- FEMALE NARRATOR: A cold-blooded murder
off a rural North Carolina highway
sends shockwaves through the community.
- TOM: He was a truly nice guy.
Everybody I know that I've met felt the same way about him.
- NARRATOR: Though leads run slim,
investigators believe this was no random act of violence.
This was personal.
- There was a footprint on the back of his shirt.
Somebody stood over this guy and shot him in the head.
- JERI: Who could have pulled the trigger,
and the big question was why?
Was he tracked there and led to a trap?
- NARRATOR: Their break in the case
comes from an unlikely source.
- CYNTHIA: He was bad, he had a record.
He had an attitude.
- JERI: The front of the envelope said,
"Open only if I die."
- KENNETH: And the policeman said, "We have a suspect."
And she said, "I felt you would be coming to see me soon."
- *
- NARRATOR: For Guilford County's Sheriff's Major
Tom Sheppard,
April 25th, 1991 starts like any other spring morning
in the town of High Point, North Carolina.
- TOM: It was just slightly after eight o'clock.
I'd just gotten to work, then the call came in,
and somebody told me that they had found a body
on the side of the road that they believed to be shot.
- JONATHAN: Some workers
were working in the area that morning.
They found the body and called 911,
and of course we responded.
- NARRATOR: The occurrence is not a common one
for the usually quiet town.
- KENNETH: It's a smaller community. During that time,
I think people left their doors unlocked,
cars unlocked in driveways.
Things have changed a lot since then,
but in High Point, it was relatively safe.
Everybody felt safe.
- NARRATOR: But as Major Tom Sheppard flies down Highway 68
to the scene, things feel anything but safe.
- TOM: I went out there
and, uh, there was already a couple detectives there
and of course four or five patrol officers.
What I saw was a station wagon sitting there,
and I saw the body laying on the- almost in the ditch
just behind the station wagon.
- JERI: He was face down and he had two shots to his head
and a shot to his back.
They don't know who he was 'cause there was no wallet.
- TOM: They ran the license tag on the vehicle,
and it came back to Fred Brown.
- *
- NARRATOR: The identity of the 45-year-old victim
catches Major Sheppard off guard.
- TOM: Well, strangely,
I've known Fred about all my life.
I went to church with him, went to high school with him.
I did not recognize him.
That's the strange thing about it.
This whole case is a tragedy, to be honest with you,
something that should've never happened.
Fred was a truly nice guy.
Everybody I know that I've met felt the same way about him.
- NARRATOR: Born and raised
in nearby Siler City, North Carolina,
Fred Brown was liked by everyone he met.
- TOM: Fred was just one of those guys,
he was just a good guy.
I mean, you know, he never, never gave anybody a problem.
He graduated a year before I did,
and I knew he went to Guilford College,
and I knew he went in the Army after Guilford College.
- NARRATOR: When the tumultuous Vietnam War began,
Fred bravely served his country.
- KENNETH: He talked about the military some
and how he traveled uh, with the military.
- JERI: Fred Brown had gone into the US Army
and he went through Officer Training School, uh,
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
- NARRATOR: There, Fred met the stepdaughter
of his commanding officer, 21-year-old Patricia DeRosa.
- He started dating and got serious pretty quickly.
- NARRATOR: Pat, as she was known to friends and family,
was raised in Oklahoma alongside her two younger sisters,
- AMANDA: Pat never really knew her father.
She was raised by a single mother
and for most of her childhood, they were poor
and struggled to get by.
- NARRATOR: Despite their eight-year age difference,
Pat was especially close to her sister, Sheila.
- JERI: Sheila looked up to, uh, Patricia because
she was her older sister,
But they were extraordinarily different.
Patricia was a, uh, no-nonsense straight shooter
and she was very much of a ethical person.
Sheila, well, she liked to party.
She liked to have a good time.
- NARRATOR: The family finally gained stability
when Pat's mom married an Army man
and the family settled into life at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
- AMANDA: When Edna married Pat's stepfather,
he made good money,
so everything in their life changed.
They didn't have to worry anymore.
- NARRATOR: Pat's life continued to blossom when she began dating
one of her stepfather's soldiers.
