00:00:04
[Music]
00:00:06
with no forensic evidence found at a
00:00:08
murder scene
00:00:10
investigators were baffled
00:00:13
but they suspected that the victim's dog
00:00:16
had witnessed the crime
00:00:19
if she had forensic scientists needed
00:00:22
some way to find out
00:00:25
what the dog had seen
00:00:29
[Music]
00:00:36
[Music]
00:00:56
north liberty iowa is such a small town
00:00:58
it doesn't take much effort to know your
00:01:00
neighbors
00:01:03
but one resident the town's people
00:01:06
seldom saw was 28 year old john hebel
00:01:11
john was
00:01:12
somewhat of a recluse john kind of
00:01:14
stayed to himself
00:01:16
it wasn't unusual if we didn't see him
00:01:18
for a month
00:01:19
he'd be doing things at his home or
00:01:22
repairing things or out with his friends
00:01:24
at one point in time in john's life
00:01:27
he was a
00:01:28
narcotics user
00:01:30
and very possibly also a narcotics
00:01:32
dealer
00:01:35
in february of 1999 john's mother was
00:01:38
really worried
00:01:39
she hadn't heard from her son in over
00:01:42
two months
00:01:43
we'd been trying to reach my son
00:01:45
and that he wasn't answering and we were
00:01:47
afraid something was wrong
00:01:49
so she called the local sheriff who
00:01:52
found john's van parked in his driveway
00:01:56
but no one answered the door
00:01:58
they smelt an odor coming from inside
00:02:01
the trailer
00:02:02
he described that odor as being the
00:02:04
owner of death
00:02:06
the officers forced their way through
00:02:08
the trailer door and found hebel dead
00:02:11
slumped in a chair
00:02:14
the body appeared to be in a position of
00:02:17
someone who had been watching tv and had
00:02:19
laid their head down on their arm on
00:02:21
their pillow and gone to sleep the body
00:02:24
was completely covered i had a blanket
00:02:27
over the entire body over the head over
00:02:30
all the body
00:02:31
he had been shot twice in the back of
00:02:34
the head with the 22-caliber pistol
00:02:37
the advanced date of decomposition
00:02:40
revealed the murder happened weeks
00:02:42
earlier
00:02:43
[Music]
00:02:46
there were no signs of forced entry
00:02:49
and the trailer doors were locked
00:02:52
that indicated to us that someone
00:02:53
actually left the residence and took the
00:02:56
time to use a key
00:02:58
to
00:02:58
bolt that door shut again keeping other
00:03:01
individuals from being able to easily
00:03:03
access and enter the trailer
00:03:06
in the home
00:03:07
police found a small amount of marijuana
00:03:10
and some drug paraphernalia
00:03:12
john didn't deserve to have this happen
00:03:14
to him he may not have been the perfect
00:03:16
person in the world he may not have had
00:03:18
the best lifestyle in the world
00:03:20
but i could almost guarantee you would
00:03:22
give you the shirt off his back
00:03:25
but john's prized collection of guns
00:03:28
was missing
00:03:30
including a uniquely customized gold cup
00:03:33
45 semi-automatic pistol
00:03:36
this colt gold cup was described to me
00:03:39
from one of john's friends
00:03:41
is you would have to pry
00:03:44
that gun away from his cold dead fingers
00:03:48
he was able to take guns apart and work
00:03:50
on them repair them customize them put
00:03:53
fancy gold on them things like that
00:03:56
it sounded as if john had been killed
00:03:58
for the
00:03:59
gun collection
00:04:02
and another one of john's prized
00:04:04
possessions was missing
00:04:06
his three-year-old husky
00:04:08
keisha
00:04:09
[Music]
00:04:10
oh he loved his dog his dog was his life
00:04:12
she was his baby she had a lot of
00:04:14
hamburgers a lot of pizza hot dogs
00:04:18
things like that i think she ate mostly
00:04:20
people food
00:04:21
she was very spoiled
00:04:22
[Music]
00:04:24
police soon learned that a dog matching
00:04:27
keisha's description was found a month
00:04:30
earlier wandering aimlessly several
