Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Jason Scott’s Secret Life
Transcript
- 0:12Speaker 1: Prince George's County, n I'm a one center. What is
- 0:14Speaker 1: your emergency? Grandma's been shut, mother has been shut that.
- 0:23Speaker 2: I was imagining how she had felt in that predicament.
- 0:31Speaker 2: It's just heartbreaking to be a sixteen year old girl.
- 0:37Speaker 2: A manster like that comes in and takes your life
- 0:41Speaker 2: from you.
- 0:43Speaker 3: Jason Scott was an extraordinarily dangerous criminal who masqueraded as
- 0:49Speaker 3: an ordinary person.
- 0:50Speaker 4: He's saying to you, criminal justice system, I am smarter
- 0:54Speaker 4: than you.
- 0:56Speaker 5: If you feel like somebody is watching you, they are.
- 1:00Speaker 4: I'm successful at doing it.
- 1:02Speaker 6: Why stop.
- 1:04Speaker 1: It?
- 1:04Speaker 5: Don't cross your mind and sick people like that exist.
- 1:11Speaker 5: My life was perfect before before everything happened.
- 2:00Speaker 7: For Marlboro, a suburb twenty miles east of Washington, d C.
- 2:05Speaker 7: Is home to the Lofton family, Dad Kirk, mom Karen,
- 2:13Speaker 7: two sons, Kirk Junior and Keon, and daughter Carissa.
- 2:19Speaker 8: My daughter was a very inspiring, very beautiful, a gift.
- 2:25Speaker 8: She was a gift. She went through some struggles. She
- 2:28Speaker 8: had an open heart surgery because she had something going
- 2:31Speaker 8: on with a valve in her heart and everything, and
- 2:33Speaker 8: she bounced right back like it was nothing, and she
- 2:35Speaker 8: was very strong.
- 2:42Speaker 2: I am ke On Lofton. Karen Lofton was my mother.
- 2:49Speaker 2: Carrissa was my younger sister. My mother was a really
- 2:54Speaker 2: caring person. She was in the nursing field as long
- 2:58Speaker 2: as I can remember. I remember I was being in
- 3:01Speaker 2: a little child and going with her to work with her,
- 3:06Speaker 2: and just all the love that she would get from
- 3:09Speaker 2: her coworkers.
- 3:12Speaker 8: She was probably one of the best nurses of her time.
- 3:20Speaker 2: Chrissa's personality at that around that age was typical teenage girls.
- 3:25Speaker 2: She was still trying to figure herself out, pleasant kind person.
- 3:32Speaker 2: You can see her modeling after the characteristics and values
- 3:37Speaker 2: and things that my mother instilled in all of us,
- 3:40Speaker 2: and you can just see the trajectory of the type
- 3:44Speaker 2: of woman that she was going to become.
- 3:49Speaker 7: In two thousand and eight, Kirk moves away after his
- 3:51Speaker 7: marriage to Karen breaks down, moved to Georgia.
- 3:55Speaker 8: In two thousand and eight, I was remarried, still remaining
- 3:59Speaker 8: to come take with my daughter. As matter of fact,
- 4:01Speaker 8: that she was supposed to move down here and go
- 4:03Speaker 8: to college.
- 4:10Speaker 6: Prince George's County nine on one center, What is your emergency.
- 4:14Speaker 1: Grandma's been shot. May my mother has been shut I
- 4:17Speaker 1: haven't believing.
- 4:18Speaker 8: Through that, will you slow down?
- 4:20Speaker 6: What's he address?
- 4:22Speaker 9: As you know, if we need any kind of testament
- 4:29Speaker 9: to Carrissa's courage.
- 4:33Speaker 6: This is a.
- 4:33Speaker 9: Young teenager, a sixteen year old, who has been involved
- 4:39Speaker 9: in a home invasion, which is one of the most
- 4:41Speaker 9: terrifying things anybody can imagine. She's been shot and she
- 4:45Speaker 9: has the kind of strength of mind to call nine
- 4:49Speaker 9: one one while she's bleeding and to report to them
- 4:54Speaker 9: that she has been shot, her mom has been shot,
- 4:56Speaker 9: and she tells the operator, you know, I'm bleeding to death,
- 5:00Speaker 9: please hurry. Unfortunately, the phone is hung up and by
- 5:07Speaker 9: the time they get there, it's two way.
- 5:15Speaker 2: So the night of the wear anything when everything happened,
- 5:19Speaker 2: I was at my girlfriend's house. My mother in law
- 5:23Speaker 2: now told me that two women have been found killed
- 5:29Speaker 2: on our street, and she told me to call and
- 5:33Speaker 2: check my mother and sister. So I called and nobody answered.
- 5:38Speaker 2: So I kept calling. I kept calling and nobody answered.
- 5:42Speaker 2: So I just I just got up and left and started,
- 5:44Speaker 2: you know, got in my car and was driving. It
- 5:46Speaker 2: had to be about two three o'clock in the morning,
- 5:50Speaker 2: got there to the house, probably about a ten minute drive.
- 5:56Speaker 2: Police kind of had like the street blocked off whatever
- 5:58Speaker 2: and I got out. I was trying to set trying
- 6:01Speaker 2: to see who it was, and police officer or detective
- 6:05Speaker 2: asked who I was, and I was told of my
- 6:06Speaker 2: name and he said, okay, we got the son right here.
