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Crimes That Pushed The FBI To Their Limit · FBI Files

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: A Labor Day weekend turned into a nightmare of murder
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: as a cross-country crime spree terrorized the nation. A pair
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of suspected spree killers traveled through state after state, leaving
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: murder victims in their wake. Working against time, the FBI
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and local authorities marshaled their resources to stop the killings.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: In a small Ohio community, an elderly woman and a
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: teenage boy disappeared. Because they vanished within hours of each other,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: police believe the cases were linked. But they didn't know how.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: A trail of stolen vehicles and murder victims across seven
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: states led the FBI in a hunt for two serial killers.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Their only hope of stopping them was to anticipate the
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: killers Next move.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: August 29th, 1994. Summer was drawing to a close in
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the small town of Port Washington, Ohio. The peaceful farming
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: community was dotted with isolated rural homes. A 79-year-old widow,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Ruth Loader, lived alone. Those of her family that lived
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: nearby kept a close eye on Mrs. Loader since she
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: was battling with cancer. When she heard footsteps in the kitchen,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: she thought it might be her granddaughter returning to see.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Her before she went to sleep. She discovered strangers instead.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: The following morning.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: The Tuscarawas County Sheriff's Office received an urgent call from Mrs.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Loader's sister. As was their routine, Mrs. Loader's sister and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: son-in-law came to check on the sick woman but found Mrs.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Loader and her car missing. Sheriff Walter Wilson, a detective
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: lieutenant at the time, was the lead investigator.
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: Family members had seen Mrs. Loader the evening prior to
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: the morning of her disappearance. She was fine at that time.
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: They had indicated to us that Mrs. Loader was recovering
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: from cancer surgery, that she definitely needed medication, which was
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: left behind.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: The family was worried since Mrs. Loader was so weak.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: She would become very ill if she was without her
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: medication for long. Marks on the back door and damage
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to the door frame indicated it had been kicked in.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: The forced entry told the sheriff that the frail woman
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: had not left of her own free will. Mrs. Loader's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: purse was left behind, but her cash was missing, along
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: with the keys to her red Buick. Sheriff Wilson immediately
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: issued an all points bulletin for the widow and her car.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: He knew that they'd have the best chance of finding
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: her alive if they acted quickly.
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: We felt very early on that Mrs. Loader obviously had
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: been kidnapped. We immediately began a massive search for Mrs.
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: Loader and her car. Then that involved all of the
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: area law enforcement agencies, It involved numerous fire department personnel.
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: Citizens from the area came out in droves and helped.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: With the search for Mrs.
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: Logan.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Concerned over her fate, the community was united in its pursuit.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: The command center was formed in the Port Washington fire station,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: where authorities worked with volunteers to plan the urgent search
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: for the alien woman. If she didn't have her medicine soon,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: her condition could become critical. They had to find the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: grandmother before it was too late.
• 5:02
  Speaker 7: Mrs.
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: Loader was pretty well known in that area. It's a
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: very good family. They're very highly thought of, and everyone
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: was very concerned for her and felt obligated and really
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: sincerely wanted to try to find her to help her.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Mounted reserve units geared up to comb rougher terrain on horseback.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Local police and neighbors searched fields and woods for any
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: trace of herd or the missing car. Sheriff's deputies from
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a neighboring county brought in canine units hoping to pick
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: up a scent. The Ohio State Highway Patrol ordered their
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: aircraft to scan roads from above. The extensive search turned
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: up no trace of Mrs. Loader or her car. Special
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: collections were taken at restaurants and grocery stores to help
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: pay for additional personnel. Deputies alerted the media while family
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: members posted flyers in neighboring towns hoping to get the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: word out beyond the local community. That afternoon, A woman
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: who knew Mrs. Loader called the sheriff's office with information
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and came in for an interview. She told investigators that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: she'd seen Mrs. Loader's red Buick in town at about
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: 11 p.m. the previous evening. She thought it was strange
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that the ailing woman would be driving that late. Though
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the light was dim, she could see that a young
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: man was driving the car. The witness tried her best
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: to help a police artist construct a composite sketch from
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: what she could remember of the brief encounter. In the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: area surrounding Port Washington, Ohio, concern that a criminal could
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: be on the loose spread fear in a community that
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was not used to locking their doors. Police showed the
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: composite sketch at every interview. But no one could identify
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the man depicted in the drawing. The day ended with
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: no new leads. On day two of Mrs. Loader's disappearance,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a deputy entered her case into the NCIC, the National
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Crime Information Center. a computer system linking 57,000 law enforcement
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: agencies across the country. That same day, the sheriff's office
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: fielded a call from some concerned parents. Their 16-year-old high
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: school sophomore had also disappeared from Tuscarawas County. In nearby Newcomerstown,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: three miles from the house where Mrs. Loader disappeared, a
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: worried father and stepmother told a sheriff's deputy their son
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: was missing. His family and his former employer had not
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: heard from him for three days. A. 22 caliber handgun
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: was also missing from the house. The parents gave authorities
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a photograph of the missing boy. Eric Elliott.
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: It seemed kind of ironic at the time that we
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: would have Mrs. Loader missing and that we would also
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: have a juvenile reported missing within that short distance.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Ohio investigators wondered if there was any connection between the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: two disappearances from the same county. Just 36 hours after Mrs.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Loader's abduction, Sheriff Wilson received another call. 650 miles west
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: in Fulton, Missouri, police found a red Buick stuck in
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a farmer's muddy field. When they ran its Ohio plates
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: through the NCIC, they discovered it was Mrs. Loader's stolen car.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: The farmer had not seen who had abandoned it. The
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: car's keys were missing, but the doors were unlocked. Among
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the items officers found inside was a green soda bottle
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and a sandwich wrapper labeled Goshen Dairy Store. They towed
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the vehicle to the station for further examination. Lieutenant Timothy
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Daimler from the Calloway County Sheriff's Office in Fulton, Missouri,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: was assigned to lead the investigation. His department's first task
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: was to check the car's locked trunk.
• 10:03
  Speaker 8: We weren't sure exactly what we were going to find.
• 10:06
  Speaker 8: We had a missing lady from Ohio, and this was
• 10:09
  Speaker 8: her car, so we were under the assumption that very
• 10:12
  Speaker 8: possibly we may find a body when we opened up
• 10:14
  Speaker 8: the trunk.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Investigators needed to open it without damaging evidence or injuring
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the woman if she was unconscious inside. An auxiliary deputy
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: who was a locksmith was called in. They discovered the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: trunk was empty. After three days of searching, hope of
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: finding Mrs. Loader alive was beginning to fade. On September 1st,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: an FBI evidence recovery team from Kansas City was called
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: in since the missing woman's car had crossed state lines.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Agents worked with local authorities processing Mrs. Loader's car for
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: forensic details. They gathered several sets of prints and hairs.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: In Ohio, the foreign prints were entered into an automated
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: fingerprint system, but no matches were found. Sheriff Wilson prepared
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to travel to Missouri. On a hunch, he took along
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a photo of the missing teenager, Eric Elliott.
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: At the time, it was nothing concrete as far as
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: connecting Mrs. Loader's disappearance and Mr. Elliott's report of his
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: son missing. However, I felt that since we're going to
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: Callaway County, it would make sense to maybe obtain a
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: photograph of the missing juvenile and take with us.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Loader's son-in-law joined the sheriff to help in the investigation.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: The Missouri official did not recognize the photo, but the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Ohio sheriff did recognize the sandwich wrapper found in the car.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: It was from Goshen Dairy, a store near Mrs. Loader's house.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Her son-in-law said the family kept her vehicle clean. Perhaps
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Eric Elliott, who also lived close to the store, had
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: left the wrapper in the car.
• 12:23
  Speaker 8: They had a photograph of Elliott with them, and we
• 12:25
  Speaker 8: decided to cover Kingdom City, which, where they would have
• 12:30
  Speaker 8: gotten off the interstate.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Ohio and Missouri investigators checked exits along nearby I-70, a
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: major east-west route in the region. They hoped someone at
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the rest stops would be able to confirm that Elliot
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: had been in the area. They spoke to dozens of
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: employees and travelers. Late in the afternoon, their efforts finally
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: paid off. They found one person who remembered seeing the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: teenager the day before. Unfortunately, authorities found no one who
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: remembered seeing Mrs. Loader or her car. For the first time,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: investigators considered 16-year-old Eric Elliott as a suspect in her abduction.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Missouri deputies also continued to canvas the rural Fulton area,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: inquiring if neighbors had seen anything unusual. At the house
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: closest to the field where Mrs. Loader's car was found,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: an officer knocked on the door of an elderly couple,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: William and Flossie Brewer. He heard their dog, but the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: couple appeared to be out. Since their car was not
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: parked outside, the deputy continued on. Authorities checked dozens of homes,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: but found no one close by who had seen Eric
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Elliott or Mrs. Loader.
• 14:01
  Speaker 8: I was on my way home After finishing that up,
• 14:05
  Speaker 8: I received a page from the communications center that they
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: wanted me to call them immediately. They told me that
• 14:12
  Speaker 8: they had found two bodies at a farmhouse out on
• 14:15
  Speaker 8: County Road 147.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It was the home of William and Flossie Brewer, the
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: house closest to the field where Mrs. Loder's car was
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: found earlier that day. Authorities believe the two crimes were
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: likely connected. Three days after Mrs. Loader's disappearance, sheriff's detectives
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: found the bodies of 86-year-old William Brewer and his 76-year-old
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: wife Flossie in the basement of their home. Each had
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: multiple gunshot wounds. They were slumped over.
• 14:46
  Speaker 9: They were near the door.
• 14:47
  Speaker 8: She had her hands tied behind her back with what
• 14:50
  Speaker 8: appeared to be a telephone cord, and he was on
• 14:54
  Speaker 8: her right slumped over also, and his cane was standing
• 14:59
  Speaker 8: there right beside him.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: The detective also found the couple's dog faithfully guarding their
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: lifeless bodies. An autopsy later determined that both Mr. and Mrs.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Brewer had each been shot three times in the head
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: with a. 22, the same caliber weapon missing from Eric
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Elliott's home. The 16-year-old suspected in the disappearance of Mrs.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Loader now became a suspect in the double homicide.
• 15:30
  Speaker 8: There was no indication that the suspect had spent any
• 15:33
  Speaker 8: length of time in the house before this occurred, so
• 15:36
  Speaker 8: from the evidence it pointed us that it had happened
• 15:39
  Speaker 8: relatively quickly.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Investigators found no signs of forced entry. In the basement,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the door to the outside was covered with cobwebs, indicating
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it had not been opened. Investigators spoke with the Brewer's son.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: He said the couple's Oldsmobile was missing, along with several rifles.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: All were entered into the NCIC. The son added that
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: his mother's bedspread was also missing. Technicians worked the scene
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: until 5 a.m. On the floor near the front entrance,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: investigators found two distinct sets of footprints foreign to the house.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: One appeared to be a tennis shoe, the other a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: hiking boot. Investigators suspected the double homicide was likely connected
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to Mrs. Loader's disappearance. What they didn't know was if
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: 16-year-old Eric Elliott and a companion had become spree killers.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: By September 2nd, 1994, Four and a half days had
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: passed since the ailing Ruth Loader was forced from her
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Ohio home without her medication. She was missing and presumed
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: dead since her stolen car was found abandoned in Missouri,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: 150 yards from where police discovered a slain elderly couple.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Authorities suspected an Ohio teenager named Eric Elliott and at
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: least one companion were responsible for the crimes. But they
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: had no direct evidence. Lieutenant Timothy Daimler of the Callaway County,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Missouri Sheriff's Department recalled that citizens in the surrounding areas
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: were stunned.
• 17:32
  Speaker 8: These are people that live in the rural community. They're
• 17:35
  Speaker 8: used to leaving their doors unlocked. They do know everybody.
• 17:40
  Speaker 8: And I think it was somewhat of a realization that, unfortunately,
• 17:46
  Speaker 8: even though you do live in a rural community, that
• 17:48
  Speaker 8: you still have to lock your doors and pay attention
• 17:50
  Speaker 8: to when strangers are in your neighborhoods.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: With two confirmed homicides and a likely third in as
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: many days, local authorities turned to the FBI for help.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Peter Christ of the FBI's Canton, Ohio resident
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: agency was assigned the case. To catch up with the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: suspected spree killer and his companion, they needed an idea
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of where Eric Elliott might be heading.
