- FEMALE NARRATOR: A disappearance in a small Texas
town leaves investigators puzzled.
- JERRY DURAN: He wouldn't have just ran off.
Too honorable for something like that.
He wouldn't have made a choice like that just to run.
- NARRATOR: But when a horrific
discovery washes ashore on a nearby lake,
the peace of this tight knit community is shaken to its core.
- KEVIN KETCHUM: It wasn't a rough cut like you would see
with an animal attack or an accidental dismemberment.
This was a straight, clean cut all the way through.
- NARRATOR: As the investigation begins,
the victim's past suggests a sinister motive.
- NARRATOR: When the pieces fall into place,
a grisly crime will take shape.
- He had been shot in the head twice
with a. 22 caliber weapon.
- NARRATOR: Investigators are left fighting for justice
until the very end.
- JEFF CRILLEY: So much of the case has loose ends,
and juries don't like loose ends.
- [theme music]
- NARRATOR: The charming town of Ennis, Texas,
is the picture of Southern hospitality.
- JEFF: Ennis is one of those towns where the kid
winning the 4H contest can make the front page of the paper.
I used to drive with one hand on the wheel
because I would always be waving to people.
- NARRATOR: But on February 18, 2008, a dark cloud hovers over
peaceful Ennis when 41-year-old Gloria Aiken calls 911 to report
the disappearance of her partner of ten years, George Frazier.
- LINDY BEATY: Gloria reported him missing.
The last time she had seen him
was the night before, which was February 17th of 2008.
And then she just didn't see him again and had a bad feeling.
- JEFF: She called the hospitals,
checked everywhere, and he was nowhere to be found.
- NARRATOR: Dispatch quickly sends an officer
to George and Gloria's home to file an official report.
- She said he left to go see a friend and never came back.
- NARRATOR: According to Gloria,
George has never not returned home, especially on a day he's
supposed to watch the couple's teenage daughter.
- Gloria called me and she asked me if I had heard from him,
and I had said, "No, I haven't heard from him."
And then she said he didn't come home.
And then she was like, she's starting to worry.
He would never leave his daughters,
because he was the role of taking care of the kids.
- LINDY: We want to look at everything
and start looking at potential people
that could have had something to do with him being missing.
- NARRATOR: George Frazier was
born in Brooklyn, New York in 1965.
Joyous and charismatic,
George quickly grew into the family comedian.
- He was a big guy, but he was more like a humble type person.
Like, "Hello, how are you doing?"
Never seen him mad. Never seen him angry.
George was just like a basic, everyday guy.
- NARRATOR: Despite George's sunny outlook,
Brooklyn in the 1960s wasn't an easy place to grow up.
- IASIA ABERASTURI: This is just an awful, crazy time
in Brooklyn. The crack just hit the streets.
Everybody was getting strung out on this crack.
- JEFF: George learned some street hustle.
He knew how to navigate
the back alleys of Brooklyn in order to survive.
- I did get that impression, he didn't have to work.
I think he might have some criminal activity that gained
him his money, and he liked his money.
He just didn't like spending it.
- NARRATOR: George's life was forever changed
when he laid eyes on single mother of two,
31-year-old Gloria Aiken.
- JEFF: She's a single mom similar upbringing,
probably a challenging childhood, much like George's.
- IASIA: She did grow up poor sharing clothes with her family.
She has three brothers and two sisters.
They were not close.
- NARRATOR: At the age of 18,
Gloria had her first child, a little girl named Erica.
But being a teen parent wasn't easy
for Gloria or Erica's father.
- IASIA My uncle's a little bit older than her.
They had the baby and they got
an apartment and they were staying with each other
and started to fight, and she got rid of him.
- NARRATOR: Seven years later,
in 1992, Gloria gave birth to a second daughter and worked
around the clock to provide a stable life for her children.
- IASIA: She did hair on the side.
She always had a job and always had a hustle going on.
And she was quite inspirational to me as a kid.
The fact that she was able
to create opportunities for herself.
- NARRATOR: Though her daughters always came first,
Gloria still found ways to treat herself.
- IASIA: She was glamorous to me,
and she was about her money, so to speak.
Her clothes were very, very nice.
Fur coats and big jewelry.
- NARRATOR: Gloria's style garnered the attention of many
young men, including 32- year-old George Frazier.
