- The victim was sitting in the back seat.
The bullet hit him in the back of the head.
[tense music]
- Man, your friend got killed today,
and we want to go find the person that did it.
- I never intended for none of this to be like that.
- Everybody was shocked by this murder.
He had such a great heart.
- The relationship that Blaine had with people
in the neighborhood was motivating them
to help us find his killer.
- He is gonna be northbound on Memorial from 27.
- As soon as the police lights come on behind him, he runs.
- Where's he at? Where'd he go?
- Well, what does that mean to you?
- But Shane's friend did not want to testify.
- If she refuses, we're gonna have
a real tough time making our case.
- And that really could put the prosecution's case on thin ice.
narrator: For those most affected by a homicide...
- I miss him. I do.
I miss him a lot.
narrator: The first 48 is just the beginning.
♪ ♪
This is the story of the fight for justice
in the weeks, months, and years
after the first 48.
♪ ♪
At a convenience store on the West Side...
narrator: He's frantic, yelling for help.
[siren blaring]
narrator: First responders find a man in the back seat
of the car shot in the head.
♪ ♪
- Victim's at the hospital.
There's a possibility he may not survive.
It's been seven years since this case,
and I'm not on the police force anymore,
but I loved my job.
There was a bond there that I'll never have
with anybody else.
That's why Tulsa solves 99%, 98% of their murders.
It's because of that teamwork.
♪ ♪
What's going on?
- Looks like the victim was sitting in the back seat.
The bullet shattered the rear window
and hit him in the back of the head.
- You could go one of two ways.
You either got a random drive-by kind of situation,
or did our victim have some beef with somebody
and it was intentional?
♪ ♪
What's the victim's name?
♪ ♪
narrator: 23-year-old Blaine Wells
was born and raised in Oklahoma.
He was the oldest of four children,
who had recently lost both their parents.
♪ ♪
- No casings here?
- No, there's not much here other than the car.
- Jimmy Turpin is the witness.
narrator: Jimmy, the driver, and another friend
who was in the car, had been taken to headquarters.
- He's saying the shooting happened about
a quarter mile down the road.
- OK.
♪ ♪
narrator: The primary crime scene is an access road
between two car dealerships.
- They got to have video at that entrance, dude.
We were hoping to get the crime on video,
or a suspect, vehicle, I mean, anything.
What's happening?
The only thing we found was this one casing.
♪ ♪
- Uh-huh.
- I was pretty frustrated.
There was almost no physical evidence,
but we just started assessing
what we need to do next, who do we need to talk to,
and then kind of go from there.
♪ ♪
- An investigation, it's fluid.
It consistently changes.
If you've done this a lot and you're good at it,
it's not an issue.
You have to be able to change
with the facts and circumstances.
narrator: Two hours in...
- [bleep] damn.
- Jimmy's the most important witness that we have
because he's in the vehicle when Blaine gets killed.
- And so we were hoping to get a lot of info,
you know, suspect description, car,
and hopefully find out some kind of motivation
for Blaine's murder.
♪ ♪
I mean, just kind of tell me what was going on today
prior to all this happening.
- We had just left the casino.
I want to say I-30, almost.
We went back to the apartment. I grabbed...
narrator: Jimmy says he went with Blaine
and their other friend who was in the car
to get more money for gambling.
- We pulled out the apartment.
When we did, I seen the car come to a stop sign.
I don't know exactly what kind of car it was.
- He described the car as a white car
with front-end damage.
- And we pulled out.
I'm looking in the rear view,
and I notice that he gets behind us.
All right, and then I come to that stop sign.
He stops about a car length behind us.
♪ ♪
So I roll down the window, and I'm thinking,
"Who the hell is this following us?"
♪ ♪
And I stick my head out, and by the time
I'm sticking my head out, he's getting out the car.
- OK.
- I seen the pistol in his hand.
I turned around, you know, and I was gonna gun it.
Next thing you know, it's like, bam.
That's when the shot was fired, and I just took off,
you know what I'm saying?
- What did he look like?
- I want to say he was over 6 foot,
about shoulder-length hair. - White guy?
