[Janine Rubenstein] At People Magazine
we started reporting on this story
because the killer got people at their most vulnerable.
He attacked people in public, in broad daylight
when they least expected it.
[Jeff Truesdell] For the family members
it's a case that they lived with everyday,
for the investigators
it's a case that they can't let go off.
She was taken to the back room.
She was shot in the back of her head.
It appeared to be "execution style."
All of a sudden there's two other cases in the Midwest.
He's getting his jollies off this.
[Capt. Pat McCarrick] It's a case that's hundreds of miles wide,
with suspects from all over the country.
Evil exists in our world and it's on that video tape.
Oh, my God! My God.
No one knew when or where he was going to strike next.
[Cindy Brady] Serial killers don't stop.
They just keep killing and killing and killing.
I may be the only survivor of the I-70 Killer.
[theme music playing]
[Mark] I'm Mark Magers
and I'm Patricia Magers' husband.
She usually went by Trish.
We met at a dance hall.
She was the tallest female there,
so I went and asked her to dance.
I said, "Do you know how to swing dance?"
She said, "Sure."
And, uh, in time
with the music I swung her out
and she went out over the bannister
that surrounded the dance floor
and landed on the floor.
I jumped over the bannister
and I helped her up
and I said, "My goodness, are you okay?"
And she was laughing and I said, "I thought you said you could swing dance,"
and she said, "I thought I could."
From the moment I saw her I thought she was captivating.
She was very, very pretty and, and poised.
She was intelligent.
Uh, she was funny.
One of her girlfriends confided in me
that she had come back to the table that night
and told them that she'd found Mr. Right.
We've been together ever since.
[Janine] In 1992, 32-year-old Trish Magers and her husband Mark
had been the proud owners of the bridal shop,
la' Bride, Sir Knight
in their hometown of Wichita, Kansas,
for a little over a year.
[Mark] It was in a strip mall
right on the main highway through Wichita.
la' Bride was the wedding side
and Sir Knight was the tuxedos.
She just loved helping the girls,
uh, put together the wedding that they wanted.
Business is so good that Trish needs extra help
and hires a few young sales associates,
including 23-year-old Patricia Smith.
[Bill] I'm Bill Trendel.
I'm the brother of Patricia Smith.
There were only two children in the family.
I was the oldest and Tricia
was, uh, the youngest by four years.
She was, you know, in her early 20s when she got married,
and they had just bought their first house.
My first son had been born that previous September.
She enjoyed being an aunt.
She was holding TJ and just didn't wanna let him go.
[chuckles]
She was really wanting to be a pediatric nurse.
And while she was in college,
she started working at the bridal place.
Working there was up her alley, what she liked to do.
[Mark] I would go to the store to help out in peak times.
Both the girls were fun and jovial.
Just a joy to be around.
On the morning of Saturday, April 11th 1992,
Trish and Patricia prepare for
what promises to be a busy day.
It's April, it's ahead of wedding season.
It's ahead of prom season.
It's a Saturday when most people
are free to come in and look and tryout dresses.
[Mark] That morning I ask her if she wanted me to go to the store to help out
and her response was that I've been working too hard
and I needed to just relax and do whatever I wanted to do that day.
So off to work she went,
and I went ahead and just did
some odds and ends around the house.
And then in the evening
I was going to surprise her 'cause I knew
she'd have a long day that day,
and I had a candlelight dinner prepared...
and she was late.
So this was in an era where we didn't have cell phones yet.
We did have pagers.
So I paged her several times
and did not get any response.
So I blow the candles out, I take off.
And when I pull up to the wedding store,
I... I couldn't tell you how many police were there.
And they had the barrier tape set up.
I broke through the barrier tape to go into the store
and they got hold of me pretty quick,
and put me in a squad car.
And I'm wanting to know what's going on
inside the store and they won't tell me.
[Det. Addie Perkins] I'm Detective Addie Perkins.
I work for the Wichita Police Department
in our Homicide Unit.
The Department received a 911 call.
[Det. Timothy Relph] The first officers that arrived noticed
the front door of the business was open
and, uh, the keys were in the door,
and so the first couple of officers went in pretty cautiously
'cause you don't know if the suspect's still in there.
