol officers made that initial suicide call. They tried not to disturb the scene, so they didn't really look around too much.
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Tell me about the scene. He had a gunshot wound to his head. He was in bed. His head was on a pillow.
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His entire upper body was tucked in. It looked like he was sleeping. Detective Reuven at a forensic team continued to work.
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No sign of a struggle. No sign of a struggle anywhere in the apartment, no signs of ransacking.
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The one thing I noticed right away was that there was no gun. There was no gun on the scene.
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Hard to have a gun suicide with no gun. That's correct. So this isn't a suicide.
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Right. This was a murder. In some ways, Dimitri Reuven was like Eric Samoa, young, successful, driven.
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But even working homicides, Reuven had none of the world weariness of some veteran detectives.
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So he was the right cop to break the difficult news to the family. I just went downstairs and I said, we have a reason to believe that Eric was murdered.
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That's when everybody lost it. I mean, his sister was just crying. His dad just had his, you know, head buried in his hands and just like, people just couldn't believe it.
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We were all in shock. We were just shocked. Who would want to murder Eric? That is exactly what Detective Reuven wanted to know.
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We started right there. We started our investigation with the family and those that were close to him
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just to see if he had any enemies, if there was anybody in his life that would want to hurt him.
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What's the answer? The answer is Eric was loved by everybody and there was no one out there that the family knew that would want to hurt him.
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Eric's head wound from a .380 caliber gun indicated to detectives that he was shot at point-blank range.
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It appeared that he was sleeping when it happened, so it would be someone that Eric trusted so much that he went to sleep and had that person there.
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And Reuven quickly learned that his victim, Mr. Popularity, had welcomed lots of people into his life and into his home.
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He used to hang out at a local bar just down the street from his house. The owner of the establishment knew him by name, and he would tell us he would be here every night,
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and he would go home with a different girl. And his family knew that? They didn't deny that?
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No. It was the kind of thing Eric's brother, Michael, had already warned him about.
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Could it have been some revenge situation? You know, someone wanted to have him, he didn't want to be with him,
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they came in and took him out. I mean, he just didn't know. But Michael and his sisters did know about one particular girlfriend named Denise.
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There were several members of our family who did point to her. Denise dated Eric for a little bit over a year.
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She's older. About 20-some years older. What did you learn about his relationship with Denise?
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Majority of this family did not like Denise. Because? Because they thought she was using Eric or she, um, they just didn't like her.
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Detective Reuven's interest in Denise intensified when he learned something else.
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He said Denise told him that for a brief time, months before the murder, she had a key to Eric's apartment.
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They were going out? That seems to make sense. Right. And there was no evidence of a break-in, so someone either had to have a key or been let in by Eric.
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Well, I mean, Denise certainly would fit the profile of somebody that Eric trusted, somebody he'd be willing to go to sleep while they were still there. Absolutely.
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Absolutely. Police were eager to interview her, but they knew that if Denise had been in Eric's apartment recently,
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any forensic trail she might have left might not mean much. And the same was true for all those other women police hadn't even identified.
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Because their DNA belongs there. Their DNA belongs everywhere in the apartment. Their fingerprints belong in the apartment.
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So now you have to prove it some other way. After day one, Reuven said, Denise topped his list of people to check out.
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But she would not be Reuven only lead And the reason is because you a witness A witness came forward who seen a man meeting with Eric just before the murder
00:12:06
Like Eric, he was a salesman. But he wasn't selling cars. Coming up, a possible new suspect.
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He's about my color, skinny guy, scruffy beard. And a possible motive as old as time.
00:12:24
Jealousy leads to murder. When Dateline continues. I was here, but I wasn't really here.
00:12:43
It was very, very difficult. People tell you grief diminishes over time. But days after Eric Samoa's death, his close-knit family could only dream about whether that moment would ever arrive.
00:12:59
When I received the paper the next day and I opened it to the obituary section and I saw this young, handsome guy in there, I just lost it.
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Sadly, I meet a lot of people in your situation. There are families that really want to know what happened.
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And then there are other people who are like, I'm not going to bring him back, and I want to spend another minute thinking about the murderer.
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You guys clearly in that first group. You wanted an answer, didn't you? Oh, yeah.
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We wanted to know who would do this because we just could not understand who would want to kill Eric.
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The family had pointed Detective Dimitri Reuven at Eric's girlfriend, Denise. We interviewed Denise multiple times.
