Original subtitles

[narrator] This week on Crimefeed...

Kouri Richins, her husband died drinking a Moscow Mule.

She wrote a book about grief.

Now she's suspected of murder, and her behavior

gets more bizarre.

And the disturbing case of Sergio Brown,

the former NFL player found partying in Mexico

while his mom's body was found in the woods near their house.

This isCrimefeed with Nancy Grace,

investigative journalist Mara S. Campo,

and private investigator Derrick Levasseur.

Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crimefeed, and I want to thank you for being with us.

The picture-perfect family, a successful, glamorous mom

and a dad who built his own business empire,

three beautiful little boys, and a McMansion to boot.

But now the dad is dead, dead of an over-the-top

fentanyl overdose and mommy accused of murder.

Mara, what?

Yeah, Nancy, a year after the death of a loving husband

and father of three children, authorities in Utah uncover

what they believe is actually a twisted murder plot

full of lies and deception, and the motive could be money.

Here's the story.

[Nancy] On March 4th, 2022, darkness descended on

the radiant town of Kamas, Utah, when 39-year-old family man

and wealthy business owner Eric Richins

was found dead at the foot of his bed.

Eric's wife, 33-year-old real estate agent Kouri Richins,

told authorities she made Eric a Moscow Mule,

vodka, and ginger beer before falling asleep

in one of her children's rooms.

When she woke up and went to her bedroom,

her husband was cold to the touch.

Eric's sudden death became even more shocking

when his autopsy revealed something suspicious.

The medical examiner determined he died of

an overdose after finding five times the lethal dosage

of fentanyl in his system.

For Eric's friends and family, it didn't make any sense.

As far as they knew, he never used drugs.

Kouri said she was shattered.

She was left to pick up the pieces for her three young boys.

That included writing a children's book about coping

with grief on the one-year anniversary of Eric's death.

She even promoted the book on a TV show

calledGood Things Utah.

I just wanted some story to read to my kids

at night, and I just could not find anything.

I couldn't find anything that really, you know, suited them

or helped them find comfort and peace.

And so I was like, let's just write one.

The book was even dedicated to, quote, "My amazing husband

and a wonderful father."

But while Kouri was becoming a national celebrity,

she was also gaining the attention of authorities.

They suspected Kouri may not have been the poor,

grieving widow she wanted to portray.

Summit County Sheriff's investigators found evidence

that pointed to Kouri.

They discovered that Kouri purchased fentanyl

from an acquaintance just days before Eric's death.

Detectives now believe that Kouri Richins poisoned her husband

by spiking his Moscow Mule with the drug

on the night he died.

But why?

After looking into her background,

police discovered Kouri's real estate business

was in trouble, nearly $2 million in debt.

And before Eric's death, they found that she took

hundreds of thousands of dollars from his bank accounts,

plus nearly $2 million in life insurance policies

on her husband,

without his knowledge.

And all the pieces came together when detectives

learned about Kouri's prenuptial agreement,

barring her from claiming Eric's multi-million dollar business,

except in the event of his death.

She was arrested on May 8th, 2023

for the murder of her husband.

Now Eric's loved ones are waiting with bated breath to see

if a judge throws the book at the infamous author.

Kouri's next court appearance is scheduled

for November 3rd, 2023. Nancy.

Wow. Okay.

That was an earful more than I wanted to hear.

You know, you mentioned, Mara, could the motive be money?

Well, yeah.

$2 million worth of life insurance policies.

Four life insurance policies

that she, Kouri Richins, took out on her husband.

-Yeah. -Now, let me tell you something.

If my husband, David Lynch runs off behind

my back and gets $2 million worth of life insurance on me,

I'm calling a PI.

Yeah, no, there's a lot there to really dive into.

We have obviously the incidents

leading up to the whole, the murder itself,

thinking back to both the trip in Greece, where that was

the first attempt to kill Eric,

where Eric actually calls his sister and says,

I think Kouri just tried to kill me.

Then you fast forward to Valentine's day where you have

Kouri reaching out for some, some narcotics

before the incident.

He, Eric, takes a bite of his sandwich.

[Nancy] Did you just say reaching out for narcotics?

-[Derrick] Yeah. -You mean trying to score a buy?

Trying to get a hit?

-Yeah. -Okay.

Reaching out for narcotics kind of sounds like

you're going to the doctor to get your heart medication refilled.

Well, she was, hydrocodone was the first thing

she went out for.

That didn't work, so then she upgraded to fentanyl, right?

And then you have Eric who takes a bite of a sandwich,

just one bite.

