00:00:00
How far would you go? How long would you wait to get justice for a friend? He killed her. He needed to pay for it.
00:00:12
They've been college roommates, super close, till that terrible night. That many wounds can certainly suggest rage at the victim.
00:00:21
Absolutely. Who could have done it? Her boyfriend? Something just didn't seem right.
00:00:27
Her new friend? Things weren't adding up. Her ex? He was very obsessed with Angie.
00:00:33
The trail went cold for more than two decades, but she was sure she knew who the killer was.
00:00:39
Even got a private detective license to help prove it. I said, I'm a private investigator and I need you to tell me where's the evidence.
00:00:49
All of that wasn't well received at all. Finally, the break they needed. We got the match.
00:00:56
Leading to one of the greatest twists of all time. It could not have shocked me more.
00:01:02
What really happened in the middle of the night. It was a Saturday morning in October 1984 when Sheila Wysocki's phone rang.
00:01:15
It was a girlfriend and she said that there's been an accident. An accident involving Sheila's good friend, freshman roommate,
00:01:25
and fellow student at Southern Methodist University, Angela Somoda. And I initially thought that Angie had been in a car accident.
00:01:34
And, of course, I went through the, is she in the hospital? Where is she? And I wasn't getting any information from her.
00:01:42
And my girlfriend was crying. That's because it wasn't an accident. That same morning, Angie's sorority sister, Evelyn Sandy, was given the news straight out by two friends.
00:01:55
They told me that Angie had been murdered. She had been found naked with a lot of stab wounds.
00:02:03
It was absolute shock. Angie Simota had not only been killed, but butchered, repeatedly stabbed in her own bedroom.
00:02:13
It was a bloody end to a life that had so much promise. She was the most amazing person. She was full of life. She could light up a room. She was a very hard worker and she knew where she was going. She was very, very driven.
00:02:33
Angie had grown up in Amarillo, Texas and attended the exclusive all-girl Hockaday School in Dallas. She just bought a condo near the SMU campus.
00:02:44
Angie was this amazing, shining star to so many people that she knew. She was absolutely brilliant before her time.
00:02:55
She was a double major in engineering and computer science at SMU. At a time when girls were not doing that, she had this amazing joie de vivre, this absolute love of life.
00:03:07
It was really the life of the party. Beautiful, intelligent, single, and 20 years old.
00:03:15
It's a combination that attracts men of all kinds. She used to get notes on her car.
00:03:21
She'd get flowers. She'd come in and show me who wrote her that day. She had a lot of attention, absolutely a lot of attention.
00:03:30
Am I right in thinking that she didn't always have the best taste in guys? Like any other 18 to 20-year-old, she didn't choose wisely at that point in her life.
00:03:39
Some of those choices and some of those men would figure prominently in the interlocking stories of Angie Somoda's life and of her death.
00:03:50
There was Lance, whom Angie had dated back home in Amarillo and through her freshman year in Dallas.
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According to her friends, Angie said she was afraid of Lance because he had a temper and had once pulled a knife on her.
00:04:04
There was Ben, Angie's boyfriend at the time of her death. Older and already out of school, he was a construction supervisor in Dallas.
00:04:14
Sounds like he was kind of the opposite of Lance. I would say he was the opposite of Lance.
00:04:19
And there was Russell, a new friend of Angie's who had gone out that evening with her and her friend Anita Cadala,
00:04:26
another female engineering student at SMU. You saw her that last night? Yes. How was she?
00:04:33
She was Angie. I mean, she was fine. That night, Anita accompanied Angie and Russell on an expedition to a series of bars and clubs.
00:04:45
Angie's boyfriend, Ben, was not present. Ben was aware of the fact that Angie, Russell and I were all going out together.
00:04:52
At least to Angie's friend, Evelyn, Ben didn't seem like the type to get jealous or violent.
00:04:58
You could never imagine Ben hurting Angie. I could absolutely never, ever imagine Ben hurting Angie.
