00:00:05
NARRATOR: A millionaire
and his family were executed in their own home. And for three years, the
murders went unsolved
00:00:13
until a 30-year-old
box of bullets and some iridescent fibers
revealed the ultimate betrayal.
00:00:22
[theme music] The beach house at Pajaro
Dunes in Northern California. On weekends and holidays,
it was the perfect getaway
00:00:57
for the Ewell family. The family's patriarch, Dale,
was an extremely wealthy man
00:01:03
who made his fortune
selling airplanes. -He was quite
successful, because he was very outgoing, very
personable, convincing.
00:01:12
And he'd go on these ranches and
sell farmers these airplanes. Land in their field,
sell them planes,
00:01:17
and then teach them how to fly. NARRATOR: Dale and
his wife, Glee, had been happily
married for 31 years.
00:01:23
Their 24-year-old
daughter, Tiffany, was a graduate
student in accounting. -Tiffany, very sweet
girl by all accounts.
00:01:31
She seemed to do well in
school and everybody loved her. NARRATOR: Their
21-year-old son, Dana,
00:01:37
was a business major at
Santa Clara University. -Dana was a very
precocious child,
00:01:43
very smart, almost
too intelligent. I heard once upon a time
that his IQ was 165.
00:01:50
It was extremely high. NARRATOR: In 1992, after
spending the Easter holiday at Pajara Dunes, Dale,
Glee, and their daughter,
00:02:00
Tiffany, returned
home to Fresno. Two days later, the
Ewell's housekeeper tried to enter the
home and sense trouble.
00:02:12
The security alarm
was turned off, yet, the doors were locked. Inside she found Dale,
Glee, and Tiffany
00:02:22
dead from gunshot wounds. -The thing that I recall
most about the Ewell home from the murders
is the photographs
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of Glee Ewell laying
on her back in the den. She had a look of fright
on her face even in death.
00:02:37
-I've never seen a house
that severely ransacked by any burglar I've
ever dealt with,
00:02:43
and I worked burglary
before I worked homicide. NARRATOR: Jewelry was
missing from the home.
00:02:49
And Dale Ewell's
wallet was empty. But there were no
signs of forced entry. -How did somebody get in
here, turn off the alarm,
00:02:58
because it didn't
ring at the alarm company or the
police department? NARRATOR: All three were shot
with a nine millimeter weapon
00:03:05
while bringing their luggage in
from the beach house on Sunday night. -So those tragic things.
00:03:11
Your life is great one
second, and a second later, you're gone. NARRATOR: Dana
Ewell was fortunate.
00:03:18
He avoided the
ambush since he was having dinner with
his girlfriend and her family that
night 160 miles away.
00:03:26
-He began dating Monica Zent,
an FBI agent's daughter. At the time of the
murders, Dan Ewell
00:03:32
was with the family and his
alibi was FBI agent John Zent. NARRATOR: Investigators found
an open box of nine millimeter
00:03:42
ammunition in the
master bedroom. And they also found very
unusual fibers on the victims.
00:03:51
-I had some
fluorescent fibers that glowed under the ultraviolet
light in the dark,
00:03:57
and some rubbery stuff that I
didn't have a clue as to what it was, except that it
appeared to be rubber.
00:04:03
NARRATOR: In their
search for suspects, investigators thought that a
business associate or rival
00:04:09
may have wanted Dale Ewell dead. Before Dale acquired
his business, the company was
allegedly involved
00:04:17
in some criminal activity. -He took over the dealership
from a former owner who had gotten into a
little bit legal difficulty
00:04:25
with marijuana smuggling. NARRATOR: Or Glee Ewell
might have been the target. -Glee Ewell had worked
for the CIA at one time.
00:04:35
The CIA doesn't tell
you a whole lot, but they did acknowledge the
fact she did work for them.
00:04:40
NARRATOR: With talk of marijuana
smuggling and CIA connections, investigators knew these murders
would be difficult to solve.
00:04:53
The cold blooded murder
of millionaire Dale Ewell, his wife, Glee, and
daughter, Tiffany,
00:04:59
was big news in
Fresno, California. -Fresno's had some big
homicide cases over the years,
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but I would venture to
say this is probably one of the biggest
ones of the century.
00:05:09
NARRATOR: Investigators
suspected that the Ewells were killed on Sunday night when they
returned from the beach house.