00:04:33
miles away
00:04:34
she was just standing in the middle of
00:04:35
the street
00:04:36
days looking around like where am i what
00:04:39
am i doing here
00:04:40
john's parents identified keisha
00:04:44
the evidence suggested she had been
00:04:46
driven there and dropped off
00:04:48
keisha was found during january when the
00:04:50
roads are typically dirty and muddy that
00:04:53
keisha's condition was was pretty clean
00:04:56
the crime scene showed that the dog's
00:04:58
leash which normally was kept inside the
00:05:01
trailer next to the door was actually in
00:05:03
the victim's van it suggested the
00:05:05
victim's van had been used to transport
00:05:08
the dog and dispose of the dog
00:05:12
this was just one unusual detail in an
00:05:16
investigation that was to become even
00:05:19
more bizarre
00:05:25
an autopsy on 28 year old john heppel
00:05:28
revealed he had been killed long before
00:05:31
his body was found
00:05:34
but the medical examiner was unable to
00:05:36
determine exactly when he was killed
00:05:39
without an idea
00:05:41
as to when the time of death is it
00:05:43
obviously becomes very
00:05:45
much more difficult to determine who are
00:05:48
suspects and who are people that you can
00:05:51
rule out
00:05:53
hebel's dog kisha was found on january
00:05:56
22nd
00:05:59
hebel's telephone answering machine had
00:06:01
messages not yet listened to the
00:06:04
earliest unheard message was left that
00:06:06
same day january 22nd
00:06:10
john would not use the answering machine
00:06:12
to screen his telephone calls
00:06:14
if someone called john one to talk to
00:06:16
him so therefore we knew that
00:06:19
january 22nd 23rd
00:06:23
john
00:06:24
was dead
00:06:27
with this information
00:06:29
authorities questioned john's friends
00:06:31
and family
00:06:33
we had three primary suspects in this
00:06:35
case
00:06:36
mike harding
00:06:37
andrew rich and sharon snyder
00:06:41
the first suspect mike harting was a
00:06:44
friend of john hebels a witness recalled
00:06:46
seeing harding's truck parked near
00:06:48
hebel's home around the time of the
00:06:51
murder
00:06:52
mike harding was good friends with john
00:06:54
we knew that john and
00:06:57
and mike
00:06:58
had some narcotics business together
00:07:01
but harding had an alibi for the time of
00:07:04
the murder and he passed the polygraph
00:07:06
test
00:07:06
[Music]
00:07:08
the next two suspects andrew rich and
00:07:10
sharon schneider were friends of john's
00:07:13
who lived about an 18-hour drive away in
00:07:16
grey bull wyoming
00:07:18
[Music]
00:07:20
we learned from a good friend who saw
00:07:23
andrew rich and john heppel together on
00:07:26
january 18th of 1999
00:07:28
that in fact andrew rich had been at the
00:07:31
trailer house of john hebel
00:07:34
but andy said john was alive and well
00:07:36
when he and sharon
00:07:38
left to return home
00:07:40
police searched the couple's apartment
00:07:43
and found marijuana methamphetamine and
00:07:46
several 22-caliber bullets the same
00:07:48
caliber used to kill hebel
00:07:52
these bullets along with the slugs from
00:07:54
hebel's body were sent to the fbi lab
00:07:58
for a neutron activation test
00:08:00
that's where the lead is shaved off of
00:08:04
the bullet
00:08:05
it's melted down
00:08:07
and atoms are counted counted
00:08:11
then compared but the atomic composition
00:08:15
of the bullets recovered from john hebel
00:08:17
was not what investigators had hoped for
00:08:21
the results showed us that
00:08:23
the bullets that we had recovered from
00:08:25
john were not the same bullets that was
00:08:27
removed from andy rich's house in grebel
00:08:30
wyoming
00:08:33
investigators found smudge marks on the
00:08:36
inside windows of rich's jeep
00:08:39
similar to those caused by animals when
00:08:41
pressing their noses against the glass
00:08:44
[Music]
00:08:45
was it possible
