Original subtitles

'When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time'

to find the truth, to separate fact from fiction,

to catch the killer and to make sure that justice is served.

But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim?

I'm Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist,

'performing nearly 23,000 autopsies,

including on some of the most high-profile cases of recent times.'

I've learnt that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.

'Through me you'll be hearing directly from the victim,

from a state-of-the-art laboratory with ground-breaking technology

that uses digitally scanned sample bodies.

I'll be investigating a series of intriguing murders'

where from the victims' bodies,

'I'll be revealing to you the truth behind those horrific crimes.'

(camera shutter clicking)

December 15th, 1994,

a man was shot dead in his kitchen and the killer escaped.

To catch this murderer the police had to piece together

dozens of tiny clues from the victim's body

While America is no stranger to gun violence,

this crime scene was surprising.

A million-dollar home

in one of California's most wealthy and privileged communities,

Newport Beach.

(man) 'The quintessential dream image

of California is Newport Beach.

There's a bay where people can have $100 million yachts

docked at their house.

A lot of money there,

but it also has a really kind of cool beach vibe.

'Surfers, beautiful women in bikinis rollerblading.'

You have yachts, marinas, fancy restaurants on the water,

you have beautiful mansions on the water.

(Matt) 'Beverly Hills meets the sea, that's what Newport Beach is.'

(Richard) 'But on December 15th, 1994,

this idyllic atmosphere was shattered.'

(gunshots)

(matt) 'Kevin McLaughlin was upstairs in his home'

where he lived with his father and he hears gunshots.

'He suffered severe disabilities.

He had problems moving, he walked with a severe limp.'

He gets downstairs and he sees his father

face up on his back in the kitchen

and as he's watching his father die on the kitchen floor he dials 911.'

(operator) '911, what's your emergency?'

And it's this heart-wrenching 911 call,

where he's trying to communicate through his deeply affected speech

'that his father's been shot.'

(sirens waling)

Once the cops got there they were able

to see exactly what was inside the house,

which was Mr McLaughlin on the kitchen floor

with bullet in his body.

(Richard) 'Paramedics couldn't save him.

He was declared dead at the scene.

All the police could do was gather evidence about this terrible crime,

and that started with being sure who the victim was.'

As a pathologist my first job

is to identify the body and I can show you on this sample body.

Bodies never lie.

Often the simplest way to identify a body

is to look at the teeth.

Teeth are fantastic things because they're strong,

they're really resilient, they resist decomposition

and all sorts of damage,

but also particularly by middle age they'll all be unique.

There'll be fillings, there'll be other evidence of repair,

there'll be teeth that have been lost through accident

or through disease, and so looking at the teeth

can be a fantastically useful way of identifying someone,

when we compare it to the dental records held by the dentist.

In this particular case, we can see that there are gaps

in the left upper and lower molars.

We can see that there's a left upper wisdom tooth still present.

There's also various irregularities of the teeth

that are all going to be unique for this individual.

But if uniqueness of teeth isn't enough,

we can look at the uniqueness of the fingerprint,

but they're much more susceptible

to damage by decomposition and by trauma

and they too need to be compared with a record

held usually by the police.

At the time of this case, the 1990s, DNA was a research tool,

but identification by DNA was not common practice,

but fortunately when the pathologist

came to look at this particular body,

the dental records were excellent

and so they made a positive identification of Bill McLaughlin,

'a 55-year-old male.

The police knew that every clue they could find

might help bring Bill McLaughlin's killer to justice.

For example, he still had his watch on.

In fact, nothing was missing from this wealthy home.'

We have no information that anything was taken,

so therefore it probably wasn't a robbery.

'If nothing's taken except for the life, it's probably a murder.'

(Richard) 'Police found shell casings from the murder weapon.'

(Larry) 'The casings and the bullets from the body'

were determined that they were from a nine-millimetre handgun.

The ammunition that was used is what's called Federal Hydra-Shok,

a particular kind of bullet.

'It has a post on it and it's a hollow-point round.'

(Larry) 'And those are bullets

specifically made for killing somebody.

Too expensive to use for target practice.

They're used for deadly force.

