00:00:00
[Music]
00:00:04
up next
00:00:05
a restaurant robbery goes wrong there
00:00:08
was no reason for this to happen stephen
00:00:11
this was a vicious vicious attack
00:00:14
and the evidence is contradictory there
00:00:16
was somebody else bleeding at the scene
00:00:18
of the crime
00:00:19
that blood and the partial fingerprint
00:00:21
were all
00:00:22
investigators had i wasn't holding my
00:00:24
breath for any real results
00:00:26
until the money trail provides
00:00:29
investigators
00:00:30
with a vital clue
00:00:33
[Music]
00:00:40
jennifer holmes remembers super bowl
00:00:43
sunday 2001 for
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one reason it was the day she
00:00:48
first met her husband they were both at
00:00:51
the same
00:00:51
super bowl party and i saw him sitting
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there with the perfect hair and his
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leather jacket
00:00:57
perfect smile so he stood there and he
00:00:59
was like hi i'm steven it's like hi i'm
00:01:01
jen
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a year later the two were married
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and 29 year old stephen became a father
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to jennifer's young son
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they also had plans to have children of
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their own
00:01:15
as far as his career he was
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i noticed this about him he was always
00:01:21
happiest when he was
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working in a restaurant steven was an
00:01:24
assistant manager of a steakhouse in st
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petersburg florida he often worked long
00:01:30
hours
00:01:30
and some nights were longer than others
00:01:34
he called me at 10 18 and said i'm just
00:01:36
letting you know
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i'm gonna be later tonight because we
00:01:39
had a late party and i
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just closed up i just let her let
00:01:43
everyone out and lock the door
00:01:45
around midnight an exterminator entered
00:01:48
the restaurant with his own
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key that's when he saw
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the bloody footprints and he saw and
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found mr holm's
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lifeless body stephen holmes had been
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stabbed to death
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i've never seen a crime scene this
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horrific it was a pretty pretty bad
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scene
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in a clear case of overkill stephen was
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stabbed
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more than 40 times when you think of a
00:02:19
murder
00:02:20
you sometimes think okay somebody is
00:02:21
shot or maybe they're stabbed i mean
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this was a
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vicious vicious attack it was almost
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decapitated
00:02:30
it's not something that should happen to
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my son it's
00:02:33
what no you can't believe
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you just can't believe that it's
00:02:38
happening
00:02:40
robbery appeared to be the motive about
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eight thousand dollars was missing from
00:02:45
the safe in the manager's office
00:02:48
this was much more than usual because
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the restaurant had been promoting 100
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gift certificates as christmas presents
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that evening
00:02:57
it's at a restaurant during the month of
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december generally speaking a fairly
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busy time of the year so
00:03:02
we'd all piece together that that's what
00:03:05
the motive was
00:03:07
the exterminator who found the body was
00:03:09
the first and most
00:03:10
obvious suspect but was quickly written
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off
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due to his demeanor how he looked and
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not have any signs
00:03:19
of violence or blood on his person
00:03:22
they could see that he was nowhere near
00:03:25
involved in this case
00:03:27
fortunately for police the restaurant
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had
00:03:30
several surveillance cameras when we saw
00:03:33
the camera was present in the hallway