24-year-old Fred Brown.
- AMANDA: Fred was smart, steady, reliable, charming.
Pat fell for him right away.
After only six months of dating
Pat and Fred got married in 1969.
- JERI: Patricia Brown grew up poor.
She saw Fred as her white knight
that would take her out of Oklahoma
away from that world.
- AMANDA: Pat was a devoted Army wife.
She supported her husband
through many different assignments
to different countries, different states.
- *
- NARRATOR: Amid the travels, moves and deployments,
Pat and Fred had a son and a daughter, Sabra and Derek.
And in 1988, when Fred retired from the Army,
the family settled in High Point, North Carolina.
- AMANDA: When they settled down,
Pat became a real estate agent,
and Fred became a professor at the local community college,
and then she went on to teach at another community college.
- NARRATOR: In 1989,
Pat and Fred celebrated 20 years of marriage,
but the joyous occasion was marred
by Pat's declining health.
- JERI: Pat had some, um, had some health problems.
In 1990, she had open-heart surgery.
- KENNETH: It was heart trouble,
blood pressure, she smoked a lot,
so just a combination of things I think brought that on.
- NARRATOR: As she recovered,
Pat went to stay with her mother,
who was now living in Alabama along with Pat's sister Sheila.
- KENNETH: Fred was working full time.
Um, so she went to Alabama to
recuperate from the heart surgery
and be a- be close to family,
be close to her sister and her mother.
Pat stayed in Alabama two or three months.
During that time, it was just Fred looking after the kids.
- NARRATOR: Though she was on the mend physically,
when she returned home,
her mental health went in the opposite direction.
- CYNTHIA: The heart surgery, I think, was a very big deal,
and not only was it a big deal, but it- it left her feeling,
you know, like she was less healthy.
You know, that she was just not gonna be
as healthy as she had been before that.
- NARRATOR: Pat found comfort
in a new but slightly unconventional hobby.
- KENNETH: She had all kind of exotic birds in that house.
That was the first thing I noticed when I walked into
the living room was the big, big bird in a cage
that took up the whole side of the wall in the living room.
- TOM: She had all these exotic birds all over the house.
Was 50, 60, something like that, that she was keeping there.
- AMANDA: Pat just absolutely loved birds.
She enjoyed caring for them, she enjoyed being around them.
It was something that gave her comfort.
It was something that helped her with some of her struggles,
but Fred didn't really share her enthusiasm.
- KENNETH: Fred was definitely annoyed by the birds.
I think the first few was okay,
but every- she continued to get birds,
yes, it was quite annoying to him.
- NARRATOR: Eager to keep the peace,
Fred put up with the birds and did whatever he could
to help Pat recover.
- JERI: Fred Brown wanted to provide for Pat
because she was recovering
when she came back from Alabama in 1990.
He hired housekeepers to keep the house clean
as Pat was recovering.
- AMANDA: Fred just wanted her to be happy and to recover,
so they started doing a renovation in the home
so she could have a room just for her birds.
- KENNTH: She wanted room for all of the birds
and then later on she wanted to add a hot tub,
and I think she wanted to add a privacy fence.
- NARRATOR: But just as the couple began rebuilding
their life together, it all comes crumbling down
on April 25th, 1991.
- JONATHAN:: Mr. Brown was found probably five to seven yards
off the roadway itself.
The area was grassy with some woods around it.
Some area workers, they found the body.
Just as detectives identify Fred's body,
they learned from dispatch that his wife, 43-year-old Pat Brown,
has just filed a missing persons report.
- JONATHAN: His wife and or daughter reported him
missing around 10:00 AM
to the High Point Police Department.
When I got there, the car was there,
and the body had not been moved and the crime scene techs
had gotten there and started their investigation.
He was face down with the wounds to the head
and- and in the back.
- TOM: It looked like a robbery just because
his wallet was missing.
Most people, if it's a random crime
aren't gonna take the wallet.
If they're mad at Fred about something,
they're not gonna take the wallet.
You're just gonna shoot him and go on.
- NARRATOR: Though on the surface,
robbery seems like the potential motive,
details at the scene raise a red flag
to seasoned detectives.
- JONATHAN: There was a footprint on his back.
