[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
they come across another case
but this time in Houston.
[Janine] In the late morning of January 15th, 1994,
Houston 911 dispatch gets a call
from a young man,
reporting he and his girlfriend
walked into a store
and found the clerk on the ground.
[ambulance siren]
[Jeff] She had been shot,
and yet, she was still clinging for life.
And rushed to the hospital.
[Janine] X-rays revealed the bullet is embedded in her spinal column
and it's dangerously close to threatening paralysis
and even death.
For the next 24 hours
with the bullet still in her neck,
the victim holds on to life.
My name is Vicki Webb
and may be the only living survivor
of the I-70 serial killer.
In 1993, I chose to go into business for myself.
And I opened a small shop in Houston.
My shop was very whimsical.
It was bright, colorful, cheery.
I did have a young daughter at the time.
And so supporting her was important.
My daughter and I were very much a unit.
And she enjoyed the store as much as I did.
[Janine] But on January 15th, 1994,
Vicki's life changed in an instant.
[bell dinging]
[Vicki] It was late morning before I got my first customer.
The man walked in the store
and he as looking around
and looking at the windows
and talking about meeting his niece.
And I just chatted with him.
He did ask me about how much traffic the store generated.
I'm very honest, so I answered him,
"In January, no, it's a slow time."
And that "There was no traffic coming into the store."
He pointed at a frame that he wanted to purchase.
And I picked up the frame
and was walking back to write up his sale.
I was almost at the desk.
[gun fires]
And I just remember seeing I was just falling.
I remember thinking,
"Oh, God, please don't take me now,
I have a 13-year-old daughter."
He jumped over me,
went to the cash register.
I heard him riffle through.
And he came back up to me.
I knew
that if he thought I was alive,
I wouldn't be.
So I played dead.
He rolled me over.
He pulled down my pants and my underwear.
He put the gun up to my forehead
I just remember feeling the cold,
terribly painful on my forehead
and hearing the click.
[gun clicks]
And hearing him laugh.
It was a very...
giddy laugh.
It was a thrill. It was a... um...
It was a horrible laugh.
And then I heard a car door shut outside.
And he got up and he left very quickly.
I was waiting for him to come back.
I thought, well, I need to get up.
Something's definitely wrong,
because, "Oh, my Gosh, I can't feel anything."
And the door dinged again.
But this nice young couple came in,
and I said,
"Excuse me, can you please call 911?
I've been shot."
And right after that
the most excruciating pain that I've ever experienced,
instant, instantaneous.
We made it all the way to the hospital.
I never lost consciousness.
The neurologist said
we think your vital signs are dropping,
we think we going to have to do the surgery.
We need to do it now.
The surgery may put you on a respirator
for the rest of your life even if it's successful.
And I looked at him and I said,
"Well, no, you can't do surgery."
"I have no intention of being on a respirator."
"I'm going to be just fine."
I knew I would live. I knew I would see my daughter grow up.
I knew I was going to be okay.
While I was in the hospital,
the Houston Police artist came in
to do a sketch.
I told him sandy brown hair, Caucasian.
Brown eyes, no glasses.
He was wearing Ropers, which is a Texas cowboy boots.
And he was very short.
So I thought he was a jockey.
His voice was very low, gravely...
uh... voice.
And told the police,
"If he's out there, I want him caught."
As Houston police searched for her attacker,
Vicki Webb begins a very challenging recovery.
[Vicki] I am completely bed ridden
without the ability to truly move.
You have to learn to walk again.
You have to learn to go to the bathroom again.
You have to learn to feed yourself,
and use your arms and your legs.
[Janine] Vicki continues to fight her paralysis.
And over the course of next three months,
she regains her ability to walk.
But Houston PD have not made any traction in finding her attacker.
Months later, she gets a telephone call
out of the blue from Wichita Police Department.
They tell her
they think she might be connected to the I-70 serial killer.
[Hennessy] We became aware about Vicki
way up in Houston due to the fact that
that M.O. was so similar.
