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[Music] up next a suburban housewife is gunned down outside her church i've seen brazen murders in my
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career but i've never seen one this brazen the investigation reveals some long-held secrets
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you have a lesbian affair you have corruption you know you have murder a love triangle
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points in one direction the evidence points in another this had a lot of twists and turns what the hell
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else is going to go on here [Music] it was a cold october night in poughkeepsie new york
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jeff fassett a local policeman had the night off and was home watching tv with his two
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sons his wife susan was a church choir practice my mother was involved in her church pretty heavily
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she'd always loved it she'd been involved in the choir for most of her life around 7 30 p.m
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jeff fassett told his boys he was going down to police headquarters he did go out to the town of
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poughkeepsie to get his paycheck three miles west of his house sometime around 8 30 choir practice ended at the
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pleasant valley united methodist church and susan fassett walked to her car to drive home then
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shots rang out [Music] people ran to the car to see what had happened and they found susan fasted
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morally wounded witnesses saw a light-colored vehicle speeding from the scene no one indicated to us that they could
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see a driver or how many people for that matter were in the car in a search for suspects police
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immediately looked at susan's husband jeff jeff fassett they learned left the house
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during the time that susan was murdered there were rumors in the police force that there were problems in
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jeff and susan's marriage we were pretty comfortable that jeff fessett might be
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involved here shortly after jeff fassett returned home police converged on his house
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he begins to see cops across the street watching him so he's watching them watch him they
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look like they have you know shotguns and gear on and they're surrounding the house
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and they're going to come here and ambush this place jeff wanted to find out why this was
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happening he made several phone calls to his police department to the state police yeah this is facet
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there's a bunch of patrol cars outside my house what's going on nobody was coming right out and telling him
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susan's son jason had made a call to the church and had learned that his mother had been
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shot that's the only information he had dad has been shot not sure what to do
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jeff turned off all the lights looked as if he was barricading himself inside the house i
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remember sitting in the house in dark in silence for what seemed like a very very long time
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they don't know what he's going to do now if a man has killed his wife his children may be next and then he may
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kill himself two tense hours passed before jeff fassett and his two sons came out of the house they are led
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outside with their hands behind their head handcuffed and tossed on the ground face down like
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common criminals and i'm waiting to find out what happened to my mother who all i know
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she's been shot now all of a sudden we're all you know seemingly under arrest
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everyone's crying everyone's upset eventually even jason facette had to consider
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the unthinkable i remember sitting there thinking like could this be real am i going to have to
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face a reality where my father had done this susan fassett's murder looked like a
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professional hit the killer was apparently lying in weight and had planned a quick getaway from the
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scene i've seen brazen murders in my career but i've never seen one this brazen that just seemed to vanish
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all of susan's personal effects were found on the car indicating that it was
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not a robbery susan's husband jeff a 24-year veteran of the poughkeepsie police department
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denied any involvement in susan's murder although he didn't have an alibi
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we could not confirm where jeff was when it happened and jeff's car was similar to the vehicle seen
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speeding from the crime scene you look at his record and his record is blemish free i mean
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he had absolutely nothing in his record that would indicate that he would turn violent at all but jeff thought he knew
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who was responsible he even said to me put me under hot lights beat me with rubber hoses i don't care what you do to
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me but when you're all done with me go see fred andrews he is behind us fred
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andros was the superintendent for the town of poughkeepsie a man with a terrible reputation
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right out of the gate people had told us what a scumbag he was fred andros was a self-centered
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mean nasty prick fred andros and susan fassett bumped into each other apparently one day in the hallway in the
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town building they started a relationship just one month earlier jeff fassett learned his wife susan was having an
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affair with fred andros an affair which had gone on for the last three years jeff put some sort of tape recording
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device on his telephone unbeknownst to her in fact she did get caught receiving and
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making phone calls to fred andros when jeff fassett confronted his wife about the affair
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susan promised to end it things were really up in the air and then one day they just came to us
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and said that they were going to work on things they were going to fix things police wondered if fred andros might
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have been angry that susan ended their affair but fred andros had an airtight alibi
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for the night of susan's murder andros and his wife had friends over to dinner
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that night the alibi that fred had for us and having dinner with a police officer was
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corroborated with the police officer and in fact his wife so he was there he was not at our crime scene