00:08:47
that rich used his car to transport
00:08:50
hebel's dog across town after the murder
00:08:55
police took kisha's nose print in the
00:08:58
same way they collect human fingerprints
00:09:03
each dog's nose print is as unique as a
00:09:06
fingerprint
00:09:08
unfortunately we weren't able to get the
00:09:10
type of smudges or prints actually from
00:09:14
the vehicle that would enable us to do
00:09:16
that but it certainly was an interesting
00:09:19
element that we pursued for some time
00:09:23
after several months with no forensic
00:09:25
evidence and very few leads
00:09:28
the investigation into john hebel's
00:09:30
murder was starting to turn cold
00:09:34
so investigators turned
00:09:36
the hebel's dog
00:09:38
for more information
00:09:40
as it turns out that dog was going to
00:09:41
play a very important part in
00:09:44
solving john's death
00:09:50
a year after john hebel's murder police
00:09:53
suspected hebel's best friend andy rich
00:09:56
was somehow involved in his death
00:09:59
but they had no proof
00:10:02
all investigators knew was that rich had
00:10:05
some unusual career aspirations
00:10:10
we knew that his lifelong goal was to be
00:10:13
a hitman for the mafia we had
00:10:15
interviewed past
00:10:16
girlfriends we had interviewed other
00:10:19
associates of andy rich
00:10:22
and he always
00:10:24
portrayed himself as a tough guy that's
00:10:26
that's how andy rich wants to be
00:10:27
remembered we were concerned that sharon
00:10:30
snyder the girlfriend of andrew rich had
00:10:34
information that she was fearful about
00:10:36
telling us the impression was that she
00:10:39
was being guarded out of fear her fear
00:10:42
of andrew rich
00:10:44
that was a good punching bag for him
00:10:46
he
00:10:48
abused me a lot there was a lot of abuse
00:10:52
not just physical there was a lot of
00:10:54
verbal abuse
00:10:56
police looked into sharon's background
00:10:58
to see if she had ever been involved in
00:11:01
illegal activity and they found
00:11:03
something
00:11:05
sharon snyder was purchasing guns in a
00:11:08
different location
00:11:09
she would give those guns to andy rich
00:11:12
some of those guns went to john hebel
00:11:14
we had a violation of the federal
00:11:16
statute the federal firearms narcotics
00:11:18
statute was the wedge that we used to
00:11:21
split andy rich and sharon snyder
00:11:24
[Music]
00:11:26
sharon told a different story about that
00:11:29
visit with john hebel
00:11:31
i honestly couldn't live with myself
00:11:33
anymore
00:11:34
i had to
00:11:36
face up to whatever was going to happen
00:11:37
to me
00:11:40
sharon said she dropped andy off at
00:11:42
hebel's home about three days before the
00:11:45
murder then
00:11:47
left to visit her daughter about an
00:11:48
hour's drive away
00:11:51
a few days later andy arrived driving
00:11:54
john's van
00:11:55
they put some of his guns into their car
00:11:58
took john's van to his home and then
00:12:01
drove their car
00:12:02
back to wyoming
00:12:04
i had no idea that john was dead now i
00:12:07
had
00:12:08
no idea about that i had wonders of why
00:12:11
he had these guns
00:12:14
after a brief stay in wyoming sharon
00:12:17
said that andy left alone with the guns
00:12:22
took off in the middle of the night or
00:12:23
around four o'clock in the morning and
00:12:24
headed to texas he was gone three weeks
00:12:28
it was andy's own stupidity for telling
00:12:30
me where he was going
00:12:32
we started to learn things from sharon
00:12:34
that we had suspected all along
00:12:37
and at that point in time
00:12:39
it became really important for us to
00:12:41
find any information that we could that
00:12:43
was going to corroborate what sharon had
00:12:46
to say
00:12:47
police visited the man andy richt stayed
00:12:49
with during that trip to texas
00:12:52
he said rich had given him an unusual
00:12:55