Female victim,
shot once at close range with a 22.
Middle of the day time, at a store that's typically not robbery target.
[Vicki] I was already back working at the shop when
I was questioned by Mike Hennessy.
And that was the first time I was introduced
to the possibility
that this wasn't just a single random act,
and the fact that this person...
uh... had done this for so long
and he has never been caught.
How... How... How is this possible?
[Janine] Detective Hennessy feels like a lot of the details align,
except for one.
[Hennessy] There was a sexual component,
which we did not have in Mid-West cases.
She wasn't raped or anything,
but her clothes were messed with.
He's never pulled down anyone's trousers.
So there are some things that don't add up.
[Hennessy] And there was no shell casing left at the scene,
that made ballistic comparisons impossible to do.
Without a shell casing
to compare to the other murders,
the I-70 task force asked Vicki
to come to Wichita
to see if there are other ways
to definitively link her to the I-70 killer.
[Hennessy] I remember being impressed by Viki Webb.
She's just an amazing woman.
And, uh, not many people
like to talk about things like that happened to them,
especially when they're so near to death.
We got a little more information on the profile,
what our killer might be like personally.
[Vicki] And I was shown the prior sketch of the I-70 killer.
And kept saying,
"Okay, that's not exactly correct,
but neither is mine."
She remembered more of a withered look, maybe a little bit older.
We had our guy done a little bit younger,
but it's been a year later,
we don't know what kind of lifestyle he has.
[Vicki] I was shown photos.
But I told Mike Hennessy
that a recording as opposed to a photo,
I would be able to recognize.
I 100% believed, if I hear the voice, I will know it.
Sadly, police cannot pursue a voice.
And none of the photos or sketches spark any significant recognition.
And, in time, Vicki Webb's case stalls like the others.
Do I believe that this... that I was shot by this person?
Yes, actually, I do.
He needs to be either dead or caught.
So he doesn't do this again.
[Janine] After Vicki's shooting, the case completely stalls.
Years pass since the original I-70 murder spree.
And the task force considers the option
that their killer may have already been apprehended
for another crime.
[Larry] I thought it makes a lot of sense
to take a look at convicted individuals
because it's a possibility that he was arrested on some other charge.
[Janine] Police here some stories from prison
that they hope will lead them to their killer.
Like a jailhouse rumor from a prison in Texas.
He definitely was eluding to the fact
that he was the one responsible.
[Janine] In 1995,
a federal agent in Texas calls the St. Charles PD,
informing them of some recent jailhouse rumors
about an inmate named Robert Craig Cox
claiming to be responsible for the I-70 murders.
[McCarrick] Robert Craig Cox was involved in some armed robberies
similar to the ones in this series.
He was convicted of murder in the Orlando area in the late '70s.
But the Florida Supreme Court
overturned the case.
He was also arrested for various abductions
and sexual assaults in California.
As well as being a suspect in Springfield Three.
[Janine] The Springfield Three is an infamous
unsolved missing persons case from June of 1992.
Three women went missing from Missouri,
just weeks after the I-70 killer's attacks.
Police investigates Robert Cox's whereabouts in 1992
and found that he was in the vicinity
of the I-70 murders around the time they were committed.
[Floyd] We have an information that would've put him on Highway 70.
And he had family in Columbia, Missouri.
[Janine] In 1995,
Cox is serving a life sentence in Texas for aggravated robbery.
Investigators decide to pay him a visit
and see if the rumors are true.
[Rhodes] Our detectives visited him numerous times in prison.
He kept saying, "I'll tell you everything once all my appeals are over."
Well, his appeals are exhausted,
and he still wouldn't talk.
After that it was, "Well, once my mother passes away,
then I will tell you."
Well, his mother passed away and he still wouldn't say anything.
So after a while it just kind of seemed,
you know, this guy is just saying this for attention.
He was never able to really provide
those really detailed events about each of these murders
that only the murderer would know.
