Original subtitles

REPORTER 1: Sarah Pender was doing 110 years for a pair

of Indianapolis murders in October of 2000

before escaping from a maximum security prison.

Investigators say Pender had help

and is being passed around from friend to friend.

The Department of Corrections, Indiana State Police,

and a US Marshals task force have worked nonstop

in trying to apprehend Pender.

REPORTER 2: Also tonight, a convicted killer

is on the loose and a prison guard is now under arrest.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

REPORTER: Sarah Pender was serving

a 110-year sentence at Rockville.

Prison officials say that Spitler

drove a prison van inside the gates and then hit...

[person panting]

My heart dropped.

I did not know what to do.

[knock at door]

REPORTER: It was a shock to Steve Stolz...

SARAH: I was absolutely scared.

And I was afraid to look out the little peephole

because I thought, I'm gonna get shot in the face.

PERSON: Side, facing that way.

And I thought, this is it.

[latches clicking]

[door creaking]

[tense music]

And when I opened up the door, it was my friend Thea.

[chuckles]

[somber music]

Thea and I spent time in prison together.

And Peggy had told Thea where to find me.

And so Thea showed up, and she said,

bitch, what are you doing?

I said, well, I did it.

She said, yes, you did.

Oh, my God, yes, you did.

She said, we gotta get the fuck out of here.

So I said, well, let's go.

♪♪

[engine rumbling]

[dramatic music]

♪♪

Thea and I drive to her house.

[laughter]

That night, Thea fixed me pork chops,

potatoes, green beans.

It was delicious.

It was the best thing I'd had in eight years.

I remember just poking at my food with this real fork

and feeling, you know, the...

the metal on my teeth and thinking,

oh, my gosh, this is real.

REPORTER: Sarah Pender is still on the run.

SARAH: These were the most normal things,

like I was at home.

REPORTER: Pender was serving time

for a double murder in Marion County back in 2000.

SARAH: I remember, I was sitting in a...

like, a La-Z-Boy chair

and feeling the cushion and just knowing that

the harshness of prison was behind me.

[tense music]

[sirens wailing]

RYAN: In a fugitive investigation such as Pender,

you can't sit.

Every lead, I went and checked out.

My visit to her friend Peggy maybe didn't bear fruit,

but, um, I left my business card.

And she said she would call me if she heard from Sarah.

I said, if I find out that you're helping her,

it's gonna be a bad situation for you.

♪♪

That's how I rolled.

Show a presence and then get them to work with you.

Like setting a bird trap, I was setting...

I was setting areas out there for me

that would hopefully spring and would generate a capture.

[siren wailing]

I was chasing down these lines and meeting these offenders,

but I'm also profiling her.

♪♪

She got someone to give her a phone

and help her on the run.

She's good at getting people to do things

that are outside the normal human behavior.

Does she get people to do things up and to including

putting two bodies in a trash dumpster?

REPORTER: Pender was convicted in 2002

for the murder of her two roommates.

Police say she helped her codefendant

dispose of the bodies in a south-side dumpster.

I thought, would Rick Hull play ball with me?

Richard Hull was the codefendant.

That was her boyfriend at the time these murders happened.

He was in Pendleton Prison

doing his own 100-plus years for the murders.

GUARD 1 [over radio]: Unit 1, industrial bridge.

GUARD 2 [over radio]: 1.

GUARD 3 [over radio]: Checkpoint 6, copy.

RYAN: I thought Richard would know her

better than anybody else.

I also thought he may know where she would probably go.

♪♪

So I introduced myself.

I told him I was with the US Marshals

and I was looking for Sarah.

He got a smile on his face.

He goes, oh, yeah?

I had mixed emotions about her escape.

I was happy for her.

Yeah, good, go, enjoy it while you can, you know?

But I was really hurting and... and...

and frustrated because I looked at my life as being over.

I mean, I'm at a maximum prison because of Sarah.

