Original subtitles

♪

It absolutely looks like a execution-style murder...

from somebody that knew him.

♪

He was charismatic.

He was a handsome guy, women seemed to like him.

♪

It's what the detectives don't find

that adds to the mystery.

Evidence was everything.

Without the gun, we had no arrest...

and no one to charge.

♪

All great lies contain the truth.

♪

We're on a clock.

We have a murder that needs to be solved.

The longer that goes on,

the less likely it is to be solved.

♪ [Suspenseful] ♪

[Gunshot]

♪

When homicide investigators collect evidence from

a crime scene, they hold pieces of a puzzle.

Only by connecting those pieces back together

can they catch the killer.

♪

♪

Silver Spring, Maryland is a very affluent metropolitan,

cosmopolitan area just outside of Washington DC.

It's a very diverse community.

It's pretty heavily populated for a suburb.

♪

JESSICA: Young families, young people.

It's a very happening area.

♪

[Phone ringing]

JESSICA: On June 6, at approximately 5 PM,

Montgomery County 9-1-1 receives a call from

a distraught woman,

asking the police to check on her brother,

a 34-year-old man named Eric Somuah.

JESSICA: She was asking the police to go to the home

and perform a welfare check.

♪

He lived alone...

and she had not heard from or seen Eric in two days.

Nobody had seen him or heard from him.

He had not shown up to work,

and that was very uncharacteristic

of her brother.

Officers arrived at the upscale apartment complex

to check on Eric.

Eric's apartment door is locked.

They knock.

No one answers.

The officers asked the building manager to

open the door with the master key,

and the officers then entered Eric's apartment.

♪

♪

DET. JANNEY: The apartment was messy.

Clothes on the floor and things like that.

It wasn't dirty.

There was carry out food.

The living room had a sofa and a big screen TV,

and just looked like a place

where a bachelor would hang out.

♪

JESSICA: Inside the bedroom, police discover a man.

He's in bed, he's a young African American man.

He's completely covered by a sheet,

pulled up all the way to his chin,

and he appears to be sleeping.

♪

When the police approached the man in the bed,

they could see blood on the sheets,

and they could see what appeared to be

a bullet hole in his head.

Police officers confirm,

34-year-old Eric Somuah was dead.

♪

Detectives informed the family that Eric was

a victim of a murder.

It was a family overtaken with grief.

Eric was the youngest child

of immigrants from Ghana

who came to the Silver Spring area.

Eric was charismatic.

Eric valued people...

and his interpersonal relationships,

above everything.

MARK: Eric was a bachelor, a handsome guy,

and women seemed to like him.

JESSICA: He worked at a Jaguar-Range Rover dealership

in the Bethesda area.

He was the top salesman.

He earned a lot of money doing it,

and he loved to spend that money

going out with family and friends.

♪

MARK: The police immediately secure the scene,

and contact the homicide detectives.

♪

JESSICA: Homicide and forensics arrived on the

scene about 40 minutes later...

and began processing the crime scene.

MARK: The victim was in bed on his left side.

He was wearing just a pair of underwear.

He had a gunshot wound to his forehead,

and there was a large pool of blood

around the upper part of his body.

JESSICA: He was tucked into bed comfortably

when he was found.

It was obvious that he was asleep when he was shot.

MARK: The wound was right in the center of his forehead.

There was no exit wound, so the bullet was still

contained inside his head and would have to be

removed during an autopsy.

There was visible stippling around the wound.

Stippling is small marks around a wound that

indicate the shot occurred at close range.

There was no spatter.

A lack of spatter also indicates that a wound

probably occurred at close range.

It absolutely looks like a execution-style murder.

More than likely this occurred from

somebody that knew him.

In many circumstances, an execution-style murder

suggests that the victim was

well acquainted with the offender.

This is not a home invasion, stranger on stranger.

This is somebody who's able to get into

somebody's personal and even intimate space

in order to carry out the crime.

JESSICA: Rigor mortis was present in the body,

which means that the murder had to have occurred

within the last 36 hours.

