Original subtitles

-An empty field in an affluent golf community

yields a gruesome discovery.

-I immediately saw a deceased white male

with a single gunshot wound to the left side of his chest.

-This could have been, you know, a robbery gone horribly wrong,

but there doesn't look like there's any struggle.

-Detectives wonder if the victim's past

has finally caught up with him...

-He knew who did this.

-Why would somebody want to shoot Alan?

-You're the only person that knew

he was gonna be walking out of that gate that night.

-...until strange new evidence challenges everything

police thought they knew.

-Why is he buying a 350-gram weather balloon.

It was very strange.

-The more we're digging, the more questions we're adding.

And there are no answers.

-Many of the searches were in his own voice.

-It was like he was leaving evidence from beyond the grave.

And all of a sudden, this takes a 180-degree turn.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

♪♪

-On a quiet Thursday morning, shortly after 7:00 a.m.,

West Palm Beach, Florida, Dispatch

receives a call from a bicyclist

who says they spotted something in an empty field

adjacent to the bike path.

[ Telephone rings ]

-We arrived.

I immediately saw a deceased, white male laying on his back,

facing up, with a single gunshot wound

to the left side of his chest.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

-First responders --

they assess the body for signs of life,

and upon not finding any,

they pronounced him deceased at 7:16 a.m. that day.

-I immediately called the other detective supervisor

and said we need to deploy our team

and get to the scene as fast as possible.

-I get my stuff, and I head out there.

Right now you're just scanning the area,

because we're not gonna touch the body

till the medical examiner gets there.

He's already been pronounced dead.

So you're examining the scene.

You're not moving anything yet. You're waiting.

-So, patrol officers immediately

locked down the scene for preservation.

-Detectives turn their focus to the body of the deceased male.

-The body was still warm when the investigator came to scene.

Rigor had not set in yet.

We suspected that that death had occurred

shortly before law enforcement and first responders arrived.

-The gunshot that we observed was right about here,

just near the heart, the left-center of the heart.

Small entry wound, like about the size of a pen.

-You could tell it was a low-caliber shot.

-Detective Moretti also notes the location

of the victim's body in an empty field

next to the affluent BallenIsles Country Club

and residential community.

-It's in the middle of a field,

and it's bright and early in the morning.

So, number one,

what are you doing out in the middle of the field,

right around the corner from the BallenIsles entrance,

with the guard-shack gate right there.

He's an elderly gentleman, so maybe he was taking a walk.

We don't know at this time.

-I thought it was odd that he was laying faceup,

almost like he had kind of fallen over perfectly.

-The gunshot wound early on

was placed so perfectly in the center of his chest

I thought possibly that we were gonna find

a firearm underneath him, that maybe he committed suicide.

-Also, the area is a very safe area.

There's not a lot going on there,

especially at that time of day.

This could be a suicide.

There has to be a gun underneath him.

-But when medical examiners at the scene

turn over the man's body,

they find nothing.

-When you don't have a gun

and you got a deceased person right there in an open field

with a single gunshot wound to the chest...

it looks like a homicide.

♪♪

-Once the medical examiner arrived

and gave us permission to move the body at the scene,

we found his wallet in his back pocket.

We were then able to identify him as Alan Abrahamson,

a 71-year-old resident of the bordering community,

which is BallenIsles.

-Detective Clayton did locate next of kin,

which had been his wife, Linda, who they reside in BallenIsles.

And we all went to the house first, and no answer.

Nobody was there.

We checked with security,

and there was no alarm set or triggered or anything like that.

And so Detective Clayton researched

and found that Linda was in Boston.

-While law enforcement attempts to reach Alan's wife, Linda,

1,400 miles north,

detectives at the scene focus on collecting evidence.

-I see a cellphone, earbuds.

White earbuds were attached to the cellphone.

We noticed a pair of scissors.

There was some string nearby,

some rubber bands, and the binder clip.

And I thought that was unusual,

because I always carry my money like this.

So we're thinking possible robbery.