• 18:18
  Speaker 10: So we were trying to get as much background information
• 18:21
  Speaker 10: as we could. We were looking for relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends.
• 18:25
  Speaker 10: We were convinced that they were heading across the country,
• 18:28
  Speaker 10: and we just needed to know everybody that there was
• 18:30
  Speaker 10: a possibility that they would stop and visit, to either
• 18:33
  Speaker 10: visit to say hello or get any kind of financial
• 18:35
  Speaker 10: or moral support.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Agents asked one of Eric Elliott's friends to come in
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: for questioning.
• 18:42
  Speaker 11: Yes.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: The friend told them that Elliot had recently become very
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: close to a young ex-convict named Louis Gilbert. He said
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that Gilbert and Elliot had spent a lot of time
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: together over the past few weeks. Both had been complaining
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: about how boring life was in the small town and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that there was no reason for them to stay. Gilbert
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: was estranged from his wife and son, and Elliot wished
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to visit his birth mother in California.
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: I just got out of jail.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: I did it.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: The friend added that the pair mentioned they wanted to
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: do something that would make them go down in history
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and planned to start by stealing a car. The last
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: time he saw them was five days ago when Gilbert
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and Elliot were walking along railroad tracks behind Mrs. Loader's house.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Because Elliot was a troubled teen, Agent Crisp believed that
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: he probably looked up to 22-year-old Lewis Gilbert since Gilbert
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: appeared to do as he pleased.
• 19:44
  Speaker 10: At the point when Gilbert befriended Elliot, he had been
• 19:48
  Speaker 10: released from jail two weeks prior to that, had a
• 19:51
  Speaker 10: criminal history, had had a history of getting in trouble.
• 19:55
  Speaker 10: And at that point, we sort of felt that maybe Mr.
• 19:57
  Speaker 10: Elliot was in awe or enamored with Mr. Gilbert because
• 20:01
  Speaker 10: he did have that kind of criminal history background.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Investigators dug deeper into Lewis Gilbert's past. The 22-year-old had
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: served time for stealing a boat and breaking an entering.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: He had also been convicted of physically abusing his three-month-old son.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Though agents still lacked concrete evidence that Gilbert and Elliot
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: were traveling together, they needed to find them as soon
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: as possible to prevent any more killing.
• 20:31
  Speaker 10: Our biggest concern at this point was that we suspected
• 20:34
  Speaker 10: these two of Mrs.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Loader's disappearance.
• 20:37
  Speaker 10: They were strong suspects in the killings and the double
• 20:40
  Speaker 10: homicide in Missouri. And we were very concerned that this
• 20:45
  Speaker 10: kind of activity would continue all the way across the country.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Wilson's first step was to see if anyone had
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: seen Gilbert with Elliot at the Goshen Dairy Store, close
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: to Mrs. Loader's Ohio home. Missouri investigators had found a
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: sandwich wrapper from the store in Mrs. Loader's abandoned vehicle.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Does this look familiar to you? The clerk identified the wrapper.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: She also remembered selling the sandwich and some soda to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Gilbert and Elliot just after Mrs. Loader disappeared. Authorities now
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: had confirmation the young men were traveling together. But five
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: days had already passed since the spree killers had begun
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: their cross-country rampage. The FBI quickly secured arrest warrants for
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: kidnapping and burglary in the Ruth Loader disappearance. Though agents
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: believe the pair was also responsible for the double homicide
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: in Missouri, authorities still lacked evidence to formally charge them
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: with those crimes. Agents weren't about to wait for someone
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to call in. Anticipating Gilbert and Elliot's westward movement, the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: FBI visited Gilbert's mother in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, on September 3, 1994.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: The agent warned her that her son and his friend
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: were armed fugitives suspected of driving a stolen Oldsmobile with
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Missouri plates. It was possible that the pair would visit
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: her for help. We need to know if you've seen
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: them recently.
• 22:17
  Speaker 12: Oh, they just left this morning. This morning?
• 22:19
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: The FBI had just missed them. Gilbert and Elliot had
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: arrived at 2 a.m. the previous day. Gilbert claimed the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Oldsmobile they were driving belonged to a friend. They said
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: they were headed to California. The pair spent the day
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and left a few hours before the agent arrived. Cooperating
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: with the FBI, she described the clothes the pair was
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: wearing and gave agents addresses of other relatives. Authorities feared
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that if they didn't catch up with them soon, the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: spree killers would strike again.
• 23:01
  Speaker 10: That was one of the most frustrating things about this
• 23:03
  Speaker 10: whole investigation. It just appeared that we were always a
• 23:07
  Speaker 10: half a day or a day behind them, and that's
• 23:09
  Speaker 10: probably one of the most frustrating things. We just couldn't
• 23:12
  Speaker 10: get ahead of them.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Because Eric Elliott was a minor, investigators needed court permission
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to distribute his photo. They got the go-ahead 36 hours
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: after the double homicide in Missouri. Lieutenant Daimler added it
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to the nationwide bulletins for the fugitive.
• 23:30
  Speaker 8: I was scared to see where they were going to
• 23:32
  Speaker 8: end up next and who they were going to kill next.
• 23:35
  Speaker 8: And I wanted to do everything I could to help
• 23:39
  Speaker 8: get those people off the street because it was apparent
• 23:43
  Speaker 8: to me that they didn't care who they killed.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Despite the best efforts of authorities, the urgent hunt for
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the suspected killers stretched into its sixth day. On September 4th, 1994,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: 165 miles west of Gilbert's mother's house in Oklahoma. A
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: dirt biker was riding the rural trails around Draper Lake,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: just outside of Oklahoma City. His ride was cut short,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and he discovered a woman's body amongst the trees. As
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: he raced to summon police, he rode around an Oldsmobile
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: with Missouri plates. Almost a week after Mrs. Loader's abduction
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in Ohio, the nationwide hunt for two suspected killers would continue.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: By September 4th, 1994, six days had elapsed in the
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: FBI's massive nationwide search for a pair of suspected spree killers.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Lewis Gilbert and Eric Elliott were wanted for a possible
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: murder in Ohio and a confirmed double homicide in Missouri.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: The fugitives were last seen in Oklahoma heading west. That
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: same day, Oklahoma City Police responded to a call from
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a dirt biker who had discovered a woman's body near
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Draper Lake. Officers secured the crime scene, then called in
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: homicide detectives. They interviewed the biker who had made the discovery.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Homicide Inspector Bob Beemo of the Oklahoma City Police Department
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: was assigned the case.
• 25:27
  Speaker 11: Once we come upon the immediate scene where the body
• 25:30
  Speaker 11: was located, I observed the young woman to be in
• 25:36
  Speaker 11: a kind of bent over backwards and caught between a tree.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: The victim was a white female in her 30s. Investigators
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: found no identification on or near the body. But a
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: manager at a nearby marina later identified her as his
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: missing employee, Roxy Rudder.
• 25:55
  Speaker 11: As a part of our investigation, Another vehicle had been
• 25:59
  Speaker 11: found a short distance away from where the victim had
• 26:03
  Speaker 11: been located. And we didn't know if this was a
• 26:06
  Speaker 11: part of the crime or not, although we did secure
• 26:08
  Speaker 11: the area around this vehicle.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: When detectives checked the Oldsmobile's Missouri plates with the NCIC,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: they discovered the car had been reported stolen from the Brewers,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the double homicide victims from Missouri. Oklahoma investigators immediately notified
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: authorities back east. to Tuscarawas County Sheriff Walter Wilson in Ohio,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: it appeared that Gilbert and Elliot had struck again.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: They had recovered Missouri's stolen vehicle, and they also had
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: another murder victim. It's just another terrible feeling that's really
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: hard to describe that obviously this tragedy continues.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma police crime technicians gathered evidence from the vehicle. they
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: recovered several unused. 22 caliber bullets. A pawn shop receipt
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: from a local Oklahoma City store was also found. Prints
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: lifted from inside and outside the car matched both Gilbert
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and Elliott's. Oklahoma medical examiners determined that Ruttle's death had
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: occurred in the last day or two since there was
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: little decomposition. Death had been inflicted by a. 22 caliber weapon.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Detectives notified the woman's devastated husband. He informed them that
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: her two-toned pickup truck was also missing. Investigators listed it
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: as stolen and added its information to the growing NCIC
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: report on Gilbert and Elliot. Detectives also took the receipt
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: found in the brewer's car to the Oklahoma City pawn
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: shop that issued it. Two video games and a socket
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: wrench set had been pawned the day before the murdered
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: woman was found. They showed the receipt to an employee.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: He vaguely remembered Gilbert and Elliot, but he had something
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: else that might be stronger than memory. The pawn shop
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: was equipped with a 24-hour surveillance camera. The videotape confirmed
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: his story. September 3rd was the last confirmed sighting of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Gilbert and Elliot. The FBI issued two more warrants for
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the suspected killers for unlawful interstate flight. Agent Peter Christ
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and his team were frustrated that after six days, four
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: victims and thousands of man hours, the killers remained a
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: half day ahead of the FBI.
• 28:46
  Speaker 10: A lot of things were going through my mind. Number one,
• 28:52
  Speaker 10: we didn't want another double homicide. We didn't want another
• 28:55
  Speaker 10: killing anyplace. And we were, I guess, what I kept
• 28:59
  Speaker 10: thinking about, what have I not done? What lead have
• 29:03
  Speaker 10: I not sent out? Let me look everything over again
• 29:06
  Speaker 10: to see maybe if we can somehow get ahead of
• 29:08
  Speaker 10: these guys instead of being behind them for a half
• 29:10
  Speaker 10: day or a day.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: The nationwide hunt for Gilbert and Elliot intensified. Law enforcement
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: agencies mobilized additional helicopters to search for Roxy Ruddle's two-toned
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: pickup truck on routes heading west. Long-haul truck drivers were
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: also notified to report any sightings on the road or
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: at rest stops. Hundreds of calls poured into police in Oklahoma, Missouri,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and Ohio. But none led to the fugitive's immediate whereabouts.
• 29:53
  Speaker 10: Every time the phone rang, I was very concerned that
• 29:56
  Speaker 10: it would be another body. And that's a terrible feeling
• 29:59
  Speaker 10: when you're working a case like this, when you know
• 30:01
  Speaker 10: what has happened up to that point and what you envision.
• 30:03
  Speaker 10: The worst thing you can envision in your mind would
• 30:05
  Speaker 10: happen if this thing continued. So every time the phone
• 30:07
  Speaker 10: rang and somebody said it was for me, that was
• 30:10
  Speaker 10: my biggest fear. That was the first thing that came
• 30:12
  Speaker 10: into my mind. Oh, we found another body.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: The two suspected spree killers had chosen elderly people and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: women as their prey. And the FBI didn't know where
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: or whom they would strike next. By September 5th, 1994,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: after a week of searching, the FBI and local law
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: enforcement were no closer to finding two suspects in a
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: killing spree that spanned three states. Agents believe that 22-year-old
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Lewis Gilbert and 16-year-old Eric Elliott were headed to the
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: home of Elliott's mother in California, driving a stolen two-tone
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: pickup truck with Oklahoma plates. Missouri Lieutenant Timothy Daimler feared
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the murder suspects would kill again if they decided to
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: steal another car as they traveled west.
• 31:03
  Speaker 8: I wasn't thinking serial killer at the time.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I guess what was going.
• 31:08
  Speaker 8: Through my mind at the time was that these guys
• 31:11
  Speaker 8: didn't care who they killed, and I was thinking that
• 31:15
  Speaker 8: we need to catch these people.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: News reports and bulletins alerted people in western states that
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the suspected killers were headed their way In New Mexico,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: state police criminal agent Daniel Becker first heard about the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: fugitives through the media.