- Gloria and George, I'm not sure how they met,
but they met after my uncle and Gloria separated.
They're both passionate people and they're both very
opinionated and they don't back down.
They both had the same drive to get money.
They were good together.
They complemented each other to me.
- NARRATOR: In 1998, the couple started dating,
and George took on Gloria's daughters as his own.
- LINDY: They called him dad,
and they seemed to have a pretty good relationship.
- IASIA: I really loved George.
He accepted me like a niece right off the bat.
Gloria worked at the post office while the girls were growing up,
and George kind of stayed with the girls while she worked.
- NARRATOR: After seven years of dating, Gloria and George
decided to leave crime-ridden Brooklyn.
- LINDY: He and Gloria moved
from New York down to Texas, and they just wanted to get away
and come to a completely new place and start over.
- NARRATOR: While the family headed south,
Gloria's oldest daughter took a different route
and joined the military.
- George was proud of her being in the military.
He would always say that he was proud of her.
- NARRATOR: In 2005, the couple moved with their
12-year-old daughter to the small town of Ennis.
- DANIEL REYNA: George had family around, you know,
he's closer to his family,
and that's the reason they moved here.
- JERRY: This little old town, Ennis,
there's not a whole lot of entertainment.
It's a lot more slowed down here than versus in New York.
- NARRATOR: George immediately embraced the slowed down
Southern lifestyle of his new hometown.
- JERRY: I met George on the job in this regional medical center.
He was a temporary, we enjoy what we do.
We hang pictures and we fix things
that are broke for people.
He said he liked Ennis because it was quiet.
He really enjoyed the peace, he said.
- He was just working temporary jobs here and there.
So she seemed to be more of the breadwinner
in the family, and he was more responsible
for taking care of the daily duties.
She had the more stable job,
the more long-term job working at the prison.
- NARRATOR: Off duty from her job at Hutchins State Jail,
Gloria wanted even more
for herself and continued her New York hustle mentality.
- She was working two jobs, if I'm not mistaken.
And then she was also going to school.
- She was enrolled in school in a community college around
here, trying to better herself and move up the ladder.
She was studying anatomy,
physiology, you know, things leading either
to a healthcare or medical background.
- NARRATOR: By 2008, their youngest daughter,
now 15 years old, was enrolled in high school,
and the family was thriving in Texas.
- George wanted to be happy somewhere with Gloria,
and that was it.
- NARRATOR: But when George is reported missing
on February 18th, 2008, Gloria tells police she is alarmed that
her always reliable partner has vanished without a trace.
- LOLA ANTHONY: I don't think he took off.
For George like not to come home or
not to be there was not like George.
- JERRY: He wouldn't have just ran off.
Too honorable for something like that.
He wouldn't have made a choice like that just to run
and left family.
- So now him being gone became a bigger issue.
And so more suspicion about
where he was and why he left became more important.
- NARRATOR: After responding officers take Gloria's statement
a missing persons investigation is opened
with Detective Dorinda Clark at the helm.
- NARRATOR: When her calls come up empty,
Detective Clark goes to the home of George's partner, Gloria,
for more information.
- Normally, your closest family member or the last person to see
someone alive is usually your first point
of the investigation as your starting point.
- NARRATOR: Sitting across from Gloria,
it's clear she is deeply concerned.
- LINDY: His wallet was still left there at the house.
If you're going to go missing on purpose, you're going to take
your wallet and things that you need, whether it's credit cards,
your ID, things that you need to live.
- They were just trying to gather some evidence or
information that could lead them as to where he could have gone.
- NARRATOR: But Gloria says the phone is also a dead end.
- Gloria said that his phone wasn't working.
- George's phone had been turned off
shortly after his disappearance.
Well, if you want to find
somebody, you got to have their phone on.
- MIKE: He didn't take a vehicle with him,
so we didn't have a vehicle to look for.
We couldn't track a phone.
There's all sorts of things going on
that we would normally do that we weren't able to do.
- NARRATOR: A week passes
with few leads for the missing person's case.
- Even after seven days of just
hitting it hard, they have nothing.
This was a frustrating investigation
for the Ennis Police Department.
They need to find George.
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
a darker picture of George's past comes into focus.
- I think George had bad dealings in the past.
- It would seem that it came back to haunt him.
- He owed somebody some money
and he was going to meet this person and take care of that.