And, um, they tell me that I will probably

end up dying in this place.

♪♪

Ryan asked me to help, but it was just like,

how can I help him when I don't know anything?

I don't know where she is.

RYAN: I mean, Rick knows her so well.

So I said, where could she go?

Do you have any theories about where she may run to?

He thought about it.

Rick told me the name Thea and that she did time with her

and that'd be someone she would turn to on the run.

♪♪

It was a hell of a lead.

♪♪

SARAH: At this point, my money's cut off.

I don't know how I'm going to support myself.

And Thea gives me a suggestion.

♪♪

Thea was a stripper, and she had been

spending time with one of the clients,

uh, outside the strip club.

And she knew that he wanted to have a threesome.

She suggested that we have sex with him

and that he would probably give us money.

At the time, I was willing to give up my body,

absolutely... my body, my attention,

my affection... for freedom.

♪♪

[knocking]

[door creaks]

That night, Thea arranged for us to meet

at this motel room and introduced me to Tom.

He was a businessman.

He was clearly in his late 50s,

but he was well built.

He was dressed nice, smelled wonderful,

so I didn't have any worries about him

being this dirty old man.

[door creaks]

Thea told him that my name was Brandy

and that I had just been released from prison

and that I needed to make some money.

♪♪

[heavy exhale]

[faint laughter]

♪♪

After the threesome, Tom asked me

what I was gonna do for the rest of the evening.

And I told him that I didn't know.

I didn't really have anywhere to go.

And so he said that I could stay in the room

because it was already paid for.

♪♪

RYAN: I feel like I'm on the scent.

Thea was working in the strip club industry.

And Rick had told me that if she really

needed to get means or help, she would go to Thea

or go to there and start hustling.

I didn't know specifically where Thea was working,

but there was various strip clubs here in Indianapolis.

And I went out there and spent some time in these places

to see if Sarah was there.

♪♪

At this point, you don't want them to think

you're law enforcement at all.

So you go in there like a baller and a shot caller,

you know, and what I mean by that is,

you better have your money with you.

The more money you spread, the more they're gonna see

you're just a normal guy.

♪♪

One of the distinguishing marks on Sarah was, um,

she had a tattoo of a bull's-eye

on her... on her butt cheek.

And I went out there looking for tattoos,

looking for anybody that looked like Sarah.

I stayed out until I couldn't stay up anymore.

I saw a lot of ass, but I didn't see bull's-eyes.

[bills fluttering]

♪♪

I was frustrated, but I didn't feel defeated, by any means,

because I will find out who's helping her.

♪♪

♪♪

SARAH: The next morning, Tom came again,

brought me McDonald's for breakfast.

And he offered to pay for another night

at the motel room so I had somewhere to go

and that he would keep me company.

So I said yes.

♪♪

Tom and I were laying in bed, and he turned on the TV

and was flipping through the channels.

REPORTER: Investigators say Sarah Pender

is on the loose and dangerous.

A Marion County jury convicted her in the year 2000

in a double murder.

Pender escaped

from the Rockville Correctional Facility,

allegedly with the help of a correctional officer.

♪♪

[indistinct police radio chatter]

I was like, damn.

[sighs]

[tense music]

REPORTER: Pender was convicted in 2002

for the murder of her two roommates.

SARAH: I didn't want to tell Tom the truth,

but I didn't know what to say.

And I'm a terrible liar.

So I told him the story.

♪♪

The evening that Drew and Trish were murdered,

Rick and I were out with my dad and stepmom.

When Rick and I came home, Drew and Rick immediately

started arguing about money that.

Rick's sister owed to Drew for drugs.

Rick's talking about, you know, fuck this motherfucker.

And, you know, he said, you probably want to leave.

And I told him, I have nowhere to go.

Where am I supposed to go?

[crickets chirping]

And so I walked around the neighborhood.

When I came home, everything seemed really quiet,

like, extra quiet.

♪♪

And the house was dark.

