Original subtitles

We don't know what prompted him to do this act when he did it.

This minor is going to sleep with his dad,

but he's going to shoot his dad, too?

And then he's going to shoot himself?

It just didn't sit right.

Now we're looking at a double homicide.

Well, double homicide? There's only three people in the house.

Who's our most logical suspect?

Once the news was reported,

things in the community were pretty wild.

The brother at the time had said

that he said goodbye to him and then shot himself.

One of the things I want to know is whether

or not he has the ABILITY to do this.

Does he have the capability to load or point the .45-calibre pistol?

And to get the results from the coroner,

who says the wounds are inconsistent with suicide.

They're inconsistent with self-infliction.

This is beginning to look more like a reactive

kind of staging than a PROACTIVE one.

If this autistic minor had shot his dad, would have been rare.

If this autistic minor had shot HIMSELF, would have been rare.

If he shot his dad and then shot himself,

would have been REALLY rare.

The Fresno County and Central Valley

is essentially the centre of California.

Fresno is a city of over 500,000 people itself,

and it's very agriculturally based.

Fruits, vegetables.

It's pretty much a breadbasket place for the entire world.

We kind of have a small-town feel,

but we have big-city issues.

Gradually, over time, it's built up a reputation as a place

that there could be a more violent nature to the city itself.

Brian lived in a trailer park home with his brother, Robert,

and his father, Patrick.

Brian was autistic, and he required a lot of care,

but he was at a point where he was really coming into his own.

He was really skilled on the computer.

He was really fascinated by films,

and, you know, he was having a good life.

Brian and his dad, Patrick, would walk around the trailer park.

They knew their neighbours.

They were really enmeshed in the community.

They loved to talk to each other on walkie talkies.

So, you know, everyone knew them as this just, like,

close, you know, pals.

The family had just lost their mother, not long before. So,

Patrick was now raising the boys as a single dad. And so of course,

that was very difficult for him AND the boys. So it was something that,

you know, clearly everyone knew they were going through a difficult time.

You know,

because it was such a tight knit place, no one was really expecting

something super out of the ordinary to take place.

Tonight,

a 15 year old is in critical condition after police say he shot

and killed his father before turning the gun on himself.

The father has been identified as 61-year-old Patrick Cotter.

Authorities were called to a mobile home park near McKinley

and Marx avenues in Fresno around eight o'clock this morning.

I came in in the morning.

I did my normal routine, which is maybe have some coffee,

go through my emails,

and then I was assigned this case,

and I called the officer.

They gave me initial information. I knew I had to respond.

We get to the scene,

and I remember an officer briefing me about the circumstances,

and we had a man, an adult male,

who was in bed, and he was shot, they believe, multiple times,

and that there was another person

who sustained a gunshot wound who was transferred to the hospital.

And at that time, they were advised from the person that was there,

the witness, that it was a boy who had shot his dad

and then shot himself,

and then 911 was called, and then he was transferred to the hospital.

The 15 year old has been in critical condition

all day here at CRMC.

He lived in the mobile home park with his father,

and 18-year-old brother, who was actually the one

that made the call to 911 this morning.

It's very important that detectives

and first responders don't start making assumptions right away.

It's what we call threshold diagnosis.

"I know it's going on here" or "I know what that behaviour means."

When they do that,

they've closed down the possibility of real investigation.

We need anyone involved in a scene like this to stay open,

not interpret too quickly

but look for things that might need a deeper investigation.

I would automatically be suspicious of the 911 caller.

At the scene, does his behaviour match the expected behaviour

of someone who's just found their brother and father dead?

Responding to the scene,

the detectives are first trying to determine,

what are the basic facts?

They have a 911 call, so they know what was reported.

Now they're going to go back in to determine

how much they can corroborate

or refute based on that comment.

As far as the scene, I wanted to find out where it took place.

How much blood was there?

Was there any type of strike marks to the home?

What's the distance between the rounds that were fired

to the subject that was hit?

Was there casing?

What type of gun was it?

These are things that are going on in my head.

First thing we see is the father that's been murdered in the bed.

That corroborates what was on the 911 call.

It should have been reasonably clear

to the crime scene investigators in this case

that they were dealing with a homicide.

The father had been shot twice in his bed.

One of the wounds was in his head.

Oh, and one of the wounds was in his back.

What I could see is that he looked like

he was still in a sleeping position, the dad,

and that the rounds that were fired were consistent.

There was other strike marks in the wall.

Everything seemed to be consistent

with what's being told to us at the time.

So the next step is now to take a look at the suicide.