Don't know.

-This area where he was found is used as a parking lot --

an overflow parking lot

for the golf community at BallenIsles.

So some of the items at first

we thought possibly weren't involved in the case.

But as an investigator, you want to take everything you can,

'cause sometimes in the end,

it will come back and prove that it was part of the case.

-While evidence at the scene is processed,

detectives are able to reach Linda and inform her

that they found Alan shot dead in a field near their home.

-Linda is in complete distress, disarray.

The Boston Police Department was there with her

for safety reasons while we made that call.

And she advised that she was there visiting her daughter,

who recently had a child.

-From his wife, we learned

that they had both traveled to Boston together.

And a few days into the trip,

Alan had been complaining of boredom.

-He was tired of the cold, tired of the hotel,

and decided he wanted to come back home to Palm Beach Gardens.

So he flew back down on his own to West Palm Beach.

on the 21st.

He told her he'll be back up on the 28th.

♪♪

-Linda described Alan, her husband, the deceased,

as the life of the party.

She said he only has friends and no enemies.

He was always having a good time.

He seemed to be happy,

and everything seemed to be going well.

And he loved living in that community,

'cause he could play golf with the many friends

that he had there.

-Linda also informed Detective Clayton

that Alan would normally walk his neighborhood

very early in the morning, around 5:30.

-Linda was able to tell us

that the property that was found at the scene,

the phone was his, the binder clip was his.

We also learned from his wife, Linda,

Alan would regularly carry

$300 to $500 in cash in his binder clip

and that she had just given him a watch

and the watch meant something to him coming from his wife.

So we know that the watch is missing

and the money is missing from the scene.

So once we learned that,

we thought, "Wow. He was robbed and killed."

♪♪

-From Palm Beach Gardens,

we don't have a lot of homicides come through our office.

It's a very affluent part of town.

It's got great security.

-Linda wants to do whatever she can

to help this investigation

to find out, you know, who killed Alan.

-So, then, at that time,

we determined that we need to interview Linda.

And she advised us that she was gonna come home

to speak with investigators.

-As Linda prepares for a return to Palm Beach Gardens,

detectives shift their focus to the upscale golf community

and any residents who may have witnessed something

to help the investigation.

-We had tactical crime units surveilling the area.

We had them stopping cars and interviewing subjects

so we can gain as much information

from them as possible.

-Did anyone talk to you specifically this week,

anybody that stood out to you as suspicious

or dangerous or anything unusual? -Yes.

-There's a gentleman that always walks or runs this path --

elderly gentleman? -Yeah, I don't know.

-Unable to find witnesses,

detectives turned back to the crime scene.

And what's left behind continues to raise questions.

-There doesn't look like there's any struggle.

Just from outside looking in,

doesn't look like there was a fight.

The shoes -- bottom of the soles of his shoes were clean.

Didn't see any wounds on the hand or anything like that.

And his hat was still on his person.

-There was no struggle.

That really put another question mark into this case.

-You don't know what you have at this point.

Anything it could be.

You got to follow the clues

or wherever the evidence may take you.

♪♪

Alan drove his vehicle to the exact location

where he would be found deceased less than 12 hours later.

He is there for 55 minutes that evening.

-What was he doing in the field

the night before his death?

-At first glance,

the shooting death of 71-year-old Alan Abrahamson

appears to be a robbery turned homicide.

But as detectives examine the evidence,

nothing about the case adds up.

-With no signs of a struggle,

we're floating any possibility.

Right now, we're, you know, a few hours in,

so we've got to collect evidence,

and we got to see where this evidence is gonna lead us.

-At that point, you want to find the crucial evidence,

which is a firearm, the murder weapon, or a shell casing.

-Investigators combed the field where Alan's body was found,

zeroing in on any sign of a murder weapon.

-The field is probably several acres --

larger than a football field.

We searched that whole field --

trees, bushes, grass.

Even a waterway that runs to the south, a canal,

we searched with a dive team.

We had workers come out and search storm drains...