(gunshots)

(Richard) 'The shots heard by Kevin and the neighbours

had a distinctive pattern.'

Three sequences of two shots, with bam bam, bam bam, bam bam.

(Richard) 'The early evidence

was pointing towards a targeted killing.'

(camera shutter clicks)

(Richard) 'On the table near Bill's body were financial documents,

which may have been significant.'

Bill was entirely self-made.

Grown up on the south side of Chicago from a modest background.

He invented a medical device

that was able to separate plasma from blood.

(Matt) 'It was a huge advancement in modern medical science.

It saved thousands of lives. It's still in use today.

And he made a fortune with that. He was well off.

He was a businessman and had lots of deals to make money.

(Richard) 'He sold the company he co-founded

for tens of millions of dollars.

20 years ago he bought a luxury six-bedroom mansion

in this gated community.

Balboa Coves in Newport Beach, California.'

Now this is a multi-million dollar bay-side home with its own dock.

(Richard) 'Bill had a jet-set lifestyle.

Just hours before he was killed,

he'd flown back from Las Vegas in his private aircraft.

But those financial papers found at the crime scene

told a different story, one of conflict and strife.

He was being sued by a former partner

who didn't feel that he was treated fairly,

and so there was about $12 million in an Escrow fund

that was going to be determined who was going to get that $12 million.

(Richard) 'Bill and his former business partner

had been arguing in court for four years

about how the proceeds of the sale

of their company should be divided up.'

And it turned out that just days before

Mr McLaughlin discovered that he won that,

'and so all that money was going to be going to him.'

They did not like each other,

so he was immediately suspected, as something to do with it.

Anybody who loses $12 million in a lawsuit might be angry.

(Richard) 'The police quickly established

that Bill's business partner was over 100 miles away

at the time of the murder.'

This man lived in Santa Barbara. He had an alibi. He did not do it.

(Richard) 'Other clues at the scene

suggested Bill was killed by someone he trusted.'

There's a brand-new key freshly cut, an Ace hardware key,

'stuck in the lock of the deadbolt of the door,'

and there is a pedestrian access gate key

'sitting on the on the mat.

There's a gate for pedestrians to go across from the McLaughlin home.'

You can gain access to that part of the community with that gate key.

Somebody came in and did this with keys. That's a huge clue.

'They didn't have cameras then, so anybody who entered'

could go to Mr McLaughlin's house from that gate without being seen.

People were terrified because nothing like this had happened

in a nice wealthy gated area of Newport Beach.

People were afraid there was a killer on the loose.

(Richard) 'The chilling conclusion was that the killer

got keys to Bill's house from a member of his family.

Who has access to keys that could get into the complex.

Who has access to keys to get into his house?

(Richard) 'Bill had been married to Susan McLaughlin for 24 years.

The divorce, just four years earlier, had been messy

and there was now a lot more money to be inherited.

They get married very young, they had three wonderful kids,

and the relationship ran out of steam.

She'd moved to their beautiful home in Hawaii where she still lives.

She was eliminated because she was so far away.

(Richard) 'The couple's son, Kevin, who had suffered brain damage

in an accident a few years earlier,

was in the house at the time of the murder.'

They interviewed Kevin and they know that this kid had nothing to do

with the murder of his father

and it's pretty obvious and he is incredibly distraught.

(Richard) 'The couple also had two daughters.'

(Matt) 'Bill McLaughlin's daughters were Kim and Jenny.

Jenny was in San Diego. Kim was in Japan teaching.'

When police talked to them, they were appropriately emotional.

They were devastated. They cooperated in every way.

'The police are very quickly able'

to eliminate the entire McLaughlin family as being suspects.

(Richard) 'Who else had access to Bill's keys?

And who knew the truth about his murder?'

One of the most sensational cases in Orange County

and it's this bizarre love triangle that ends in murder.

Bill McLaughlin, a wealthy businessman,

was shot dead in his home in Newport Beach, California.

'Police hoped that his body would tell the truth

about what happened in his murder.'

They thought he'd been murdered by someone close.

'And then just hours after his murder,

Bill's girlfriend Nanette Johnston arrived at the crime scene.