- 6:10Speaker 2: And I just broke down him because I knew it,
- 6:13Speaker 2: kind of realization that, okay, if it was him.
- 6:18Speaker 8: I was in the room sleep and my son, my
- 6:21Speaker 8: oldest son, Kirk Jr. He called me at probably you know,
- 6:28Speaker 8: three in the morning, four in the morning something like that.
- 6:31Speaker 8: He was crying and I said, what's wrong? He said,
- 6:36Speaker 8: have you talked to key On yet? Mine Carissa got killed.
- 6:43Speaker 8: The first thing that I thought was they got into
- 6:46Speaker 8: a car accident or something like that, but then he
- 6:49Speaker 8: said they were shy. I immediately got off home with
- 6:55Speaker 8: him and I called my other son, my younger son,
- 6:57Speaker 8: and he told me that they somebody came into our
- 7:01Speaker 8: house and out of the family house in Kibos of them.
- 7:07Speaker 2: It's just just heartbreaking to be a sixteen year old
- 7:14Speaker 2: girl and be in the comfort of your own babe
- 7:18Speaker 2: and a manster like that comes in and takes your
- 7:22Speaker 2: life from you. I was imagining how she had to
- 7:30Speaker 2: felt in that in that predicament, somebody storming in, you know, shooting,
- 7:34Speaker 2: shooting you and you have to, you know, call it
- 7:38Speaker 2: nine one one, trying to get somebody to say you
- 7:40Speaker 2: is you know is it's heartbreaking.
- 7:47Speaker 7: With no signs of forced entry, the police suspect the
- 7:50Speaker 7: murders have been committed by someone with access to the
- 7:53Speaker 7: lofton's home.
- 7:58Speaker 9: They kind of step back and go, Okay, what do
- 8:00Speaker 9: we do. We start from the innermost circle and we
- 8:03Speaker 9: work our way out. Most often, sadly, those are the perpetrators.
- 8:11Speaker 9: One of the first persons to come on the radar
- 8:13Speaker 9: is Chris's older brother Kean.
- 8:21Speaker 2: Honestly, I didn't know why I was in a police car.
- 8:23Speaker 2: I had no idea.
- 8:24Speaker 4: It was.
- 8:24Speaker 2: Everything was an immediate shot right there from there. I
- 8:29Speaker 2: remember being in the interrogation room.
- 8:33Speaker 8: Does your mom set you along for the house?
- 8:36Speaker 7: Okay? All the time?
- 8:37Speaker 2: Every time?
- 8:38Speaker 8: Would you have heard your mom and sister?
- 8:40Speaker 1: Now you have heard your mom?
- 8:43Speaker 2: And I remember them letting me come out to like
- 8:48Speaker 2: one of the one of their desks and letting me
- 8:51Speaker 2: hear like a snippet of the nine.
- 8:53Speaker 1: One one called Grandma's been shut.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Anybody who's getting to accused of anything that they haven't done.
- 9:04Speaker 2: They're gonna be upset when I'm in that interrogation room
- 9:09Speaker 2: and I'm hearing them accusing me, and I'm just trying
- 9:13Speaker 2: to process, like did this really happen? Like did my
- 9:17Speaker 2: mother's just to really just get murdered? Are you guys
- 9:20Speaker 2: really accusing me of doing this? Everything just felt like
- 9:23Speaker 2: a like a nightmare or a dream, Like just felt
- 9:26Speaker 2: really surreal. I knew a thousand percent it wasn't me.
- 9:38Speaker 8: So they didn't know what to think. They didn't know
- 9:40Speaker 8: anything about who this person was. I got no finger French,
- 9:44Speaker 8: there was no forced intrigue, and all of.
- 9:47Speaker 6: A sudden, here it is.
- 9:49Speaker 9: The forty eight hours has passed, which of course is
- 9:51Speaker 9: often the critical period for getting that first lead, and
- 9:54Speaker 9: they're sitting there kind of going, we have no idea.
- 9:57Speaker 4: And if you're going down the wrong road with that,
- 10:00Speaker 4: you've allowed the individual to perhaps clean up the case,
- 10:03Speaker 4: to perhaps even be further away from the case. So
- 10:06Speaker 4: it's very important those first initial hours of any case
- 10:10Speaker 4: that you hope the investigators are on the right path.
- 10:14Speaker 7: Kirk and Keon begin to develop their own theories about
- 10:18Speaker 7: what happened.
- 10:21Speaker 8: I know how safe that Karen was, and Karen would
- 10:24Speaker 8: not let anyone in that house at two thirty six
- 10:27Speaker 8: in the morning without she would have the alarm on.
- 10:29Speaker 8: They said the alarm was just engaged.
- 10:32Speaker 2: She took that really seriously. You know, when I would
- 10:34Speaker 2: leave out to make sure the back doors locked things,
- 10:37Speaker 2: lest so to make sure the window was locked. She
- 10:39Speaker 2: was always a stickler for those things. But I'm pretty
- 10:43Speaker 2: sure I thought that, Okay, somebody forced her to put
- 10:47Speaker 2: the alarm in. It's no other explanation.
- 10:53Speaker 7: At the time of the Lofton's murders, a burglar is
- 10:56Speaker 7: successfully evading capture in the neighborhood.