MARK: There was a 380 caliber shell casing on the bed

next to the body as well.

The fact that the killer didn't pick up the casing

indicated that they were in a hurry.

♪

There was a used condom on the floor

to the right side of the bed.

That was collected to be analyzed for DNA.

Obviously, he had been intimate with someone

in the near time to his death.

♪

In the kitchen, on the counter,

there was carry out food that was partially eaten.

That would be a good source of DNA...

as well as a bottle of wine with just one wine glass,

which seemed odd to us.

It appeared as if someone had been there,

so you would think there would be two wine glasses.

In the living room, next to the sofa,

we found a partially smoked marijuana joint.

At the time, marijuana was illegal in Maryland,

so he was potentially interacting with someone in

the criminal element where he would have to

purchase marijuana from.

He had a laptop that was there.

He had his wallet.

There was cash.

Nice television.

It didn't appear that anything was ransacked.

♪

JESSICA: It's what the detectives don't find

that adds to the mystery.

There's no sign of forced entry.

There is no sign of a struggle.

MARK: The only thing that was missing was his cell phone,

which was very suspicious,

as well as there was no handgun.

So, the CSI investigators dusted and swabbed areas

around the bed, the door, the door handle.

♪

JESSICA: As the investigation moves forward...

Eric's autopsy was processed.

MARK: The bullet recovered during the autopsy was

determined to be a 380 caliber bullet.

♪

Every firearm has a unique pattern of markings that

it leaves on a bullet casing as well as the bullet,

so it's almost like a genetic fingerprint.

Each gun is very unique in that sense.

The striations can absolutely lead to

identifying a particular gun.

Based on the 380 calibre slug and casing

found at that crime scene,

detectives are certain they're looking for a

380 semi-automatic,

like a Smith & Wesson or Lorcin,

two of the most common 380 automatics

in the US in 2012.

With the rest of the evidence gathered,

they have many pieces of a puzzle.

So now, they need to see how these pieces fit together

to find Eric Somuah's killer.

MARK: The fact that the door was locked would indicate

that the person that was responsible had some

familiarity with the apartment or the building,

and how to go about securing the door when they left.

Could very well be someone that had a key.

♪

What we learned from the family was that the only

person who had a key to Eric's apartment

that he had had any trouble with was Danielle Hill.

JESSICA: She was identified as Eric's girlfriend.

It was somewhat of a rocky relationship.

It was on again, off again.

MARK: Eric's family was leery of Danielle.

They thought that she may be trying to

date him for his money.

She was significantly older than him.

JESSICA: And that is somebody certainly that

the detectives needed to speak to.

♪

MARK: We decided to bring Danielle into our office

for questioning.

Her demeanor was somewhat calm and

unlike what you would expect from somebody

that had lost a loved one unexpectedly.

♪

Danielle confirmed to us that she'd been dating Eric

for almost a year.

♪

She gave us a pretty vital piece of information

that she had had a text message communication

with him at around 2:30 in the morning on June 5.

The time of death was between 2:30 in the morning

when he had the text message conversation with Danielle,

and about 7:30 the next morning when he was

supposed to show up at work.

JESSICA: Danielle was very candid,

telling us her and Eric had spoken that evening and

that they were discussing breaking up.

MARK: According to Danielle, it was a calm conversation.

♪

JESSICA: There was a lot of conversation between Danielle

and Eric about whether or not they could make a

relationship work, him being so much younger than her,

her not being able to give him children.

♪

MARK: Danielle told us that she was aware that

he would hook up with other women,

that he would meet women at nightclubs and bars,

and have one-night stands.

She had also seen text messages on his phone

that confirmed that.

There was an undertone of anger

as she was telling us this, although it seemed like

she was trying not to appear that way.

A lot of murders are perpetrated by somebody

that's close to the victim,

and the fact that she reported that they had been

having a discussion about breaking up that night

led us to be suspicious of her.

♪

We asked Danielle if she had a key to Eric's apartment,

and she confirmed that she did.

JESSICA: Now, not only does she have a motive

to kill Eric- the breakup-

but she has the means to enter that apartment.

