Original subtitles

I was headed up to work at the mine,

and on my way,

noticed that there were some taillights

off the side of the road in the ditch.

When I got up to the vehicle,

you could actually see the bullet holes,

and I jumped down.

The gentleman was slumped over.

I told him, "Hang on," you know?

"Help's on the way."

But no, he was... He...

...took his last breaths, right there.

Well, Clifton was a Wild West,

shoot 'em up, rough, tough town.

You had to be tough to survive.

Fortunately, in this area, in Arizona,

the rock had a lot of minerals in it,

veins of gold and silver,

and that started a stampede to this area.

If anybody tried to jump your claim,

they would settle it with a gun.

The town of Clifton is not on the way somewhere else.

People that are here,

they're here because of the mine,

the same way that the people came here looking for gold.

Even now,

a dispute can cause a man to be killed.

It still goes on today, just like it always has.

I was asleep

when I got a phone call from my dispatch.

There had been a shooting near the Horseshoe Curve.

I was the first officer on scene, so automatically,

I was the lead investigator,

so there was a lot going on in my head.

I had to start figuring out why this happened.

From his driver's license,

I was able to identify the victim

as Matthew Misener.

Matthew didn't reside in the Clifton area,

so at that point, I needed to figure out

who is he connected to?

Just after coming out of Clifton,

the roadway is nicknamed "Horseshoe Curve,"

because the highway goes up,

and it looks like a giant horseshoe.

There was no cameras,

so it was a very ideal spot for a hit.

The pillar of the door

was just loaded with bullet holes.

The grouping of the gunshots

were within the size of a dinner plate,

and it was very accurate.

Very precise.

It was like the guy had, you know, significant skill,

- and practiced this thing. - Yeah.

Especially to be doing that

going 45 miles down the roadway,

- if not faster. - Right.

But shooting through the car, out of the passenger window,

into the victim.

Yeah.

I started looking for evidence.

What really happened here?

Why was this man killed like this?

It's...

It's a heinous thing.

Police officers told me that

there was a woman that arrived on scene,

and she had walked over, and looked at the victim,

and then drove away,

which was very suspicious.

Eventually, we realized that was the victim's fiancee,

Nicole Chacon.

She was a person of interest that we needed to talk to.

It was very bizarre that you have

your fiance that is on the side of the road,

and you don't stay to be with him,

and you leave.

When I spoke to Nicole,

and it appeared she was very confused.

She was oblivious to what really happened,

so I told her, "Nicole,

I hate to tell you this,

but, you know, your fiance was murdered."

You know, I understand that there is shock,

and you're scared, and you flee from reality,

but she is a suspect.

Speaking to Nicole,

there are more questions than answers,

but I decided to ask her, notify the next of kin.

I answered the phone.

It was Nicole calling me,

and I thought it was really weird,

'cause I've never spoke to her.

She was like,

"Something's happened,"

and she's like,

"I'm gonna put the detective on the phone."

I'm hysterical, crying.

My relationship with my brother

is, like, super...

It's a strong bond, so it just hurts me a lot

that I couldn't...

That I couldn't protect him.

I was like, "Who would just want to kill him?"

You can't believe something like that

would happen in a small town like this.

Everybody up here got along with him.

I never heard anybody say anything bad about him.

It wasn't long after

that they let us know it wasn't an accident,

and at that point, it's like, you're like,

"Okay, this is obviously very malicious,

and somebody had some intent behind it."

I can't make sense of it.

I still have yet to, like,

grieve my brother fully, completely.

I used to see him with his kids.

He was the most loving dad, loved to give hugs.

When he did his selfies,

there was really never, ever, a smile.

He was always serious.

And that's another selfie there of him.

Got a little smirk.

Every family will talk about their loved one,

and say, you know,

they'd give them the shirt off your back,

but Matt was truly, like, that person,

and...

Sorry.

He never showed anger, ever,

and for him to have somebody get that mad at him,

and just shoot his vehicle,

I just could not, like, fathom that at all.