00:05:17
Glee and Tiffany
Ewell drove back separately and
were killed first. Dale Ewell got home
about a half hour later.
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-Whomever had killed his
wife and daughter remained in the house for perhaps
another half hour.
00:05:42
Why would this
killer or killers, why would they remain in the
home for a half hour or so
00:05:48
after they had gunned
down two people? NARRATOR: But that's
apparently what happened.
00:05:54
Dale with shot in
the back of his head as he entered the house. -Just stunned and
just became numb.
00:06:01
I just could not
understand, or believe, or contemplate such a thing. NARRATOR: All three were killed
with a nine millimeter weapon.
00:06:11
-Those people were
essentially ambushed. It was just seen of pure evil. I don't think there's any
other way to explain it.
00:06:17
You can't try to say, oh,
well, these people are insane, the perpetrator's insane
or anything like that.
00:06:24
The perpetrator in this
case was just purely evil. NARRATOR: The Ewell's son,
Dana, had an airtight alibi
00:06:31
as did everyone who
had keys to the house. Investigators found an
open box of nine millimeter
00:06:38
ammunition in the
Ewell's bedroom. Was this the ammunition
used by the killer? The nine millimeter bullets
retrieved from the bodies
00:06:49
had been damaged on impact. But the back end of each bullet,
known as the heel, was intact.
00:06:56
-The questions on
there had nothing to do with the
bullets being fired. It was something that
occurred during manufacture
00:07:03
and was something that
I hadn't seen before. NARRATOR: So Allen
Boudreau removed the casing
00:07:09
from an unfired
bullet and compared to the heels of the
bullets from the victims.
00:07:17
The tool marks were the same. -These bullets,
the murder bullets, came from this
box of ammunition.
00:07:24
NARRATOR: An identification
number on the box indicated the bullets
were made in 1971,
00:07:30
and the price sticker
on the box revealed it was purchased at a
local hardware store.
00:07:37
When police called the hardware
store, the owner said he still had all his sales receipts,
even the ones from 30 years ago.
00:07:44
-And they found the
receipt for that ammunition made out to Dale Ewell. NARRATOR: Proof that
Dale Ewell and his family
00:07:55
were killed with
his own ammunition. -It had to be somebody that
knew enough about that family
00:08:02
to know that there
was a box of nine millimeter ammo
in dad's bedroom. Which meant it was an
inside job of some sort.
00:08:12
NARRATOR: And the bullets
looked like they had been fired through more than just
the barrel of a gun.
00:08:17
-These bullets went
through something that marked then unlike
any normal gun barrel.
00:08:23
And it could be a flash
suppressor, sound suppressor, silencer or something
along that line.
00:08:28
-What robber would
come to a crime scene with a silencer on a gun? NARRATOR: Could it
have been a hit man?
00:08:39
The forensic evidence gathered
and the Ewell family home painted the bizarre picture
of how Dale Ewell, his wife,
00:08:47
and 24-year-old
daughter were killed. Someone with a house key
turned off the security alarm
00:08:57
and murdered them with
a nine millimeter weapon using ammunition belonging
to the victim, Dale Ewell.
00:09:12
It looked like a
botched robbery. Some money and
jewelry were missing, and the only forensic
evidence was the bullets
00:09:20
and the yellow
luminescent fibers. -From the scientific end
of the investigation,
00:09:26
what I had to work with
was relatively little. NARRATOR: The only
remaining family member,
00:09:34
the Ewell's 21-year-old son,
Dana, had a rock solid alibi. He was with his
girlfriend and her family.
00:09:42
-There really was never any
question about his alibi, where he was on
Easter Sunday when
00:09:47
his parents are being killed. -What innocent guy
gets an attorney and wants us to contact the
attorney to contact him just
00:09:53
to get information on their
parents or their sister? That made no sense. NARRATOR: Dana Ewell
also had a clear motive.
00:10:04
He was the beneficiary
of his parents' estate. -Dana Ewell stood to inherit
approximately $8 million.
00:10:13
It would have been
approximately $4 million had his sister not
also been murdered.
