Original subtitles

The body was found in the grave site, face down.

He was completely decomposed.

There's not many people who can tie up a live human being

to bury them, where they're gonna suffocate, in a shallow grave.

Somebody was really doing this to not just be hurtful

but to really torture him.

Out of anger, out of spite, out of hate.

Who is this guy?

What did he do to get this kind of punishment?

I just remember thinking, "This is probably gonna be one of the hardest cases

I've ever worked in my entire life."

This is the Old West...

...where a man's word is his bond.

100%.

The neatest thing about a cowboy's life is, I think, everybody gets along.

I make one phone call, we got 10 guys here.

All great guys.

All of them would do whatever you asked them to do to help you out.

It's very close-knit.

A lot of the people that I know are horse people, rodeo cowboys.

The Western way of life is something we love.

We trust a little bit easier, take people at face value.

We have a lot of people that just pop in,

and, "Hey, I'm looking for a job."

I've seen that a million times.

It's always been that way, as far as I know.

Forever.

This champion cowboy, Rick Godfrey,

showed up in Phelan looking for work.

He was putting himself out to be a horse trainer and a farrier.

He had these glowing reviews.

The horse committee is pretty tight.

We all basically know each other.

I was on Facebook looking for a farrier, and I met Rick.

We hit it off, talking about horses.

Rick was a likeable guy.

He acted like a know-it-all,

but when you see him with horses, he was good with them.

He really was.

So at first, everything was fine.

We had a trailer on the property,

and I remember him mentioning something about needing a place to stay.

He had asked me if he could stay there.

I said it was my boyfriend's. He would have to ask Dale.

Dale told me, "Well, you know, I've been down on my luck before.

I wouldn't mind helping somebody."

The arrangement was $300 a month,

and then Rick was gonna help me around the property during the week.

Rick and I met on a dating website.

We spoke a few times,

and then we started talking pretty much every day after that.

He just was a really nice person

and just really cared about animals,

which is really important to me.

At some point, he had made a name for himself as a bull rider.

Rick talked about his bull-riding days, all the rodeos,

and being a horse trainer.

He also shoed horses and groomed them and that sort of thing.

He was always in full costume.

He believed in that lifestyle- that old Wild West:

be polite, "Yes, Sir. Yes, Ma'am."

Rick treated me like gold.

From the moment he woke up, he was sending me videos, phone calls,

and making sure that I knew that he was there.

One day, his phone was going straight to voicemail.

And even though I really only knew him, like, two months,

I kind of knew right then that something was wrong.

Lisa called me and asked me if I'd heard from my son.

And I said, "No, I haven't talked to him. Why?"

You know, I had talked to him a couple days prior.

And I said, "Okay, well, I'll try calling him."

I couldn't get through.

It just kept ringing, ringing, ringing, and going to voicemail.

My son does things at whim sometimes,

so I really wasn't sure what to believe.

There was a good possibility he was licking his wounds in a motel.

Maybe he ran away with another woman.

But I was concerned about my son.

I started to Facebook Messenger his landlord, Debbie,

if she had seen Rick and his dog,

and she said she had not seen them all day.

Rick's girlfriend messaged me asking if Rick was home.

I had not seen Rick.

But I had seen my boyfriend, Dale, talking to a local woman

called Laura Vasquez.

I knew of her Facebook, but I didn't know her personally.

She was building a business with Rick.

You know, stalls and round pen and...

Some kind of horse business.

When I heard Laura Vasquez and Dale talking, I heard her say,

"You seen the bracelet that he's wearing?

Well, that bracelet was my husband's."

I was working in the Phelan station.

Rick Godfrey's father called in and reported that his son had been missing.

I went to see Dale and Debbie.

They told me that when Rick got back,

Rick had Laura Vasquez's bracelet.

Dale told Rick to give it back, and he said, "No."

Dale got upset, then Rick said,

"Okay", took off the bracelet, and threw it at Dale.

Dale Brewster contacted the sheriff's department

and reported that he was involved in a physical fight with Rick

and was concerned about him.

