Original subtitles

Detectives with the major case squad

tell me that 68-year-old Daniel Taylor was murdered.

Police are confident that he knew the suspects.

[theme music playing]

MAN: The thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite -- it's like a wolf that's...

feeling the hunger.

MAN: We're learning new information about

a suspicious death in Collinsville, Illinois,

when the major case squad was called in to

investigate after an elderly man

was found dead inside of his home.

Heisch is doing something we call impression managing.

She's taking control of the narrative.

She's trying to control the outcome of

the investigation, but what she's also doing

is trying to manipulate the investigators.

She's trying to build a bridge with them so that they

see her as this innocent individual

who's just trying to be helpful.

HEISCH: Yeah.

DETECTIVE: Mm-hmm.

HEISCH: Uh-uh.

HEISCH: Uh-uh.

Eva Heisch he has been not cooperating for a month.

This person that she was friends with,

she went to his house, and yet there's really no indication

that she's sad about his death or curious about his murder.

She does have an interesting insight into his finances,

which most people wouldn't know.

DERIGHT: That's a red flag, because it's giving them

a sense that she knows

when he has more money and less money,

and she's paying attention to that.

The investigator is asking Heisch, you know,

there's no reason why we would find any of your fluids there,

right, and her answer is not, "No."

Her answer is, "I don't think so."

She's leaving the door open a little bit later just

in case she needs to tweak her story a little bit.

Here, she's just describing all these,

what she describes as really traumatic experiences

that she had with hardly any questioning at all.

She's just freely offering this information, and that's

so unusual in someone who's experienced a real trauma.

She's offering up this information to

really have a sympathetic view of herself,

to say, "I've been traumatized by murder before.

"I'm not someone who could possibly commit a murder.

Don't pay attention to me."

SAHNI: Eva Heisch is someone who's been

around law enforcement quite a bit.

She has a very lengthy criminal history that

dates back to her childhood and her adolescence.

This is a woman who knows the legal system,

she knows the criminal justice system,

she knows cops, and she knows how to manipulate cops.

Her choice of the tone

she's using, the little girl semantics and body language,

she's turtled in on herself physically.

She looks like someone who needs protecting.

TUSSEY: She's hiding her face, and you can't see if

she's crying or what sort of emotional expression she has.

And it's interesting that she points out

that there's no stopping Jessie when he's mad.

But, you know, why was he mad?

They supposedly just went there to get gas money

from this victim, according to her side of the story.

So there's just a lot of parts of her interview

that aren't really adding up and making sense.

People that are psychopathic, people like Eva Heisch,

have a high need for control -- Heisch is in damage control mode

and she's in panic mode, because now she's losing

control of the situation.

But the part that is pathological lying and is

compulsive is the part of her that just continues

to tell them things and fill in gaps without thinking about

the fact that they can be verified.

Now she is using, "I blacked out.

I don't remember," as a feigning of something very convenient to

make blame go away from her, and when she's backed

into a corner like she is right now,

she's instead just trying to shut down and say,

"I have no information for you. I have no lies for you."

She contradicts herself in these statements

in that she says, "I was tortured by him,"

which suggests this is someone who is well aware

of his potential for violence.

But then she says that she had no way of knowing he would

react to the victim the way he did.

To the rest of us who live in the real world,

who are not out to lunch, who don't double down on lies,

this is not even believable.

She's even saying, "Hey, help."

Basically, "Listen to me.

"Don't you want to hear about my story and how I'm not really

the perpetrator of this?" And when they're not listening,

she becomes enraged.

And that's something that we see in individuals who

have psychopathic traits,

is this inability to control emotions in

the appropriate way

and instead lash out, especially when they're losing

control of the situation, and she's losing control.

What we see with Heisch not getting her way in this

interrogation and picking up chairs

and screaming like an out-of-control two-year-old

in the size and power of an adult body

may be some of what Danny experienced

before he was killed.

He didn't have any money to give her, and Heisch didn't get

her way, and we see what happens

when Heisch doesn't get her way.

But in the end, this is somebody who doesn't

value human life.

She values her ego.

And ultimately, that is the biggest wound

for her is that this isn't working.

People aren't seeing what she wants them to see.

People aren't doing what she wants them to do.

And Eva Heisch doesn't know how to interact with

anybody in her life except when they're compliant with her.

TUSSEY: Danny Taylor was a 68-year-old man

who lived alone, and he had health issues.

Eva Heisch seemed to know this about him.

She knew that he had enough money,

at least, to go to the strip club

however often he went.

So he was a very vulnerable but perhaps ideal

victim for her, because, in fact,

he was older, and he lived alone.

DERIGHT: Psychopaths are often going to go for

what's most readily available in their environment,

the easiest thing they can think of.

So if there's someone who is vulnerable and weak in

their environment, they're gonna capitalize

on that and have no empathy.

They're not going to feel bad about what they did.

They're just gonna take what they need

from the weak person and move on.

DETECTIVE: Okay.

DETECTIVE: Mm-hmm.

The credibility of Jessie Werley's

story at this point makes sense.

It not only fits the data that's available,

but most importantly, he's implicating himself in

this crime -- he's not backing away.

With Heisch, every version she gives is set up

and designed to make sure she has no blood on her hands,

figuratively or literally -- had Eva Heisch

not ever gotten this idea in her head to go rob

an innocent vulnerable person

and do it at any cost, including killing him,

There's no way that Jessie Werley would

have ever found his way to Danny's doorstep.

More that night?