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fred andros was despondent and upset he wanted to know i think he asked things like who would do such a thing
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and and he cared about her at the autopsy the medical examiner recovered five bullets from
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susan's body you're looking for a llama or a ruger manufactured 45 caliber weapon we determined that
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andros didn't have a registered 45 handgun nor did he have a vehicle that fit the description
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of the vehicle that was leaving the scene the victim's husband jeff fassett didn't own a 45 caliber weapon either
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but the medical examiner discovered one additional clue [Music] susan had intercourse within 48 hours of
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her murder when jeff fassett was questioned about this it was news to him they test that semen
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against jeff fassett's dna and it's not a match police asked fred andros if he'd had
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sexual relations with susan fassett before her murder and he said no he had told us that he
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hadn't seen her in a month and had never been intimate andros explained why he was unable to have
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sexual relations fred had said to us that he was unable to perform sexually due to the
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medication he was taking fred said he was impotent but that was clearly discounted by the
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numerous interviews with the prostitutes in the area that that was nothing but a
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hoax he was picking up prostitutes every day for crying out loud i had confirmed through his wife that he
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wasn't having relations with her but he was he was picking up hookers every day
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when asked to provide a dna sample andros refused they really have no legal reason
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to order a dna sample from fred andrews you have to have some evidence yeah and they have none to try and obtain a
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court order to go to a judge and say this guy was alibi not near the scene he doesn't have the type of weapon that was
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used he doesn't have the type of car that was used you know that that starts to detract
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from your from your real hard suspicion if susan fassett didn't have sex with
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her husband or fred andros then she was having an affair with someone else which opens up a whole new pool of
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suspects for the police susan fassett's autopsy revealed she'd had sexual relations within two days of her
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murder dna from that encounter did not match her husband jeff so who was it her former lover fred
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andros denied it was him although he refused to provide a dna sample we knew it wasn't jeff and we're
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thinking it had to be fred who else would it be because we absolutely could find nobody
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else that was involved with susan that would have had sex with her a couple of days before the murder
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so detective art boycott called andros and set a trap i told him i'd bring him
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up some lunch um he said sure that's great i uh brought him hamburger french fries and a
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drink and right after we got in the car and started talking i said here's your lunch
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fred here's your drink here's your your hamburger and fries but andro said
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he wasn't hungry and didn't touch anything he was in the middle of the day
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lunchtime the sun was coming in through the car he had a flannel jacket on i cranked up the heat hoping to uh
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kind of sweat it out of them the car got hotter and hotter but andro still wouldn't touch anything
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so i cranked up the heat more and so he went ahead and took a drink and once he took the sip out of that
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straw i knew i had what i wanted essentially fred is handing over his dna tests confirmed that fred andros's dna
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matched the dna taken during susan fassett's autopsy within 48 hours of her death he had had
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social relations with her he had told us that he hadn't seen her in a month that's a big lie it was like a bomb
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going off that was something that fred you know deliberately hid and we wanted to know the good reason
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why when faced with the forensic evidence andros had no choice but to admit he lied
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but he claimed he did it to protect the killer during the course of that interview
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after a time fred andrews had offered up the name dawn silvernail as a possibility of the one who had
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committed this murder fifty-year-old dawn silvernail was a state employee with no criminal record and was
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married with one grown son she's a housewife she's got a college education
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she works with the disabled she's got a great reputation she's never ever been
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in trouble andros told police he was having an affair with dawn silvernail at the same time he was having an affair
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with susan fassett in fact he said the three of them had five or six sexual encounters
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together i told him i'd never done anything like that before and i went to the house and she was there
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and he introduced me to her and we talked for a few minutes and then we went upstairs and we
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[Music] engaged in a three some with the three of us there that lasted maybe half an
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hour fred would videotape susan and dawn having sex and then fred would be involved in the
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threesome between them fred andros suspected that dawn silvernail and susan fassett
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started seeing one another alone and perhaps had a lover's quarrel dawn denied it i never had any contact
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with susan fassett unless fred called me and set it up and we met with fred in fred's presence
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i never had any independent contact of any type with susan ever dawn also denied having anything to do
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with susan's murder saying she had no motive to harm her she was so calm so cool so cooperative
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that we had to think geez maybe not maybe maybe she's not involved in this thing
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a background check showed dawn owned a 45-caliber handgun like the one used in susan's murder she also had a vehicle
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registered to her that fit the general description of the vehicle seen leaving the scene