- White guy, parted in the middle,
and he had on all green. He was slender.
- And he was wearing all green? - All green.
- Why would anybody be doing this?
- I don't know. That's what I'm saying.
- You're always trying to gauge if the person
you're interviewing is trying to hide something,
tell the truth.
- He was very detailed in his answers,
but I felt like Jimmy was holding something back.
- Tell me about Blaine.
- All right, well, Blaine, we was real, real close.
I really love him, man. He's a good kid.
You know what I'm saying?
- When Jimmy's emotional in the interview,
it shows that Jimmy really believes that Blaine
is an innocent guy.
- He been trying to stay clean.
He was actually getting ready to leave
and go to Arizona, just getting away from this,
you know what I'm saying? A bunch of madness.
- The drug scene in that part of town at the time,
there was a lot of meth.
So drugs being a motive, they're always
in the back of your mind.
- If there's anything else surrounding this, you know,
if there's dope involved, we need to know everything, OK?
♪ ♪
- Me and my little nephew Josh,
we was doing dope.
♪ ♪
- Where did Josh come into all this?
Did he ever leave with you guys during any of this?
- He did leave and go...
narrator: He says Josh went to sell some pills.
- With a dude named Cody.
They were supposed to meet up.
And I don't know if Josh did him wrong, but I--
yeah, all right, he was gonna rip,
I guess, Cody off.
He was gonna rip him off.
- So we were like, "Oh, boom." We were on the right track.
- This drug deal goes down where this Cody kid
gets ripped off by Josh for 100 bucks.
♪ ♪
- Like, me and Blaine didn't have nothing to do with that.
- But you know when somebody's [bleep] you.
- A lot of times, people are so worried
they're gonna get in trouble for the drugs,
they kind of start to lie about the murder investigation.
We didn't care.
We just want to solve the murder.
- Is this your phone? - Yes.
- OK.
You mind if I look through it at your texts and stuff?
- No, go ahead, no.
- I don't know if he would have ever
told us had we not found
a bunch of text messages with Cody.
So you guys are talking, like all day.
- Yeah.
- And he keeps asking you about, you got this,
you got that, right? - Yeah.
- You understand what we're saying here?
- Yeah, you're saying that--
- I'm saying you [bleep] set this up.
♪ ♪
We were frustrated. We needed a lead.
And the longer you wait, the harder it is.
♪ ♪
Man, your friend got killed today.
And we want to go find the person that did it.
So quit making us sift through the [bleep]
and just tell us the [bleep] truth.
♪ ♪
- See, Cody hit me up for pills,
and Josh was like,
"Well, let me rip him off," basically.
♪ ♪
narrator: Jimmy admits he set up
the drug deal between Josh and Cody.
- I guess they met up at QT.
And that's where the deal went down.
♪ ♪
- What did Cody look like?
- Taller fella, I mean slender, typical white guy.
But it wasn't Cody.
- Maybe there's more than one possibility
as to why this happened, but that's pretty big.
- Yeah.
- People getting ripped off on dope
on the West Side, people don't like that.
- What we're learning is that Blaine's
just hanging out with the wrong group of people.
- I never intended for none of this to be like that.
- Nobody ever does, man. Nobody ever does.
But that's how we end up.
Sit tight.
♪ ♪
If you were targeted for ripping off somebody
for dope or money, you know, and maybe
Blaine wasn't the target. Maybe you were.
♪ ♪
- So this is me and Blaine.
We were having a dance-off.
He whooped my butt at that dance competition.
He won hands down.
He was so fun to be around, so cool to be around.
Everybody loved my brother.
It's kind of hard not to.
He was my number one.
I looked up to him because he was an amazing big brother.
These photos are all the good times that we had.
We were really happy kids.
narrator: But after both their parents passed away
from illnesses, Blaine turned to drugs.
- I think that he took it possibly the hardest out of us,
but he turned it around because he seen us kids struggling
and he knew that we needed him.
So he got clean, got him a new job.
He was working.
He was, you know, trying to be there for us.
- I get joy with them because I get to see my brother again,
but it also is kind of sad
because I know he's no longer here,
and I can't bring him back.