- 11:03Speaker 3: Jason Scott came across his very mild mannered He held
- 11:06Speaker 3: a part time job with a packaged delivery service. It
- 11:11Speaker 3: wasn't dute as being dangerous by his friends and family,
- 11:13Speaker 3: so he was somebody who masqueraded as an ordinary person.
- 11:20Speaker 9: Jason Scott was somebody who seemed to have a lot
- 11:22Speaker 9: of potential. He was somebody who had a college degree.
- 11:26Speaker 9: He was somebody who worked at UPS. So he was
- 11:29Speaker 9: somebody who, at least on the surface, seemed to be
- 11:32Speaker 9: somebody who really had his act together.
- 11:36Speaker 7: Twenty seven year old Jason Scott has two master's degrees,
- 11:40Speaker 7: and until recently was unknown to authorities.
- 11:44Speaker 3: He had started committing robberies in his at least as
- 11:48Speaker 3: a teenager and perhaps early twenties, and had graduated from
- 11:53Speaker 3: committing robberies of unoccupied houses to home invasion robberies and
- 11:58Speaker 3: violent crime.
- 12:01Speaker 6: So at the same time that.
- 12:05Speaker 9: Jason Scott was living this kind of law abiding life
- 12:07Speaker 9: on the surface, this is somebody who, in the privacy
- 12:12Speaker 9: of his own home, seemed to be absolutely obsessed with crime,
- 12:19Speaker 9: with forensics, with understanding how to get away with crime.
- 12:25Speaker 3: One of the notable things about mister Scott is the
- 12:29Speaker 3: clothing and tools that he used during his criminal activities.
- 12:33Speaker 3: So he dressed like a criminal. He would dress all
- 12:37Speaker 3: in black, he wore black gloves, he carried a black backpack,
- 12:41Speaker 3: so he dressed like a thief.
- 12:45Speaker 9: Jason Scott spent hours of his life thinking about crime,
- 12:51Speaker 9: learning about crime, learning about forensic techniques. Almost considered himself
- 12:56Speaker 9: like a doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde. I would imagine
- 13:00Speaker 9: to some extent he feels kind of this sense of impunity,
- 13:04Speaker 9: like or the sense that I'm untouchable, Nobody's going to
- 13:07Speaker 9: catch me.
- 13:10Speaker 6: Another thing that stands out about Jason Scott is. He
- 13:13Speaker 6: was an incredibly diverse criminal.
- 13:17Speaker 9: So not only was he interested in burglary in home invasions,
- 13:25Speaker 9: he was interested in peeping.
- 13:31Speaker 6: He was interested in cruising.
- 13:32Speaker 9: The neighborhood and taking pictures of people in the privacy
- 13:35Speaker 9: their own homes who had no idea what he was doing.
- 13:39Speaker 9: It's not uncommon for that to progress to breaking it
- 13:43Speaker 9: to a home, to some kind of sexual offense.
- 13:46Speaker 4: So this progression is a natural part that we as
- 13:49Speaker 4: criminologists are concerned about with any crime that someone does,
- 13:53Speaker 4: does it then have an opportunity to develop to make
- 13:57Speaker 4: that person a criminal, a criminal that is looking for
- 14:00Speaker 4: a career. I'm doing it, I'm successful at doing it.
- 14:05Speaker 6: Why stop?
- 14:17Speaker 7: The murders of mother and daughter, Karen and Carissa Loften
- 14:21Speaker 7: have shocked this respectable Washington suburb. There's a space of
- 14:26Speaker 7: burglaries too, but the police are yet to track down
- 14:30Speaker 7: the perpetrators. Two months later, another murderer is called in.
- 14:42Speaker 10: My name is Courtney Hicks, my mother is Delora Stewitt,
- 14:47Speaker 10: and my sister is Ebony.
- 14:49Speaker 6: Do it.
- 14:52Speaker 10: My life was perfect before before everything happened. My mom
- 15:06Speaker 10: was the kindest person that I ever met. She was
- 15:09Speaker 10: always there for me, even still after everything that's happened
- 15:12Speaker 10: to me in my life, because of how my mom
- 15:14Speaker 10: taught me to believe in myself. My sister was someone
- 15:19Speaker 10: I could always depend on. I could always count on
- 15:21Speaker 10: this as well. It's my mom.
- 15:24Speaker 5: I missed him so much.
- 15:25Speaker 10: So when I got home, I like, I don't remember
- 15:42Speaker 10: if I had to disable our alarm or not, but
- 15:45Speaker 10: I just go in the house and I see my
- 15:46Speaker 10: sister's jacket on the back of the chair. Everything just
- 15:52Speaker 10: looked normal. It just looked like they just weren't there.
- 15:54Speaker 10: My mom's car was in the driveway. Everything looked normal.
- 15:57Speaker 10: It just they just weren't there. I go upstairs and
- 16:03Speaker 10: I go on my sister's room. It was no bleach
- 16:06Speaker 10: spot on my sister's floor, So that kind of like
- 16:09Speaker 10: struck me, like, Okay, maybe Ebony did come home.
- 16:11Speaker 5: She probably dropped some bleach or something there.
- 16:13Speaker 10: When I got into my bedroom, I just like sat
- 16:16Speaker 10: down on my bed. That's when I got the feeling
- 16:20Speaker 10: that you need to get out of this house. I
- 16:23Speaker 10: run out of the house. I get in her car
- 16:25Speaker 10: and I goes to my boyfriend at the Times house.