That's a very odd thing, I thought.

Rick had jumped over his fence,

lost his boots and took off, and he hadn't seen him since.

No one knew what happened with Rick.

A lot of women are attracted to the cowboy type of man.

The ruff and gruff, you know, belt buckle, cowboy hat.

A lot of the women who were very interested in Rick

were already in relationships, whether that was them being married

or in a relationship with a boyfriend.

It was a dangerous game- sleeping with married women.

He was actively having relationships

literally, you know, coast to coast.

The Internet was his hunting field.

He had a certain type that just opened themselves up to him.

They wanted that romantic fairytale

that we have perpetuated about the cowboy.

This masculine, strong, wise,

hard-working, hard-loving man

that is gonna take care of you.

But he was giving them the same line of bull [bleep].

He just needed your money.

He wanted all of it.

There were rumors that he was sleeping with everybody's wives,

and then he was ripping people off.

But it seemed like people from all over were unhappy with him,

not just here in Phelan.

I didn't know any of that stuff until after Rick went missing.

It was just kind of, like, somebody you knew but didn't know,

and you're not sure how you're supposed to feel.

He had these women all over the country

thinking that they were talking to, you know, or dating

this real rodeo cowboy.

When it came to women, Rick didn't have much common sense, you know.

Men who chase after married women are gonna come to no good.

He didn't seem to get that.

As a parent, you don't wanna assume the worst.

So, you know, you gotta keep going, hoping that they find my son.

We probably get two, three phone calls a month.

"Hey, I'm looking for a job",

you know, "I've been out of work for a little while. I'm really good with cattle ",

and it never pans out.

We've had some real yo-yos come out here.

We've rode plenty people off out of here

probably a little more aggressive than we should.

You don't call law enforcement. You just handle it.

That's why we have dogs and rifles and pistols

and anything else you can find.

My son's name was Allan. Allan Frederick Godfrey.

Allan is the junior. I'm the senior.

He was born in New York state.

When he was seven, his mother and I separated, and they moved to Ohio.

He had an uncle, I believe, that lived in Kentucky or Tennessee

that raised horses.

And he ended up living with him for a while.

He was around people that wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots.

You know, that's where he got his interest in the cowboy life.

He would tell me, "I'm a bull rider",

and, "I'm a bronc rider."

And then he was showing me pictures and sending me videos,

and I couldn't really tell 100% if they were him or not.

I told him: "Just 'cause you ride a horse don't mean you're a cowboy."

When I met Rick Godfrey,

he had all these credentials that he had listed.

He said that he had gone to the NFR,

which is the National Finals Rodeo. It's our Super Bowl.

He rides broncs and bulls.

He was a director on the board for the rodeo association.

It became very clear very quickly that there was something else,

you know, under the surface with this guy.

I met him on a social media site,

and he was talking about going to a rodeo in Florida

and had a few days to just hang out some place.

And I was like, "Well, if you're coming through Oklahoma,

you're welcome to come to my house for a little while."

So I went and picked him up at a gas station.

This picture I took, putting his suitcase in the back of my truck.

He talked a real good horse game.

Really tried to put on a nice facade.

But when I asked him to halter a yearling, he put it on completely wrong.

Then I knew he knew absolutely nothing about horses,

and that was the moment that I told him he was never to ever touch my horses again.

From there on out, it was, "You're a wannabe, you're a joke."

He no longer could get this trainer, bull rider,

rodeo person over on us.

I found out he does not have bull-riding licenses, wasn't a rodeo champion.

He wasn't even a horse trainer.

He'd rip off pictures off the Internet

of actual trainers at competitions,

and he'd put them on his profile and say, "This is me."

You know, and he would either chop the head off

or blur the head, you know, the face.

And a lot of people just didn't know any better.

What's going on?

He was a user.

He was a liar.

Not a real cowboy.

He was fake.

Found a site on the Internet called Gunsel Busters.

All the people Rick had come in contact with

were talking about how he'd scammed numerous people

and how people didn't like him.