I just could not believe that

somebody would want to hurt him.

It's a small community, right?

Everybody knows each other, and you hear

the gossip going around, and then the rumors start.

From what I heard,

he was just driving up the Horseshoe,

and some guy pulled up right beside him,

and started unloading inside of his vehicle.

I can't remember the last time

there was a shooting in this town.

It was a really big shock for the community.

People keep a lot of stuff to themselves around here,

and once rumors start flying, it's bad juju

all the way around.

We heard about it,

and surmised that it was probably

like a road rage incident.

That's what we took it to be.

The word spreads really fast,

especially in a small town,

but it's not always correct.

As far as road rage,

I felt that there was more to the story than that.

It could have been that somebody driving by

was in the passenger seat, and could have shot at him,

or, you know, from the driver's seat.

There's a lot of things that went through my mind

on how this could have happened.

You need to try to figure out, you know, why this happened,

but at the time,

Nicole, she was the only person

that we believed could have been involved,

or knew who was involved.

When Nicole came down to the police station,

I was focused to find out how she was involved.

Nicole, she was our only suspect at that time,

so I started asking her questions

about her fiance.

I want to know

why would you go on scene, and leave?

That was bizarre to not only me,

but to everybody.

She was very confused.

She didn't understand

why these questions were coming to her,

or why she was even being questioned.

I pulled off to the side of the road

because I...

I wanted to try and get a better look

to see if I recognized the vehicle.

I had gotten out of my car,

and I started walking up to the scene,

but, like, something...

Something told me not to go up there.

I just got back into my car, and drove to the gas station.

I was numb.

I was just in denial.

Sergeant Aguilar, she was like,

"Tell me who you think it is,"

and so, I did.

I looked at her, and I said,

"The ex-wife, Georgina."

That morning, the fire department,

we lined up shoulder to shoulder,

walked up and down the highway two or three times,

looking for shell casings.

Went down off the side into the creek,

looking for a gun.

Maybe the individual tossed it over.

But there was no sign of anything like that.

When I got up to the vehicle,

there was two child car seats in the back seat.

I, you know, shook my head.

You hate to see something like that.

As a father myself, you know, it was heartbreaking.

There was some paperwork on the floor,

and I grabbed it,

and it just happened to be court papers

for the next day, for custody of his children.

Georgina was my brother's ex-wife.

I think that they started having some issues.

Georgina had it out for Nicole,

and I think it was that jealousy,

you know, "That used to be mine.

I had that."

As soon as I discovered

there was a custody issue happening,

it was a very big red flag for me,

in thinking that Matthew's ex-wife, Georgina,

might have had something to do with his homicide.

She began telling us that she wanted Matthew

"in their life" type thing,

and implied that he was a good father,

but then she said that Matthew had texted her like,

"If anything ever happens to me, look at Nicole."

I checked it out, and we did confirm that

he did send that text to Georgina.

Why would he say this?

Because it does imply that possibly

Nicole had something to do with the incident.

It looked bad.

You know, maybe Nicole was in on it,

and had something to do with his homicide.

When I found out Matt was shot,

truthfully, we thought Nicole had something to do with it.

Nicole and Matt,

they had a pretty volatile relationship.

They were constantly fighting,

and breaking up.

When I remembered I was reading

the text messages between Georgina and Matt,

'cause I was just, like, "Oh, my God.

They're gonna think it's me."

It was one of our arguments, and Matt made me so mad,

and that's why he told Georgina what he did.

You could tell in the messages

that Nicole and Matthew did go at it quite a bit.

They had a very rough relationship, at points.

We decided that it was not likely

that Nicole was an actual shooter,

so I asked if she had any further information

that would help us find who the suspect is.

And they asked me if he owed anybody at work money,

or if somebody hated him,

and I told them, "Nothing that I can think of,"

but he has a coworker, Sam.

They carpool, and it was Sam's day to drive.