- 16:28Speaker 5: And when I got to him, I'm just.
- 16:29Speaker 10: Calling my mom and this is like now probably going on.
- 16:34Speaker 5: It was late and still no response.
- 16:43Speaker 7: The following day, Courtney hears that her mother and sister
- 16:47Speaker 7: have been murdered. Their bodies are found in a stolen
- 16:53Speaker 7: car that was then set on fire at a different address.
- 16:59Speaker 7: Police identify Dolores and Ebony through dental records.
- 17:03Speaker 10: Then they came to our house. I want to say,
- 17:05Speaker 10: was it later on that day? I believe they came
- 17:07Speaker 10: to our house and that's when they did tell us
- 17:10Speaker 10: about the deadly workers matcha my mom and my sister.
- 17:15Speaker 10: They were in the Bernie Carr when I was fifteen
- 17:24Speaker 10: my dad died, So I honestly didn't think that. I never,
- 17:29Speaker 10: in my life stop anybody like my mom and my
- 17:31Speaker 10: sister would be murdered or anything like that. This never
- 17:35Speaker 10: any I don't think anybody would think somebody they loved
- 17:38Speaker 10: would be murdered. My family was everything to me, my mom,
- 17:43Speaker 10: my dad, and my sister. I didn't have a worry
- 17:45Speaker 10: in the world.
- 17:52Speaker 9: Certainly in the murders of Dolores and Ebony Dewet. This
- 17:58Speaker 9: is somebody who engages in incredibly risky behavior. He steals
- 18:04Speaker 9: a car and the person that he steals the car
- 18:08Speaker 9: from actually witnesses this.
- 18:10Speaker 1: What's the nature of your emergency. I just left my
- 18:13Speaker 1: house maybe an hour ago, and to comeback my car
- 18:16Speaker 1: is missing out of the car board.
- 18:20Speaker 5: That's my car.
- 18:21Speaker 1: Okay, it just little past me. Wow.
- 18:26Speaker 9: So this is somebody in the middle of the day
- 18:27Speaker 9: steals a car, drives it to a house, puts two
- 18:31Speaker 9: people in there who are no longer alive, and burns
- 18:37Speaker 9: this car in a relatively short amount of time.
- 18:42Speaker 6: Wait, how riskier can you be?
- 18:46Speaker 4: It's a horrific, horrific crime scene of a burned body.
- 18:51Speaker 4: Dental records are needed to identify the individuals to know
- 18:55Speaker 4: whom they are. This does by time by moving them
- 19:00Speaker 4: to another place, by putting them in a car that
- 19:04Speaker 4: has nothing to do with them, and then burning the
- 19:07Speaker 4: bodies allows for additional time for the individual to get away.
- 19:22Speaker 10: I used to feel like people will be watching us
- 19:24Speaker 10: outside of our house. My mom will always feel like
- 19:27Speaker 10: people will be watching this. If you feel like somebody
- 19:33Speaker 10: is watching you, they are. And if you really have
- 19:35Speaker 10: that oversens and urge, I feel like somebody watching me,
- 19:38Speaker 10: I feel like somebody watching me, they are.
- 19:42Speaker 5: It don't cross your mind and sick people like that exist.
- 19:49Speaker 9: I think most of the time, when people have a
- 19:52Speaker 9: sense of being watched, they probably are. And I think
- 19:56Speaker 9: it's very very important to trust your guid and investigate,
- 20:01Speaker 9: call the police whatever you think it's going to make
- 20:03Speaker 9: you feel safe.
- 20:05Speaker 6: Too.
- 20:05Speaker 9: Many of us in the past have had these gut feelings,
- 20:10Speaker 9: had these kind of spidy senses, or the hair on
- 20:13Speaker 9: the back of our neck stands up and we talk
- 20:15Speaker 9: ourselves out of it, when really it's our body's way
- 20:18Speaker 9: of telling us that something is wrong, even though we
- 20:21Speaker 9: don't consciously know it.
- 20:27Speaker 7: There have been two mother daughter murders less than two
- 20:30Speaker 7: miles apart, in just eight weeks. Like Karen Lofton, Delores
- 20:37Speaker 7: DeWitt was a nurse and at home alone with her
- 20:40Speaker 7: teenage daughter.
- 20:42Speaker 9: In many respects, there are a lot of similarities between
- 20:46Speaker 9: the murders of Karen and Carissa Lofton and Dolores and Ebony.
- 20:52Speaker 6: And you know the.
- 20:53Speaker 9: Similarity to the course, they're both nurses, they're both single parents,
- 20:56Speaker 9: they have teenage daughters. Yet there are some significant differences.
- 21:02Speaker 9: So police know that Karen and Carissa are murdered in
- 21:05Speaker 9: their home, that they are shot to death, and this
- 21:11Speaker 9: is very, very different from Ebony and Dolores, who are
- 21:16Speaker 9: removed from their home before they are eventually found in
- 21:19Speaker 9: a burned out car. It would be really nice if
- 21:24Speaker 9: Sarah killers always did everything exactly the same, because it
- 21:28Speaker 9: would be much easier to catch them, And so it's
- 21:31Speaker 9: important to kind of step back sometimes and kind of
- 21:33Speaker 9: go Okay, Yes, there are some surface differences here, including
- 21:38Speaker 9: the way these people were murdered, but we can't rule
- 21:41Speaker 9: out the possibility, given these other similarities, that there's some
- 21:45Speaker 9: connection between the two.