- NARRATOR: February 19, 2008.
It's been 24 hours since George Frazier was reported missing,
and there is no sign of the beloved father.
- LINDY: Ennis is a rural community.
Was he somebody who had gone missing,
who wandered into the woods or went out
by the lake for some reason, fell in, drowned?
Maybe animals had gotten to him.
There was always that possibility of that happening.
- NARRATOR: After days of searching, on February 25th,
detectives circle back to his partner of ten years,
Gloria Aiken.
- She says that there's been no activity on his credit cards.
- NARRATOR: When detectives ask if Gloria has any theories
as to where George might be, she says she and her family are
beginning to fear George's past may have caught up with him.
- He was a force in the areas we grew up in.
So, he was a respected man on the streets.
Based off of the lifestyle that George led in the past,
it would seem that it would've been something from his past
that came back to haunt him.
- JERRY: George was very private.
I think George had bad dealings in the past.
He just seemed like he come from a really fast background,
maybe something to do with drugs.
He knew quite a bit about them,
the sales, amounts, types, kind.
- NARRATOR: Although the family
had seemingly made a fresh start in Texas, Gloria says there's
one bit of information she had been afraid to tell police.
- She tells detectives that he
took off that night because he owed somebody some money and he
was going to meet this person and take care of that.
- Gloria told the investigators that possibly he had owed some
people money, specifically a Hispanic man
who might have been in the Mexican mafia.
And so that's why she believes
something bad might have happened to him.
The Mexican mafia and various gangs are all over Texas.
It's very rare to have that in our county, you know,
but we've had a few cases where gang related activity
ends up coming into our county.
- NARRATOR: The potential lead sparks investigators' interest.
But during the interview, they notice an unsettling detail
in the language Gloria is using around George's disappearance.
- LINDY: She kept saying, he was this, he did that,
he had been, you know, doing this.
It wasn't anything in the present tense.
- That's definitely...
would cause for concern and kind of throw up a red flag in your
investigation when you've got your reporting party already
referring to your victim in the past tense.
- NARRATOR: Still, Gloria remains entirely
cooperative and even consents to a search of her home.
- JEFF: They look through the couple's cars.
They look through the couple's home.
There is no obvious sign of foul play.
- NARRATOR: But as investigators make their way to the couple's
bedroom, they notice something odd.
- MIKE: The house was clean.
It was very organized.
It was just a nice place.
Go upstairs and there's this big
walk-in closet full of trash bags.
"What's in there?" "Oh, those are all of George's clothes.
She said she couldn't stand
to look at them, is what she told us.
- JEFF: I can imagine where
somebody would be so upset seeing this reminder that they
would put the clothes in trash bags.
So, it wasn't an automatic red flag.
It just seemed odd.
- NARRATOR: Investigators decide to dig deeper
into Gloria and George's home life
by going to Ennis High School
and sitting down with the couple's 15-year-old daughter.
- LINDY: Her response to them was, "I'm a kid.
Why are you asking me these things?"
She never was real emotional about him being missing,
didn't seem to be super upset.
She figured he's probably just going to come home later.
She said the last time she had seen George
was at their home, upstairs.
She heard him get a phone call.
- JEFF: She remembers him leaving,
because the house has an alarm system
that would let her know when somebody was leaving,
and that's about it.
- She never saw him after that.
- NARRATOR: Next, detectives ask if her parents
ever had any problems in their relationship.
- LINDY: She described her parents' relationship
as being pretty happy.
She said they didn't really fight all that much.
- NARRATOR: The teen's description of a peaceful home
draws the spotlight off Gloria.
- It was, by all appearances, a happy home.
That's all she could give the police
about George disappearing.
- NARRATOR: Desperate for answers, on February 26,
over a week since George's disappearance,
investigators begin questioning his friends, hoping for a lead.
- JEFF: They're talking to a friend of George
who says that he hasn't talked to George
since Christmas, but he does remember George
talking about a guy named Daniel.
- Daniel had a reputation at one time of being kind of a crook.
- NARRATOR: Detectives must determine if this is the man
Gloria believes George owes money to.
- MIKE: Any lead's worth checking out.
I'm not going to discount any lead till we follow up on it,
and it just seemed like a good place to go.
- NARRATOR: On February 29, 2008,
12 days since George's disappearance,
detectives sit down with Daniel Hinojosa.