Nanette and Bill first met four years earlier.'

Nanette Johnston was a beautiful vivacious, mother of two,

and everybody describes her as very beautiful,

but also really smart and savvy.

(Larry) 'Nanette was slender.

She worked out a lot at the gym. Very fit, very tanned.'

Was that type of girl.

(Matt) 'Nanette put an ad in a newspaper.

A magazine prior to internet dating that said, "Wealthy men only.

I know how to take care of my man if he knows to take care of me."'

It appears that that was the ad that Bill had answered

and got to know her because of that ad.

(Richard) 'Some time in early 1991 Bill and Nanette started dating.

She was just 25 years old, while he was in his early-50s.

But the romance seemed real.

Quite soon Nanette moved in with Bill

and they started living together in his Newport Beach mansion.

She had two young children who lived with her ex-husband.

Bill welcomed them into his life and showed them real affection.'

(Larry) 'She would take them to Bill's house once every other week.'

They got to go flying in his plane,'

and got to go be in Bill's boat.

'So they enjoyed, like, a vacation house.

They were treated very well by Bill and he liked them a lot.'

(Richard) 'They had been living together for four years.

The couple had made business plans together

and Nanette handled all of the couple's joint finances.'

(Larry) 'She had cheque books, had used his cards to buy things,'

and she had access to the accounts and everything he was working on.

(Richard) 'On December 15th, 1994,

only an hour after the murder, Nanette arrived at her home.'

(Larry) 'They were able to interview her in one of the police cars.'

From what she said, sounded that she was very upset about this.

(Richard) 'Nanette told the police she spent the afternoon and evening

watching her son at a soccer game in a town 30 miles away.

After that she went shopping.'

(Larry) 'She was at a pretty large shopping mall.

Maybe a 20-minute drive from there.'

During the time of the crime, she was buying Christmas presents.

Here's the receipt which puts her about five or six miles away.

'She couldn't possibly have committed the murder.'

(Richard) 'So Nanette had a strong alibi.

The police had to look for a different suspect for this murder.'

My job as a pathologist

is to examine the body as carefully as I can

to find information that may be of use

to the police in their investigation.

In this case, the pathologist found

that there were six injuries to the front of Bill's chest.

Six small injuries that were absolutely typical

of gunshot entry wounds.

When they looked at his back, though,

they found there were only three wounds

that were much larger, more irregular

and contained muscle and bone

that were absolutely typical of gunshot exit wounds.

So three bullets had gone right through,

but three bullets remained in the chest.

Looking at the injuries to the front of Bill's chest,

it shows the killer must have been standing in front of him,

looking at him at the time the shots were fired in very quick succession.

And it shows that whoever killed Bill

clearly deliberately intended to do so.

'After such a shocking murder,

it's no wonder Nanette said she was frightened.

She told the police that she was worried the killer

might come back to shoot her.'

(Larry) 'Nanette in the interview said that she was scared.

She said, "I could have been the target.

I was supposed to be here and I've pissed off people in my life."'

That was a very important thing for me,

because, if true,

then she must be afraid of whoever did this.

She said, "I don't want to be here, to stay here."

She said, "I'm going to go somewhere else."'

(Richard) 'She took Kevin and drove them to Bill's beach house

just a mile away on Seashore Drive.

But while this was a perfectly sensible precaution,

something about Nanette's behaviour didn't seem right to the police.'

(Matt) 'What's curious, one of the things is she had a car phone.'

She sat in the car and she didn't call anybody.

Bill McLaughlin had an ex-wife, he had two adoring daughters

and you've got Kevin.

He's got relatives, friends in the community,

and she never called anybody, which was curious, kind of off.

(Richard) 'Nanette also seemed strangely unemotional,

almost detached, even at Bill's funeral.'

According to every witness, they get into the church for Bill's funeral

and everybody is crying, including her two kids,

'except for one person, and that was Nanette.'

No emotion the night of the murder and now no emotion at the funeral.

She goes back to the beach house, she changes.

She drives to Champion Yamaha, which sells dirt bikes, motorcycles.

'She goes and buys three motorcycles right after the funeral.'