MARK: When we asked her about her whereabouts that night,

she admits that she was home alone.

JESSICA: That is not a great alibi for Danielle.

MARK: What's going through our mind is that

Danielle killed Eric in a jealous rage.

♪ [Suspenseful] ♪

[Gunshot]

[Gunshot]

Eric's girlfriend, Danielle Hill,

is at the top of the suspect list.

MARK: Danielle sets off the alarm bells for me

because she's a close acquaintance.

She's the last person we knew that he talked to.

She had a key to Eric's apartment.

She doesn't have an alibi that's corroborated.

And she admits that they were talking about breaking up.

♪

One of the early steps undertaken by investigators

in this case is determining motive.

It's quickly revealed that on the night of the murder,

Mr. Somuah is on the phone with his soon to be

ex-girlfriend, Danielle Hill.

This is obviously very upsetting to her,

and investigators naturally then need to consider

the fact that this may have led to an escalation

in this break-up, and ask themselves,

is Danielle Hill capable of murder?

♪

MARK: By now we have access to the security footage from

the apartment building in the time leading up to

Eric's death.

Eric's apartment building also had a key fob system,

which is important because it can tell you what kind of

times he had entered and left the building.

JESSICA: Detectives immediately started looking at

the security footage from the complex.

MARK: In this particular building,

there was a pretty sophisticated camera system,

so we were able to obtain the video recordings from

the time that we thought Eric died and

a few days prior to that as well,

to see what his movements were and who

he may have come and gone with.

JESSICA: Detectives are never able to find Danielle Hill or

Danielle's car anywhere on the surveillance footage.

MARK: I had a unsettled feeling.

I can't say that 100% she was the killer,

but I absolutely couldn't rule her out.

She was cooperative.

She turned her cell phone over for us to

analyze the data in it.

And, we now have access to Eric's phone records.

♪

The phone records confirmed what Danielle had told us

regarding the contact she had had with Eric

in the early morning hours of June 5.

She's telling the truth about that.

JESSICA: Danielle's cell phone data confirms that

she was at home in Rockville about a half an hour from

Silver Spring during the time of the murder.

But that cell phone was actively in use throughout

that time, including texts and phone calls with Eric.

MARK: Despite having a motive to kill Eric,

the fact that they had been having a discussion

about breaking up,

and she had a key to Eric's apartment,

there's no physical evidence linking Danielle to the crime.

JESSICA: They are very confident that Danielle

is not the person that murdered Eric.

Based on evidence that was gathered from

the crime scene- the condom,

a wine glass, containers of takeout food-

Eric might have had company before he died.

Detectives investigate Eric's phone records.

Even though Eric's physical phone was missing,

we can still access phone records,

and that gives us some information.

The detectives go through the phone,

and the police databases,

and systems that they have access to,

actually, literally charting every single contact number

in that phone and assigning it to individuals.

MARK: There were literally hundreds of calls

to family members.

JESSICA: They saw a number that nobody could identify.

Friends and family had no idea

who the number belonged to,

and the number had a Mississippi area code.

Officers start searching databases to try and

identify who the number belongs to.

And they ultimately identify this Mississippi number

as belonging to someone named Katrina Ben.

They use police databases

to find out if someone named Katrina Ben

has a car registered to her.

♪

MARK: Katrina Ben has a vehicle with

Mississippi plates registered in her name.

♪

Eric's brother told us that Eric had recently started

seeing a woman who lived in his building, named Katrina,

and that she was a traveling nurse.

And he told us they would get together and watch the games,

and she would spend the night.

♪

RESHMI: The evidence found at the crime scene included

an open bottle of wine...

food containers, and a condom,

which corroborates Eric's brother's information.

Detectives now look at this evidence more closely,

putting it into the story, and filling in the blanks to

determine if Katrina Ben could have been at Eric's

at the time the murder.

♪

JESSICA: The officers want to contact Katrina in person.

They don't know if she's in the area.

♪

They asked the building manager:

"Do you have a nurse that lives in the building?"

