Original subtitles

♪♪

-An inferno tears through a garage

and a grisly scene emerges.

-It appears to be the truck

essentially dropped right on top of a body.

It's a heck of a way to have to die.

-The more police uncover, the less things make sense...

-Inconsistencies were being found

with the dental not matching, the tattoos not matching.

-Something's off. Why isn't he answering?

-Did he see Ari hurt somebody or kill somebody?

-...until investigators reveal a secret

with fatal consequences.

-All of a sudden, there's a gunshot.

And we believed we were being fired upon.

[ Gunshot ]

-Yes, she's been involved all along.

-It's sick that this was all just done to settle some debt.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-On a frigid morning in a suburb northwest of Chicago,

911 dispatchers answer a call

from local resident Denise Squire.

[ Line rings ]

-Denise had related that her house was on fire

and that her husband was missing.

[ Siren wailing ]

We responded with one of our deputy sheriffs

and the Wauconda Fire Department.

-When Lake County sheriff officers arrived on the scene,

the first thing that they saw

was a woman out front of the house,

presumed to be Denise Squire, who had made the phone call.

-There was heavy black smoke coming out of the garage.

-While firefighters arrive and work to control the flames,

officers pull Denise aside.

-The first thing that Denise Squire told our deputies

was that she was not able to find her husband, Ari Squire,

and that he and his white truck were missing.

-The fire department was able to extinguish the fire,

went inside the garage.

They observed the white pickup truck,

and there was a lot of smoke damage

throughout the whole garage,

but the fire was pretty much contained

to the engine compartment and the floor

underneath the truck.

As they made their way around,

they observed that there was a set

of feet that were sticking out from

underneath the front fender area of the truck.

-It was apparent that there was a dead person's body

underneath the truck.

-After they had removed the truck from the victim

that was underneath, they were able to ascertain

that the truck looked

like it had accidentally fallen off the jack stand.

-The truck essentially dropped right on top of a body.

So you're talking about thousands of pounds

and the force of that dropping on a body.

That's a heck of a way to have to die.

-Detectives carefully examine the remains under the vehicle.

-Because the legs had been sticking out,

they weren't too far decomposed due to the fire,

but upper torso area was pretty heavily charred.

Facial recognition was not possible.

We were able to find a wallet in the back pocket of the jeans.

The wallet belonged to that of Ari Squire,

the husband of the homeowner, Denise Squire.

-It appears to be that Ari Squire died

from a tragic accident.

-Officers share this horrific news with Denise.

-Denise Squire was relatively calm,

considering that we had just discovered

that her husband's body was possibly

underneath the white truck in the garage.

We didn't have time to determine was she in shock at the time?

Was she just very cool under hectic circumstances?

-Investigators press Denise for details

about what happened before the call.

-At 8:00 in the morning,

Denise Squire was just getting up

and heard three very loud booms from the garage area

that made her decide to go

and investigate what those could have been.

She opened up the garage door and black smoke billowed out.

She called in for her husband, Ari.

Couldn't see anything in there.

Tried calling him one or two times before she realized

that she really needed to call 911 to get some help on the way.

-Denise gives the officers background about Ari

and their marriage.

Born in 1969,

Ari Squire grew up in the Chicago suburbs.

While his father built a business

in the healthcare industry,

young Ari dreamt of building engines.

-Ari Squire was a nice kid. He lived at the end of the road.

We had an auto mechanic class together

as a freshman, and he was the first one

to put together his two-cycle engine quicker

than anybody else.

He had the auto mechanic gene. He truly loved it.

-He was described to us as a gentle soul.

He didn't smoke or drink or mistreat people.

-Ari left behind a passion for auto work after graduation

and took a job at the hospital his father owned.

It was there in the early 1990s,

that he met Denise Frank,

seven years his senior, and the hospital president.

As their relationship grew, so did Ari's drive.

In 1998, he took over another one of his father's businesses.

-Denise told us that Ari was once president of in-home

healthcare provider.

He was in that business with his father.

-He never seemed to be a CEO to me.

Ari was a gearhead.

-Ari found a way to work with his hands,

starting a side business in the late 1990s

doing home construction.

But while that new venture grew,

his healthcare career began to unravel.