♪ ♪
narrator: Three hours into the investigation...
♪ ♪
- The second witness was also in the car
with Jimmy and Blaine.
- And you try to use that to verify
everything that Jimmy said.
- And what did he look like?
- OK.
narrator: Blaine's friend also describes
the suspect as having shoulder-length hair.
- You know a guy named Cody?
- Do you think that guy could have been Cody at all?
- OK. Sit tight, OK?
- We felt, after talking to the second witness,
that it did corroborate a lot of Jimmy's story,
which is good for us.
- So this is Cody.
- Jimmy and the second witness,
they don't think that Cody could kill somebody,
but that doesn't mean that Cody didn't have a friend,
take somebody with him that would actually do the job.
♪ ♪
narrator: While the warrant squad
searches for Cody and Josh...
- Yeah, buddy.
narrator: Frazier gets an update from the hospital.
- All right. Yeah, bye.
As of right now, there's no brain activity.
You know, they're just kind of waiting to talk to the family
before they make any decisions.
♪ ♪
- Something my dad told me years ago,
that was somebody's little kid at some point.
So you focus on the family.
♪ ♪
You just have to keep going.
♪ ♪
narrator: Seven hours in, the team finds Josh
at his grandfather's house.
- So, man, yesterday, did Jimmy say anything
about meeting some guy at QuikTrip
about some pills or something?
- Nah, I got a dude at QuikTrip.
I got a dude.
- And what's this guy's name? - Cody.
Tell him just to meet me at QuikTrip, park in the back.
- So what kind of car was he in when he was there?
- Like a purple, dark-colored four-door.
I just went up, and grabbed the money,
and went in the back door, and went out front.
- Did he start blowing you up? - Yeah.
- That's all the texts from-- - Can I look through it?
- Yeah, that's fine. - OK, OK.
- What was this, "never did you wrong, karma's a bitch"?
- Yeah, that's right after I did it.
That's right. He was just--
- You know, "watch your back." - Yeah.
He said, "you only got a few places to go."
I ain't send nothing back to him.
♪ ♪
- Wow. Sit tight, man.
- Some of those text messages that we saw in Josh's phone
were incriminating that Cody was
gonna want to do some kind of harm to Josh and Jimmy.
- The question is, is he mad enough
to want Josh or Jimmy dead?
♪ ♪
narrator: An hour later...
- What's up, man? - Not much.
- We find the Cody kid who we're thinking,
"Hey, this may be our guy."
- Hey, just kind of tell me about what happened yesterday.
- When I got ripped off? - Yeah.
- Josh...
- He gives the exact same version of events,
says, "Yeah, we just got screwed out of $100."
- Man, I'll be honest with you, dude.
We looked through his phone.
Some of the text messages you sent him, man,
were pretty-- - I know.
I was mad at the time.
That was $100. - Yeah.
We thought, "We got him." Like, he's gonna break, right?
And this thing's done.
But I want you to be honest about this.
If you maybe called somebody and said,
"Hey, can you go get my money back,"
now would be the time to tell me.
You could see his heart beating out of his neck.
He was sweating through his shirt.
- When it happened, I tried to call Jimmy.
No answer. I tried calling Josh back.
No answer.
Just ignored my text.
♪ ♪
- I went home and waited for
my little brother to get off work.
narrator: Cody says, after that, he went to bed.
- I don't know more. That's the thing.
You guys are-- you're making me nervous
because you're making me feel like I did something
when I didn't even do anything.
I'm not a gangster. I don't do that stuff.
♪ ♪
- Eventually, we're able to verify he has an alibi.
He wasn't anywhere near the scene.
At that point, we're able to eliminate him.
- He's good for now.
Thank you.
At the end of all that, we were like, "Now what?"
We had motive. Now we have nothing.
So, yeah, we were right back to square one.
It sucks to just go home, but it's kind of
where we're at right now.
♪ ♪
narrator: Over the next day and a half...
[phone rings] - This is Detective Frazier.
narrator: The team continues to chase down leads.
- We started getting these Crime Stoppers tips
because the entire neighborhood wanted us
to find the killer, like, fast.