• 31:38
  Speaker 7: My initial thought was that the chances of them being
• 31:42
  Speaker 7: apprehended in New Mexico were extremely slim because of the
• 31:45
  Speaker 7: wide open spaces that we have and a relatively small
• 31:49
  Speaker 7: amount of law enforcement that we have throughout the state.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: The same day the reports began to hit the news
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico, Gilbert and Elliot stopped at the rural
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: home of an older couple 15 miles south of Santa Fe.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: They claimed that the stolen two-tone pickup truck was low
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: on gas. The couple agreed to help. The fugitives said
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: they were on their way to California But the woman
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: was suspicious and she didn't see any luggage in the truck.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: To her they seemed jumpy and left in a hurry
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: when they heard the noise of nearby construction The woman
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: reported the sighting to the New Mexico State Police. But
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: by the time units arrived to investigate, the two young
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: men were nowhere in sight. The following morning of September 6th,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: a New Mexico man reported another sighting to police. He
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: claimed to have seen Gilbert and Elliot the previous night.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: The man told the officer that he first encountered them
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: while driving on Highway 599 outside Santa Fe. The motorist
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: saw two young hitchhikers and pulled over to pick them up.
• 33:38
  Speaker 7: Hey, how's.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: It going?
• 33:49
  Speaker 13: Thanks for picking us up.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: They said their pickup truck had gotten stuck in the mud.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: He didn't realize who they were until he saw their
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: photos on the news the next morning describing them as
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: suspected killers. The witness said he gave the pair a
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: ride to the store where they bought food and gas.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Later that night, he saw them again and drove them
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: back to the place they had first met. It was
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: a desolate part of the highway The officer needed a
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: landmark to estimate where the motorist had dropped the fugitives
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: The man said it was close to a small overpass
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: In the chance that the fugitives were still in the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: area He alerted all area law enforcement. The New Mexico
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: State Police were aware they had to move fast. Two
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: units raced to the location to conduct a search for
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: any trace of the suspected murderers. They found the overpass
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: in a remote area. Reports had warned that the Ohio
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: men were armed. Gilbert and Elliot would be tired and
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: desperate after running and hiding for seven days with little money.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Officers prepared for the worst. If the fugitives were still
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: in the area, they had miles of shrubs and hills
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: behind which they could conceal themselves and take aim at
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: anyone approaching. Exactly. Officers were instructed to use extreme caution.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: The team wanted to bring them back alive. They scanned
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the dust for footprints, food wrappers, and soda bottles, anything
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that might indicate the suspected killers were still in the area.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: They approached one of six culverts underneath the highway. Carefully,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: they moved forward for a closer look. One officer spotted
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: two men lying on the ground inside, apparently sleeping. One
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: of the startled men appeared to be groping for his
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: gun in the dark. In the next split second, officers
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: had to decide whether they needed to use deadly force
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to stop the suspected spree killers. On September 6th, 1994,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: New Mexico State Police were within a few feet of
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: murder suspects Lewis Gilbert and Eric Elliott. The fugitives reached
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: for their weapons, but chose not to die. After a
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: murder spree that took the lives of four victims in
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: less than a week, the pair was arrested without a struggle.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: The 1800 mile chase had ended. FBI Special Agent Peter
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Christ got the news of their arrest in Ohio.
• 38:02
  Speaker 10: My reaction, of course, when I received that news was
• 38:04
  Speaker 10: a tremendous sigh of relief. The first thing I wanted
• 38:08
  Speaker 10: to know, it was after they'd been caught, were there
• 38:11
  Speaker 10: any bodies, were there any unsolved homicides close to where
• 38:14
  Speaker 10: they were arrested? Of course, the answer was no. Just
• 38:18
  Speaker 10: a tremendous sigh of relief that this whole thing was
• 38:20
  Speaker 10: finally over.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Officers recovered a. 22 handgun and a green soda bottle
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: at the campsite where the pair were apprehended. They also
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: found the bedspread belonging to the murdered Mrs.
• 38:35
  Speaker 14: Brewer.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: State police found Roxy Ruttle's stolen pickup two miles away
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: near a racetrack in Santa Fe. Like their other two
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: stolen vehicles, the truck was stuck in the mud. Examining fingerprints,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: crime scene and lab investigators matched personal items to the
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: murdered woman in Oklahoma City. Investigators also found another green
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: soda bottle, the same brand they had found under the
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: culvert and in Ruth Loder's car. Eric Elliott and Louis
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Gilbert were taken to the New Mexico State Police District
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: office in Santa Fe. If they could turn one against
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the other, Their prosecution would be assured. Sixteen-year-old Eric Elliott
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: made one phone call to his father in Ohio and
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: refused to say anything about the killings. Now it was
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Lewis Gilbert's turn. The ex-convict waived his rights and agreed
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: to be interviewed. New Mexico State Police criminal agent Daniel
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Becker had little time to prepare.
• 39:49
  Speaker 7: Gilbert revealed very little during the first hour of our
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: interview about these killings. A couple times he made mention of,
• 39:56
  Speaker 7: I asked him if he had did this out of,
• 40:00
  Speaker 7: for some justifiable reason, or if he's a cold-blooded killer,
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: and he responded by saying, one of those.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Gilbert claimed that he didn't recall what had happened over
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the past five days. He refused to say anything about
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the murders or Mrs. Loader's disappearance. Frustrated, the investigator left
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the room. A few moments alone was all Gilbert needed.
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: After we had taken our first break, Gilbert began to
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: open up a little bit more, and he actually made
• 40:47
  Speaker 7: an admission that he had killed between one and five people.
• 40:51
  Speaker 7: And when I had asked him why he had killed people,
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: he said, for stupid reasons.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Gilbert began by recounting the day he met the woman
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma.
• 41:02
  Speaker 6: Hey, how you doing?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: He said that he and Elliot struck up a conversation
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: with Roxy Rubber. and they found her fishing alone in
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: a secluded area of Draper Lake near Oklahoma City. They
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: told her that their car was stuck in the mud
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and needed a ride back to town. She offered to
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: help and packed up her gear. Her pickup truck was
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: parked just up the hill.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: Give me the keys.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: When her back was turned, Gilbert pulled the. 22 pistol
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Elliot had taken from his parents' Ohio home. Then Gilbert
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: told Elliot to tie Ruttle's hands. Gilbert said Ruttle cried
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: and asked him not to hurt her. Elliot stayed behind
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: while Gilbert marched Ruttle into the woods. He told her
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to sit down at the base of a tree. Then
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: he shot Roxy Ruttle. Now that Gilbert had admitted to
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: one murder, the agent pressed him on the others. He
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: asked the confessed killer to describe what had happened in
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Missouri the day before he got to Oklahoma.
• 42:54
  Speaker 7: Gilbert advised me that they had been traveling through the
• 42:58
  Speaker 7: state of Missouri, and the evening before the murders, they
• 43:01
  Speaker 7: had parked the stolen vehicle that they had obtained in
• 43:05
  Speaker 7: Ohio in what I was led to believe was a field.
• 43:10
  Speaker 7: and they'd slept in the vehicle overnight, and the following
• 43:13
  Speaker 7: morning or afternoon when they were about to leave, they
• 43:15
  Speaker 7: realized the vehicle was stuck, so they needed to get
• 43:18
  Speaker 7: another vehicle.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: As Missouri investigators believed, Gilbert and Elliot had simply walked
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to the closest house and saw a car in the driveway.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: It was the home of Mr. and Mrs.
• 43:34
  Speaker 15: Brewer.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Gilbert decided they'd asked to use the phone to call
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: for a tow.
• 43:43
  Speaker 14: Hello, sir.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: How you doing? Pretty good.
• 43:47
  Speaker 9: We've got our car.
• 43:49
  Speaker 15: Thank you so much.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Wanting to help, the brewers let the young men in.
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: Once inside, they learned that they didn't have a telephone book,
• 44:02
  Speaker 7: so they couldn't come up with a number to call
• 44:04
  Speaker 7: for a wrecker. And it's at that point that Gilbert
• 44:06
  Speaker 7: told me that he decided, or they decided, that they
• 44:08
  Speaker 7: were going to kill the Brewers.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: They led the grandfather and grandmother into the basement. Then executed.
• 44:26
  Speaker 6: Them.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: There was one more crime that Gilbert had not discussed.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: The elderly cancer patient from Ohio, Mrs. Loader, was still
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: missing and presumed dead. No one knew what had become
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of her. On the evening of August 29th, 1994, Louis
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Gilbert and Eric Elliott approached Mrs. Loader's Port Washington home
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to steal her car. Since no one answered when they knocked,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: they believed the house was empty. So they broke in
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: to search for the car keys. After 10 minutes, they
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: still hadn't found the key As they rummaged through the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: living room, they were startled when Mrs. Loader suddenly appeared.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: He claimed Mrs. Loader was still alive when he locked
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: her in the trunk of her car and sped off.
• 45:46
  Speaker 7: They got about four miles outside of town in a
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: wooded area, and they pulled up alongside of a guardrail
• 45:54
  Speaker 7: and parked, got outside, Gilbert told me that he opened
• 45:59
  Speaker 7: the trunk and he picked up Mrs. Loader out of
• 46:02
  Speaker 7: the trunk and they took her off the road near
• 46:05
  Speaker 7: the guardrail about five feet from the side of the road.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Gilbert said he forced Mrs. Loader to walk away from
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the car. He said he shot her with the same.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: 22 that had killed the others.
• 46:22
  Speaker 9: We drove a little ways and.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Gilbert had finished his description of the murders. but he
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: hadn't told the agent where they could find the murdered
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Ohio woman.
• 46:35
  Speaker 7: We knew it was crucial to find Mrs. Loader's body,
• 46:40
  Speaker 7: both as evidence so this murder could be prosecuted and
• 46:44
  Speaker 7: also just simply as closure for the family so that
• 46:49
  Speaker 7: they could find her and make for proper arrangements for
• 46:53
  Speaker 7: a funeral.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Gilbert gave authorities directions to find Mrs. Loader's remains. 50
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: people from the FBI and 12 different law enforcement and
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: volunteer groups followed Gilbert's directions. They searched for the dead
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: woman in fields and woods and hills for days. But
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the 79-year-old widow and mother of four was never found.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Walter Wilson continues to work the open case.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: When you work a murder case, you almost become part
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: of the family, so to speak, because your goal, obviously,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: is to solve the crime, to help the victims, the
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: surviving victims, as much as you possibly can. It's something, obviously,
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: that will never, ever be forgotten. I have a high
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: respect for the Loader family. having got to know them
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: very well. I feel bad to this day that we've
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: not yet been able to recover Mrs.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Loader's remains. 16-year-old Eric Elliott stood trial as an adult
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Elliott was found guilty of first-degree murder for
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: his participation in the killing of Roxy Rutland. He was
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: sentenced to life without parole. In Missouri, after 57 years
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: of marriage, the Brewers were laid to rest. Unlike the
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: family of Ruth Loader, the Brewer family was able to
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: have some closure for their tragic loss. After being sentenced
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: to death for the murder of Roxy Ruddle in Oklahoma,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Lewis Gilman was extradited to Missouri, where he stood trial
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: for the murders of William and Flossie Brewer. Lewis, where's Ruth?
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Where's the lady in Ohio? Where's Ruth, Lewis? Give her
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: family a break. He remained silent on the whereabouts of
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Ruth Loader's remains. Since the Ohio woman has not yet
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: been recovered, there has been no trial date set to
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: answer for her kidnapping and murder. For her family and friends,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Gilbert and Elliot's actions are unconscionable.
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: I've often thought, what, what goes through their mind or
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: what causes them to do that, and I really, it's
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: hard to understand or think what they're thinking other than
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: obviously they have to be very evil people.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: In the mid-1990s, A gang of professional bank robbers raided
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: cities across seven states. Disguises and speed protected their identity
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: from cameras and the police. They stole hundreds of thousands
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: of dollars, always leaving a bomb to terrorize their victims.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: With no minutes and little evidence, the FBI had to
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: find the bandits before someone got killed.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Across the Midwest, a band of armed robbers struck banks
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: at the rate of nearly one per month. They attacked
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: with lightning precision and lethal force. They were in and
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: out in five minutes. I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: the FBI's New York office. The stakes were raised when
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the FBI discovered the robbers had an agenda beyond personal wealth.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: To stop these violent extremists, the FBI need to capture
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: their terrorist leaders.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: In 1994, the citizens of Ames, Iowa enjoyed the peaceful
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: life provided by a small college town. Many newcomers had
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: moved to Ames because of the area's low crime rate.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: On January 25th at 10.30 in the morning, two men
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: entered a bank in town.