In 2005,

federal prosecutors accused him of fraud

and misusing company funds.

Despite spending $200,000 on attorneys,

he was ordered to pay a $160,000 fine and $60,000 in restitution.

-From what I understand,

Ari was having financial difficulties due

to that previous lawsuit.

-He was under house arrest until he paid those debts,

but was allowed to leave the home for work purposes.

-And now he was working at his own business.

He had a construction business, Main Beam Construction.

It was kind of floundering.

The housing crisis was a huge problem for them.

-In 2008, there was a recession that set in.

The housing crisis kicked in.

If you're in construction, there would be a big challenge

to be building houses during that time.

-Definitely appeared to be in financial quandary

at the time of his death.

-Before they leave, detectives ask

about the couple's financial situation,

and Denise tells them that she had her own career change

and had left the healthcare industry to work

as a professor at a local college.

-Ari and Denise were married for 14 years.

They didn't have any children.

She was the breadwinner

and bringing home most of the cash flow for the residents

and for their relationship.

When asked about how his business was doing,

she said it wasn't doing very well.

-Denise was painting a picture

where they kind of had a compartmentalized marriage.

They lived in separate bedrooms.

They didn't actually interact all that much.

Not what one would expect from a married couple.

-We were asking Denise if there was any insurance

that would cover Ari for the incident.

Denise related that she didn't have a life insurance policy

for him.

-Police wonder, was this tragedy the result

of an accident or a deliberate act by someone

who'd lost all hope?

Inside the charred garage,

detectives begin a thorough examination,

starting with what could have caused the fire.

-To me, it looked like it had been an accidental fire.

There was a fluorescent light that was underneath the truck

and the light bulb had broken.

The fluorescent light could cause a spark which

would allow some incendiary fluid to cause a fire.

-Before they get any answers, at 12:30 PM,

Ari's business partner, shows up on the scene,

having just learned of his death from a coworker.

-Jim McCullough enters into the investigation

as Ari's partner for Main Beam Construction.

They're buddies.

Jim was very shocked about the news.

We asked him if there was any reason

why Ari would be underneath his truck.

He said, yeah, Ari was going to fiddle around

with his fuel filter and had mentioned that.

Ari was allegedly a very good mechanic.

The truck had the front wheels removed, the front tires.

We asked him about taking the tires off for a fuel filter.

The fuel filter on a diesel truck is usually

either right in the engine compartment

or just slightly underneath.

You can almost reach underneath there

without even a jack and fix it.

And he had no explanation with the wheels

except for maybe they were out of alignment or something.

We originally asked Jim if Ari was very cautious

on there, and he said, "Yeah."

-Any trained mechanic of any kind would tell you

that you put something under the truck just in case it falls.

You don't want it to fall on you and crush you.

So it seems to me

that him taking off the front tires

and not putting something in to protect himself

would seem very strange.

-So the question is,

how does Ari Squire get crushed under a truck?

It's not something that happens very often,

and it's certainly not the people

that have as much knowledge as he does.

Denise mentioned to the investigators

from our office that he had been depressed,

that financial strain and everything else,

that it was taking its toll on him.

When you have all these hurdles financially, you're down.

You're confined to where you're able to go.

This is not a life that he's enjoying at this moment in time.

And we've seen people take their lives when that happens.

So, you know, maybe it wasn't an accident.

Maybe it was a suicide. We have to consider.

-By that afternoon, with the cause of death still unclear,

detectives begin closely examining the scene.

-When we started processing the scene,

inconsistencies were being found.

-It was a lot going on.

What it looks like is that he's working on his truck.

Somehow the truck slipped off a three-ton hydraulic jack.

But the odd thing is that the truck had

no scratches or denting.

-I noticed that the jack,

where it was positioned originally, was in

between the radiator and the front fender.

Not a spot

where you would normally put a jack with

a 10,000-plus-pound diesel truck on it.

Ari, being the master mechanic,

if you will, failed to use jack stands,

which is pretty surprising considering

that your neighborhood driveway mechanic

would always put some kind of jack stand

to keep that vehicle from falling on them.

When the body was removed, we noted that there

had been a gasoline odor on some of the clothing.

This is a diesel truck.

I don't know why he'd be having gasoline out.

-It was a mystery.