(Richard) 'Nanette was not the kind to ride motorbikes

and Kevin couldn't ride one, so who could they have been for?

The clue came from something strange

that Nanette's son said at the funeral.'

Her son said, "My mom's boyfriend plays in the NFL,"

and people at the funeral were like,

"Your mum's boyfriend is in that coffin up there."

And that's the first anybody in the McLaughlin family

learned about the existence of another guy.

(Richard) 'To find out who this other man was,

the police put Nanette under surveillance.'

(Larry) 'They were going to stake out the seashore house

where she was staying.

So they had the place surrounded.'

(Matt) 'They have an undercover narcotics officer.'

The report is very two dimensional.

We were on the beach, we could see Nanette Johnston

inside with her two children, decorating a Christmas tree.

The curtains are open, the windows are open.

Anybody can look in and see this is not the actions of a woman

who appears scared for her safety.

Why is she in the house in a place where anybody could see her?

There is a man with a gun in the sand outside her house.

'It's a police officer, but he's got a gun

and he could shoot her, if he wanted to, right there.'

So how fearful is she of this man who she thought might be after her?

(Richard) 'The surveillance officers saw something extraordinary.'

(Matt) 'They see this guy in a black Nissan Pathfinder.'

A big guy, strong guy, formidable.

I mean, he's somebody to be reckoned with.

He walks into the beach house like Santa.

Got a big bag full of Christmas presents.

His head is not on a swivel. He's not looking around.

He goes into the beach house where he was living.

So very soon after this murder

police realise Nanette Johnston has moved in with another man.

Police want to know who he is.

(Richard) 'When challenged by investigators,

Nanette identified him as Eric Naposki.

Eric was a professional sportsman, a football line-backer.

He played for both the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts,

but he never hit the big time.

(Larry) 'Eric did not make a lot of money in football.'

He went playing in the Canadian Football League

and for an NFL Europe team, the Barcelona Dragons.

When you're on practice squads and you're not in with the big boys,

league minimum is not much money.

They get all the fries they can eat in training.

(Richard) 'By the time Nanette met Eric Naposki,

he was working in security.

He still had hits looks and physique, but not much else.'

(Matt) 'A bouncer in a nightclub.'

(Larry) 'He was making poor money. Wasn't making a lot.'

He was hanging around with rich people in Newport Beach,

'but he was living in a single studio apartment in Tustin

and barely could make rent.'

(Matt) 'He's broke.'

(Richard) 'Nanette said she met Eric at a gym in the early-90s.

At first she insisted that they were just friends,

but soon she admitted they started dating early in 1994

when she had already been living with Bill for three years.

The police urgently needed to speak to Eric.'

The police did some checking on him

and discovered he had a minor traffic warrant.

(Matt) 'Got a traffic ticket and he never showed up for court.

The judge issued a warrant for his arrest. The police arrest him.'

They do an impound search of his car.

'He's got a notebook

and as they're flipping through these pages on the notebook,

there's a bunch of letters and numbers

that strike one of these observant detectives

and they run it as a licence plate'

and lo and behold it comes back to Bill McLaughlin's Mercedes.

'We try to figure out the dates of these notes'

and looked like it's probably about a month before the murder.

And that really started the ball rolling

in regards to looking at Eric as a possible suspect.

(Richard) 'Eric Naposki was now in the police's sights.

They didn't know where he was on the night of the murder,

until they were tipped off that Eric and Nanette

were watching her son's soccer game that day.'

The Newport Police got a very interesting phone call

from Kevin Ross Johnston, Nanette's ex husband,

saying, "She was not alone at that game.

'My ex-wife was there with her boyfriend Eric.'

She contacted me and said, "Don't tell the police

I was there with Eric."

So he calls and says, "My crazy ex-wife

wants me to specifically lie to you about who she was with.

She was with this big dude, Eric."

It made them very suspicious

that Eric and her may have done something.

He may be involved and they started to focus on that relationship.

(Richard) 'Police were sure Bill

was at the heart of a dangerous love triangle,

but they couldn't prove that this led to Bill's killing,

unless they could tie one of the suspects to the murder weapon.'