And, they were like, "Yeah, we have a staffing contract

with a travelling nurse company,

and they're not leased to the individual nurses,

they're just leased to the company."

So they couldn't figure out, based on this,

who was renting this apartment.

♪

MARK: So we tried to locate her vehicle in the

parking areas around the building.

♪

We did locate it, and we decided to sit on it

until somebody came out to it.

JESSICA: The detectives stay for hours until

she comes out to her car.

♪

MARK: She finally showed up to the vehicle with

belongings of hers as if she was getting ready to move.

♪

We approach her and call her by name,

and she responds to it.

We told her that we'd like to talk to her about Eric,

and her response was, "Eric who?"

We say, "Eric Somuah,"

and she says, "What about him?"

And we told her that he is dead.

♪

She didn't have any kind of emotional reaction

to that news.

JESSICA: Eric's murder is all anyone is talking about.

The building was overrun with police, with forensics,

and she just had no reaction.

MARK: It's very strange that she didn't have any kind of

reaction when we told her that Eric was dead...

but she was also very polite and conversational.

♪

I didn't quite know what to make of her at this point.

JESSICA: Those very first few moments of interaction with

Katrina certainly set off alarm bells for investigators.

♪

♪

We asked Katrina Ben to come to our office

for an interview, and she agrees.

MARK: We asked Katrina to explain her activities and

whereabouts for the past few days

leading up to Eric's death.

♪

She tells us that she's a traveling nurse,

and that she works night shifts and

sleeps during the day.

She's also saying that she's in the process

of moving to Baltimore for a new job.

♪

Katrina tells us that she moved into the building in

early March and that she met Eric about two weeks later.

♪

MARK: They were both avid NBA fans.

She said that they bonded over that,

and began meeting at his apartment

on Monday nights to watch.

At that time, it was the playoffs.

Very quickly that routine turned into

a sexual relationship.

They would get together and watch games,

then have sex, and she would spend the night.

It was always Monday nights because

that was her day off during the week.

We then asked her about her last encounter with Eric.

Katrina doesn't hesitate to say she was with Eric

in his apartment the night he was killed.

That is very uncharacteristic of

what a killer normally will do.

In many homicides

where the offender had a personal vendetta

or motive against the victim,

it's not uncommon for them to fabricate an alibi,

to put time and distance between themselves

and the crime scene because they know

investigators will deem them

an intuitive suspect.

Katrina, on the contrary, says, "Yeah I was there.

I was there the night of the murder."

Early on, investigators must have thought,

"Oh, we've never seen that before.

She must be clean in this case."

♪

MARK: So we asked her if she's ever owned a gun,

and she just matter of factly said, "No."

She was adamant that she never owned a gun.

JESSICA: They asked her: "Have you ever fired a gun?"

"No!" She was very upset.

♪

MARK: Katrina tells us that early on in the game

Eric wanted to go buy marijuana.

She wasn't happy about that 'cause she wanted to

watch the game.

Eric calls a marijuana dealer that he knows.

And he and Katrina go drive to that person's

apartment building and buy marijuana.

MARK: Then they return to Eric's apartment, and...

Eric proceeds to smoke a joint.

♪

In the living room next to the couch we found

a partially-smoked marijuana joint.

She tells us that she woke up around 2 AM,

alone in Eric's bedroom, to the sound of

two men talking in the living room.

It was a very small apartment,

so it was almost right outside the bedroom door.

♪

JESSICA: One voice she recognizes is Eric's.

The other one is the drug dealer that she went and

saw earlier with Eric.

MARK: She was very annoyed that the dealer was making

a lot of noise and she couldn't go to sleep.

She says that around 5 o'clock

the dealer was still there.

She finally decides to go back to her apartment.

♪

♪

She, later that morning, texted Eric and said

what a good time she had the night before,

and she looked forward to getting together

with him again. He did not respond.

♪

JESSICA: Katrina continues to text Eric over the days after

she leaves that apartment,

telling him that she misses him,

asking him why he's not speaking to her.

Saying to him, "Did I do something wrong?"

Trying to regain his attention.