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Reuven's interest in Denise picked up when he learned from the family that her romance with Eric was on the rocks.
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And he was with her probably about a year. And then after a while, he was just tired of being, I guess, bogged down by someone.
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According to Reuven, Denise told him that she and Eric were talking about breaking up by mutual agreement.
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Reuven said she also acknowledged Eric was dissatisfied with their relationship,
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giving the detective a theory to consider. Older woman, younger man, and now he wants to end it and maybe see somebody else.
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And that breeds jealousy and we know what that leads to. Correct. Jealousy leads to murder.
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While he continued to investigate Denise, Reuven learned from residents in Eric's building
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that there was a woman there he'd been dating for just a few weeks. That's why we wanted to talk to Katrina.
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Katrina Ben came down to police headquarters for an interview. She's visibly upset here.
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Just earlier that day, Detective Reuven and his partner had told her that Eric was dead.
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I just want to start again by saying just thank you. You don't have to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.
00:15:02
So let's... I want to know too. Yes. They wanted whatever leads she could give them.
00:15:07
But they began with the basics. And how did you meet Eric? I met Eric outside, like two weeks after I had been there.
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Outside their building. And he asked me if I was a nurse, because he was starting some kind of agency,
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nursing agency, kind of like what I worked for. Katrina did work as a nurse for the NIH, the National Institutes of Health.
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It turned out she and Eric had plenty in common. I'm a basketball fan, and so was he.
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So that was our connection. The relationship quickly turned more than friendly. Katrina said she and Eric had been dating weekly, usually on Mondays, ever since.
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Katrina wanted to know about progress in finding her lover's killer. We can't really tell you what's going on with the investigation.
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And the reason is because you're a witness. Oh, my God. She asked if they could at least say where Eric died.
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I think we can tell him where it happened. He was killed in his apartment. The interview topic returned to the vibrant Eric she knew.
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This guy has so many goals and so many dreams. It's just crazy. It's like he was having the best time in his life.
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Now he's dead. That explained, Katrina said, why he never answered her recent texts.
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Did he make any calls on Tuesday? Am I the last person? Can you tell me that? I mean, I don't know if he stopped calling me or if he wasn't answering because he was dead.
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Because I've been depressed and suffering and mad and crying because I'm thinking he's not talking to me.
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We've been like this. Just to settle my heart, you know. I think your heart can be settled.
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The detectives consoled her, but also continued to probe about that last night together, two days before Eric's body was discovered.
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I went to his place Monday. He stayed with me Sunday. Okay, but Monday you went down to his place to watch the game?
00:17:04
Yeah. But then she said the night got strange. Out of the blue, Eric said he wanted to smoke some pot.
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Like, hmm, I'm going to have a social boat. But she told him she wasn't interested.
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She did agree to ride with Eric so he could buy weed at a nearby apartment complex.
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I didn't know what was happening. He's never, ever done anything like that around me.
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They drove up to this building. Almost immediately, Katrina said the pot dealer jumped into the back seat.
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And it was real quick. I mean, the light was on, the whole deal, whatever they did.
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And the guy got out. All this happened before the light could even go out in the car.
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Because I'm thinking, if you're going to do something like this, turn the light out.
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Somebody might see me. You know, I work at NIH. I don't want to be identified in something like this.
00:17:47
He was bald, and he's about my color. Skinny guy. Scruffy beard. I didn see his face straight on I wasn trying to look at him directly I not trying to look like I want to know who you are After driving back to their building Eric and Katrina spent the rest of the night watching the basketball game
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Before they became focused on each other. Excuse me if this is too much information, but we had sex for a while and I went to sleep.
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A little later, she told the detective, she was woken up by the sound of Eric talking to someone outside the bedroom.
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through a crack in the door. Katrina thought she could make out a face, and the man looked familiar.
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She believed the guy to be the drug dealer. The same guy she'd met earlier. Yes.
00:18:34
This was only hours before Eric was murdered in his bed. Detective Reuven now had another major suspect.
00:18:43
So we concentrated on this drug dealer. This would prove to be a critical moment in the case,
00:18:49
but not for the reasons you think. Coming up, police strike gold, maybe, in the drug dealer's apartment.
00:19:00
That's the same kind of gun that killed Eric. It's the same kind of gun. But strike out with Katrina.