Obviously, somebody stood over this guy and shot him
with his foot on his back execution style.
Somebody that's robbing somebody doesn't wanna get close.
They're gonna shoot them a distance away,
at maybe, uh, four or five feet.
- NARRATOR: Instead,
the close, precise nature of the injury
suggests one thing to investigators.
- JERI: This looked like this was premeditated.
This looked like it was planned.
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
the devastating news rocks Fred's loved ones.
- JERI: She could not understand why
something like that could happen
to such a loving, dutiful man like her husband.
- *
- NARRATOR: As the morning of April 25th, 1991 unfolds,
investigators in High Point, North Carolina
contemplate what led 45-year-old Fred Brown to be shot to death
in a roadside ditch.
- JERI: What was Fred out there for?
And why did he pull off the side of the road?
Was he helping somebody?
Was he tracked there and led to a trap?
- JONATHAN: The homicide occurred outside the city limits
of High Point in Guilford, you know,
in rural Guilford County.
Given the location and with the wounds to the head
and- and in the back, it kind of looks calculated.
- NARRATOR: As investigators look closer,
evidence is adding up to a far more personal crime.
With little more to go on from the crime scene,
Fred's body is sent to the coroner
for a thorough autopsy.
- JERI: They were looking everywhere for clues
for something to figure out how this happened.
- NARRATOR: As they wrap up the scene,
detectives begin to question neighbors to see if anyone saw
anything suspicious the night before.
- TOM: There weren't a lot of neighbors out
in that area at that time, but there was a witness
and came forward and was driving on south on 68, Highway 68,
and she said that she saw the two vehicles over there
pulled up front bumper to front bumper.
- JERI: This woman, she saw these two cars,
one with the hood popped up,
and she saw a pair of headlights and she saw two people.
Um, when she told that to authorities,
that got authorities thinking, like,
what was Fred out there for?
Why did he stop?
- TOM: Also, there was one woman that lived, uh, I guess,
east- east of 68 and said she heard some gunshots.
- JONATHAN: There was one shot and then there was a pause
and then sounded like maybe one or two shots right after that,
and she said it was, you know,
between eleven and eleven-thirty during the evening.
I thought, okay, well
that kind of narrows down the timeline a little bit.
- NARRATOR: With a timeline starting to develop,
investigators head to Fred's house to break the news
of his death to his wife Pat and teenage daughter, Sabra.
- JONATHAN: That's just basic law enforcement in a homicide.
Uh, you start with the family.
- NARRATOR: As they speak to Fred's loved ones,
investigators pay close attention to their reactions.
- JONATHAN: Are they tearful, are they not tearful?
Is it forced, is it not forced?
You just get a good sense.
- TOM: When you talk to somebody like this
and it's their husband of 20 years,
you're gonna get a visceral reaction from them.
When the detectives talked to Patricia,
she did not act like she was too concerned
with Fred's death,
and that kind of put up a red flag.
- NARRATOR: Though seemingly in shock,
Pat goes on to explain that the previous evening
was no different than most weeknights.
- CYNTHIA: The night of the murder,
Pat was home and then Fred got home from work
around five or so and then Pat had to go
teach a class, I guess, around six-ish.
- JERI: Pat was teaching her real estate classes down at
Randolph Community College,
which is 30 minutes south of High Point.
Sabra had gone to see friends,
and she was out that night as well.
It's around ten or ten thirty, uh, when they came home.
- NARRATOR: Upon their return,
mother and daughter were surprised to find
Fred wasn't home.
- TOM: Fred, a lot of times, would go to the grocery store
and just walk around and buy a few things
and come home,
and originally that's where they thought he was,
at the grocery store.
- NARRATOR: Still, Pat says it was unusual
for him to be out that late.
- CYNTHIA: They immediately felt that there was something wrong
because that it was not like Fred to just not come home.
He might stay at the grocery store
longer than they would want, but he would never stay out,
you know, that long.
- JERI: She stays up four hours trying to find her husband,
hoping he'd come home, hoping for an answer,
hoping for something and she gets nothing.
So she calls High Point Police Department.