The community was very, very concerned

'that there was a killer on the loose.'

Police in California were on the hunt

for the killer of Bill McLaughlin.

'At autopsy the body had revealed the truth of what had happened.

The killer was standing very close to Bill

and this was a deliberate assassination.

The police had a suspect, Eric Naposki,

a former football player turned nightclub bouncer.'

He was no stranger to physical force,

but did he fire the fatal shots?

To prove that the police had to find the killer's gun.

'The police thoroughly searched the area around the murder scene,

but they came up empty-handed.'

We had divers in the channel, the water behind the house.

'The Navy sent divers trying to find the gun.'

They checked storm drains. We never found it.

Gun could be anywhere.

(Richard) 'All the police could do was question Naposki about his guns,

which wasn't easy.'

Mr Naposki is a very strong-willed individual.

He likes to control, he's a big man

and he does not like to be controlled.

I listen to a tape and it was Eric Naposki yelling at the police.

That's how he conducted these interviews.

He is aggressive, "You guys lied to me. That's my statement."

(Eric) 'Because obviously that's a lie.

'Someone's lying, because I know I'm not lying.'

(officer) 'You're using a strong word lying.'

"I tried to mislead you. What's the big deal? Arrest me."

We're playing this mind F game. It's just unbelievable.

They ask him, "Do you have any firearms?"

Then it's like, "I did have this 380."

A Jennings 38, a Saturday night special type semi-automatic handgun.

"I gave that to my dad after he got mugged."

(Eric) 'Yeah, he has a Jennings 380. Same model and everything.'

As they're wrapping it up, they're like, "Just so we clear,

just the one gun and no other guns?"

He's like, "I did have a Beretta nine-millimetre."

(Richard) 'A Beretta nine-millimetre.

The bullets that killed Bill were nine millimetre,

but Naposki claimed that gun had disappeared.'

I gave it to my buddy, Joe David Jimenez.

Doing a security job for me. He got it stolen out of his car.

'They hit up his friend, Joe David Jimenez,

who was in fact was cooperative.'

He said, "I did work a security job for Eric.

He gave me a gun just like he said, but not a Beretta 92F.

He gave me a Jennings 380.

'I told him that the gun got stolen, but I sold it to my friend.

I can get that gun for you."

So he gets the gun from his friend,

turns it into Newport Beach Police Department

and it was loaded with Federal Hydra-Shok ammunition.

(Richard) 'So a gun Naposki admitted he once owned

turned up loaded with the same ammunition

used to kill Bill McLaughlin,

which means the police now knew he owned Hydra-Shok bullets.'

At the autopsy it was important to find

just how much damage had been caused by these bullets.

It was found that one of the bullets had gone right through the heart

causing extensive injuries

that was on its own fatal for this particular case.

But the pathologist said that all six bullets

could have killed Bill on their own, and why was that?

The reason is there were so many crucial parts to the chest.

There's the heart, the lungs, the major blood vessels of the aorta

and the superior and inferior vena cava, the spine.

So many areas that were critical to life,

which had been damaged by the passage of these six bullets.

The type of bullets used were Hydra-Shok.

These had been designed for the FBI

specially to spread when they hit the human body,

and this is designed, so that maximum damage is caused,

and the chances of the bullet going right through are minimised.

So Bill had been hit by six of these bullets.

He clearly didn't stand a chance,

and the only possible reason for using bullets of this sort

is to make sure that you kill someone.

'But the gun the police suspected was used to kill Bill McLaughlin,

a Beretta 92F, which Eric had admitted to once owning,

had disappeared.

So the police couldn't connect Eric to the murder weapon.

They made more progress tracking his movements

on the night of the murder,

starting from Nanette's son's soccer game.'

(Matt) 'The games went into triple overtime.

They hustle back to the car.'

(Richard) 'Nanette and Eric left the soccer field at 8.20pm.

They were in such a hurry,

they didn't even wait to see Nanette's son receive his trophy.

Naposki claimed he was in a rush to get back to work.

He had no time to commit murder,

When the police drove the same route, they had time to spare.'