Plus, there are differences in the nature of Cox's crimes
and the I-70 killings that investigators cannot reconcile.
All of his crimes carry some sort of sexual component.
Whereas that is not the case in any of the I-70 serial killings.
And he never did confess to anything.
[McCarrick] He's still in prison in Texas.
Probably never get out.
[Janine] Investigators could never completely rule out Robert Cox.
But they have to explore other suspects.
And soon after in 1996,
they hear of another suspect
who is also in prison.
[McCarrick] We had information from one of Alden Baker's cellmates
that he was claiming responsibility for these crimes.
[Janine] In 1996,
Baker is serving time at a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas
for armed robbery, handgun charges, and sexual offenses.
[McCarrick] He certainly was a career criminal.
His first incarceration, I think, was age 13.
And he spent a lot of time in Indiana.
In fact, he was in the Indiana penal system.
Not far from the crime scene in the Indianapolis.
He was released from there on an armed robbery charge
in June 1991.
So nine months or so before the crimes in this series began.
[Janine] What sticks out to detectives is that, Baker
is currently doing time for a number of crimes
that are very similar to the I-70 killer's M.O.
Including robbing a store in the same St. Charles mall
where Nancy Kitzmiller was killed.
[McCarrick] We know that he robbed that Hallmark store
some weeks prior to the murder.
So McCarrick and others from the task force
sit down with Baker face to face.
[McCarrick] So went to interview him
at the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.
And in short order, Baker... drops a bomb.
[McCarrick] Immediately, he confessed
to the crime in St. Charles and the one in Wichita.
[Janine] McCarrick and his team press Alden Baker on the details
of these crimes.
[McCarrick] He told us that he was a drug addict
and his memory was distorted
by his drug use.
[Floyd] Some of the stuff that Baker told
was not accurate to what actually happened at some of the crime scenes.
[McCarrick] He did ask us for copies of crime-scene reports
That was a red flag to us.
That's something that somebody does
when they're trying to claim responsibility for a crime.
[Floyd] Some of these people when they get in trouble
they wanna put stuff like this on the resumes.
So there's stuff that makes me suspicious of him being our killer.
Detectives begin to think
that maybe Baker is laying claim to the murders to
improve his social standing in prison.
But they soon deduce that the reality is far darker.
He wasn't trying to get out of jail.
He knew he was never gonna get out of jail.
He was looking to get the death penalty.
Some years later,
he committed suicide in the federal prison.
[Janine] As the investigation stretches into the late 1990s,
authorities track down leads, which unfortunately don't lead to their killer.
Then in 2001, in Terre Haute, Indiana,
there is a new shooting.
And police believe the I-70 killer may have finally resurfaced.
In November of 2001,
I was a patrol officer.
I was working in,
what we call Three Districts in Terre Haute.
On the night of November 30th, 2001,
I was on patrol at about
two and half years on the job.
And I was sent to 7th & 70 Liquor Stores.
It was a shots-fired call.
I pulled up on the west end of the building and parked over there.
I was there alone, no one else had responded
at that time and arrived yet.
And I wasn't sure what I was walking into.
As I got further back in,
I recognized that there was someone's feet.
I turned the corner and there was a man lying on his stomach.
And he was bleeding...
uh... excessively.
He was lying right here.
I did attempt to
rouse him to see if there's any kind of sign of life.
And I got nothing.
And then I recognized that there was clearly a bullet wound to the back of his head.
It was a fairly large wound.
I was the first person to realize
the tragedy that had unfolded in the store.
Someone's life had just changed forever.
And it turns out a lot of somebody's lives had changed forever.
The victim, Billy Brossman
was a father of young five-year-old, I believe, at the time.
And he and his wife, they had just recently purchased a home.
You know, he had family here in town. People loved him.
To this day, one of the most unpleasant things I had to do was
walk around that corner and find him.
While Billy Brossman may have been alone when he died...
Terre Haute detectives realized
it is still possible to bare witness to his murder.