It's kind of strange that there would be

an individual that drives with Matthew every day,

and then, on the day that he gets murdered,

he's not there,

and that was very strange to us,

so we were thinking

"We have another suspect."

The police, they questioned me,

because I called off, so obviously,

they thought I knew something of what was going on,

or I had a part of it,

like I was a suspect of some kind.

I told the police I wasn't at work

because I had some plumbing issues

with one of my rentals.

Sam told me that he owned some other property,

and that day, they were having some maintenance issues

that needed to be attended to immediately.

I actually had to get a letter from the tenant

saying that I was there at those hours of the day,

and I told her,

"I didn't have anything to do with it," and...

And I was cleared,

but I feel bad,

because I was friends with Matt.

When you work up here in the mine,

the guys up here are like family as well.

After talking to Sam, it was just

kind of a coincidence, I guess, that he wasn't there.

But we still have Nicole and Georgina

as potential suspects,

and so I decided to look again into both of these women,

but we don't have any witnesses,

so I'm thinking,

"How are we gonna solve this case?"

Used to bring my kids up here

to play with Georgina's kids.

We had a lot of good times in this place.

Probably the last time

I was at this park was with Georgina.

We were

sitting at that bench over there, under the shade,

and we had, the kids were playing.

She had told me that Nicole had showed up at her house, knocked on her door.

Nicole said, "I'm about to crush your world."

And she had told her about the affair

that her and Matt had been having.

And it did crush her world.

And she was telling me how devastating she was.

How he could do this to her.

Georgina and Nicole had a feud and they hated each other.

And it all revolved around Matthew,

who got Matthew.

It was this wild and crazy emotional battle.

I don't have any evidence, but my gut is telling me,

between the two of them we'll find out the truth

of who killed Matthew Misener.

Georgina, ultimately her goal was to get, have Matt back.

There was one weekend Georgina called me up and said, "Guess what?"

And I said, "What?" She said, "Me and Matt are getting back together."

"What?"

I said and she says, "Yeah, he's over here, he spent the weekend."

But in the end, he would end up back with Nicole.

I told 'em, "Y'all need to grow up.

You guys act like you're in high school

and you're fighting over a, same boy."

Georgina did portray that it was Nicole that had broke up the family.

but I had Georgina's back because she was the mother of his kids

and those were my nieces and nephews

and I am one of those that family is everything to me.

My mom and my sister actually both admitted

they were taking Georgina's side

because they thought my brother was in the wrong.

That kind of broke my heart a little bit

to hear it and I think about that on a daily basis.

I never really had the chance to kinda decide one way or the other,

but I, I definitely feel in my heart

that I would have had my brother's back one hundred percent.

For me, I know Matt and Nicole.

I think they were good together.

They, they were always happy.

Nicole was a cool person to be around with.

She was a cool person to talk to.

Good to know and I think they were one of the best couples I've seen.

I worked with Matt the very first day

that I got on as a maintenance helper.

If Matt needed a wrench or just a crowbar,

you know, I picked it up and handed it to him.

So, what first caught my eye was his personality.

He was just funny.

Lots of times when he was off,

he was going to Tucson to go visit his kids.

And his kids were everything to him.

I didn't really know much about the custody battle until he took a day off.

He's like, "Well, I'm not gonna be here."

I was like, "Hey, what's going on?"

He's like, "Well, I got court."

I was like, "Oh, everything good?"

He's like, "No, I'm trying to get my kids."

He's like, "My ex-wife, Georgina, has had the kids

and I'm trying to get them full, full custody."

I was on his side. a hundred percent.

At this point in the investigation,

we were kinda worried because we don't have any witnesses.

It's just a shooting on the side of the road and they're gone.

So, I thinking, "How are we gonna

catch this perpetrator who had pulled the trigger?"

I go up to the horseshoe curve

and I start looking for evidence on the scene.

Our theory at the time was our shooter

was actually parked in this dirt parking lot over here.