• 51:31
  Speaker 14: All right, this is a robbery.
• 51:32
  Speaker 16: Everybody down on the floor.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Down, down, down on the ground. Down, get on the floor.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: They wore ski masks and held semi-automatic pistols. They ordered
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: everyone to the floor. The teller managed to set off
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: a silent alarm without being seen. The FBI office in
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: nearby Des Moines was alerted to the robbery in progress.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: The agency had primary investigative jurisdiction in crimes involving federally
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: insured money. Agents immediately responded, but they were 30 miles
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: away from the bank. The bandits quickly emptied the cash drawers.
• 52:19
  Speaker 9: Don't look at me.
• 52:20
  Speaker 16: Face the ground.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: One of them pulled out what appeared to be a bomb.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: He warned that no one should move for five minutes
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: or it would explode. The employees and customers evacuated as
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: soon as they could. The local police cordoned off the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: bank as explosive experts worked inside. The bomb proved to
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: be a diversion. Two road flares bound with duct tape.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: The employees described how one of the gunmen leaped over
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the counter to grab the money. They grabbed thousands in
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: cash and were in and out of the bank in
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: less than five minutes. Agents interviewed the witnesses. They said
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: the gunmen sometimes used Spanish when talking to each other.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: The security camera provided photographs of the robber. Ski masks
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: effectively hid the faces of the assailants. But investigators had
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: images of their disguises and their weapons. Nine millimeter semi-automatics.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Because the perpetrators wore gloves, they did not leave any fingerprints.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Detectives used electrostatic tape to recover a footprint from the counter.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: The precautions taken by the bandits had effectively obscured their identities.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Ken Moore of the Des Moines, Iowa, FBI
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: field office was immediately concerned that they were dealing with
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: dangerous professionals.
• 54:30
  Speaker 15: Now, most bank robbers try to enter banks as quietly
• 54:32
  Speaker 15: as possible, go up to one teller counter and proceed
• 54:37
  Speaker 15: to rob the bank and then leave as quietly as
• 54:38
  Speaker 15: they can. These individuals came in very violently, fast.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Agent Moore wanted to apprehend the suspects as quickly as
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: he could. But the FBI had nothing of value to
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: lead to their identity. Several weeks later, a communique came
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: into the Des Moines office. It alerted area FBI of
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: a February 15th bank robbery in Davenport, Iowa. Agents contacted
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the Davenport office to see if the incident might be related.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: The agent described two gunmen wearing ski masks and black
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: overcoats that had invaded a Davenport bank. The thieves used
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: the same Spanish phrases as the Des Moines bandits. They
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: also hopped over the counter to empty the cash drawers.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: There was one significant difference. This time, the bandits left
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: a real explosive, a pipe bomb instead of a fake. Fortunately,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the detonator was missing. Disarming it had slowed down the investigation.
• 56:01
  Speaker 15: What that device does is it requires more manpower that
• 56:07
  Speaker 15: could be out conducting an active investigation. Instead, they're at
• 56:10
  Speaker 15: the bank making sure things are safe.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Investigators believed that the similarities between the incidents were more
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: than coincidental.
• 56:21
  Speaker 15: After the Davenport bank robbery, we realized that the same
• 56:25
  Speaker 15: individuals were responsible for both bank robberies. This was our
• 56:29
  Speaker 15: first connection to possible serial bank robbers.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: In the next four months, Cincinnati, Green Bay, and Kansas
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: City suffered similar crimes.
• 56:47
  Speaker 15: There appeared to be a pattern of their robberies. There
• 56:50
  Speaker 15: appeared to be two regions where they were robbing banks,
• 56:53
  Speaker 15: the Midwest region as well as the Ohio region. We
• 56:56
  Speaker 15: were trying to logically connect those two regions and why
• 57:00
  Speaker 15: banks were being robbed that way.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: The robberies occurred between 10 and 11 in the morning
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: when banks were less populated. Each time, the bandits were
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: out in less than five minutes, always leaving an inert
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: bomb as they fled. The wide geographic spread of targets
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: made their next moves impossible to predict. The FBI needed
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: to find some evidence that would lead to the suspects.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: On June 8, 1994, the bandits hit a bank in Springdale, Ohio.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: They drove away with over $ 11, 000. The bystanders saw them
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: use a brown Chevrolet as their getaway car. On June 17th,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: a security guard became suspicious of a car on his
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: employer's lot. It had been sitting for a week without
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: anyone claiming it. He saw a police scanner. He also
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: spotted a pager next to a stained $ 20 bill. A
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Springdale officer came out to check the car. He began
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: a search to ascertain the vehicle's ownership. He made an
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: effort to force open the glove compartment. The grenade tumbled out.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: The hand grenade turned out to be another inert explosive,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: but its presence linked the car to the bank robbery.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Agents used the car's serial numbers to track down the
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: dealership where it had been sold. They talked to the
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: salesman who had handled the deal. The sale had been
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: made less than two weeks earlier, but he couldn't give
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: a description of the buyer. The dead ends left investigators
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: feeling the pressure.
• 58:59
  Speaker 15: We were becoming frustrated because the escalation of violence seemed
• 59:04
  Speaker 15: to have been increasing. They were more brazen, were brandished. firearms,
• 59:11
  Speaker 15: scaring bank employees. They were scaring customers, leaving behind booby traps.
• 59:20
  Speaker 15: So we were very frustrated and we were concerned.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: On December 27th, the bandits finished 1994 with their 12th
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: robbery in as many months. they hit a bank outside St. Louis.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: This time, there were four gunmen.
• 59:36
  Speaker 15: Now we were concerned over possible takeovers of banks, possible
• 59:42
  Speaker 15: entry into the bank vault. With four people, there's a
• 59:45
  Speaker 15: lot more they can do.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Bystanders of the St. Louis robbery saw the bandits put
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: on their ski masks before entering the building. A teller
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: got a glimpse of one of them inside the bank.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: These witnesses helped FBI artists make composite sketches of the suspects.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: The FBI distributed the drawings to other agencies and the media.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: They hoped it might bring someone forward who might know
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: something more. The television and news reports generated hundreds of
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: calls into the FBI offices. Agents followed up on all
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: credible tips, but none provided any lead value. The assailants
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: communicated with the media as well. They sent letters and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: cartoons to newspapers. The correspondents ridiculed federal agents and their
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: attempts to catch them. In one letter, the gang dubbed
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: themselves the Midwestern Bank Bandits. The bandits sent another message
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: to authorities in one of their getaway cars. An investigator
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: searched a vehicle used in a robbery near St. Louis.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: On the front seat, the gang had left a newspaper
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: clipping about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. In less
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: than two years, the bandits had hit at least 15
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: banks across the Midwest. By the end of August 1995,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: agents from seven states and FBI headquarters gathered in Louisville, Kentucky.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: All the offices were now working together to identify and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: apprehend the suspects. All information and leads were to be
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: channeled through a single office, then distributed to the others.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Moore and DeMore served as the point man.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 15: The meeting also resulted in all case agents going back
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 15: to their office, reviewing all files to see if there's
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 15: anything they may have missed or anything of lead value
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 15: that might assist us in identifying the suspects.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Supervisory Special Agent David Welker found a phone tip that
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: came into his Cincinnati office after a June 1994 robbery.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: The informant had named two men as the leaders of
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: the Midwestern bank bandits, Peter Langan and Richard Guthrie.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 17: Well, you determine at the time that they had criminal backgrounds,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 17: that as we set out our leads, that they had
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 17: been arrested in Georgia for the robbery of a pizza hut,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 17: and then We found also at the time that the U.S.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 17: Secret Service had looked at Langen as a result of
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 17: threats made to the president.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: At the arrest, police seized semi-automatic guns and grenades, weapons
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: similar to those used by the bank bandits. The suspects
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: served a brief prison sentence before being released. Agent Welker
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: was able to pull their mugshots. He compared the photographs
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: with the artist's sketches made after the St. Louis robberies.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 17: And they were so close then that it was, it
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 17: was phenomenal. It appeared that the composite artist used these
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 17: photographs to draw the composite drawings.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 16: That's how close they were.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Agents now had names for the gunmen. In pursuing the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: FBI was about to uncover a far more deadly plot
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: than bank robbery. In 1995, the FBI hunted the Midwestern
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: bank bandits. The day before Thanksgiving, the four gunmen struck
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: another bank in St. Louis, their 21st robbery. Their disguise
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: included ATF hats. The same caps worn by federal agents
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. They also
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: left their signature pipe bomb. None of these explosive devices
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: had gone off. They had either been inert or lacking detonators.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: By now, agents knew how to defuse the bombs themselves.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: They weren't going to let the ruse slow the investigation
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: down anymore. Supervisory Special Agent David Welker of the Cincinnati
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: office had names for two of the bandits. But Peter
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Langan and Richard Guthrie were living underground, surfacing only when
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: they struck another band.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 16: Clearly, we've identified the right people.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 17: We're trying to develop as much information about these people
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 17: and their contacts as possible. But the best part about
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 17: it is we have leads to follow.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: In the intervening months, the informant who had provided the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: names had moved from Ohio.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: The first set of robberies to.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Special Agent Ed Woods of the Cincinnati FBI field office
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: tracked the informant to Georgia where he lived with his
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: new wife and child.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: This fella had been an associate of Langan and Guthrie
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: in the past, had removed himself from that lifestyle and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: was starting a new life for himself. And I think
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: he was ready to put all that behind him. So
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: when I interviewed him, he cooperated fully.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 9: I need to ask you a few questions.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: The informant had met Langan in 1991 at a white
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: supremacist rally. The Bible says, Thou shalt not covet thy
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: neighbor's work, and the black neighbor... They shared similar beliefs
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: about race and government. A year later, Langan proclaimed his
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: intention to form the Aryan Republican Army, It was going
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: to start a revolution against Washington and its federal agencies
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: like the FBI and ATF. Langen had been inspired by
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: The Order, an established terrorist group. The Order had financed
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: their racist agenda by robbing $ 4 million from banks and
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: armored cars. That evening, Langen introduced Guthrie as his compatriot.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Two months before the first bank robbery, they asked the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: informant to become a member of the Aryan army. Well,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I've got some stuff here. He declined to join the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: new gang. But he did agree to pitch in.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: What we got from this cooperating witness was the scope
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: of their activities, the surgical planning for their bank robbery activities,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: the fact that now we learn for the first time
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: that their activities aren't just bank robbery and criminal matters.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: It relates to white supremacy.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: The informant helped Langdon case the bank in Springdale, Ohio.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: But before that June 1994 robbery, the informant had a
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: change of heart and cut himself off from the bandits.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: He had participated enough to be charged as an accomplice.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: The FBI promised not to prosecute him if he assisted.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: They were ready to make a deal to capture Langan
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: and Guthrie.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 17: Once we determined that they had broken off other white
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 17: supremacist organizations to form their own, it certainly ratcheted the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 17: investigation up just another notch.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Agent Welker suspected it was only a matter of time
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: before the Midwestern bank bandits turned their racial prejudice into violence.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: The gang was back in Cincinnati hitting another bank in
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: December 1995. During their escape, one of the bandits bumped
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: into a teenager. The gunman demanded her purse. She refused
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to comply. Only the sound. of approaching sirens prevented the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: young woman from being seriously hurt. Betting that the bandits
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: were still in the area, Agent Welker brought the informant
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to Cincinnati. Upon arriving, the informant agreed to reenter the
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: white supremacist movement. Agents instructed him to page the FBI
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: when he made contact with the suspects. But investigators became
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: frustrated when more than a week passed without any results.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 17: Since he's been here for a week and a half
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 17: and has provided no information at all and has arranged
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 17: no meeting, has virtually done nothing, I was more than
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 17: skeptical as to what this cooperating witness could do for us.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 17: And I was prepared to send him home because of.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 16: My disbelief at the time.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: At 2.30 in the morning of January 17, 1996, the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: informant paged the FBI. The call roused investigators from sleep
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: to a secret meeting. The informant claimed to have found Guthrie.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: He was finishing dinner with a friend when Guthrie unexpectedly
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: showed up. The informant invented a reason for being in
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Cincinnati and engaged the suspect in small talk. Can I
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: talk to you outside? Sure, come on. Guthrie invited him
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: out to his van to continue the conversation in private.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: While they sat in the parking lot, the suspect asked
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: his old friend to reconsider joining the gang. Guthrie showed
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: off an assault rifle and a bag of armor-piercing bullets.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: The informant provided a partial license plate number and description
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: of Guthrie's van. Agents still doubted his credibility.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 17: So I had Agent Woods arrange to have the cooperating
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 17: witness in the FBI office at 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 17: I didn't want him to know why he was there.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 17: I just wanted him to be there. And then I
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 17: arranged for my division's polygraph examiner to be there, and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 17: I wanted a polygraph of him.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 16: I wanted to make sure that what he was telling
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 16: us was true.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: The informant agreed to take a lie detector test. The
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: examiner determined that the young man had been deceptive in
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: his answers during the test.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 18: I'm telling the truth.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: Listen.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: The piece of paper there, this polygraph doesn't lie. He
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: insisted he was telling the truth. Make a quick phone call.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 6: Please, let me make one phone call.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: One second.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 16: I can prove it.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 18: I can prove it.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: One more chance.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 9: Yes, come on.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: To prove it, he placed a call to the friend
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: with whom he had had dinner.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 13: Hey, what's going on, man?