00:05:04
The evening ended at 1 a.m. Angie dropped Russell off at his apartment, which was walking distance from her own,
00:05:12
and then took Anita home. Anita had thought about spending the night at Angie's, but decided against it.
00:05:18
What was the last thing you said to each other that night? See you tomorrow at the football game.
00:05:23
She doesn't meet me there. Very strange, because Angie was pretty much a woman of her word.
00:05:28
I remember saying, I wonder where Angie is. I came home and my roommate said, there's something I need to tell you.
00:05:35
She said, but you might want to sit down. She goes, Angie was murdered last night and the police are wanting you to call them back.
00:05:45
What did you think? I didn't want to believe it at first. Beyond that, I started with the whole, what could I, should I?
00:05:53
Could I have prevented it Should I have spent the night Would things have been different But she was not the last person to see Angie alive
00:06:09
It turns out Angie's boyfriend, Ben, was that person. She had stopped by his place on her way home after dropping off Anita.
00:06:17
Later that night, it was Ben who called police to Angie's condo. And what got their attention was not just what Ben said, but how he sounded when he said it.
00:06:33
Does he sound frantic? Panicked? Investigators didn't think so. Coming up, police start focusing on Ben. But soon, the list of suspects gets longer.
00:06:47
He was a pretty scary guy. He was creepy. when In the Middle of the Night continues.
00:07:03
In the fall of 1984, SMU college student Angie Simota had been found murdered. Arriving officers walked in on a bloodbath.
00:07:14
They found one shoe in the den, another shoe somewhere else, then all her clothes stacked up, all in one neat pile.
00:07:24
And then Angie laying on the bed covered in blood. Her chest area was pretty caved in with stab wounds.
00:07:32
So this was a vicious assault. There were 18 stab wounds, 10 of which punctured the heart, breaking the breastbone and going through the body.
00:07:40
Josh Healy and Patrick Curlin were assistant district attorneys in Dallas. They said whoever stabbed Angie was intent on killing her.
00:07:51
That many wounds could certainly suggest rage, anger at the victim. Absolutely. From what you could tell, did Angie Simota have any enemies?
00:08:00
It seemed like she had maybe broken some hearts, but enemies, she was the type of person that did not have enemies.
00:08:05
Everyone seemed to like her a lot. The only people who seemed to be mad at her were ex-boyfriends or people that wanted to be her boyfriend.
00:08:14
Police immediately focused on the man in Angie's life, starting with Ben, her then-boyfriend.
00:08:21
Ben told police a story that sounded a bit suspicious. He said that after dropping off Anita after their night out, Angie had stopped by his place,
00:08:30
waking him up for a brief visit, and that she then drove home. Within minutes of reaching her condo, Ben says Angie called him at around 1.45 a.m.
00:08:40
In that phone call, Ben says Angie told him she had let a man she didn't know into her home in the middle of the night,
00:08:47
a man who'd asked to use her phone and bathroom. Ben says Angie then hung up, promising to call him back a few minutes later.
00:08:55
But she never did, Ben said, and she didn't answer his calls. concerned ben told police he drove to her condo but angie wasn't answering her door either
00:09:07
and now ben was locked outside calling police on the early generation mobile phone in his truck
00:09:13
and sounding to them oddly calm my girlfriend called me said there was a man in her apartment
00:09:21
using the bathroom and the phone and now i cannot get her to answer the phone her car is here and
00:09:26
She can't want to enter the door or can't enter the door. He broke in? No. No. He didn't break in.
00:09:33
She let him in? I'm not sure I believe so. Does she know this man? I don't believe so, no.
00:09:38
Does she want to answer the phone? No. Police weren't sure what to make of Ben and his version of events.
00:09:44
So there was no way to tell whether the story that Ben had told police on the 911 tape actually happened.
00:09:52
The only thing we had was Ben's word. No cell phone records back then and no records of local phone calls.
