Original subtitles

Babcock State Park is almost all woods.

It was really kind of a spooky place.

When we arrived at Cabin 13, it appeared that there was

a real serious struggle going on there.

Somebody killed her.

I just could not fathom that someone had actually

killed her.

To look back and see all these clues that I missed,

that I just didn't see.

There was a male subject in the photos that appeared to be

in various stages of undress.

His story didn't add up.

That night, wasn't a lot of traffic out,

nothing going on, so I decided to go have dinner.

Soon as I walked in, I got the radio call.

There was a individual that called in

from Babcock State Park.

He said several individuals had broken into his cabin

and attacked him and his wife.

So I was on my way.

When I arrived on scene, there was the headquarters

building, and that's where the call came from.

He was there at the telephone, and the only thing he had on

was a pair of brief white underwear.

His legs were scratched.

I called for help, please don't hurt me, please!

As I approached him, he was very hysterical.

I need help!

I said, "Calm down.

"I'm a police officer.

I'm here to help you, not hurt you."

I asked him if he knew who he was.

He told me he was Mr. Flippo.

He advised me at that time that his wife was still

at the cabin.

I asked him, "Which cabin were you at?"

He said, "Cabin number 13."

So I told him to go with me. I placed him in my cruiser.

I asked him what had happened.

He had told me that several people had been there.

They had attacked him and his wife.

The distance between the headquarters building

and Cabin 13 is probably about

7/10 of a mile down a one-lane road.

When we arrived at Cabin 13, there was a Camaro sitting on

the left-hand side of the road across from the cabin.

It had looked like a white T-shirt or something hanging

or something hanging off the side-view mirror.

I said, "Did you arrive in this car?"

He said, "No, I don't know who owns that car."

I said, "Do you remember how you got here?"

He gave me very good details of his green Cadillac.

There was no green Cadillac anywhere around.

I told him to remain seated in the vehicle, and I was going to

check the cabin.

It had been raining that night, so it was kind of slippery.

I didn't know what I was walking in on.

I thought there were several people inside the cabin.

I thought there was going to be a fight.

Hello?

I yelled in, "Fayette County sheriff's office,

is anyone in there?"

There's no response.

I looked over at the bed.

There was a large bloodstain on the bed.

And I seen a lady laying between the bed and the wall.

A lot of blood.

That point, I walked back out, went back to my cruiser, got on

the radio, called for other assistance.

And an ambulance,

I'm trying to keep Mr. Flippo calm until

I can get medical attention for him.

Once the ambulance got there, one attendant took care

of Mr. Flippo.

And me and the other ambulance attendant went over

and checked his wife.

Michael Flippo's wife, Cheryl Flippo, was deceased.

You never think anything like this will happen.

She was a beautiful person, and she brought joy

to many people and to us.

We grew up in southern West Virginia.

There was seven of us children.

We lived in a little coal mining community

that had like, 22 houses.

We went to church about every Sunday.

Cheryl, as far back as I can remember, she always was very

devoutly religious.

When we reached high school, thinking about your future

and what you want to be, she prayed for the Lord's

direction and she felt the Lord told her she should be

a minister's wife.

Michael was in college studying to go into the ministry.

So when Cheryl and Mike were introduced, Cheryl was very

interested because she felt the Lord works in

wonderful ways.

When Cheryl and Mike got married, Cheryl was 19,

and Michael was a few years older.

She glowed. She was so happy.

Cheryl and Mike had been living in Nitro, West Virginia,

for about 15 years.

The kings of the army, they flee...

Michael Flippo was a pastor at a Church of God in Nitro.

He was a typical Church of God minister.

He spoke in tongues. He did his altar calls.

Cheryl absolutely took her role as a pastor's wife

extremely seriously.

She felt that they were like a couple in their ministry,

as well as a couple in their marriage.

She was constantly doing things for the church, for people

in the church.

She had lots of roles in the church.

She was part of the women's group.

She was youth leader, Sunday school teacher.