[Det. Mike Hennessy] Upon the first inspection by the officers,
there was no, uh, signs of a break-in.
There was really, uh, no signs of disarray.
Uh, they noticed someone's purse
on the floor not too far from the doorway.
And nothing was unusual, out of place.
[Det. Relph] When they were making their way
to the back part of the... the store
they see two things on the floor.
At first they think they're mannequins
but one officer very quickly noticed that there was blood.
And that's how they discovered
Patricia Magers and Patricia Smith.
[Det. Hennessy] They discovered that Patricia Magers
had already been deceased
however her employee Patricia Smith
was still clinging to live.
They call the EMS 4 and she was taken
straight to the hospital.
In the midst of the police responding to the scene,
Mark Magers arrived and is sitting in a patrol car out front
desperate to know what's going on.
I said, "You either tell me what's going on in there
or we're gonna get out of this car and, and have some serious words."
And that's when he told me both girls had been shot.
I wanted out of the car.
I wanted to go and see what was going on myself.
It was, uh, part disbelief,
uh, maybe, somewhere deep down I thought maybe I can...
do something that they couldn't.
I wanted to go see, I wanted to go see my wife.
And they wouldn't let me.
I knew that this was... uh, gonna be extremely...
painful for me.
Meanwhile Patricia Smith passes away at the hospital
and her family is notified.
My dad called and notified us what...
you know, what had happened
and that my sister was... was... was dead.
Finding out about her death was very,
very shocking. Kind of a... it's very sobering.
I mean, to be an unexpected violent act
is very, very shocking.
I don't think I slept much that night.
While the victims' families are trying to deal with this tragedy,
detectives at the bridal shop
are trying to make sense of the scene.
We did recover three .22 caliber
shell casings near the victims.
Cash register drawer was open.
So I was assuming of course that, uh,
it's gonna be a robbery case.
Our lab investigators start dusting for fingerprints,
they take photographs and measurements.
[Det. Hennessy] Cash register drawer and shell casings,
at that point that's all we really had
as far as any forensic or any physical evidence
that we could work with.
We were very short on some forensic evidence
but it's not a failure of police departments
uh, of that time.
Back in 1992 swabbing,
things like that, or touch DNA,
that wasn't even something that local police departments or
even larger police departments were doing at that time.
[Janine] As investigators process the scene
they questioned the 911 caller about what he saw.
Earlier that evening he realized he didn't have his cummerbund.
Uh, he called la' Bride.
[Det. Perkins] They explained to him that they are actually closing
but they'll stay late to give him this item.
When he goes to the store
the lights are out.
The door is open.
The keys are stuck in the door.
And walks in,
you know, was kind of hollering for someone.
He sees no one, hears no one.
And then all of a sudden,
a white male comes from the back,
then he saw a gun.
The gunman wanted the witness to come in the back with him.
And our witness refused. He didn't wanna go back there.
He told the gunman that,
"It has nothing to do with me.
I just came for something,
but I really don't need it now."
The gunman insisted he come back with him.
And the witness kept talking him out of it.
Eventually the gunman gave up and just let him go.
He's extremely upset. He's not sure what's gone on.
Um, he doesn't know
the severity of what has happened.
You know, this is a situation that obviously,
he's just there to pick up an item.
He never ever thought
he'd walk into a situation like this.
The witness is able to give a detailed description of the assailant.
He described him as a white male,
maybe 5'6" to 5'7",
speaking clearly so there was no accent he noticed.
He described the suspect as
semi-blond, reddish hair.
His demeanor being extremely calm.
But he had a nervous tick of some sort
'cause he kept rubbing his face with his hand.
The witness goes on to describe the man's gun
and he says it was a pistol but not your average pistol.
[Det. Hennessy] This is kind of a strange-looking weapon, according to him.
You know, described as one between a...
a hand gun with a long barrel
and a rifle with a short barrel.
[Det. Relph] It had what's called a foregrip,
and that's pretty unusual for a... for a pistol.
Police sit down with the witness
and a sketch artist
to create a composite sketch of the suspect.
The police distribute the composite sketch to all the local media.
Most of my first couple of days was just fielding,
uh, phone calls or, uh, tips that people called in on.
By the next day it was very quickly recognized
that this was a high-profile case.