Everybody that we talked to
had nothing but good things to say about Blaine,
and they wanted to help.
They said, "We want to do the right thing.
We want to be able to help you put this person in jail."
♪ ♪
narrator: Then...
- About six hours prior to the first 48 hours,
Blaine's family decided to take him off the life support.
♪ ♪
- It hurts so bad when I lost him because
when he died, I wasn't even in Oklahoma.
And they was trying to keep him hooked up
until I got into town so I could see him,
and I never got that option.
♪ ♪
narrator: Five days after Blaine's death...
- Thanks, buddy. You too.
Justin and I had gotten some information
that there was an inmate in the Tulsa County Jail
wanting to talk about Blaine's murder.
♪ ♪
- How do you know Blaine?
- The relationship that Blaine had with the inmate
was motivating them to help us, which you don't see
a lot in homicide investigations.
OK, I mean, you care about him?
- Well, just anything you've heard
as to why this happened, we need to know.
♪ ♪
- Why?
♪ ♪
- The inmate was a part of the Aryan Brotherhood,
and the Irish Mob and the Aryan Brotherhood
have this rivalry about turf and dope and women,
and they clearly were trying to hurt each other.
narrator: Just hours before the shooting,
outside a car wash,
he got into a fight with some members of the Irish Mob.
- Yeah.
Have you ever seen those guys in a car at all?
Narrator: The inmate says, after the fight,
he left with a friend in a silver car.
- He felt bad about Blaine and almost kind of some guilt,
like it was his fault that Blaine ended up getting killed.
narrator: He gives them the nickname and description
of his friend, the one who was driving that silver car.
- All right, man.
♪ ♪
The wheels were turning.
The Irish Mob, they wear green, clearly.
We got a suspect wearing all green.
- There's a chance that these idiots
just got the wrong freaking car.
- The inmate believed it was kind of a mistaken identity.
- We're kind of at a dead end on a lot of this stuff.
Let's follow this one and see where it goes.
♪ ♪
narrator: Frazier and Ritter head to the car wash
to see if it's got surveillance cameras.
- He said the actual physical altercation occurred
in front of this car wash.
♪ ♪
- But then I look over to my left,
and sure enough is the car that the inmate had described
and the person, whose description
was also very unique.
- And I'll be damned, the inmate's friend
kind of falls in our lap at the car wash.
♪ ♪
- At that point, you're like, "You got to be kidding me.
Maybe this is gonna pay off."
♪ ♪
- So what happened the other night?
narrator: The inmate's friend saw him punch a member
of the Irish Mob,
who goes by the nickname Little Man.
- What'd that guy look like?
- Yeah.
- Not what we were looking for.
We wanted, you know, long hair, parted down the middle.
narrator: Little Man lives in an apartment
with some other members of the Irish Mob.
- Who are they?
- Shane Vanderpool? OK.
- Do you ever see those guys in a car?
- Everything that Jimmy and the second witness described
was falling in line with what the person in the car wash
was telling us about Vanderpool.
♪ ♪
- Parted down the middle, shoulder-length hair.
- Yeah.
narrator: 38-year-old Shane Vanderpool grew up
in Tulsa and earned a GED.
He has 13 prior felony convictions for assault
with a dangerous weapon, drugs,
and possession of stolen property.
- He's got the hair. He's got the car.
We felt pretty good about Shane.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Four days later...
- We figured out Shane's phone number,
apply for his phone records, get 'em back,
do some location stuff.
6:30 on the 21st,
this guy's hitting at a tower right here.
And sure enough, his phone is in the area
at the time of the murder.
And this'll help if he says he wasn't there.
- We learned that Shane had felony warrants
out for his arrest,
and so we decided we'd pick him up.
His appearance, I think, has changed
from his 2014 booking photo quite a bit.
So if we book him on his warrant,
we can take a picture of him here
and put that in a photo lineup.
♪ ♪
narrator: 12 days after Blaine Wells was killed...
- We gathered some information about an apartment
out west that was a known hangout for Shane Vanderpool.
♪ ♪
- We end up seeing who we identified as Shane Vanderpool
jump into a Chevy Impala.