Unfortunately, Godfrey was just the living,

breathing epitome of a gunsel.

This was somebody that would try to wear a costume.

Act the part poorly.

He had multiple little clips on his belt

for all the cell phones that he carried.

He had himself his little Bowie knife.

You know, all the jewelry and, you know, flare

that he would attach to himself, you know,

to show that he was a military veteran, to show he was a cowboy.

Just somebody that shows up at the rodeo, and they've got their outfit on,

and they're gonna ride that bull,

and then at the last minute, "Oh, God. Headache."

But a gunsel gets in a lot of trouble.

They get themselves hurt. They get other cowboys and cowgirls hurt.

They hurt the stock.

Some people said, "I hope he's hurting."

They hope he's dead.

But they had no idea where he was.

We put out flyers with Rick's photographs

throughout the whole High Desert.

Search and Rescue did a great search

in the area where his last cell phone hit was.

We weren't able to, obviously, find anything.

The last person who saw Rick was Dale Brewster.

I thought, "Could Dale have something to do with it?"

We got a search warrant for Dale and Debbie's home

and took forensic people out there.

Dale took me into the garage.

We also looked inside the trailer

where Rick was staying on the property.

We weren't able to find anything.

Even though Dale had called 9-1-1,

I don't believe there was any evidence

he had anything to do with Rick going missing.

My next thought was-

"Could Laura Vasquez have something to do with Rick being missing?"

Laura Vasquez. She had such animosity towards Rick

for basically defrauding her.

And such anger.

She was going the extra mile to get her money back

and to settle the score.

Laura told me everything was great at first.

He would work with her horses,

train her horses, shoe her horses.

Eventually though he wanted to start a business with her,

and that's how he ended up talking her into

giving him some money to start the business.

Rick ended up

cheating Laura out of $25,000,

her entire life savings.

I got the opinion that she probably wished

something bad had happened to him.

Rick Godfrey was never gonna have a happy ending.

The devil doesn't show up as the devil,

he shows up, you know, in a cowboy costume.

There was a very long line of women that, uh, wanted to get vengeance.

The question that should be asked

is if any of those women did it.

There was a lot of people in this area

and surrounding areas that were not happy with Rick.

Rick is a drifter.

If he burns a bridge, instead of trying to rebuild or fix it,

he basically just packs his stuff up and he moves on.

This was basically a missing person with some unusual circumstances.

We didn't know exactly what happened to Rick.

I was at work when Trevor Thomson,

a dirt bike rider, called me.

Trevor said that he found a body out in the desert.

It was a very shallow grave,

and they'd put a couch on top of the body.

The, uh, legs were partially sticking out of the ground.

They were very decomposed.

I asked, Trevor, "Was there anything you noticed

on the body that would stand out?"

Trevor took some pictures and sent 'em to me.

That's when I saw a rodeo belt buckle.

When they found his body,

they called me to identify it.

I said, "Well, he has plenty of tattoos,

can't you just check his tattoos?"

And I think that's when it really hit me, like,

"Oh, my gosh,

this is somebody I cared about and, like, this is it."

Body was found in the grave site, face down.

He was completely decomposed.

Somebody was really doing this

to not just be hurtful,

but to really torture him.

Out of anger, out of spite, out of hate.

He had duct tape around his entire face and head.

And then he also had rope around his neck,

tying his hands behind his back,

such as being hog-tied.

Somebody meant to bury him alive.

And it's a horrible way to die.

I knew it was going to be a very difficult case,

you're just praying to God you have some suspect DNA.

There's a good possibility that we had DNA

from his fingers on the duct tape and, possibly, fingerprints.

There's a good chance that their skin cells are embedded in the knot of the rope.

But when we sent out those two items for forensic testing,

we learned very quickly that there was no forensic evidence.

Which really made the case so much harder for us.

In a lot of murders, you usually have a lot of evidence,

which means you don't need a solid confession,

you have DNA, you have video, you have witnesses,

you have the gun, you have the weapon,

in this we had none of that.

