Original subtitles

[intriguing music playing]

[Khadija] All I seen was sparks.

I think that was the time I knew that Eric was gone.

[news reporter] The 28-year-old was tragically

gunned down just outside of his home.

I just screamed to the top of my lungs.

No words that could explain that feeling.

[Det. Bamberski] They're innocent victims.

They don't deserve what happened to them.

[Khadija] I didn't know what to do after that.

I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how to breathe.

I didn't know how to do any --

anything.

So the big question is, who is this guy?

[Coleman] Gangs, drug dealers.

A lot of them think that they're untouchable,

not realizing in the background we're watching.

This is a truly evil person. He was a true serial killer.

You're insane. You're a monster.

He called himself the next John Wick.

He's a real life murder-for-money hitman.

I'm Detective Joe Bamberski, FBI Task Force Officer.

I'm Liz Becker, Special Agent, FBI.

[narrator] When serious crime strikes,

the Special Agents of the FBI answer the call.

Fidelity.

Bravery.

Integrity.

This...

is "FEDS."

[dramatic music playing]

What's up?

At work, doing what I do, towing cars.

It's a Sunday night, in the rain.

[Khadija] Eric was literally love at first sight.

Two days later, he was moving me out of the apartment

that I was in.

And I was moving into his.

It was so quick, but yet, we knew.

We knew.

[Eric on video] Over here.

In the beginnings 2017...

I'll be 40 years old. Would you believe it? 40

We were moving to down south.

We were leaving.

He had bought a truck from his mom.

We were packing it up with a little bit of stuff

that me and him had together.

Relocate down south, start a new life.

I don't ask for much.

I just want to live.

The words are so powerful when I see that video.

He just wanted to live.

-[motors whirring] -[car honking]

That night, I had been working at Melrose Place, the bar.

It was a deli up front, tavern in the back.

Eric, he was working for A. Bob's,

the tow truck company down the street from the bar.

I was outside, you know, on a break, and Eric came up.

We were actually talking about, you know, how we were leaving.

And we seen this man, dark-skinned man,

stone-washed jeans on, and he just opened fires.

All I seen was sparks.

[gunshots blasting]

It was just rapid fire.

[two gunshots blasting]

I tried to grab him.

But Eric pushes me where I'm in front of the bar door now.

My back was burning.

I had gun fragments that I didn't even realize

were in my back.

I know Eric saved my life.

It got silent.

[somber music playing]

And somebody was giving him CPR.

I think that was the time I knew

that Eric was gone.

[ominous music playing]

[train tracks rattling]

[Becker] In 2017, I was brand new to the FBI.

I wanted to work narcotics cases

and violent crime cases and --

so, therefore, this is unfortunately, kind of,

the perfect place to be.

Philly is a very large city, very vibrant city,

has a lot of great areas to visit.

But there's also the other side,

where there's a lot of violence,

gangs, homicides, narcotics.

It's an uphill battle.

[Becker] The city itself, unfortunately,

has a really bad narcotics problems

and violent crime issues.

We're fighting for the top of the most murders per city

in the country.

[Det. Bamberski] There's a famous quote in Philadelphia by Frank Rizzo,

and it goes, "The streets of Philadelphia are safe.

It's the people in Philadelphia that make them unsafe."

I was in the homicide unit for, uh, just shy of 28 years.

It takes a toll. It takes a huge toll.

I worked probably in excess of 2,000 murders

with my partner, John McNamee.

So my relationship with Joe is kind of like

looking in the mirror, just not physically.

I felt close enough to call him my brother.

I feel like I knew more about him

than I did my own siblings.

[Det. Bamberski] The unique thing with myself and my partner was that we were

also cross designated with the FBI

as a task force officer,

which basically means you're a local police officer

who is then sworn in as a federal officer.

[Coleman] They're the same as we are at that point,

all working together, all sharing information,

all to try to combat the violent crime problem

that plagues us all.

The FBI opened their door for us,

and then we bring an enormous amount

of investigative experience.

It's a combination of...

I guess you could say, old-school tenacity

and new-school technology, and it's tough to overcome

when they work together.