- 21:48Speaker 7: At the time of the Loften and de whit murders,
- 21:51Speaker 7: police are already investigating the death of forty six year
- 21:54Speaker 7: old mother of three Vilma Butler in June two thousand
- 21:58Speaker 7: and eight. She is shot dead and found in her
- 22:04Speaker 7: burning home around fifteen miles from the Dewitts and Lofton's,
- 22:13Speaker 7: but police still do not believe they're dealing with a
- 22:16Speaker 7: serial killer.
- 22:17Speaker 4: Serial Killers usually are not this meticulous in their acts.
- 22:22Speaker 4: You know. We usually see that there's opportunity as the
- 22:25Speaker 4: main factor there is that of a special type of
- 22:28Speaker 4: person he or she is interested in committing these acts with.
- 22:33Speaker 4: But to see intelligence put together, to see elements of
- 22:36Speaker 4: information put together, this is a different ballgame. This is
- 22:41Speaker 4: a different realm.
- 22:45Speaker 10: It's unfortunate that he was able to get away with
- 22:50Speaker 10: it for so long.
- 22:53Speaker 5: And then he ended up game court.
- 23:09Speaker 7: There have been five murders in this respectable suburb since
- 23:12Speaker 7: June two thousand and eight. Police don't believe they're dealing
- 23:17Speaker 7: with a serial killer and are yet to identify a suspect.
- 23:22Speaker 7: But separately from the murders, authorities are getting closer to
- 23:26Speaker 7: catching local burglar Jason Scott.
- 23:32Speaker 3: The crimes that mister Scott committed were clustered around his
- 23:35Speaker 3: own neighborhood in Prince George's County, Maryland, which is a
- 23:38Speaker 3: suburb just east of Washington, d C. In May of
- 23:44Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, Jason Scott and his accomplished Marcus
- 23:48Speaker 3: Hunter travel up to Woodbine, Maryland to commit this robbery
- 23:51Speaker 3: of the gun shop. They stole thirty nine firearms, including
- 23:58Speaker 3: automatic weapons, machine gun silencers, and a large volume of ammunition.
- 24:05Speaker 4: Someone who moves to being involved in gun deals has
- 24:09Speaker 4: a lot of spheres of activity going on. You usually
- 24:13Speaker 4: don't expect that in someone who's involved in criminal activity.
- 24:16Speaker 4: One becomes good at one part of criminal activity, but
- 24:19Speaker 4: does not drift as we say in criminology to perhaps
- 24:23Speaker 4: having a life of regular conformity and then going to
- 24:27Speaker 4: be an innovator of criminal activity. This is what makes
- 24:31Speaker 4: this case so special. He's confident in what he does.
- 24:39Speaker 9: After doing this, he decides to make some money by
- 24:44Speaker 9: selling some of these illegal weapons. And yet I think
- 24:48Speaker 9: his boldness really does propel him to take these ridiculous risks.
- 24:56Speaker 9: And he's selling illegal weapons in the s parking lot.
- 25:02Speaker 9: I mean, it seems like that's something that is not
- 25:05Speaker 9: a criminals of the a criminal mastermind.
- 25:07Speaker 6: Would do you work there?
- 25:10Speaker 3: Jason Scott had let it be known among some of
- 25:12Speaker 3: his criminal compatriots that he had guns to sell, and
- 25:16Speaker 3: an undercover ATF agent arranged to meet Jason Scott in
- 25:19Speaker 3: a parking lot and purchase four weapons from him.
- 25:25Speaker 8: We have the big profumab whoever you call, would they're
- 25:28Speaker 8: going to be a to I mean, anyone, I know
- 25:31Speaker 8: why you doing another?
- 25:35Speaker 3: Agents then were able to verify that for of those
- 25:37Speaker 3: weapons were the weapons that had been stolen on May
- 25:41Speaker 3: twenty sixth from the gun shop. Well, this was a
- 25:45Speaker 3: moment that exposed Jason Scott to the subsequent search warrant.
- 25:51Speaker 3: During the course of executing that search warrant, the agents
- 25:53Speaker 3: recovered sixteen firearms that had been stolen from that gun
- 25:56Speaker 3: shop in Woodbine back in May of two thousand. They
- 26:01Speaker 3: also obtained from Jason Scott's bedroom many of the burglary
- 26:06Speaker 3: tools that he had used to commit the crime, the
- 26:08Speaker 3: clothing that he wore, the black clothing, the ski mask,
- 26:12Speaker 3: and the backpack containing his burglary tools, which included things
- 26:16Speaker 3: like bolt cutters and screwdrivers and fry bar and also
- 26:20Speaker 3: included a police scanner.
- 26:24Speaker 9: There is almost a black comedy here, if things weren't
- 26:27Speaker 9: so horrific. That this is somebody who is intelligent, he's
- 26:32Speaker 9: graduated from college, he's a personal person, and yet he
- 26:37Speaker 9: almost lives in this fantasy world.
- 26:39Speaker 6: It seems like.