I mean, she did all different kinds of roles that Michael

needed her to fill, and Cheryl loved those things.

They was always busy going to church, going to hospitals,

and going to people's houses.

Michael said that they were just riding around.

And on the spur of the moment, they decided that they would

like to spend the night at Babcock, where they could have

a romantic evening.

Michael Flippo rented Cabin 13 in Babcock State Park.

Babcock State Park is almost all woods.

I think many people would go to Babcock for seclusion.

They have hiking trails and cabins that are built along

the creek that runs through there.

It's very quiet.

Normally, not a whole lot goes on at nighttime.

When I first got there, I met up with Sergeant Bryant,

and he gave me a brief rundown of meeting Flippo.

The police had to tell him that his wife was dead.

He was sad and grieving, but they still had to ask him

questions as they were moving forward with the investigation.

Michael Flippo was confused, incoherent at times.

The statement that he gave was they had a pleasant evening

eating ice cream and eating snacks.

Then they retired for the evening.

He stated that this intruder had broke into the cabin

while he and Cheryl were sleeping

and attacked them both.

In her final moments of life,

how much fear she must have suffered at that point.

Michael Flippo told us this intruder just hit him in

the middle of the night.

And while he was knocked down on the floor,

the intruder got on his legs

to hold him down, facing him, and took a knife,

cutting his legs.

He was unconscious for a period of time.

Then when he came to, he went over,

he checked his wife.

He says he put his head down on his wife's chest and he could

hear her heartbeat.

He had told me he couldn't find a cell phone.

So he ran out the door and he ran to use

the pay phone at headquarters.

It was obvious what had happened to her.

What wasn't obvious was who did it.

And that is the thing that we have to find out.

I left Garland with the house, let him process it.

Early morning hours, next morning,

the area was searched.

Babcock State Park is huge.

Most of the park is wooded.

The police start looking for that someone to check to see if

he was out there.

I placed a officer up at the mouth of the road, so if

anybody left the area, we'd know about it.

Every camp was checked.

We went to the cabin, talked to the individual that was there,

asked them if they heard anything, told them to stay

inside the cabin until somebody says it's OK to come out.

No one who was near Cabin 13 heard or saw anything.

We was trying to collect evidence as quickly

as possible.

I obtained the license plate and had a registration check

for the Camaro.

Now we wanted to start processing the crime scene

before we did anything.

There was a table with various items on it.

Cheryl's purse was there. A briefcase was there.

There was a bloody fingerprint that was discovered in

the bathroom window on the inside roll of

the duct tape.

It appeared that there was a real serious struggle

going on there.

You could see the blood splatter on the wall.

Various items turned over.

The bedding had been pulled down to the foot of the bed.

As Garland Burke processed the whole scene, he did find

a piece of wood that he believed was

the murder weapon.

Cheryl Flippo had taken a severe beating.

To think that someone could mutilate a human body

like that.

It's hard to forget.

I drove up to my mom's because my kids were staying there.

And when I opened the door, I heard Pamela screaming.

Cheryl's son had called and said that Cheryl was dead,

that she had been murdered.

And I was like...

...shocked.

Cheryl's dead,

and Michael is in the hospital.

I just remember saying, "Somebody killed her."

"Somebody killed her."

Really, somebody killed her.

I just could not,

could not fathom it, that someone had actually,

actually killed her.

My immediate reaction was to think that this had to be

a mistake, that, I mean, who would do that to Cheryl?

I would have thought she would have been the last person that

anyone would want to hurt, period.

Flippo was being treated at the hospital.

There was a small wound to his forehead and he got struck

in the back of the head and some cuts on his leg,

very, very minor,

so he got released from the hospital.

He was transported to the Sheriff's Department,

where they performed a more in-depth interview.

When he was questioned about who could do this to you,

Michael Flippo appeared scared.

He said someone was communicating threats to him.

He said, "Somebody's stalking me."

The stalker was in and out of their lives.

And now he was back.

Many years before Cheryl's murder, Michael Flippo had made

several reports concerning this alleged stalker.