The entire exchange is captured on the store video camera.
Evil exists in our world.
And it's on that videotape.
Open
the recording.
Let's see if it comes up.
Just watching the store.
Vantage point from behind the counter.
No mask.
No disguise.
To the beer cooler.
Carrying a six-pack to the counter.
Oh, my God.
[gun fires]
Oh, my God.
I would not want to think that this is how someone I knew lost their life.
It's all it comes down to.
[sighing]
[Rumsey] When you look at the video,
that beer's on the counter for less than five seconds.
And this man's pulling out a gun.
The clerk Billy handed the register drawer to this guy,
put it right in front of him.
The guy took the money.
But then the suspect very calmly
orders him around the counter.
When you see him stand in the way of that door,
it leads me to only one conclusion.
He didn't go there to rob Billy.
[gun fires]
When you see someone walk in,
and then just...
for no reason at all...
execute them like that,
it makes your stomach turn.
Although the surveillance video is disturbing,
it reveals to detectives what weapon the killer used in this crime.
[Davis] He used a revolver,
so there was no shell casings left at the scene
that we could send off.
They did dust the place for prints.
They found no prints of value.
In 2001, DNA still wasn't huge.
They did get a small quantity of DNA,
but not enough to make a profile out of.
But, perhaps, what sticks with the detectives most
is this ostentatious way that the killer fired his weapon.
[Davis] He used a very unique...
style of shooting.
You know, he flips his hand in the air and he twists,
like he's doing a...
-a dance. -[gun fires]
This guy gets a rush
as he's killing this poor man.
It's shocking. It's a shocking video to watch.
It truly is.
Working quickly, investigators capitalize on this video evidence
and circulate the killer's image.
[Rumsey] We put him on local news stations.
He was shown night after night for a while.
The businesses were given flyers.
And they went out
and they plastered the stamps with photos of this guy.
And that one person called in to say,
they knew who this guys was.
[Davis] Terre Haute's not that big of a city,
someone would've known that man.
Somebody would've seen that video and knew he was from Terre Haute.
This man was not from Terre Haute.
[Janine] Not only that,
but investigators can't shake the feeling
that this murder is eerily similar
to another deadly attack years before.
The murder of Mick McCown.
[Davis] When the call came out over the radio...
[police radio chatter]
The way they described the Billy Brossman murder...
it made me relive that...
I-70 murder here in Terre Haute
back in '92 at Sylvia's Ceramics Shop.
The distance between the stores
and the proximity of I-70.
I thought, "Wow that sounds like our serial killer
we've been looking for the past nine or ten years."
[Rumsey] When you think about all the similarities,
both of them involved robbery in retail businesses.
[gun fires]
[Rumsey] Location of the wounds on the persons,
it sure appears that there could be a connection
between Billy Brossman and Mick McCown.
[Janine] Regardless of its possible connection,
detectives are feeling their suspect isn't a local.
So they expand their search.
[male news anchor] Police in Terre Haute, Indiana
need your help to track down a cold-blooded killer,
whose vicious crime was caught on tape.
[Davis] They put the video on America's Most Wanted
and a woman called in.
And she said that she was confident
that her former boyfriend
committed the crime at the liquor store.
She just said she's known him for a long time
and she was confident it was him.
Two other people called in with the same name.
This suspect lived in St. Charles, Missouri.
[Janine] St. Charles is also where Nancy Kitzmiller was killed
at Boot Village, her place of work.
So investigators check out this man's criminal history.
[Davis] This man has had some fraud cases.
He's had some aggravated battery cases.
A burglary case.
[Janine] Investigators soon discover
this person of interest checks out other boxes
on the I-70 killer's profile.
[Davis] He traveled throughout the mid-west
and worked in construction
and does match the sketch.
In 2001,
Terre Haute detectives went to his hometown of St. Charles, Missouri
and interviewed him.
He admitted to being in Terre Haute,
not necessarily the time of the murder.
But he had been through here before.