JESSICA: She's showing detectives all of these

concerning texts that she is sending to Eric.

JESSICA: She directly asks Detective Janney...

JESSICA: And Detective Janney says to her,

"He wouldn't have done this to you.

Your heart can be settled.

He was dead."

MARK: So what's going through our mind at this point

is the possibility that this drug dealer who's in

the apartment waits for her to leave and then

kills Eric while he's sleeping.

♪

[Gunshot]

JESSICA: Was Eric's murder the result of

a drug deal gone bad?

JESSICA: We have this story from Katrina that...

the drug dealer was now the last person to see Eric alive.

Was this man in the apartment...

after Katrina left, and then Eric went to sleep?

♪

Anything's possible.

KATRINA: [Sighing]

JESSICA: She was very upset that Eric had

ghosted her and now was deceased.

She was clearly someone that had

a lot of contact with Eric,

so now this "drug dealer" is a new lead in the

investigation that officers have to follow.

MARK: We immediately tried to find out about

this drug dealer Katrina tells us about.

She gave a very thorough description of him.

MARK: And that his name was Victor.

♪

We cross referenced Eric's phone records and

came up with the name Victor Darnwell.

Eric contacted Victor Darnwell around the same time

Katrina told us about that night at Eric's apartment.

♪

We did inquiries on Darnwell, and learned that he had a

pretty extensive rap sheet and was known to police.

♪

It didn't take us long to track him down.

We had a surveillance team set up on

Darnwell's apartment building and vehicle.

He left the apartment in his vehicle,

and was observed doing a drug deal,

and he was arrested.

♪

We bring him in for questioning.

He initially denies ever knowing Eric

or having any interactions with him.

But Eric's phone records told us differently.

He'd had a lot of contact with Darnwell

on the night of his murder.

He's lying about knowing Eric or having

any interactions with him.

♪

Finally, he confessed to selling the marijuana

to Eric in front of his own residence,

but he was adamant that he had never been

to Eric's apartment.

JESSICA: At this point,

the detectives weren't just gonna believe him.

MARK: He'd just matter of factly lied to us.

He claims to not even know Eric,

and now he claims to not even know where Eric lives.

I don't even think he knew what Eric's last name was.

He told us that as a general practice,

people come to him.

He doesn't deliver to them.

Victor Darnwell is a convicted drug dealer

and a liar.

Police still don't have any hard proof to link him to

Eric's murder, but they want to hold him

while they look for more evidence.

Because detectives already have him on drug charges

from that night, they send him to lock-up,

and they're able to get a search warrant

for his apartment.

♪

MARK: During the search of Victor's apartment,

we recovered a safe that contained a

380 caliber handgun, money, and drugs.

The 380 caliber handgun we knew to be the

same kind of weapon that killed Eric.

JESSICA: Now we have a drug dealer,

a potential murder weapon that matches the

same caliber that Eric is killed with.

And, now we have Katrina's story that this is the

last person to see Eric alive.

Maybe this truly is a drug deal that has gone bad.

[Gunshot]

[Gunshot]

which was the same calibre gun that Eric was killed with. ell's apartment,

To prove that Victor Darnwell's gun is the

same weapon that killed Eric,

investigators undertake what's called a firearm and

toolmark examination on Victor Darnwell's gun.

MARK: It's the same caliber...

but the ammunition was different.

This is not the gun that killed Eric.

Police are ultimately unable to conclusively link the

firearm recovered from Mr. Darnwell's apartment

to the murder scene.

But it dawns on detectives that maybe there are

other firearms to which he had access.

He's such a compelling suspect that this does not

have them shut down the investigation.

They just start broadening their horizons.

JESSICA: We can confirm that the drug deal happened,

but we can't confirm that

Victor Darnwell was ever in the apartment.

MARK: So now we go and...

turn back to the security footage

and the key fob records.

The key fob records indicate that Eric's vehicle was seen

leaving the apartment building at 10:31 PM and

returning at 11:08 PM.

Two minutes later, we see Eric and Katrina

entering the building, through the lobby.

That part of Katrina's story is checking out.