♪♪

And it felt wrong.

♪♪

I heard a noise.

I didn't understand what the noise was.

And I called out for Rick.

And there was no response.

♪♪

And I looked.

I didn't see Drew or Trish or Rick.

♪♪

There was blood on the floor.

♪♪

And when I got to the living room,

I saw Rick.

♪♪

Rick was bent over.

He was...

putting Trish's body into a blanket.

I do remember being very afraid

and thinking that, what do I do now?

What do I do? What do I do?

Because I didn't know.

I said, Ricky.

♪♪

And when he stood up, he turned around,

and he just looked at me.

♪♪

For a moment, we just stared at each other.

And I clearly thought to myself, I'm about to die.

♪♪

And so I just froze.

I just froze there, and I waited.

♪♪

And then I put my hands up, and I just said,

what do you want me to do?

♪♪

Rick told me to get another blanket.

And so I did.

♪♪

I remember Rick dragging Trish's body across the floor

to take her out.

And when he put her body in the back of the truck...

♪♪

I saw that Drew was already in there.

♪♪

But I didn't know what to do,

except stand there.

♪♪

I just felt so helpless.

♪♪

Rick told me to get into the truck,

and I did.

[engine humming]

I remember very clearly thinking, this is not real,

and making up that everything was fine.

♪♪

Rick drove only a handful of blocks away

to a dumpster behind a building.

♪♪

[car door clicks open, dull thudding]

♪♪

I only saw when I looked in the rearview mirror.

♪♪

And then I didn't want to see anything else.

And so I just looked forward, and I pretended not to see.

♪♪

[siren wailing]

♪♪

RICHARD: Sarah says she had nothing to do with this,

that I was the one that did it all.

And that's not the truth.

That's not what happened whatsoever.

♪♪

Drew was my friend.

He was my brother.

♪♪

As far as the night that this all took place, um,

I'm still in the middle of some of my appeals,

so I can't get into the full details

of everything that... that took place.

But I did not... I did not, uh...

I did not murder Drew and Trish.

♪♪

RYAN: When I was talking to Rick,

he openly said he walked in and returned home

and Sarah was rocking back and forth

holding a shotgun while two dead bodies were there.

That's what... that's what he claims.

♪♪

RICHARD: Who are you gonna believe:

me with my background, knowing that, uh...

he already knows I'm a drug dude

and have been in the business,

6'3 1/2 ", 6'4", 325 pounds, bald head,

goatee, looking like this,

or some girl that's kind of innocent-looking,

just working her way through being a young adult.

Who you gonna believe?

♪♪

'Cause females won't lie.

They're not gonna be deceiving.

[laughs]

♪♪

[tense music]

♪♪

Rick just asked me to buy a gun.

And I said yes.

I didn't... I didn't question why he would want it.

Um, there wasn't a lot of discussion about it, um.

Rick couldn't buy a gun

because he had a previous felony.

So at 7:30 in the morning, he drove us to Walmart.

And we walked in.

He picked out the gun and ammunition that he wanted.

And I bought it, paid with a check and my ID,

thinking that this was what I was supposed to be doing.

♪♪

[water sloshing]

[gunshots]

[camera shutter snapping]

[gunshot]

RICHARD: Did I know if Drew or Trish

was gonna get killed with that shotgun?

♪♪

No.

Sarah was playing her game, was... was pointing everything

at me at the very beginning.

I just don't know what really happened.

What I can say is that Sarah wanted the... that shotgun.

It was Sarah's idea to get the...

to go for the protection.

I mean, uh, I was in the drug business.

If I wanted a gun, I could have one, OK?

I mean, getting a gun was not a problem,

would not have been a problem, um.

♪♪

[indistinct police radio chatter]

REPORTER: The victims, a white man and a woman,

were discovered last night in a dumpster

behind the Teamsters Hall

in the 800 block of South Meridian.

The two had been shot to death.