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but ballistic tests reveal susan's gun did not match the striations in the bullets used
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in susan's murder it looked as if the gun had been tampered with up until that
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point my career i've never seen that where the rifling has been totally removed out of a weapon
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it was incapable of being compared to any projectiles that we had found at the scene
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if fred or dawn silvernail were involved in susan fassett's murder police still had no
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evidence to prove it dawn silvernail admitted she'd had sexual threesomes with susan fassett and fred andros but
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denied any involvement in susan's murder dawn's 45-caliber weapon didn't match
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the bullets used in susan's murder but her neighbors told police some interesting news
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they said that dawn and her husband would often fire their guns in the back of their property using the
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trees for target practice investigators immediately converged on the area looking for bullets we had to go back in
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time and find a bullet that had passed through that barrel before it had been destroyed they
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recovered dozens of damaged bullets one had distinct striations on the bottom i was able to make a match to the
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homicide projectiles from susan fassett for a positive identification that indeed dawn silvernails
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45 ruger was involved in this case dawn silvernail was confronted with the evidence
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she kind of hung her head and then said three times that i shot that poor woman i had rolled down the window
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[Music] and when she reached up to face in her seat belt i pulled the gun up and i fired
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and i shot her but why dawn said fred andros wanted revenge against susan for ending their affair given fred's ego
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nobody was going to say no to fred nobody would break up with fred but why did dawn
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silvernail do it dawn says andros loaned her more than 15 000 over the 20 years they'd known one
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another instead of paying him back andros asked her to murder susan to erase the debt
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andros basically said she had no choice he threatened my entire family and told me
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that if i wouldn't take care of this problem with susan for him that something would happen to somebody
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that i loved to find out if dawn silvernail's version was true investigators used a new tool called
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webtas webtas stands for the web-enabled temporal analysis system and it's a system developed specifically
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for the military and department of defense to assist with information analysis against their different databases
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webtask collates information from cell phones pagers emails and easy pass trips investigators compared all this data
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from the three main people in this case susan fassett dawn silvernail and fred andros the majority of those
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communications were from fred to dawn and what that indicated to us was in fact that fred was not only planning
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some activity but also preparing a conspiracy the evidence corroborated dawn's story
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the records reveal that within 15 or 20 minutes of the time that she killed susan she stopped at a pay phone and
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paged mr andros to signal him that it had been done if you accept what fred andrews says
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that this is dawn silvernail with her own motive and her own motivation his story doesn't
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make sense that she would stop and of all people simply dial a pay phone and page him
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and signal him the only person that she would do that for is a person who was involved and new
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at fred andros's direction dawn went to the united methodist church on the night of choir practice
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she parked next to susan's car and waited when susan got into her car to go home
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dawn fired five shots and sped away [Music] dawn told investigators she left the
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murder weapon and phony license plates in a pre-arranged spot computer forensics revealed that dawn
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used a payphone to leave a message on fred's pager 20 minutes after the murder to signal
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the assignment was done later fred collected the evidence altered the gun's ballistics
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and returned the gun to dawn no one knows why susan fassett met with fred andro shortly before her murder but for fred
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andros his behavior was particularly appalling he looked in her eyes knowing that she
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was going to be dead within 48 hours and that speaks to the character of fred andrews he was
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a mean-spirited prick if there is such thing as a napoleonic complex he had it when police went to arrest
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fred andros he was waiting for them and they go into his house investigators walking up the stairs and
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pow here's a gun shot but fred survived the self-inflicted gunshot in his face
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i think that it's fitting that he wasn't able to do it that he only deformed himself and in turn
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was arrested and was forced to go to trial fred andros was tried and convicted of
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second-degree murder and first-class conspiracy he was sentenced to 25 years to life in
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prison he died of a heart attack after serving only a few years of his sentence it's entirely
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appropriate that he died in prison and is burning in hell dawn silvernail was tried and convicted of
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second-degree murder and was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison gullible
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naive she falls for it believes it and in the end she's a murderer she's a convicted
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murderer scary person people look at me like i'm a monster and maybe i am i don't know maybe i am
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but i'm a monster who's filled with remorse and i feel for the people i hurt when i did allowed
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this man to manipulate me into doing what i did everybody had a part in this and every
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lead was just tenaciously followed every item of evidence was collected and tested and
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it's just nice when the puzzle fits together in the end