But Victor Darnwell never appears on the footage.

Buildings like Eric's building don't have

airtight CCTV surveillance.

A drug dealer like Victor Darnwell may have

instinctively had Eric let him into the building

through a back door or emergency exit...

without being seen in CCTV footage.

So, if Darnwell was in Eric's apartment

the night Eric was killed,

investigators will need other evidence to prove it.

[Gunshot]

♪

MARK: We looked at the CSI evidence

from the crime scene.

He had a rap sheet, so we ran his fingerprints

to show Darnwell being at the apartment.

There was no forensic evidence that

puts Darnwell in the apartment.

JESSICA: To find the person that murdered Eric,

we need to connect them to the murder weapon-

a 380 caliber gun.

MARK: Evidence was everything in this case.

Without the gun, we had no arrest and no one to charge.

JESSICA: We're on a clock because we have

a murder that needs to be solved.

The longer that goes on,

the less likely it is to be solved.

It was truly an all hands on deck to try to recreate

a complete picture of what happened to Eric.

♪

MARK: In May 2013, my partner got an idea to

try to locate the gun that killed Eric.

JESSICA: He looked for abandoned guns,

or guns that might have been turned into the

police station to see if maybe somehow this

murder weapon had been lost or thrown away.

MARK: We searched 39 reports of 380 caliber handguns

that were recovered in the previous year.

We hit pay dirt on June the 11th, 2013

with the second to last gun.

It was a gun that was discovered about 31 minutes

away from Eric's apartment by car,

two days after we found Eric's body.

The gun was discovered by a motorist who was

stuck in standstill traffic,

and happened to glance over at the shoulder of the road

and saw the gun.

JESSICA: He picked it up,

he put the local police station into his GPS,

and he handed that gun into police,

and it was actually sitting in police property

for that year.

MARK: We got lucky.

So we decided to test the gun that was found near

Eric's house against the shell casing and bullet

that were recovered from the crime scene.

MARK: But it was missing crucial parts

and was inoperable, so in order to test it,

forensic investigators would have to rebuild it.

♪

Looking at the condition of the firearm,

I had to determine what I needed

to put the firearm back together again.

And if I can, I'll rebuild the firearm using parts and

pieces from firearms within our reference library.

And do the operability test, function test.

The firearm is a Lorcin L380.

That's a 380 auto caliber firearm.

And it was in bad condition.

Luckily for us, the barrel was pinned on this firearm,

and that's how we can actually move forward

and get a test fire.

The projectile is what killed Eric.

The muzzle is something that we can use to say that

this bullet came from this particular firearm.

I was able to rebuild the firearm using a slide and

a magazine from firearms within our reference library.

And then I performed a test fire.

[Gunshot]

As part of my examination,

I compare the bullet from the test fire

to the bullet from Eric Somuah's head.

And if there's similarities between the two.

♪

On the bullet itself are microscopic individual marks

that make that bullet specific to

a particular firearm.

There's enough similarities between the two that I could

not exclude this firearm as being the firearm

that killed Eric Somuah.

RESHMI: Detectives now effectively have

the smoking gun.

If they can find records to determine the most recent

owner of that gun, that'll likely tell them exactly who

brought it into Eric's apartment that night

to shoot him in cold blood.

♪ [Suspenseful] ♪

We began to trace the gun's serial number,

and it was linked to a subject

who lived in Mississippi.

He had purchased the gun in 1998.

And subsequently, this gun had multiple owners,

and it was a real challenge to get anyone

to talk to you about it.

Each person would tell us they had it for about a year

and then they pawned it at a pawn shop.

♪

So now we go to Mississippi to look through pawn shops.

We went to quite a few of them.

Detectives eventually are able to track this gun to a

pawn shop, where it was sold in June of 2004.

MARK: The owner said that he used to have the records,

but he had kept them in his garage,

and the rats were starting to eat them,

so he turned them all over to the ATF.

♪

My partner called the ATF agent,

and they said that they would help us,

but it wouldn't be immediate,

so we left Mississippi without any information.

