Original subtitles

When you have a mastermind,

it's not just someone who can plan a crime,

because almost anybody can do that,

but how do you plan the crime to successfully get away with it?

That's where the real genius comes in.

The mastermind, to me, he was the epitome of a,

you know, the old-fashioned slickster car salesman.

Very confident, arrogant, extremely clever,

a fraudster, a sociopath.

An evil person.

They didn't know which way to look.

There were a lot of theories.

Whoever killed them was related to the phone cards.

I 100% believed it was a personal servant for a sheik out there.

I thought it was the gold.

If they wrote a movie about it, you wouldn't believe it.

You're being placed in arrest for murder.

Murder?

Yes, sir.

Oh, my God.

We had enough evidence against the killers.

But the question was...

In the early evenings of April 16, 2004, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department got a wellness call from Dennis Wood's son.

He hadn't spoken to his father in two weeks.

He was 71 years old at the time.

Officers responded.

One of the first things they noticed was that Dennis Wood's car was in the driveway.

It had a layer of dust on it.

It looked like it hadn't been moved in quite a while.

There were also a number of newspapers in the driveway.

The oldest paper was from two weeks before.

The patrol deputies knocked at the front door, got no response.

They tried the door.

It was unlocked, but they couldn't open it.

Something on the inside was blocking the door.

The back door was slightly open, and the screen was locked from inside.

So they tore a small hole in the screen, unlocked the screen, and walked inside.

The house was...

Unkempt.

He had hundreds and hundreds of pages of files and notes and notebooks strewn about.

The house looked like something that a mad scientist would live in.

He had records in the kitchen, in his office, in the living room, in his car.

He had two or three bedrooms upstairs, and he had records in all of them.

But it didn't appear that anything had been removed.

There was a strong odor in the house.

You ever have meat rot in your refrigerator?

It's very similar to that odor.

As they made their way to the front door, they found Mr. Wood's dead body lying in the foyer, up against the front door.

The detectives noticed, near Dennis's head, there were two spent .22 caliber shell casings.

They found a third shell casing in the bodily fluid.

The victim had been shot three times, once in the chest and twice in the head.

This had all the earmarks of an assassination more than a murder.

Any murder case, you have to learn about the victim and who they associate with.

I was 23 years old when my grandfather was found killed in his residence.

When my grandfather was young and living in Syracuse, his house was struck by lightning.

And the lightning went through the wall and through his bed and electrocuted him.

After that incident, he had to wear extremely thick prescription glasses.

We called them Coke glasses.

My grandfather and dad, you know, were extremely close.

They'd go out to eat, they'd go to see movies, they'd go to batting cages.

My grandfather was a very brilliant man.

He worked as a consultant for the DOD.

He would present computer seminars and whatnot around the country.

He always had the newest computers that I remember when I would visit.

It was above my head when he tried to explain those things to me.

He was my dad for many, many years.

He was my protector.

When he thought mom was being a little tough on me, he'd come to my rescue.

Even silly things like lima beans on my plate.

He would scrape my beans off into his plate and said, shh.

We had a great relationship.

He was one of those people who were just so smart.

Their brain were constantly working.

He had a lot of interest.

He would do all kinds of research.

He was writing a book.

It was something to do with codes that could be rendered from the words in the Bible.

None of it made any sense to me.

Do you remember that book by Dan Brown, Da Vinci Code?

The Bible itself had a series of secret codes in it that would unlock the future, basically.

I think Dennis was actually going to try to prove that there were secret codes or algorithms in the Bible itself.

Dennis was described as a brilliant man, but in the 90s, Dennis had a very serious car accident

that actually resulted in some brain damage that affected his short-term memory.

Yes, his body was able to heal.

His mind, no.

And that put an end to his teaching.

It changed his whole life.

How sad it is that his, he, he lost so much.

Their income stopped.

And then they started different ventures.

They got into selling t-shirts and perfumes and prepaid calling cards.

So for people who remember, it was literally a card with an account number.

And you would use that card in a pay phone or your home phone and get discounts on long-distance calls.

The phone calls on the prepaid phone card were cheaper than they were on the sell plan.

They were quite popular in California and the Mexican markets.

That's what Dennis would do.