[Det. Bamberski] On the night of January 12th,

John and I were working the 4 to 12.

[Det. McNamee] On the 4 to 12 shift

you pretty much resign yourself to the fact

that you're gonna be leaving the building

to investigate a crime. A murder.

[sirens wailing]

[dispatcher and officer speaking]

[Det. Bamberski] I got the phone call.

There had been a homicide up in the Frankford section

of Philadelphia.

One person is shot. They were pronounced dead.

The victim's name in this case,

was Eric Robinson.

Right here, where we're standing,

there was a lot of blood on the sidewalk

from where the victim had fallen.

He was shot multiple times.

His girlfriend, who was standing right next to him,

was right here.

[Det.McNamee] There's a lot of ballistic evidence,

a lot of shell casings.

Looked like a very personal shooting,

by the amount of violence

that we saw directed at one person.

-[Det. Bamberski] There's the surveillance camera -[Det. McNamee] Yeah.

[Det.McNamee] We knew by our observations outside that the store

at the corner probably had video.

[Det. Bamberski] And we recovered some very valuable video evidence.

The video surveillance shows the person

who committed the homicide

look outside the window and you can see that person looking

at Eric Robinson and Khadija, who are standing just outside

of camera view on the sidewalk.

The video evidence from inside the store was amazing.

It clearly shows the offender's face,

his physical description, the clothes that he's wearing.

In my years in law enforcement, I've never seen

video surveillance footage that was as clear

as the Eric Robinson homicide.

[Det.McNamee] In addition to that,

the video shows the suspect exit the store,

walk directly to the victim, and...

[gunshots blasting]

...fire many shots.

[gunshots blasting]

There was no struggle. This was a targeted attack.

It was just a matter of fact execution of a person

on the sidewalk.

[Det. Bamberski] It's clear that Eric Robinson is the intended target.

What is the motive of this murder?

So we have to look into the background

of Eric Robinson. Where is he from?

Who does he associate with?

What's up?

At work, doing what I do, towing cars.

[Det.McNamee] We find out he was a working man,

was not on anybody's radar in law enforcement

for any kind of misconducts at this point in his life.

I'm thinking that whatever this guy did, it was personal.

So we had to speak to Robinson's girlfriend.

[Khadija] The next day,

I walked back up to the bar, and I laid in front of the bar

where he's ki --

in his blood.

Until my daughter and them came and got me.

'Cause I didn't know what to do after that.

I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how to breathe.

I didn't know how to do any --

anything...

'Cause we had did everything -- so much together.

and...he didn't deserve that.

I had to, of course, talk to the detectives.

And they asked me, did he ever have an altercation in my bar?

And I told them a customer...

He was being very disrespectful one night.

Over flirtatious, but not respecting the fact

that I'm telling you I have a man.

And it was very negative. It was nasty.

Eric said a couple words back to him.

He didn't like Eric because...

Eric stood up to him, you know,

and walked away from it.

That's what I had to tell the police.

[Det. Bamberski] That's a very viable motive

for why somebody would want to commit a murder.

That happens all the time, you know, romantic interests

cause people to do crazy things.

So we were chasing the lead given to us by Khadija

when the following evening another murder occurred

that led us in a different direction.

[gunshot blasting]

-I love this picture. - Mm-hmm.

When he jumped in that pool, and he came up.

That had to be the funniest thing ever.

[Marie] He'll never get old.

Khayyan and I were cousins, 30 days apart, literally.

We were joined at the hip.

It was not one day that went by

that we didn't talk to each other.

We just, it was, I don't know, it was magnetic,

like brother and sister.

We had a good childhood.

We both spent a lot of time with my grandmom.

Khayyan always came around.

He always made sure he stopped by.

And Khayyan was her breath of fresh air.

There's no words in the English language

to describe him.

Handsome, handsome from the word go.

Such a lovable child.

He called me "shorty," and I don't know why,

'cause I was taller than him.

He was an all around boy, and then he became a man.

And I was so proud of what he did.

He had two sons, loved them to death.

He took care of them.