And he has this reaction where he has hives,

and then he can't breathe.

And fortunately, he was able to get

to his son's EpiPen, which saved him.

But then again, he calls his business partner

and says, listen, I think Kouri just tried to kill me.

-Those exact words, Derrick. You're right. -Yeah, I don't--

Hey, and he was kind of laughing about it.

He said, "Hey, [chuckles] I think she's trying to kill me, man,

for the money."

-Yeah. -But truer words were never spoken, Mara.

so much so that he then changed his will

so that everything was put in trust.

So the prenuptial agreement that they had said that

she would get some of his assets if he died before her.

And that's what she believed all the way up until his death.

But what he had done is, in late 2020,

because he didn't trust her, he created a trust,

he moved all of his assets to the trust,

and he made his sister, the personal representative,

in control of that trust.

Kouri did not learn that,

allegedly, until after Eric's death.

She was trying to drill into a safe

because he had about $165,000 in cash in the safe,

and she was told, you can't do that.

And her sister-in-law said, because I'm in control of the estate.

And then, reportedly, Kouri punched her sister-in-law

when she learned that news.

That's right, guys. And to top it all off,

Kouri Richins, the so-called Moscow Mule Mom,

because, you know, Moscow Mules are made

with ginger beer, which is very tangy to hide

the taste of fentanyl.

She then goes on to write a grief book for her children.

She's got three little boys to help them deal with

losing their father that cops say she killed.

I want you to take a listen to Kouri Richins

talking about her "Grief book."

So my husband passed away unexpectedly last year.

So it's March 4th was a one-year anniversary

for us and he was 39. It completely...

took us all by shock.

We have three little boys, 10, nine, and six and, um...

You know, we kind of... My kids and I kind of wrote this book

on the different emotions and [sighs] grieving processes

that we've experienced last year and, you know, hoping that

it can kind of help other kids,

you know, deal with this and kind of, you know,

find happiness some way or another.

Some way or another.

Well, she says she wrote the book with her

three little children, but her Google searches reveal,

"How do I hire somebody to write a book for me?"

Ouch.

Yeah, well, there's other Google searches that I find

incredibly compelling in this case.

So on the evening of Eric's death, she told police

that she didn't touch her phone.

-Right. -But they later found that there was activity

on her phone, including internet searches.

And here is some of what she allegedly searched that night.

"Can cops force you to take a lie detector test?

Will life insurance pay if the death certificate says pending?

If someone is poisoned, what does it go down

on the death certificate as?"

And, my favorite, what is considered

a lethal dose of fentanyl?

One more thing about the phone, because that's incriminating,

obviously.

But also, think about what she said that night.

She gives him the Moscow Mule.

She says she goes to bed with her son,

who is having nightmares.

And she says she leaves her phone on the charge the entire time.

However, the phone tells a different story.

You have multiple times where the phone was locked

and unlocked while she allegedly was sleeping.

And then you also have her doing actual messages

between someone who were later deleted.

And then finally, they have movement with the phone itself.

So clearly, what she was saying did not happen.

I think cops are really going to weigh in on that.

She's getting caught in a lot of lies.

Eric Richen's family has lived through H-E-L-L.

Did they believe Eric was murdered?

When we come back.

[music playing]

A mom of three, Kouri Richins, accused of spiking her husband's

Moscow Mule cocktail

with a deadly fentanyl overdose.

And then she goes on to write a children's book

about grief for their three little boys.

And now in a new twist,

jailers say she writes a script for her family,

directing them to lie about the murder.

So how does Eric Richins' family feel about that?

With us right now.

High-profile lawyer Greg Skordas, the family spokesperson.

Greg, it's so great to see you again.

It's nice to be with you again.

You're representing Eric Richins' family.

And what's amazing to me, Greg, is this, I believe,

is not the first time she's tried to poison him.

And that family, the Richins' family,

must have smelled trouble way back when,

when they talked Eric into signing a prenup,

getting her to sign a prenup.

What's the latest with this script that jailers

find in her cell telling them to say Eric was a drug addict

and he would go to Mexico and get drugs?

She's the one scoring the drugs from a housekeeper.

The housekeeper's already admitted.

Yeah, it's the walk the dog letter, and the jailers found

that during a routine search of her cell.

They found a letter folded up in a book

that basically is a letter to her mother

purporting to give her brother information

about what to say, and she sort of even says,

you know, you need to spoon-feed it to the kid

because maybe he's not the brightest,

-but... -Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.

-Yes. -What?

The "script" says you need to spoon feed him this?