This was gonna be pulling a rabbit out of a, of a hat type of case.

I was heart broke for Allan

when, when they confirmed it was my son.

You know, so many emotions run through you.

You're just thinking about the little boy that you remember,

um, the times you had that were special.

And you think, you're job as a father is to protect,

you're first instinct is, "I just wanna...

...you know, get my vengeance."

Um...

And I just couldn't do that, you know.

I have six other children...

...but it hurts everyday.

Now the question was,

was he killed by one of the women that he had taken advantage of?

Or was he killed because he cheated,

he stole, and he lied about everything?

You had the scorned lovers...

...the women that were upset

and wanted their piece of flesh.

There was a, a contingent

of, of real horsemen, professionals,

getting together, so they could stop Allan Godfrey.

You had multiple people in the community

who were really upset with Rick.

There were comments like, "It's about time."

Or, you know, "Good riddance."

"Who doesn't want him dead?"

But there is no evidence against them.

They were upset, but they didn't have enough hatred

to tie him up, duct tape him...

...and throw him into a shallow grave alive.

They didn't have enough motive to kill him.

So we started getting closer and closer and closer to the people

who are around Rick in the last week before his death.

There was one individual

who is extremely angry with Rick

for basically defrauding her,

Laura Vasquez.

Rick Godfrey lived with Laura Vasquez for a short amount of time.

Kind of the same circumstances,

in a trailer, on her property.

But Laura Vasquez was just recently retired from her job,

and Rick frauded her out of quite a bit of her retirement money.

So Laura starts a small scale lawsuit against Rick.

So Rick does what Rick always does,

he collects his belongings and he moves on.

Laura Vasquez,

her situation was, she was ripped off,

and she wanted to at the very least

try to be made whole and get some of her stuff back,

but she wouldn't murder anybody.

The one thing about the truth is,

you just never change it,

it stays very consistent.

Laura Vasquez was very forthcoming

about how angry she was with Rick.

Ten months later, when I contact her,

she lays everything out the exact same way,

she tells the same details,

so Laura Vasquez,

uh, starting pulling herself out of that suspect pool for me.

So I went back to the person that last saw him alive,

that was Dale Brewster.

Rick and Dale did not get along,

because Rick was always flirting.

To make matters worse,

Dale had heard that Debbie may be sleeping with Rick.

I have no doubt in my mind

that, that he was coming on to her,

because he'd done the same thing to me at the beginning.

I believe that there's a high probability

that Debbie and Rick,

all the times that they were left alone,

probably crossed a line or two.

That is not something that

Dale Brewster would have taken lightly.

I think the thought alone,

that Debbie may be sleeping with Rick under his very own nose,

would have upset him enough

to get him into a horrendous fight.

That wasn't happening.

Why would I do that? Why would I be...

Why?

Rick and I had

just a friendship, and he knew that's all it was.

He was charming.

But not that I was interested in him

because I wasn't, you know, I--

It wasn't that kind of...

He was nice to be around, that's all.

He actually tried to kiss me one time,

and I was like, "Dude, like, what the heck?"

So, you know, basically

put him in his place then, so.

The only suspect with a strong enough motive

to kill Rick Godfrey was Dale Brewster.

He was the last person with Rick Godfrey

the day that he went missing.

Normally, the victim

who gets beat up worse would call in.

I mean, it just doesn't make sense to say,

"We had a horrible fight, and I got the upper hand in it."

Dale Brewster was our number one suspect.

Dale Brewster

bragged about the fact that he got in a fight with my son.

The man bragged about how, how rough he beat my son.

The man might was well just admit the fact that he killed my son.

The day that Rick Godfrey got placed in that grave,

Dale Brewster said he basically was at his house all day,

he didn't leave.

What the cellphone evidence showed us

is that Dale Brewster, on the Rick Godfrey went missing,

left his home around six o'clock in the evening.

He drove out to the middle of the desert.

We looked at cellphone records from months before,

and at no other time during that time period

had he ever driven out to this remote area of the desert.