He was a great provider.

At the time, he worked at A. Bob's

as a tow truck driver.

[Marie] He wanted to be a police officer,

and he was on that path. He was on the path.

He was working. And that was my grandson.

And I miss him. I miss that relationship.

[phone ringing]

[dispatcher and caller speaking]

[Marie] Friday the 13th,

sitting in my usual chair, watching TV.

My son's upstairs. Common Friday night for me.

And all of a sudden, my son's coming down the steps.

"Come on, let's go. Khayyan's been shot."

I said, "What?"

We got there before the ambulance.

As I'm standing outside the ER, watching across the street,

I see the ambulance. the lights go out.

And if you don't know what that means,

that means that the person's gone.

My heart just sunk.

Well, they took him out of the ambulance.

Then I looked, turned around, I seen Khayyan's face.

Couldn't believe it. His face was all swollen.

His head was blown up.

He had always been big as I don't know what,

but he still was Khayyan.

Then they called my son, his mother, and they --

and they told us that he didn't make it.

No words that could explain that feeling.

[Najeera] And when we finally got the call,

I just remember my knees, my, like, they just buckled,

and I just screamed to the top of my lungs.

And everything after that was just a blur.

I didn't want to be touched. I didn't want to be held.

I didn't want the comfort.

Like, I just -- I just wanted him.

I never went to the hospital.

I regret not going to the hospital so -- every day.

Every day.

And I want him to know that.

[intriguing music playing]

[Det. Bamberski] I was following up leads

on the Eric Robinson murder.

The homicide unit was notified

that another murder had occurred.

The fact that they both worked at the same tow truck company,

we suspected that the homicides were connected.

So the murder of Khayyan Fruster was then reassigned

to John and I directly.

I took a look at the CCTV and was able to see

how Khayyan was killed.

There's a tow truck sitting on the corner

outside of Khayyan's house.

Once Khayyan approached the tow truck...

opened the passenger door, the shooter immediately ran up

and, while the passenger door was open, began shooting Khayyan

and basically executing him.

[muffled gunshot blast]

[gunshot blasting]

[Becker] Khayyan Fruster, he was a completely innocent person.

The blatant disregard for human life is insane to me.

[Det. Bamberski] The ballistic evidence that was recovered

from the Khayyan Fruster murder was compared

to the ballistic evidence recovered from

the Eric Robinson scene.

It was a match, meaning that the same gun

killed both victims.

We realized that Eric wasn't killed

for romantic reasons.

Now we're looking at a double homicide.

We're now thinking, "What's going on

at the tow company that we need to start looking at?"

[Det. Bamberski] At that time in Philadelphia,

we were experiencing a lot of unlicensed, unregistered

tow truck operators,

and some of them were warring with one another.

Not to the extent that they were murdering each other,

but it certainly wasn't out of the realm

to think that it may have escalated to that point.

[Det. Bamberski] We had a very clear picture of the shooter.

We had a very clear picture of what he was wearing.

[Becker] So we get this CCTV footage of the Robinson homicide

out on a billboard for people to hopefully call in and give us

an idea of who the subject actually is.

Once that happened, I was like, someone has to know

who this person is. Someone's gonna call.

This will be an easily solved homicide.

That never happened.

It was very strange that nobody came forward.

What that means is he's so dangerous

that nobody wants to come forward.

We were starting to think that it's somebody in the city

that has some kind of reputation,

and it's a dangerous reputation.

It's extremely frustrating. The case did stall.

The case hit a point where we weren't able

to move forward.

[Marie] Months went by. In fact, a whole year went by.

And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to him.

And I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

So I investigated.

I discovered Khayyan was to testify against this man

named Arthur Rowland.

And that's where it went from there.

I found out Khayyan was getting his car towed.

They were hooking it up to the tow truck.

The guy pulled a gun. So, Khayyan called the cops.

Khayyan had to go to court.

He's testifying that this guy threatened him with a gun

when he was doing his job. He was doing the right thing.

So I investigated a little bit more

into this Arthur Rowland's lifestyle.

I'm on the computer, and I'm looking up his history.