What exactly were the circumstances

that resulted in the truck going on fire?

It looked like a tragic accident.

But as we know in law enforcement,

sometimes things aren't as they first appear.

-He went missing the same day that Ari was found dead.

-The phone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing.

I didn't know what was going on. Something was wrong.

-This is exactly what Ari had told them two years before.

Her answers to the test came back

that she was being deceitful.

♪♪

-Detectives have discovered a body

they believe to be Ari Squire,

burned and pinned beneath a pickup truck in his garage.

As the first day of the investigation ends,

the cause of the fire remains unclear

and the charred remains are sent for autopsy.

-The coroner determined

that Ari had died of massive chest injuries

and a ruptured heart.

Death would have been instantaneous.

He wouldn't have even felt what was going on.

Absolutely falls in line with the truck's sliding off

and landing on your chest.

-While the manner of death

makes sense with what they saw at the scene,

the medical examiner is still perplexed

by the victim's identity.

-When somebody dies, obviously you can tell who that person is.

But when something's burnt and skin's burnt,

it's harder to figure it out.

-The upper torso had been badly burned

as a result of the fire.

-The skin was damaged from the fire,

but you could still make out tattoos.

We determined that there was just one on the body.

It was a letter J.

-It can help us confirm Ari's identity.

-Detectives turn to Ari's wife, Denise, for help.

-We asked Denise if there were any tattoos on the body.

She indicated there were some on the arm.

We asked Denise what those tattoos were.

She said she wasn't sure, which was very confusing

since they had been married for 14 years,

that she wouldn't know what the tattoos were.

-While Denise's answers leave investigators uneasy,

other family members offer key information.

-One of Ari's siblings indicated

that he had an American flag on one arm,

and on the other arm, he had a lion tattoo.

-There was definitely not one of a flag

or a lion on this body.

-The body that was underneath the vehicle

had Ari Squire's identification in his back pocket.

Who is this body that was found underneath the truck?

It wasn't Ari Squire.

-The coroner calls in a forensic dentist

to match the remains to Ari Squire's dental records.

As the scene is processed further on the second day,

answers are elusive.

-Cause of the fire was perplexing.

-We ended up looking at the light

that was crushed by the truck,

and as we followed that cord over to an outlet,

it was plugged in and then up to the circuit breaker,

expecting to see a tripped circuit breaker.

When I looked at the circuit board,

all the breakers were off,

meaning that there was no power to the light

at the time of the fire.

You know, I verified

that the fire department didn't turn them off.

There was soot all the way across the breaker board,

so they had been off prior to the fire.

That eliminated my electrical fire theory.

There was a propane torch that was not too far from there,

and it was in the on position.

So now things are looking

that maybe it was set up with a torch.

It was a big, big red flag and we're looking at an arson.

-It could have been all kinds of different things

that started the fire. It wasn't the truck.

-It was a big pivot for our investigation

because now we're turned in a different direction again.

-Two days after the fire in her garage,

Denise is becoming increasingly impatient

as she waits for the forensic dentist's findings.

-We received a phone call from the funeral director

that was working with Denise on Ari's body.

Denise was demanding

that the body be cremated as soon as possible.

-But we couldn't have the body cremated

until the autopsy was done,

and the funeral director told her as much.

-She was very upset with that.

She was saying that she needed to have it done

for a celebration of life ceremony,

and she needed it done as soon as possible.

We are in the middle of a death investigation.

-Why is she so insistent on getting the ashes?

-With questions surrounding Ari's wife's behavior,

police complete a canvass of the neighborhood

to find out more about the couple's dynamics.

-So, the neighbors found them to be odd people.

There were a couple times where they saw the couple fighting.

Denise would be running out in front of the house,

and Ari would be chasing after her, apologizing.

Kind of like a puppy dog trying to make things better.

And just seemed strange.

-One of the next door neighbors said

that they had at least two incidents of domestic disputes

in the three years that he knew Ari.

We can only surmise,

if you're going to be chasing your spouse outside,

there's probably a few incidents that happened inside.

-Learning that her marriage had been in turmoil,

combined with her unexplained urgency to cremate the body.

Investigators begin to focus in on Denise as a suspect.

-Now we start looking at her background,

financials, anything that could give us a motive to

why she would be involved.