00:10:18
-Dana was a prim
and proper type kid, went to class with his
$200 shirt and his $100 tie
00:10:25
that he let everybody
know that's what it cost. NARRATOR: He also made
some unusual inquiries
00:10:31
after the murders. -Dana Ewell called me
at the coroner's office and interrogated me as to
the progress of the autopsy,
00:10:39
what we'd found and so forth. -It is really unusual for
some close family member
00:10:45
to call and ask for the details
of the case in the way he did. NARRATOR: And
investigators learned
00:10:52
that Dana had some
character flaws. Apparently he had plagiarized
a term paper in his business
00:11:01
ethics class and
failed the course. Investigators also learned
that Dana was a loner.
00:11:09
His only friend was his
former college roommate, Joel Radovcich, so they
decided to give him a call.
00:11:16
-The first thing Joel said,
upon being phoned by Detective Souza, was are you
going to arrest me?
00:11:25
It was an unusual thing to say. NARRATOR: So unusual that police
put him under surveillance,
00:11:32
and found that he didn't use
the telephone in his apartment. Instead, he'd use
a pay phone nearby.
00:11:40
-They had two pay phones
mounted on the outside exterior wall of the 7-Eleven store.
00:11:44
He would look down at his waist
level and then dial a number. We deducted the fact that
he was looking at a pager.
00:11:52
NARRATOR: An undercover
officer positioned himself within earshot. -I want no [bleep]
stock options.
00:11:58
I want a quarter million,
and I want it now. NARRATOR: Radovich demanded
quarter of a million dollars,
00:12:04
and also wanted advice
on how to invest it. -Joel was in a world of his
own, like no one was around him.
00:12:11
The only thing they
were talking about was their investments,
and where they were going to invest the money.
00:12:15
NARRATOR: According
to phone records, Joel was talking Dana Ewell. A check of Joel's
financial records
00:12:25
indicated that he
was spending freely despite not having a job. -He was taking helicopter
flight lessons at the Long Beach
00:12:33
airport, some of which
costs $500 an hour. No job, no source
of income, and he's
00:12:40
spending this kind of money. -They found that the checks
for some $5,600 odd for Joel's
00:12:47
lessons had been paid
by Dana directly. This was a very curious event. This was something
that led directly
00:12:57
to a financial link
between the two suspects. NARRATOR: And Joel Radovcich
purchased several very
00:13:04
suspicious items
prior to the murders. During a surveil
of Joel Radovcich, the detectives found that
Joel had ordered books
00:13:13
from a publisher in
Boulder, Colorado. And, in turn, he had
these books shipped to a man named Jack Ponce.
00:13:21
NARRATOR: One of
those books described how to make a homemade silencer. A background check revealed
Jack Ponce was a 23-year-old law
00:13:31
student and Joel Radovcich's
life long friend. Records indicated that
Ponce say owned a nine
00:13:39
millimeter semiautomatic weapon. -Jack Ponce said initially that
the weapon had been purchased
00:13:46
for the purpose of shooting
opossums in his attic. Investigators found the whole
opossum shooting scenario a bit
00:13:52
hard to swallow. NARRATOR: During
police questioning, Ponce denied any involvement
in the Ewell murders
00:13:59
and said his nine millimeter
gun had been stolen. -We've probably heard that
story a few times in our career.
00:14:08
NARRATOR: This
murder investigation had been complicated
and time consuming. By this time, three
years had passed.
00:14:18
And Dana Ewell told everyone
who would listen that detectives John Souza and
Chris Curtice were
00:14:25
too inept to solve the case. -Dana Ewell, he
would call us Mutt and Jeff, and Bert and Ernie.
00:14:32
And we weren't
smart enough to find the murderer of his family. -And Ernie and Bert couldn't
find a gun in a gun store.
00:14:39
-And the only reason
we had a cop's job is because we couldn't
get no other job.
00:14:43
-I'll be damned if some kid like
that's going to make fun of us. NARRATOR: Investigators now had
three suspects in the murder
00:14:53
of Dale, Glee, and Tiffany
Ewell, the Ewell's son, Dana, his college roommate,
Joel Radovcich,
00:15:01
and Joel's friend, Jack Ponce. With a search
warrant, investigators found a number of
interesting items
00:15:10
in Joel Radovcich's apartment,
including a half dozen tennis balls with holes
drilled through them.