He's got a rap record like this.

So I called the detectives, and I let them know.

I thought, this is the man. This is the reason.

And that's how Detective Bamberski took over.

[Det. Bamberski] Khayyan's grandmom

came to us and said that Khayyan

was due to testify against Arthur Rowland.

When we looked into Arthur Rowland's background,

I could see that he's a person who's in the drug trade

and had been so for a very long time.

On the night that Khayyan was making an attempt

to tow Arthur Rowland's pickup truck,

the police recovered the firearm

that was used to threaten Khayyan,

as well as a significant amount of narcotics.

And then, the day before Fruster was to testify in his case

against Arthur Rowland...

he was murdered.

The sticking point with that was Eric Robinson.

We could not connect him to Arthur Rowland in any way.

And there was no doubt that when we were reviewing

the video footage of both locations

that the shooter was not Arthur Rowland.

He had a legitimate alibi for both murders.

[Det.McNamee] We needed someone that could help us

with information, so we took the information

to task force members, and instantly,

Agent Becker informed us that he's a suspect

in a major drug investigation that I'm conducting.

[Becker] We knew about him.

Arthur Rowland was a known subject

in the violent drug-trafficking game in Philadelphia.

He was one of those people that it was very difficult

to get a case on him because he was very surveillance-conscious.

But we always knew that he was the person

that we needed to focus on.

I would say that Arthur Rowland is probably one of the most

dangerous people that

I have ever investigated.

[Becker] Over the course of months,

we finally got a wiretap going on who we believed to be

a very senior figure in the hierarchy

of Arthur Rowland's drug organization.

It was clear that Arthur Rowland,

otherwise known as "Bo,"

really had his tentacles in everything.

Arthur Rowland was one of the main members

of this drug-trafficking organization,

receiving large amounts of methamphetamine

and distributing it to his people on the street.

[Coleman] This is what the Bureau does,

and we do it very, very well.

Gangs, drug dealers, a lot of them think

that they're untouchable, that law enforcement

can't get to them.

Not realizing in the background, we're watching.

There's not an organization that we can't get into,

you know, if we decide that's where we need to be.

So, when Joe and John said that they believe Rowland

was a part of their investigation,

we were very interested.

They're given all access to our case files,

information, whatever they need,

and whatever we need to work a case together.

And that's the beauty of this task force.

We need to know anybody and everybody that's connected

to Arthur Rowland.

So as individuals are being identified on the wire,

we were cross referencing those images, their photos,

to the CCTV footage of the Eric Robinson homicide.

[Det. Bamberski] None of that was panning out.

None of the people that are tied into Rowland

are fitting into the image of the person

who committed the murders.

They are clearly not the same person.

Again, the frustration level rises

because you can't get past this one part of the case

that's now taking months to do.

One of the disappointing aspects of being a homicide detective

in Philadelphia is a lot of murders go unsolved,

and that's frustrating

for the loved ones of the homicide victim.

[Khadija] I didn't want to wait anymore.

Every day, I wake up, I think about Eric.

Every morning,

every night.

How did he get away with this so long?

I would call them.

They would call me back and forth.

They did the work.

They did the footwork, but they couldn't connect it.

[Det. Bamberski] I was thinking to myself,

"How are we going to tie this all together

"and connect the two murders

and link it to the drug organization?"

Is there something else that I'm missing here?

You just need that one piece.

[phone ringing]

[dispatcher and caller speaking]

I was coming to work that day

when I was notified that there was a murder.

The victim in the case is a male by the name

of Shawn Small.

[reporter] Police are now looking for the gunman responsible

for the murder that occurred in the Overbrook Park section

of the city.

[Det. Peters] So here in the parking lot,

we find the victim.

He slumped over from the driver's side

into the passenger's side.

He's been shot one time, execution style,

in the side of the head.

We have one witness who sees the shooter

come back up to the victim's car.

Now, at this time, the shooter was on foot.

He reaches inside the car.

The shooter then wipes down the side of the car

with his jacket, and then proceeds this way here

towards 75th Street.

So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna look for cameras.