-Initially, Denise told us

that there was no insurance policy.

We started looking closer at the financials,

and we were able to determine that Ari did, in fact,

have a life insurance policy

that had been purchased nine years earlier.

Denise was the primary beneficiary

on that life insurance policy,

and the policy was going to pay out somewhere

between $2 and $5 million.

Now we know Denise was not being truthful with us,

and we're trying to connect the pieces to the puzzle,

if you will.

And we have a guy who's short on money.

An insurance policy would help satisfy

those medical debts that he owed.

-You can cash it in and call it a day right now.

And it's looking like she might want to cash in.

-As police prepare to confront Denise about her involvement,

forensic results force them to rethink everything.

-Dental records came back as not Ari Squire's.

It was not his teeth inside the dead person's body.

-The dental not matching, the tattoos not matching.

This was definitely not Ari Squire.

The forensic dentist

believed that the teeth of our victim

belonged to a 20-something-year-old,

as opposed to a 40-year-old male.

Next big question was, who was it?

♪♪

-Forensic results have left investigators grappling

with many questions.

Who was the victim under Ari Squire's truck,

and where is Ari?

-Was Ari Squire involved in this murder

of the individual underneath Ari's truck,

and did he abscond somewhere.

-As police reached day four in their investigation,

Ari's old business partner reaches out again

with a bewildering lead.

He's been contacted about an employee Ari hired

who went missing the day of the fire.

-Jim McCullough, Ari's business partner,

receives a phone call from a woman

asking where her son was at.

She's missing her son, Justin Newman.

She's telling him

that he's supposed to be working for Main Beam Construction.

Jim says he did not know a Justin Newman

who the lady was looking for.

-Justin's mom knew that Justin was my best friend.

The day after he disappeared,

she came to me asking if I had heard from him,

if I'd seen him,

and my response was, "No, I haven't heard from him.

I haven't seen him."

So I gave him a phone call and I got no response.

The phone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing.

So something within me was like, hey, something's off.

Why isn't he answering?

I didn't know what was going on.

Something was wrong.

-Police reach out directly to Justin Newman's mother

for more details.

-We sent some investigators out to talk to Justin's mom.

She was definitely a wreck.

She was a wreck when she had talked with Jim.

She was a wreck to our investigators.

As we talked with Justin's mom,

we found out that Justin was a 20-year-old male,

blond hair, blue eyes, 5'8", 150 pounds.

-His description matches that of the body in the morgue.

-But we weren't sure if Justin was a victim,

if he was a suspect, or if he was just on the run.

-As they continue to interview Justin's mother,

she paints a heartbreaking picture of her missing son.

-As we talked with Justin's mom,

we found out that Justin was the glue

that kept that family together.

He was employed over at Home Depot for most of the time,

and he was making the $10 an hour,

and that was paying all the family's bills.

-Justin's mother reveals he had been excited lately.

A new opportunity was on the horizon

that promised more money.

-Ari Squire was a regular at Home Depot.

He had a construction company,

so Justin had to have his orders ready for him to be picked up.

Ari raised interest in him. It was put out as, "Hey,

one, do you want to make some more money with me?

And do you want to learn some construction?"

Justin said, "Yeah, more money, and I get to learn stuff?

Why not?"

He took care of his mom.

So getting a higher raise, or even making $15, $20 an hour,

that was going to be so much more money for him.

For Justin, it was turning out to be a dream job.

He was going to have, you know,

someone that owned his own construction company teach him.

Ari was going to be a mentor for him.

-Justin told his mom that he had been meeting up with Ari

at local McDonald's

and talking about employment opportunities

that Ari could provide for him.

-Justin's mother saw no cause for alarm

on the last day she saw him.

♪♪

-On the morning of February 23rd,

Justin had left at about 6 AM

to go meet with Ari Squire at his house

to talk about this employment opportunity.

Justin's mother, Donna,

started to get concerned about Justin's whereabouts

because he failed to come home

and give her the ride to work that he normally was 100% on.

He was using his half-brother, Frank's, car,

which was the only transportation

that the three of them had.

Later in the evening, she received a text from Justin

that stated that he was going to be in Missouri working.

When she got the text, she was a little concerned with it.