- NARRATOR: Investigators ask Pat if there was anyone,
including her, who might want to see Fred harmed.
- Law enforcement wants to know the circumstances surrounding
the person's disappearance: mental state.
had there been any fights in the family?
Had the person been depressed, illnesses?
Had there been any threats made to anybody?
- JERI: Pat told them that they had a wonderful marriage,
an excellent marriage.
They didn't have financial difficulties.
They had two wonderful children.
Everything was great between them
and she could not understand why something like that could happen
to such a loving, dutiful man like her husband, Fred Brown.
- *
- NARRATOR: Despite Pat's lack of emotion,
to detectives, it seems unlikely
that anyone in Fred's immediate family killed him.
- JONATHAN: Talking to the daughter and the wife,
we knew where both of them were.
So, and they had, they had solid alibis
of where they were most of the evening.
- NARRATOR: Investigators also
rule out Fred's oldest son, Derek.
- AMANDA: Derek was away at school that night.
He wasn't anywhere near High Point.
- TOM: If you don't have any idea which direction to go in
and there's no real evidence at the crime scene,
you got a lot of work in front of you.
We didn't have any idea of what could've happened to Fred
and why he was laying out there beside that road.
- NARRATOR: With no leads from Fred's family,
investigators turned to his co-workers
at the community college where he taught economics.
- KENNETH: Everybody on campus was shocked,
and everybody was trying to figure out, you know,
is this family, is it student,
is it somebody that he didn't know?
- NARRATOR: Detectives sit down with Kenneth Vaughn,
Fred's friend and fellow teacher.
- KENNETH: All the faculty, including myself,
the students loved him.
He was just a nice guy, easy to get along with.
He loved to talk.
He didn't know a stranger.
- NARRATOR: But Kenneth says outside of work,
Fred was going through a rough patch.
- KENNETH: Fred was trying to appease Pat
in making the renovations to their house,
even though it was creating a lot more debt than he wanted.
- TOM: They argued consistently about that,
and I think Pat wanted to spend more money than Fred did.
- JERI: They had done a lot of home renovations.
They were living in an upscale High Point neighborhood.
They were stretched thin.
- NARRATOR: According to Fred's close friend
and co-worker Kenneth Vaughn,
the renovations weren't the only thing
Pat was dumping money into.
- TOM: They said there was tension
and the major bone of contention between Fred and Pat
was the birds.
- KENNETH: He saw their life savings going out the window.
- NARRATOR: But according to Kenneth,
the birds were the least of Fred's worries.
- KENNETH: There was a situation where he came to my office
and talked about what he was afraid may happen,
and he just said to me, point-blank,
"I would not be surprised
if Pat didn't get a contract out on me."
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
a haunting statement from their victim
leaves investigators on edge.
- KENNETH: I looked in his eyes
and he said, "They would be better off with me dead."
- NARRATOR: And a cryptic message turns the investigation
on its head.
- CYNTHIA: He was writing letters
that are only to be opened when he was gonna die.
- *
- NARRATOR: Detectives in High Point, North Carolina
have just learned startling details
about Fred Brown's deepest fears.
in the months leading up to his death.
- TOM: Fred believed that, uh, Patricia wanted him killed.
- KENNETH: I looked in his eyes
and I said, "Tell me that you don't believe that."
He said, "No, I do believe that."
And I said, "Why?" He said,
"Because they would be better off with me dead."
- JONATHAN: He told investigators
Fred's wife, Patricia,
was very volatile towards Fred,
and, you know, that- that throws flags up to you.
- NARRATOR: In spite of his fears,
Kenneth tells investigators
Fred wouldn't consider a divorce.
- KENNETH: I felt like it was best maybe
if he could just walk away for a while,
but he wouldn't do it.
He said, "My religion will not allow me to do that.
"I don't believe in divorce.
I'm gonna stay with it."
Kenneth's portrayal of the Brown marriage
is in stark contrast to what Pat told investigators.
- TOM: Patricia said,
"We only spend money that we've actually got."
You know, that kind of thing, but apparently that's a lie.
- NARRATOR: Before confronting Pat with these discrepancies,
detectives continue to reach out to those who knew the couple,
including their former housekeeper.