00:03:35
our initial reaction was that we may
00:03:37
very well have
00:03:38
not only the attack on video
00:03:42
but at least a starting point of what
00:03:44
how the suspect was built
00:03:46
and his race but there was an immediate
00:03:49
setback
00:03:51
all the cameras were hooked to a single
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video recorder
00:03:56
and it was gone the entire vcr was
00:03:59
the cords were actually cut and removed
00:04:01
from the office
00:04:03
there were no signs of forced entry
00:04:06
was it possible that a customer hid
00:04:09
in the restaurant until closing time in
00:04:12
preparation for the robbery
00:04:14
there's no reason to believe that the
00:04:16
criminal might not have gone back to the
00:04:18
restroom
00:04:19
and hid in the bathroom until after they
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closed you know close the stall
00:04:22
hit on top of the toilet that sort of
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thing if the killer was a customer
00:04:27
that meant dozens if not hundreds
00:04:31
of potential suspects
00:04:32
[Music]
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friends family and co-workers had
00:04:39
difficulty understanding
00:04:40
why stephen holmes had been murdered
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the restaurant had never been robbed
00:04:46
before and was located
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in a low crime area robberies usually
00:04:50
don't result in this type of repeated
00:04:53
violence
00:04:53
very rarely in armed robberies does the
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victim sustain this many
00:04:58
injuries steven's best friend and
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co-worker
00:05:02
wilson santil was among the first to
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offer his condolences
00:05:07
i heard whaling i came inside and it was
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wilson in the living room crying
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my wife consoled him and uh you know
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grabbed and grabbed his shoulders and
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just said you know think about steven's
00:05:19
smile
00:05:20
and you know he would forgive whoever
00:05:22
did this and
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i think he started wailing more the day
00:05:27
after stephen holm's murder
00:05:29
a man working across the street from the
00:05:31
crime scene contacted police
00:05:33
this individual indicated that a white
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pickup truck
00:05:37
with a horizontal stripe along the side
00:05:39
of it raced out
00:05:40
of the durango's parking lot prior to
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the police arriving
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the witness said this happened at about
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11 o'clock
00:05:48
just after the time police believe
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stephen was killed
00:05:52
the description was so detailed
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i mean a loud muffler stripes on the
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side
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um you know a small pickup white i mean
00:06:02
it was it was a very clear description
00:06:04
of what type of a vehicle it was
00:06:06
for two days police officers stopped
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dozens of trucks that fit the
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description
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checking the interiors for blood and the
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drivers
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for any fresh wounds then
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they got a devastating setback the
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witness now
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said he made the whole thing up
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he was trying to score points with his
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girlfriend is what it basically boiled
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down to
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he might have been a brick short too
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that's a week's worth of work and it's
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down the tubes
00:06:35
and it's it's very disappointing as
00:06:38
family and friends
00:06:39
mourned stephen holmes police wondered
00:06:42
who would want him dead nobody
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who knew him as far as i was concerned
00:06:48
at that time
00:06:49
could have hurt him especially like that
00:06:52
we'd interviewed a lot of his friends a
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lot of family members some co-workers
00:06:56
you could not find a single person that