♪♪

Well, it's not an everyday occurrence

to have, uh, bodies in a dumpster in Indianapolis,

let alone two bodies in a dumpster.

♪♪

Once we identified our victims,

Andrew Cataldi and Tricia Nordman,

we were able to connect the location

of where they had lived.

And we knew that the home was being rented

by Rick Hall and Sarah Pender.

♪♪

Rick clearly was a suspect.

We knew Rick had been dealing drugs.

REPORTER: Police came to believe that this man,

22-year-old Richard Hull,

who lived with Cataldi and Nordman,

was the likely murderer.

He was placed under arrest and charged with, uh,

Andrew and Tricia's murders.

We just didn't know if Sarah was involved.

♪♪

[tape recorder clicks]

♪♪

ANTHONY: She was flipping her hair

and fixing her blouse, fixing her shirt.

I thought she was the type of woman

that maybe thought she could talk her way out of this.

But we knew that Sarah had purchased a weapon.

She helped conceal the evidence.

I felt like she was more involved than she let on.

I stand firm in my convictions

that she is a very, very dangerous person.

Uh, she's capable of doing about anything.

After Sarah escaped from prison in 2008,

my daughter said, well, Dad, aren't you a little

worried about what she might do?

I mean, you're the one that convicted her.

Don't you think we ought to be concerned

about her coming here?

I said that I think Sarah

had a dark, evil demon within.

And I think it's a good thing for Indianapolis

and everybody else that she's found as soon as possible

because I don't know what she's capable of doing.

[dramatic music]

When I was a youngster, I was an actor.

And then I realized a little later on,

you need to be gainfully employed.

So I fooled around and I practiced the law

and eventually ended up working as a deputy prosecutor

in Marion County Prosecutor's Office.

Sarah Pender had been charged with two murders.

I was getting to prosecute.

And I loved that.

You know, I felt pretty good

about the evidence in the case.

♪♪

BONNIE: I tried to feel optimistic about the trial

the best I could, because I had no idea what the evidence was.

And I just didn't know what to expect.

SARAH: Before the trial, I thought that they just

made a mistake and everything would be OK,

that it would be fixed.

I remember sitting there thinking,

I couldn't wait to get home, lay in my bed,

eat lasagne, and figure out

how I was gonna move forward with my life.

♪♪

LARRY: When the trial started,

Sarah was trying to convince a jury

that although Rick did all these horrible things

and committed these murders

and that she was with him

that she didn't actually participate.

She said she was scared.

She thought Rick Hull might shoot her

if she didn't help him.

And I argued to the jury, she had that opportunity

to leave the day after the shootings

to go to law enforcement.

Just why in the hell didn't you get out of there,

leave, go?

[gunshot]

But she didn't.

♪♪

I've covered lots of murder cases.

I'm a journalist.

I look for evidence. I look for facts.

And in Sarah's case, the facts Larry put forward

were really compelling.

Larry introduced a witness named Floyd Pennington.

♪♪

Floyd had been, uh, locked up in jail on a robbery charge.

She had some sort of steamy pen-pal relationship with him

while they were both locked up in jail.

SARAH: When Floyd entered the courtroom

from the opposite side,

I wanted to yell out, like, why are you doing this?

♪♪

Floyd was charming, and he used

proper spelling and grammar,

and that's unusual for a lot of people in jail.

After seven months of writing, Floyd and I decided to organize

a trip to the hospital.

♪♪

LARRY: They, uh, feign some sort of illnesses

so they could talk in person.

♪♪

He told her that he wanted to have

a better... stronger relationship,

and she did too.

But he needed her to confide in him,

tell him the truth about the murders

of Andrew Cataldi and Trish Nordman.

♪♪

VIC: So Floyd said that Sarah had told him that she wanted

to get rid of the roommates to... you know, for money

or drug dealing or whatever it is

they were into at the time...

[water sloshing]

And that she bought the shotgun.

She got Rick angry enough

and convinced him to commit these murders.