I'm always alert anytime I'm responding to a suicide,

because I know suicides are one of the top four themes

that are used to stage a murder. So if I was called to the scene,

my senses would already be alert.

Initially, the homicide case of the father,

in this particular case, the individual died right away.

We were involved with doing the autopsy.

The person that was under the umbrella

of what was considered a suicide case,

he ended up going to the hospital,

and he was at the hospital for a number of days.

So there was a separation in the case itself.

There is a lot of variation in how people react,

depending on their age and their circumstance.

But an 18-year-old boy who's in a confined space with two people

who are dead is going to react in some way.

He's just lost his brother AND his father,

and his brother has done this horrific thing

that seemed to come from out of the blue.

If Robert is truly the standby witness,

they need to make sure they start questioning him right away,

because his witness is part of the crime scene.

And the fresher it is for them,

the better for their story.

But they'll also really want to have him isolated away from the scene

and ask again and maybe again to make sure the story holds together.

Brian survived.

And once the police showed up, he was still alive

and so everyone was questioning, you know, what really happened?

Hoping to get questions answered and that he would come around

and shed some light on what really took place.

One of the things that they had advised me of is that

the boy was autistic,

and I still remember to this day. When they told me that,

I wrote it in my notes, and I underlined it

cos I just felt that was a bit unusual

for an autistic kid to shoot himself

and also shoot his dad.

If this is a staged scene, Robert will be invested in Brian dying,

and he'll be worried that Brian might survive.

Tonight, a 15 year old is in critical condition

after police say he shot and killed his father

before turning the good on himself.

The father has been identified as 61-year-old Patrick Cotter.

Authorities were called to a mobile home park near McKinley

and Marks avenues in Fresno around eight o'clock this morning.

With Brian still in the hospital and not yet conscious

and not even clear that he'll make it,

investigators have to kind of wait to see, what will his story be?

We have not received any more information of his son's condition,

but we will release that information as soon as it becomes available.

The 15 year old lived in the home with his father

and 18-year-old brother, who made the call.

Clearly, we want to talk to him as rapidly as possible.

So there will be a detective down at the hospital almost 24 hours a day.

In the off chance that he's awoke,

we can talk to him to find out exactly what happened.

Does even know how to handle the weapon that was used?

Was the weapon in the appropriate place

for somebody who has just tried to shoot themselves?

I was really curious to know what his autistic spectrum stage was.

And could he, one, handle a gun?

Could he fire a gun?

And also, what was the relationship like?

Like, who is also the person in the home with?

We have to understand that Robert should be concerned

about his 15-year-old brother. Is he going to make it?

If he doesn't seem concerned, that would be pretty important.

And if he doesn't seem concerned

about the fact that he just lost his father, that would be important.

If he starts to distract himself with things

like getting on his phone or doing something like that,

that would indicate maybe there is more to the story here,

but they can't really start interpreting any of that behaviour

until they get a fuller context.

So they're going to need to know a lot more

about the family relationships.

Does the brother who's fighting for his life...

Does he have any background of aggression

or have there been disputes?

Have the police been called here before for any reason?

Does Robert have any issues in HIS life?

So they have to start unpacking all of that before they can

really make anything of odd behaviour or inconsistencies.

There was nothing at the crime scene to suggest to the police

that there was another version of events.

There was no intruder involved.

The blood spatter that was connected with the deceased person

entirely fitted with the account given by Robert

and nothing to undermine this story.

The brother at the time had said that the minor autistic child

was standing at the doorway,

fired the weapon, and the dad was struck.

He said goodbye to him and then shot himself.

The first autopsy was relatively straightforward.

I looked at the gunshot wounds. I looked at the story.

Everything seemed to fall into place that

this individual was shot by someone else.

So at that particular time,

I signed a death certificate on the case as a homicide.

You're going to have physical evidence.

You're going to have fingerprints.

You're going to have DNA on the gun.

So the most important thing to do is to preserve the crime scene.

Don't let anyone else touch it. Don't let anything contaminate it

so that the physical evidence that it's there can be properly tested.

Investigators can tell if a gun has been recently wiped

or cleaned and without fingerprints,

it's very difficult to prove

or disprove the version of events of the suspect.

Of course, we want to talk to the surviving son, Robert.

We want to know exactly what happened that particular night.

What did he see? What did he here?

But also, this is our one chance to talk to a family member

about the mental abilities of his brother.

And we're going to be dependent upon that initially

because he's intimately part of the family.

He lives there, so he knows all these things.

Some inconsistencies will be understandable

because he's in shock and he doesn't really know what's going on

and why it happened. But if he starts to deliver a story

that remains stable but it contradicts things at the scene,

then that's going to raise red flags.

