Original subtitles

[sirens wailing]

- The medical examiner--

it was something that he's never, ever seen before.

- Tonight on "The First 48: Critical Minutes..."

- Maybe they're trying to cover up DNA.

- We revisit three cases where forensic evidence

was the break detectives needed...

- Whoever's doing that is a sick dude.

- A woman found murdered in a dumpster.

- If you look...

- And the DNA doesn't lie.

- There's going to be DNA

that's going to link him to this.

- Then-- - Look.

See this footprint right here?

- Detectives debunk the suspect's story

with a footprint at the crime scene.

- And fingerprints are the old-school method

used to track down a killer.

- His prints were on the Gatorade bottle.

- Are you [bleep] me?

- No, I just got the results back just now.

All right. Let's get him.

[doors slamming]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- A good crime scene technician is worth

his weight in gold.

When you go to trial, you only have one shot to get it right.

So detectives and prosecutors want to feel very,

very confident having a lot of strong forensics

to present to a jury.

A witness can change his story.

A witness can disappear.

Witnesses die before trial sometimes.

But the forensics never change.

♪ ♪

[radio chatter]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Flip-flops.

A shirt.

♪ ♪

- Did she have any clothes on?

♪ ♪

- She's in there.

♪ ♪

- Oh.

That's pretty bad.

She's face down.

She's dark-headed.

Nude for what we can see.

- No.

- What do you think, Jason?

- It could be a sexual assault kind of situation.

I-- I don't know.

But I was thinking about that guy that

raped that homeless lady a mile from here

two weeks ago.

Assaulted her.

- Hopefully, if there is some sort of sexual assault,

we will get some sort of, uh, DNA evidence.

Hopefully she's got something on her hands, and--

and-- and on her body, that-- if that is the case.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- All right. So this house right here--

- Yeah.

- Across the street...

- A bunch of homeless hang out there.

- Yeah.

- Oh, look. Some hospital papers.

♪ ♪

[camera shutter clicks]

[radio chatter]

- Yeah, Amy Robertson.

Here we go.

♪ ♪

- 43-year-old Amy Robertson was born and raised in Tulsa.

She had been living on the street for the past few years.

♪ ♪

- [sighs]

- Dianna. - Yeah?

- Monkey and Amy are an item.

They fight a lot. They were fighting yesterday.

♪ ♪

- We're looking for Monkey.

- Patrol runs the name found on the prescription slip.

♪ ♪

- Gumercindo Jurado.

Sounds like the guy that they were describing.

- You got a picture?

The homeless people know Monkey.

They're more than happy to help.

- OK. Is this Monkey?

- Sergeant Walker shares the lead with the press.

- The more people we have looking, the better.

♪ ♪

- Then--

- A patrol officer recognizes Gumercindo.

♪ ♪

[sirens wailing]

♪ ♪

- Sure enough. He's in custody.

[radio chatter]

♪ ♪

- Back at Homicide...

- And then on this leg right here,

we swabbed those contusions hoping for some DNA.

♪ ♪

- How was she killed?

- Uh, probably strangulation was the ultimate method.

♪ ♪

It seems like there's a whole lot of--

whole lot of anger in that, Dave.

♪ ♪

Strangulation is very personal.

♪ ♪

- Are you and Amy hooked up?

- Yeah. Well, I gave her-- - Boyfriend, girlfriend?

- Yes. I give her a ring yesterday morning.

- How'd that go?

- Well, she-- I went to work, and she-- she was-- she's--

she was waiting for me over there at the Shell station.

- He claims he last saw Amy yesterday

after he got off work.

♪ ♪

- And, uh--

- What time was that, do you think?

- Did you spend the night there last night?

- Yes, I did. By myself.

I drank, uh, two beers, and I went to sleep.

- Did you get any phone calls overnight?

- No. - Hmm.

- I didn't hear the phone ringing.

- You don't mind if I look at your phone?

- No. You go ahead.

- Let me ask you this.

Because we're here to help Amy, right?

And you're here to help Amy, too.

- Yes, yes, yes, I-- - OK.

For me to go all in with you, I got to ask you this.

Did you hurt her today? - No, man.

- Do you hurt her yesterday? - No.