Yeah, she says sort of make it short make it easy

-Don't, don't use a lot of big words. Right. -Dummy down.

And so, and that, that Eric was a drug user.

That he traveled to Mexico periodically to get

his fentanyl, all of which is completely untrue,

not corroborated by anything. But, she says,

you need to give this to my brother.

You need to tell him when he goes to court that

what he needs to say is A, B, C, and D

which would establish if true that Eric was in fact,

a drug user when in fact, it's just not.

I mean, this... the county's actually looking at it

-as witness tampering. -Oh, yeah.

[Nancy] You're darn right.

So she doesn't want to just kill him according to police.

She wants to drag his reputation through the mud

I mean, what's worse than that?

According to police, she kills him,

murders him for money, pecuniary interest

and then tries to paint him as a dope addict.

Well, part and part of what she writes in that letter

is coaching on what they should say during interviews

and she says during an interview with Good Morning America,

make sure you tell them that he bragged about being a drug user.

And is that the kind of thing, if your beloved husband

had died of an accidental overdose,

you would want people to think?

Can you give us some insight on what kind of person Kouri is

as a person, as someone who has a personal knowledge

of her?

I guess from just having practiced law for 41 years,

I would call her a sociopath.

I mean, a person really devoid of a conscience,

devoid of a-- I mean, there's nothing there.

When you look at her, when you see her in court,

when you watch her body language, there is nothing.

And just like you talked about, the writing of a book.

That is trying to make it seem as though

your husband was a sympathetic person,

that he's up in heaven sort of coming

and reaching out toward the children.

It's just such hypocrisy, given everything

we now know about the homicide.

But it just, it never surprises me.

I mean, I've practiced law long enough

to see that every case has its own nuances,

and this one just, and it continues to take turn

after turn after turn.

Can you tell us about the party?

I love that part.

-Yeah. -That would be state's exhibit number one.

Please tell us, Greg.

Yeah, so right after, I mean, she was ready to close

on a house about the time Eric died.

That he disagreed with flipping that house.

That he didn't want her to buy the $2 million

so-called mansion in neighboring Wasatch County.

So she still celebrated, notwithstanding her husband

has just died, the purchase of the part of the house,

and the house that she was going to flip.

Of course, she was well upside down with hard money lenders

and with others in that house.

She was never going to make the money that

she was bragging that she was going to make.

And in fact, it got to the point where she got in

a fight with one of Eric's sisters

and was charged criminally with assault

because she allegedly punched the sister.

-Which sister was that, Greg? -It was Katie.

As a matter of fact, let's take a listen

to the dad, Eric, sister Amy.

Dear Judge Mrazik, I'm here today to represent

my brother, Eric Eugene Richins,

His life was taken in a senseless act

of poisoning on March 3rd, 2022.

His wife, the defendant, has been accused of

committing this crime.

If she is found guilty, she has committed

the ultimate act of betrayal.

Eric is gone and I am brokenhearted.

He was my best friend and protector.

The feeling of loss is so great, it is visceral.

And with the sorrow comes wave of panic

and not being able to see him again.

I can never talk to him, never hug him again,

and never more be a part of his life.

With me, high-profile lawyer Greg Skordas,

who is representing Eric's family, the Richen family.

I think the whole thing is bass-ackwards,

and maybe I'm projecting, Greg.

But after my fiance was murdered shortly

before our wedding, the last thing I had

on my mind is throwing a boozed-up party

over flipping a house and making money.

Money?

What's money when the one you love the most is gone?

Or hiring a locksmith to come and drill his safe

while people are still there mourning.

I mean, that's really what precipitated the conflict,

is she's got some guy out there drilling a hole

in his safe because, as you mentioned

earlier, there was a lot of cash in there.

I mean, she was not holding back at all, trying to access

as many of his assets as possible as soon as he died.

[Derrick] Greg, I think a lot of people, when they hear this story,

are going to ask why. Why did Eric stay?

I mean, as a detective, we're looking for means,

motive, opportunity, and very rarely do you have a victim who's aware,

before their death, of the means

and the motive behind it.

I know there are kids involved,

but do you have any insight as to why Eric chose to stay

under the same roof with Kouri?

You just said the reason, Derrick. Three reasons.

-Yes. -Those three boys.

And he was a father above everything else.

And he would have done anything he could

to keep that family together. And it's part of the culture there.

It's part of the way people live in that

particular community.

But he wanted to stay with those children

and raise those in a family.

Now, he was certainly looking in terms of protecting his assets

and maybe even had consulted a divorce lawyer.