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Good, man. Yeah. The speakerphone allowed the agents to hear everything.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 18: Without prompting, the friend immediately asked about his time with Guthrie.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 17: So now we had to make a decision, and the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 17: decision is do we believe the polygraph or do we
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 17: believe the phone call? I think at the time, I
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 17: think the decision we made was the right one, and
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 17: that is we have to believe the phone call.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 16: It was an unprovoked response by the friend.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: The informant arranged to meet Guthrie on Monday at their
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: mutual friend's apartment. FBI agents assembled an arrest team. They
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: staked out the location, ready to capture the suspect when
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: he arrived. The informant waited inside the apartment. The friend
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: did not know why the meeting had been arranged. Guthrie
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: had promised to come sometime between 4 and 5 p.m.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: 5 o'clock came and went, without the white supremacist arriving.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: The informant knew that more than his credibility was at stake.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: So was his cooperation agreement. If the FBI believed he
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: had deceived them, they would turn him over to prosecutors
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: for bank robbery. At 5.20, there was still no sign
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: of Guthrie. It looked like the suspect would not show up. Outside,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: the arrest team grew impatient. Hey, what's up?
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 17: Yeah, he's here.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: It was Guthrie on the phone. He said they could
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: meet at a nearby pizza restaurant in 30 minutes. All right,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: The informant needed to get word to the arrest team.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: He told his buddy he was going out for cigarettes.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: The informant told the agents about the call.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 14: They alerted the SWAT team to the new location.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 18: Several cars set.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: Out for the pizza parlor. The agents could not help
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: but wonder if this was the location or just another diversion.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: Along the way, traffic separated the arrest team. One agent
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: was passing a convenience store parking lot when he spotted Guthrie.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: He turned around and radioed to the others that the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: suspect had been sighted. Guthrie got into his van and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: started driving. The agent stayed on the van's tail, hoping
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: the rest of the team would catch up. He was alone,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: following a suspect considered highly dangerous. But he was determined
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: not to let Richard Guthrie get away. In January 1996,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: the FBI pursued Richard Guthrie. The suspect was wanted for
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: 22 bank robberies. An agent separated from the arrest team
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: had spotted the suspect at a Cincinnati parking lot and
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: began tailing his man. He reported by radio his progress
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: to the others. Guthrie noticed that he was being followed.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: An informant had reported that he was armed with automatic
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: weapons and armor-piercing bullets. The suspect tried to lose his tail.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: The arrest team caught up with a lone agent and
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: joined the chase. Guthrie couldn't shake them. He unwittingly turned
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: into a cul-de-sac. Trapped, he abandoned his van. Agent Ed
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: Wood sprinted right behind him. He caught up to the gunman.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 6: It was almost as if it was in slow motion
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 6: where like you could almost read his mind, what he's thinking.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: He's thinking, I believe, is this it? Is this the
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: last standoff of this white supremacist? And quite frankly, what
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 6: I expected him to do was to turn and start firing.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: Guthrie came to a riverbank. He had no escape. Agents
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: boxed him in.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 16: I've been in law enforcement for over 20 years, and
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 16: I've never.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 17: Seen a look on a face like Guthrie's at the time.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 17: And Guthrie, as he was looking at us, he was
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 17: deciding whether he wanted to die right then. He was
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 17: deciding whether he wanted to pull a gun and take
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 17: on everybody who was standing there.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: The suspect chose to live. He submitted to arrest.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 17: Catching him, it was a huge relief. And catching him
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 17: to where there was no violence attached to the arrest
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 17: was even a greater relief.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Once in custody, Guthrie began talking. He told investigators how
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: he stayed in touch with the other primary suspect, Peter Langan.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: The friends used coded voicemails to contact one another. He
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: handed over his pager and PIN number. He claimed his
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: next meeting with Langan was to be in Indianapolis. Guthrie's
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: lawyer made an agreement with the FBI. For later consideration
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: in sentencing, they could take the suspect with them to
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: use as bait. Under the arrangement, the accompanying agents weren't
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: allowed to question Guthrie about his crimes. Agent Welker sought
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: another way to ply information from the bandit's leader.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 16: I assigned two agents to guard him.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 17: One agent is a former Harrier pilot in the Marine Corps,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 17: and the other is our principal firearms instructor. And of course,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 17: over a two-day period, there was a lot of discussion
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 17: going on.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 16: I was well aware that Guthrie had.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 17: An interest in flying, and he had a keen interest
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 17: in weapons.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: During the trip, the agents engaged Guthrie in long conversations
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: about common interests. The congenial strategy worked. the assailant warmed
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: up to his accompanying agents and began volunteering information on
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: the robberies. Guthrie admitted that he had lied to investigators.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: His rendezvous was really supposed to take place in Columbus, Ohio,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: not Indianapolis, where the investigators had taken him. He gave
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: them the address of a safe house. He told them
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: Langan was heavily armed. He would not come out without
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: a fight. An FBI arrest team assembled the next morning
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: in Columbus. Langan's van was parked next to the duplex
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: Guthrie had described. The plan was to wait until the
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: suspect exited his home and got into his van. Then
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: as he pulled out, FBI cars would box him in.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: This would contain him and prevent a vehicular pursuit. All
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: escape avenues were blocked off. At 9.30 AM, Langan left
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: the duplex carrying a canvas bag Agents suspected this held
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: an assault weapon. He got into his van, but failed
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: to start the engine. The arrest team waited for the word.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 17: Once he was observed getting into the van, the adrenaline
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 17: for everyone there was flowing. Everyone knew something was going
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 17: to happen.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: The suspect sat motionless. Agents didn't know if he was
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: planning something. He seemed as if he anticipated the arrest. Finally,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: the signal went out to move in.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 9: Let's take him. Let's take him.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: In what agents thought was a suicide move, Langan had
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: decided to put up a fight. On January 18th, 1996,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: the suspected leader of 22 bank robberies decided to shoot
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: it out with an FBI SWAT team. Supervisory Special Agent
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: David Welker of the Cincinnati office led the arrest team.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 17: Someone who's going to pull a gun on 20 or
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 17: more FBI agents is one nasty dude.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 16: He's one nasty criminal.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Peter Langan was one gun against many. SWAT team bullets
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: pummeled the van. It was over within moments, but not
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: before 50 rounds had been fired. Langan survived and surrendered.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: Despite the hail of bullets, he suffered only minor injuries
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: to the face and back. After two years of pursuit,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: the leaders of the Midwestern Bank Bandits were now in custody.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: Two other accomplices remained at large. The van was filled
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: with semi-automatic guns, ammunition and grenades. Inside the canvas bag,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: agents found a nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol. It was the
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: same make of weapon that the bank bandits used. Evidence
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: inside the duplex confirmed the bandits were more than a
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: gang of thieves. The house contained an armory big enough
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: to equip a small cadre of terrorists. Agents found ski masks,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: FBI hats, police uniforms, and false IDs from nearly every
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: state of the union. Books and literature detailed the gang's
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: creed of militant hate.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 14: I'm Commander Pedro.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Investigators discovered a tape among the propaganda. It targeted young
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: white males for recruitment into the Aryan Republican Army.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 19: Please have a seat.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: A Columbus bank teller had briefly glimpsed the face of
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: one of the bandits 17 months earlier. Detectives gave her
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: a photo lineup, hoping she could remember enough to make
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: an ID. Despite the intervening months, she picked out Langan
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: from the array of similar-looking men. While Langan refused to cooperate,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: Guthrie agreed to tell all he knew. Agents debriefed him
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: 10 hours a day for 10 straight days. He could
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: recall all the places, times, and dates. It took 99
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: pages to detail the 22 robberies. But when it came
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: to his at-large accomplices, Guthrie only knew their first names.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: The bank bandits had been assembled like an underground terrorist cell.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: Personal information on others was kept to a minimum to
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: prevent capture. Guthrie could only offer that the man he
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: knew only as Scott was involved in music. The man
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: he knew as Kevin was the nephew of a police officer.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: Both lived in the Philadelphia area. The scant information was
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: forwarded to Pennsylvania. Special Agent Joe Hendrickson of the Philadelphia
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: FBI Field Office was initially overwhelmed by the request.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 13: There was no hope of finding these people with that information.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 13: I sat back and had a cup of coffee, and
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 13: then I said, well, I'll go contact the Philadelphia Police Department,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 13: and there's a possibility that maybe their personnel records indicate nephews,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 13: but I was surprised. in much doubt that that type
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 13: of record existed because I know that in my outfit,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 13: I did not list nieces and nephews in my personnel file.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia had 7,000 police officers, any one of which could
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: be Kevin's uncle. The search began at the Intelligence Division
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: of the Police Department. An officer knew immediately who the
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: FBI was looking for. The division had been keeping tabs
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: on white supremacists in the area. Intelligence officers had kept
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: them under surveillance for over a year. Officers often spotted
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: them meeting on a farm belonging to Mark Thomas.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 13: Over the years, the Philadelphia Police Department had been taking
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 13: down tags at various rallies and so forth. And at
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 13: some point in time, they took down a tag, ran
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 13: the tag, and it came out to Kevin McCarthy. And
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 13: then they said, you know, we've got a lieutenant here
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 13: that has that name. They contacted him, and lo and behold,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 13: they found out that Kevin McCarthy was attending Aryan Nation rallies.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Hendrickson put a surveillance squad on Kevin McCarthy they observed
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: him repeatedly visiting a recording studio in Philadelphia Agents noted
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: the license numbers of the cars outside the business. They
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: ran the plates for all the people going in and out.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: One of the vehicles belonged to a man named Scott Stedeford.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: He managed the studio and also played drums in McCarthy's band.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: From his amateur photo, Guthrie confirmed that this was the
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Scott he had worked with. Using that same photo, A
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: witness also recognized Stediford as the getaway driver in the
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: Des Moines robbery. An arrest warrant was sent to Philadelphia.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: The studio presented too many risks for officers to invade
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: and force. Agents could not be sure who was inside
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: and what weapons might be hidden. They didn't want another shootout.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 15: I'm writing it for my mom, actually, and these are the.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 16: Lyrics I came up with.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Two undercover agents posed as father and daughter. The female
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: agent asked Stediford about the cost of studio time. She
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: claimed she wanted to record a song for her mother.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: As Stediford considered a quote, the undercover agents confirmed that
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: he was alone and unarmed. The agents drew on him.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: they placed him under arrest. The FBI did not have
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: an arrest warrant for Kevin McCarthy. They feared that he
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: would run once he heard about Stediford's capture.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 13: What we ended up doing was we brought his uncle,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 13: the Philadelphia police officer, with us. We felt that with
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 13: his blood relative, the law enforcement presence, and the total
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 13: set of circumstances that we hoped that he would somehow
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 13: be convinced that the thing.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: To do would be to cooperate. The uncle entered the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: basement bedroom. He disarmed his sleeping nephew. The agent woke
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: the young man. He began explaining that it was in
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: McCarthy's best interest to cooperate with the FBI. Only suspicion
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: tied the young man to the crimes. The agent needed
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: a confession. He showed McCarthy the 99-page admission made by Guthrie.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 13: And when he saw this report, describing every bank robbery,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 13: what they did, where they went. He realized that we
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 13: had all the information. He just didn't realize that we
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 13: had no evidence.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: The young man was overwhelmed. He voluntarily turned over the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: weapon and clothing he used in the robberies. When he
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: began to confess, his uncle stopped him and advised him
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: to get a lawyer.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 16: Get your lawyer.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: With all the suspects now in custody, agents considered their
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: investigation wrapped up. On July 3rd, 1996, Richard Guthrie pleaded
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: guilty to 19 bank robberies. He agreed to testify against
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: his accomplices. With his cooperation, prosecutors considered their case airtight.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: Nine days later, the cooperating witness hang yourself in a