[Det. Hennessy] A double killing like this
is very unusual,
and of course we had to, uh,
pull all the resources together
because this was a... this was a bad one.
As word spreads, autopsies are performed
giving investigators some insight
as to what happened in the bridal shop that night.
Officers and detectives learned that
there is no signs of any type of sexual assault.
Both victims didn't appear to have any kind of struggle,
they didn't have any kind of defensive wounds.
[Det. Perkins] Magers was shot twice in the head
and Smith was shot once in the head.
Um, it appeared to be "execution style."
[Det. Hennessy] It just didn't make sense.
There's no reason to, uh, take employees
to a back room like that
and execute both victims.
It just seemed like overkill for, uh, just simple robbery.
Detectives are also struggling
with another detail of this robbery.
[Det. Hennessy] Bridal shop is not usually a business
that has a whole lot of cash on hand.
And it's just not a business at all
that's typically picked to be robbed.
[Det. Relph] There were multiple other businesses around
that appeared to do much more high volume as far as in cash.
There was certainly more money to be made in other places.
[Janine] Putting this all together, investigator think
the robbery is just distraction,
perhaps a misdirect by the killer.
We ramped up our efforts to find out
the true motive of the suspect.
But after a few days the cops haven't developed any leads
despite having a composite sketch.
Investigators start to think that,
uh, it could be someone from out of town.
So we decided to start looking elsewhere.
We contacted NCIC.
National Crime Information Center is a good resource
for all law enforcement across the nation.
That's how we talk with each other.
Investigators provide details of the crime to NCIC,
and are surprised when they're notified
of a murder in Indianapolis with a strikingly similar MO
that took place just three days prior.
[Lucretia] My name is Lucretia Harden.
I was working at Speedway gas station
back in 1992.
That job at Speedway was relatively new.
I think I probably been there maybe about six months.
The only person that I really got a chance
to really remember the name was Robin,
the lady that worked next door at the Payless Shoe Store.
She was just sweet, quiet and humble.
She'd come in there, um, on her... on her breaks.
And, uh, I remember she would always buy the same thing.
A little after 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday April 8th, 1992,
Lucretia gets an unexpected phone call
from the manager at Payless Shoe Store.
[Lucretia] He said that he'd been calling
over to the store over and over again
and no one was answering the phone.
So I told him that I would go next door
and find out why she wasn't answering the phone.
When I got over there I just had this creepy feeling.
I didn't see Robin anywhere.
And I saw that the cash register drawer was open.
I knew something was wrong.
So I called the police.
It wasn't a long time at all before the cops got there.
And they were looking around.
All the way to the back of the store was the storage room.
And they opened the door.
I saw when he looked down to the right
that he just, um,
just jumped.
And you know, what he saw
startled him and he jumped.
That's when I kinda felt like, uh,...
Yeah, something... something happened to her.
[Capt. Ray Floyd] My name is Ray Floyd.
I'm a Captain of Investigative Services.
The investigators at the scene were able to get a hold of the manager pretty quick
and determined that the victim
was 26-year-old Robin Fuldauer.
She was face down. They observed blood around her head.
It looked like she had, uh, a gunshot wound to the head.
The did locate .22 caliber casings.
Her clothes weren't disturbed.
There was no sign of sexual assault, sexual motivation.
The last known transaction in the store
happened at 1:12 p.m. yesterday.
Uh, that individual bought
a pair of man's shoes and a pair of women's shoes.
Uh, who that person is we, we don't know
and they're certainly not a suspect at this point
but we would ask if... if they, uh, know
that they were in the establishment,
the shoe store around that time,
we would like to talk with them.
As the CSI team processes the scene,
they find that robbery is a possible motive.
[Truesdell] Police investigators find the register open
as they were told,
they determined that about $90
has been taken from the register.
It appeared to be a random robbery that possibly went bad.
[Janine] But what the cops don't understand
is why the assailant murdered the young store clerk.
[Capt. Floyd] It appeared that she was most likely
compliant with the robbery,
so there didn't seem
to be a real good motive
on why, uh, he would've taken it
to the next step and murdered her.
While detectives continue their investigation,
police inform Lucretia
that Robin Fuldauer was murdered.
I was just so distraught.