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would say anything bad about him
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defensive wound showed steven fought his
00:07:04
attacker to the end
00:07:05
he had over 24 defensive wounds i
00:07:08
believe
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and 20 wounds to his neck and his face
00:07:11
it was obvious it was a very big
00:07:13
struggle
00:07:14
part of the struggle started inside the
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kitchen area
00:07:17
and it made its way down that small
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hallway into the
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doorway of the office and then right
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there in the office
00:07:24
is where the final struggle took place
00:07:28
it appeared steven tried to make it into
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his office and shut the door
00:07:32
there were actually stab marks on the
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door
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there was a large concentration of blood
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on that door
00:07:39
there was a huge amount of blood on the
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floor the victim very well may have
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slipped on his own blood
00:07:45
there were dozens of footprints made by
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the killer
00:07:48
unfortunately there were no clear
00:07:51
impressions for comparison
00:07:54
it was someone that may have had a pair
00:07:56
of galoshes or boots clean up type boots
00:07:59
handy or actually had them on at the
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time they left the
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murder scene
00:08:07
but it appeared the killer left evidence
00:08:10
as he removed the surveillance equipment
00:08:13
the suspect had to actually step over
00:08:16
the victim that he had just killed
00:08:17
the vcr was up off up off the counter
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area of the desk
00:08:21
i believe that the suspect utilized part
00:08:24
of that desk to reach up
00:08:25
to get the vcr and cut it cut the cord
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and take the vcr
00:08:30
on the floor underneath that shelf
00:08:32
investigators saw a manila folder
00:08:35
when they turned it over they found
00:08:37
something
00:08:38
we looked at it closer and we actually
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noticed the fingerprint in blood
00:08:42
myself and mr carlisle looked at each
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other
00:08:45
and said we got him was it possible the
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killer accidentally knocked it onto the
00:08:50
floor
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as he was stealing the security system
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vcr
00:08:54
the folder the fingerprint wasn't face
00:08:57
up so
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the person who as they were leaving
00:09:00
probably wouldn't have known that they
00:09:02
had left that
00:09:02
essential piece of evidence but it was a
00:09:05
partial print and badly smudged
00:09:08
the technician and i were going back and
00:09:09
forth and i'm like well i think i can
00:09:11
use it but let's see if we can make it
00:09:13
just a little bit better
00:09:14
and hand it back to him but enhancing it
00:09:17
would come at a price
00:09:19
that would actually destroy the dna
00:09:20
profile of
00:09:22
the blood that the fingerprint was left
00:09:24
in investigators decided the risk
00:09:27
was worth it the print was sprayed
00:09:30
with a medo black a chemical dye that
00:09:33
reacts with the proteins in blood
00:09:36
he worked on it a little bit more and we
00:09:38
decided that was
00:09:40
as good as the print was going to get
00:09:42
the result
00:09:43
was the partial print of a fingertip
00:09:47
investigators entered the print into the
00:09:49
nationwide fingerprint database of known
00:09:51
criminal offenders
00:09:53
and the result was bad news i did do a
00:09:56
knife
00:09:56
search i was not able to come up with
00:09:59
the match
00:10:00
that's because the print didn't have
00:10:02
enough points of comparison
00:10:04
for the computer to process with no
00:10:08
print match and now no dna
00:10:12
investigators were no closer to solving
00:10:15
this murder
00:10:16
it's a situation where you basically uh
00:10:18
take a deep breath and
00:10:20
and keep on swimming
00:10:25
in an attempt to find steven holmes
00:10:27
killer
00:10:28
investigators wanted to make sure they
00:10:30
identified every
00:10:32
piece of potential evidence in the
00:10:34
restaurant
00:10:35
the murder took place in steven's office
00:10:38
in the back but investigators noticed
00:10:42
small circular blood drops on the
00:10:44
counter near the sink
00:10:46
in the kitchen it was obviously close to
00:10:49
the crime scene