Obviously, he denied any involvement in the murder.
[Janine] Police are unable to find any physical evidence
liking him to the rime.
So no charges were filed at that time.
[Janine] Even with video surveillance,
another possible I-70 murder goes cold.
It's been a decade since the first I-70 homicide.
And the original task force has disbanded.
But for many of the investigators,
they are too close to this case to give up on it.
[McCarrick] I mean, I'll never give up on it.
And I'm not... I'm not unique.
There are a lot of other guys who won't either.
People used to say,
if you're gonna do this job for any length of time
and you're gonna be any good at it,
you can't take these cases personally.
But if you can...
work a case like this and not take it personally,
I don't want you working for me,
better go find some other kind of...
kind of job.
[Janine] Despite all their efforts,
law enforcement still knows very little
about who or where the killer is.
[Hennessy] Did he just do his murder spree
and just quit?
Or moved on to another remote part of the country
and still continue that?
We have no idea.
And it's the lack of answers that is the hardest part for the victims' families.
When people from the task force or the detectives would call
and give updates,
I know they felt that maybe this was the best lead
or they were gonna get him.
And then when it didn't happened, it was a...
It was a big letdown.
It is an emotional rollercoaster.
[Cindy] The investigation went on for so long.
I...
I gave up hope that they would ever catch him.
It wasn't, it wasn't quite the same
family get togethers.
All of us girls had March birthdays,
so Dad always did a big March birthday dinner for everybody
and we kind of changed the way we did that.
You just kind of change things
to make it not quite so noticeable
that you're missing somebody.
It's too painful.
It is too painful to keep doing it the same way you've always done it.
[Mark] Back in the '90s,
after the funerals and after the media and all the publicity,
trying to get the word out,
things started dying down a little.
That's when it really hit me.
That it's just me now.
Trish is gone.
I started drinking.
And for about...
ten or eleven years, I tried to drink myself to death.
And every night when I left work,
I'd go to the cemetery and sat at her grave.
I was stuck with this pain and loss.
And guilt for not being there,
not doing something about it. Not...
preventing it from happening.
But by the grace of God...
got the help I needed.
And so I've dedicated a large portion of my life since
trying to help other people, uh...
find a way out of that darkness.
In 2021,
several police who were early in their careers
at the time of the homicides
are not veterans in their departments
with the authority to breathe new life
into finding the I-70 killer.
[Floyd] In 2021, I reestablished
the I-70 serial killer task force.
I reached out to Indianapolis, I reached out to Terre Haute, Raytown and Wichita.
[Jeff] In November of 2021,
all of these agencies reconvened in St. Charles
to get the task force up and running again.
More than 29-plus years have passed,
but the case surrounding the I-70 killer remains unsolved.
One of the keys in solving this case
comes in the form of a task force.
[Floyd] We looked at the Texas cases and the Brossman case,
but what we focused on on our task force was the six people in 1992
and we formulated, uh, key pieces of evidence
that we thought would be important, the DNA test.
We also set up an online portal,
where we can instantly share information
with Wichita, Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Raytown.
Now this is where you at home come in.
Police are asking for your help.
There's a $25,000 reward.
[Jeff] Very quickly, after this was featured on the news,
a tip resurfaces from 30 years earlier.
And now, police are trusting us at People Magazine
with an exclusive piece of information
to help spread the word
and maybe bring justice
to the families of the victims of the I-70 serial killer.
[telephone ringing]
[Rhodes] After opening the case,
we received a call from an individual
who was from Indianapolis.
And in 1992,
he was actually working as a foreman of a construction site
that was of very close proximity to I-70.
[Floyd] He said somewhere between 2 and 3 o'clock,
a vehicle pulled up into the construction site
driving very erratic.
[Rhodes] The driver jumped out.
He was all amped up, all excited.
And he said he was looking for a job.
The foreman said, you know,
"We can always use help, but you have to come and fill out an application
at our work trailer which is down the road."
And he's like, "You can follow me down to my work trailer
and I'll get you an application there."