(Larry) 'They could easily drive all the way to Balboa Cove

and let Naposki out,'

and she can easily drive to the mall and start shopping.

He can easily open the door, shoot him

and then actually it's only a few hundred yards

'to where he worked,

and go under a bridge and be at work

within literally minutes after shooting Bill.'

And so it all fit very nicely.

(Matt) 'They ask him again, "You don't have an alibi."'

And he goes, "Oh, well, she dropped me off

and then I went up to my friend's house up in Tustin

'to see if they're there, and then I got a page,

so I went over to Denny's."

It's a different story than the original one that he told.

'So they re-traced the route and guess what? He had enough time.'

We did it numerous times and that's what it was.

(Richard) 'The police proved that Naposki

could have been at the murder scene,

but couldn't prove that he was at the murder scene.

(camera shutter clicking)

They could show that Eric and Nanette were very intimate

and even took holidays together.'

(Larry) 'They went to Eric's house where his family lived

and the kids met his family along with Nanette.

They went to New York with the kids and had a full tour of New York.'

And then they went to a wedding for Nannette's sister.

'Bill thought that she had gone back east with her kids.'

Had no idea that Eric Naposki went with her.

(Richard) 'The police could prove that Eric and Nanette

had been making big plans for their future, just the two of them.'

(Matt) 'Here's a woman who has no skills,'

and you're talking about a guy who was broke working as a bouncer.

Those two people were looking at multi-million-dollar homes

'and talking about being able to pay for it

after the first of year.'

Nanette believes she is coming into money.

The only way Nanette would come into money

is if Bill was dead.

(Richard) 'Bill McLaughlin had a $1 million life-insurance policy

and Nanette was the sole beneficiary.

That wasn't the only way she'd profit from Bill's death.'

(Matt) 'She has a provision in the will for $150,000.

She's got the right to live in the beach house rent-free

and she's got title to the convertible Lexus,

and in addition to all that she finagled herself

into becoming the trustee of Bill's estate,

after he has won this big lawsuit against his partner.

There's about $12 million in that account.

(Richard) 'But Nanette had been helping herself to Bill's money

even before he died.'

About a month after the murder,

Kim and Jenny McLaughlin contact the Newport Beach Police Department,

so these are Bill's daughters.

There should be millions of dollars in his bank accounts.

When they get into the bank accounts and they get access,

there's virtually no money left.

They were able to determine that Nanette started probably in January,

so a good 12 months earlier, pilfering money from his accounts.

(Matt) 'Bill had a series of bank accounts.

Nanette did not have access to those accounts,

but she did have a joint chequing account

that belonged to both of them, with the same bank.

So she would simply fake cheques

and then do transfers from one account to the other.

They got more and more as the months went by.

She started out with $7,000 that she did this with,

and pretty soon it ten, then 15, then 20.

The most disturbing one is the day before Bill McLaughlin's murder

'they found a cheque for $250,000, quarter-million-dollar cheque,

a day before Bill McLaughlin's murder.'

When they started looking for taxes and everything,

she was going be found out.

If he's dead, she's free and clear.

She can say, "This was normal. He wanted me to do that."

So that was a big red flag.

(Richard) 'In total Nanette stole nearly half-a-million dollars

from Bill's bank accounts.

In March, 1995,

Nanette Johnston was prosecuted for forgery and grand theft.

She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail.'

The police believe there's enough to charge her with murder

and also Eric Naposki with murder, but the DA disagreed.

They're like, "She's stealing, she's cheating," and it got refused again.

'DNA is in its infancy at that point.

We've got no eye witnesses, there's no fingerprints, no confession.'

So for the DAs that are looking at that at the time,

they didn't there's enough evidence to proceed.

(Richard) 'When Nanette was released from jail six months later,

she and Eric separated.'

(Matt) 'She gets married to Packard, he goes back east,'

gets married and then divorced,

and has at least one child on the east coast,

and they go on with their lives.

(Richard) 'The case went cold,

the murderer seemed to have got away with it,

but lurking in the files

was the evidence that would one day convict them.'

This was one of the most diabolical and heart-breaking cases

I ever tried as a prosecutor.