I never hurt her.

- Do you ever hit her at all, ever?

- No, no.

I wouldn't-- I wouldn't do anything to Amy-- to Amy.

She loves me, man.

And I tell you one thing, I love her back.

I want to get justice, trust me.

♪ ♪

- I might get some DNA from you real quick.

♪ ♪

- The suspect gave consent to examine his phone,

so we're just going through it.

♪ ♪

- And one of the things he tells us is that he hadn't

seen the victim since, I want to say, 5:00 or 6:00

in the evening yesterday.

Well, he's got pictures of her on his phone

after dark on the parking lot out there.

♪ ♪

[door opens]

So when you left the Shell yesterday evening,

what time did you leave?

- Before dark. - Before dark?

- Mm-hmm.

- You remember this?

- Nope. I don't see-- I didn't see none of that.

None.

- You took these pictures with your phone last night

after 9:00 at the Shell station.

- That's Amy. - That's Amy.

It's time to come off the bull crap and tell the truth.

If she left at 6:00, how are you taking pictures

of her at 9:00?

- I don't remember doing that.

♪ ♪

- If you don't remember doing that,

what else don't you remember?

- I don't know.

But I got to tell you, I didn't do that.

♪ ♪

- [groans]

- Do you think there's going to be DNA that's

going to link him to this?

- I think so.

How long is it going to take us to get there, though?

It's going to take a while.

- Well, he has a misdemeanor warrant

for public intoxication.

There's enough discrepancy that we

can't get him for murder.

- We need to keep an open mind.

Because if it's not this guy, then who is it?

♪ ♪

- I got a call from the medical examiner.

Death is going to be strangulation.

A lot of contusions and--

and fractures here.

He said it looked like a rape.

But post-mortem, she was packed with organic matter

in both cavities.

- When you say packed with organic matter--

- Dirt, mulch, debris.

- Meaning somebody put it in her?

- Purposely put it in there.

- Whoever's doing that is a sick dude.

- But here-- here's the thing.

Why are they doing it?

Are they doing it to-- thinking they're going

to cover up what they did?

- The medical examiner--

it was something that he's never, ever seen before.

His theory was, yeah, maybe they're

trying to cover up DNA, maybe they're

trying to kind of hide things.

♪ ♪

- 33 hours in...

- Here's Jill.

- Have a seat.

- The team meets with Sergeant Jillian Phippen

of the Special Victims Unit.

- I've got some video from a rape case

that we've been working.

It occurred about two weeks ago

less than a mile from your murder.

This is our suspect in the silver Lincoln.

So he's here with his lights off.

♪ ♪

This is the victim.

He's watching her.

So he's going to shoot across the street here.

- Was she a homeless, like, street-person type?

- She is.

And this is where he forces sex.

♪ ♪

And then he drags her off to another location.

♪ ♪

This could be a good suspect for you guys.

- We have oral swabs of hers.

And that's what we're waiting for

to see if there's actual profile.

- I think the best thing we probably

have to go on right now.

Let's get a rush on the DNA and see if there's

a connection between the two.

♪ ♪

[phone rings]

- Hey, what's up?

- Three weeks since the murder...

- I tested swabs from the contusions,

the ligature, and I have an unknown male.

And it's none of the people that you provided samples of.

- The suspect DNA recovered from Amy

does not match her boyfriend or the unidentified rapist

from the video.

- OK. Well, maybe CODIS will pop a name out for us.

- Hopefully.

- It's somebody completely--

- Unknown to us right now.

- At the moment.

There's enough of a sample that they can enter

that into CODIS, and we'll see if there's

a-- if there's a hit.

♪ ♪

All of these individuals, they get swabbed,

they go into prison.

The DNA gets fed into the database.

It's one of those things that we'll

just have to wait and see.

Could be a month, could be a few months.

But I'm optimistic.

I'm excited to meet the devil that did this.

♪ ♪

- Sometimes it can take a long time

for DNA evidence to come back,

and it's excruciating.

And it's a horrible feeling to know

that the person that's responsible for this

is still walking around.

And it's horrible for the family,

and they put a lot of pressure on law enforcement.

"Why are you not doing anything?"

But I can tell you from my experience

that it is the most rewarding thing when it--

when it does finally come back.