[Rhodes] So the guy gets back in his car
and he follows the foreman to the trailer.
As he's following the foreman, he was tailgating him.
Couple of times he thought the car was gonna hit him.
He pulls into his work trailer and he steps out of his truck.
[Rhodes] That's when noticed there was a female
in the passenger seat of the car.
[Floyd] She reaches into the backseat
and grabs the barrel of a gun.
And hands it over to the guy.
The foreman thought he was getting robbed.
He jumps back in his truck and he takes off.
[Floyd] He said the guy got back into his Cadillac and actually pursued him.
There was a wooded area behind his trailer.
So he drove into the wooded area for several hundred yards
before he gave up chase.
[Rhodes] He called the Indianapolis Police Department to report it.
They said they would send an officer out.
And he said he waited for hours and hours
and no officer ever showed up, so he went back home.
[Floyd] He said, that evening was when he found out
Robin Fuldauer had been murdered
between 1:00 and 1:40 in the afternoon
on that same day at the Payless Shoe Store
just minutes from this construction site
where he had been working.
So he was under the assumption that the police were probably really busy with that
and that's why this call fell through the cracks.
[Rhodes] Years go by
and, you know, he sees the news that we had reopened the I-70 case.
So he contacted Captain Floyd and I.
The caller goes on to describe the man and vehicle.
[Floyd] He's a white male, 5'6" to 5'9",
probably 150 to 160 pounds.
Red hair, almost dirty blonde.
And it was cut short.
He was wearing khaki pants, black and white tennis shoes.
And a light-green army t-shirt.
[Rhodes] And this description
matches what the witness from Wichita described.
Investigators then show the witness various firearms.
[Rhodes] We did show him several firearms,
and he said the ERMA-Werke
definitely could have been the gun that he saw.
This is the only lead that I'm aware of
that mentions that there may be another person that was there.
Getaway driver, companion.
I mean, whatever she was to him, I'm unsure.
The fact that she was handing him the ERMA-Werke,
I do think this is a priority lead.
This promising lead also gives the task force a very specific new detail,
a vehicle.
[Rhodes] He was driving a cream colored
Cadillac Eldorado Convertible,
with Florida plates.
We were trying to get license plates for any Cadillac
that would've been registered in Florida in that timeframe.
[Rhodes] We're investigating those and seeing if there is
a connection or some kind of correlations
between these cases and the Cadillac Eldorado.
While the task force makes headway
with old-fashioned gumshoe detective work,
they are simultaneously using advancements in technology.
[Rhodes] Right now we have evidence testing available to us
that never existed in 1992.
That they probably never even fathomed would have even existed.
[Rumsey] At the task force meeting,
we methodically went through
each and every agency's case.
We decided what were the most likely
items of evidence to produce DNA results.
[Janine] Amongst all the cases,
there are numerous items to be tested.
But the results can be frustrating.
[Davis] We sent the pockets of mixed jeans for DNA testing,
thought for sure
that if his wallet was missing,
the suspect reached in and grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket.
Then his DNA would be in there.
Unfortunately, it didn't come back with a good result.
But of all items the task force is testing,
the shell casings left at the scenes, they're the most promise.
[Davis] We're hoping for DNA on the shell casing that we've sent off.
That's our best shot right now.
When someone tells you they have
mostly 50% chance of getting DNA off of a shell casing,
that's exciting news on a case that's 30 years old.
You're still looking for a needle in a haystack.
Still, I mean, you're looking for something very, very small,
but we only need to hit one time.
[Janine] The task force has multiple departments
working on multiple leads
that authorities in Terre Haute
are revisiting another lead from years before.
I was a patrol officer in 2001 when Billy was killed.
I thought there was a strong possibility that
the suspect was the I-70 killer.
This suspect has done a lot of traveling, I know that,
through the mid-west and out through Texas.
He was a laborer, construction worker, paid under the table.
No tax information or anything like that.