-Justin's mom, Donna, gets this text message saying that,

"Hey, I'm going out of town, I'm gonna go work."

And he abbreviates the state of Missouri as "MO."

The text was a little bit too formal for him.

One, he wasn't a texter.

Two, he wasn't going to sit there and abbreviate it.

If he was to spell it out,

he would have spelled it probably wrong, knowing him.

And he would rather have sat there and called.

So, yeah, she wasn't buying that.

-Donna also related

that Justin didn't have any extra clothing.

He didn't bring his cords for his cell phone, he didn't pack.

Anybody that was going to be going out of state

would have packed.

-With these ominous details in mind.

Investigators ask Justin's mother to provide some

of his personal belongings to secure a DNA sample.

-We didn't disclose that we were comparing it to the body

that we had in the morgue.

We just needed it for a missing person's

identification for the DNA.

We weren't sure if the body was Justin,

so we didn't know if Justin was missing.

Did he see Ari hurt somebody, kill somebody?

Was he involved in the incident and on a run with Ari?

We weren't sure.

-Cook County puts out an ISPERN,

which is an alert for all law enforcement agents

that Justin Newman is missing,

that the vehicle was reported missing, as well.

-While they await DNA results,

investigators head to Justin's workplace for clues about Ari.

-We send investigators out to Home Depot

to talk with Justin's coworkers.

-Detectives met with an individual

by the name of Sandy Lively.

-Sandy Lively was a 41-year-old employee of Home Depot.

When they met Sandy,

they realized that, yeah, he has exactly the same

physical characteristics, same age as Ari.

-From a visual standpoint, I see a lot of similarities.

Ari looks like Sandy and Sandy looks like Ari,

especially after Ari grew his beard.

-And then, Sandy Lively drops a bombshell.

♪♪

-Detectives speak with Sandy Lively,

who may hold details that link two missing men,

Justin Newman and Ari Squire,

to the charred body found in Ari's garage.

-Sandy Lively worked with Justin Newman,

but he also knew who Ari was and what he looked like.

-He related that Ari had, for the last several months,

wanted to offer employment to Sandy.

-A few months earlier, Ari had asked Sandy

to quit his job and to come work for him,

and he even offered him $60,000 for the first year.

-Sandy has a family, he just wants to take care

of his family, he wants to do the best he can in life.

-He was a little concerned

with the construction business going up and down,

and the fact that Ari didn't offer any kind of benefits

kind of concerned him greatly.

-The strange demands of Ari's job application

are also concerning to Sandy.

-During the review of the application,

Sandy was able to see

that Ari requested his mother's maiden name.

Facts about tattoos. Uniform size.

His PIN numbers for banks.

-He even asked about piercings and eye color.

-Characteristics that would definitely not be

on a normal standard employment form.

-Sandy was put off by Ari Squire.

Ari wouldn't take no for an answer.

He kept going back in,

trying to talk Sandy into changing his mind.

-And in the last week and a half,

Sandy had mentioned that Ari had called him several times,

pretty much begging him to come work for him.

He said he had a lot of work, and he really needed some help,

and that he didn't have enough workers.

-Sandy, after all this pestering from Ari,

agrees to meet with him in the morning of the fire.

Sandy was going to meet with Ari to help him on a job.

-Sandy overslept.

After his interview,

Police continue to unravel what happened to Ari and Justin

while keeping Ari's wife under close scrutiny.

-We also are looking at Denise,

the only one that was at the house at the time.

There's a lot of inconsistencies that fall in her direction,

but there was not any other evidence

that she was involved in this fire.

-Denise continues to carry on as a widow,

holding a celebration of life ceremony

just six days after the fire.

-Denise Squire had their celebration of life

for Ari at a restaurant.

We had sent a couple of investigators to attend.

A lot of times, you'll have somebody

that's involved in a murder show up at the funeral.

We didn't know who was going to show up there.

And, you know, is Justin going to show up?

Is Ari going to be in some kind of disguise and show up?

We had no idea who was going to be there,

but we wanted to have eyes on the situation

just to see who was there.

-The ceremony offers little to the investigation,

so detectives weigh their next move

until an unexpected lead comes in.