[ Dramatic music plays ]

...and we couldn't find anything.

-As the sun sets on day one of the investigation

into Alan Abrahamson's death,

detectives hope the next morning's autopsy

will provide clues.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

-The body did not present any defensive wounds.

There was a single gunshot wound to the left chest,

and the defect on the shirt had a little bit of blood staining

around the defect

and then a little streak of blood

coming up around the 12:00 position

and going up to the left shoulder.

-Something appeared to us

that something dragged through the blood post being shot,

from what we don't know at this point.

-And I could see

unburned gunpowder particles on the shirt.

Those unburned gunpowder particles tell me

that the gun was discharged very close

or near contact to the body surface.

-We feel this is more evidence we have a homicide

and that he knew who did this,

because he let someone get that close to him

to shoot him straight directly in the chest.

-Despite their theory that Alan knew his killer,

detectives have not identified a suspect.

-Outrage, shock, and fear.

Tonight, the Palm Beach Gardens community is on edge

after one of their own is gunned down and left for dead

just outside a well-to-do neighborhood.

Now police are on the hunt for the killer.

-You do not have people being shot outside of BallenIsles.

It was not a common occurrence.

This was in public.

It was inexplicable for the police department.

It had to be a really big deal.

The media is barking at their door, saying,

"What's going on here?", you know?

So they had a lot of pressure on them.

-The thought someone was killed here

has many locals on edge,

and there are still many questions surrounding his death,

as police have not confirmed an arrest.

[ Down-tempo music plays ]

♪♪

-I was sitting at my desk.

And the phone rang, and it was the newspaper.

I don't recall the name of the newspaper.

But they identified themselves

and, you know, broke the news to me.

It was devastating to hear this,

because I had just talked to him, you know, hours before.

I met Alan Abrahamson through an introduction

from another sales rep that was working for me.

I immediately liked Alan.

Why would somebody want to shoot Alan?

You know, he had no enemies.

He was this, you know, happy-go-lucky guy.

He was, like, the model person for that stage of life.

Had a successful career.

Got out of a marriage that he wasn't happy in.

Moved to Florida, found Linda,

had a wonderful relationship with Linda,

living in a nice neighborhood.

Alan and Linda were like two teenagers in love,

and he always talked about Linda.

They were a great couple and a happy couple.

And you know, I immediately thought about Linda

and how I wanted to reach out to her, which I did.

And of course Linda was, you know, totally beside herself.

She couldn't even talk, really.

-But the grieving Linda,

having returned to Florida from Boston,

allows detectives to come to her home for a formal interview

as they hunt for any information

that will help identify Alan's killer.

-She was really still grieving and was upset.

-It's not an easy thing to handle.

She reiterated a lot of the things

that she had told Detective Clayton

over the phone,

that he would carry $200 to $300 cash on him,

might have been wearing a watch.

You know, there were scissors left at the scene --

a small pair of metal scissors --

and we asked if they were hers, if, you know, it was him.

And to her recollection, absolutely not.

She doesn't know anybody who would hurt him.

-Detective Moretti advised that he felt

that Linda had nothing to do with this homicide,

that he was able to clear her as a suspect.

-Linda tells detectives

that Alan recently altered his early-morning walks

around the neighborhood

and he was meeting a golf buddy for coffee --

a member of the BallenIsles community named Victor.

-We had learned from Alan's wife, Linda,

that Alan was supposed to meet Victor for coffee

that morning of his death.

One thing stood out --

in order for Victor Greenstein to go home,

he had to drive past the crime scene to enter his neighborhood.

Why wouldn't you call 911

if your friend doesn't show up at Starbucks?

-Victor has not reached out to Linda

or Palm Beach Gardens detectives in the days since Alan's death.

And the question is why not?

-Detectives investigating the killing

of 71-year-old Alan Abrahamson

have just learned that Alan was set to meet a friend

the morning of his death.

-Because Victor Greenstein

was supposed to meet Alan for coffee that morning

and then Alan didn't show up,

Victor was definitely identified as an early person

that we wanted to talk to.