Cheryl called to tell us that they thought somebody was

following Michael,

and had threatened him.

We all knew that there was somebody doing some strange

things around their house.

The stalker was even entering his house...

and leaving notes taped in various locations.

The notes were made from cutting letters out of

magazines and gluing them on paper.

Cheryl would come home

and find a note someplace.

And it would say, you know, "I'm watching you,

I'm after you, I'm going to get you," and stuff like that.

The notes were very brief, but they indicated that someone

was trying to hurt them.

The idea that the stalker could come into their home

and do that and disappear, that was very scary.

I do remember telling Cheryl, you guys should not be alone.

It seems like when you're alone, that's when

you're more at risk.

Cheryl did at one point tell her friend, "I believe

somebody's trying to kill me."

We also learned about an incident

at the church in Nitro.

Michael had been in the church.

And right after he left, the church caught fire.

The thought was the stalker was in there, and the stalker was

the one that set the fire.

They were very scared.

Cheryl didn't feel safe.

The FBI got involved, and the house was staked out.

The Nitro police took this very seriously, and I know that

they were at that home and the church on several occasions.

Michael began to tell his church family,

Cheryl, and the Nitro police that he was once again

being stalked.

He reported to the police that among the many things that

would indicate the stalker was there, was this note that said,

"April showers bring May flowers to your grave."

Most of the congregation had a plan to protect them,

men from the church would come in and stay with Michael

and Cheryl to make sure that nothing happened.

Michael said the stalker left a message on the answering

machine saying, "I tried to kill you eight years ago and failed,

but I won't this time."

Was he the one that went into that cabin

to commit this heinous crime?

We had been at the cabin all day.

It took so long to process

the crime scene,

We want to preserve and to collect evidence

slowly and meticulously.

There was a briefcase laying on the table.

There was some papers in there that had Michael Flippo's name

and address on there.

There was an envelope that appeared to have photos in it.

There was a male subject in the photos that appeared to be

in various stages of undress.

The man was standing by a car, taking off his pants.

The police have no idea who this man is in those

pictures, and no idea of his relationship

to the Flippos.

We went to Nitro to talk to the members of the church.

The members of the congregation were very leery about talking

to law enforcement.

They loved their pastor. They loved their pastor's wife.

The people of the church felt loyal to the Flippos.

We actually rented a motel to interview

the ones that would cooperate, but would only come

in the early morning hours of darkness

so that they could keep from being seen.

When we interviewed some of the congregants,

we determined the person in the photograph was

an individual by the name of Joel.

Joel was a friend of Michael Flippo's.

He was a young adult. I believe he was 25 years old.

I knew a little about Joel.

Michael was trying to counsel him

and provide spiritual guidance.

Michael started hanging out with Joel quite a bit.

He had been trying to work out some kind of land deal with

Joel, and they were going to go into some kind of

business together. Cheryl was very anxious.

She just seemed stressed.

She had her reservations about it.

I don't think she ever really trusted Joel.

One particular couple informed us about the close relationship

that Joel and Michael Flippo had developed.

They said that strange things were happening in church

and that Joel had even started occupying the seat that

Cheryl Flippo normally occupied in church.

That made her uncomfortable.

She didn't understand that.

Michael was gone a lot.

And she seemed extra nervous about why he was gone.

We learned through the investigation that Michael

Flippo and Joel had went to a ski resort.

They were together for the weekend

and spent the night together in one room.

I'm sure a lot of Michael's behavior disturbed her.

And I'm sure her gut was telling her

things weren't right.

When the stalker thing got really bad, she also told me

that Joel was staying in their house.

I said, "Cheryl, why would Joel be staying in your house?

I know you have some concerns about him."

And she said, "Michael brought him into the house because

he was an expert with a gun."

So that would offer them some protection if

somebody tried to harm them.

They found Michael Flippo's diaries on the computer at

Flippo's church.

Several years earlier, a member of the congregation

had installed the computer at the church.