♪ ♪
- I got eyes on him here.
He is gonna be northbound on Memorial from 27.
Driver we're looking for is Shane Vanderpool.
♪ ♪
[sirens blaring]
Go, man.
- As soon as he got lit up, as soon as the police lights
come on behind him, he runs.
♪ ♪
- Where's he at? Where'd he go?
♪ ♪
- I covered the murder of Blaine Wells.
And we have covered lots of cases
involving Irish Mob members.
When I first came here in 1992, we were just starting
to hear about the Irish Mob.
And they weren't taken very seriously at first,
but then quickly, they start becoming more organized.
They are doing armed robberies. They're doing carjackings.
♪ ♪
- This is the apartment where we found Shane.
In this apartment, there's a lot of drug trafficking,
a lot of drug sales, probably some gun sales too.
Not that they were really smart about what they did
and how they operated.
They do things in broad daylight.
They do things where there's witnesses.
They're not good at getting rid of their evidence.
They're not good at trying to get away with the crime.
- Just last year, the feds did this huge bust,
and they got 125 Irish Mob guys,
and they recover hundreds and hundreds of pounds
of meth and 200 guns.
And hopefully it put a big dent in the Irish Mob.
I do think there is hope that it gets better
because the good people are fighting back
and police are doing everything they can as well,
but it's an ongoing battle.
♪ ♪
- It was frustrating, is the word I can use on TV,
I think.
- We set up a perimeter from where
Shane ran from, went searching through
the area, trying to find him.
♪ ♪
Oh. Hey, I've got him over here.
I just happened to see him walking down a sidewalk
in the neighborhood.
He's walking away. He's on his cell phone.
Car's parked.
- It's definitely risky.
I mean, we're following a murder suspect.
- We're like, "This guy's gonna run," you know?
♪ ♪
- Oop, dogs out.
- We ended up getting K-9.
♪ ♪
- Booyah! Boom.
Good deal. He is in custody.
♪ ♪
We're excited,
and when we finally put our hands on him.
We were like, "Oh, my gosh, this--
you know, this got to be the guy."
At that point, we were gonna go directly to our witnesses,
Jimmy and the second witness, in hopes to get
a positive identification.
♪ ♪
There's a lot of circumstantial stuff, you know,
his description, the phone records,
but that's not gonna be enough to be able to charge him.
- If you've got a victim that looks at the pictures
and is like, "That's the dude that did it,"
it's pretty good.
- Jimmy, I got some pictures to show you.
See if you recognize anybody out of these photos, OK?
♪ ♪
- Man, looks like him.
- That looks like him?
- Right.
It seemed like he was younger.
- It looks most similar to that guy?
- Yeah. - OK.
Jimmy's ID of Shane Vanderpool was good,
but was it immediately, "This is him"? No.
- He picks this guy out of six people,
but he doesn't want to say 100% for whatever reason.
- If I'm a defense attorney, that's one of the things
I would jump all over.
- On a murder charge, well, you better have
something else to back it up.
- I'ma head to her now.
narrator: The case now hinges
on the second witness IDing Shane
as the shooter.
- We'll see. Here we go, moment of truth.
♪ ♪
Good ID on Mr. Vanderpool.
- Once we get those positive identifications,
do we have enough to charge him?
Absolutely, but we did not have enough
to prove that he's guilty of murder
beyond a reasonable doubt.
So we're gonna go interview him,
and hopefully we can get a confession.
♪ ♪
Shane, man, wake up, buddy.
We walk into the interview room,
and he's dead asleep.
Have a seat, bud.
You know, there's that old saying, too,
the guilty sleep.
Well, man, we're investigating a shooting.
♪ ♪
Do you know what shooting I'm talking about?
- No idea?
- It happened the morning of February 21.
Do you remember what you did that day?
- What motel did you go to?
- Yeah?
He said he was at some hotel
on the other side of town out east.
We had a lot of information, cell phone towers,
witnesses putting him out west, so it was--
you know, he lied.
OK. What kind of car were you in?
♪ ♪
- That's what the second witness
and Jimmy described. It was a white car.