-Victor, how are you doing?

-Good to see you -- Well, not, like...

-How long have you known Alan?

-Basically, when he moved into BallenIsles.

I'm gonna say five years.

-From what we understand,

that you and Alan recently started meeting at Starbucks.

-He gets a small coffee --

tall coffee with two ice cubes.

-Okay. Now, Alan doesn't show up on Thursday.

You call. He goes to voicemail. Call again.

-The last time I tried him was 6:49, I think.

And I probably left around --

Yeah, I left 7:00, 7:05.

-Is that out of character, for Alan not to show up?

-You know, I mean, I thought nothing of it,

that maybe he overslept or whatever.

I mean, I wasn't gonna go to his home

and ring the doorbell, thinking I'd wake him.

Quite frankly, that's what I kind of figured.

-As an investigator, put yourself in my shoes, okay?

You're the only person that knew he was gonna be walking

out of that gate that night.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

You're there. He doesn't show up.

You call him.

Okay, so where do you go after that?

-I went to the gym.

-What gym? -BallenIsles.

-When you left the Starbucks that morning,

I would assume you went westbound

on PGA towards BallenIsles.

-I went right by that light show.

-How many police cars do you think were there?

-God, I don't know -- six maybe, seven.

I mean, it was...

And, guys, honestly, you know, it never dawned on me.

In hindsight...

I mean, maybe it should. It didn't.

-So Victor had told us that he did see the crime scene,

he saw the police cars,

but he just didn't think anything of it.

-What would you say the general consensus of Alan is

amongst the community, amongst his friends?

How would you describe him to somebody who never met him,

which is us?

-Well, it's just the guy you'd want to go out

and have a beer with or hang out with,

or spend four hours on the golf course with.

He was just a fun guy.

-Did he talk about any business dealings coming up

or anything like that?

Having to meet anybody? Anything at all?

-No. -And how would you describe,

if you know, his relationship with Linda?

-I think it's great.

Two second marriages.

Both bad first marriages, from what I understand.

And I think they were just really soulmates.

-Do you know anybody who would want to harm him?

-No, I do not.

♪♪

-But detectives are eager to learn more about Alan's past,

specifically the family he built before he met Linda.

They set out to question Alan's ex-wife

and their two grown children.

♪♪

-We found out that Alan had two adult children

that were estranged from him --

his daughter Rachel, and his son Daniel.

-Alan's children didn't have a great relationship with him.

He was remarried and had three stepchildren.

He didn't really speak to them that often,

and it seemed like he was losing his relationship with them.

That makes us want to talk to them

and interview them extensively.

Are they angry enough to have something done to their father?

These are all questions that you have to have answered.

-Detectives also speak to Alan's ex-wife

and learn that all three members of Alan's estranged family

have alibis hundreds of miles away

on the morning of the killing.

While his family is ruled out as suspects,

the details they've shared

force detectives to reconsider Alan's spotless reputation.

-A man 71 years old has a past.

There's a whole world of things to dig into.

-Why did he leave his wife alone in Boston?

Who was he coming here to meet?

Was he having an affair?

-Police in West Palm Beach, Florida,

are searching for clues in the mysterious death

of Alan Abrahamson.

They suspect information on his cellphone

may hold the key to finding his killer.

-A forensic extraction was completed on Alan's cellphone,

and I had looked over that report

but didn't see anything really of any evidentiary value.

So I decided to start manually looking through the phone.

I was able to get into his Google Maps timeline,

which started to paint a picture

of where he had been over the last few days.

-It showed him going from the airport on the 21st

to his house on that day

with an Uber.

He went to Bank of America.

He went to a gas supplier

for, like, helium, propane,

I-95 to another gas supplier.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

♪♪

What it also showed is the night before,

so on Wednesday the 24th,

it showed that Alan drove his vehicle to the exact location

where he would be found deceased

less than 12 hours later.

He is there for 55 minutes that evening.

Doing what? We don't know.