He would buy cards in bulk and he would go around to the liquor stores and small markets and sell these cards out of the back of his cars.

And that would be his profit.

There was a convenience store in Oxnard, south of Ventura.

There was a gas station up in Ojai.

Realizing that he had this issue with his short-term memory loss, he had to develop a system for keeping track of all the money.

He actually kept sticky notes and documentation of everything.

Around 2004, people were starting to get rid of their landlines and were using cell phones for them.

And so these prepaid phone cards weren't really needed.

And so the business ventures were failing.

And then his wife had passed away in December of 2002.

They did open heart surgery on her.

And she never made it home.

Sorry.

When she passed away, my grandfather took it pretty hard and she cared about that man more than anything.

I think he got overwhelmed.

And she was there to always get him back on track, have him focused.

Now, he was on his own, more or less.

He was lost.

Very lost without her.

I fell in looking at the house and some of the evidence that he was lonely at that time, probably depressed.

But he was also felt a sense of urgency.

He was on the verge of bankrupt.

And I can't imagine the fear that was going through his mind having just lost his wife and that he could very well be losing his house very soon.

And a few months later, he was murdered.

I just, it's just so brutal, the way that he died.

That should never be something that anybody has to think about.

Being shot in the face repeatedly.

The medical examiner estimated the level of decomposition at approximately two weeks.

He was lying face down.

The body was in advanced states of decomposition.

The skin that was visible was black.

There seemed to be a large pool of fluid around the area of his head and chest.

You could still tell it was a human being, but you couldn't tell it was Dennis Wood.

It was a pretty grotesque scene.

At that point, the investigators didn't really understand what was going on.

Nothing had been taken.

So it wasn't a failed break-in.

It wasn't a botched robbery.

When you put two bullets in the brain and one in the chest, the intent is pretty clear that they wanted him dead.

My father always believed his theory was that whoever killed him was related to the phone cards.

The fact that he was just in a prepaid phone card sales business, the manner of his death made no sense to investigators.

The monies he generated from that just didn't generate the kind of money that would warrant ultimately killing him.

You would have to have business transactions in the several thousands of dollars.

It's like looking at a blank canvas.

Where do you start?

We did find, after Dennis' wife had passed away in December 2002, he took out a line of credit against his house, using that as collateral of $100,000, to look for other business ventures to invest in.

When investigators were at the crime scene, they opened up Dennis' computer.

His computer was open to a website called Capital Gold Group.

Dennis was in the process of buying two antique gold coins worth $40,000.

But when investigators were searching through the house, they didn't find any gold coins.

I thought it was the gold.

The detective spent a few months trying to investigate the gold angle, and he did send $40,000 in cash to the company to pay for those coins.

This wasn't some investment where Dennis was watching an infomercial and thought, I'll buy a coin that they're showing me on TV right now.

This was a legitimate investment that he had hoped would generate a profit for him sometime soon down the road.

I panicked, because Lord knows who he might have said anything about this gold coin to.

For $40,000, Dennis lost his life.

Sorry.

It took several months before we were able to determine that Mr. Wood never actually had the gold he owned in his possession.

We had spoken to the Las Vegas broker, and they confirmed that we have it.

It's here in the vault in Las Vegas, and it had never been delivered to Mr. Woods.

I think what happened was the company was going to send him the gold coin, they just hadn't sent it to him yet before he was killed.

So it wasn't about the gold.

Detectives investigated a number of things, but they just couldn't find any reason to justify the murder of Dennis Wood.

This was the time before there were marine cameras.

You have a neighborhood that's, there's only one way in, one way out, and no one heard anything.

My dad in July of 2004 discovered a piece of paper that had a sticky note on it from Dennis, and faxed it to the detective.

And the document was primarily related to the gold that Dennis was looking to purchase.

But in that document were some very strange notes.

One of the notes referenced a loan he had given to a friend for $28,500, but there was no name.

It also mentioned something about 4X.

And lastly, it seemed to be a complaint in the notes saying that the friend wasn't following his program, meaning Dennis's program.

But by itself, that didn't mean anything.

And nothing came about from it.

So the case had gone cold.

My dad ended up shortly after that being diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

It wrecked his body.