00:15:17
-I found out that
the dyes that they use in these yellow, orange,
and purple, pink tennis balls
00:15:24
are FDA approved
dyes because children and dogs chew on tennis balls. And it was very
interesting, but I found out
00:15:32
everything there is to
know about tennis balls. NARRATOR: The fibers
from these tennis balls
00:15:37
were consistent with those
found on the murder victims. Proof that the tennis
balls were a part
00:15:44
of the homemade silencer. -Jack Ponce was
arrested at a restaurant where he worked as a bartender.
00:15:52
Joel was eventually arrested at
his favorite Taco Bell where he seemed to eat three
times a day every day.
00:15:58
Dana, however, was
nowhere to be found. Radovcich admitted nothing. Jack Ponce, however, didn't
want to face the death penalty,
00:16:08
so he decided to cooperate. He was the one of the three who,
as the police say, rolled over.
00:16:14
He agreed to turn evidence
against Joel Radovcich and Dana Ewell, tell them
everything he knew.
00:16:22
NARRATOR: Ponce originally
told investigators that his nine millimeter
weapon had been stolen.
00:16:27
He now admitted he sold it
to Joel Radovcich for $500. A few days later, Ponce
said Joel returned the gun
00:16:37
and told him to get rid of it. -Joel told Jack that he was
the one that killed the Ewell
00:16:42
family, and he described the
inside of the house, where he was, how he did
it, what happened,
00:16:47
the sequence of events. And we knew all that, but it
was never in the newspaper.
00:16:53
NARRATOR: Ponce said he
disassembled the gun, threw the parts in dumpsters
and buried the barrel
00:16:59
in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. In an unbelievable
stroke of luck, the barrel was still there.
00:17:09
-Been there for three years. Surprisingly and luckily,
we have an open lot in LA
00:17:13
that stayed vacant and wasn't
paved over, or concreted over, for three years. NARRATOR: Holes had been
drilled into the gun's barrel,
00:17:23
consistent with the
information in the books that Joel Radovcich ordered. Investigators dipped the
barrel in a special solution
00:17:33
to remove the mud and rust. Then attached it
to a rifle and test fired it using the
same ammunition
00:17:42
found at the crime scene. Amazingly, after three
years in the ground, the test was conclusive.
00:17:51
-Lo and behold, these test
fired bullets looked very much like the Ewell bullets in
their general character
00:17:57
and appearance. -That was the part that
contained the forensic evidence we needed to establish that
weapon was used in the murder.
00:18:07
NARRATOR: Four
prosecutors, what happened was unthinkable, but
perfectly logical.
00:18:14
After all, the evidence showed
it was an inside job all along. Dana Ewell wanted
his parents' money,
00:18:24
and he did not want to wait for
them to die of natural causes. And he did not want to share
it with his sister either.
00:18:33
So he hired his roommate, Joel
Radovcich to kill them all. Radovcich decided to
use an assault rifle
00:18:44
with a homemade silencer
reinforced with tennis balls to further reduce the noise.
00:18:51
Dana gave Joel the house
keys, the alarm code, and told him where
his father kept
00:18:57
the box of nine
millimeter ammunition. To establish his alibi,
Dana had dinner that night
00:19:04
with his girlfriend
and her father who happen to be an FBI agent. When Glee and Tiffany came
home, Radovcich ambushed them.
00:19:19
He shot Tiffany
first, and then he followed Glee into
another room and shot her.
00:19:30
About a half hour
later, Dale came home, and Joel was waiting. Tennis ball fibers
left at the scene
00:19:46
were consistent with the fibers
found in Radovcich's home. Prosecutors believe that Glee
Ewell knew who was responsible.
00:19:58
-She had met Joel before. Of the three, she's the only
one that got a look at Joel.
00:20:05
And I believe knew that her son
was killing her for the estate. NARRATOR: Jack Ponce was
given immunity in exchange
00:20:14
for his testimony. Dana Ewell eventually
turned himself in. And in 1995, he
and Joel Radovcich
00:20:24
were both convicted
of first degree murder, and murder
for financial gain. Both are serving life in
prison without parole.
00:20:36
-I believe that the physical
evidence in this case was a really big
deal, and probably
00:20:43
carried the weight
of conviction. -He was an arrogant young man. He was an extremely
arrogant young man
00:20:50
who thought he was smarter. A very smart young man,
don't get me wrong, but he thought he was
smarter than a bunch
00:20:55
of streetwise cops. -We weren't lax in our job. It just took a long
time to put it together
00:21:00
to get enough evidence
to go to court. [theme music]