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: jail cell. The suicide devastated the government's case.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 6: Now, that created a major problem for the prosecution because
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 6: since Guthrie could no longer be cross-examined, his information couldn't
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 6: be used directly against Langan.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: If the other bank bandits were going to be convicted,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: the FBI had to find someone else who could corroborate
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: Guthrie's confession. In 1996, the legal case against the Midwestern
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: bank bandits was on the verge of collapse. The chief
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: cooperating witness had killed himself. Without his testimony, the evidence
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: against his captured co-defendants was slim. Special Agent Joe Hendrickson
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: spearheaded the investigation in Philadelphia.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 13: These bank robbers were very, very good. Evidence that they
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 13: left behind at every robbery was zero. They were fully masked,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 13: fully gloved. Their weapons were untraceable.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Hendrickson helped convince Kevin McCarthy to plead guilty and turn
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: state's witness. But prosecutors needed more than one cooperating felon
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: to convict the others. Investigators focused on the man who
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: had steered suspects into the Aryan Republican Army. Mark Thomas
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: had turned Scott Stediford and Kevin McCarthy into outlaws. Thomas
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: edited a newsletter and web page for white supremacists. His
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: literature and videos had swayed many young men into racist
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: and anti-government organizations.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 13: And we felt that even though he was not personally
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 13: involved in these crimes, that he had caused these crimes
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 13: to come about, and therefore he was responsible. and based
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 13: on conspiracy laws, we felt that it was quite possible
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 13: to go after him for conspiring to commit bank robbery.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: The FBI made weekly contact with Thomas at his Pennsylvania farm.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: They wanted to know about his activities, but more important,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: they wanted to keep pressure on him. They made it
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: clear that they suspected him and weren't going away.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 7: Cool.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy told investigators that he and Scott Stediford had
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: stayed at Thomas' home. He acted like a father figure
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: to them and warned them of the coming race war.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: He brought the young men to live in Elohim City,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: a white separatist compound in Oklahoma. During the summer of 1994,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: Thomas invited them to join the Aryan Republican Army. In mid-October,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: Scott steadily agreed. He participated in his first bank robbery
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: two weeks later. On November 13th, Thomas drove Kevin McCarthy
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: to Arkansas for an introduction to Langdon and Guthrie. The
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: teenager heard them boast of successfully robbing banks throughout the Midwest.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 11: The 17-year-old joined up.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: Agents also learned from McCarthy that Thomas took $ 100 in
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: stolen money for the start of an Aryan war chest.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Over the months of contact, agents caught Thomas in several
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: lies about his activities. They took what they had to U.S. prosecutors.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 13: The United States Attorney's Office decided that based on the
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 13: cooperating witnesses' testimony, we were going to arrest him. Even
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 13: though it was a very slim case, it was a
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 13: close call, as the United States Attorney's Office would say,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 13: but we're gonna put out an arrest warrant for him.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: Thomas heard that the FBI was going to pick him
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: up on a charge of conspiracy. He agreed to surrender
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: after calling the media to witness the event.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: He told the press.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: Their presence prevented his assassination. Thomas pleaded not guilty at
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: his arraignment hearing on February 4th, 1997. He asked to
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: meet with the FBI the next day. That's where Mark
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Thomas caved. He signed a seven page plea agreement that
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: corroborated Kevin McCarthy's confession. The government's case was now solid.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 13: This was the biggest surprise of anyone involved in the case.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 13: The idea that the head of the movement, after one
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 13: day in prison, would decide to completely cooperate was just unfathomable.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 13: But apparently our pressure over the six months of continually
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 13: talking to him and then the one night in prison
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 13: was enough for him to decide that he had been
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 13: completely wrong in his ideals and that he wanted to,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 13: as he said, get right with God.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: Mark Thomas was sentenced to nine and a half years
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: in prison. Peter Langan was convicted on bank robbery and
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: gun charges. He received life without parole. Kevin McCarthy got
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: five years. His testimony helped convict Scott Steadiford on two
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: counts of armed bank robbery. We don't need that. The
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: court sentenced Stediford to 29 and a half years. In America,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: extremist groups enjoy the freedom to maintain their beliefs. They
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: are constitutionally protected until they cross the legal line. If
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: they engage in outlaw activities, they will find the FBI
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: on a mission to stop. As crack cocaine tore through Washington, D.C.,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: a drug gang fought to take control. Authorities fought back
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: with everything they had. But gang members used any means
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: to avoid prosecution. As the violence raged out of control,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: law enforcement took back the streets.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: In the early 1990s, Washington, D.C. became the murder capital
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: of the nation. Few were left untouched by gang violence,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: which was ignited by the drug trade. By 1994, that
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: violence would strike at the very heart of law enforcement.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: I would fall to the FBI to lead.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: An international manhunt and bring in the leader of the
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: city's most vicious gang.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: October 26th, 1994. The nation's capital was about to become
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: the backdrop to another bloody crime. Just before midnight, three
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: masked gunmen broke into a home in the northwest section
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: of the city.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 14: Get up!
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 13: Get up!
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 10: Get up!
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 7: Matt!
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: They targeted Gerald Gaither, demanding his cash and drugs. He
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: turned over what little money he had in his pockets.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: The owner of the home, William Ragland, was accosted while
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: working in his basement. Upstairs, one of the gunmen discovered
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: Nancy Hatchett and Darlene Hatchett, Ragman's daughter and granddaughter.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: Get out there.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Get to the living room.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 7: Go.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: To convince Gaither to cooperate, the gunmen terrorized each of
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: the residents.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 7: Get out.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 6: Get out.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: The women were ordered to lie face down on the floor.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Hands out. Tell them, come on up, man.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 7: Come on up, man.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: Tell us where the money and the drugs are.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 12: Where is it?
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: Where is it? Gaither denied having more cash or drugs.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 7: Put your hands down now.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: One of the gunmen turned his. 22 caliber handgun towards Raglan.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: The 89-year-old retired federal worker died instantly. Andre Madison, another resident,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: was hustled into the living room. One of the three
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: attackers noticed his gold necklace and ripped it from his neck.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: The one man was dead. Gaither still refused to cooperate. Enraged,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: one of the gunmen began shooting the residents. The robbery
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: attempt collapsed into murder. The trio quickly fled the house.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: One of the attackers vomited near the back door. Nancy
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Hatchet called 911. Officers from D.C. 's Metropolitan Police Department
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: quickly arrived at the house, located in a known drug area. Inside,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: three people were dead. William Ragland, his granddaughter Darlene Hatchett,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: and Gerald Gaither. Pictures were taken of each body and
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: shell casings were collected. Outside, police discovered vomit near the door.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Nancy Hatchet and Andre Madison, the only survivors, tried to
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: help police develop suspects. But the attackers were masked, making
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: identification difficult. For Metropolitan Homicide Detective Anthony Brigadini, A check
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: on victim Gerald Gaither suggested a possible motive.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 4: The main victim of the triple was a drug dealer
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: in the 1st and Kennedy Street area. The guy drove
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 4: flashy cars, had nice clothes, had a lot of money.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 4: When the drug dealer was unable to give them enough
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: money and or drugs, things started to get a little harried,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 4: and that's when the shootings occurred inside.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: Neighbors told police that after hearing gunshots, they saw a
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: dark colored sedan with a loud muffler leaving the area.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: An all points bulletin was issued for the vehicle and
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: three men inside. One hour after the murders, two DC
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: cops spotted a noisy vehicle that fit the report. Noticing
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: three men inside the vehicle, the officers pulled over the
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: gray SUV. The police asked the men for identification. The
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: driver was identified as Benny Lee Lawson. The passengers were
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: determined to be Kobe Mowat. and Jermaine Gray. In one
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: of their pants pockets, police recovered a broken gold necklace.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: But details from the murder scene were still incomplete. For
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: the officers, the necklace was meaningless. After recording all of
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: the men's names and addresses, the three were soon released.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: There was no evidence in the car to connect them
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: to the murders. Despite the lack of solid suspects, homicide
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: detectives believe that Gerald Gaither had been murdered by a
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: rival drug gang. By 1990, crack cocaine had hit the
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: streets in Washington, D.C. Neighborhood gangs began to emerge throughout
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: the city when it became clear that there was a
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: lot of money to be made from dealing the drug.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: As more and more money flowed to the gangs, They
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: resorted to violence to protect their turf from rival drug dealers.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: By 1994, the nation's capital was averaging nearly 400 homicides
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: a year. DC police joined forces with the FBI and
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: several federal agencies to combat the drug-related violence. Most of
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the murders remained unsolved. Hoping to rattle free a lead
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: in a triple murder, detectives began canvassing the neighborhood where
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: the murders took place. Neighbors were too afraid to openly cooperate.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: Some were willing to phone in information anonymously. One tip
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: led to Benny Lee Lawson. one of the three men
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: pulled over the night of the homicides. Investigators learned that
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: the gold necklace taken from Andre Madison matched the one
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: officers found on one of the men in Lawson's car.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: Detective Brigadini questioned Lawson.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 4: Lawson's interview lasted about three or four hours and different
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 4: detectives went in and spent some time with Lawson in
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 4: an attempt to get him to provide some sort of
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 4: information about his involvement in the triple murder.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 16: Sit up.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 11: Look at me.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: Lawson repeatedly denied having any knowledge of the triple murder
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: and refused to take a polygraph test. Investigators tried to
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: shake his story with the false threat that they could
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: put him at the murder scene through a DNA test
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: of the recovered vomit. Lawson remained unswayed. After four hours,
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: police had no choice but to release him. Lawson's name
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: was run through the crime database. He had been identified
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: by police intelligence units as a member of one of
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: DC's most violent and feared street gangs. The first in
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's street crew, named after the city blocks the group
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: lived on and controlled. Organized in 1988, the crew was
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: involved in drug dealing, theft, kidnappings, drive-by shootings, and murder.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: The men with Benny Lawson the night of the murders,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: Kobe Mowat and Jermaine Graves, confronted him about the long
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: hours he spent with the homicide detectives. They believed he
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: had snitched and told the police about the gang's involvement
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: in the triple murder. Blossom was infuriated by the accusation.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: He hated the police. He assured the two that he
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: had revealed nothing to investigators. Since no arrests had been made,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: Graves was confident the cops had no evidence. Mullen was
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: not as sure. He declared that he would leave the
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: country rather than be indicted for murder. Lawson vowed he
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: would never go back to prison where he once had
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: been raped. Lawson returned home that night. Being labeled a
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: snitch was an insult to his loyalty towards the crew.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: And for a gang member on the streets, it was
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: a death sentence. He was committed to gaining back the
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: respect of the crew, proving that he was not a snitch.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: On November 22nd, 1994, a few days before Thanksgiving, Benny
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Lawson returned to Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. It was around 3.15 p.m.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: He was trying to locate the homicide department he had
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: visited several days earlier. He asked two teenagers for directions.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: They mistakenly led him to the cold case squad. The
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: team inside the office was made up of personnel from
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: the MPD and the FBI, whose job was to breathe
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: life into the growing number of unsolved homicide investigations. Inside
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: the office were FBI agents Martha Dixon Martinez, John Kufta,
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: Mike Miller, and Metropolitan Police Sergeant Hank Daly. The teenagers,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: who were there for a scheduled appointment, began to speak
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: with the officers. With no warning, Lawson pulled out his
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: M-11 assault handgun and started firing. The headquarters of the Washington, D.C.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: police was under attack. Repeated gunfire echoed through Washington, D.C.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: police headquarters. Detectives raced to the third floor office where
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: the shooting continued. No one knew what was going on
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: behind the locked doors of the cold case squad room.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: Open up the door!