He no longer was unable to stand straight up.

And all along when he's going through this, he's also trying to figure out who would want my grandfather murdered.

The whole murder took a huge toll on my father.

He got overwhelmed.

It took over my father's life towards the end.

And in April of 2010, my father passed away.

Two years have gone by.

We just sort of kept the case alive, but we weren't really doing much with it, honestly.

Then a call suddenly popped up.

I get a call from the crime lab in 2006.

Hey, we have a hit on a murder weapon that's been recovered in L.A.

At the time of the murder, shell casings were recovered at the scene.

And the crime lab uploaded those shell casings into a national database.

And in 2006, the Los Angeles Police Department test fired that gun.

And those shell casings matched.

Our shell casings recovered at the scene.

And we're like, this is great.

This is good news.

It was a .22 caliber pistol.

Just like this one.

Same caliber as the bullets recovered from Mr. Wood's body.

When you're told, hey, the gun's been found, that's got to be a good clue.

I've seen it on CSI.

Right?

The members of the Los Angeles Police Department arrested the juvenile for possession of the firearm.

The juvenile's name was Tylan Merriweather.

He was a gang member.

And he was 17 at the time.

But they had two issues.

Number one, from the city of Moorpark to Compton, I would say that it's about 60 miles.

How did he get to Los Angeles into the hands of a Compton gang member?

Number two, how did he get into the hands of a juvenile?

We made contact with this gentleman.

No, he wasn't in Moorpark.

No, he hasn't done any crimes in Moorpark.

He had no connection to Ventura County.

They had no evidence he'd ever been to Ventura County.

He had no connection to Dennis Wood.

He was pretty open with us.

And he consented to a search.

We found nothing related to Mr. Wood's residence.

They had absolutely no idea how this firearm got into the hands of Mr. Merriweather.

We asked Tylan about the origin of this pistol.

He said he met a girl through school who sold him the firearm for $125 cash.

He didn't even remember her name.

Is that a believable story?

Yeah, actually it was a very believable story.

That happens all the time.

And the reason is because firearms aren't cheap.

And to just get rid of a gun is to throw away money.

It's not uncommon for a gang member to sell it to another gang member without telling them what the firearm had previously been used for.

And in the two years since Dennis' murder, the gun could have changed hands a number of times.

It could happen. I could see it.

We pretty much took his statement at face value and we pretty quickly wrote him off as a suspect.

It was extremely disheartening when it was discovered that the person that was in possession of the gun at that time had nothing to do with the case and had just come across the weapon.

Meanwhile, there is kind of a strange twist in the investigation.

About two and a half years after our murder, there is another victim out in Los Angeles.

So December 1st of 2006, there was a death investigation in South Central Los Angeles.

Jesse had owned a furniture manufacturing business.

He was pretty good at it.

However, competition from China who could provide furniture cheaper forced him to ultimately close his factory down.

And he was financially desperate.

He was seated in the driver's seat of his pickup truck, kind of slumped over the steering wheel, shot three times in the head.

And stabbed six times in the chest.

One of the first things they noticed was that there was a blood smear found on the truck.

And this ultimately linked to two killers.

Alex Baracamonte was the one who stabbed him.

He had cut himself during the stabbing, which placed him at the scene inside the truck.

And during one of the interviews, he implicated Raul Vasquez.

Raul Vasquez was the, I guess for lack of a better term, son-in-law of Alex Baracamonte and ultimately confessed that he did pull the trigger and he did shoot Jesse.

Raul was always scruffy looking.

Raul was always scruffy looking.

He certainly wasn't a rocket scientist either.

And Alex Baracamonte was a friend of Jesse's and actually would stay as a night watchman security guard at the furniture business in exchange for a place to lay his head at night.

There was nothing that really stuck out to me like clear cut motive for the two of them.

So my partner and I felt extremely confident that it was orchestrated by three individuals, not two.

And we had learned further information about Jesse.

There were several hundred thousand dollars that were never accounted for.

According to both Mr. Vasquez and Mr. Baracamonte, along with several other witnesses that were interviewed at the time, led us down a particular road towards this individual named Tony, who turned out to be Antoine Neme.

Antoine Neme was born and raised in Lebanon.