And he was waiting for, uh, Mr. Misener's vehicle to cross onto US 191.

These are the cameras that would have caught, uh,

the shooter sitting in that dirt parking lot.

Unfortunately, these cameras at the time were not working.

The cameras from Circle K were broken.

Very disappointing.

We lost that incredibly good evidence which we could have had.

Fortunately, Clifton is a small town

and rumors spread very quickly.

A man at the mine called me

and he told me that this white sedan

that had driven past Mr. Misener's vehicle

made a U-turn and drove southbound.

So, I made a phone call.

Shari Aguilar was inside the interview room with Nicole

and I just kinda interrupted the interview

and said, "Hey, Nicole, I need to know something here.

Is there anybody driving a white car that would wish you or Mr. Misener harm?"

And she says, "Well, yes."

And she says, "Uh, actually there was a man

that had been taking pictures of my fiancé's license plate."

Nicole showed us the picture of this vehicle that Matthew had taken

of a guy taking photographs of him.

The picture actually showed a plate number.

And we were able to run that immediately to find out who owned that vehicle.

One of the owners on the registration

actually had some warrants out for his arrest.

Eduardo Montano from Tucson, Arizona.

That was the real break of the case.

I was excited that we found a piece to this puzzle. This is a good lead.

Why would someone from Tucson be here, where Matthew works, to come after him?

How is Eduardo involved?

How is he connected with Nicole or with Georgina?

We headed to Tucson to interview Mr. Montano.

I had that gut feeling that this is the man we were looking for.

As we got here,

there were patrol cars all along the side of the road,

detectives walking back and forth.

There was a patrol car here on the side of the road

and Mr. Montano was in the back seat of it.

That's when I opened the door and saw Eduardo for the first time.

He wasn't upset, he wasn't crying, he didn't look angry.

It was a huge relief that we had him in custody.

Sergeant Aguilar left the scene with Montano

to do an interview. I stayed at the house.

I went to the front door and met with the grandfather.

And I said, "Well, your grandson

is a prime suspect in a homicide."

And he was just dumbfounded.

He says, "That couldn't be Eduardo.

He is the most respectful young man.

He was a haul truck driver at the mine."

Have a seat.

As I'm getting information from the grandfather,

I'm texting Shari so she can ask questions during the interview.

Eduardo did admit to being in the Safford, Clifton area for a job.

I'm asking him who the supervisor is.

When we went into Eduardo's bedroom,

he had a pistol that was on the top of his closet.

His grandfather told me that Eduardo was an excellent shot.

And there was actually fourteen rounds missing in that pistol.

And then very quickly we discovered that

Mr. Montano never worked at the mine.

His alibi uh, was, was a lie.

It was very clear to me that Mr. Montano's life

seemed like it was one massive lie.

Everything about Mr. Montano did not add up.

And then his grandfather told me that Eduardo was always asking for money

because he said he was paying

these huge child support payments to his ex-wife.

So, I went to talk to his ex-wife.

She had told me that Eduardo had left her for another woman

and she believed her name was Georgina.

I honestly truly believed we had

the suspect who, who committed the shooting.

And that point, we needed to figure out if he acted alone

or if Georgina was involved in some way.

My gut is telling me there's something going on between the two of them

in leading to this homicide of Mr. Matthew Misener.

So, we immediately wanna speak with Georgina.

And then she starts telling me about her relationship with Eduardo.

She said she didn't really know him too well.

They had dated for a week and they just stayed friends.

First thing I think, I remember her saying is,

"I can't believe Eduardo, I can't believe he would do this."

My intuition with her was, "She's not telling me the truth."

And of course, Eduardo...

How are you doing?

...he denies that she has anything to do with what happened.

But I'm sure there is more to the story than what they both were saying.

It just didn't add up, everything pointed to Georgina.

I'm so frustrated at this point.

I know that Georgina is involved in this homicide.

We know she's lying to us,

but we don't have the evidence to arrest her.