And Flippo asked him to include a journal program so

the congregant knew the diary existed.

And he went to find it.

Flippo talks about men and his frustrations

about his sexuality.

In his diary, he says, "I love Joel."

He also says, "I'm not a homosexual,

"but I feel like I would like to have

a man put his arms around me."

And for us, that was...

...pretty shocking.

We were like, "What?" Just mind-blown, "What?"

We thought we knew Michael.

The member of the church was pretty disturbed

when he read it.

And he gave it to the investigators.

It kind of seems like he was living a double life.

So we wanted to get as much information about

the marriage as possible.

Inside Cheryl's Bible, which was located inside

the cabin, was a letter that had been written to

Michael Flippo.

In Cheryl's letters, she was clearly

expressing frustration.

She said something like, "I'm so tired of going to bed punished."

She said, "I do love you, but I hate this competition

that you've created."

And one of the things he said in the letters too is,

"Why can't I have a friend?"

His idea that he would have to have this friendship in secret

didn't sit well with him at all.

It's clear from her letters she wanted him to put

her above Joel.

But she didn't feel like that's what Michael was doing.

And then the results from the registration check made on

the license plate for the Camaro came back

registered to Joel.

It was becoming pretty clear that the police had serious

questions about the relationship between

the two men.

So they called Joel to come and speak to them.

Joel denied that he had any involvement with the murder.

He clearly stated it was his car, but he was not there.

And he said that Flippo was threatened by a stalker

and wanted to get away.

So he volunteered to give his red Camaro to the couple.

Joel did say to the police that on April 27th, just a few days

before the murder, he and Flippo visited

Babcock State Park

and just drove around.

He's the one that told Flippo,

"Get Cabin 13."

He had been to that park many times since he was a kid.

He liked the park very much.

Joel had always wanted to be baptized at this park.

So they found a spot where they could pull over

and do this baptism.

Joel explained that those photos record the time after

the baptism, changing from wet clothes into dry clothes,

and that Flippo took the pictures to capture

a happy moment.

Joel said he and Michael Flippo were absolutely just friends.

And when he was asked about the marriage, he thought that

Flippo and his wife had a good marriage.

The police were trying to figure out, was it Joel?

Is he telling the truth?

When he was questioned again, Flippo said that he had

borrowed Joel's car to be in somewhat of a disguise so that

the stalker couldn't follow him.

Every time that police asked Michael Flippo who the murderer

would have been, he continued to say

it was the stalker.

He could never describe the stalker.

He can't give a physical description.

We were beginning to be suspicious of what

had happened, so we wanted to see the cabin.

It was really kind of a spooky place,

just eerie and so isolated.

I felt Cheryl.

I felt Cheryl's presence.

I remember sitting down at a table that was there,

and I could feel her just wash over me.

Just was one of the worst feelings you could ever get,

walking in there and knowing that that's the last thing that

she ever saw was inside of that cabin.

It was brutal.

Now we wanted to go back and look at the photographs in

case we missed something with the naked eye.

At first impression, the attack occurred in the bed.

But when I looked at the blood pool on the floor,

you can see where something had been dragged through the blood.

It seemed like someone picked up a pillow, sopped it up with

the blood on the floor, and put it on the bed.

Someone was trying to make it look like Mrs. Flippo died in

the bed instead of on the floor.

When you're looking at the rocking chair turned over,

it would give the impression that there was a struggle.

You start looking closely, there was clothing neatly

stacked underneath the rocking chair.

Then I noticed that footprints were very evident at the cabin.

It was extremely rainy that night.

If you got off the walkway at all, you got mud on your feet.

You could see Charlie Bryant's footprints and the footprints

of the medic that was going in.

So you're looking then, and you're thinking, where is

this third person?

In my opinion, Michael Flippo couldn't describe this stalker

because there was no stalker involved.

This was a staged crime scene.

It started becoming evident at that point

that Michael Flippo was no longer a victim,

but he was a suspect.