After that almost hour passes, he returns back home.

And, then, that morning,

the Google timeline picks back up again,

shows him in a walking distance from his residence

to that same field where he was found deceased.

-It was very unusual.

What was he doing in the field the night before his death?

And there's nothing there.

It's in the middle of nowhere. It's in an open field.

-In the meantime,

while everybody's doing everything else,

we were able to obtain video footage from the guard shack

at the BallenIsles entrance of PGA.

We start looking from the previous days there,

so we've got him leaving on the 23rd.

He's walking out the gate at 5:50 a.m.

Alan was on his way to meet Victor for coffee.

We were able to pull up video footage from Starbucks

showing Alan entering in and meeting Victor for coffee.

-So that's when we were able to confirm

that Victor was telling us the truth,

that he did regularly meet him there,

and that he did meet him there

several days before the homicide.

We would talk regularly.

I actually met him for coffee on several occasions.

And as I slowly got to know Victor,

you could clearly see

that he had nothing to do with the shooting,

and we were able to rule him out as a possible suspect.

-And, then, on the morning of the murder,

Thursday the 25th,

we have Alan on video, walking out.

-Alan was shown on video walking out of the gate

at 5:53 in the morning,

carrying something in his left hand.

-We let it play, see if we can hear anything,

'cause it also had audio.

37 1/2 minutes later,

you hear an audible gunshot,

plain as day.

[ Gunshot ]

-Detectives can hear the shot that killed Alan Abrahamson.

But with Alan out of the camera's view 200 yards away,

they can't see who pulled the trigger.

-So we've got 37 minutes of unaccounted-for time.

What happened in that 37 minutes?

I walked from that guard arm to the location where he was found,

and I just took a normal walking pace,

and it took me four and three seconds.

So you minus four minutes from the 37,

we got 33 minutes of unaccounted-for time.

What is happening in that 33 minutes?

-Investigators wonder if the package

that Alan carried can provide answers --

a package that was absent from the crime scene.

-We want to know what that was.

Like, is that something that could help us?

Was he exchanging something with somebody in the field?

What was he carrying?

-For answers, investigators

turn back to Alan's timeline

within his cellphone data

and look for any unusual

movements before the shooting.

A trip to the bank,

then to gas-supply companies,

catch their eye.

-Eventually, we get the documentation

from Bank of America showing he withdrew $300 cash.

I got surveillance video of him withdrawing the money.

Then, detectives go to nexAir

and find out at that time

that he purchased

a 40-cubic-foot helium tank.

He paid cash for it.

We were able to obtain the receipt.

-Alan asked the air supplier for another 40-pound tank of helium,

but they were sold out and referred him to another store.

-So Alan went to that air supplier,

bought another 40-cubic tank of helium.

He paid cash for that, as well.

We got the receipts for that.

And so why is he buying 80 cubic feet of helium?

I don't know.

-It made no sense.

-To make sense of the strange purchases,

investigators turn again to the data found within Alan's phone.

-February 1, I was going through Alan's e-mails

in his Gmail account,

and I had found that he had placed an order

for a weather balloon on Christmas Day 2017.

I thought a weather balloon purchase

about a month prior was odd.

-Investigator Machado follows her instincts

and digs deeper into Alan's unusual purchase.

She finds e-mails from Alan to the weather-balloon supplier

dating back months before his death.

-October 17, 2017.

He e-mailed High Altitude Science,

"Will a 350-gram balloon

be able to hold 65-plus cubic feet of gas?"

Also, "What will the approximate diameter

of the balloon be at launch?"

Those are very specific questions, if I would say so.

♪♪

What we're thinking now that we've got those e-mails,

"Okay, that might explain the helium."

We eventually go back to the residence again.

And in the garage, on a shelf,

was an empty box from High Altitude Science, empty.

Linda had no knowledge that that was even there,

had no clue about why he would be purchasing weather balloons,

had no clue whatsoever.

Okay, well, now what?