gold cup 45-caliber semi-automatic
00:12:58
pistol
00:12:59
to pay off a drug debt but by this time
00:13:02
a year later he no longer had the gun
00:13:06
investigators then located a second man
00:13:08
rich visited on that trip who still had
00:13:12
in his possession a box of ammunition
00:13:14
richard sold to him
00:13:17
inside the box
00:13:19
investigators found several short black
00:13:22
and white hairs
00:13:24
microscopic analysis confirmed that the
00:13:27
hairs were from an animal but there were
00:13:30
no roots attached so nuclear dna testing
00:13:33
was impossible
00:13:35
but they were able to extract
00:13:37
mitochondrial dna from the hair
00:13:41
mitochondrial dna is passed to animals
00:13:44
and humans only from the mother
00:13:48
joy halverson a california veterinarian
00:13:51
specializes in animal dna
00:13:56
it will not be as
00:13:58
unique a profile as i might get from
00:14:01
blood or saliva or hair with a root but
00:14:04
it will still allow me to say
00:14:06
yes this sample matches
00:14:09
the reference dog or it doesn't match
00:14:11
the reference dog breeds of dogs and to
00:14:14
some extent cats today are really only a
00:14:17
few hundred years old
00:14:19
and so they don't differ that much
00:14:22
that you could definitively say for
00:14:24
example well that's a dalmatian
00:14:28
halverson performed a pcr test which
00:14:30
stands for polymer race chain reaction
00:14:35
it's basically like taking one page out
00:14:37
of a book
00:14:39
and ignoring the rest of the book and
00:14:41
xeroxing that page a million times
00:14:44
and now you have that page
00:14:47
in so much quantity
00:14:49
that you can see it
00:14:51
then the sample was sequenced to get a
00:14:54
visual representation of the dna type
00:14:58
when she compared the dna from the hair
00:15:01
in the ammunition box to a sample of
00:15:04
keisha's hair
00:15:05
she found a haplotype in both sets that
00:15:09
was extremely rare
00:15:11
occurring only in 1 in 300 dogs
00:15:15
[Music]
00:15:16
the chance of having that match just by
00:15:18
random was pretty low
00:15:22
combined with i'm sure the circumstances
00:15:24
of the case if i were sitting on the
00:15:26
jury i would find that to be a
00:15:28
compelling piece of evidence
00:15:31
in the case
00:15:34
this was forensic proof that rich was in
00:15:37
possession of an item stolen from john
00:15:39
heppel
00:15:41
then
00:15:42
investigators got another break
00:15:45
the man who was given the gold cup
00:15:47
pistol said he still had the gun box
00:15:51
inside was a note listing all of the
00:15:54
custom alterations made to the pistol as
00:15:57
well as the costs
00:15:59
doug van noyk asked me if i thought that
00:16:01
was john's handwriting
00:16:03
and um i thought it was
00:16:06
but to be sure investigators needed an
00:16:09
expert
00:16:11
for that they turned to gary licht a
00:16:13
forensic document examiner
00:16:16
he compared the note to known samples of
00:16:19
hebel's handwriting
00:16:21
the question material was written with
00:16:24
somewhat heavy pressure
00:16:25
in the known writings
00:16:28
that was also written with that same
00:16:30
sort of pressure they were also all hand
00:16:33
printed and his known writings also
00:16:36
relied heavily on printing and not
00:16:38
cursive
00:16:39
he looked for unique features in
00:16:41
individual letters in john's known
00:16:44
writings features he then tried to
00:16:47
locate in the question document
00:16:50
in the creation of other letters such as
00:16:53
a lowercase d
00:16:55
i look to see if it's made with one
00:16:57
stroke in other words the pen moves down
00:16:58
on the stem
00:17:00
back up slightly and counterclockwise
00:17:02
motion forms the loop on the lowercase d
00:17:06
based on his comparisons
00:17:09
licht was able to draw a definitive
00:17:11
conclusion
00:17:13
i was able to identify the writer of the
00:17:15