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 7: Come on, open up the door!
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: Across town at the FBI's Washington field office.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 19: It was just a normal day like any other day.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 19: and we were monitoring one of the police radios, and
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 19: we heard a call go out that there had been
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 19: a shooting at MPD headquarters.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: Agents quickly determined the shooting was taking place inside the
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: cold case office, where several FBI agents were on duty.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 19: And very quickly, we started to page our agents that
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 19: were assigned to the cold case homicide squad to try
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 19: to account for all of them. And as time progressed,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 19: we weren't hearing back from some of the agents, and
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 19: we realized that we might have some agents inside there.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 19: And as we listened, the calls became more serious, and
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 19: they were requesting assistance.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: Critically wounded, Special Agent John Kufta was trapped inside the
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: Gold Case squad office. When the shooting had stopped, he
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: could hear the shouts from officers outside the office trying
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: to get in. Help was just a few feet away.
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 14: At that point, I heard a voice tell me that
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 14: they couldn't get in, and I thought to myself, you know,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 14: I'm not going to die in here. I thought of,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 14: you know, my wife, my eight-month-old daughter at the time,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 14: and I knew that if I stayed awake, if I
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 14: continued to breathe, if I continued to pray, and if
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 14: they got me to a hospital, I'd be alive.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: Shot in the thigh, arm, stomach, neck, and chest. Krufta
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: managed to open the door. The detectives pulled.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 7: Him out.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: The only other visible person to the rescuers was Metropolitan
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: Police Sergeant Hank Daly. Barely clinging to life, he was
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: dragged from the room. He was rushed outside where a
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: helicopter waited to transport him to the hospital. Not knowing
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: if the shooter was planning another ambush, the officers waited
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: for the SWAT team to arrive. FBI agents and SWAT
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: teams from around the capital converged on the Metropolitan Police headquarters.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: Yells continued from inside the room as the SWAT team arrived.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: Heavily armed, they entered the room. They first discovered FBI
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: agent Mike Miller's body. His weapon was still in its holster.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: In an adjoining room, the SWAT team discovered the body
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: of an unidentified black male. There was a gunshot wound
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: on his hip and a fatal wound to his head.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: FBI agent Martha Dixon Martinez was the final victim found.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: She had gunshot wounds in her back. Near her lay
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: the gun the shooter had likely used to kill her
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: and the others, an M11 assault weapon. Shouts for help
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: came from inside a closet.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 16: Suspect in the closet, open the door slowly.
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: Not knowing if he was a suspect or an innocent bystander.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: The SWAT team apprehended one of the teens who had
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: walked in the room before the shooting began. The other
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: teenager had managed to flee the office earlier after being
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: shot in the leg. Supervisory Special Agent Mark Giuliano and
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: other agents arrived at the scene.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 19: I just remember walking through the hallway and just seeing
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 19: the chaotic scene and the blood and just the total.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 19: Realm of emotions on everybody's face from, you know, being
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 19: focused on the mission of trying to figure out what
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 19: happened and could there be other people involved.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: Based on the crime scene analysis, investigators quickly reconstructed what
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: had happened inside the home. After Miller, Kufta, and Daly
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: were ambushed, Agent Dixon Martinez joined the firefight. She was
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: able to shoot the suspect in the hip before being
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: shot in the arm, dropping her gun. The attacker took
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: her nine millimeter handgun and shot the agent in the
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: back as she tried to crawl for cover. He then
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: Police fingerprinted the shooter. Hopefully his identity would shed light
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: on his actions. Two FBI agents were dead. Sergeant Hank
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Daly would not survive his injuries. It would be the
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: first time in eight years that more than one FBI
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: agent had been killed at a single time. It was
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: also one of the worst attacks in history on the
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: DC police. Agent Kufta would endure seven major medical operations
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: before recovery. The loss of his co-workers, Sergeant Hank Daly,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: Agents Mike Miller and Martha Dixon Martinez was devastating.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 14: Martha, Mike, and Hank were law enforcement heroes. They didn't
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 14: as much lose their lives as gave their lives for
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 14: a cause of justice, for a cause that they so
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 14: deeply believed.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: Within hours, the investigation was moving forward. The fingerprints of
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: the shooter had come back.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 4: When the information came up about the identity of the shooter,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 4: a detective had the information, came into a conference area
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 4: where the majority of the homicide officials and detectives were,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 4: and it was announced that the shooter was Benny Lee Lawson, Jr.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: When homicide detective Anthony Brigadini heard the news, he realized
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: his squad was the probable target of Lawson's rampage. Lawson
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: and the 1st and Kennedy Street crew were the prime
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: suspects in the triple murder of William Ragland, Darlene Hatchett,
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: and Gerald Gaither. The shootings at headquarters showed just how
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: far the gangs would go to protect themselves.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 4: I think that law enforcement as a whole has learned
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 4: that people operating gangs or crews are serious about what
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 4: it is that they're doing. They won't stop at any
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 4: cost to get their mission accomplished.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: Now that federal officers have been murdered, the FBI was
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: given jurisdiction in the investigation of the crew.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 4: I was detailed to work jointly with the FBI to
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 4: investigate the 1st and Kennedy Street crew, who at that
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 4: time we felt were responsible for essentially Lawson's actions here
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 4: at police headquarters.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: After joining the task force, Rigodini shared what he knew
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: about Benny Lawson and the crew. Special Agent John Kerr
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: was on the team. For him, Benny Lawson's connection with
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: the 1st and Kennedy Street crew raised serious questions.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 12: Was this just a random act by Benny Lee Lawson,
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 12: or were there accomplices? Did he have any help in this?
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 12: Were there going to be any further attacks on agents
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 12: and police? So that was a reason that we opened
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 12: up an investigation to answer those questions.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: Was this a conspiracy? Investigators obtained a search warrant that
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: night for the house Lawson had lived in. Police, get out! Police,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: get out! In his room, they uncovered a note written
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: to the members of the D.C. Homicide Unit who had
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: interrogated him. threatening to kill them. Gang related materials, violent
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: rap lyrics, and drawings of murders were everywhere. For investigators,
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: the items in Lawson's room reflected a fixation with violence
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: common to virtually all gang members.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 12: It was very obvious and disturbing that these individuals were
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 12: living this lifestyle.
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: This is the lifestyle that they were a part of,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: this is the lifestyle.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 12: That they identified with, and they wanted to actually live
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 12: the same lifestyle as the lyrics that they were writing,
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 12: the pictures they were drawing, and the videos that they had.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: As the victims of the shootings were laid to rest,
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: investigators were planning their strategy to ensure that these gang
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: members could never kill again. With six homicides on their hands,
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: including two FBI agents and a Washington, D.C. police detective,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: a joint FBI-MPD task force began gathering information on the
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: First and Kennedy Street group. FBI agent Mark Giuliano headed
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: up the task force.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 19: And our goal was to, A, investigate the crew because
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 19: they were a violent street gang. and B, to try
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 19: to determine what the motivation was of Benny Lee Lawson
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 19: to come into police headquarters and do what he did,
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 19: and to determine if there was anybody else involved at
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 19: either end, either in helping him get there to pull
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 19: off what he did or helping the crew afterwards cover
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 19: up what had happened.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: In the wake of the shootings at MPD headquarters, police
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: pressure on gang members increased. The crew members reacted by
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: spending less time on the streets. Building a case against
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: them for their criminal activity would be difficult. The crew
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: was impenetrable to outsiders. Planting an undercover agent inside the
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: gang was too dangerous.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 19: What we realized is that, A, we had a very
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 19: close crew. That is, they took care of each other
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 19: and watched each other very closely. They were very, very
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 19: leery of outsiders. They had been leery before, but they
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 19: were even more leery now, and that any attempts for
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 19: us to get somebody, an agent or a police officer
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 19: on the inside, was not something that we were going
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 19: to even attempt to do.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: Instead, agents would have to gather intelligence on the crew
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: through covert surveillance. As time went on, the gang returned
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: to business as usual. The FBI was watching.
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 12: We had extensive surveillance coverage of the area, day and night,
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 12: identifying everyone that came onto the block, identifying who the
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 12: buyers were, what time of day, where did they go
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 12: when they bought, did they get into a car, did
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 12: they go into an alleyway, did they do it hand-to-hand
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 12: right there in front of you. All these things we
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 12: started to take notice of and document.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: Through surveillance, the leaders of the crew were soon identified.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: Kobe Mowat and his second-in-command, Jermaine Graves, the two men
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: in the car of Benny Lawson the night of the
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: first triple homicide. On the streets, Mowat was known to
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: be violent and unpredictable.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 19: The reputation of Kobe Mowat was that of fear, that
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 19: he would react quickly.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 9: At times, he had a temper.
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 19: He always carried a gun and could be extremely violent
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 19: at times.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: Looking into Coben's past, investigators discovered he shared a common
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: history with Graves and with Benny Lawson. Their relationship developed
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: in 1990 while serving together in Washington, D.C. 's Lorton Prison,
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: located in Northern Virginia. They had been arrested and convicted
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: for weapons violations while preparing for a drive-by shooting at
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: another gang. The task force members were convinced that Mowat
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: and Graves played some role in all six murders. But
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: the leaders of the 1st and Kennedy street crew continued
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: to keep a low profile. Agents devised a long-term strategy
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: that would net not only Mowat and Graves, but also
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: the entire gang membership. They would slowly build a conspiracy
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: case against the crew that would include the entire range
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: of their criminal activities. From crack cocaine trafficking.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 18: Agents would work themselves inside by first targeting individuals who
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 18: regularly purchased.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: Their drugs from the crew. This would allow them to
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: watch and record the gang committing crimes. And by arresting
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: the buyers, agents would have leverage to turn them into informants.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 12: We'd come into an area when we thought that they'd
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 12: be the most active in selling drugs. And in order
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 12: to identify someone and hopefully get lucky, catch someone with
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 12: some drugs and maybe force them to work for us
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 12: at some point.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: Some of the buyers arrested were unwilling to cooperate at first.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: The dangerous reputations of Mowat and Graves were well known.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: But the threat of long prison sentences was powerful. The
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: FBI strategy paid off. Threatened with significant jail time. one
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: of the biggest drug suppliers to the crew decided to
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: become an informant. At the FBI's direction, he would generate
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: conversation with crew members about their illegal activities.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 19: And he'd have conversations with them, and they'd like to
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 19: brag about what they've done. And at our direction, he
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 19: would bring something up, say an old drive-by shooting or
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 19: an old murder or something about drug dealing. and these
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 19: individuals would just start to talk about it. They'd talk
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 19: about who was involved, what happened.
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 9: All of this was being recorded.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: Through the informant and the recordings, agents learned that Mowat, Graves,
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: and Lawson had killed previously. Less than three weeks before
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: breaking into William Ragland's house, they had kidnapped and murdered
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: another rival drug dealer. William Red Billy Woods was a
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: well-known dealer from a rival gang. Jermaine Graves arranged to
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: lure Woods to his mother's house. Once there, Mohawk Graves
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: and Lawson robbed him and beat.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 4: Him.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: Fearing the rival gang would retaliate against the crew, they
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: shot him three times and dumped his body in the river.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: Agents also heard testimony from another informant that further implicated Mowat, Graves,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: and Lawson in the triple murder at William Ragland's house.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 19: He overheard Benny, Kobe, and Jermaine Graves talking about the
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 19: triple homicide. And one of the things that he mentioned
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 19: that they were giving Benny a hard time for was
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 19: the fact that he threw up.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 9: At the scene of the triple homicide.
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 19: That's something that only the homicide detectives knew and that
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 19: we knew and had not been released to the public.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: The information was only circumstantial, but months of surveillance and
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: informant testimony gave agents enough evidence to obtain a search
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: warrant for the homes of Kobe Mowat and Jermaine Graves.
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: They would strike at Jermaine Graves first. a heavily armed
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: SWAT team made their way inside his house. No one
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: was there. Agents would not leave empty-handed.
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 12: We were able to locate a 9mm gun, semi-automatic pistol,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 12: as well as some.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: Crack cocaine, what we believe to be crack cocaine.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 12: One of the members on the squad took the information
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 12: that we got from the gun and put together an
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 12: affidavit for an arrest warrant based on the fact that
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 12: it was a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: For several weeks, Graves eluded investigators. They continued surveillance, hoping
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: that he would turn up.