00:19:05
She just flat out refused to give us a phone. Why? Detective Demetri Reuven has worked a lot of homicides,
00:19:27
but the death of Eric Samoa angered him more than most. You know, he was just sleeping.
00:19:34
To kill somebody while they're sleeping is just, it's horrible. Eric's sisters were grateful to have someone as committed as Reuven
00:19:42
working their brother's case. He is a phenomenal investigator. And now, just days after Eric was murdered, it looked as if Detective Reuven might give the family some resolution.
00:19:56
One of Eric's lovers, Katrina Band, handed the investigators a new suspect, Eric's pot dealer.
00:20:04
It didn't make sense to me because I was thinking, why is he here? Katrina told them how uneasy she felt with the dealer in the apartment.
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It was just a little uncomfortable. It just seemed a little weird. So at just around 5 a.m., Katrina said she got out of there.
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She said the guy then just came up to her as she was leaving and basically pushed her out with the door.
00:20:27
Based on Katrina's account, the police believed Eric was killed sometime in the early morning hours of June 5th.
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Reuven brought in the dealer for questioning, a man named William Woodfork. And he was like, I have no idea who that is.
00:20:43
Never met him before. Did you believe him? No. I knew Eric called him, and Katrina's story tied him to Eric.
00:20:50
Reuven hammered away at Wood Fork for hours, finally getting him to admit he sold Eric marijuana the night of the murder.
00:20:59
But the dealer balked when Reuven asked why he later went over to Eric's. And he was like, what are you talking about?
00:21:07
He was so adamant about not even knowing where Eric lives. you know, I'm a weed dealer. I'm not a delivery man. I don't deliver. People come to me.
00:21:18
Detective Reuven wasn't about to just take a drug dealer at his word. So we ended up getting a
00:21:23
search warrant for his place and we recovered a safe from his apartment. And inside the safe was
00:21:29
a .380 handgun. And it was just like, did he lie? Is this a murder weapon? That's the same kind of
00:21:36
gun that killed Eric? It's the same kind of gun. The gun was sent to the firearms lab as Reuven
00:21:42
checked to see if he could prove William Woodfork was in Eric's apartment. But Woodfork's DNA and
00:21:48
fingerprints weren't on the door or anywhere else. You look at the security tape? Is he on there
00:21:55
anywhere? He was never on the security tapes. Then the tests came back on the dealer's 380.
00:22:01
It was not the gun that killed Eric. It was the same caliber, but the ammunition was different.
00:22:05
So it was just one big coincidence. Now Eric's dealer wasn't looking as good for the murder.
00:22:12
Not only was the gun not a match, Reuven was convinced the dealer was never at Eric's apartment.
00:22:20
As for Denise, the woman who had been Eric's girlfriend, investigators interviewed her three times.
00:22:26
She was cooperative and allowed them to look at her phone. Her phone records put her at home the night of the murder.
00:22:33
So they eliminated Denise as a suspect. And again, Reuven started from scratch. You don't just come in in somebody's apartment and murder them while they're sleeping and expect to get away with it.
00:22:45
And I felt like this was my job to find the killer. And I felt like I wasn't doing my job.
00:22:50
The detective circled back to the person who pointed them towards the pot dealer in the first place, Katrina Ban.
00:22:58
The woman who'd been so surprised and distraught by her lover's death. Now the cops wondered if she had deliberately misdirected them.
00:23:08
Reuven and his partner asked her back for another chat. Do you think he was the one?
00:23:14
Eric, do I think he was the one for me? Actually, no. But he was trying to convince me that he was the one.
00:23:23
Just days before, Katrina had spoken of Eric lovingly, but no longer. I mean, I knew he was a ladies' man.
00:23:31
I'm not stupid. At some point I asked her to give us her phone because I knew she exchanged messages
00:23:36
and she just flat out refused to give us her phone. Well, that has to make you sort of sit up and think.
00:23:43
It was a little odd, but at the same time, if it was somebody, it was my significant other
00:23:50
that was murdered, I think I would do anything to help the police. And she wouldn't do it?
00:23:54
No. Katrina's abrupt change in behavior was strangled. even alarming to the detectives.
00:24:02
But all they could do was say their goodbyes as Katrina headed off to a new job in Baltimore.
00:24:09
At this point, there was enough weird behavior from Katrina Ben, and we had nothing solid, nothing really incriminating,
00:24:17
but it was just something not being right there. The cops had a nagging feeling.