- KENNETH: After the surgery,
he hired our housekeeper at GTCC to come in
and help look after Pat and clean the house,
take care of things.
My understanding was she left because of the way
Pat was cursing Fred a lot.
- TOM: Everybody said that,
you know, when Patricia would really get mad at him
and yell and scream, Fred never, never argued back.
That's when we started really focusing in on Patricia.
- NARRATOR: After speaking to the housekeeper,
investigators begin formulating a new theory
about what happened to Fred.
- TOM: We knew Patricia didn't kill Fred
'cause she had an alibi.
In my experience of working these homicides,
we've had several where the wife had the husband killed.
You know, every time they've paid somebody
or promised money to somebody.
We just didn't have any idea who.
- NARRATOR: But no matter how much they dig,
investigators cannot prove that Patricia was somehow behind
her husband's murder.
- JONATHAN: You try your best to keep it going,
but unfortunately, the resources aren't there.
- NARRATOR: The medical examiner's autopsy findings
offer little help.
- CYNTHIA: There was absolutely no indication of who was
actually out there with a gun on six, sixty-eight that night.
And so, once you just don't have a lead,
then it just stop.
- TOM: It did go cold because of that
after about six months, something like that.
- NARRATOR: As the investigation fizzles,
Pat Brown moves forward with her life.
- JERI: The HR director said that Pat Brown
got really angry about how much money
that the- the life insurance through GTCC
that she would receive.
- KENNETH: She got some insurance.
Of course she got the last year's pay
from this- the state of North Carolina,
and there was some land that belonged to the family
that she sold. So, she ended up with quite a bit.
- *
- NARRATOR: With her children
now grown up and out of the house,
Pat decides it's time for a change of scenery herself.
- TOM: After the estate was settled,
she took all the money and went back to Alabama,
a couple hundred thousand, probably.
- JERI: She had wanted to move closer to her mom.
She ended up buying, um, a doublewide trailer
and two single wide trailers.
- NARRATOR: In her new home, Pat's passion for exotic birds
hatches into a whole new lifestyle.
- JERI: She started a business that she called Sassy's Pets,
where she sold kittens and exotic birds.
- AMANDA: It seemed like Pat was really living her dream
and putting the murder investigation behind her.
- NARRATOR: As time ticks by,
Fred's friends and family are exasperated
by the lack of justice.
- KENNETH: They came back out and, uh,
interviewed my colleagues again
just to see if there's any other information
or help because it was a cold case.
None of us could, uh, offer anything other than
what we offered initially.
It was frustrating.
I mean, it had been three years,
and we were waiting for something to happen,
some type of information or whatever
that would bring this to fruition.
We wanted closure.
- JONATHAN: Three or four years after the homicide.
Um, I wouldn't say that is a cold, cold case,
but it's not in the forefront.
During that period,
we didn't have anybody looking at
cold cases on a regular basis.
- TOM: What happens is, on a homicide,
if anybody calls with the information,
they start working on it again.
But nobody ever called in this case
until the Reading Police Department called.
- *
- NARRATOR: On July 13th, 1994,
three years since Fred's brutal murder,
Detective Jonathan Jacobs gets an unusual call
from an investigator in Reading, Pennsylvania,
that heats up the case once more.
- JONATHAN: I remember getting a call in the morning.
An officer from Pennsylvania wanting to know about
if we had had a homicide in High Point
three or four years ago on Highway 68.
- NARRATOR: According to the Reading Police Department,
a woman had recently found two letters left behind
by her father, Leroy Wentzel.
- JONATHAN: On the outside of the envelopes,
it said, "To be opened only when I die."
- NARRATOR: Overcome with curiosity,
the woman opened the letter and was shocked by its contents.
- It bothered her horribly,
so she called the Reading, Pennsylvania Police Department.
- AMANDA: They read it and they find a
really dark confession.
- TOM: Leroy basically confessed to killing Fred Brown,
told how he did it.
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
investigators learn the chilling tale
of Fred's final moments from the killer himself.
- JONATHAN: He pulled the gun out
and said, "You and I need to take a walk."
- NARRATOR: And a deadly plan takes shape.