But he was not going to do anything that would

jeopardize the health or safety of those boys.

[Nancy] You know, we've got more of Amy.

Let's take a listen one more time to Eric's sister.

His own family seem to be the only ones standing up for him.

He has no voice of his own now.

He's been murdered. Listen.

Not only did she betray our brother,

it feels as though she has murdered

and taken away a part of our souls as well.

Because of our actions, there has not been a day

that has gone by we have not lived

with paralyzing anxiety and fear,

worrying for the boys' lives as well as our own.

I may be naive, but I never knew evil like this existed.

The twists and turns in the case,

her writing the book, her going on TV,

drilling into his safe while literally the mourners are

in the home mourning, throwing the party.

It's almost laughable.

But I think you get lost in the fact that Eric is gone.

These boys are going to be raised without a father

and possibly without a mother.

Right, and you know, at the time, and even today,

when a person dies of a fentanyl overdose,

it just seems that law enforcement

sometimes takes it for granted.

And I think that was her miscalculation.

They assumed, oh, another one is dying of a drug overdose.

They're not going to do an investigation.

And so she was quick to do all the things

you're just talking about,

not realizing that law enforcement,

and especially the Richins family, was not going to give up

on this case and were going to make sure that

somebody found out exactly what happened here.

They're not the only ones.

We're not giving up on it either,

and neither are you, Greg Skordas.

Greg Skordas, you're awesome.

Thank you for being with us.

Guys, when we come back, Sergio Brown, a former NFL star,

faked parties in Mexico while his mother's body

is found outdoors

wrapped in a sheet near the family home.

Stay with us.

[music playing]

Welcome back to Crimefeed,and now to NFL star Sergio Brown

in Mexico, living it up while his mom is found dead.

Her neck snapped?

Mara, what happened to Miss Myrtle?

Well, Nancy, we're talking, of course, about Sergio Brown,

the 35-year-old former NFL safety who had played

for major teams like the New England Patriots,

the Indianapolis Colts, and the Buffalo Bills.

His disappearance, along with his mother last month,

prompted a major search for the pair.

Let's take a look at what authorities have found

in this case so far.

Sergio Brown and his 73-year-old mother

Myrtle Simmons Brown were seen on the night of

September 14th by a neighbor near the house

they shared together in Maywood, Illinois.

It was the last time Myrtle would be seen alive.

She and Sergio were reported missing

two days later on the 16th.

But later that same day, Maywood police recovered

the body of Myrtle Simmons Brown

from a creek near their home.

A medical examiner determining her death was caused by

multiple injuries from an assault.

Sergio, however, was still missing

until two days later when he posted a bizarre video

of himself in Mexico addressing his mother's disappearance,

saying he believed she was simply on vacation

and claiming the FBI had tried to kidnap him.

[speaking]

[bleep]

Then, two weeks later, despite the recent discovery

of his mother's body, Brown was spotted partying

in Tulum, seemingly without a care.

Finally, all of his partying came to an end

earlier this month when Illinois investigators

issued an arrest warrant for Brown for

the first-degree murder of his mother.

Mexican officials intercepted Brown on a flight

he was trying to take to Colombia.

This is a kidnapping.

They're in uniforms.

I was going to Colombia.

I'm from Chicago.

I should not be going to Tijuana.

Relax, relax.

Let me go.

This is kidnapping.

Witnesses say it took an hour and a half

to escort him off the flight.

Brown is now being held in custody back in Maywood, Illinois,

after his extradition back to that state.

Nancy?

Amazing that a professional NFLer takes on an air marshal.

That's what you don't want to do, is take on

an air marshal that's trying to arrest you on a plane.

You know, speaking of the body of Miss Myrtle, who's 73 years old,

the one person, the one person in the world

that has stood by Sergio Brown since he was born.

She lets him live with her.

She is found completely nude, wrapped in a sheet,

not too far from the family home with--

You saw the picture of her, Derrick.

This frail little lady, her neck was snapped.

Yeah. This doesn't seem like it was a premeditated murder,

but more of a heated argument that escalated.

Clearly, there's things going on with Sergio.

It might be related to CTE.

We're going to get into that a little bit later.

-But forensically, it doesn't look good. -Right, right.

-You mean the concussion impairment, CTE? -Right.

So you think that could possibly be a defense

to killing your own mother?

-Sounds more like a robbery gone wrong to me. -Yeah--

He has her credit cards, her iPad.

I think she got tired of him mooching off her

and they had an argument about money and he killed her.