[Phone ringing]

JESSICA: A week later, detectives get a call from

that branch of the ATF.

MARK: The agent tells us that he had found the receipt,

and that he was faxing it to us.

♪

We looked at the name...

and it was Katrina Ben.

We were almost literally jumping up and down.

♪

Katrina Ben bought that particular

380 caliber handgun June 8, 2004,

and was in possession of it and owned it for eight years.

She was adamant that she never owned a gun.

JESSICA: She denied that she ever fired a gun.

MARK: We re-examined the security footage

from Eric's apartment building,

and we discovered that at 6:34 AM on June 5th,

Katrina left the building...

and returned at 7:05 AM.

She parked in the fire lane.

And was only in for about five minutes

before she went back and left in the car.

♪

MARK: That 31 minutes was the exact time it would take

to make the round trip from the apartment building

to where the gun was recovered.

Why would she throw away a gun that she had for

eight years, other than now she had a body on it?

So, on June 29, 2012,

we executed the search warrant at her apartment.

♪

We seized her computer, her cell phone,

and we obtained her fingerprints and DNA.

We searched her computer, and we learned that

she had visited Eric's Facebook page

after he was dead, and before we approached her

and told her that he was dead.

So she had to have known,

based on all the messages of grief.

JESSICA: Detectives then interview Katrina again.

JESSICA: "Eric was not worth all this.

He was nothing to me. He was just a (beep)."

JESSICA: Detectives ask Katrina,

"Why did you have a gun in the first place?"

And she's like, "Because I've had 11 stalkers."

It's just such a bizarre comment.

JESSICA: And then they ask her about the discarded gun.

Katrina tells this story:

"I lost that gun a long time ago.

I don't even know that it made it with me to Maryland.

Eric could have stolen the gun.

The drug dealer could have stolen it.

I don't even know where it is."

It was delusional.

She knows that she went and threw that gun

on the side of the highway,

and that she's seen on camera coming in and out

of the front door of the building.

JESSICA: That's just, on some level,

is so twisted.

JESSICA: All great lies contain the truth,

and Katrina was doing that from the second that

she began interacting with the detectives.

JESSICA: So now, we have the evidence to prove that

she was the person that actually killed Eric.

♪

Why did she kill him?

Katrina says that she was always the Monday night girl.

Katrina and he never went out.

She never met his friends.

They drank, they watched basketball,

and they had sex.

He didn't show her off.

And that's what Katrina was to him.

She was his Monday night girl.

And that's why she killed him,

because he refused to let her occupy

any significant space in his life.

♪

Motive, means, and opportunity.

She had the motive to kill Eric.

She has the means to enter that apartment,

and opportunity.

MARK: She nearly got away with murder.

♪

The gun ownership was definitely the straw that

broke the camel's back in terms of charging her.

♪

The night of the murder, Katrina thought that she was

going to have Eric's exclusive attention.

She spent the evening with him.

She had sex with him....

And then she discovered that he was having communications

with his girlfriend, Danielle.

Her last text message around 2:30 in the morning

on June 5th...

♪

Katrina got very jealous.

♪

She thought she meant more to Eric than she really did.

♪

She waited for him to go to sleep.

♪

♪

And then she put a gun to his head and killed him.

♪

[Gunshot]

It was a jealous rage.

♪

Very cold hearted.

At 6:34 AM, Katrina left the building.

JESSICA: And then she discarded the gun

in that morning rush hour traffic.

♪

♪

In October of 2014,

Katrina Ben was convicted of first-degree murder

and use of a handgun in a crime of violence.

MARK: She was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years

without the possibility of parole.

♪

This case is remarkable because in this day and age

of technology, and DNA,

and all the things we can do forensically,

it came down to just good old-fashioned hard work

by a detective that went the extra mile.

To be able to bring justice to Eric Somuah and his family

is the reward we get in this job.

There's not many happy days in this line of work.

You're delivering bad news to people all the time,

so it's good to help them find closure in it.

JESSICA: Eric was truly a loss.

He was just a very bright, very kind,

very outgoing young man that loved life.

♪

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