00:09:58
So that call that Ben talked about, that may never have happened. That is correct.
00:10:02
I would expect someone to be, I can't find her. I don't know where she is. She's not answering.
00:10:07
It was a very mellow, it was a very feelingless phone call. I mean, it was somebody who didn't seem too concerned.
00:10:14
Ben waited in the living room while police went into Angie's bedroom. They came out and told him Angie was dead.
00:10:21
The first responding officer, what he remembered most was even after he had discovered the body and said so, Ben didn't even ask what condition, how she was, or anything like that.
00:10:35
And sometimes people who don't ask that question don't ask it because they already know the answer.
00:10:40
Exactly. They didn't ask how she was killed, whether it was gunshot, whether it was stab wounds.
00:10:45
That's unusual. Very. And there was something else. Ben's story may have been suspicious, but Ben himself was squeaky clean.
00:10:56
This was approximately 2 o'clock in the morning. He had been awakened from sleep, and he arrived at the location in a clean-pressed shirt,
00:11:09
and he smelled of soap as if he had just cleaned up. That tended to raise some suspicions with the first responding officers that something just didn't seem right.
00:11:22
While police were trying to process the story Ben was telling, they widened their investigation to include Angie's ex-boyfriend Lance,
00:11:31
the boy next door in Amarillo, the boy Angie had trouble with. It was something Angie's friend Sheila knew all about.
00:11:39
He was very obsessed with Angie. He was so obsessed with her, he would come down all the time to school to see her.
00:11:48
They had dated through Angie's freshman year. One night I got a call from Angie.
00:11:53
She was crying and she said that Lance had gone crazy and I needed to get over there She was screaming Lance had taken a knife and shredded all of her clothes
00:12:06
Did he threaten her? Yes. Yes, he did. Physically? Verbally? Verbally. And you have a weapon, whether it's a knife, scissors.
00:12:16
He threatened her. He was a pretty scary guy. He was creepy. Suddenly, Lance was at the top of the investigators' list.
00:12:24
Prime suspect, absolutely. Especially when we have an 18-wound stabbing. There was no forced entry.
00:12:30
That's right. Suggesting that whoever had gotten into her apartment had either figured out some way of getting in undetected
00:12:37
or Angie knew them and let them in. Yes. And all of that pointed either to the ex-boyfriend Lance
00:12:46
or to Angie's current boyfriend Ben or maybe to a new man in her life, the man she'd been out with the last night of her life, Russell.
00:12:59
Soon, police would ask Sheila, then a college student, to help narrow down that list of suspects and solve the crime.
00:13:08
He killed her. He needed to pay for it. Coming up, Sheila's nerve-wracking night with a suspected murderer.
00:13:18
And then, investigators get a break. They had their guy now. When Dateline continues.
00:13:33
Who wanted Angie Simota dead? An autopsy determined she'd also been sexually assaulted just before she was stabbed to death.
00:13:44
Her friend, Sheila. I find out she had been raped and I can't think of anything else.
00:13:52
It was overwhelming emotionally. It was hard for Angie's friends to hear, but the rape did help law enforcement
00:14:00
because they now had the perpetrator's DNA profile. But back in the mid-80s, that wasn't the help it would be today.
00:14:09
Back in 1984, they could at least do a type of blood testing where they can determine whether or not an individual is a secretor or a non-secretor,
00:14:18
Basically narrow it down to 20% of the population. Roughly 80% of Americans are secretors, meaning their bodily fluids contain markers for blood type.
00:14:30
The other 20%, known as non-secretors, don't have those markers. The killer was a non-secreter.
00:14:36
Correct. And that meant it couldn't be Lance, the ex-boyfriend. Angie's friends say she told them Lance had threatened her with a knife.
00:14:46
Blood tests revealed Lance was a secretor. In addition, Lance had an alibi, putting him 370 miles away on the night of the murder.