Yeah, I don't think it's a defense,

but I think it's something we have to acknowledge

that may have played a factor in this.

Sergio Brown was not a superstar.

He wasn't like an Aaron Hernandez.

He didn't have a troubled past, because if he did,

we would have known about it.

He wouldn't have been playing in the NFL.

The fact that he had-- and I was looking at

a lot of his old Instagram videos.

He seemed like a pretty good guy.

There was nothing really publicly put out there about him.

He was a New England Patriots player.

I'm a fan of the New England Patriots.

Never heard anything negative about him

in the area where I worked as a patrolman.

But forensically, as far as the case itself,

it doesn't look good.

You have DNA that was taken off

Sergio's toothbrush that was found potentially

under the fingernails of Myrtle,

which shows defensive wounds.

You also have Sergio's blood found on the patio.

And then finally, you have the Ajax cleaner

that was found in the bathtub.

-It's just not good. Yeah. -In the drain, specifically,

as if trying to get rid of evidence.

You know, it's funny, odd that you mentioned all of

his prior posts as seemingly being like a "Normal guy,"

which would directly contradict any claim

of a concussion-related ailment that led him

to do this and then go fake party in Mexico.

And by the way, he also said, "Fake news, I'm being framed,

the FBI did it, the local police did it."

And lied about his mother's whereabouts.

[Mara] But Nancy, I actually, I have to side with Derrick on this one.

Because when you look at these videos, something ain't right.

Yeah, he's drunk.

It looks more than drunk or high.

This person, and I am no therapist, I'm not trained

in psychology, but this person seems maniacal.

Even in the videos of him so-called partying

without a care, you can see that he's so off

that someone else is moving his limbs

as though he's a puppet.

All of the behavior that we have seen is erratic.

It seems like we have someone who is in the midst of

a mental health crisis.

-That is certainly what it looks like. -Can I ask you a question?

So, if he's in the middle of a mental health crisis,

how did he get a ticket, drive himself to the airport

or get a ride, find his location,

the right gate, get on the plane, travel to Mexico,

order drinks, take pictures of himself drinking tequila?

Are you saying that he has a mental defect

that just vanished once he got to Mexico?

No, but I do think that those two things

can coexist at the same time.

That someone can be in the midst of a mental health crisis,

but also be competent enough to carry out

day-to-day functions and know that they need

to flee after they've done something bad.

I think those things can coexist.

I think it's very hard to look at these videos

of this man and not say that there was something

deeply wrong with him at the time that

-those videos were released. -[Derrick] And I think when the CTE comes in,

it's more of a justification.

Like we see in previous cases, there's this paranoia, right?

There's some way where he looks at his mother

and doesn't see her as his mother anymore.

He sees her as someone that's trying to hurt him.

And again, I don't know what was happening.

It could have been financially related.

I think we'll learn more based on digital data

from his cell phone records.

But I wonder if there was a conversation between

Myrtle and Sergio that escalated about money.

And that's where the argument ensued,

and a verbal argument became a physical argument.

You said the words, "Financially related motive."

This guy has made going on $10 million over the course

of his career and he's living with his mother.

So financially related, you mean...

He wanted her to give him some more money,

and she didn't want to.

That kind of financially related?

These guys blow through that money. They really do.

$10 million, they can blow through it pretty quickly.

But this to me, Nancy, is, in my mind,

is further evidence of something not being right with this man.

We've seen the behavior since he left the league.

He's not able, he has not been able to hold a job.

You can look at his LinkedIn.

He posts, you know, jobs every couple months he's moving jobs.

You mentioned all the money that he made.

Where did it go? Why was he living with his mother?

Then you see this erratic behavior on social media that

is so vastly different from what we've seen in the past.

It definitely seems like there's another component here.

[Nancy] Question. When you say something is wrong,

I agree with that, with both of you,

that something is wrong.

But in order to beat a murder charge,

and of course, he is pleading not guilty.

He has not been proven guilty in a court of law.

These are just allegations right now.

"Something is wrong" will not carry the day for the defense.

There has to be a proven mental defect

that rises to the level of insanity.

Insanity in our jurisdiction means you don't know right

from wrong at the time of the incident.

And the fact that he fled and wrapped her body

in a sheet to conceal it suggests to me

that he did know murdering your mother is wrong.

Excuse me, allegedly murdering your mother.

From a legal standpoint, you are 100% correct.

There is a lot of evidence here that I think

is going to make it very hard for the defense.

But from the perspective of trying to understand

what happened here, how could this man with this

long career and this upstanding life

seemingly suddenly snap and allegedly harm his mother

in this way, I think that's what a lot of us

are struggling to understand.