I... I was so emotional, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
I mean, it's right next door.
It just felt uncomfortable,
just being in that area, you know?
I didn't care for the job anymore after that.
It just...
Yeah.
[Janine] Indianapolis PD interview Robin's friends
and family, looking for a suspect,
or any clues as to why someone would want her dead.
They found that Robin did not live like a lifestyle
that would put her typically in danger.
[Truesdell] Robin was a 26-year-old woman with a bright, bright future.
Uh, she was a salutatorian of her high school class.
Very devout in her Jewish faith.
[Capt. Floyd] She went to work.
She wasn't involved in illegal narcotics.
She wasn't in an abusive relationships.
I mean there's no reason to commit homicide with her.
There was-- It just made no sense.
[Janine] As days go by investigators don't make
any progress in identifying a suspect,
until they get a call from the detectives in Wichita
who have just found out that their respective murder scenes
seem to have a lot in common.
The MO was just so similar
that the suspect had entered the store
that you don't typically wanna rob,
and it's also right off the highway,
where there's a single, uh, female employee
and, uh, she was taken into the back
and shot in the head, close range.
And they also recovered a .22 caliber shell casing.
Wichita investigators get together
with their counterparts in Indianapolis
and they decide to compare ballistics
on their respective bullet casings.
And it shows the same gun,
the same weapon is being used in both homicides.
And so we're dealing with one weapon.
The same weapon.
[Det. Hennessy] Now we know that the murders
were committed by the same person in both jurisdictions.
Once we learned that, then we knew
that we had something much bigger going on.
But he's still out there.
He's somewhere in the area.
We just don't know where he's gonna strike.
[Truesdell] Now the police
have connected the series of three murders
and they think there may be a strategic killer
moving across the country.
[Det. Brad Rumsey] I'm Brad Rumsey.
I'm a Violent Crimes Detective
with Terre Haute Police Department.
Terre Haute in general
is what I consider a small town.
And for the most part
you don't really hear about
a lot of bad things happening here.
[Janine] Sixteen days after the Wichita murders,
on the morning of Monday, April 27th, 1992,
40-year-old Mike McCown,
known to his friends and family as Mick,
is working at his mother's shop, Sylvia's Ceramics.
[Cindy] My name is Cindy Brack.
Mick McCown was my brother.
Mick was a wonderful musician.
He was very talented.
He played lots and lots of instruments.
Self-taught.
[Mick singing] ♪ You can't show me no affection ♪
♪ 'Cause the love you lost a while ago still hurts you ♪
Mick plays in several bands
and travels to cities around the area
including Indianapolis and Chicago.
He'll be gone for long, long periods of time playing
and he would travel, I guess, what he called the Holiday Inn Circuit.
Because back then Holiday Inn always had a dance floor.
[Janine] For the last few years Mick has done less traveling.
He returned to Terre Haute to help out his parents who were ageing.
And he basically took over several of the day-to-day operations of the shop.
[Cindy] When Mick came and took over the shop,
I continued to work there.
So we were able to spend a lot of time together.
That Monday, the 27th, at approximately 5:00 p.m.,
a 911 call comes in to the Terre Haute Police Department.
[Sgt. Troy Davis] My name is Sergeant Troy Davis.
I'm a detective with the Terre Haute Police Department.
And I was working in the north end of town
when the call came in.
And it was called in as a man down
there at Sylvia's,
possible gunshot victim.
It was a big deal, uh, when the call came out.
Every unit that was working in that area responded.
[Det. Brad Rumsey] Initial officers arrive on scene.
There was a man found dead inside the store.
[Janine] The store is bustling with the law enforcement,
and not long after that detectives arrive
and start to unpack the scene.
[Sgt. Davis] There was a shell casing recovered
near the body.
It came from a .22 caliber hand gun.
[Det. Rumsey] Also there was a shoe print inside
that is very similar to, if not the same as
a shoe print that's outside,
and both of those were photographed.
They've also found the cash register drawer was open,
and money was taken.
They did not find his wallet on him.
And it's not known if that wallet was stolen
during the incident that cost him his life,
or if it's something that he didn't bring with him that day.
Detectives think this might be a robbery,
but it doesn't quite add up.
When someone dies during a robbery
it's usually because they fought back.