00:14:56
He was staying with his parents in Amarillo, working at the local gym there, and so they were satisfied that he was not in town when this took place.
00:15:04
So he was eliminated based on that. And what about Ben, Angie's oddly unemotional boyfriend,
00:15:12
who officers thought acted strangely the night of the murder. Did police check to see whether there were scratches or bruises on him?
00:15:19
They checked that. They checked his vehicle. They checked his apartment for any type of blood, bloody clothes, anything like that.
00:15:29
Nothing? Nothing. And tests showed Ben was also a secretor. Whoever had raped and killed Angie was not.
00:15:38
So cross Ben off the list. which leaves Russell. And he was a non-secreter, and so he could not be eliminated.
00:15:46
His alibi was that he was home in bed, not exactly the strongest. There was no witness that could confirm where he was
00:15:53
after he was dropped off by Angie and Anita. No one can confirm he went to bed. No one can confirm where he was after that.
00:16:01
Did he ever move off that story? No. And Russell said there was nothing romantic about the evening.
00:16:08
It was just a night out for three young people. He continued to insist that he didn't have any feelings for Angie, that he didn't perceive that evening as a date and that he wasn't romantically interested in her.
00:16:18
Correct. And I get the feeling nobody believed that. No one did. A lot of things weren't adding up.
00:16:24
Soon, police were questioning Angie's friend Anita about Russell Buchanan. Was there some specific thing they wanted to know about Russell?
00:16:32
Did I think that he was romantically interested in Angie was the primary question.
00:16:37
So I think they sort of were piecing together that we went out that night, that he had some romantic interest in her and maybe she had rebuffed him.
00:16:46
And since he lived within walking distance, that he had committed the crime. What Anita didn't know was that the day after the crime, Russell left town for about 24 hours.
00:16:57
It seemed suspicious. When he returned, police paid him a visit. He told them he didn't know anything about Angie's murder, even though it was in the headlines and all over local news.
00:17:08
It seemed hard to believe. Police saw both motive and opportunity. And while there was no witness placing Russell at the crime scene, there was also no one to back up his alibi.
00:17:21
Angie's friend Sheila met with the lead detective, who laid out for her the police theory.
00:17:27
Russell snapped is the word he used. And then he grabbed a knife, took her into the room, and proceeded to rape her.
00:17:36
This is probably the one and only murder he will do. That it was just a passionate moment, and he snapped, and he's going to be back to his old calm self.
00:17:47
Investigators asked Sheila to have dinner with Russell and ask him about his whereabouts the night of the murder.
00:17:54
She agreed who so uncomfortable Here I am sitting across from this man thinking I eating dinner with a murderer I getting into a car with a murderer This guy murdered my roommate
00:18:06
But even to Sheila, Russell stuck to his story, just as he had a couple of weeks after the murder when police asked him to take a lie detector test.
00:18:16
In fact, Russell was found to be truthful when he was asked questions about Angie's murder.
00:18:22
But about three months later, Dallas police took a second look. And they looked at the polygraph again and came to a consensus that he was deceptive on those questions.
00:18:33
That's a big difference from the way his original polygraph results were perceived.
00:18:38
Huge. They had their guy now. I did not want to believe that it was somebody close to her.
00:18:44
It was more than I could handle. Did you think police were going to charge Russell?
00:18:47
Oh, yes, absolutely. But they didn't. Russell hired an attorney and stopped talking with police.
00:18:54
They told me that he had lawyered up and they couldn't touch him. They also said that Russell was leaving the country.
00:19:00
So, of course, he was leaving the country. He lawyered up. He is hiding. It's done.
00:19:08
He's going to get away with murder. Not so fast. Russell Buchanan is about to tell us a story
00:19:14
that will make you reevaluate everything you just heard. Coming up, Russell answers the tough questions.
00:19:24
The police theory was that you attacked her, you had sex with her, and then you stabbed her to death.