His family lived in Saudi Arabia between 1976 and 1986.

During that time, he was the personal servant for a sheik out there.

In 1986, he was able to immigrate his wife and his son and daughter to the United States.

He purchased a gas station in Ojai and renamed it Tony's American Gas.

I don't think you can immigrate from Lebanon in the 70s to Saudi Arabia and then figure out a way to get you and your family all the way to the United States where you then become a citizen without having intelligence and drive.

Another thing that he also was very good at was manipulation.

To me, he was the epitome of a, you know, the old-fashioned slickster car salesman.

Through interviews, we learned Tony was orchestrating these business ventures, selling furniture in England, another business venture in Mexico, selling of wheat in Egypt.

And apparently Tony Neme was running some sort of inheritance scam where he had a friend who died in London and didn't have any heirs and he would have people show up suddenly with certain certified documents stating that they were in fact heirs of this person.

Therefore, that person should receive that estate as inheritance.

For Jesse's case in Los Angeles County, we thought Jesse, he might have been involved in the supposed business ventures.

We actually spoke with Mr. Neme. He came in for an interview.

Mr. Neme said that he knew Jesse, was quite fond of Jesse.

Who's Jesse your friend?

He's my best friend.

He's my brother.

He's my brother.

Where's your brother?

You know, Jesse got a second on his house for a while.

Yes.

Do you know where that money went?

I don't know, sir.

He was your friend.

He was your son.

Now, where do you think the money went from?

I have no idea.

Neme didn't bite on anything.

If I know anything, I'm the first one to come to you guys to tell you about Jesse.

Okay.

All right.

So for Jesse's murder, my partner Kevin Lloyd and I were both very confident that we had enough prosecutorial evidence against the two killers.

However, we didn't have enough evidence to implicate.

There was an involvement of a third person who had orchestrated his killing.

L-A-D-A only charges Bracamonte and Vasquez.

And during the trial, Vasquez starts providing information to Los Angeles detectives in the hopes of currying some favor for himself.

And one of the things he talks about is a murder that he drove Alex Bracamonte to somewhere in Ventura County.

LA County called me at my desk, informed me that he had a defendant in custody.

And he had information about a murder that occurred in Moorpark.

I asked Sergeant Lloyd to have his informant draw him a sketch of the house and the street that it occurred on.

Sergeant Lloyd called me back a few hours later and said,

It's a match.

It was Mr. Woods' home.

And so the next day, my partner and I jumped in the car and drove down to L.A. County Jail and had an interview with Raul Vasquez.

It's very casual. We're sitting across the desk from each other.

What Raul tells them is that he drove two men, Alex Bracamonte and Antoine Namy.

Raul even describes the dirty blue car parked in the driveway.

He said as he waited in the car, those two men approached this house, knocked on the door, and Alex Bracamonte shot the man with a gun that he had concealed in a box.

I called the crime lab.

Hey, can you re-examine the recovered bullets from the crime scene?

And during that examination, the crime analyst actually discovered brown paper around the bullet.

Now this was big because this verified that what Raul Vasquez was telling them was true.

Raul said that the motive for the crime was financially based.

Only he didn't know what that connection was.

Ventura County detectives start looking into Antoine Namy, and what they realize is that Antoine Namy owned this gas station in Ohio called Tony's American Gas, where they sold a variety of items, including, ultimately, prepaid phone cards.

Dennis had a list of vendors and contact information of every single person or business that he sold prepaid phone cards to.

And under the city of Ojai, there was only one business that Dennis sold prepaid phone cards to.

And that was Tony's American Gas.

And in the month of March, there were several phone calls between Dennis and Tony.

And in fact, on the afternoon of March 31st, 2004, the day prior to the murder, there were two phone calls within a short time of each other to Antoine Namy.

But we had a problem here. Detectives never had that direct connection that said Antoine Namy ordered Dennis Wood to be murdered by Alex Procamonte and Raul Vasquez.

I had no idea why Namy would want Dennis murdered the way he was.

Their entire ability to file the case hinged on the words of Raul Vasquez.

We needed to know, can this be proved beyond a reasonable doubt?

We needed to talk to Raul one more time. And it didn't go as planned.

Raul had now changed his story.