Because Brian was autistic and did need a lot of care,

neighbours were really questioning, like,

was he capable of doing something like this?

Was he capable of hurting his own father and then doing it to himself?

It really did raise a lot of questions.

It's the father who is the actual caregiver for the son,

and they have a real good relationship.

Well, the behaviour doesn't match what we're being told,

so something's wrong.

The suspected minor who shot his dad

because of his autism slept with his dad in the same bed.

So one of my first instincts is like,

well, this minor is going to sleep with his dad,

but he's going to shoot his dad too?

And then he's going to shoot himself?

It just didn't sit right.

What I was finding is that if this autistic minor had shot his dad,

would have been rare.

If this autistic minor had shot himself, would have been rare.

If he did both of these,

shot his dad and then shot himself, would have been REALLY rare.

Robert's account was that Brian then went on to shoot himself,

but his injuries weren't fatal.

This outcome leaves the police investigation in a kind of limbo,

because they have a perpetrator who has attempted to commit suicide,

but they are still alive,

so they can't really progress this investigation

until Brian actually recovers.

One of the things I want to know is whether or not

he has the ABILITY to do this.

Does he have the capability to load or point the .45-calibre pistol?

You're in suspense. You're kind of in a limbo.

You're waiting to see. And for our office,

the biggest clue is going to come from the minor

who was suspected had shot his dad

and then shot himself because now he's in the hospital

in critical condition,

and we don't know what his wounds look like.

So along with our findings and our concerns

about was he able to do this,

we don't know. We're kind of in limbo at that time.

I was taking a wait-and-see type of approach to it,

that the way I can tell is looking at the gunshot wound.

If it's what we call a distant gunshot wound

and what you have no evidence of gunpowder,

muzzle imprint or what we call stippling...

Stippling is when you have powder that comes out of the gun

and strikes the surface of the body at a distance

anywhere from six inches up to almost three feet.

So I felt that the best way

I can look at the gunshot wound itself

and determine it from the pathology perspective,

that's something that I have to wait and see.

First thing I would say to a detective

is watch Robert's behaviour.

Because if this is a staged scene,

Robert will be invested in Brian dying,

and he'll be worried that Brian might survive.

The 15-year-old has been in critical condition here at CRMC.

After Brian officially passed away,

it was a devastating blow to the family.

Not only did they lose Brian and Patrick,

they had also lost their mother soon before that,

so it was just a horrible tragedy for them.

When Brian finally succumbs to his injuries,

there would be a routine postmortem examination

by a forensic pathologist.

Once the son passes away,

now we can finally get those answers that we've been searching for.

What type of wound does the suicide victim have?

Is it a hard contact? Is it a close contact or whatever?

Cos that'll tell us whether it's consistent

or inconsistent with a self-inflicted wound.

Any situation, such as a gunshot wound to the head,

whether it's a suicide or a homicide,

there is a request at that time to the family.

"Would you be willing to donate organs and tissues?"

And that took place, in this particular case,

on the 15-year-old son,

is that there was another day in between

when he was pronounced dead

and when he finally arrived at the corner's office.

Medical examiner has to determine three things:

cause, manner and mechanism.

The cause of the death, which is either going to be homicide,

suicide or accident or unknown.

The manner of death, which is, what killed this person?

How was this person killed?

And the mechanism of death. What weapon was used?

A gunshot wound that's inflicted close up,

which is what you would expect as a murder-suicide.

The bullet's entry point is going to look different

than a shot from a few feet away.

There is no gunpowder found in the skin around the wound.

There is no muzzle imprint of the skin itself around the wound.

Which then leads me to say

we're not dealing with a suicide in this particular case.

It's something different.

We learned that he passed away,

and then we brought him into our office because we wanted

to look at that wound, to see if it was consistent

with either someone shooting himself, like,

is it possible where he could have had a distance

of where it was something that he could have done,

like, the placement of the barrel to the head?

Is everything consistent with someone he did it himself?

And if not, then we were going to have two homicides

instead of a homicide and a suicide.

It's not until the postmodern findings that the police realise

that they now have a DIFFERENT kind of case on their hands...

...and that Robert would become key person of interest

because he was present when both of the crimes were committed.

And his account does not square with the medical evidence.

The autopsy showed that Brian could not have shot himself,

and that, ultimately, is what led to Robert's arrest.

As Robert begins to realise he's now a suspect,

he will start to worry. He's a kid.

He's not sophisticated about crime scene staging.

He believes he's gotten away with this, and suddenly he hasn't.

We wanna now look at motive.

Why would Robert kill his brother and his father

and pin it on his brother?