00:19:30
And then, will investigators finally have a way to know if he's telling the truth?
00:19:35
They did have a sample that, in today's technology, could be tested to try and find a DNA standard.
00:19:42
When In the Middle of the Night continues. Several months after Angie Simota was raped and murdered,
00:20:01
the prime suspect, Russell Buchanan, hired an attorney and refused to speak with police.
00:20:07
Several months after that, he left the country. It seemed suspicious, but without enough evidence to arrest Russell, police could not stop him.
00:20:16
Russell was never arrested or charged with Angie's murder. He went on to become a successful architect.
00:20:23
Years after Angie Simota's death, Russell talked once again about what happened that night and about Angie.
00:20:31
Her friends describe her as the kind of girl that guys get crushes on. Maybe so.
00:20:36
Possible that you had a crush on her? No, no, not at all. I hardly knew her. But after questioning Angie's friend Anita about that shared night out,
00:20:47
investigators wrote that she told them that the evening centered around Russell and Angie
00:20:53
and that Anita felt as if she were along for appearances sake only. It certainly didn't occur to me that it was Angie and Russ event.
00:21:03
It was the three of us. I remember Anita and I sitting at the table visiting while Angie was out on the dance floor dancing.
00:21:13
Russell had told police Angie and Anita had dropped him off around 1 a.m. And he then went to sleep.
00:21:20
For him, that was the end of the night. Your alibi was you were home in bed. Yeah, and there was no way to prove it, unfortunately.
00:21:30
The police theory was that you, after you were dropped off, walked back to Angie's house, knocked on the door.
00:21:39
She let you in because she knew you. You already had a thing for her. Something went wrong, you attacked her, you had sex with her, you raped her,
00:21:49
and then since she knew you and she could identify you, you stabbed her to death.
00:21:54
That's what they thought. And so, in the days after the murder, police started picking up Russell after work
00:22:01
and bringing him down to the station for questioning. It seemed like two or three times a month for six months.
00:22:09
As they got towards the five to six month time period, there was a significant shift in the tone and tenor of the interrogation.
00:22:19
More accusatory. Outright accusatory. I recall in detail the detective leaning back in his chair with an envelope of photographs of the crime scene.
00:22:34
They were absolutely horrific. He would hold them up in front of me, and his questions were,
00:22:41
Russell, this looks familiar, doesn't it? You remember this, don't you? Because you did this.
00:22:49
We think you did this. No, it wasn't we think. It is you did this. You had sex with her.
00:22:59
You killed her. You stabbed her 18 times. But Russell continued to deny it. That steady drumbeat of accusation and denial ended only when Russell hired the attorney
00:23:12
and refused any further free trips downtown. And the murder of Angie Somoda then went cold for years.
00:23:24
Then, in 2004, 20 years after the crime, Angie's friend Sheila, by then living in Nashville,
00:23:32
decided to act on something she'd thought about for a while. I actually had felt to Angie around me for a while, and then I was doing homework for the Bible study class.
00:23:43
And all of a sudden I look up and as you're sitting there, there was Angie. And then I thought, it's time.
00:23:52
And I called the police. And said? I wanted to know about the Angela Somoda case, who was working.
00:24:00
on it if they were working on it and if they weren't would they reopen it and at that point
00:24:05
told me nobody in 20 years had called not one single phone call that prompted sheila to take
00:24:14
a big step she decided to get a private investigator's license to see if she could
00:24:19
learn enough about crime and criminals to actually help solve angie's murder at the very least she
00:24:26
wanted Dallas police to take her seriously. She earned her license in 2006 and called the police
00:24:33
again. I said, I'm a private investigator. You need to send me all the information on Angela
00:24:41
Simota's case. And I need to talk to the detective. And I need you to tell me, you know,
00:24:47
what has been done, what hasn't been done. Where's the information? Where's the evidence?
00:24:52
all of that wasn't well received at all. But they met with you to talk about the case.