♪♪

-At this point, we still kind of have nothing,

-Investigators working the mysterious shooting death

of Alan Abrahamson are spitballing ideas

as they search for his killer.

-A few of our detectives were together

with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators,

and they started talking about a theory.

-There was an episode of "CSI Las Vegas"

where a person had tied a handgun

to a regular, helium party balloon

and had tried to shoot themselves,

and the balloon took the gun away.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

-Maybe Alan committed suicide

by purchasing the weather balloon,

tying a string to the weather balloon,

attaching the gun to the string of the weather balloon,

and shot himself, and then the weather balloon

took off with the gun, and off it goes.

Well, initially, we're back-and-forth.

"Okay. Yeah, okay. Sure. No problem.

This is the movie 'Up.' Whatever."

So we do some more research with this,

and I find that there's a case in New Mexico.

A gentleman did try this, did commit suicide.

The balloon did take the gun from the scene.

However, it was found about 20, 30 feet away,

and it was popped by a cacti.

Okay. This has been thought of

and attempted on TV before.

Okay. So?

But it's also been attempted in real life before.

-Maybe Alan's the first one that was successful.

-This case maybe was not a homicide,

but actually a suicide.

At this point,

it was kind of the only theory that made any sense.

But at the same time, we didn't have enough to prove it.

-We just have the purchase of the tanks

and the purchase of the weather balloon.

That's all we have. We still got to keep digging.

♪♪

-Once we had the theory,

we decided to widen our search of the field.

We went approximately 100 feet to 200 feet west

of where Alan was found,

and we found multicolored rubber bands and string.

At that point, I decided, "Let's go back out to his house

and do a more extensive search."

So Alan's wife, Linda, led us in the house,

and in the top drawer of Alan's office,

we matched the rubber bands in the string found in the field.

So we knew that that string and rubber bands

that were found on that morning linked to this case.

-For more evidence to boost the suicide theory,

investigators take another look at Alan's autopsy report

and notice an unusual finding that remains unexplained.

-Our CSI team and Dr. Tormos had noted

that there was a thin line of blood upon his sweatshirt

that looked like something

was dragged through the blood along the shirt.

-In all likelihood, once the gunshot was fired,

that string from the weather balloon

holding, that tied the weapon to it,

went across the chest there.

-We now know what happened.

We now know how that mark got on Alan's shirt --

part of the string on the weather balloon

leaving a trail of blood.

-Despite the mounting evidence,

investigators realize they face an uphill battle.

-It's very rare that a homicide

will be reclassified as a suicide.

We went to the medical examiner's office

to reveal what we thought happened to Alan.

-He would run the new findings by me

and say, "What do you think? Is this even possible?"

And I would say, "Yes, but we need more."

-"We need more facts.

We need more evidence to prove your theory."

So we weren't quite there yet.

-For the next three weeks,

investigators attempt to collect more evidence

to support the suicide theory.

But they continue to come up empty.

♪♪

-On February 27, I was at home.

And my son had been playing with my cellphone --

my Android phone at the time.

And he had said, "Hey, Google,"

and he was asking it some silly questions

that a 7-year-old would want to know.

And when I took the phone back from him,

I saw that it was on a screen called My Activity.

I found that it was recording his voice

and I could play his searches back in his voice.

♪♪

At this point, I am immediately going into work

and getting Alan's phone out of evidence again.

Once I got Alan's phone out of evidence,

I immediately went to the Google app,

and I started just scrolling through the past few days.

♪♪

One of the first searches that came up

was "How to commit suicide" and "Ways to kill yourself."

And I just turned to Rick,

and I said, "Rick, we've got it."

-This happened in January of 2018,

but these searches started in 2009.

"How to commit suicide" and "Ways to kill yourself"

was in July of 2009.

".380 ammo for sale" in 2010.

-In 2016, his search started to include

the weather-balloon research.

-He was contemplating this

not for a week, not for a month.

He was contemplating this for 10 years.

And then we learned many of the searches were in his own voice.