question material as john hebel proof
00:17:20
that it was hebel's gun and no other
00:17:23
that andy took with him to texas
00:17:26
based on the handwriting analysis and
00:17:28
the dog dna
00:17:30
andy rich was arrested and charged with
00:17:33
john hebel's murder
00:17:36
he was nothing he was a user of people
00:17:39
he would manipulate he would use them
00:17:42
um
00:17:43
for his own gain he didn't care about
00:17:45
anybody didn't care about anybody but
00:17:46
himself
00:17:48
in court
00:17:49
rich had an interesting response to the
00:17:51
forensic evidence against him
00:17:57
the forensic evidence showed that andy
00:17:59
rich
00:18:00
was in john hebel's home
00:18:02
around the time of his murder
00:18:05
based on the position of the body
00:18:08
prosecutors believe rich killed hebel
00:18:11
after he fell asleep in the living room
00:18:13
watching tv
00:18:18
the motive was apparently money
00:18:21
rich wanted to sell hebel's gun
00:18:22
collection for either cash or drugs
00:18:25
the shooting may have agitated hebel's
00:18:28
dog
00:18:30
to stop the barking rich put keisha in
00:18:33
hebel's van then drove her several miles
00:18:37
away
00:18:38
before letting her out in a strange
00:18:40
neighborhood
00:18:42
little did he realize
00:18:44
that keisha's hair would be found in the
00:18:47
stolen box of ammunition
00:18:50
and that canine dna testing would prove
00:18:53
it came from hebel's beloved dog
00:18:57
andy hated that dog andy could not stand
00:19:01
keisha
00:19:02
i don't know why he spared her i have no
00:19:04
idea
00:19:06
how can you spare an animal and shoot a
00:19:08
human
00:19:10
[Music]
00:19:11
when rich sold hebel's prized pistol in
00:19:14
texas he left the note inside with
00:19:17
handwriting that matched hebble's known
00:19:20
handwriting samples
00:19:23
the witness testimony and the forensic
00:19:25
testimony piled together just added up
00:19:27
like bricks in this case and it was
00:19:29
because of the two and putting those two
00:19:32
together that we were able to be able to
00:19:34
solve this case in the first place
00:19:39
on the day before his murder trial was
00:19:42
to start
00:19:43
andy rich made a surprise announcement
00:19:46
he said i killed john hebel for his guns
00:19:50
but he never turned around and never
00:19:51
addressed the family
00:19:54
never
00:19:55
apologized for what he had done or
00:19:57
or showed any remorse
00:20:00
for what he had done
00:20:02
i was somewhat stunned by that
00:20:04
i thought that that was the point in
00:20:07
time where he would accept
00:20:09
responsibility and do the right thing
00:20:13
the parents and family of john hebel
00:20:15
were sitting behind him it was his
00:20:18
chance to try to make amends
00:20:22
he failed miserably in doing that
00:20:25
even at andrew rich's own admittance
00:20:29
john was one of his five best friends in
00:20:31
this world
00:20:34
and he's
00:20:35
he's so much a piece of trash that he
00:20:37
killed one of his best friends
00:20:40
rich pleaded guilty to first degree
00:20:42
robbery and voluntary manslaughter and
00:20:45
was sentenced to 35 years in prison
00:20:49
in exchange for her cooperation
00:20:52
sharon schneider was charged for drug
00:20:54
possession and was sentenced to six
00:20:56
months in a halfway house and two and a
00:20:59
half years probation
00:21:01
sharon was not a witness to the crime
00:21:03
sharon had pieces of the puzzle
00:21:06
that
00:21:07
she gave us
00:21:10
that we could put together to solve the
00:21:11
crime
00:21:13
i think it's very interesting how keisha
00:21:15
helped ultimately to be able to solve
00:21:18
the crime of the homicide of her master
00:21:21
i feel that keisha solved the case
00:21:24
along with the detectives
00:21:26
she provided the evidence against andrew
00:21:29
rich
00:21:30
she got her man
00:21:33
[Music]
00:21:44
[Music]
00:21:58
[Music]
00:22:07
you