There was no indication of a struggle.
There's nothing broken on the floor.
That's very unusual. It's a ceramic store
and there's nothing that's been smashed.
Uh, the victim doesn't appear
to he's been in a fight, his hands aren't bloody.
He was slumped over, crumpled over.
And, uh, there was blood coming from the back of his head.
It appeared that he, maybe he was on his knees
or bent over somewhat.
Maybe putting a display up of ceramics
on a shelf or something.
And it just, it simply appeared that
this person walked in
and executed him, instantly.
[Det. Rumsey] Nothing indicates
he might have been looking at the person.
It looks like he was shot
before he knew someone was there to shoot him.
[Cindy] I was at home.
And the news came on.
And the reporter was standing in front of our ceramic shop.
[reporter on TV] A customer entering this ceramic store
made the horrible discovery this afternoon,
just inside the front window of Sylvia's Ceramics, lay a man's body.
Oh... just like...
everything just... crashed...
[voice shaking] I stood up and I was screaming.
And my husband, he said, "What's the matter? What's the matter?"
[voice breaking] I said, I couldn't talk.
I couldn't talk.
I said "We got to go! We got to go! We got to go!"
He said, "Go where?" I said "We gotta go to the shop, they killed Mick.
They killed Mick."
Mother got there first.
And the hearse was still there.
And they were loading his body,
into the... into the hearse.
It was undoubtedly the worst day of our lives.
We had this happy family.
Then our world just collapsed. It was never the same after Mick was killed.
Never the same.
Police canvassed the area looking for anyone
who might have seen or heard something
but it's proving really difficult for them.
[Sgt. Davis] There was parking only in the back.
So no one would have seen this suspect
come in and out of the front door.
There was no front door. It was a back door.
And behind the business,
uh, there were a few homes.
Detectives talked to the residents
of those homes, who saw nothing.
It was a main thoroughfare, because you had, um,
I-70 right there. It was a busy street.
But there was no witnesses whatsoever.
A daytime shooting, um, at a business like that is very unique.
Things like that, uh...
Well, they just don't happen, especially, you know,
in... in a smaller town like Terre Haute.
[Janine] Detectives have no solid leads
until they receive some new information
about one of the few pieces of evidence
collected at the scene.
[Sgt. Davis] The shell casing
was sent off for ballistic testing.
There's a national database for ballistics
and all the information, uh, from these ballistics testings
goes into this system.
And it compares the shell casings.
When they got the information back,
our shell casing was matched up
to, uh, a homicide that happened in Indianapolis, Indiana,
as well as Wichita, Kansas.
So all these victims were shot from the same gun.
Now we have three cases that are connected.
That's when we realized that we had a serial killer.
[Janine] Police inform the families
affected by the senseless murders
that their loved ones were victims
of a serial killer.
[Mark] To deliberately seek out defenseless young women
in these innocent strip mall settings,
to murder in cold blood...
[sputtering] I can nev... I... I don't know how to...
um...
understand that or even begin to understand that.
[Bill] It was sad to know that other people were going through this
because of the same person doing that.
[Cindy] They don't stop.
Serial killers don't stop.
Not voluntarily.
They just keep killing, and killing and killing.
As the families wrestle with this new information,
police discover that the killer has struck again.
Not once but twice.
All of a sudden we get information,
a few days later
that there's two other cases in the Midwest
that were connected to ours.
On Sunday May 3rd, 1992, in Saint Charles, Missouri,
24-year-old Nancy Kitzmiller's found dead in a back room
at Boot Village, her place of work.
She was in a similar fashion as, uh, Indianapolis
and also, uh, Wichita, as that she was laying face down
basically in a pool of blood.
[Janine] Four days later in Raytown, Missouri,
Sarah Blessing is found dead in a back room
at The Store of Many Colors, a personal health shop that she owned with friends.
As the detectives compare the details of these two new cases
they realize that the MO is the same
as the murders in Wichita, Indianapolis,
and Terre Haute.
Investigators think that the body count has gone from four to six,
and this killer on the loose shows no signs of stopping.
[Det. Kelly Rhodes] I'm Kelly Rhodes. I'm a detective here
at St. Charles City Police Department, in Missouri.
Nancy Kitzmiller who was shot in the back of the head.