00:10:51
but far enough away that we were hoping
00:10:53
that that was in fact the suspect's
00:10:54
blood
00:10:55
blood tests revealed it did not belong
00:10:59
to the victim
00:11:00
stephen holmes somebody had to be
00:11:03
standing over the table and blood
00:11:04
dripped off of
00:11:05
onto the tape
00:11:09
but if the blood was the perpetrator's
00:11:11
why was it there
00:11:12
and why didn't he clean it up these
00:11:16
almost perfectly round blood drops
00:11:19
called
00:11:20
passive drops were made by someone
00:11:22
standing still
00:11:24
possibly while washing his hands at the
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sink
00:11:27
a lot of times in a knife fight like
00:11:28
that the knife may slip
00:11:30
out of his hand and cut his finger or
00:11:32
something similar to that effect
00:11:35
the blood dna was possible evidence
00:11:38
but investigators had no one to compare
00:11:41
it to
00:11:42
with no sign of forced entry the killer
00:11:45
could have been an employee so
00:11:48
investigators asked restaurant employees
00:11:51
for dna samples and their fingerprints
00:11:54
they also wanted to see if anyone had
00:11:57
cuts or bruises
00:11:59
on their hands they say you know what
00:12:02
let's bring all the employees in and
00:12:04
let's fingerprint everybody
00:12:06
at least if we do that maybe we can rule
00:12:08
everybody out with the fingerprint
00:12:10
that we've got now but as police were
00:12:13
fingerprinting the employees
00:12:15
they didn't notice any with visible
00:12:18
injuries
00:12:19
authorities are thinking the killer's
00:12:22
probably not here he's probably not an
00:12:23
employee
00:12:25
it was basically something that had to
00:12:27
be done to further the investigation
00:12:29
but i wasn't holding my breath for any
00:12:31
real results
00:12:32
nevertheless each employee was
00:12:35
fingerprinted carefully
00:12:37
this would be the front of the finger
00:12:38
but the print i had was more off to
00:12:41
the side so in order to make sure i got
00:12:44
the area i needed i had to fully
00:12:47
roll each and every finger of each and
00:12:49
every employee
00:12:50
and in a shocking development the print
00:12:53
on the manila folder
00:12:55
matched the last person anyone expected
00:12:58
especially stephen holmes's family
00:13:02
it belonged to wilson santeel stephen's
00:13:06
best friend the restaurants maintenance
00:13:10
man
00:13:10
and prep cook steven's family couldn't
00:13:14
believe it
00:13:15
since the two often worked late together
00:13:18
steven would bring in cds specifically
00:13:21
that he knew was the type of music that
00:13:23
wilson liked so that they could put them
00:13:25
in
00:13:25
and it would go through the whole store
00:13:27
and they could be listening to that
00:13:29
music while they were working
00:13:30
wilson santil went to the ceremonies to
00:13:33
honor the deceased
00:13:34
he hugged family members cried when it
00:13:37
appeared to be appropriate
00:13:38
there was no flight issues there was no
00:13:41
obvious signs that we needed to suspect
00:13:44
him of anything
00:13:45
but investigators naturally went further
00:13:48
comparing
00:13:49
santeel's dna to the blood droplets on
00:13:52
the kitchen
00:13:53
counter and faucet those six foreign
00:13:56
male
00:13:56
dna profiles found at the scene did
00:13:58
match the suspect in the case
00:14:00
the 51-year-old haitian national was
00:14:04
arrested
00:14:04
on suspicion of murder do you have
00:14:07
anything to say at all
00:14:08
they get a wrong guy that's why they got
00:14:10
the wrong guy yes you didn't kill
00:14:12
stephen holm i don't
00:14:13
you don't know anything about it steve
00:14:15
was my good friend
00:14:17
although santil's blood and fingerprint
00:14:19
were both at the scene
00:14:21
police had a problem there was a
00:14:24
plausible
00:14:25
explanation for his blood to be at the
00:14:27
sink in the kitchen
00:14:29
the defense is pretty clear he's a
00:14:30
maintenance worker he's a prep cook
00:14:32
people cut themselves all the time and
00:14:35
there was no proof
00:14:36
santilla's fingerprint was in stephen's
00:14:38
blood it could have been there
00:14:40
previously so you find a fingerprint of
00:14:43
my client here wilson santil
00:14:45
inside the restaurant what's the big
00:14:47
deal needing more
00:14:49
investigators looked into a possible
00:14:51
motive
00:14:52
why would wilson santeel want to kill a
00:14:56
man he called
00:14:57
his friend people thought that wilson
00:15:00
was a hard-working guy
00:15:02
good family man good father until
00:15:05
a background check revealed a secret
00:15:10
past
00:15:12
why was your your bloody fingerprint at
00:15:14
the scene it's not my
00:15:16
i don't have no blood in my sleep
00:15:19
he was your friend yes he's my best
00:15:21
friend
00:15:23
wilson santilla insisted he had nothing
00:15:25
to do
00:15:26
with stephen holm's murder the father of
00:15:29
three
00:15:29
was active in his church and well liked
00:15:32
by his co-workers
00:15:34
he even considered the victim his best
00:15:37
friend
00:15:38
but a background check revealed santil
00:15:41
had a violent
00:15:42