So something has happened

to make Robert do something so extreme.

Is he angry at his brother and his father?

In this household, we had both parents,

a 15-year-old brother with severe autism and Robert.

And he looked to his mother.

She was probably his best friend

and the place he could go to get away from his father.

And once she had died, it would have changed the entire dynamics.

Especially if the father did not know

how to deal with the autistic brother.

He might have looked to Robert to be the primary caretaker of this boy,

and Robert would have resented that kind of responsibility.

So if he already had a conflicted relationship with his father

and now the mother is removed as a buffer to that,

it's raw. And he's annoyed at his brother,

and he concocts a plan to get rid of the father

and brother and blame the brother.

And it would be an easy way to be rid of both of them

and be home scot-free.

You want to get some background on Robert.

How did he get along with everybody?

Was there any expected reward if both of them passed away?

In the early stages of the investigation,

there is no reason for Robert to believe

that he hasn't fooled the police.

It's just an example of how most people are naive about the intensity

and scrutiny that they might come under

during the course of an investigation.

The police would be looking into all their relationships

and their behaviour and their movements.

Once Robert becomes a suspect,

they will confiscate his computer, his phone,

any other digital devices so that they can look at HIS history.

What kinds of things did he look up? Did he look up suicides?

Did he look up how to use these kinds of weapons?

Did he look up how to stage anything?

So they're going to be looking for any indication

that this plan is his

and he's the one that carried this out

and then pinned it on his brother.

And they're going to be looking for what was his relationship

with his brother that he would do such a thing.

And they would look in detail at their digital devices.

And of course, most people don't realise

that even when you delete evidence

that the police can still find that evidence on these devices.

What they found when they examined his computer

was that he had repeatedly searched how the police investigate suicide,

and how might someone go about staging a suicide.

In this instance, Robert didn't even delete the evidence.

It would have been found very quickly.

The internet searches that they found were things like

"how to fire a Colt 1911"...

...which is directly connected to the crime

because that's the weapon that was used.

He's so unsophisticated

that he doesn't even realise they're going to be able to find this.

If you're going to do these kinds of searches, go to a library,

do something else.

He clearly is naive.

This is beginning to look more like a REACTIVE kind of staging

than a PROACTIVE one.

I think the people questioning him, the detectives,

are going to start seeing signals that he's distressed,

that things have gone completely off the rails,

and he doesn't have a way to fix it.

When a suspect is interrogated,

it's a very planned-out procedure,

everything down to the temperature in the interrogation room,

the positioning of the chairs, the positioning of the questioners.

It's all down to a science.

And the purpose is to have the suspect so uncomfortable

and set them at such a cognitive dissonance

that they will finally confess.

In America, we try to get a confession

because we consider a confession the best evidence that there is because

somebody is giving a statement against their own self-interest.

That's our best evidence,

and all of our courts has recognised

that that is the strongest evidence that there is.

This is an example of when you're just laying out

all the evidence that you have, and the suspect realises that

there's no other place for him to go.

They have you. So what does he do?

He tries to confess because he thinks that confession

is the best thing that's going to help him down the road.

Once he's confessed

and considering the evidence that they already have,

I believe prosecutors would charge him

with the crime immediately at that point.

We have to make sure that the evidence is compelling enough

to say that, yes, this person is the one who did it.

Because that is enough

for a reasonable jury to find that he's guilty.

I do remember in this case,

we had a forensic tech whose son was autistic,

and he's one of the ones who came to me and was like,

"Imron, I know if this kid is autistic,

there's no way he could have done this. There's no way."

When Robert changed his plea to no contest, essentially saying,

"You got me. I mean, you have the evidence and I recognise it."

Now I think grief would come into the picture,

much more so than before.

He's already grieving a recent death of his mother.

Now he's realising he has done this horrible thing to his brother.

He probably did love his father and brother to some extent,

and now he's lost them both. And he did it.

The staging of the scene shows premeditation.

It shows consciousness of guilt,

and it shows that he was willing to lie

and blame his autistic brother.

Those actions can elevate a charge from manslaughter to murder.

If he were to testify that he snapped,

went into the room and shot both of them,

that would make a lot more sense.

And he could have been able to argue,

"Because of my terrible childhood, this is manslaughter.

I just snapped. I didn't mean to do it."

Staging the scene does the absolute opposite.

It makes him look far more guilty,

and it makes a crime look much more premeditated.

Once the news came out that Robert was actually the one

who had perpetrated this crime and it wasn't a murder-suicide,

it was an even bigger question mark of what really happened here.

He took enough time to plan, Google search

and then stage the crime.