- 26:45Speaker 3: One of the items of evidence that we recovered from
- 26:48Speaker 3: Jason Scott's home was a video recording that he had
- 26:51Speaker 3: made of this teenage victim when he was recording the
- 26:54Speaker 3: victim while she was naked during one of his home
- 26:58Speaker 3: invasion robberies, and at one point mister Scott himself crossed
- 27:01Speaker 3: in front of the camera. There actually was an image
- 27:06Speaker 3: captured of mister Scott in his full regalia that he
- 27:10Speaker 3: would wear to commit his crimes, and when the authorities
- 27:14Speaker 3: found those recordings and photographs and the burglary tools, they
- 27:17Speaker 3: realized they were dealing with a master criminal, not simply
- 27:21Speaker 3: somebody who had committed a robbery at a gun shop,
- 27:25Speaker 3: but somebody who posed a continuing threat of violence in
- 27:28Speaker 3: the community. The agents were working with local police who
- 27:31Speaker 3: knew about the spree of home invasion robberies in addition
- 27:34Speaker 3: to the murders that have been committed in the area,
- 27:37Speaker 3: and so once they found this evidence, they immediately settled
- 27:39Speaker 3: on Jason Scott as a likely suspect in a whole
- 27:42Speaker 3: spree of crimes.
- 27:47Speaker 9: I think when you think about this kind of sexual
- 27:49Speaker 9: aspect of sexual assault that is so consistent with somebody
- 27:54Speaker 9: who has a history of peeping and voyeurism, then progressive.
- 28:00Speaker 6: Those people who peep don't.
- 28:02Speaker 9: Progress to worse things, but people who do progress to
- 28:09Speaker 9: worse things often have a history of peeping and voyeurism.
- 28:14Speaker 3: I think Jason Scott enjoyed the sense of power and
- 28:18Speaker 3: control that he exercised when he committed these home invasion robberies,
- 28:22Speaker 3: where he kept people under control, he kept people at gunpoint.
- 28:28Speaker 3: In a couple of instances he detained people in their
- 28:31Speaker 3: homes while his partner, Marcus Hunter took their ATM cards
- 28:35Speaker 3: and went to withdraw cash. And I think Jason Scott
- 28:38Speaker 3: enjoyed that sense of power that he obtained while he
- 28:41Speaker 3: was detaining innocent victims.
- 28:46Speaker 9: There was one home invasion that he carried out where
- 28:50Speaker 9: the victims were, of course terrified. They had no idea,
- 28:53Speaker 9: They felt completely helpless. The victim later on said, you know,
- 29:01Speaker 9: when you have absolutely no control over situation, you don't
- 29:07Speaker 9: know what to do. And she said, I started praying,
- 29:10Speaker 9: and you know, Jason Scott said, shut up. I think
- 29:17Speaker 9: that affirmed to him that I am powerful. I am
- 29:21Speaker 9: a criminal mastermind. I am in charge of these situations.
- 29:24Speaker 9: And I do think that was very important to him,
- 29:26Speaker 9: and for whatever reason, he really did embrace this criminal identity.
- 29:33Speaker 7: Jason Scott is now a suspect in the five murder investigations,
- 29:37Speaker 7: but police don't have enough evidence to charge him, but
- 29:42Speaker 7: the evidence from the firearms offenses, home invasions, and sexual
- 29:46Speaker 7: assault makes police believe he's linked to a vast array
- 29:50Speaker 7: of crimes. Rather than charge him for just the crimes
- 29:56Speaker 7: they have evidence for. Scott is taken into custody and
- 30:00Speaker 7: offered a profer interview.
- 30:02Speaker 3: In a interview, the government promises a defendant that things
- 30:06Speaker 3: that he says in the interview won't be used against
- 30:08Speaker 3: him directly in court, and so the profit is an
- 30:10Speaker 3: opportunity for the defendant to come in with the promise
- 30:13Speaker 3: of immunity and revealed to the government the criminal activity
- 30:17Speaker 3: in which he participated.
- 30:21Speaker 9: They're thinking, this is somebody who's going to help us
- 30:25Speaker 9: catch other almost arms dealers or people who you know
- 30:29Speaker 9: who are selling illegal guns, and so Jason takes advantage
- 30:35Speaker 9: of this.
- 30:38Speaker 3: During the interview with federal authorities, mister Scott admitted that
- 30:42Speaker 3: he had committed approximately twenty eight burglaries and nine home
- 30:47Speaker 3: invasion robberies.
- 30:50Speaker 6: Law enforcement is absolutely stunned my this.
- 30:54Speaker 4: He's saying to you, criminal justice system, I am smarter
- 30:57Speaker 4: than you that I was able to be successful with
- 31:01Speaker 4: these crimes. I am good at what I do, and
- 31:04Speaker 4: I'm better than you. At this time, the jig is up.
- 31:08Speaker 4: So if it is up, let me just go ahead
- 31:10Speaker 4: and tell you and show you how much smarter I
- 31:13Speaker 4: was than you, how much intelligence and research goes into this.
- 31:18Speaker 9: And of course Jason's sitting there smugg as can be,
- 31:22Speaker 9: thinking I've got immunity from all these things. Nothing I
- 31:27Speaker 9: said today can be used against me. He was a
- 31:31Speaker 9: little misguided, I think, in thinking.
- 31:34Speaker 7: That police cannot charge Scott with the burglaries and home
- 31:40Speaker 7: invasions he's confessed to, but he can still be charged
- 31:45Speaker 7: for other crimes because of new evidence or if implicated
- 31:48Speaker 7: by an accomplice.