past 20 years earlier santil
00:15:46
served four years in prison for
00:15:48
aggravated assault
00:15:49
and concealing a weapon and despite
00:15:52
working
00:15:53
three jobs he had money problems
00:15:56
he was paying child support from what i
00:15:58
understand for two different children
00:16:00
and the amount when i added up now it's
00:16:03
probably the amounts like seven or eight
00:16:04
hundred dollars a month it was quite a
00:16:06
large sum of money
00:16:08
the forensic evidence clearly pointed to
00:16:10
wilson santeel
00:16:12
as the man who killed stephen holmes
00:16:14
inside the steak restaurant
00:16:17
but investigators wanted to know what
00:16:20
happened
00:16:21
to the eight thousand dollars missing
00:16:23
from the restaurant
00:16:24
safe that's when they learned that
00:16:27
santeel
00:16:28
visited a local furniture store the day
00:16:31
after the murder the furniture store had
00:16:34
a security camera
00:16:36
in the office which showed santeel
00:16:38
paying off
00:16:39
a twelve hundred dollar debt in cash
00:16:43
with one hundred dollar bills
00:16:46
much of the money stolen from the
00:16:48
restaurant was in 100
00:16:50
bills from the gift certificates they'd
00:16:52
been selling
00:16:53
on the night of the murder we know that
00:16:56
there are 100
00:16:56
bills that are stolen the fact that he
00:16:59
pays off this debt
00:17:01
at this furniture rental company so
00:17:02
quickly after the murder
00:17:05
is
00:17:06
[Music]
00:17:08
it's just bizarre and forensic testing
00:17:12
found
00:17:12
a connection between santeel's
00:17:15
fingerprint in steven's office
00:17:17
and his blood drops near the sink you
00:17:20
had feet print leading to the manager's
00:17:22
office and you had shoe prints leading
00:17:25
from the office to the kitchen now the
00:17:27
case is coming full circle
00:17:29
prosecutors believe wilson santil was
00:17:33
desperate for money and believed his
00:17:36
only
00:17:36
recourse was to rob the restaurant where
00:17:39
he worked
00:17:42
as the maintenance man he stopped by
00:17:44
after hours
00:17:45
knowing the cash receipts would be in
00:17:47
the safe
00:17:53
santil probably made some noise in the
00:17:55
kitchen
00:17:56
steven walked out of his office to see
00:17:58
who was there no
00:18:08
[Music]
00:18:10
that's when steven saw the knife
00:18:14
steven ran to his office and tried to
00:18:17
close the door
00:18:18
but santil was still able to get inside
00:18:21
stephen was stabbed more than 40 times
00:18:26
and died in his office
00:18:31
as santil washed his hands and the knife
00:18:35
his blood possibly from a bloody nose
00:18:37
from the fight
00:18:38
dropped onto the kitchen counter and
00:18:41
faucet
00:18:42
santio took the eight thousand dollars
00:18:45
from the safe
00:18:46
since he knew the surveillance cameras
00:18:49
had captured the fight
00:18:50
he cut the cables and removed the video
00:18:54
recorder
00:18:56
but as he did he left his partial
00:18:59
fingerprint
00:19:00
on the manila folder which fell to the
00:19:03
floor
00:19:04
upside down centil
00:19:07
left the restaurant with the murder
00:19:09
weapon video recorder
00:19:11
and his bloody clothes prosecutors
00:19:14
believe he returned later
00:19:16
to clean up the blood but his plan fell
00:19:19
apart
00:19:20
when he saw the exterminator was there
00:19:23
on an
00:19:23
unscheduled visit nobody knew he was
00:19:26
coming by that night
00:19:27
except for stephen i feel that was a
00:19:30
godsend steven's the only person that
00:19:32
knows that this guy
00:19:32
is showing up and again thank god that
00:19:35
he shows up on that night
00:19:37
because that narrows the timeline that
00:19:39
preserves the crime scene at that point
00:19:41
and that prevents wilson santil from
00:19:43
coming back and cleaning up the crime
00:19:45
scene
00:19:46
when steven's family learned that wilson
00:19:49
santil
00:19:50
murdered their son they were shocked and
00:19:53
angry because
00:19:54
it was santil who came to their home
00:19:58
hours after stephen's murder to offer
00:20:01
his condolences you know to listen to
00:20:04
all the lies and then to know that he
00:20:05
came here it's just
00:20:06
you know complete disbelief when we
00:20:10
found out later it was him
00:20:12
it's a weird feeling that he had the
00:20:15
nerve to come here to our home
00:20:17
to see all right
00:20:20
it's still hard to comprehend that
00:20:24
wilson santil was tried and convicted
00:20:28
of first degree murder he was sentenced
00:20:31
to life in prison without the
00:20:33
possibility of parole
00:20:36
santil left evidence behind
00:20:39
some he might have explained having
00:20:41
worked there
00:20:42
as an employee but not all of it
00:20:46
i think forensic science is amazing
00:20:48
that's what solved the case
00:20:50
it just puts that much more of my faith
00:20:52
in the in the system
00:20:53
and i'm just i'm glad that it's
00:20:56
progressed to where it has and i hope it
00:20:57
continues to
00:20:59
to do so forensic science in this
00:21:02
particular case is 110
00:21:04
it's the reason wilson santil is in
00:21:06
prison and without
00:21:07
it he would be a free man today