What if I told you that people
saw you in a different place Sunday morning?
- I agree.
Man, I know you weren't at the motel on Sunday morning.
- I'm asking you.
- I'm telling you, you weren't.
I know you weren't.
- No, I'm not gonna argue with you.
- OK, Shane.
♪ ♪
We got him locked into a story.
He was in 31st and Memorial,
and his phone records say different.
He was at 51st and Union.
Sometimes a lie is just as good as a confession,
so, man, we're gonna book him for murder.
♪ ♪
- Always kind of look at these as phases.
Like, you get your probable cause,
and you know he's your guy, but then
you have to think about all the other stuff
you got to do to get ready for court.
♪ ♪
- Thank you, guys. - Thank you.
- There are a number of things that are on a prosecutor's
dream checklist that we were missing.
Juries like to have things to hold and see and feel.
We needed something more than just a guy with long hair.
We needed something a little extra,
or else we're gonna be in a world of hurt.
♪ ♪
- She's kind of pissed off
'cause he's kind of ignoring her.
narrator: Before handing the case off
to the district attorney...
- We searched Shane's phone following his arrest,
and we found a lot of great stuff.
It shows a picture of this shirt,
a green shirt.
narrator: Days after the murder,
one of Shane's friends texted him.
- And it says, "Look, this is the shirt
you wore that one morning you popped old dude off."
Working murders, you hope and pray
and keep your fingers crossed for those little gifts
that you get every now and then.
That's pretty good stuff.
It's awesome.
This is where the case really blew up for us.
♪ ♪
These are pictures from Shane Vanderpool's phone
hours before he shoots Blaine Wells.
♪ ♪
You can see Shane Vanderpool in his green shirt,
which matches the description of the suspect
given by the witnesses at the scene of the murder.
And this is the screenshot we recovered
February 21 of the News On 6 story
of Blaine Wells' murder.
- When they are looking
through Shane Vanderpool's phone,
they see that he has gone to our website
to see what information we're reporting
about that murder.
- Shane was texting this picture to his friend,
insinuating that he had done this.
- It's like click, picture, here's where I've been.
In my opinion, he's bragging about it.
Why else would you send that?
So has Shane confessed to this person,
told him that he did it?
- So finding the person that sent the text message
about the shirt and talking to them
about being a witness is essential.
♪ ♪
narrator: Two weeks after Blaine's murder...
- Let me get some info from you first, OK?
narrator: The friend who Shane was texting
agrees to be interviewed.
- Who got the room for you?
- He had gotten her a hotel room
right around the time of the murder.
- OK.
- Right.
narrator: When the friend woke in the morning,
Shane still wasn't back.
- So she texted him, wondering where he's at.
He got one.
- And what does that mean to you?
- Well, what does that mean to you?
[sobbing]
- You're doing the right thing.
I'll be right back.
♪ ♪
After this interview with her,
we were ready to move forward with wrapping it all up
and giving it to the DA's office.
♪ ♪
- Shane Vanderpool was pretty well known as somebody
who was high ranking in the Irish Mob.
And once we had the packet from Detective Frazier,
I thought the case was incredibly strong.
What Shane's friend gave us, essentially, was a confession.
"I'm the guy who did it."
But the problem was Shane's friend
didn't want anything to do with us,
didn't want anything to do with our case,
but we needed her testimony.
We needed her to stand up for her community
and do the right thing.
♪ ♪
narrator: One year later,
the trial of Shane Vanderpool begins.
- This was the first case that I had ever had jury duty for,
so I took it very seriously because, you know,
someone's life is in your hands.
♪ ♪
narrator: The state calls its first witness.
- Jimmy's testimony was critical to the case
because it lays out for the jury
what some of those last moments were like for the victim.
And the emotion that Jimmy demonstrated for the jury
about how much he loved his friend,
how much he cared for his friend was,
frankly, heartbreaking to see.
narrator: But on cross-examination...
- The defense really attacked his memory
of what had happened.
- Did you really see what you say you saw?
Were you able to identify particular features
of the car? Was the bumper damaged?
Was it not?
And Jimmy struggled a little bit.