Daniel and George used to work at the hospital together.
Daniel and George were friends.
- JEFF: Daniel says that he had no information about George,
hadn't talked to him in a long time.
- MIKE: Daniel had no knowledge of what happened to George.
He was concerned about George also.
- NARRATOR: Daniel provides an alibi, which quickly checks out.
And when detectives dig into Daniel's past,
they find no ties to the Mexican mafia.
- He did not appear to be involved
in any kind of offense at all.
- NARRATOR: With their best lead dried up, investigators find
themselves at a stalemate yet again.
- JEFF: Investigators are considering all possibilities.
They want to put different storylines to rest.
Was this a missing person?
They had to find answers.
- NARRATOR: March 1, 2008.
As the investigation
into the disappearance of George Frazier
grinds to a halt,
a new mystery unravels three miles away
in nearby Bardwell Lake.
- A couple that was on the lake just enjoying themselves
come around a curve and see a human leg.
- LINDY: They had been walking along the way,
found this leg partially wrapped up in a plastic bag,
and then called the authorities right away when they found it.
- KEVIN: Normally,
when you get a call that someone thinks they found human remains,
it more often than not, it turns out to be an animal bone.
So, I was a little shocked
to find out when we got there that it was an actual human leg.
- JEFF: There's no distinguishing marks,
but it's a leg of an African-American.
- KEVIN: The wound itself appeared to have been cut
with some sort of saw or a bladed instrument.
It wasn't a rough cut like you would see with an animal attack
or an accidental dismemberment, something like that.
This was a straight, clean cut all the way through.
- NARRATOR: Coming up,
a possible crime scene is uncovered.
- LINDY: In most of the places,
there were very small, like droplets of blood.
- NARRATOR: And as investigators dig more
into George and Gloria's relationship,
a stunning secret comes to light.
- He admitted they had an affair.
- NARRATOR: On March 1, 2008,
investigators with the Ellis County Sheriff's Office
are processing the scene where a human leg has just been
recovered on the edge of Lake Bardwell.
- We felt we needed to search the area looking for
the rest of the victim's body or more parts.
We didn't find any blood at the scene.
We didn't find any other physical evidence.
Everything appeared to be
that the location at the lake was strictly a dump site.
- NARRATOR: With a likely homicide on their hands,
detectives immediately send the severed limb to the coroner
for analysis and search the missing person's database.
- JEFF: As they're looking
through all of these missing persons cases,
they land on George Frazier missing since February 18th.
- KEVIN: We learned that the Ennis Police Department,
which was near our location, actually did have
an open missing person case for a George Frazier.
Since both of the cases were
in this close proximity, the description matched,
we had a pretty good suspicion
that this leg was probably that of Mr. Frazier.
- LINDY: We were able to get from his sister some DNA items.
Additionally from Gloria, they got a toothbrush,
and so they were able to compare the DNA.
And it was George's leg.
- NARRATOR: Detectives head to the home George shared
with his partner Gloria to deliver the tragic news.
- LINDY: When the investigators
went to tell Gloria that George was deceased,
she was not overly emotional in terms of crying
and things like that.
So that caught the investigators off guard when that happened.
So now, we're going to hit Gloria Aiken
much harder than before.
- NARRATOR: On March 3rd, Gloria agrees to sit down
with investigators for a polygraph examination.
- MIKE: I believe the questions in the polygraph were,
"Did you have any knowledge of Georgia's disappearance?
Were you involved in any way in Georgia's disappearance?"
There weren't but two or three questions.
- JEFF: She continues to maintain her innocence.
She continues to maintain
she knows nothing about George's disappearance.
- NARRATOR: Though Gloria is adamant of her innocence,
the test suggests otherwise.
- LINDY: The part that Gloria failed
was the question asking about whether she participated
in George's being missing or in his dismemberment.
So that was very important to investigators at the time.
- JEFF: The detectives inform Gloria that she's failed,
and at this point, she clams up.
- NARRATOR: Detectives press Gloria by showing her a photo
of the leg found on the shore of Lake Bardwell.
- MIKE: That's when she started tearing up.
She knew whose leg it was.
She knew exactly whose leg it was.
She stood up, said, "I got to go."
And I said, "It's your last chance to talk to us."
And she said, "I got to go," and left.
The next day, we got a call from an attorney
that was representing her
and said that he did not want us talking to his client.