And the consequences of this could be Eduardo takes the fall

and Georgina gets away free.

I was focused on, "What do I need to do to be able to connect that dot

to show that she was involved?"

I know from prior investigations,

people communicate through text messages and then delete them.

So, I'm getting search warrants

for the cell phones to try to retrieve any messages

that might connect the dots to Georgina being involved.

And the first text messages that Sergeant Aguilar showed me

said, "We shouldn't be talking about this with our phones

because this stuff is kept on record."

It was unbelievable and we kinda chuckled to ourselves, saying,

"How could she, uh, you know, conspire to commit a murder

and put something out like this?"

You know, bad for her, great for us.

You can see that they're conspiring for this to happen.

And that moment, we, we had her.

We, we had her connected.

We discovered that several text messages mentioned

Eduardo not wanting to do the, the assas-- the assassination.

Eduardo told her, "I don't feel like I can do this.

I don't think I have it in me."

And the next message from Georgina says,

"You gotta do this, if you don't do this, you're not a man.

Don't worry about coming back to me, I don't want you here."

I have a warrant for her arrest.

When she clasps those handcuffs on,

it just felt like a, a sigh of relief.

But there's one more mystery left.

Why?

Why Eduardo did this homicide for Georgina.

I will not talk to you without the presence of a lawyer.

Understood.

It didn't make any sense.

Eduardo wasn't friends, didn't know our family.

So, the fact that he committed this crime

and murdered my brother was just baffling.

He had no rhyme or reason to do something like that

and then you realize Georgina and him had that relationship,

and then you're like, "She had to have been the mastermind."

According to Eduardo's brother,

Eduardo had always had a crush on Georgina.

They actually went to high school together,

and he's always wanted to be with her.

She knew that she could play Eduardo.

She knew that he had a troubled childhood.

"How can I get Eduardo to kill Mr. Misener?"

"Well, I'm gonna tell him that's he's treated my kids

just like he was treated when he was a kid."

And how he could be a hero to her children

by killing Mr. Misener.

In my belief, that's what happened.

Georgina, she, she was good

at manipulating people and lying.

Georgina has other people to do her dirty work for her.

I believe that Eduardo was convinced that he was going to protect the kids.

And that is why he did what he did.

The police department had reached out to us,

letting us know that they did have the suspect in custody.

And we just couldn't believe it.

It, not even a, crossed my mind that it had been her.

In this job, I've seen people do some really messed up things.

Out of love, out of fear.

Um, once Matthew filed for custody,

I believe Georgina, she was truly afraid of losing her children.

When you start putting things together

about, about Georgina, it all made sense now.

But how somebody could think they would get something

out of killing the father of their children

made absolutely no sense to me.

The judgement of this court sentences Eduardo Montano

to second degree murder, which is a class 1 felony.

When they gave him his sentencing, I was happy.

He's doing 34 years.

You know what, that's good 'cause you got a,

you got a crazy guy out of the streets,

and he ain't gonna hurt nobody.

When they said they were giving her the maximum years for murder, the 25 years,

that was the happiest thing I heard.

I really hope they rot in there for what they did.

Georgina ruined the lives of so many people.

I mean, his poor kids, I just...

They're without a mom and a dad now.

For what?

You know, what benefit did she get out of that?

I, I see no benefit.

I have a lot of rage in me because I trusted Georgina.

She made me believe that my brother was this bad person.

You know, I'm the oldest, I should have protected him.

This is a picture of when all of us,

all five of the kids and Matt, went to Apple Annie's

for Halloween to pick out pumpkins.

We were all together, just as a happy family.

That was all that we both wanted, was...

...all of our kids together, us together, just having a good time.

This is a picture of when he took me out on a date

and he was like, "Take a picture of my eyes."

So, I did and...

And I have 'em tattooed on my arm.

He was...

...just funny, goofy.

Just amazing.

Very considerate, very selfless.

Just always thought about other people,

making sure that they were okay.