And lo and behold,

Rick's body is found near the location that Brewster's phone

was pinging the day that Rick went missing.

So now it was extremely important

to interview Dale and Debbie,

the people that saw Rick Allan Godfrey last.

Unfortunately, they had packed up all of their belongings

and moved out to Arizona.

We're just having a good time,

we weren't on the run.

I told Dale, "How about you and I just go take a trip to the Grand Canyon?"

We didn't know that they were following us.

It seemed very suspicious

that they left town all of the sudden.

The team travel out to Arizona.

When we get there, Dale and Debbie were in a local motel.

I'm so excited.

We know what room he's in,

we have eyes on it...

...so let's go get this guy.

We have a murder suspect in this room.

Months and months and months of investigation.

And sure enough...

...Dale Brewster answers the door.

Neither one of 'em was shocked or dismayed.

They weren't like, "We had nothing to do with this.

Why are you guys still bothering us?"

He invoked immediately and said he did not wanna speak without an attorney.

I read Debbie her Miranda warning,

and she just started talking.

And, uh, I just said, "Do you recognize this rope?"

And she said, "That's one of the ropes I use for my ponies,

that's my rope."

And I said, "Well, this was the rope that was around Rick's neck and wrist...

...bounding his hand behind his back in that shallow grave,"

And she just had this look on her face, like, "Oh, shoot,

I said too much, 'cause I just said that that was my rope,

and it came from my residence."

And that's the residence that she shared with Dale.

She pretty much stopped talking at that point.

I'm feeling super good

that I get to call Allan Senior,

and I said, "I just arrested the man who murdered your son."

You know, I was elated.

I wanted to be able to just go down there

and smack him upside the head myself,

but, you know,

they promised me they were gonna make sure he paid for what he did.

Walking into the courtroom on the Brewster case

we knew that it's a circumstantial case.

That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a weak case.

When they see each piece of circumstantial evidence,

from Dale being the last person to see Rick alive,

that Dale admits that there was an altercation that occurred,

and ultimately Dale's phone record showing that he left

and headed out to the area where the body was found

at the time that Rick went missing.

Put that all together, and what you have is a clear-cut case,

Dale Brewster murdered Rick Godfrey.

The motive being that

Dale Brewster believes there's something inappropriate going on

between Rick Godfrey and his girlfriend.

I think, personally,

that Allan might have been

having an affair with his wife

or had some kind of a, uh,

affair with his wife while he was away.

That's what I think.

Why would you get all mad and beat somebody up because

some woman comes to see you and says,

"Oh, he stole a piece of jewelry"?

Why would you be concerned about it?

But you say,

the guy is screwing around with your wife,

now we have a personal issue.

You know?

So I really don't know,

but it seems more likely

that was the reason for that to happen.

I just remember closing my eyes

when they read the verdict.

And, basically, they said,

"As to first degree murder...

...Dale Brewster is found guilty."

I just remember thinking, "Oh, my gosh"

He's got a 50 year sentence with life.

He better never be able to get out.

You know?

His girlfriend was there, and she claims she didn't have any idea he was there.

She knows what he did.

And they're telling me they can't charge her with anything

'cause they have no evidence.

There was not enough to file on Debbie

through this entire case,

but I think she was a part of the cover-up.

I think that she was definitely afraid of Dale,

and she knew what Dale was capable of

because she knew that Dale murdered Rick.

There must have been a reason why I'd never asked questions.

'Cause maybe I didn't wanna know.

Maybe I didn't want to

see what was right in front of my face.

Rick Godfrey

was never gonna have a happy ending,

and that was by his own design.

He barked up the wrong tree finally,

and got what was coming.

He took advantage of the wrong person,

and got himself killed.

It was the, the most odd, surreal thing ever.

Maybe I'm just numb to it,

I wasn't emotional about it.

I just didn't feel much.

Just surreal, I guess.

And it was just very sad.

To this day, I still haven't

done any real grieving over it.

Hurts everyday.