♪ ♪

[clock ticking]

- One year after Amy's murder..

- We got a message from the lab.

Liz Egan of the Special Victims Unit called me,

and she said that they had a guy that they

had arrested for a rape.

He was convicted of first-degree rape

on that particular case, and they got his DNA.

She thought that he might be a good match

for the Amy Robertson case.

So I went ahead and took the DNA

that they collected from him on that particular case

and had it compared to our case.

And it turns out it's a match.

Got DNA on both of her legs and the ligature

that's around her neck.

[radio chatter]

- What's his name?

- Dennis.

Dennis Kurtz.

- Oh my god. This is so great.

♪ ♪

- We're headed to the prison to talk to Dennis Kurtz.

Hopefully he's going to tell us the truth,

some sort of an explanation why his DNA is on Amy.

A lot is riding on this.

♪ ♪

All right.

♪ ♪

- You ever had sex with her?

- Well, this girl had been murdered.

- [gasps]

- Yeah.

And your DNA is all over her.

There is no way.

- Your DNA, man, is definitive.

- OK.

- There's nobody else on the planet.

- I understand what DNA is.

- So why would it be on her if you didn't kill her?

- There's not an explanation.

I don't have an explanation for you.

- The suspect could sit there and say all day long

that I'm not the person, I'm not the person,

I'm not the person.

Going to be pretty difficult for him to explain why

his DNA was recovered, especially from inside

of a victim's body.

When you had no witness account, no video,

nothing else to rely on,

when you get a hit, it's one of the most

rewarding things for a homicide investigator to get.

♪ ♪

- Before I file charges against him,

I'd like to go speak with his wife

and see if maybe he confided in her,

or if she has any information.

Hopefully she's going to want to join team Tulsa.

♪ ♪

- The next day...

- I appreciate you meeting with me, first of all.

- Not a problem.

- I work in the Homicide unit, and I'm working a case that

happened in April of 2017.

- I believe he was going downtown

for a job of some sort.

He had a dress shirt on.

♪ ♪

Later on, I met him, and he had a different shirt on.

♪ ♪

And he said, "I had to get a different shirt.

"Because, you know, the other one had blood on it,

and it wasn't my blood."

- OK.

♪ ♪

This case that I'm working happened here in Tulsa.

- Is it a female?

- It is.

It is.

And his DNA is all over her.

- Oh.

- She was a, uh, mother and grandmother,

and she was dumped in a dumpster.

♪ ♪

- [sobbing]

♪ ♪

- It's a lot of vital information

that definitely brings a much clearer

picture as to what he had been up to in the month of April.

When you take that in addition to the DNA evidence there,

it's really telling the story.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Don't know who he is, so we're going to go find out.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- He's pretty well-dressed,

He's very clean-cut.

♪ ♪

Our wallet's missing?

- It's gone, huh?

- No IDs or anything.

Married. Got a ring on.

♪ ♪

So somebody's missing him.

♪ ♪

- The victim is a Hispanic male in his early 30s.

♪ ♪

- Payday on Friday, been working all week.

Big old bundle of money.

He's just a target.

So I think he was robbed.

- He's probably been out here all night.

- The medical examiner determines

that the victim was killed by a gunshot

to the back of the head.

- Oh, but look.

See this footprint right here?

- Alanis notices a faint mark on the victim's back.

- It's not real distinct, but it's something there.

- [exhales]

- 9, 10.

- The print appears to be from a size 10 shoe or boot

with a distinct heel.

♪ ♪

- We'll try to see if we can cut it out

so we can preserve it.

♪ ♪

- Good job, Joe.

♪ ♪

- You can see some pattern.

Right now, it's about all we have.

♪ ♪

- The next morning...

[phone rings]

- Homicide, Alanis.

You got him identified?

Excellent.

- Alanis gets some good news.

- The medical examiners was able

to compare the fingerprints,

and they identified him as Jose Ojeda.

- 31-year-old Jose Ojeda worked as a bartender.

He was married and the father of three young children

with a fourth on the way.

♪ ♪

- We're heading to speak with his wife, Rosa.

The fact that you have to go and tell somebody

that their loved one's dead--

the emotion.