Now the story was that Alex Procamonte went to the front door by himself when he shot and killed Dennis Wood through the box.

Now he doesn't know anything about Tony's involvement in this thing.

We just didn't know why. He changed his story, but he appears to be lying about something.

I don't think his memory is that bad. And we're kind of sitting back on it. We're just like, what do we do next?

That change in his story was so significant. It sort of killed the investigation at that point.

In April of 2023, the case has now been reassigned to the cold case unit of Ventura County.

And the two detectives assigned to the case now were Detectives Gerardo Cruz and Eric Hernandez.

They started going through the crime scene photographs.

Well, the detectives at the time had taken several photographs of Dennis Wood's car.

Well, in the car on the front passenger floorboard was a box.

And the box contained a number of files.

It's like the way somebody carries a briefcase, only instead of a briefcase, Dennis carried a box.

And so when they saw that, they pulled that file from evidence.

And mind you, the files in that box had not been looked at since they were booked into evidence in 2004.

And when the cold case detectives opened that file, that's what really broke the case.

When the detectives looked at those photographs, the very first file in the front was American Gas, that Antoine Ani owned.

And this file was a piece of paper.

And it was unusual because it had nothing to do with the prepaid phone card business.

The paper on the back of it said, loan to Tony.

And stapled to it was a copy of a deposit slip and some handwritten notes by Dennis that said that $5,700 in cash had been deposited into the bank account of Antoine Ani.

And attached to that paper, there was also a post-it.

And it had two lines on it.

The first one said, $11,000 cash, no rec.

Just below that, it said, $12,000 cash, no rec.

But Dennis's handwriting was pretty bad.

And so I need someone who can come in and tell us what these records are and what these records mean.

And so the only person alive on earth who could potentially do that was Dawn Hauser.

I could identify the meaning of the ledgers.

No rec. What does that mean?

It was not received.

Now it all makes sense.

There was a document we got from Dennis's son, Bruce Simmons, way back in the beginning of the investigation in 2004.

It had vague references to a friend that Dennis had loaned $28,500 to, which is very close to the $28,700 that Dennis had lent to Antoine Ami.

I think that this friend was Antoine Ami.

And it seems that Antoine Ami manipulated him to make an investment.

Dennis was providing large sums of cash to a man that he didn't really know, seeking a return of four times.

This was the first time that detectives realized that there was a significant financial connection between Dennis Wood and Antoine Ami.

So after getting that information, we were going to get Alex Bracamonte, who already serving a life term for murder for the Los Angeles case.

But he had never been interviewed regarding Dennis Wood.

Without Alex's testimony, we don't have a case against Antoine Ami.

Believe it or not, he fully confessed to the murder and gave us details only the killer would know.

He drove me over there, because I didn't have a car.

Who did?

I drove over there.

Okay.

And he set it up.

Who set it up?

Tony.

The basic story is that Antoine Ami and Alex Bracamonte kill Dennis Wood was because he didn't want to pay the money back.

So, Ami gives Alex the gun to use, which was a .22 caliber semi-automatic firearm.

And Alex Bracamonte puts the gun in a box.

And then what happened?

I got up, walked, and knocked on the door.

I said, delivery.

He opened the door.

I went in.

How far did you go to the house?

As far as where the door is free and then you can close it behind you.

And Dennis starts raising his voice.

And then I shot him.

Once in the chest and two in the head.

And that's how the murder took place at Dennis Wood.

You got me there.

Of course I have an eye on it.

Stop.

Mr. Nemi is driving his green jaguar, and deputies pulled him over.

Once on the way, sir.

Hi, Mr. Nemi?

Yes, sir.

All right.

Step out of the car for me.

Open it up.

All right, take your seatbelt off and step out.

Step out.

Priver's car and...

Step out.

Let me drive our stuff out.

Turn and face the car for me.

Yes, sir.

All right, go ahead.

Hands on your back, palms together, and lace fingers.

What happened?

Hey, Mr. Nimi, you're being placed under arrest for murder.

Murder?

Yes, sir.

Oh, my God.

And informed him he was arrested for murder.

No, he didn't tell me what's the problem.

You're being arrested for murder.

Murder who?

Huh?

Who?