00:24:23
Katrina Ben was lying. That pot dealer wasn't in the apartment the night Eric was murdered.
00:24:30
But Katrina was, and suddenly she looked suspicious. But suspicions don't make a case.
00:24:37
And right now, someone was getting away with murder. Coming up, a damaged gun helps a determined detective shoot a bullseye.
00:24:47
It was recovered the day after we found Eric's body, and I was like, let's just test this gun.
00:24:53
This gun makes sense. When Dateline continues. As his murder investigation slowly rolled forward,
00:25:11
Detective Dimitri Reuven developed a certain affection for Eric Samoa, the guy he'd never met, the successful, charismatic, charming victim.
00:25:23
You kept a picture of Eric on your desk at work? Mm-hmm. Just to remind you. We call him the most interesting man in the world.
00:25:29
That was the name of this case. And I've always had a picture of Eric to just kind of remind me to keep going and keep working the case.
00:25:39
Unfortunately, what wasn't next to Eric's photo on Reuven's desk was any hard evidence against Katrina Ban,
00:25:48
the woman Reuven thought knew more than she was telling about Eric's murder. He decided to take yet another crack at his suspect.
00:25:56
And along with another detective, Reuven paid Katrina a visit up in Baltimore. For the most part, her story remained the same.
00:26:04
But Katrina was also on guard and defensive. Don't go down with me. Don't go where?
00:26:12
No, I feel like you're trying to be sarcastic. Instead of focusing on the detective's tone, Katrina should have paid more attention to their clothing.
00:26:21
Detective Reuven secretly had a tape recorder in his pocket. And that's when I asked her about owning any guns.
00:26:28
Do you own a gun? No. Have you fired a gun? No. Armed with a warrant, Reuven searched Katrina's apartment but did not find a gun.
00:26:38
He seized her phone and computer, but cops didn't find anything incriminating. There was no gun registered to her anywhere?
00:26:45
No. And no sign that she'd ever owned one at any point in her life? That's correct.
00:26:49
Reuven kept going. I subpoenaed her bank records and credit card records just to see if she purchased any ammunition somewhere.
00:26:56
You didn't find it? No. Reuven didn't stop there. He kept looking everywhere. He even went all the way to Katrina's hometown in Mississippi, where he learned something interesting.
00:27:09
I talked to her dad, who said that he had guns, multiple guns in the house, and that Katrina had shotguns before.
00:27:19
So we knew she lied. But that is no criminal offense. Still, Reuven was certain he could eventually find something concrete.
00:27:29
And he kept looking. Weeks passed. Then months. Eric's family was eager for answers.
00:27:38
They were not shy about letting Reuven know that. He gets probably deadly phone calls from each one of us.
00:27:47
and he was so patient and just explaining. Detective Reuven never said to you, hey maybe like one of you could call me
00:27:54
and tell the other people. Never, never. And you look at your phone and you're like,
00:27:58
you don't even want to answer because you have no news. It's the same that it was last week.
00:28:02
We think we know who did it, but we can't prove it right now. May 2013 the one year anniversary of Eric murder approached and frankly the investigation had come to a standstill Reuven wasn just angry he was frustrated He needed to make
00:28:20
something happen. Reuven thought about the gun that had killed Eric, and he knew. A lot
00:28:26
of handguns just like it were already in police custody all across the D.C. area. He decided
00:28:33
to examine all of them. It was an immense task. He began in Montgomery County. So I decided to look at all 380s recovered in the past year.
00:28:44
Which had been how many? It was about 60 guns. Reuven combed through the records for each of those guns, most seized by cops in traffic
00:28:53
stops or drug busts. But none matched up until Reuven read the second to last file. It was
00:29:00
handgun number 59 out of 60. It was a gun turned in by a tourist from Montana who had spotted it
00:29:08
lying by the side of the Beltway, D.C.'s most traveled road. The only reason the man saw it
00:29:15
was because he was parked in D.C.'s famous bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was recovered the
00:29:22
day after we found Eric's body. It was a short distance away from the crime scene, and I was
00:29:27
like, let's just test this gun. This gun makes sense. This seems like succeeding against unbelievable
00:29:32
odds. One in a million. The gun was a mess, missing most of its components, and it looked as if it
00:29:40
might have been run over after it hit the pavement, but the barrel intact. Using spare parts, the
00:29:47
police firearms lab reassembled the weapon and test fired it. The result, a close match to the
00:29:56
bullet that killed Eric Samoa. And on the gun, a serial number. From it, Reuven learned
00:30:03
something else. Where was it originally sold? It was sold at a pawn shop in Columbia, Mississippi.