This is the worst part of the whole investigative process.

♪ ♪

[knocking]

♪ ♪

- Hey, Sean. I need you to run this number for me.

- Alanis calls headquarters hoping

to put a name to the number Jose called

repeatedly the night before.

- Comes back to who?

♪ ♪

All right, man. Thanks.

Sean says comes back to a Frances Salinas.

♪ ♪

- The phone number is linked to a woman's name.

♪ ♪

- The person the victim called last

canceled this prepaid phone the day after the murder.

♪ ♪

We have to subpoena the phone records.

And that usually takes time.

♪ ♪

- In an unexpected turn,

Jose's brother shows up at Homicide.

- The victim's brother, he wanted to meet me

without the rest of the family knowing.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- So he's got that secret life we talk about.

But you know, if you think about this--

the lover is going to kill him, but he robs him?

♪ ♪

- We believe that the last person Jose called

is probably going to be our suspect.

Right now, all I have is our suspect's phone number,

and I'm waiting on the phone records to come in.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Zapata says that on the night of the murder,

he made a date with the victim to meet at a gas station.

- He claims he got into Jose's car

and was surprised when another man got in at the same time.

- Zapata says he grabbed the other man's gun

and turned toward Jose.

♪ ♪

- He says he shot at the men in self-defense.

- OK.

And--

♪ ♪

- Alanis tells Zapata that Jose was not shot by accident

but was executed.

♪ ♪

- Zapata changes his story.

- He says that he and Hernandez are roommates.

♪ ♪

- He was lying, and we're going to get to the bottom of it.

- Juan says that his buddy shot the victim.

Right now, we're going to go find, uh, our second suspect

and see what he has to say.

- As a homicide investigator, when you get a case like this

and the person tries to give a self-serving statement,

it's always been my strategy just to get him

to put himself on the scene.

"I was trying to defend myself."

He's admitting to being on the scene.

Now the only thing you have to work on

is debunking his story about a self-defense case.

A person's been shot in the back of the head,

and there's a footprint in his back--

it basically tells you that he was not a threat.

So it-- it pretty much blows up his self-defense case.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Hernandez says he waited in the car,

and Zapata led the victim into the field.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- OK.

♪ ♪

They both already had planned to rob him and kill him.

- He told you that he knew that they were going to go do that.

- Yeah. - He's done.

♪ ♪

[line trilling]

♪ ♪

- Right now, uh, all we've got is that it sounds

like a home invasion, and an elderly male

has been shot and killed.

♪ ♪

- Hey, Kev.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- 80-year-old Jim Rosenlieb was born

in West Virginia and had a long career

in the oil supply business.

During retirement, he was an active volunteer

with Habitat for Humanity.

Jim leaves behind his wife, two sons,

and several grandchildren.

[camera shutter clicks]

[camera shutter clicking]

- A window has been smashed out in the guest room

down the hall from where Jim's body was found.

[camera shutter clicking]

- A blood trail leads from the closet in the guest room--

[camera shutter clicking]

--to where Jim collapsed.

- Nearby, the team finds a Gatorade bottle.

- All right.

Let's get that dusted for prints too.

- When you're processing a homicide scene,

obviously you can't test everything.

You can't fingerprint everything.

You can't get DNA testing on everything.

So you look for the things that don't fit.

You look for the things that just

simply does not make sense.

And in this particular scene, you look and say,

"OK, why would a Gatorade bottle

"be in the middle of a yard

when there's no other trash there?"

And it kind of stands out to you.

♪ ♪

- To me, it looks like a burglary.

- Maybe he-- he gets in the window, OK?

Hears the victim getting up, hides in the closet

real quick.

Old man's investigating, probably with his flashlight.

It's probably his.

Sees him.

Probably said, "Get out of here, get out of here."

Suspect freaks out.

Boom.

So that's probably what happened.

♪ ♪

[camera shutter clicks]

♪ ♪

- Hey, Justin.

I need you to check out this tree-trimming service.

[radio beeps]

[line trilling]

- Hey, ma'am.

My name's, uh, Justin Ritter.

I'm a detective with the Tulsa Police Department.

♪ ♪

- I have to ask, though, where were you

this morning at, like, 4:00?