- 31:52Speaker 3: Once authorities realized that Jason Scott had been involved in
- 31:56Speaker 3: a crime spree in the area, they started to review
- 31:59Speaker 3: all crimes that had been committed in the area over
- 32:02Speaker 3: the past couple of years to identify which ones were
- 32:05Speaker 3: likely to have been committed by Jason Scott. Marcus Hunter
- 32:15Speaker 3: revealed that he was a friend of Jason Scott and
- 32:18Speaker 3: that he had participated with mister Scott in many of
- 32:22Speaker 3: the robberies and burglaries that mister Scott had committed in
- 32:25Speaker 3: the community. Marcus Hunter used the term spooky House to
- 32:31Speaker 3: refer to an abandoned property that he and Jason Scott
- 32:34Speaker 3: would go to after the crimes to split up the proceeds.
- 32:38Speaker 3: So on multiple occasions, Jason Scott and Marcus Hunter went
- 32:42Speaker 3: to the so called spooky House with the proceeds of
- 32:46Speaker 3: the robbery and then divided the property among them. The
- 32:53Speaker 3: most compelling evidence I recovered from the Spooky House that
- 32:57Speaker 3: was used in the state case is that they found
- 33:01Speaker 3: charred It's a fabric of hair at the Spooky House
- 33:05Speaker 3: that were connected to the murder because they matched evidence
- 33:09Speaker 3: that was found on the bodies when they were recovered
- 33:12Speaker 3: from the car that had been burned.
- 33:20Speaker 7: This vital new piece of evidence links Scott to the
- 33:23Speaker 7: crime scene of Dolores and Ebony de Witt. Jason Scott
- 33:29Speaker 7: is charged with their murders while being investigated for the others.
- 33:34Speaker 6: This is the beginning of the end for Jason Scott.
- 33:47Speaker 7: It's one and a half years since Jason Scott was
- 33:50Speaker 7: charged with the murders of Dolores and Ebony de Witt.
- 33:54Speaker 7: As a case is building against him, He's first facing
- 33:57Speaker 7: trial for the crimes that investigators have evidence of.
- 34:02Speaker 3: In the federal system, we prosecute defendants for the most
- 34:07Speaker 3: readily provable offenses, and so in this case, we identified
- 34:12Speaker 3: four home invasion robberies in which the proof was the
- 34:14Speaker 3: strongest and the witnesses were the most credible and compelling,
- 34:19Speaker 3: and we charged mister Scott with those four home invasion robberies.
- 34:23Speaker 3: In addition to the child pornography he had produced during
- 34:27Speaker 3: one of those robberies, and then the possession of the
- 34:29Speaker 3: stolen firearms that had been taken from that gun shop
- 34:32Speaker 3: in Woodbind The most important piece of evidence in the
- 34:38Speaker 3: case was the video recording that Jason Scott had made
- 34:42Speaker 3: of this teenage victim. Mister Scott at one point actually
- 34:46Speaker 3: crossed in front of the camera. So in this case,
- 34:50Speaker 3: the federal sentence for this series of primes eleven violations
- 34:54Speaker 3: in total, amounted to one hundred years in federal prison.
- 35:04Speaker 3: I know the family members of the murder victims were
- 35:07Speaker 3: present at the sentencing, and they were very relieved. They
- 35:10Speaker 3: were confident that mister Scott had been held accountable and
- 35:13Speaker 3: would no longer pose a threat to the community, regardless
- 35:16Speaker 3: of whether or not he ultimately was convicted on the
- 35:19Speaker 3: state charges for the murder.
- 35:22Speaker 4: What we do see is someone who's become very good
- 35:25Speaker 4: at being a criminal, someone who's intelligent, someone who looks
- 35:29Speaker 4: at information that's publicly accessible, plus perhaps has a charm
- 35:34Speaker 4: that allows for many people not to feel threatened. We
- 35:39Speaker 4: hope that these elements don't come together, and thank goodness,
- 35:43Speaker 4: that person is no longer on the Street causing these
- 35:46Speaker 4: heinous acts.
- 35:56Speaker 7: Jason Scott is in jail, respect him of the murders
- 36:01Speaker 7: of Filma Butler, Dolores and Ebony DeWitt, and Karen and
- 36:05Speaker 7: Carissa Lofton, but they only have strong evidence linking him
- 36:09Speaker 7: to the de Witts murders. In order to prosecute him
- 36:14Speaker 7: for the provable crimes, police strike a deal using an
- 36:18Speaker 7: Alford plea.
- 36:19Speaker 4: It's been around since about the nineteen seventies. Here you
- 36:23Speaker 4: have an environment in which one please to say, I'm
- 36:28Speaker 4: not saying I'm guilty of doing this act, but I
- 36:31Speaker 4: am going to go ahead and move the process in
- 36:34Speaker 4: order to perhaps receive a lesser sentence.
- 36:38Speaker 7: As part of the Alford plea for the murders of
- 36:40Speaker 7: Dolores and Ebony DeWitt, Jason Scott now won't face trial
- 36:45Speaker 7: for the murders of Filma Butler or Karen and Carissa Lofton.
- 36:52Speaker 8: We never had our day in court. He was going
- 36:55Speaker 8: to spend the rest of his life in jail anyway,
- 36:57Speaker 8: So I guess they assume wasman need to satisfy the family.