For it to be someone that he had a business relationship with, selling cards, I was in shock.

If you could just tell me whether or not you understand you tried, yes or no, okay?

Murder who?

Just, I'm trying to talk to you, okay?

Yes, sir.

I'm trying to make you random, okay?

There was a look of anger on his face.

No remorse.

And that was probably the evil showing.

They interviewed him.

When's the last time you were here in Ventura County?

2003.

I sold my gas station in Ojai.

What was the name of the business?

Tony's American Gas.

Tony's American Gas.

Now, make no mistake, Mr. Nimi lied throughout the entire interview.

Did you ever sell any other things like, God, 2004, I don't even know if they had them, like cell phones?

No, no, no, no, never.

How about, like, phone cards?

No, no, no, no.

At first, he denied knowing Dennis Wood or having any sort of business relationship with him.

Then went for the sentence with some facts.

He acknowledged that he did know Dennis Wood and that Dennis Wood sold him prepaid phone cards.

Besides the prepaid calling business with this gentleman, did you do any other type of business with this gentleman?

No, no, no, no, no, no, nothing, period.

Was there any type of loans given out, like a...

No, no, no, no, no.

Did somebody borrow money for whatever reason?

From me?

No.

From you or to you?

No.

If I want a bottle, I go to the bank.

They know me.

They know my business.

Okay.

He lied and lied and lied.

Do you recognize who that is?

You've never seen that person before?

I don't.

We believe this is the person that you were in business with buying prepaid calling cards.

Oh, this one?

Yeah.

This is Dennis Wood.

Dennis, yes, Dennis.

So Dennis is the person that you were in business with.

I remember, yeah.

So this is a deposit going into Bank of America.

When confronted with the deposit slip that showed Dennis had given him cash.

It's for $5,700.

And per the notes, it was received in cash and then deposited into your, it looks like a personal

account.

He now had to admit that, yeah, oh, I misunderstood the question originally.

Yes, I did borrow money from him.

This one, I remember what it is.

I called Dennis and my family was in the old country and I was short of money.

And I asked Dennis if he could loan me some money.

He claimed his wife and kids were in Lebanon at this time, but his family was not in Lebanon

at the time of the murder, but were in fact in the United States.

This is what you said.

You said, you do not borrow money.

If you need to take a loan, you go to the bank, but now you're telling us that you did

take a loan.

I did from him.

Yeah.

So earlier when we asked you, you said, no, I don't take loans.

Maybe I missed it.

Maybe I missed it.

You were perfectly clear.

Totally.

You're telling me about a month later, you paid him off.

40 or 45 days.

40 or 45 days after March 31st.

Yeah.

You know why I can't believe that?

Yeah.

Because on the 16th, he was found dead.

You know, you think for 5,700, I'm going to kill somebody?

No, I think it was for more.

What is it?

Show me.

Tony, here it is.

You're under arrest for the murder of Dennis Wood.

Me?

The interview was a cherry on top for me because it shows not just his intelligence, but it

shows his deceit and his willingness to lie in the face of facts in the hopes of trying

to get away with his crime.

You got him.

Got him.

It was a relief.

It was emotional, especially emotional because my father wasn't alive to hear that news.

These detectives are heroes to me.

We had given up hope because there are people, good people, who are working hard to find those

answers for you.

At the age of 71, Dennis was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

He was clearly an easy mark for a fraudster to come in and take advantage of him.

It's kind of a strange twist of irony that the brain injury that likely ultimately put

him into a position where he had to reach out to a man he didn't know and led to Dennis

Wood's murder was also the reason he had to develop a system of record keeping.

And investigators were able to solve it.

Antoine Némy is an evil person.

It seemed that Antoine had his finger in a bunch of different pies.

Who knows what other things could possibly be out there that he had involvement in that

we have no idea about.

I have wondered if there is other murders that Tony is behind or orchestrated.

Over the years, since Dennis Wood was murdered, I don't know.

Just cold-blooded to execute three people.

We figured some Italian good-looking guy, when we saw him, we were like, wow.

It wasn't like she was going out with Brad Pitt.

There was some embezzling.

He was having an affair.

Coincidences?

I don't believe in coincidences.

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?

Coincidences?