Agree.

I often wonder why, but in the black and white letter

of the law, I'm just trying to figure out, did he do it?

Is he responsible for murdering his mother?

Guys, did Sergio Brown have anything to do

with his mother's death? If so, why?

An expert in sports stars turns felons next.

35-year-old former NFL star Sergio Brown now charged with

murder one and concealment of a dead body, his own mother's.

Sergio Brown partying in Mexico

with her body found near a creek in Maywood, Illinois,

where the two lived together.

Joining us right now, Dan Lust,

high-profile sports attorney, expert at sports stars in trouble.

Dan, what do we know about Sergio Brown?

I think it's important to go back in the history of Sergio Brown.

Played for four teams over seven years,

made in the vicinity of $7 million in his career.

But for all intents and purposes, wasn't a pro bowler,

wasn't an all-star, never won the Super Bowl, right?

This was a guy that was, we'll say, a career special teamer.

He started, I think, about 10% of the games

he played over seven years. So not a household name.

He did play with Tom Brady.

He did play with Pat McAfee, played with Andrew Luck.

But not someone that we'll ever know about

outside of this particular story.

A guy that played for Notre Dame

and worked his way up through seven...

pretty successful careers as a special teamer,

but again, a relatively unmemorable career

other than for this incident, but I think that's important here.

So he's played for multiple NFL teams.

He's amassed close to $8 million

over the span of his career.

He's a special teamer, a safety...

I don't know, that's pretty impressive to me.

And let me ask you this, why is it that people

that seemingly have everything,

specifically in your arena, sports stars,

they've got fame, they've got money,

they have access to mansions, whatever they want,

and they end up behind bars.

You're the specialist and sports stars turn felons, why?

Yeah, it's tough.

I mean, those type of athletes, celebrities,

musicians that grow up at a young age with that

level of fame maybe aren't as accustomed

to just daily life as most people, right?

So from the age of about 19, he was playing for Notre Dame,

one of the top universities in the country.

From ages 18 to about 29, he was basically a celebrity.

He got kind of whatever he wanted.

He did play for the Patriots,

the Colts, the Bills, the Jags.

It's a fair question.

And I think, you know, to this question about

$8 million, right?

That's $8 million pre-tax.

That's not $8 million after the lawyers, after the agents,

[Nancy] You are parsing words.

-$8 million versus $5 million, it still ends in million. -That's there. I take it.

In this case in particular, there are some

who are wondering if his career in the NFL

is perhaps linked to this crime due to CTE.

Is it possible that if these allegations are true

that his career in the NFL had something to do

with this erratic behavior?

I think it's possible. I mean, he retired.

He signed a three-year contract with the Jags,

only played one year before he was released.

He said it was because of injury, but we never

really know that question.

I think there's been studies done when hundreds

of brains have been looked at.

Families have donated their deceased ones' brains

to be analyzed for CTE, and some studies

have showed about 90 percent of brains.

For every ten brains, nine of them have CTE.

So that goes to say, it's not to say that for every

ten football players, nine have CTE,

but if you think one has CTE, and you submit their brain,

there are studies that show that 90% of those brains have CTE.

So I think that's a fair question, that CTE

could be linked to these kind of troubling events.

[Mara] But they only know for certain after death.

After death. You cannot know at the present time.

You know, with, with this case, we've seen a lot of comparisons

to Aaron Hernandez, right? And with Aaron Hernandez,

what we know especially you. Superstars,

a lot of things get swept under the rug.

Right? If they have things in their history

that would prevent them from playing football

or baseball, whatever it might be.

They kind of disappear. We've seen that with Aaron Hernandez,

but as you mentioned, Sergio was not a superstar.

And there doesn't appear to be anything in his past

that would indicate he was this troubled kid

throughout his college career and in the NFL,

because he wouldn't have been playing if he was.

-Correct. -Do you think this is a more classic case

of someone who played football,

did the right things, but yet later in life,

CTE finally caught up to him?

That's probably right.

And there is kind of an actual direct link

between Aaron Hernandez and Sergio Brown.

They both were rookies on the 2010 New England Patriots class.

He had two, we'll say, accused murderers

for the time being, but two people

in the same rookie draft class with Rob Gronkowski.

-Yeah. -So quite the rookie draft class with the Patriots.

So I do think that's possible.

Again, he didn't play for his first two years at Notre Dame.

So no one had heard of him. He didn't play in college.

Then his last two years, he got some playing time,

but was not a star recruit.