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 9: We really didn't know where he was. We had some ideas.
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 19: We knew he was still in the metro area, Obviously,
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 19: he knew once we hit his house that we were
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 19: looking for him and where it was on the street
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 19: that we were looking for him, so he was keeping
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 19: a very low profile. During one of our very standard surveillances,
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 19: I saw an individual who walked like Jermaine Graves.
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 9: Just from the back. I couldn't see his face.
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 19: So I asked one of the units to drive around
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 19: the block and just take a look at the guy.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 19: And the next thing I know, they jumped.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 9: Out and arrested him. They knew as soon as they
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 9: pulled around a corner, it was him. He was arrested
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 9: right on the street corner first in Kennedy.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: Just a few months after the first triple murder, Graves
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: was off the streets. Making a case against Kobe Mola
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: would prove more difficult. With the arrest of gang member
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: Jermaine Graves on a weapons charge, The FBI task force
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: was one step closer to taking the first and Kennedy
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: crew off of the Washington DC streets. Now agents were
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: ready to serve a search warrant on the home of
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: the crew's leader, Kobe Mowat. The SWAT team entered the
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: house Kobe shared with his twin brother, Kareem. The two
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: never knew what hit them. Investigators found gang-related documents, drawings
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: and writings, and a small amount of marijuana. They found
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: no guns or evidence of the murders. But that was
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: not their prime interest. The task force hunted for evidence
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: of a larger crime pattern.
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 19: Most of the evidence we were looking for at the
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 19: time was a list of crew members, shirts that they
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 19: all wore with the logo on them. pictures, phone books,
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 19: things that would associate this group together.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: The twins were arrested on drug charges and taken in
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: for booking. Kobe's time in jail was brief. Only his
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: brother Kareem's fingerprints were on the bag of pot. Kobe
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: was released and the possession charge was dropped. Agents were
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: determined to see him back behind bars. Investigators continued developing
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: informants from within the gang. They got the break they
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: were looking for. Facing jail time on a drug charge,
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: a member of the first and Kennedy crew agreed to cooperate. Finally,
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: investigators learned the answer to the question that had most
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: plagued them. Why did Benny Lee Lawson go into police
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: headquarters and kill two FBI agents and an MPD sergeant?
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: It started the night Kobe Mowat, Jermaine Graves, and Benny
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: Lee Lawson broke into the home of William Reitland. The
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: trio's plan had been to rob drug dealer Gerald Gaither.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: Jermaine Graves became frustrated by Gaither's refusal to cooperate, and
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: he snapped, killing three of the residents. Overwhelmed, Benny lost
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: and vomited outside the home. To Mowat, it was a
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: sign of weakness. The informant continued. When Lawson was brought
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: in for questioning by investigators, Mowat was sure Lawson had snitched.
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: He began to tell others in the crew that Lawson
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: was cooperating.
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 9: Benny hated snitches. He hated them.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 19: He actually pistol-whipped one individual whom he thought was snitching
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 19: and probably hated him more than any other crew member.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 19: So to have Kobe think that he was ratting or
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 19: snitching on him and to go out to 1st and
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 19: Kennedy Street crew and have the rest of the crew
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 19: look at him as a snitch, we believe was more
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 19: than he could handle.
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 5: Really?
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: For agents and investigators, it was now clear that Kobe Mowat,
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: Jermaine Graves, and Benny Lawson had committed the triple homicide.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: Agents took their case to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 12: Through these conversations and the cooperating witnesses, plus the information
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 12: that the police had, from the car stop the night
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 12: of the triple murder, left us no doubt that they
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 12: had enough to get.
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: A murder warrant for these guys, for the triple murder.
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: It was also clear that Kobe Mowat was part of
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: the reason Benny Lee Lawson murdered three investigators inside the
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Department. Agents finally felt ready to go before
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: a grand jury and present their conspiracy case against Kobe
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: Mowat and the entire crew. Among the 57 charges that
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: were handed down were indictments for nearly a dozen homicides,
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: drug trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, and racketeering. Already in custody,
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: Graves was charged with three counts of felony murder. An
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: arrest warrant was issued for Kobe Mowat. Investigators returned to
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: his house. This time, he wasn't home. The closets had
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: been emptied. The place looked like it had been abandoned.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: In the trash, investigators found a receipt for a plane ticket.
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: It appeared that Kobe had kept his promise to flee
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: rather than go to jail.
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 19: And the plane ticket was for just a few days
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 19: before we hit the place. And the plane ticket was
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 19: from New York. to Moscow and at that point we
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 19: knew that Kobe had most likely fled not only the
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 19: area but most likely the country.
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: Mowat was one step ahead of the agents. They tried
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: to pick up his trail in Russia but he was
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. Investigators discovered there was a flight
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: departing to Africa soon after he landed in Moscow. The
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: check of the passenger list revealed nothing. Agents grew increasingly
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: more frustrated. Mowat was slipping away. For six months, FBI
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: agents and Washington, D.C. police tried to track fugitive... Kobe Mohan.
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: He could be hiding anywhere. An international manhunt was underway.
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 9: We literally went months without a break.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 19: We went through hundreds and hundreds of documents that we
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 19: had obtained during search warrants. during various parts of the investigation,
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 19: looking for overseas phone numbers, looking for overseas relatives, once again,
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 19: without a break.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: After several months, Agent John Kerr got a break. Through
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: an informant, he uncovered the name of an ex-girlfriend of Kobe's.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 12: We had come up with addresses for one of the
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 12: addresses we came up with. We subpoenaed the toll records,
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 12: and sure enough, We found a collect call from Kenya on.
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: One of her toll records.
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 12: And this was shortly after he would have arrived in Africa.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: Agents brought her in for questioning. She repeatedly denied knowing
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: anything about Kobe Mowat's whereabouts. Agents confronted her about the
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: phone records. If she continued to withhold information, they would
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: serve her with a grand jury subpoena. She decided to cooperate.
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: She told investigators that Kobe had in fact called her
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: several times from Nairobi, Kenya. He had not called her recently.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: She believed he might have moved on to Tanzania. The
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: information was immediately passed on overseas. Moat's phone call to
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: his ex-girlfriend had originated from a hotel in Nairobi. A U.S.
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: Department of State regional security officer in Kenya followed the lead.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: The hotel owner said he had no recollection of Kobi Mowat.
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: Agent Giuliano received the news.
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 19: And it becomes very, very frustrating because, once again, we're
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 19: getting no new information, we're not getting a break, and
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 19: we know that the only tie that we have now
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 19: is this hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. So we go back
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 19: to the regional security officers and ask them to go
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 19: back out and re-interview the individual.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: Again, the hotel owner insisted he knew nothing about Kobi Mowat.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: When shown photographs, he seemed to hesitate. The regional security
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: officer kept pressing. Finally, the owner asked for a guarantee
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: that if he gave information, Kobe would never be told.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: The regional security officer agreed to protect him. He said
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: Kobe had in fact been to his hotel, but he
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: had left several months ago. He gave the security officer
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: a number that Kobe had called while at the hotel.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: The call was to the East African country of Tanzania.
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: It took agents a few days to determine why the
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: hotel owner protected the 1st and Kennedy Street crew leader.
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 19: What we determined is that Kobe's mother was educated in Jamaica,
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 19: and during that process, she had befriended several individuals who
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 19: ended up going to various parts of the world. She
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 19: had an association with this hotel owner in Nairobi, and
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 19: she had made the contact to protect Kobe and to
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 19: help him.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: You have a nice day.
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: The phone number in Tanzania eventually led investigators to a
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: local college professor. He was a friend of Kobe Mowat's mother.
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: The FBI asked the Tanzanian National Police Department to follow
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: the lead. The professor was unwilling to cooperate with the authorities.
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: Certainly not a student. The National Police began their own
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: investigation into Kobe Mowat's whereabouts in their country. As the
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: search for the gang leader intensified in Tanzania, agents and
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: police in Washington, D.C. continued to build their case against
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: the 1st and Kennedy crew. They amassed volumes of evidence
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: through surveillance and informant testimony over the previous year.
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 4: There were about 20 to 25 Metropolitan Police Department officers
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 4: and FBI special agents working on this investigation around the clock,
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 4: whether it was determining phone records or uncovering new murders
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 4: that these guys had committed over the years.
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: On September 14, 1995, officers and agents executed over a
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: dozen arrest warrants. They searched for any indication of the
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: gang leader's whereabouts in Africa. They found nothing. They collected
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: additional evidence of a criminal enterprise. They confiscated financial records, guns, drugs,
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: and gang paraphernalia. Some of those arrested agreed to cooperate
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: in exchange for less jail time. Investigators were slowly taking
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: all of the gang members off the streets. In Tanzania,
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: the search for Kobe Mowat was heating up. The National
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: Police Force developed their own informants and learned that Mowat
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: had in fact been in contact with a university professor.
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about Kobe. They returned to interview him.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: He once more denied knowing anything about Kobe. Threatening the
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: Jamaican-born professor with deportation, the Tanzanian police convinced him to reconsider. Finally,
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: he admitted to helping Maud find a place to hide out.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: He offered to take the authorities there.
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 19: And this hut is literally out in the middle of
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 19: the tribes people who are living in straw huts or
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 19: actually just living on the ground right amongst the wild
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 19: animals and amongst where they grow their crops.
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: It was the last place on earth authorities would have
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: thought to look for Mowat. Unaware that the professor had
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: betrayed his location, Mowat was surprised to see the police
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: approaching his hut. he set fire to anything that could
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: potentially identify him. But the police quickly moved in and
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: doused the flames. While they searched for a reason to
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: place him in custody, they never told Mowat why they
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: were there.
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 19: They also determined that out in the back, he's grown
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 19: a small amount of marijuana, or what they call bangi.
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 19: And in that part of the country, it's against the law.
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 19: And the penalty is 10 years in prison or $ 100.
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 19: So they brought him in based on that premise, telling
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 19: him that he was going to be incarcerated for that.
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: Investigators in Washington received the news that Mowat was in custody.
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: But time was working against them. The Tanzanian police could
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 1: only hold Kobe on the possession charge for a short period.
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: As a drug trafficker, Mowat had plenty of cash on
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: hand to pay the $ 100 fine. After days of diplomatic wrangling,
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: the arrangements for Mowat's extradition to the United States were finalized.
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: Agent Giuliano and Detective Brigadini traveled to Tanzania to take
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: him into custody. Investigators were finally face to face with
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: the man who had eluded them for over a year.
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 19: When he came in, Kobe looked tired and he looked
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 19: like he had been defeated. We explained to him what
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 19: the charges were, that he was being removed to the
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 19: United States. that he had been indicted in the United
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 19: States for a variety of charges, including several counts of
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 19: first-degree murder and racketeering.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: Mowat was on his way back to the United States,
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: where he and fellow gang members faced 57 indictments. Kobe
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: Mowat and Jermaine Graves would be convicted on all counts.
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: They were each sentenced to 35 years in a federal prison.
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: Mowat's capture in Africa allowed investigators to get the remaining
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: First and Kennedy crew members off the streets.
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 19: When we brought Kobe back to the United States, he
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 19: just had a domino effect on the rest of the
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 19: crew members.
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 9: Eventually, every crew member pled guilty.
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 19: Because they felt and actually told us that once they
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 19: saw that we had found Kobe in East Africa and
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 19: brought him back, that they felt they didn't stand a chance.
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: FBI agents and D.C. police worked tirelessly to bring justice
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: to the victims of gang violence. But this case was
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: also personal. Only after the entire gang was in jail
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: could they have a sense of closure and feel they
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: had vindicated the deaths of their friends, Sergeant Hank Daly
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: and FBI agents Mike Miller and Martha Dixon Martinez. For
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: Agent John Kufta, who barely survived the attack at police headquarters,
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 1: the implications of this case were far reaching.
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 14: When this group was locked up, I think it sent
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 14: a clear message to other criminal organizations out there operating
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 14: in the District of Columbia and in that tri-state area
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 14: there that the FBI and the DC police will go
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 14: to whatever lengths are necessary if it takes them to
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 14: other continents to track you down and find you and
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 14: bring you back to the United States to justice.
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Bye.