- JONATHAN: He took responsibility for the killing,
but also says she's the one behind it all.
This was all about her wanting him dead.
- TOM: If you're gonna hire somebody to kill somebody,
you probably ought to pay him what you promised.
- NARRATOR: July 1994, almost three years after
Fred Brown was gunned down on a North Carolina roadside,
police in Pennsylvania receive a written confession
to his murder penned by a man named Leroy Wentzel.
- JERI: It's a confession in his own handwriting.
From a detective's standpoint, you've got gold in your hands.
- NARRATOR: Pennsylvania authorities immediately contact
investigators in High Point to relay this information.
- JONATHAN: They told me that they had somebody
that was in custody.
He was laying claim that he had killed somebody
down here in Guilford County.
I said okay, and took down the information,
um, made a few phone calls.
I flew up to Reading, Pennsylvania,
and we went and visited Leroy in the jail and interviewed him.
They picked him up on some child support warrants
and had him in a jail.
Leroy is, you know, he's not a big man at all.
You know, he's short and got this long white beard.
- JERI: Leroy stood 5'3", 145 pounds.
He was covered with tattoos
and his nickname was Short Circuit
because he had a temper.
- CYNTHIA: He was bad, he had a record.
He, um, had an attitude.
- NARRATOR: Despite his rap sheet,
Leroy's cooperative with investigators,
and quickly reveals a stunning connection
to Fred's case.
- JERI: Leroy Wentzel been married seven times.
He was the ex-husband of Sheila Wentzel,
and Sheila was the younger sister of Pat Brown,
the wife of Fred Brown.
- AMANDA: Leroy explains that back in 1990,
Pat had moved to Alabama to stay with her mother
to recover from open heart surgery,
and he and Sheila were still married at the time
and they lived nearby.
- Pat would talk about Fred, how she was angry at Fred,
and how Fred was such a tightwad.
- *
- NARRATOR: According to Leroy,
one evening about a year before the murder,
a phone call between the two sisters
set a plan in motion.
- CYNTHIA: She had asked Sheila if Sheila knew somebody
to kill Fred and then that Sheila talked to Leroy
and Leroy said, "Well, I'll do it."
- JONATHAN: Fred and Leroy,
they had met only just a few times,
- Patricia said she would give him $30,000 to kill Fred.
- NARRATOR: Pat suggested the payment would come
after the murder once she collected
what she thought would be a big payday.
- KENNETH: She thought she was gonna get
a $250,000 life insurance policy.
- JERI: Sheila hangs up the phone, turns her husband,
who she believes had murdered a man in the past,
and said, "Hey Leroy, Pat, my sister will pay you 30K
"if you knock off Fred.
You up to that?"
And of course, Leroy, he said yes.
- NARRATOR: According to Leroy,
the three revisited the idea for almost a year.
Then, in April of 1991,
Pat was back in North Carolina and ready to follow through.
- JERI: Leroy got a call from Pat again and said,
"Hey, listen, April 24th, 1991 is a great time.
"I'm gonna be teaching class.
"Why don't you come up to North Carolina then
"and like, your car breaks down and that you call Fred for help,
and that he comes and that you kill him there?"
- JONATHAN: He drove up here to High Point.
Leroy brought with him the .22.
- CYNTHIA: Pat had to go teach a class around six-ish
and Sabra had to go somewhere too.
And so for a few hours of the evening,
Fred was the only one that would've been home,
and Sabra and Pat were both gone.
- NARRATOR: At 9:30 PM,
Leroy says he phoned the Brown residence.
- JONATHAN: He said, "I've broken down
on- on the highway not far from you,"
and of course Fred said,
"Well, I'll come out there and help you."
- JERI: Leroy pulls on Gallimore Dairy Road
and he waits on Fred.
- JONATHAN: He removed the coil from his car.
Fred and Leroy went to the front of Leroy's car
and looked under the hood.
Leroy went to the backseat of the car,
got the gun, and pulled the gun out and said,
"You and I need to take a walk."
- JERI: Basically tells Fred that your wife wants you dead.
- JONATHAN: Fred begged for his life,
and Fred turned and started running,
and Leroy shot him in the back and he went down face first.