[ Cellphone beeps ]

[ Cellphone beeps ]

[ Cellphone beeps ]

[ Cellphone beeps ]

[ Cellphone beeps ]

[ Dramatic note plays ]

-Oh, my God.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

-Investigators have just found a number of searches

on Alan Abrahamson's phone

which support their suicide theory.

-It wasn't just the helium tanks.

It wasn't the purchase of the weather balloon.

This tied it all together.

-Armed with a massive pile of evidence,

investigators formulate their final theory

to present to the medical examiner

and the state's attorney.

-On the evening prior to us finding him deceased,

Alan went out to the field.

-And we theorized that he drove his car there,

and he had the two 40-cubic foot helium tanks in there,

prepped them somewhere in the field.

-His helium tanks, his string, the rubber bands,

probably the scissors --

everything was in place and probably ready to go.

-That morning, we saw Alan walk out past the --

He made it out to the field

probably approximately four minutes.

-We think that package he was carrying

was the weather balloon.

If you remember, initially,

we had that 33 minutes or so of unaccounted-for time.

It takes time to inflate that --

Not a lot of time, but enough time to inflate that.

Then you've got these helium tanks.

-We never found the helium tanks,

but there was a waste-management dumpster in the plaza next door.

And the morning that we were arriving at the scene,

the waste-management truck was pulling out as we were arriving.

So were his helium tanks in the dumpster?

Maybe. And maybe Alan was so thorough that he knew that.

-He then had time to set up his system

of tying the gun to the weather balloon,

cutting the string.

-We cannot prove, but we theorize that the reason

we did not find a shell casing at this point

was we think he tied some type of catch bag

to catch the casing when it ejected on there,

'cause that would be taken away, as well.

-Alan was able to pull the trigger, fall backwards,

and let the balloon take away the firearm.

♪♪

-And you ask, where would the weather balloon end up?

-There are these things called weather balloon trackers.

Type in the weather conditions for that day,

capacity of the balloon.

You enter all that information in, and it gives you a track.

It took off up, to the west,

made a U-turn,

and headed east out over the Atlantic Ocean,

and the approximate burst point

was about 40 miles north

of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean.

-Once presented with the totality of information,

there is no doubt in my mind

Mr. Abrahamson committed suicide,

and we changed the manner of death from homicide to suicide.

-With the manner of death changed,

investigators must now notify Alan's wife, Linda.

-We sat down,

and we started going over step by step from the beginning.

And we're probably 10, 15 minutes into this.

She asked us, "Can you please stop for a moment?"

And I heard her say, "Did he kill himself?"

So she could see where it was going

just that early, too.

Linda was taken aback, for sure.

It was shocking to them.

Everything seemed to be fine,

and life of the party and love of his life,

and they were going on trips together.

♪♪

-I believe that she thinks

that Alan had committed suicide to benefit everybody.

There were several life-insurance policies

written out to all the family members.

-You can't take a million-dollar policy out on yourself

for your family and then kill yourself the next day.

It's not gonna cover that.

But these insurance policies were taken out way prior.

-The insurance companies tell investigators

that the policies were past the point of contention.

Since several years had passed since Alan opened them,

they were to be paid out

regardless of whether he committed suicide.

-So when Alan killed himself,

he knew before he left this world

that everybody would be taken care of financially.

-Even though Alan's family would benefit financially

from his suicide,

those around him still find it shocking

that such a vibrant man would choose to end his own life

and stage it to look like a homicide.

-Not the slightest hint that he was depressed

or unhappy with his life.

He was suffering in silence with a smile on his face.

I would want people to know

that Alan was the type of person that everybody loved.

He apparently was a master of two lives --

two emotional lives.

But he concealed it and did a very good job concealing it.

-I think he went through this elaborate scheme

so his family would not find out that he did commit suicide.

He wanted it to make it look like a homicide.

-He wanted everybody to think that he left happy.

He didn't want to reveal to his family

and his wife that he was sad.

-At the end of the day,

the reason why will really never be known,

because Alan took that with him to the grave.