The killers of Bill McLaughlin had gone unpunished

for more than seven years.

'His body revealed the truth about the bullets used

and the deliberate nature of the killing,

but the case had gone cold.

The suspects were getting on with their lives,

while Bill's family were still grieving.'

But a new team of investigators were determined to crack this case.

'In 2002 Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy

had just started a new job with the homicide unit

of the Orange County District Attorney's Office.'

(Matt) 'My predecessor Debbie Lloyd looked at it.

Look at the McLaughlin case.'

I think you're going to solve it.

'I got assigned an investigator to work with me,

as my partner in the Homicide unit, named Larry Montgomery.

'Larry's a legend in law enforcement so this case that had sat idle,'

we started working it up again.

(Richard) 'Larry Montgomery started reading all the old case notes

and listening to all the tapes of the police interviews.'

(Larry) 'There's such a volume of work

and virtually nobody has time to look at that volume of work.

So I made a point of listening to every single tape

'and taking every single bit of notes.

There's times where there's something that's important,

but nobody knew it at the time.'

(Richard) 'One of the 62 tapes Larry listened to

was the recording with Nanette

in the police car on the night of the murder.'

(Larry) 'She said, "Well, I'm going to go to the other house,

and I thought interesting, if she knows,

and the police told her,

that the killer had keys to this mansion,

'why is she willing to go to another house,'

belonging to Bill, and her and stay at that house?

Who says the killer doesn't have keys to the house? Struck me as odd.

(Richard) 'Over the next few years,

Larry was able to uncover new incriminating evidence

from the witness statements.'

(Matt) 'There is a woman who was a neighbour of Eric Naposki'

who said he talked about Bill McLaughlin, how he hated him.

She had been talking to Eric. He had mentioned Bill on several occasions.

He told her he hated Bill, he wanted to blow up his plane.

And then after the murder, he said,

"That Bill McLaughlin guy, you know he got killed?"

She said, "Tell me you didn't do it."

He said, "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't."

An autopsy is not just to establish the cause of death.

It's also there to seek out any possible clues

that might help an investigation.

For instance, did the deceased fight back?

Are there any bruises or injuries to the knuckles or the hand

that will show that he's punched someone?

That might enable the defendant to claim self-defence in the future.

In fact. there aren't any such injuries.

What there was, though, was an injury to his left eyebrow.

'And that small mark on the body is telling us so much.

It's an injury that is typical of the type of wound

that's caused when someone collapses after they've been killed.

And I'm sure that's what happened in this case.

So there were no signs of a struggle, no sign of a fight.

The pattern of injuries grouped together as they were

suggests that the killer saw Bill was in front of him,

shot him very quickly, Bill fell to the ground dead

and the killer made his escape, all within seconds.

'It would seem this killing was planned weeks

or maybe even months in advance,

made obvious by the keys found at the murder scene,

one newly cut from an Ace Hardware blank.'

Ace hardware blanks can only be sold at Ace Hardware.

'Nobody else carries them. Ace Keys are made at Ace.'

So they go to the local Ace Hardware store

closest to Eric Naposki's house.

'The guy goes, "I know that guy. I made keys for him,

right about the time of this."'

He looked at the key and goes,

"This looks like it was cut on my machine."

Turns out there's several different key machines

that will make the keys and this was a high-end key machine.

There were few in the area.

'It kind of made sense that he had those keys made.'

(Richard) 'The police could tie the newly cut house key to Naposki

and when they checked Nanette's keyring,

they found her original pedestrian gate key was missing,

exactly like the key found on the mat.

And new techniques could extract more evidence

from the six empty shell casings found at the crime scene.'

There's a whole science on expended shell casings left at crime scenes.

'It's a form of firearm DNA'

because the little microscopic lands and grooves

that go into expanding a shell casing

are unique to every firearm, so they are able to figure out...

If they find a brass casing, they can link it to a gun.

If you don't have the gun to compare it to,

you can look at the firing pin used in the ammunition.

(Richard) 'The make of gun used in the murder could now be identified.'

(Larry) 'Originally the murder weapon

was known to be a nine-millimetre,'

and the possibility of about 27 or 28 guns, different types of guns,

could have shot that particular bullet.