- TOM: Leroy said he went up to him
and shot him twice more in the head.
- JONATHAN: God, it was compelling, it was cold.
Leroy got back in his car,
fixed the coil, put the hood down
and drove up just a little ways and forgot that he had supposed
to make it look like a robbery.
He walked back, got the wallet out of Fred's pants,
got back in his car and drove off down to Alabama,
throwing the wallet out on the way.
- JERI: Leroy had stopped at a service station
with some payphone to call Pat to tell her that
he had shot Fred Brown on Gallimore Dairy Road
and left him for dead.
Then when they looked at Pat Brown's phone records,
she'd received a call from somewhere in Alabama
in the middle of the night.
- JONATHAN: At some later point, a couple of days later,
he threw the .22 into the Coosa River.
- TOM: His description of the crime scene
was exactly the way it was.
Leroy had already told two people
he'd written the two letters. That's what was in the letter.
- *
- NARRATOR: While Leroy owns up to his role in the plot,
he doubles down on the crime's true mastermind.
- JONATHAN: He took responsibility for the killing,
but also said that Tricia,
she's the one behind it all.
This was all about her wanting him dead
and kept hounding them to do it.
- KENNETH: Fred was killed for no reason other than
somebody was greedy and wanted some money.
- AMANDA: Without the money
and with Fred still in the picture,
Pat couldn't keep her exotic birds
and she couldn't have the lifestyle that
she had envisioned for herself.
- *
- NARRATOR: Of course, Leroy confesses
he had a similar motive.
- JONATHAN: He was gonna get 30,000 bucks.
Of course, he never got that, anywhere close to that,
and they kept asking, and she kept saying,
"I don't have it, I don't have it,
I don't have it."
That's, you know, another reason this came to light 'cause
Patricia never paid him.
- TOM: If you're gonna hire somebody to kill somebody,
you probably ought to pay him what you promised.
- AMANDA: Leroy's story is compelling for sure,
but investigators have to figure out
if he's telling the truth or if he's trying to get revenge
on his ex-wife and maybe even Pat.
- CYNTHIA: He hated Sheila and he hated Pat.
Why not take out the two people that you're mad at?
- JERI: They asked him, "Why'd you write that letter?"
It wasn't 'cause he had a conscience, that he felt bad.
He wrote the letter because he didn't get paid.
- *
- NARRATOR: After speaking with Leroy,
detectives break down his story
looking for proof that he's telling the truth.
- JONATHAN: There were phone records and it did show
correspondence between Patricia and Sheila
on the dates and times that Leroy said.
- JERI: They also found that Leroy Wentzel had indeed
been there for the simple reason that he caught-
he got caught for a traffic ticket.
These were all pieces to a jigsaw puzzle
that started to come together.
- *
- NARRATOR: On July 21st, 1994,
investigators finally have enough evidence
to obtain arrest warrants for Sheila and Pat.
- KENNETH: Pat got a phone call and the policeman said,
"We have a suspect,
"the murder of, uh, your husband Fred,
and it's Leroy Wentzel."
And then later on they knocked on her door,
and she said uh, "I felt you would be
coming to see me soon."
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
while one sister stays quiet, the other sings like a bird.
- JERI: But she told the detectives that,
yes, she was involved.
- KENNETH: I always thought that she had a hand in it some way.
- NARRATOR: And Leroy brings a courtroom to its knees.
- JERI: He held out his hands like this and they were shaking.
You could drop a pin in that courtroom.
- NARRATOR: By the summer of 1994
sisters Pat Brown and Sheila Wentzel
are in custody,
both accused of conspiring with Sheila's ex-husband,
Leroy Wentzel, to murder
Pat's husband, Fred Brown, in 1991.
- KENNETH: I felt a lot of relief
when they arrested Pat because deep down,
I always thought that she had a hand in it
some way or another.
- NARRATOR: Now in custody,
Pat maintains her innocence and refuses to give a statement.
But her sister, Sheila, doesn't follow suit.
- JONATHAN: She knew everything.
She knew everything and readily admitted it.
- JERI: Sheila was gonna testify for the prosecution
to say that her sister had killed her husband for money.