00:24:57
No, no. They gave you the evidence. No, no. They gave you regular updates. No, no, no, no. None of it. Doesn't sound to me like it helped to be a private eye.
00:25:08
It did not. So after finding out they were not going to welcome me into the investigation,
00:25:14
I started making phone calls to him and the first 50 phone calls went to the lead detective
00:25:22
who had been moved to traffic. Got nowhere with him and finally one day six months into it I
00:25:30
talked to a receptionist who said he's in retirement he's not even working traffic.
00:25:37
Wait a minute you left 50 messages in one month? Yes I'm a little obsessive. Sheila's persistence paid off. She eventually was put in touch with the investigator looking at cold cases.
00:25:50
A woman who dusted off the old Angie Somoda files took a look inside and found some promising evidence.
00:25:58
In 06, when she decided to reopen the case, she went over to the lab and realized that they did have a rape kit.
00:26:05
They did have a sample that in today's technology could be tested to try and find a DNA standard.
00:26:13
By 2006, of course, DNA testing had evolved. Some of Angie's other friends also approached police about reopening the investigation.
00:26:21
But it was Sheila who eventually made more than 700 phone calls over the years, trying to move Angie's case forward.
00:26:28
She even offered to pay for the DNA testing herself. And I said, OK, I'll send you a check.
00:26:34
I'll overnight it. Who do I make it out to? She said, we can't do that. You can't do that.
00:26:38
You're not allowed. That's something police departments pay for, not PIs. Right.
00:26:42
Finally, in 2008, the DNA sample from Angie Simota's cold case was entered into the national database.
00:26:53
To Sheila Wysocki, the frightened co-ed turned mom turned private eye, the pieces were about to finally fall into place.
00:27:03
You still focused on the theory that Russell Buchanan did it and got away with murder?
00:27:08
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely found out he was still in Dallas. that he was actually a professional.
00:27:14
And I kept thinking, why is this man having a good life after he had murdered Angie?
00:27:19
It was going to be solved. And Russell was going to go to jail. Well, just a minute.
00:27:25
If it were that easy, do you think this story would be on Dateline? Coming up, the case is cracked.
00:27:34
The detective said we got him. My mind immediately went to Russell. Who else could have done it?
00:27:40
Good question. But the last thing she was prepared for was the answer. When Dateline continues.
00:27:58
March 2008 the DNA from Angie Simota killer was entered into CODIS the National DNA Database And finally police had the answer that had eluded them for 23 and a half years
00:28:15
We got the break we were looking for. We got the match. I received a call and it was the detective and she said, we got him.
00:28:23
My mind immediately went to Russell. Who else could have done it? And then she says to you, it's not Russell.
00:28:30
It's not Russell. It's not Russell. You could not have shocked me anymore. Everything I had known my whole life was just gone.
00:28:42
This whole time I thought this guy had done it and it wasn't him. It wasn't him.
00:28:51
DNA, as we now know, does not lie. The sample taken from Angie Simota's body did not match Russell Buchanan.
00:29:01
Did you feel guilty for having done everything you could? To put somebody behind bars?
00:29:09
Yeah, done everything you could to convict Russell and send him to death row? Yes, absolutely.
00:29:14
Of course I did. You know, I thought this guy was it and absolutely I was going to get him.
00:29:20
And he wasn't the guy. So everything that I thought was truth was not truth anymore.
00:29:28
And yes, I felt very guilty. Still do. She felt guilty. Russell felt anything but.
00:29:37
All those years, he'd been unaware of how hard Sheila had worked to convict him.
00:29:43
All he'd known was the intense heat police had applied. But even now, Russell just can't seem to get the words,
00:29:50
I told you so, out of his mouth. It doesn't change anything. Angie's life hasn't been resurrected.
00:29:57
But my role or lack of role in this case was put to rest. I no longer had to wonder anymore about who perpetrated this horrible crime.