00:30:09
Why was that a big deal? Because that little pawn shop was just a few miles down the road
00:30:15
from Silver Creek, Mississippi, which was the hometown of Katrina Ben. Reuven just couldn't
00:30:23
by that as a coincidence. So he took another trip down to Mississippi, this time to track down the
00:30:30
gun's original owner, which was harder than it might sound. This gun had multiple, multiple owners.
00:30:37
It would take me 30 minutes just to persuade somebody to talk to me. Why? Because in Mississippi
00:30:42
you sound like a stranger? That's so weird. Possibly sound like a stranger. Also, nobody wants to talk
00:30:49
about guns. They always think that I'm there to get them in trouble. It was a lot of shoe leather
00:30:55
and Reuven still didn't have a solid link to Katrina. It would take some persuading for me
00:31:01
to even have people talk to me. But slowly the persuasion paid off. And each would tell us yeah
00:31:08
I had it for a year and then I pawned it at this pawn shop. After interviewing six former owners of
00:31:13
the gun. Reuven arrived at a pawn shop that bought and sold it sometime around 2003.
00:31:19
So the owner, he was like, we kept our records in diaper boxes in the back of the shed and the
00:31:27
rats were eating on them. So we decided to just send them to the ATF. Reuven offered to come look
00:31:32
through those diaper boxes. The response from the ATF? Thanks, but no thanks. The ATF agent was just
00:31:41
saying, just let us take care of it. So we left Mississippi really with nothing.
00:31:46
Reuven returned to Maryland, wondering if he'd hit another dead end. He wondered for about a week.
00:31:55
It was late June, now more than a year since Eric was murdered, when an ATF agent called back.
00:32:02
We found these diaper boxes, we found these records, and we're faxing a receipt.
00:32:06
So I was waiting by the fax machine, the fax came through, I looked at the name and it was Katrina Ben.
00:32:11
She was the last purchaser of that handgun. And you got her. Oh yeah, it was pretty incredible.
00:32:17
I was literally jumping up and down Now he just had to lasso Katrina Ben Easy You decide If I was going to do something like this it wouldn be like this It wouldn be stupid
00:32:34
Coming up, was Katrina Ben a Monday night girl? A girl who you do not take out, you do not show off, and you do not introduce to your friends.
00:32:44
She has her purposes. And was that a motive for murder? Eric Samoa had been dead for more than a year, and still no one had been arrested for his murder.
00:33:10
But his family, bound together by grief and faith, felt a kind of serenity. I believe that there were certain people that were destined or ordained, I would say, to work this case.
00:33:26
Detective Rubin, outside of his normal business hours, was very determined. And he persevered beyond what a normal detective would do.
00:33:40
The family didn't know it yet, but that perseverance was about to be rewarded. Detective Reuven had an arrest warrant for Katrina Benn.
00:33:50
She was living back in Mississippi, which is where the cuffs went onto her wrists.
00:33:58
But Katrina Benn did not remain silent. Not at all. If I was going to do something like this, it wouldn't be like this.
00:34:08
It wouldn't be stupid. How would it be? I think it would be planned out. Reuven had dropped the friendly facade he'd once presented to Katrina.
00:34:16
Now he came at her full force. So you're still saying you didn't tell her? No, not.
00:34:22
Okay. Did you own a firearm? Yeah. Okay, what kind of firearm did you own? The .380.
00:34:31
Remember, Katrina had told police she didn't own a gun, hadn't even fired one. Why didn't you tell us that last time?
00:34:40
Because you never asked. I didn't kill anyone, so there's no need for me to say I have a gun.
00:34:47
I mean, you never asked. You asked me, have you ever held a gun? Have you ever fired a gun?
00:34:52
It was simple, they told her. She murdered Eric. It was your gun that killed him.
00:34:58
That's a scientific fact. The question was why. There has to be a reason. There has to be a reason.
00:35:06
And if there isn't a reason, then you're going to go down, I'm telling you, as the most cold-blooded person that we've spoken with because you're so good, it's going to look horrible.
00:35:16
It's going to be bad. I'm just going to have my... I'm telling you, you'll be bored.