- NARRATOR: When Pat's trial begins in May of 1995,
both Sheila and Leroy take the stand against her.
But it's Leroy who becomes an unlikely courtroom celebrity.
- JERI: Leroy Wentzel walks in the courtroom.
This is Short Circuit,
a man who stood 5'3", 145 pounds soaking wet.
He came in with a beard down to here,
hair down to the middle of his back.
He had tattoos on both arms.
I remember when he walked in, there was, like, a gasp
in the courtroom just because of what he looked like.
- NARRATOR: The judge orders Leroy to reenact the shooting
using a stapler as a gun.
- JERI: He held out his hands like this and they were shaking.
You could drop a pin in that courtroom,
and it was quiet.
- CYNTHIA: It was just so emotionally charged
in the courtroom.
- NARRATOR: While Leroy holds the courtroom's attention,
it's Pat's story that everyone is eager to hear.
- AMANDA: Her attorneys argued that Sheila and Leroy
are the ones who are looking for a payday, not Pat.
- CYNTHIA: Leroy got a sense
from when Pat was visiting her mom
that Pat and Fred had money, that they were well off,
and so Leroy saw them as a target.
- *
- NARRATOR: The defense claims the husband and wife
intended to extort money from Fred by accusing him
of having an affair.
- CYNTHIA: Our defense was that
Leroy was trying to blackmail Fred
and our position was that the blackmail was accusing Fred
of having an affair and that he would disclose.
- JERI: They wanted hush money.
They said, "If you don't give us so much money, you know,
we're gonna tell, uh, Pat about your affair.
And you better pay up."
- CYNTHIA: Leroy tries to get Fred to pay him money,
and instead Fred says no and turns and runs,
and Leroy, maybe not even thinking he's gonna kill Fred,
but just reacts and he kills Fred.
- TOM: The rumor that Fred was having an affair
with another lady is, uh, something we heard.
It was based on the fact that when Pat was in the hospital
with heart surgery that a female came up
and stayed with Fred,
and we looked into and we located her,
and there was nothing to it.
That woman didn't have anything to do with Fred
other than just a friend of the family.
That was stuff that Pat's defense attorneys
were trying to throw out there, but it's just wasn't true.
- NARRATOR: In closing arguments,
the prosecution urges the jury to see through the lies
and convict the true mastermind of this murder, Patricia Brown.
- JONATHAN: The defense did a, you know, a really good job.
You never know what a panel of 12 people are gonna do.
- NARRATOR: For two long days,
the jury deliberates over the evidence.
- CYNTHIA: When a jury is out a long time,
that's more, more likely to be a not guilty verdict,
but not in this case.
- TOM: Patricia was found guilty of first degree murder,
and then of course they came back
and gave her life in prison.
- NARRATOR: In 2002,
less than seven years into her sentence,
53-year-old Patricia Brown dies in prison.
- CYNTHIA: Her health was such that we knew
she probably wasn't gonna last long in jail.
She did actually pass away not terribly long
after the conviction.
- NARRATOR: Meanwhile, both Leroy and Sheila
pay the price for their roles in the murder.
- JERI: Both Sheila Wentzel and Leroy Wentzel,
they pled guilty.
They pled guilty to second degree murder.
Leroy got life plus 50 years.
Sheila, his ex-wife, got 50 years.
- CYNTHIA: The death penalty was off the table for Leroy
and that Sheila got a sentence
where she had some hope of getting out before she died,
and so those were the two things that they got.
- TOM: The tragedy of this case is destroying two families
over nothing and over a bunch of birds and some real estate debt.
- *
- NARRATOR: While Pat may have never admitted her guilt,
it's clear that in the end, she clipped her own wings.
- JERI: Maybe that was the time when she snapped.
Maybe that was the time that she came from
a loving mother to a murderer.
- CYNTHIA: Fred should be remembered
as a good, decent man.
I mean, he was living a good honest life
with his wife and his kids,
just going through life like we all do.
- KENNETH: His legacy was the type of person he was that
he would do anything in the world for you.
He loved what he was doing,
he loved his students, he loved his family.
Fred was a great guy, easygoing, well-liked.
It's just a terrible shame to lose somebody like that
in that manner.
- *