00:30:14
I no longer had to live with the idea that there were people in the police department that thought I had perpetrated this crime.
00:30:23
The Dallas police called him on the phone to apologize. The police sergeant was very, very thoughtful.
00:30:31
He said, on behalf of the Dallas Police Department, I want to tell you that we apologize for anything that we may have done to have accused you of a crime in this case.
00:30:45
And we wish you well. Wait a minute. Didn't hurt my feelings at all. They made me feel great.
00:30:51
And you were okay with that? Sure. That's all it took? You bet. How many interrogations?
00:30:56
I have no idea. Holding the crime scene photos up in front of you? In front of me, yeah.
00:31:00
Not a happy experience. And then they apologize and you're like, well, all right, fine.
00:31:06
Yeah, that's fine. I refuse to allow this incident to define who I am. I have moved on.
00:31:12
I harbor no ill feelings towards the Dallas Police Department. Never have. I happen to be an innocent bystander, falsely accused.
00:31:22
But life goes on. In fact, I was thrilled that they called me to offer an apology.
00:31:30
But he does think about what might have happened. What if I had said I could not go out that Friday evening?
00:31:44
I wouldn't be here. I would not have even been considered a suspect. So the fate of that one decision to go out one evening cast a very long shadow, not only for Angie, but for everyone else involved.
00:32:07
And there's an even bigger question for Russell. What if he hadn't been able to hire a lawyer?
00:32:12
He was prosecutors say an eyelash away from being arrested for Angie rape and murder If you believe that he was attracted to Angie he had motive He had opportunity
00:32:25
He didn't have an alibi. Now you add failing a polygraph. All the evidence pointed towards him.
00:32:32
It was all circumstantial. Correct. In the mid-80s, that was the kind of thing that got you locked up.
00:32:39
Got a lot of people locked up. So who was the man behind the DNA match? and what story would he tell?
00:32:49
Coming up, a killer revealed. I remember the air being sucked out of the room and the feeling that I'm in the presence of pure evil.
00:33:00
But what would a jury see when In the Middle of the Night continues? More than 23 years after the rape and murder of Angie Somoda, the man behind that DNA was finally identified.
00:33:25
It was not, as we now know, Russell Buchanan. It was not Lance, the ex-boyfriend.
00:33:33
And it was not Ben, the boyfriend who never asked police how Angie died. The man whose DNA was found in Angie Somoda's body is Donald Andrew Bess.
00:33:46
Not a name you had heard before. Never. Never had hit the radar of the Dallas Police Department.
00:33:53
Not someone she knew. Never crossed paths. Why was Mr. Bess' DNA on file in the national database?
00:33:58
He had previously been arrested and convicted of two different rapes. Donald Bass had been out on parole only seven months on a rape charge when Angie was raped and killed.
00:34:16
Prosecutors say she clearly had no idea of his history when he came knocking on her door.
00:34:23
And Angie let him in the house. Why would she do that? I think a different time, a little more innocent, 1984.
00:34:30
If they said, hey, can I use the bathroom? Can you give me directions? she was the type of individual that would help.
00:34:37
She wouldn't have thought twice about it. He's never admitted to it. Has not. He still has yet to admit that he actually had sexual relations with her.
00:34:46
In May 2008, Donald Bess was charged with Angie's rape and murder. The trial took place two years later.
00:34:54
His DNA hit was fresh, but everything else in the case was more than 20 years old.
00:34:59
And the murder weapon was never found. By now, Donald Bess was 61. Angie would have been 45.
00:35:08
Her college friend Sheila walked in the courtroom on the first day of trial. And I just remember feeling shaky all over.
00:35:16
She got a close look for the first time at the man accused of robbing Angie of most of her life.
00:35:22
And he walks in the door. And I remember the air being sucked out of the room and the feeling that I'm in the presence of pure evil.
00:35:35
Anita and Russell, the friends with whom Angie spent her last night, both testified.