- JEFF: Since Gloria is no longer talking,
since she's lawyered up, they're going to have to play tough.
- LINDY: We had the polygraph examinations,
but those aren't admissible in Texas.
They thought it would have been more evidence found at the home.
- So they get a search warrant
to search this house and the cars again.
- NARRATOR: On March 11, 2008,
detectives arrived at Gloria's home
for a more comprehensive search.
- LINDY: This time, they also went in
with crime scene technicians from the DPS crime lab.
- MIKE: We took a computer.
There was a 9 mm pistol we seized.
They found blood in a Jeep.
They found blood in a bathroom.
And Dorinda Clark found a large amount of blood on a chair
in an ottoman and the wall in the living room.
And it appeared somebody tried to clean it up at some point.
And they didn't do a very good job.
- They find a baseball bat
that has bloodstains and pieces of hair on it.
- NARRATOR: Despite the evidence,
some details of the crime aren't adding up
with the supposed crime scene.
- LINDY: In most of the places,
there were very small, like droplets of blood.
I think the theory was he was killed in the home,
taken to some other location
for dismemberment, and then his body parts,
you know, thrown out in different locations.
- NARRATOR: Convinced that George was killed in his home,
detectives do a neighborhood canvas.
- JEFF: What emerges from this is that George was really
well thought of by the neighbors,
but Gloria, not so much.
- DANIEL: We were all pretty good friends.
She would get onto him all the time.
Just anything, anything he did.
- It seemed like every time I went to the house to pick him up
there was something, fighting about something.
We would leave, and then he would make
the comment, "She's all about money."
- NARRATOR: Neighbors say that money
wasn't the couple's only problem.
- George thought she was having an affair.
- NARRATOR: With this new information,
investigators must consider if Gloria's alleged lover
had anything to do with the crime.
- MIKE: I want to know if he's got any knowledge
about any potential homicide,
or if he was involved in the disappearance or
the dismemberment of George Frazier.
- LINDY: If he does know something
and didn't give information,
he could potentially be charged with some criminal activity
himself or if he participated in some way in helping Gloria.
- NARRATOR: On March 12, 2008, Detectives subpoena Gloria's
phone records, hoping to uncover the name of her alleged lover.
- LINDY: When they got her phone records, they could tell
who was calling and what time they were calling.
They saw that there was one particular number
that she called very often.
That person ended up being Mr. Odetola,
a person who also worked with her at the prison.
- Phone records pointed to him as being the most called person.
- NARRATOR: On March 21st,
investigators head to Hutchins State Jail
to interview the man on the call log: Olatunbosun Odetola.
- MIKE: He admitted he'd been dating her
since like August of '07.
She had told him that she wasn't married, that she was living
with two old aunts that were rich and would cut her off
if they knew that she was seeing anybody.
- JEFF: They saw each other regularly.
He would rent a hotel room
in Corsicana, which is about 30 minutes down the road.
- NARRATOR: When detectives break the news
that Gloria did, in fact, have a partner
of ten years, Olatunbosun appears genuinely shocked.
- He says that he had no idea who George was, didn't even know
that Gloria was in a relationship with anyone.
He confesses that he had been
in the home, but had no idea that George even existed.
- NARRATOR: Olatunbosun says that within the past three weeks
Gloria had asked him to move in with her.
- NARRATOR: Coming up, more gruesome evidence
is recovered from the depths of another Texas lake.
- MIKE: The arms had been removed,
and the body had been cut just below the chest.
- NARRATOR: And detectives set a trap for their prime suspect.
- We asked him, you wanna be a witness or suspect?
- NARRATOR: April 2008.
Six weeks after the disappearance of George Frazier,
Ennis police are speaking with Olatunbosun Odetola,
the lover of George's partner, Gloria Aiken.
- LINDY: They were looking at Gloria.
So now, they're also trying
to figure out what is the motive, right?
Can we prove that Gloria had a motive to kill George?
Why would she want him dead?
Once this evidence of an affair
was discovered, he then became a person
of interest in that did he help her do this?
- NARRATOR: With nothing to hold Olatunbosun on,
investigators let him go for now
and begin digging deeper for Gloria's potential motive,
starting with the couple's finances.
- She was trying to pay all the bills, and he wasn't really
contributing a whole lot at that point.
- NARRATOR: But detectives soon
uncover one way Gloria could get money from George.