- 37:03Speaker 10: Carissa often I always speak her name, and I always
- 37:06Speaker 10: say she's such a strong girl, because she comes home
- 37:09Speaker 10: only to find someone killing her mom, and then she
- 37:13Speaker 10: gets shot in the head from what the story tells,
- 37:15Speaker 10: to be able to pick her strip, to pick up
- 37:17Speaker 10: the phone to call down on.
- 37:18Speaker 1: One BRANDM, I've been shot. My mother has been shot.
- 37:22Speaker 1: I'm believing through that sweet slow that what's you address.
- 37:29Speaker 10: It's just heartbreaking when you hear her. It's heartbreaking. It's
- 37:34Speaker 10: so heartbreaking because she didn't They didn't deserve it. None
- 37:38Speaker 10: nobody deserves it.
- 37:40Speaker 8: They're still a very empty void in myself with my
- 37:45Speaker 8: family's hearts, because we don't know. We didn't get the
- 37:49Speaker 8: satisfaction that the the witch got of a trial and
- 37:55Speaker 8: in a killer that admitted and was found guilty of
- 37:58Speaker 8: their crime. We didn't get that.
- 38:07Speaker 10: I used to hate him for a while, but I
- 38:13Speaker 10: had to get over that.
- 38:15Speaker 5: At first, I used to want him dead. I pray
- 38:19Speaker 5: to God that like why he's locked up.
- 38:21Speaker 10: Every time he close his eyes, he sees him as
- 38:23Speaker 10: he left them.
- 38:28Speaker 5: Now I just feel like, no, what he got is
- 38:33Speaker 5: the best.
- 38:34Speaker 2: Thing for him. I don't even want to give him
- 38:39Speaker 2: and he real estate in my mental space, so he's
- 38:45Speaker 2: where he needs to be.
- 38:50Speaker 9: I think that Jason Scott has all the hallmarks of
- 38:53Speaker 9: a serial killer in terms of so many different things,
- 38:57Speaker 9: his interest in forensics, the way he researched his crimes,
- 39:01Speaker 9: and most importantly, the way he carried out so many
- 39:06Speaker 9: different crimes and really exhibited no compassion, no empathy whatsoever
- 39:12Speaker 9: for his victims.
- 39:17Speaker 3: This was probably the most memorable case that I personally
- 39:21Speaker 3: prosecuted in my thirty years with the United States Department
- 39:24Speaker 3: of Justice because of the scale of the harm that
- 39:29Speaker 3: Jason Scott had visited on the community, and obviously the
- 39:32Speaker 3: particular harm on the victims of the murders, the home invasion, robbery,
- 39:37Speaker 3: and the child abuse. You saved lives by taking somebody
- 39:41Speaker 3: like Jason Scott off the street.
- 39:50Speaker 10: My parents, my mom, my dad, and myster City always
- 39:53Speaker 10: told us, if you believe in yourself, you could do anything.
- 39:55Speaker 5: So with that, even do all the tragedy.
- 39:58Speaker 10: In my life, I could pack myself on the back
- 40:02Speaker 10: that I just never gave up. And that's only because
- 40:05Speaker 10: of them. Life has never been the same, life will
- 40:10Speaker 10: never be the same. I'm just been trying to adjust
- 40:13Speaker 10: to it.
- 40:13Speaker 6: It's just.
- 40:17Speaker 5: Uh, I was shattered. I had nothing. Now I am
- 40:24Speaker 5: parent everybody hear this world.
- 40:27Speaker 10: To my family and It's like I said, I haven't
- 40:32Speaker 10: met anyone.
- 40:34Speaker 5: They just measure up to how great they were.
- 40:42Speaker 2: You know, I have three kids now with my wife,
- 40:47Speaker 2: and my mother or sister has met nine of them.
- 40:52Speaker 2: So she was robbed from having three beautiful grandchildren that
- 40:57Speaker 2: she could be interacting with.
- 41:01Speaker 8: I still feel lost, like it's a loss. I've grown
- 41:05Speaker 8: a lot. I had to learn how to turn a
- 41:07Speaker 8: tragedy into something helpful, and that's the only way that
- 41:14Speaker 8: you can get through something like that. Jason Scott feel
- 41:19Speaker 8: like they did not responsible for two murders. They're responsible
- 41:21Speaker 8: for three because in my family because my son Kirk
- 41:25Speaker 8: Junior never recovered. He went through a very dark period.
- 41:32Speaker 8: He was drinking, very depressed and everything for years. Six
- 41:39Speaker 8: months ago, well a little more six months in a
- 41:42Speaker 8: month after his birthday, exactly a month after his birthday.
- 41:47Speaker 8: Then he died. They found him in a hotel and
- 41:53Speaker 8: the cause of death is alcohol and poison him. You know,
- 41:57Speaker 8: he had died from alcohol. Jason Scott definitely played the
- 42:03Speaker 8: part in it. I used to call Charrissa my butterfly,
- 42:14Speaker 8: and she loved the color green. That year after she passed,
- 42:21Speaker 8: and it was an influx of green butterflies all through Georgia.
- 42:28Speaker 8: The main thing that I had to remember is that
- 42:32Speaker 8: God didn't make mistakes, and that my story had to
- 42:37Speaker 8: help somebody else
- 43:11Speaker 4: Much