When we review that video, it was right there

in the top corner.

[Becker] It's not great surveillance footage,

but you can see the unknown male

get out of the vehicle, approach Shawn Small's vehicle.

[Det. Peters] He stops and fires the shot.

And that was it.

Then later on, he returns on foot.

We were able to get another video

that showed the shooter.

He's wearing black and bright yellow jacket,

so it was easy to follow him on surveillance footage.

[Det. Peters] He sees the police arrive,

and then he runs through one of the back alleyways.

What can we do to find out who that person is?

When I speak to Shawn's brother,

he provides me the information

that he met with Shawn the night before,

that it was Shawn's birthday.

He had met him at a bar.

So now I needed to get their video.

[Becker] We see a series of vehicles pull up.

Three males get out of all three vehicles.

One of them was our victim, Shawn Small.

[Det. Peters] And he's with his brother,

a gentleman who went by the name P.R.

The fourth guy,

we don't know, but that was the exact person that we had

on camera from the crime scene.

He's wearing this distinct shirt and the sneakers match.

Shawn's brother he told me that he was with two gentlemen,

that one he knew was P.R,

and the other one he did not know

but was introduced to him as Vern, Ern, Vance,

something like that.

So, I watched the video from inside the bar,

and it was then when I get

a really good picture of the shooter.

So the big question is, how do I get to this guy?

Who is this guy?

[Det. Peters] Now at this point,

I'm like, so close.

So I go to what's called the Photo Imager.

It's a list of people's arrest photos.

And I do a cold search.

How the photo machine works is --

you're putting in combinations. I have a description...

physically, decent picture of his face,

and his name's Vern, Ern, Vance, something like that.

So I just start breaking down combinations of those.

First page, nothing. Second page, nothing.

I'm going through the pages.

On the third page, bang, there he is.

PRTha -- that's the guy.

The guy from the picture in the bar to this guy,

it's the same guy.

The name was Ernest Pressley.

Pressley was arrested two days prior on another case.

I really was getting one break after the other.

So I prepare an arrest warrant for Pressley for the murder

of Shawn Small.

So, I kind of have the who, so where's the why?

And this is when I dig into P.R, and then I find out that P.R

was associated with Arthur Rowland

and their business is drugs.

The more I dug into Rowland and the more I dug into P.R.,

there was no way that I felt that a federal agency

wasn't watching them.

John and Joe were the FBI task force,

so I reach out to them.

He calls me over, and he says, "Take a look at this guy."

And I look, and I look closer,

and I'm like, "That's it." That's our shooter.

Ernest Pressley is the shooter of Eric Robinson

and Khayyan Fruster,

as well as the shooter of Shawn Small.

It was, like, we got the guy. We knew we had the right guy.

There was no questioning that it wasn't the same person.

But in the beginning, Pressley wasn't cooperating.

[Det. Bamberski] Arthur Rowland was still out on the street.

Pressley was like, "I can't speak on these guys

"because I know what will happen to me,

the same thing that happened to Shawn Small."

[Becker] But at that point, we have enough evidence

against Arthur Rowland.

We've had enough pounds of methamphetamine

that we had seized.

We had enough phone calls that we were listening into.

[Coleman] We know how they're operating.

We know who's doing it, and we decided

it was the right time.

[Becker] So that morning was a massive coordination

where we had search warrants and arrests

going on in California and then also in Philadelphia.

Arthur Rowland is living...

close to what we call the Main Line,

which is a very nice part of Philadelphia

in a high-rise condo.

[Det. Bamberski] We went up to the apartment

that Arthur Rowland was living in.

Rowland actually refused to open the door.

So once FBI, SWAT forced open the door,

he was inside, and he was taken into custody.

[Becker] The house is searched.

We find narcotics, large stacks of money,

he had a gold necklace

that had diamond-encrusted pendant on it that said "Bo,"

which is his nickname.

So it just really gave...

a good picture of how much money

he was making.

[Det. Bamberski] There was a handgun right by the door,

and Liz Becker recovered

two machine guns that were secreted

in the nightstands in the bedroom.