A shell casing was found right in the doorway
just a few inches away from her feet.
Based on the actual gunshot wound,
it does appear that it was contact.
Uh, which means that the barrel of the gun
would have either been touching her
or very, very close to touching her.
There was, um, several hundred dollars
taken from the register.
There was also, uh, a pair of boots that had been left on
top of the counter near the register.
We don't know if that was from a prior customer
or if the... the killer had set those there.
[Capt. Pat McCarrick] My name is Pat McCarrick.
I retired as a captain
for the St. Charles Police Department.
The Boot Village store, it was near
a shopping center near I-70.
So there would have been quite a bit of traffic
through there at that time.
[Capt. Floyd] Same sort of MO with Sarah Blessing.
She was taken to the back room.
She was shot in the back of her head.
Again there's a single .22 caliber casing.
There was cash missing.
But in the Sarah Blessing case there is a witness.
The owner of the TV repair and video store next door
noticed something peculiar that day.
[Capt. Floyd] He sees this guy walking across the parking lot.
He's wearing a grey sports jacket.
So he takes notice of him
because, "Why's this guy wearing a sports jacket?"
The guy stops and he looks into his store
for a... a time
and they... they make eye contact.
The witness and the suspect locked eyes for a short time
and then the suspect goes next door, to The Store of Many Colors.
And so I'm working on the TV and all of a sudden about...
maybe two or three minutes later I hear, pop!
And I went...
That sounded like... a gunshot.
I grabbed my .38. I had it behind my back.
And I went to the front door and I opened the door
and as soon as I looked out the guy's going around the corner of the building,
and it was the same guy I had seen over here, the same clothes.
Same pants, everything.
So I went next door and called for Sarah.
And then I saw her feet sticking out.
My name is Shelli Reid, and I'm Sarah Blessing's sister.
Sarah was a hugger.
It was just all enveloping and warm and tight and long.
And it was really an awesome feeling.
You just felt loved when she, when she hugged you.
She loved helping others with being healthy.
And she was really excited about
the Store of Many Colors opening up.
I answered the phone and Mom was on the phone.
[voice breaking] And she just kept saying, "Something bad has happened."
And she just kept saying it over and over and over.
And, Dad finally got on the phone,
and told me that Sarah had died,
that somebody had killed Sarah.
And I just remember losing it.
The murder of Sarah Blessing is another tragedy
in a string of senseless murders.
[Truesdell] Starting in Indianapolis, Robin Fuldauer's murder
was followed three days later by a murder in Wichita.
Sixteen days after Robin's murder,
there was another shooting in Terre Haute.
Seven days after that was the shooting in St. Charles.
Four days after that came the shooting at Raytown, Missouri.
All and all this killer took six lives
at five locations over 29 days.
[Capt. McCarrick] It's a case that's hundreds of miles wide,
with suspects possibly from all over the country.
[Det. Hennessy] By nature, serial killers
don't wanna be caught, ever. They wanna keep going.
And that was my fear, was that
this person is gonna keep on going.
[reporter] A shoe store in Indianapolis,
a ceramic store in Terre Haute,
a bridal shop in Wichita,
an herbal medicine store outside Kansas City,
another shoe store near St. Louis,
all murder scenes.
Six victims so far.
Victims of what police in four states
are almost sure is a serial killer on the loose.
And if the pattern is any indication,
somewhere at along Interstate 70
more trouble lies ahead.
Detectives began to wonder if this killer might be preparing to kill again.
So to catch this serial killer the jurisdictions of each case
come together and form a task force.
There was a task force, began meeting on a regular basis
and... and comparing notes,
comparing tips that we received,
looking for commonalities between the crime scenes.
We're trying to keep everybody in open communications
because a a lot of information
could be lost if it's not shared.
The task force turns to the FBI for help with the investigation.
[Larry Ankrom] My name is Larry Ankrom. I was the chief of
the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico.
Personally in my career of 16 years
I never had a serial homicide case
where the offender was doing close head shots
multiple times, victim after victim after victim.
As I went through the material,
I started developing some thoughts on
what I thought was going on here.
He's targeted commercial businesses
but the motivation wasn't to rob these places.
The risk of exposure was really high.