He's kind of slid under the radar for a long time.
I certainly think that he looks like the composite.
His face is sunken in, looks a little petite.
His hair is thinning, which matches the composite.
[Janine] In order to connect their suspect
from the Brossman murder,
the task force contacts the owner of the video store
who witnessed the I-70 killer the day Sarah Blessing was killed.
They hope, maybe, he'll be a match there too.
The St. Charles, Missouri Police Department put together a photo array
and showed it to the witness.
He picked the man out.
[Rumsey] I don't wanna go into his name,
or where he's currently living.
But I will say he's absolutely a solid, strong suspect.
[Davis] We got a court order from a judge
to get his DNA.
Traveled to where he was at
took his DNA.
So we do have that.
And we have sent that out for a comparison
against some of the evidence from the crime scenes.
We're hoping we have a big enough sample to test.
And that within two or three months, we'll know for sure.
I don't have any doubt that he's the I-70 killer, in my mind.
[Janine] In addition to exploring DNA evidence,
in 2021, the task force releases
a new age-enhanced version of the police sketch.
[Jeff] If he's still alive,
the suspect today described as 20 to 30 in 1992
would now be 50 to 60.
[Rumsey] I think this person is still alive.
And someone is gonna see that composite sketch,
the latest one, the age-enhanced,
and go, "My gosh, that's uncle Jim."
Or "That's the neighbor two doors down."
And suddenly you got a red hot investigation again.
[Rhodes] I'm dedicated specifically to the I-70 case.
And I'm not gonna stop working this case until he's caught.
It doesn't matter if you've come forward before,
or if in 30 years, they've never come forward.
Now would be the time. This case needs to be solved.
[Perkins] We want the victims' families and friends
to know that this case has not been forgotten.
It is still being actively looked at.
It is still being actively worked.
[Davis] It's just a matter of time.
We haven't given up after over 30 years.
And we'll never give up until we find out who did this.
I was shot in the back of the neck.
You really can't see any kind of, um...
entrance wound or anything else.
A very tiny bullet.
I never had surgery. Um...
I have no intention of ever having surgery.
Um, when I die, they'll be able to take the bullet out.
It causes me issues all the time.
But I've lived with a bullet in my neck
for almost as long as I lived without it.
Uh, so it's my new normal.
Never again will I be vulnerable. Um...
So he took months out of my life. He can't have anymore.
[Mark] I appreciate the communities
and agencies enable these people to do this...
uh... aggressive look.
But I learned a long time ago,
not to get my hopes up, not to have expectations.
Because expectations are premeditated resentments.
Even decades later, these experiences haunt the witnesses
to these senseless crimes.
[Lucretia] I really wish I could've been more helpful.
It's been a long time,
but still emotionally traumatizing to me also, you know.
To have to relive that.
[Tim] I saw her feet sticking out.
I didn't go any further.
I'm sorry.
Still bothers me.
I mean, I...
feel like I didn't act fast enough.
If I'd have not waited so long.
Think they might have caught him.
[Shelli] Sarah had just the gift of life.
She still had a lot to teach people.
And she had a lot to share with people.
She wasn't just a vic.
She mattered to people.
[Mark] To this day, there are days that are hard.
There are days that I wanna give up.
And say, "Why me?" "Why Trish?"
And those questions will forever be unanswered.
[Cindy] Mick was a wonderful musician.
We're lucky really because we have tapes of his voice.
And you can look at pictures and that's wonderful.
But when you lose somebody,
after a while, you lose their voice.
But we have Mick's voice.
[Mick singing] ♪ Love can save you Time will tell ♪
♪ So let me dry the tears That you've been crying ♪
[chorus singing] ♪ Been cryin' ♪
♪ Woman, you need a lover like me ♪
I just encourage everybody out there to,
you know, just stop for 60 seconds and think about it.
Don't just turn the channel.
You know, think about that for a minute.
Think about the impact this had on...
The ripple effect through the people that these individuals knew
and, uh, and step forward.