[Becker] It was a kid's room that Arthur Rowland

was keeping two extremely dangerous,

high powered, semi-automatic rifles in.

It tells me a lot about him.

[Coleman] Once Rowland was finally arrested,

we were hoping that Pressley

would be more inclined to talk to us.

In April of 2019, Ernest Pressley

came in for an interview at the FBI Philadelphia office.

It's Liz Becker, Kevin Coleman, myself, and Joe.

So I said, "OK, let's sit down."

I couldn't even get the Miranda warnings out

when Ernest Pressley said, "I'm going to tell you everything."

And then we knew we had him.

And at that point, it was pretty much, "OK,

"can you elaborate

on why you would do these things?"

And he elaborated on why he would do them.

These are things that...

everyone's familiar with because generally

they're television shows.

But this was real, a real life

murder-for-money hitman.

[Det.McNamee] After he identified himself

of killing Robinson, we really still suspected

that Fruster's murder was connected.

Ernest Pressley tells us that he was hired

to kill Khayyan Fruster.

Then we ask the next question, which is,

"Why did you kill him?"

[Becker] Pressley is alleging that Arthur Rowland

was the one getting the firearms

for the homicides and then paying

the individual to do them.

The intent was to kill Khayyan Fruster

and prevent him from testifying

against Arthur Rowland.

There's no witness, there's no crime.

But I still have that...

gnawing thought in the back of my mind,

why Eric Robinson?

So his plan was,

"We'll kill a tow truck driver tonight,

"and tomorrow night,

"when we kill Khayyan Fruster,

it'll look like a tow truck war."

Which is exactly the path we follow.

[Becker] Eric Robinson, he just happened to be

wrong place, wrong time, and they targeted

him just because of where he worked at.

Classifying Eric Robinson as a sacrificial lamb,

you almost wonder if there's,

like, a soul in there.

[Det.McNamee] It was frightening.

I realized that we're talking to somebody

who's capable of incredible amounts of violence

without any remorse or guilt.

I say very, very few times in my life,

I've encountered a truly evil person.

This is a truly evil person.

You took this man for no reason.

You're insane. You're a monster.

Not only that,

he did that, but then you turned around

and took another young man who had just had a baby.

There's so many families affected.

[Det. Bamberski] "Ernest", I said,

"You're looking at three murders here."

The U.S. Attorney's office was seeking the death penalty.

When we brought up cooperation,

he immediately responded with, "I know how cooperation works

"over here, and I'm going to tell you everything.

I'll tell you about two more murders."

Which almost knocked everyone out of their chair.

He admits to five that he pulled the trigger on

and then co-conspirator on another homicide.

[Det. Bamberski] So we solved six murders.

He was a true serial killer.

[Becker] One of the cell phones that was seized

from Ernest Pressley at the time of his arrest,

I got to look at myself and how he names his phone

was "John Wick."

I think that he took pride in being a hitman

and called himself the next John Wick.

[Det. Bamberski] Pressley took a guilty plea

for all of the incidents that he was involved in,

and he was sentenced by the judge to life in prison.

He declined to cooperate any further at that point,

and he never testified against Arthur Rowland

or anybody else.

[Becker] Arthur Rowland was never charged

for the actual murder for hires of those individuals.

However, because of the drug conspiracy,

the judge sentenced him to 40 years in prison.

[Det. Bamberski] We were able to take

two extremely dangerous individuals

off the street for a really, really long time,

and one for the rest of his life.

[Becker] The families that were there for the sentencing,

they got to see somebody come to justice,

and hopefully that brought them some kind of closure

in the end.

That is why we wear the badge and we carry the gun.

[nostalgic music playing]

[Marie] I spoke at Pressley's trial,

and I let them know that he took something.

He took a good person off the face of this earth.

I miss my grandson.

How much? Immeasurable.

What, where he'd been?

He should've been here.

He should be here.

[Khadija] Eric's with me every day,

and his love shines through all of it.

And eventually, I'll be back with him.

I'm gonna give him the biggest kiss and hug

I could probably ever give somebody

in my whole entire life.