-About a week after the accident,

we received a teletype from Eureka Police Department

in reference to the missing vehicle

that Justin was supposed to be in.

-I was working patrol as a police officer

in Eureka, Missouri.

It was common for me to go to hotels in the community

and look for things that were out of place.

On March 2nd, 2008,

I was midway through my shift working midnights in Eureka,

and I was conducting a patrol at Days Inn

when I noticed that there was a vehicle there

that was backed in.

When I see cars backed in,

it draws my attention because it seems

as though they're doing it for a reason.

Possibly a quick escape.

The vehicle in question on this particular night

was a 1999 Pontiac Sunfire red in color,

and it had the plate that was dangling off of it,

which is always a sign of something.

Someone's either possibly moved the plate

or used the plate of another.

So it definitely drew my attention to it

and made me investigate it a little further.

I pulled in front of it.

I ran the plate, and by doing that,

it alerted me that the vehicle

had an endangered missing person

attached to it, and the missing person was Justin Newman.

I had an uneasy feeling about this,

and I've had these type of situations throughout my career

where I get these feelings

and it turns out that there's much more

than what meets the eye.

♪♪

-Nine days after Justin Newman vanished,

a Missouri patrolman spots his vehicle in a hotel parking lot.

-I actually went to the register in a hotel.

I was informed by the attendant that, in room 133,

a subject by the name of Justin Newman

had checked in for a couple of days.

-When we get the teletype from Eureka

that the red Pontiac Sunfire had been found,

we requested that they make contact with Justin,

whoever was in possession of that vehicle

and over at that hotel.

-We had a few of us go to the hotel

and knocked on the door.

We called for Justin numerous times

and no one responded,

which brought our concern to a whole new level.

And the attendant unlocked the door.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a gunshot.

[ Gunshot ]

And we believe we were being fired upon at that point,

so we took tactical positions.

We don't know if Justin Newman was by himself.

Maybe there was somebody in the room

and holding Justin against his own will.

We made the decision to go in,

and as we entered the room,

we noticed that there was a subject slightly on the bed

and partially off on the floor.

It appeared that the subject had

a self-inflicted gunshot wound

from where the weapon was under his chin,

and the exit point of the bullet

went through the top of his head.

-This had all the appearances of a suicide.

-Despite the condition of the body,

officers can still clearly make out the victim's face.

-I pulled the wallet from his pocket

and was able to pull out a driver's license

for Justin Newman.

After comparing the driver's license

with the deceased subject in the room,

I knew this was not Justin Newman.

-This was not a young man, 20 years old.

-I'm not sure who it was,

but at this point, I made another phone call

to Lake County Sheriff's Department.

-The Eureka officer requested photographs

of both Ari and Justin, so we sent those over to him.

-When they brought the photos back to me, it was at that point

that I realized it was, in fact, Ari Squire.

I contacted Lake County again,

and I informed them that I 100% believe that the subject

that I had in my room was Ari Squire.

-This shocking suicide clarifies what happened.

Ari had murdered Justin Newman,

stolen his identity, and was on the run.

-They found brown hair dye

and blue tinted sapphire contact lenses.

Justin had the bright blue eyes.

He had the light hair.

Ari's was originally brown and brown eyes.

I believe that Ari was going to assume Justin Newman's identity.

-Detectives now believe that the body in the garage is Justin

and Ari had been alive the entire time.

♪♪

The next day, police call Denise to the station

to inform her about Ari and press her for answers.

-So, now you have to tell Denise

that you're a widow once again.

And it's a strange conversation with her

because we believe it's possible

that she's been involved all along.

-We proceeded to tell her that Ari was dead

and she became very angry about it.

"Well, I know Ari's dead. He's been dead from the fire."

And then we explained to her that, no,

he shot himself and committed suicide in Eureka, Missouri.

She had almost a callous attitude towards it.

She then became very, very much enraged

and started on being not so cooperative.

We requested that she do a VSA,

which is a voice stress analyzer.

It's very similar to a polygraph test,

and all of a sudden, she remembered

that she had to grade papers.

We know she's feeling the heat at this point in time,

and she needs to get out of there,

but she doesn't want to say, "I'm out of here."

With that being said, we asked her to do it right now,

and she ended up saying she would do it.