♪♪

I wanted to scream out, like, this is not happening.

He is lying.

How could anyone believe this man?

How could anybody believe him?

♪♪

LARRY: And I said she had a Charles Manson-like ability

to convince people to do bad things.

VIC: During the trial, Larry came out and told the jury

how there's also this one letter.

[paper rustling]

♪♪

It painted a picture of Sarah,

uh, and... and not as a, you know, innocent victim.

♪♪

It was something that was certainly shocking.

LARRY: "My dearest Richard, I just snapped.

I didn't mean to kill them, it must have been the acid."

SARAH: There was nothing I could do to defend myself.

And all I could think about was, I didn't write this.

I didn't write this. I didn't do this.

LARRY: "I'll never forget you.

"I love you and I miss you so much.

Love always."

♪♪

VIC: Larry, in his closing argument,

sort of gave two possibilities

of ways of proving Sarah's guilt.

In one, it was that, like that letter said,

Sarah was the one who had actually pulled the trigger

and shot the victims.

And the other scenario Larry put forward

was Floyd Pennington's statement,

that Sarah had manipulated Rick into doing these crimes.

It doesn't matter.

If the jury believes one or the other,

um, she's still guilty of murder.

♪♪

LARRY: And I said, you have a responsibility

to convict her.

And they did.

The jury came back in, and the judge ruled

that she was guilty of both murders.

[gavel bangs]

[water sloshing]

Sarah Pender was sentenced to 110 years.

♪♪

All I remember is crying.

♪♪

Oh, I cried, you know, because what do you do?

I felt like my heart was ripped out.

♪♪

I was lost, because there was no way

that I could sit in prison for 110 years

for something I didn't do.

[siren wailing]

REPORTER: Investigators say Sarah Pender

is on the loose and dangerous.

A Marion County jury convicted her in the year 2000

in a double murder.

SARAH: Tom stayed with me for a few days.

Our relationship deepened, and I just trusted

that Tom was not gonna go home and call the police.

[dramatic music]

He was all these things that, from the outside looking in,

was a very normal, upstanding citizen.

But in his private life, Tom was a sex addict,

and he saw an opportunity for me to be his sex pet.

♪♪

Clear as day, I remember he asked me if...

it was the oddest thing.

He asked me, do you love me?

I said, no.

He said, do you think you could love me?

I said, yeah, I think I could love you.

He said, OK.

He said, do you want me to take care of you?

Said, yeah.

And so I began to look at the relationship as,

I need to play a role.

SARAH: You know, he was my sugar daddy.

And I never got greedy.

I never wanted him to think that I was using him.

I always wanted him to know that he was using me.

♪♪

♪♪

SARAH: Tom wanted to go to a casino.

He enjoyed gambling and wanted to show me off

as something like a prize.

I was worried that someone would recognize me,

but I had cut my hair, dyed it.

I was made up in this little black dress and a necklace.

♪♪

It was a very reckless thing to go to the casino,

but it made him happy.

It made him want to keep me.

♪♪

One of the things that made me valuable to Tom

is that I would do whatever he wanted me to do.

And so when Tom wanted to go out,

I said yes, because I would have said yes if he asked me

to turn the sky purple.

[indistinct chatter]

But every moment was tainted with knowing

that someone that had seen me on the news could spot me.

REPORTER: Others have talked to police,

saying they think they've spotted Pender.

I became more paranoid.

REPORTER 1: Sarah Pender. REPORTER 2: Sarah Pender.

REPORTER 3: Sarah Pender. REPORTER 4: Pender.

REPORTER 5: Sarah Pender.

♪♪

I realized it was important for me to keep moving

and get out of Indianapolis.

♪♪

So I asked Tom to help me.

[siren wailing]

[tense music]

♪♪

Tom fixed me up with a job

down in Cincinnati working with a friend of his, uh,

that was a general contractor.

It was really hard to be away from my friends

because they had become such a support system.