- Well, if he's not certain about the car,
what else is he not certain about?
I felt bad for Jimmy because you could tell
he wanted to help his friend.
He wanted to say the right thing,
but you don't know, you don't know.
When Jimmy's not sure about the car,
it might have introduced some reasonable doubt.
- After Jimmy's testimony, Shane's friend was gonna be
incredibly important.
- But Shane's friend did not want to testify.
- If Shane's friend refuses to testify,
we're gonna have a real tough time making our case.
We're gonna have a real tough time convincing the jury
that that particular long-haired guy was the guy
who pulled the trigger.
♪ ♪
- The thing I hoped to get out of Shane's friend
was a confession straight from Shane Vanderpool's mouth.
And coming from somebody who's his friend,
that would be pretty powerful.
- But we were very worried that Shane's friend
wasn't gonna show up to testify.
- Getting somebody like her to take the stand
and doing it in front of the defendant
is an incredible act of courage.
So seeing her there was an enormous relief.
But getting her in that room was step one.
Getting her story out was gonna be an enormous step two,
and I wasn't entirely sure how that was gonna go.
♪ ♪
- Shane's friend testified that Shane
told her kind of the whole story on how it happened.
Shane Vanderpool is coming from the apartment over here,
sees the victim's vehicle with Jimmy
and Blaine and the second witness leaving
their-- their apartment.
And unfortunately, I think, it was kind of a coincidence.
They're almost neighbors, right?
And they come out, and Vanderpool
thinks he sees, you know,
a possible Aryan Brotherhood gang member.
And as they're stopped at the stop sign,
that's when Shane Vanderpool
gets out of the car, points the gun,
pulls the trigger, you know,
striking Blaine Wells in the head.
Her testimony corroborated everything
that happened in that murder.
The only person besides the two eyewitnesses
that would know that information is the killer.
narrator: But on cross-examination...
- The point the defense tried to raise
was that Shane's friend and Shane had only met
two days prior to the murder.
- And he tried to question whether or not
his client really would have made
the kind of heartfelt confession
that she testified to the jury that he had made.
♪ ♪
- You want this jury to believe that a man
that you've known for less than 72 hours
confessed all of this stuff to you?
Yes, I do want them to believe that.
It is the truth.
- It comes across as incredibly strong, believable,
and I think should send a message
to the jury about the strength of her testimony.
- But the defense isn't finished yet.
narrator: Shane's attorney questions Detective Ritter.
- When we made contact with Shane's friend,
we found a small amount of methamphetamine
in Shane's friend's purse.
So the defense started hitting on why Shane's friend
wasn't arrested for this meth.
So you didn't arrest her
because she was giving you information.
- We had not made any deals with Shane's friend
at all whatsoever in exchange for her testimony.
- But they're trying to imply, maybe Shane's friend
might be willing to do this because they're just
trying to save their own skin.
- So at this point, I think all of the jurors
were questioning a little bit.
Well, maybe the defense is right.
And that really could put the prosecution's case on thin ice.
♪ ♪
- I have never once felt like I knew 110%
what a jury was gonna do, and this case was no different.
♪ ♪
- Shane behaved to me very, like, nonchalant.
He didn't seem remotely remorseful.
♪ ♪
- When the jury came back,
they told us that their verdict was guilty.
♪ ♪
For somebody who had the number of convictions
he had for some pretty serious offenses,
and because of the absolute senseless nature
of this murder, I felt life without parole
was absolutely appropriate for Mr. Vanderpool.
- Blaine had a lot of friends,
and all the things that he had either done
for people or the relationships
he had with people resulted in a successful conviction.
You know, maybe that was Blaine kind of looking down
and helping out from afar.
♪ ♪
narrator: Eight years after Blaine's death...
- I miss him. I do.
I miss him a lot.
It don't help in any way, knowing that, you know,
he was mistaken identity because,
at the end of the day, it still happened.
But my brother is not gonna want me crying over him.
He wants me to live to the fullest,
and I know he does.
So I'm trying to hold up to that
and be that way because I think,
in the long run, it will help my siblings.
And I definitely don't want his memory to go faded away.
♪ ♪