We had one of our investigators administer the test,

and they were asking if she had anything

to do with the death of Justin.

Did she know who killed Justin?

Her answers to the test came back

that she was being deceitful.

-Even after cracking under the voice stress test,

officers lack the proof to charge Denise.

-She's still talking about wanting to go home

and grade the papers,

and we tell her that she's in our interview room.

We have a team at her residence doing a search warrant,

and they're collecting any kind of electronics,

cell phones, computers.

We determined that Ari had allegedly died on February 23rd,

and they found an e-mail

that Ari had sent to Denise after the fire.

-It appears that Denise Squire knew absolutely

that Ari was alive,

that he was coaching her on what he wanted to have happen

and what needed to be done next.

♪♪

-Detectives have uncovered a troubling e-mail exchange

between Ari Squire and his wife

in the days following Ari's apparent death.

-So there were questions that Ari Squire was sending to Denise

in the form of e-mails.

"Did a accident happen?"

And her response is "yes."

The second question -- "Per my will,

when is the party set for?"

And her response is, "Working on that now."

Next, "When are you planning on dispersing my ashes?"

"Don't know."

And, "Is there anything you need?"

And from Denise, "A new life."

That tells me that she is 100% invested and in the know

as to how everything transpired.

-Investigators interviewing Denise waste no time

confronting her about the suspicious exchanges.

-Denise tries to explain it as an auto e-mail,

and obviously, our investigators

weren't going with that, auto e-mail.

First, an auto e-mail,

how would he know when to send it?

How was he to know he was going to die?

She held fast to her story

and she just wouldn't break from that.

She was being very uncooperative at that point in time,

and eventually, she just shut down and said,

"I'm not talking to you anymore."

We did not have enough evidence at that point

in time to hold her or arrest her.

She wanted to stop talking to us,

And that's one of her rights.

So she left the sheriff's department at that time.

-10 days after the body was discovered,

forensic results are finally in

and reveal the true identity of the man burned in Ari's garage.

-The results of the DNA test showed

that it indeed was Justin Newman that was underneath the truck.

The coroner was able to list the manner of death

of Justin as homicide.

-Investigators pieced together a chilling theory of

how Justin Newman and Ari Squire

wound up in this deadly case of identity theft.

-We think that, early morning,

Justin arrives to meet Ari for work.

Ari overpowers and incapacitates Justin.

He places Justin down on the ground,

changes his clothes out, puts him underneath the vehicle,

smashes the vehicle on his chest

while he's technically still alive, kills him.

Stages the arson part of the fire and ignites it.

Then Ari took Justin's vehicle and fled the state.

And start a new life, if you will.

♪♪

-With the identity now certain,

police inform Justin's family of his tragic fate.

-Justin's mother was just devastated.

20-year-old son that loved her so much and was such a good son.

And it just killed her.

-I found out, you know,

it was Justin the whole entire time underneath the car.

That's sick. It's sick that that this was all

just done for some money, all to settle some debt.

Whatever thing that you had going on in life,

you chose to kill not only just my friend, a brother, a son.

You chose to kill a 20-year-old kid

that had his life ahead of him.

I miss him a lot.

-In the end, prosecutors never charged Denise.

-I requested some assistance from the FBI,

but we were never able to come up with anything

that put her involved in the crime.

-Though her insurance claim was denied,

Denise fought and won more than $6 million.

But her story was far from over.

-The Newman family did file a civil lawsuit

against Denise Squire.

-The judge actually found in favor

of Justin Newman's estate against the Ari Squire estate

and allowed them to have the insurance money.

-They did receive an award of $6 million.

Well, even though she wasn't criminally charged,

she was found civilly liable for the death of Justin Newman.

It's a small element of satisfaction.

-There's always a chance

that Denise could be called up to explain her actions.

The statute of limitations in the state of Illinois

is unlimited for this type of case.

Personally, I just wish that I could have interviewed.

I wanted to talk to Ari.

I wanted to find out his motive

and why he would do such a heinous crime.

But that'll never happen.

-This is Justin's name.

I got it tattooed on me about a year later.

He would make you laugh. He loved to make you laugh.

Smile. He would always try to cheer me up.

Justin was just a great person.

He was a great person to be around.

You know, that's my friend. That was my best friend.

♪♪