Aaron Hernandez, star recruit,

-Yeah. -and they swept that under the rug.

A little bit of a different situation.

I have a question for you.

As much as I would love to go over and over and over

his sports history, can we talk about the murder?

He's used to being a safety and sacking

huge football players.

This is a very frail 73-year-old mother

of all people, his own mother.

You three are speculating that CTE,

a concussion-related injury, may have had something

to do with him allegedly murdering

Miss Myrtle, his mother.

Was he ever treated for CTE?

Yes, no. Was he?

-I don't think so. I don't believe so. -Okay.

Did he ever exhibit problems with CTE in the past

that you know of?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Do you know the injury that threw him out of

the roster with the Jags?

-It was not CTE, was it? -Yeah, it was not a head injury.

I believe it was an Achilles if it wasn't.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it was Achilles injury.

So, why are we talking about

the possibility his judgment was clouded with CTE

if he had never been diagnosed, never treated,

showed no signs of it, and in fact his injury

was an Achilles injury, which is horrible,

but it doesn't lead to murder.

I think what we're trying to do here is understand

the why, right?

The motive. What's the reason behind it?

And with someone who may have something

underlying that we haven't diagnosed yet,

it could be something that we don't really understand.

And CTE is so new.

I think, as an investigator, I want to know more about it.

Because what we're finding is, now recently,

there's a lot of changes in protocol within the NFL.

But there's still going to be a lot of players

who weren't under those protocols who we're now seeing

later in life the residual effects.

And I want to understand that.

So maybe what we can do in the future is prevent it

-from happening to other people. -I agree.

I want to understand it, too.

But what I really want, you're a practicing lawyer.

I want justice for Miss Myrtle, 73 years old,

supporting her former NFL star son.

And then he's found with her credit cards,

her iPad, all of her stuff.

And she was murdered brutally. Look at her.

This little lady had her neck snapped.

And all of her clothes taken off her,

I believe, because they were bloody.

And that is more evidence of premeditation

and knowing full well what you're doing.

They didn't just look at the bathroom for evidence.

They looked down the drain...

where he apparently was getting rid of evidence.

That is not crazy.

But wouldn't that be after the fact, though, not premeditation?

-We know that-- We know-- -It's contemporaneous with the murder.

We know that he burned some clothes, allegedly.

They have it on the ring camera where you see that.

Could it be a situation where he loses control

out of anger, something happens,

and then after the fact, he realizes,

"Oh my God, what did I do?" Now he has to respond.

Now there's things he has to do to clear.

-From the lawyer. -Yeah, I was gonna say in, in the moment.

We're talking about CT and I think this is really relevant

outside of his sports background.

He was a content creator.

He was posting videos online

and from about 2019 to the present. He's off.

He's off the grid. He's not on social media.

We don't hear anything about him.

So it's not just a let's pretend he has CTE,

I think there is something that changed with him

over the last couple years.

So to Derrick's point, is it possible?

There was some kind of heated interaction

and then he had some lucid moment thereafter,

I'm not sure 'cause the videos that we see

of him in Mexico are...

I'm not seeing someone that's so lucid.

Maybe it's alcohol, but then on the plane,

can we really blame the alcohol at that point?

So Nancy, to your point, maybe it's some kind of

conjured up image he's creating in anticipation of

some type of insanity defense.

But there is some, really, for the last four years,

he's been off the grid.

He worked for Google, digital account manager,

had graduated from Miami with an MBA post his playing career.

So there was some levels of him being out there.

So this is fairly new.

This is the first time we've seen him

in a number of years at this point.

Did you guys ever think his behavior in Mexico

had something to do with that empty bottle of tequila

sitting in front of him? Just a thought.

When we come back, a young wife found dead,

her husband armed and on the run.

That's next.

[music playing]

We did find a vehicle.

The vehicle was located by a hunter.

So we're asking anyone with trail cams,

any hunters, any people with video cameras

at their houses,

please give it to the police.

I'm going to have the number in a second,

the Gardner police or the state police.

It's incredible how often that these tips

help us solve crimes, find people.

So we're asking the public for all their help.

You are hearing the Worcester Mass District Attorney

asking for your help finding Aaron Pennington.

As of this taping, he's still missing.

No one has seen him since October '22,

the same day his wife, Breanne Pennington, found dead

with a shotgun wound to the face.

[female reporter] Did Mr. Pennington has a military background.

Do you think he has the skill set to survive in the woods?

Well, you know, that's part of the training.

Those are the questions that the state police

have been asking, and they're finding out exactly what training

he would have had, wouldn't have had.