When Officer Burke looked back at the church fire several

years earlier, he learned the fire chief

suspected it was arson from the beginning.

I think he learned that you can get money from insurance.

He kept saying they needed a new church,

they needed a new church, and that old church burnt down

and they got a brand new church.

I mean, it's too coincidental. Burn, burn, burn, burn, burn.

Our investigation also revealed a background of

embezzling money.

Just before the murder, there was a child

who desperately needed a liver and pancreas transplant.

Everybody rallied around this family.

And ultimately, they raised almost $90,000.

Flippo opened an account for the child with only

his name on it, and he was dipping into that account.

There was around $12,000 missing.

Flippo took that money, and he was never held

to account.

He always liked expensive things, always liked to

impress people. It had always been about money.

Cheryl was determined that they would live with a budget

and save money for their retirement,

which was not Michael's plan.

We discovered a life insurance policy had been taken out.

He had made this life insurance policy, making himself

the sole beneficiary.

And if Cheryl would die, he would get $100,000.

The insurance policy was taken out in the name of

Cheryl Flippo on March 1st.

And it went into effect April 1st.

The pieces of the puzzle started coming together.

His story didn't add up.

He did this.

We actually got a search warrant to have

his body examined.

So we took Michael Flippo to the medical examiner.

He checked the wounds, and the way the striations were

on his leg,

they were self-inflicted in this case.

The curve of the wound is one of the things you look at.

And from observing the wounds on his leg, we could determine

the wounds self-inflicted.

And then the results from the bloody thumbprint on

the duct tape came back matched to Michael Flippo.

By that point, investigators believed they had

a complete picture of what led to her murder.

On April 27th, after Joel and Michael visited

Babcock State Park, Flippo reserved Cabin 13.

He brought her to Cabin 13 because it was a secluded area.

You could do about anything, and nobody'd know about it.

What I think occurred was that Cheryl and Michael had laid

down in her mind to go to sleep and have a restful evening.

And Michael started striking her with a piece of firewood.

I can't imagine what went through her head at that point.

It's the worst kind of betrayal.

The scene was made to look like the stalker came in and had

a big struggle with Michael Flippo and harmed him.

He fled the scene.

He made his cover story that removed him from any guilt.

The day before Cheryl Flippo's funeral,

We went to Nitro and arrested Flippo.

That was a very satisfying moment to me.

Michael Flippo was charged with the first-degree murder

of his wife.

You fought for justice for her.

You wouldn't have been able to live without justice for her.

But it didn't make the pain go away.

We never got a confession.

We never heard anything other than the fabrication

he told us up front.

We did debate whether or not anybody else was involved.

But when we sat and listened to Garland Burke tell us that

he was at that cabin for five, six, seven days, he could not

find a molecule or a hair sample or a blood spatter

or anything that did not belong to those two people.

The only piece of evidence that even connected Joel was

the use of his car

that Michael Flippo had driven to Babcock.

I thought I was good in judging people.

And to look back and see all these clues that I missed,

that I just didn't see,

there was no stalker.

Michael was the stalker.

Every time Michael would get into trouble, he would say

the stalker was after him.

It was like his ace in the hole, you might say.

For a preacher, I think he was very devious.

He betrayed all those people, not just us and her

and his family.

He betrayed all those people that he supposedly was

ministering to.

In my mind, you know, it's like she paid the price

for his sins, and how is that right?

Cheryl was our angel on Earth.

She wasn't perfect,

but she was our angel on earth.

She was the heart of our family.

So to lose that, for us, was

insurmountable.

I feel the pain as much today as I did

in 1996.

We had to move on.

We did our own things.

It was extremely hard

to do it without her.

It was for me.

Life goes on

for us.

It will never be the same,

but at least you have the solace of knowing that

he'll never be able to do it to anyone else.

We had a cabin on Stump Island.

I'm not saying that evil things were happening

but it was a creepy, creepy space.

There were rumors galore.

They were concerned that you have a serial killer

in your community.

That cabin holds an awful lot of secrets.