And so that sort of solitude

was difficult.

♪♪

PEGGY: One day at home...

[doorbell rings] The FedEx guy came,

and I thought Mom might have ordered something.

She said she didn't order anything.

And then I got to looking at it, and it had my name on it.

[paper rustling]

Then I opened it up and I seen it was a little Tracfone,

one that can't be traced.

And then I looked in there again

and seen there was a little note in there from Sarah.

♪♪

RYAN: It was roadblock after roadblock after roadblock,

but you can't give up.

I've got certain things in place, and then, boom.

[phone buzzing]

I get notified by Peggy.

She was nervous, and she goes, Sarah mailed me a phone,

and she's gonna call me this Thursday.

What do I do?

I was like, don't do anything. I'll be there Thursday.

So when Peggy reported that to me,

that took me from cloud one to cloud nine.

I was excited.

It gives you that other shot of adrenaline

to keep on going 'cause I'm getting closer.

♪♪

[tense music]

♪♪

RYAN: When Peggy got her phone mailed to her,

I called down our tactical operations truck from Detroit.

He came down for this because once the phone came up live,

we needed to track where she's bedded down at.

♪♪

When we got to Peggy,

you could see Peggy was nervous.

And God love her, you know, here we are, federal agents,

and... and... and... and this is a big deal.

♪♪

We're all waiting for this thing to start ringing.

And all I told Peggy was, when she calls, be normal.

[phone ringing]

When the phone rang, it scared me.

I jumped.

I didn't know what to expect.

[ringing continues]

SARAH: Eventually Peggy answered,

and I immediately felt relief,

uh, from this tension that I had.

♪♪

I mean, she was talking really, kind of,

like, quiet, you know?

So I don't know where she was at.

SARAH: Peggy was crying, and she's like,

they know that I helped you.

I don't want to go back to prison.

Please, just turn yourself in.

That was so hard to hear her be scared.

[device beeps]

RYAN: My colleague was out in the truck,

and he was trying to locate which tower

and which antenna, where she was at.

[device beeping]

I'm trying to keep Peggy on the phone,

'cause the longer I have the conversation going,

the better it was for us to get where she was at.

♪♪

I begged her to turn herself in

because they had orders to shoot to kill.

♪♪

SARAH: I told her, I can't turn myself in.

This is what I chose to do.

And if I go back, I'm just going to kill myself.

And I told her, if they find me and they shoot me,

they're only gonna do me a favor.

♪♪

RYAN: Those are words I'm sure Peggy didn't want to hear.

And it was the first indicator that Sarah

didn't want to go back alive.

That goes beyond me speculating.

I heard it from the horse's mouth

that she's... she's accepted violence as opposed

to sort of a peaceful surrender.

I remember apologizing to her and saying,

Peggy, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

♪♪

And then she hung up.

And I believe that was the last time I talked to her.

RYAN: After the phone call, I literally took

a beeline out to the truck.

The, uh, technical guy finds out

it's on a tower outside of Cincinnati, Ohio,

near several motels.

So we'd have to only conclude

she's bedded down somewhere in one of these rooms.

I mean, God, that made perfect sense.

♪♪

We had the nest.

[tires squealing]

[guns cocking]

I felt that urge, that excitement.

It's like the dog on the scent of a trail.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

So US Marshals from Cincinnati went out

and canvassed the area where Sarah

was making this phone call.

I was confident I'd get her.

♪♪

[phone buzzing]

But the marshals called back from Cincinnati

and basically said, hey, we've canvassed

all these places... nothing.

No one's seen her at all.

[phone snaps]

[phone clatters]

♪♪

Looking back, I was goddamn close to her.

♪♪

[grunts]

But a good hunter will never give up.

I've never had to shoot anybody, never have.

But I can assure you, as I'm sitting here,

the magazine that I carried in my gun,

that first bullet had her name on it.

♪♪

[dramatic music]

♪♪