- There's a $250,000 life insurance policy on George.
- LINDY: This $250,000 life insurance policy became a real
legitimate motive for why she would want him,
you know, dead.
She could gain a hefty life insurance policy
to live the life that she wanted to lead.
- NARRATOR: While investigators
continue looking into a possible financial motive,
another clue washes ashore on a nearby lake
on April 5th, 2008--
five weeks after the discovery of George's leg.
- There was a person around Richland Chambers Lake that was
doing some sort of landscaping or yard work.
- MIKE: He thought it was, you know, somebody
cleaned some fish and threw the guts in the bag, dumped it,
you know? It's flies and stuff around it.
He goes to look at it and finds a head and torso in the bag.
- NARRATOR: The Freestone County Sheriff's Department
quickly responds to the scene.
- MIKE: There was quite a bit of decomposition.
The arms had been removed,
and the body had been cut just below the chest.
- JEFF: It happens to be
an African-American male, they believe between 25 and 50.
- LINDY: Everybody's just kind of assuming the torso
and the head probably belongs to George.
- NARRATOR: The body parts are
immediately sent to the crime lab for analysis.
- NARRATOR: On April 6th, the autopsy report lands
on the desk of Ennis police detective Dorinda Clark.
- MIKE FRAZIER: He had been shot twice in the head.
It was a .22 caliber pistol.
- NARRATOR: Detective Clark also receives the DNA results
from the blood found inside Gloria and George's home.
- LINDY: DNA confirmed that all
of the blood that was found on the ottoman, the couch,
the TV, the baseball bat, the wall,
and the master bathroom all belonged to George.
- LOLA: She used to always say, "We're gonna get her."
She wasn't going to let it rest.
She was determined not to let it rest.
- NARRATOR: But just as the pieces are coming together,
Detective Clark gets a devastating setback.
- We were looking for a small caliber gun, like a. 22.
I believe she had a .9 millimeter in her house,
so it did not match.
- MIKE: The weapon we see from the house
was not the weapon that shot him.
There was a lot of evidence, but it was all circumstantial.
- NARRATOR: Determined to connect Gloria to the crime,
Detective Clark turns to the one person who may have been more
involved than they're letting on.
- KEVIN: I had a doubt that she
was the one that did the cutting, you know?
I thought that was a little
extreme for a spouse to dismember a human body.
- It would have been really
tough for Gloria to do this all on her own.
And so now they're wanting to know,
did the boyfriend have something to do with this?
- NARRATOR: On April 24, 2008,
detectives ask Gloria's boyfriend, Olatunbosun Odetola,
to come in for a polygraph exam.
- MIKE: He passed the part of the polygraph
that asked about participation
in the offense, in the dismemberment or the homicide.
He failed the part about the knowledge of the offense.
He just denied that he had any knowledge of it.
He just was not really cooperative at first
until we asked him,
"You want to be a witness or a suspect?" He chose witness.
He would do anything he could do to clear his name at that point.
- NARRATOR: On April 25th, Olatunbosun agrees to wear
a wire during a conversation with Gloria.
- The boyfriend is putting a lot of pressure on her.
He's accusing her.
- The conversation with him and Gloria, it got pretty heated.
- Suddenly she becomes very combative,
and that's when their voices get raised.
- MIKE: It gets so heated that the management
from Jack in the Box called the Hutchins Police,
"Hey, there's a disturbance out here.
This man and this woman are arguing."
- NARRATOR: The officers' presence puts an end
to the argument and any chance of Gloria incriminating herself
on the wire.
- NARRATOR: Without a confession from Gloria,
the case quickly loses momentum.
- MIKE: I would have wanted a confession,
because it was all circumstantial.
We took what we had to the DA's office.
The chief felony prosecutor reviewed it, felt like it was
enough to arrest, but not enough to prosecute.
- JEFF: So much of the case has loose ends,
and juries don't like loose ends.
Everything needs to be tightened up.
- LINDY: There weren't any post-polygraph admissions
that were made by either Mr. Odetola or Gloria
that we could use.
I don't think anybody realistically believed
that Mr. Odetola did any of this.
We still had to prove that she intentionally
and knowingly, you know, caused his death.
- And so it kind of just dropped off at that point,
it became a cold case.
- NARRATOR: Though investigators try to build a case,
five years pass with no developments.