♪ ♪

- That day, they used Rick.

- What was your feel about him?

- Does he ever answer?

- OK.

I appreciate it. - All right.

♪ ♪

- What do you have for us, Joe?

- Corporal Joe Campbell

has news from the medical examiner.

- And he had four bullets in him.

They said there was some red plastic stuff on the tip.

♪ ♪

- Here we go.

We've never seen one of these rounds

in one of these murders that I can remember.

It helps with aerodynamics, and it's a really

high-end self-defense round.

So it probably does a lot of damage.

And it's to kill people.

♪ ♪

I'm going to submit everything that I've got,

check the phone.

We got so many things going on.

It's just crazy.

But we don't have that person that we're looking for yet.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Ricky the tree trimmer.

On it the whole time, buddy. That's crazy.

- Ricky the tree trimmer. - [laughs]

♪ ♪

- Rick Davison.

- Ricky Davison is 20 years old.

- All right. Let's get him.

♪ ♪

- All right. Let's go.

♪ ♪

[sirens wailing]

♪ ♪

[radio chatter]

♪ ♪

[door opens]

- Hey. - How you doing?

- I'm all right, Rick.

I'll make this kind of easy for you.

Did you work at a tree-trimming company?

- Yes. Yes.

- OK.

What was the last place you worked at

with that tree-trimming company?

Do you remember the house?

- No, sir. No, sir.

- The people that lived there, they made you guys BLTs.

- You remember that? Because that never happens.

Nobody just comes out and makes sandwiches for the workers.

- And I ate them. I ate them.

- Let's go back.

So a week before Sunday night, where were you?

♪ ♪

- Right up the street at a female's place.

That's it. - What's her name?

- [exhales]

This is starting to get weird and uncomfortable.

- It does when you lie.

- I'm not lying, though.

- Listen to me.

I want you to just listen to me.

Well, it has something to do with you, because you

shot and killed the man.

- You've told people.

- Told what?

- That you killed the old man.

- I've never even hurt anyone in my life.

- Rick, you could spend the rest of your life in prison.

- That's the thing.

I never burglarized anyone.

And you're-- you're not trying to believe me.

- No, I'm not, 'cause we have evidence.

- Because you're full of [bleep].

- I'm not trying to believe you.

I think you're completely full of [bleep].

♪ ♪

- And I haven't even begun to even

get into a whole-- whole motherlode

of other forensic evidence.

- I've been waiting for that. - No, but wait.

I haven't even gotten into--

- I don't want to smile or nothing.

- No, I want you to-- no, listen.

I don't mind if you do smile, because a jury

is going to see that.

- We forgot something very important, too.

The round that was taken out of him was a .32-caliber

with red-tip ammunition.

Guess what we found in your stuff?

A .32-caliber with red-tip ammunition.

Now, listen.

That gun-- that's the same gun that

was used to kill that man.

And that old lady who was married

to this guy for over 50 years has

a right to have some closure to what happened to him.

♪ ♪

- I've never tried to kill anyone.

I never will.

- Last chance, because we're going to walk out.

And when we walk out, you don't have

another opportunity to tell your side of the story.

♪ ♪

- You're not going home, bro.

- Ricky Davison is booked for murder.

♪ ♪

The next day...

- His prints were on the Gatorade bottle.

- They were? - Are you kidding me?

- No.

- Shut up.

- No, I just got the results back just now.

- The one from the scene?

- Yeah.

I went and got a search warrant for his phone that he had

in his-- on his possession at the time when we arrested him,

and Nathan's going through this.

See anything good?

- On the day of the murder, he tells one person on his phone,

"Did someone that lived by you die?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I caught a body."

- Wow.

- That's huge.

♪ ♪

- You have some suspects that hold on to their lie.

They feel like regardless of what you present to me,

they still sit there and go, "I wasn't there.

It wasn't me."

But we're still going to end up in the courtroom.

And you're going to have to explain to 12 jurors,

and you're going to have to insult their intelligence to

how all this other evidence can point to you,

and you're saying that you wasn't there.

To have somebody deny their existence somewhere

and to have some evidence that could put them on the scene,

that is a very gratifying feeling for an investigator.

♪ ♪