So planning it, executing it,
and escaping, all those things together,
uh, was... was the real thrill here.
He's receiving extreme gratification for this.
This is something that's really powerful, uh, for him
and keeps driving him.
Special Agent Ankrom believes he knows
why the victims are often by themselves and female.
I think the reason they were women victims here
is because he felt he could control the situation.
He doesn't appear to be a very big guy.
He's been described as kind of a medium build or... or less.
So physically he could get them to do what he wanted to do
and be out of there without a problem.
For example he gets in the ceramics shop
and he see that this is a man
he doesn't take him back to the back of the store
like he does everybody else.
He basically shoots him right where he's working.
He doesn't feel like he has the ability
to handle, uh, this male employee.
He travelled over 1,600 miles
in the 29 days that all this was taking place.
It was clear to me that he was not there by accident.
He was on the road a lot. Most likely had a job
which took him to these locations.
Special Agent Ankrom also believes he can deduce
where the suspect lives based on the location and timing of the murders.
[Ankrom] Once he experienced difficulty in Wichita where he has a witness
that comes into the store to pick up a cummerbund,
where does he go next? He goes back to Indiana.
He's actually only 70 miles away
from where he did his first case.
That leads me to the belief that
he has some connection to the Indianapolis area.
In the weeks and months that follow, the local press
names the suspect the I-70 Killer.
Because all of the victims have been killed
in close relation to Interstate 70.
[Capt. Floyd] It definitely started catching traction.
There were hundreds and hundreds of tips
coming in that had to be followed up on
and I mean, it... a tremendous amount of manpower
on all agencies.
[Janine] Meanwhile the FBI lab detects
a substance in all the shell casings
that nobody noticed before.
They noticed a small amount
of red substance on these casings.
The red substance is found to be a mixture
of an industrial abrasive called corundum
and jewelers rouge.
Both can be used to polish and buff metal
and investigators question why this unusual mixture
would be present on the casings.
[Det. Rhodes] One thought in why somebody would have used this,
it helps the cartridge
feed through the gun much easier.
So it could have been to try to prevent
the gun from jamming.
It shows some amount of care for the firearm
that goes beyond what,
uh, you know, most robbers would do.
[Det. Rhodes] Also the FBI were able to give us
a list of about seven to eight different firearms
that it could have been.
[Det. Relph] But some of those weapons were eliminated
'cause they were revolvers
or they were derringers,
and those kind of weapons don't use a shell casing.
So now you're down to just a few semi-automatic guns
and then you combine that with the description
that the witness in Wichita has provided,
and you are down to very few guns that meet all those criteria.
The witness in Wichita had,
uh, described the gun as, you know, having a wooden grip
and just the way that he physically described the gun
we were able to narrow down that list even further
to an Erma Werke ET22.
Which was a German naval pistol.
The Erma Werke is the only one that really seems to fit that description.
[Capt. Floyd] Erma Werke is probably
a foot-and-a-half, two foot long.
Uh, it's got a wooden forearm on it but it is a pistol.
[Det. Rhodes] Really it's more of a collectible.
It's not typically what somebody would take
if they're, um, planning, on... on...
on killing people.
Um, it's just not...
it's just not your typical murder weapon.
The agencies and the task force
work on finding this unusual gun.
Only about 6,000 were imported from Germany.
So, I mean, 6,000 out of how many guns there really are,
I mean, that's really not very many.
It's not a good firearm
in terms of the mechanics of it.
The action, it jams.
The action doesn't work too well.
If you go and buy that gun
you're buying it as a collector's item
because you like the appearance of it.
[Capt. Floyd] He could have been a gun enthusiast.
I mean they did give several leads
for people that had this type of weapon
that they had bought at different gun shows
and if we're able to locate this weapon
then... then we can start tracking backwards
and see where it came from.
But with the amount of news coverage,
very likely this suspect could've changed weapons.
Serial killer do evolve.
While law enforcement continues to follow up on leads,
investigators ask family and friends of the victims
to help to get the word out.
[Mark] I did every interview, every anything,
passed out flyers, uh,
I did anything I could do to try to, uh,
get it out there to the public
and hopefully somebody would recognize this person.
She'll never rest in peace until...
at least in my mind, until this guy is put away.
Then in 1994