But as time went on, technology advanced,

and eventually we were able

to narrow that down to one specific firearm

and that's a Beretta 92F.

So the only gun that could have done it was a Beretta 92F.

Eric Naposki owned a Beretta 92F

and Eric Naposki lied about that Beretta 92F.

(Richard) 'Not only had Naposki

owned the same gun as the murder weapon,

the police also discovered he had been training with it.'

That boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom,

Eric Naposki had gone through a firearms training course,

'where he was trained to shoot twice,'

re-aim, shoot twice, re-aim, shoot twice.

And it's called the double-tap technique.

Basically, it's a technique to kill.

(Richard) 'The investigators were also very sceptical

about how recently Naposki had started his job

at the Thunderbird night club.'

There were nightclubs throughout Los Angeles and Orange County.

Hundreds of them.

Of all of the nightclubs Eric could get a job as a bouncer,

on December 1st, two weeks before Bill McLaughlin's murder,

he gets one 136 yards away from our murder scene.

'An easy way to run over a bridge and be there in about a minute.'

So that's not a coincidence. It's just not.

(Richard) 'Larry even found crucial evidence

in Nanette's Christmas shopping.'

The night Bill died she said she's at the stores at the mall.

We have the receipts for what she bought

The items she bought were for family and friends. Nothing for Bill.

If she knew he was going to be dead, no reason to buy presents for him.

'Nanette even bought Eric a size 12 pair of $795 shoes that day,'

with Bill's credit card.

(Richard) 'Matt and Larry had pulled together complicated details,

but at its heart they believed this case was simple.

Nanette had two huge motives for wanting Bill dead.

One financial, one emotional.'

(Matt) 'She's embezzling money from his bank account,

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Got this lifestyle where she doesn't have to work.

Bill is financing plastic surgeries, exotic vacations.

She gets to drive in a convertible Lexus. She's living the life.

She's cheating on him and stealing from him

and whichever one of those Bill McLaughlin finds out about first,

she's out with nothing.

She has to kill Bill McLaughlin to get away with this.

(Richard) 'It took several years of hard reinvestigating

to gather all the new evidence

and in 2009, 15 years after Bill McLaughlin's murder,

Nanette Johnston and Eric Naposki

were finally arrested and charged with murder.'

I got one of these awesome moments where I got to call Kim McLaughlin

and I said, "We filed charges in the death of your father."

There's this pause and she said, "Against who?"

'I said, "Well, against Eric and Nanette."

She started to cry. She said, "For what?"

I said, "For the murder of your dad." She cried.'

(Richard) 'Two years later Eric Naposki

was tried at the Orange County Superior Court.

28 witnesses were called and there were more than 240 exhibits.'

I was absolutely utterly convinced

that Nanette Johnston and Eric Naposki murdered Bill McLaughlin,

'but you never know how it will be perceived

and if your witnesses are going to come off well,'

so you always go in with your heart in your throat.

(Richard) 'After three weeks the jury was sent out

to consider verdicts.

They deliberated for seven hours.'

The jury convicted Eric Naposki of first-degree murder with a firearm

'and a special circumstance of murder for financial gain.'

Doing this to help Nanette get money.

The sentence was life without possibility of parole

in California State Prison.

(Richard) 'Nanette Johnston was tried a year later.

The prosecution argued that while Nanette didn't pull the trigger,

she had planned the crime and aided in its execution,

and so she should also be prosecuted for murder.'

The jury convicted her of murder for financial gain.

'Nanette was also sentenced to life without possibility of parole

in a California State Prison.'

(Richard) 'After 17 and a half years

Bill's family finally received the justice they deserved.'

(Larry) 'After the investigation and the trial were done,

I did meet his ex-wife.

I was also close to his daughters and they're very nice people.'

It was nice to get some closure for them.

Bill McLaughlin's family never stopped their search for justice.

In the end it was the tenacity of the investigating teams

that trapped these killers, but bodies never lie.

'Bill's body showed that there had been no struggle.

He was shot in cold blood by someone who intended to kill him.

Eventually justice was served.'

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