So it makes him and the crime appear to be very cold,

calculated, cruel, planned.

Now the prosecutor has to determine,

what's the best course of action?

Does he want to accept a plea or go ahead and go to court?

Many times it revolves around money.

It costs money to have a homicide trial.

Costs a lot of money.

Whereas a guilty plea doesn't take that much at all.

And if the guy is going to take a guilty plea,

if he can get a good sentence,

that's normally the accepted course.

Ninety-eight per cent of cases do not go to trial.

They're resolved by a plea bargain.

In this case, I would suspect

that Mr Cotter pled guilty to everything

in order to avoid the death penalty or life without parole.

What would have been uncovered in the examining

of Robert's personal history was that

he seemed to have a very traumatic childhood, and in fact,

he tried to use this as part of his defence during the trial.

But a traumatised childhood would not be a defence.

It would perhaps be mitigation,

but he still shot his father and his brother.

He still murdered them. He knew he was murdering them,

so the trauma would perhaps be relevant to his sentence

but not relevant to his conviction.

Mitigation is anything that could either explain why the person did it

or anything that can get them a lower sentence.

So we look at things like family history, personal history,

and if your judge is convinced that there are reasons,

not excuses but explanations for why a crime was committed

and that there are reasons why your client is not like everyone else,

that can go a long way in reducing a potential sentence.

But it is going to be a lot about who the judge is,

cos some are more compassionate than others.

They're going to be looking at the fact that he's 18.

The adolescent brain research that we have these days

where adolescents, especially boys,

don't really think that far into the consequences of their actions.

They're more impulsive.

So whatever sentence they bestow

is going to be qualified by some of this research.

There is no room for error because the stakes are so incredibly high,

with a potential for life without parole

or the death penalty, which is still active.

We don't want false convictions.

He receives life without the chance of parole.

He will die in prison.

The extra 50 years on top of those two life sentences

is what we call enhancement.

So if you use a gun in commission of a crime and someone dies,

that adds 25 years to the sentence.

That's a way to ensure that he would never get out of prison.

Because if at some time

life in prison were declared unconstitutional

or parole was brought back,

he would not be eligible for parole, because before he COULD be paroled,

he'd have to serve those extra 50 years.

This is one of these cases

that you have to take everything into account.

Not only was it meticulously planned, carefully planned...

...but it also involved the murder of your own family.

This would have a tremendous impact on the jury

as well as the community.

The judge said something like,

"I can understand maybe killing your father over abuse

in your background, but you grabbed your brother by the collar

and yanked him back and shot him.

That is so brutal and unnecessary.

And then you wanted to pin it on him."

And I think that was the deciding factor, is the brutality of that.

You don't really know it's staged

unless there's something really, really apparent.

The way is reported to law enforcement was really consistent

with what I saw. One of the things that we're looking for,

if we're looking at staging and trying to see, is, like, timing.

Let's say if these events happened hours prior to being called 911,

I could say, "Well, this doesn't make sense

because this person is super cold.

He's been passed away for some time,"

but for this case, everything was fairly consistent.

The gun was there. The casings were there.

The person who did it was there.

There wasn't anything real elaborate or anything.

It just appeared to be really straightforward.

I mean, there was an effort being put forth

to make it look like what it was, and it was done well

except for the part where we have this other evidence.

I think the only thing that was really out of the ordinary for me

was just saying that it was a minor, autistic kid who did all of this.

If it wasn't for that, I don't think I would have been so intrigued.

Or you know, the red flags wouldn't have really come up.

To me one of the more frustrating things within this case is,

what was the motive? What was the rationale? What was the reason?

There's been some alleged

but nothing really positive that said

this is the reason why, on this particular date,

he killed his dad and then his brother.

That's the most frustrating thing because that resolves everything.

Now I feel like I'm working on behalf of that community,

that autistic community.

When it all kind of comes to light

that this was not the one who did it,

you feel some great satisfaction knowing

that I was a part of it in some way.

His family doesn't think of him as an evil person.

They think of him as somebody who had a moment

that is really unexplainable,

and I think that will sit with them forever.

They'll always try to understand what came over him that day.

Because they were so young, both Brian and Robert,

when this took place,

it was just such a horrible tragedy and lives lost.

Both of them would never get to live out their futures.

They would never get to continue being part of that community

that they were so involved in,

and it's a loss for everyone around them.

When something like this happens in such a small community,

it's something that will stay with them forever.

These were people that were enmeshed in their lives every day.

They were people... They were children that they saw grow up.

And to see them ripped apart like this,

one of them, the rest of their life in prison,

it's something that they will never forget.

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