Then the investigation hits
another roadblock when lead detective Dorinda Clark is
diagnosed with leukemia in March of 2013.
- That does have an effect on the case,
because as a lead investigator, you've got a lot
of things in your head
that may not necessarily be written down somewhere.
- Ennis is a small police department.
She had institutional knowledge in her brain.
- NARRATOR: As Dorinda endures
grueling rounds of chemotherapy, Gloria moves on with her life.
- JEFF: Gloria cashed in that $250,000 life insurance policy.
Another setback for the cops is
Gloria decides to remake her life in South Carolina.
So now, she's a thousand miles away.
- NARRATOR: Coming up, will Gloria get away with murder?
- There's a lot of witnesses
and testimony that was lost forever.
- It's not required for us to prove motive in Texas,
but everybody always wants to know.
- NARRATOR: By 2013,
the murder case against Gloria Aiken has been on hold
for five years after facing several hurdles.
- Unfortunately, time is not a friend of this investigation
because during those years when the case was
dormant, several key family members die.
There's a lot of witnesses
and testimony that was lost forever.
- NARRATOR: While the investigation has setbacks,
lead Detective dorinda Clark receives promising news
following her leukemia diagnosis.
- She went into remission and came back to work.
- JEFF: She is doggedly determined.
She needs answers. She wants to get Gloria.
- Dorinda came back to work, and man, she got fired up.
- NARRATOR: In April 2014,
the Ellis County District Attorney's Office presents
the evidence to a grand jury.
Prosecutors argue that Gloria was tired of supporting George.
- JERRY: I think Gloria
got a little greedy and wanted money, and she's found another
way to get her hands on money: life insurance.
- She had like a $250,000 insurance policy on him.
The insurance policy would be a big motivator.
- NARRATOR: Prosecutors argue that on February 17, 2008,
George had settled into his favorite chair for the evening.
- All signs point to George is either asleep or watching TV,
that Gloria takes a baseball bat, hits him over the head.
Just based on what they found,
I mean, a baseball bat with blood stains and pieces of hair.
He clearly was beat up.
- I think, to disable him,
to knock him out and then finish him off with the pistol.
I think she hauled him in that Jeep,
how that blood got in there,
cut him up with a battery- operated saw of some type.
Put him in bags and took him to the lake.
- KEVIN: You know, I always thought
that there might have been another party involved
that might have been an accomplice,
but we just didn't have the evidence.
- LINDY: All of the facts
and circumstances were brought out to the grand jury and they
ultimately decided to indict her for a murder.
After the arrest warrant comes out,
she's found in South Carolina.
She was ultimately arrested
and then waived extradition back to Texas to stand charges here.
- MIKE: We had her transported back to Ellis County.
We tried to interview at the Ellis County jail.
She didn't want to talk to us and she started crying.
- NARRATOR: In 2016, while Gloria awaits trial,
the case is dealt a final blow when Dorinda's cancer returns.
- LINDY: She had ups and down.
We thought she was going to make it,
she was doing great, and then she crashed.
- NARRATOR: On July 8, 2016, after decades in law enforcement
Dorinda dies at the age of 54.
- MIKE: Dorinda got sick again,
and when she got sick again
and died, you know,
you lost your lead investigator at that point.
- Essentially what we had was
a crime scene being in this house.
That's where Gloria lived.
It's not required for us to prove motive in Texas.
We, you know, really realized
that we were not going to be able to do this trial
because of Dorinda Clark not being available.
We decided we needed to
plea this out and get the best option
we could in the end.
- NARRATOR: On May 19, 2017, prosecutors offered Gloria
a plea deal, reducing her murder charge to manslaughter.
- She plead guilty, took twelve years.
I was pretty upset about it.
Twelve years wasn't enough.
You shoot a guy and cut him up
and put him in two different lakes, that's--
I believe that's worth more than twelve years.
- She took his life and all the people he's gonna to touch
and all the people he has touched
and she got twelve years.
That's not justice.
That's a crime in itself.
- IASIA: Gloria isn't a bad person, not even at all.
She's not, to me.
And I just can't imagine how she
could do these things that she's
accused of and that she pled guilty to.
- JERRY: It was just a waste
to take a man's life like that in such a manner.
It's just horrible. Just horrible.
And the world is not a better place.
It's a lesser place without George in it.
- *