00:35:41
Both found it emotional. Just keep reliving a situation that is just difficult. It was just a flood of emotion of how could you do something like that?
00:35:54
It was tough. It's very tough. Did you look at the defendant while you were there?
00:35:58
Yeah. Yeah, that was scary. And think to yourself. That was scary. You're the reason that I was under suspicion for so long.
00:36:06
No, that was not what was going through my mind at all. What was going through my mind was, dude, do not come after me.
00:36:15
Prosecutors had DNA on their side, which sounds like a slam dunk, but nothing ever is in a jury trial.
00:36:23
The mere fact that his DNA is found in her doesn necessarily put him at the crime scene and doesn necessarily make him her murderer The defense team including Robbie McClung went on the attack
00:36:35
All you can assume from DNA is that he had sex with her. It's up to the facts and the evidence to determine whether or not it was consensual or unconsensual.
00:36:43
You're going to tell me Angie Simota chose to have sex with convicted rapist Donald Bess?
00:36:51
I can't tell you. No one can tell you. No one was there but Angie Smota and Donald Bess.
00:36:56
And the defense did the same thing police did in the first hours after Angie's murder.
00:37:01
Make her boyfriend Ben a suspect. The man who made that calm 911 call that police found suspicious.
00:37:09
To assume that a very intelligent young lady is going to throw the door open to some stranger at 1.30 in the morning
00:37:15
to come into her apartment to use the bathroom, but then is so afraid of this person that she picks up the phone and calls her boyfriend.
00:37:22
and then hangs up the phone willingly, and yet this is supposed to be the assailant that kills her?
00:37:30
It doesn't make sense. You find Ben's actions suspicious? Extremely suspicious. She and the others on the defense team didn't point their fingers only at Ben,
00:37:41
but also at ex-boyfriend Lance, at Russell, and at any other man who could have been invited by Angie into her home.
00:37:49
It almost seems as if she were overcome by someone she knew. Someone in close proximity.
00:37:54
Or someone holding a knife, and she was terrified. It still could be someone that she knew, but it still could be someone other than Donald Bess.
00:38:00
Someone like Ben, the defense suggested, and they put the blame on Angie herself for possibly making him jealous.
00:38:09
A bouncer at the club where she had been that night talked about the way she was dressed, the way she was acting,
00:38:17
that she was extremely flirtatious with him, and that's how she got in the club,
00:38:21
and just kind of the general tenor of her behavior. You're kind of making her out to be sort of trampy.
00:38:31
Trampy seems to be a harsh word. What I'd say is that things weren't exactly as they seemed,
00:38:38
that there maybe had been some reckless behavior, maybe a little bit more fun and flirtatious than certain people would have liked,
00:38:49
and that maybe someone found out about it. You think Ben was angrier than he let on?
00:38:55
Oh, much angrier. Even though he appeared calm. There are a lot of suspects out there that can appear calm when they need to be calm.
00:39:04
They put on a defense of anything they could that would stick. And the best way to do that is to attack the victim
00:39:11
and the victim's reputation and credibility. And she wasn't there because he had murdered her to defend herself.
00:39:19
And so that's what they did, and shame on them. And it didn't work. It didn't work.
00:39:25
Despite the defense's attack on Angie and its suggestions about the men in her life,
00:39:31
the jury deliberated for less than an hour. The verdict was guilty. The same jury sentenced Donald Best to the death penalty.
00:39:41
For Angie's friends, this was the end of a very long and very sad trail. I can only guess that Angie would have been probably overwhelmed to know that so many
00:39:57
of you were still thinking about her all those years later. Angie was really special and I mean she never left our hearts and minds.
00:40:05
Do you still think about her? I did. You fought pretty hard to find out who killed her.
00:40:10
I did. I did. You should feel some accomplishment at that. I feel that maybe she can rest in peace.
00:40:18
She died such a horrific death that she deserved to rest in peace. That's all for now.
00:40:31
I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.