Yes, that is part of the equation.

We're going out there in numbers,

and we ask, please, no one in the public

go out and try and look for this guy.

If you run into the guy, call the guy in the police,

call the state police, call the police department,

and just back off from anything that you might see,

but provide us with the information that you might get.

Mara, Derrick, what else do we know?

Well, I think some of the most compelling information

that we have is from the arrest warrant

and the reason that police believe that he's responsible

for Breanne's death, aside from the fact

that he has disappeared.

And in the arrest warrant, they say that

they found a note written on his phone

that he wrote the night before she was killed.

And if this is not damning evidence,

I don't know what is.

The note said, quote, "Don't say anything. Be quiet.

If she wakes up, just say you're getting nasal spray.

Get on side of bed...

very close proximity to head, put hole in her head."

-Yeah. -That information, of course,

led to the arrest warrant and is why police have launched this manhunt.

Yeah, so there's some premeditation there,

and to me, it sounds like we might be dealing with

another situation, not exact, thank God,

Robert Card, where we have a situation.

And by the way, thoughts are with everyone in Lewiston, Maine.

I think you have a situation where he felt like

the relationship was ending.

If he couldn't have her, nobody could.

There's some other Facebook posts that indicate

that's some of the thoughts he was having.

I think we may be in a situation

where police are going to find him and he's going to be deceased

from a self-inflicted wound.

Right now, police are on the search for

Aaron Pennington, age 33.

He is a white male, 6'2", blonde, 175 pounds.

Now, his car was found deep in the woods.

What we've learned from doorbell and surveillance footage

is that he drives away from the home.

You see his four children...

leaving the home, going to a neighbor's home,

asking for help.

They tell the neighbor, Mommy is lying down in

the bedroom crying, and they can't find Dad.

She wasn't lying in the bedroom crying.

She was dead in the master bedroom

from a gunshot wound to the face.

In the home,

three cartridges were found from a shotgun.

Hence the warning, armed and dangerous.

We also know Pennington had special clearance

within the U.S. Air Force, and according to sources,

worked on special ops.

We know that he had active secret clearance,

and that's a quote, an engineer with an illegally owned firearm.

Mara?

Yeah, but the part of that story, Nancy,

that really breaks my heart is the children, ages two, five, seven,

and nine, leaving their house on foot in the morning,

going to a neighbor's house and asking for help.

You have to think that they heard the gunshot,

and at least the older ones, the seven and the nine,

I have the seven-year-old, that they would have been aware that

something very bad happened and very scared,

and that's why they went to the neighbor's house for help.

Because if they just thought Mommy was crying,

that's not great, but not cause to leave your house

and go to the neighbor and say, "Please call the police."

And that's what's really sad here, is that

now those kids don't have any parents.

And you see him pulling out and leaving the children alone

with their mother's dead body,

lying with a shotgun wound to the face,

just like in that "Note to self," he wrote to himself.

Yeah, and Nancy, from what you said earlier, I know that

I said that he more than likely has killed himself.

Again, we don't know, but police can't approach it that way.

So right now, they're setting up a grid

around the area where the BMW was found.

You have a multi-jurisdictional operation

with a lot of moving parts, and they're treating this

as a still alive, armed, and dangerous.

Because think about it, as a law enforcement officer,

you're going into these woods,

and the perpetrator has the tactical advantage.

He can see and hear you coming.

You don't know where he is, so it's a really dangerous situation,

and I hope they find him sooner than later,

because until they find him, he's a danger to the community.

But to your point, Derrick, those who knew the family said

that in the past he had threatened suicide,

and that also the alleged motive here, if in fact

he is responsible for this murder,

is that she was threatening to leave,

-Yeah. -that she was going to leave, she was going to take

the children with her.

So I think there's a very good possibility that you're right,

that he left the house and went into the woods to take them.

[Nancy] And, clearly, she was right.

What had she been enduring in the years

leading up to this, giving birth to the four children,

trying to raise them with a dad behaving like this?

No thought at all to what this would do to his own children.

As of this taping, Aaron Pennington's still missing.

If you have info on Aaron Pennington's whereabouts,

call the FBI.

1-800-CALL-FBI. Repeat.

1-800-CALL-FBI.

Every week, we bring you the breaking crime

and justice news from across our great country.

In the coming weeks, we talk about

the biggest bombshells on some of the biggest crime stories

from the headlines, and some cases

you may never have heard of.

On behalf of Mara and Derrick, we'll see you next week.

Good night, friend.

[theme music playing]