00:35:21
But Katrina wouldn't give it up and ask for a lawyer. The detectives put her in lockup and Reuven stepped outside to call Eric's family.
00:35:30
I was just like, you know, thank you, God. They're going to get this woman. Getting a conviction was ultimately the responsibility of Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy.
00:35:42
Even with the gun, which gets you and harassed into a courtroom, this is pretty far from an ideal case.
00:35:48
Absolutely. To sell this to a jury when you were basically saying that she felt so betrayed after a three-week relationship that she was driven to murder, that's a little bit of a tough sell.
00:35:58
McCarthy assigned the case to Assistant State's Attorney Jessica Zarella. At trial in the fall of 2014, she gave Katrina a nickname few would envy.
00:36:10
Why did you refer to Katrina as the Monday Night Girl? It was used in the context of a girl who you do not take out, you do not show off, and you do not introduce to your friends.
00:36:20
She has her purposes, but those purposes are relegated to Monday nights and not the more
00:36:26
high profile Saturday and Friday nights This was the prosecution theory Katrina learned maybe from Eric phone that she was far from the only woman in Eric life Jealousy and anger did the rest And Katrina shot Eric while he slept
00:36:45
Human emotion fuels most homicides. What I keep thinking of is sort of fatal attraction.
00:36:51
An insignificant relationship on one side and a very significant relationship if you ask the other person.
00:36:56
Obviously he made a misjudgment when he became intimately involved with her. And the sense of betrayal that she felt is what fueled this homicide.
00:37:04
And said prosecutors after Katrina killed Eric, she quickly ditched the gun and began playing the part of the concerned lover.
00:37:12
but she couldn't keep her story straight lies upon lies upon lies to bury the truth
00:37:19
and that ultimate truth in this case was that gun the crux of katrina's defense was that she had no
00:37:27
reason to kill eric because she just wasn't that into him eric was a great guy but i wasn't even
00:37:35
trying to be with eric like that and to be honest when you would tell me he was in love with me
00:37:40
I never believed him. What's wrong with the argument that this was a woman who discovered there were other women in his life
00:37:47
and she got incredibly jealous and angry and that tipped her over and she killed him?
00:37:52
It just doesn't work for Ms. Benn. Carl-Henri Govan was one of Katrina's lawyers.
00:37:58
We have to look at the time in which these two parties were intimate with one another, a matter of weeks.
00:38:03
And so to say that the relationship was at such a strong level that she would become jealous or irate to the point where she would murder somebody doesn't resonate with the time in which they were together.
00:38:15
As for that gun, Katrina's attorneys argued that the traveling nurse had long since lost track of it.
00:38:22
They said someone could have stolen the gun along the way and used it on Eric. She shifts from one residence to another from state to state because of her profession.
00:38:32
She may have left the gun, or she was unaware, rather, of where the gun may have been.
00:38:37
Jurors were not swayed. It took them just six hours to find Katrina Benn guilty of murder in the first degree.
00:38:45
There's no doubt in my mind that had she not been convicted of this crime, Katrina Benn was just as likely to encounter someone else who disrespected her in the same way
00:38:56
that she felt Eric did and with the same result visit that ultimate consequence which is take his
00:39:02
life but the real jaw dropper came at sentencing when Katrina addressed the courtroom she stood up
00:39:09
as if she was given a eulogy of my brother telling us I'm sorry for your loss and all this stuff it
00:39:16
was like a slap in the face she was talking about the murders as though she wasn't even there you
00:39:21
killed this person. You're the reason why we're here. It was just unbelievable. The judge sentenced
00:39:29
Katrina Benn to life plus 20 years. Justice has been served today and what you have sown into the
00:39:37
life of our dear brother, cousin, nephew, friend, you will reap bountifully with life in prison.
00:39:47
Now, years after saying goodbye to Eric, his large, loving family still feels the pain of that loss.
00:39:56
We do remember Eric every day, all the good times we had. It's unfortunate that we have to think about the day that he was brought home from the hospital
00:40:06
to the day that we actually closed the casket. What they want to do is warn other families
00:40:14
To watch out for the other Katrina Benz in the world I pray and continue to pray that even in doing this
00:40:21
That it will bring awareness to other people out there About certain types of people
00:40:26
And just being very cautious and being aware So the lesson is be careful who you get close to
00:40:31
Be very careful, very aware Very important That's all for now I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.