[line ringing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[man speaking]
DAMICO: John was a little bit different.
Not what I pictured my mom to ever date.
Not a people person.
BURRINGTON: You always want to see the good in people,
but I felt something is a little off here.
DAMICO: We would question, like, what's going on with him?
He became a completely different person.
BURRINGTON: I thought, wow,
he's definitely getting obsessed with this,
and then that's where everything took a big
terrible turn.
[man speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
PIFER: There was a makeshift bookshelf that had been turned
into a door into, like, a almost a hidden room.
[detective speaking]
SUAREZ: His demeanor, his actions,
his emotions, they just weren't genuine.
He's just an evil person.
[music climbing]
[theme music playing]
NARRATOR: It's Christmas Day in the Damico household.
I can't see.
NARRATOR: 42-year-old Steve has an unusual
present for his 41-year-old wife, Carla.
[Steve speaking]
[Dani speaking]
My dad said, "Santa left a present out in the garage,"
and me and my mom went out there.
[Steve clears throat]
-[Steve gasps] -[Carla chuckles]
[Dani speaking]
[Carla speaking]
Carla got a garage door opener from her hubby.
[chuckles]
[Carla speaking]
[Steve speaking]
Oh, yeah. It was practical.
[laughs]
BURRINGTON: They were married, had to be about 22 years,
somewhere around that.
And at this point, Carla and Steve's
marriage was probably starting to go downhill.
I think it had been brewing for
a while, and sometimes, you stay together for the children.
I think that might have been part of the situation.
[gasps]
He was a good dad, but maybe not quite up there doing
everything like Carla.
She ran circles around him,
made sure everything was in order.
They were young when they got together, and I
didn't see my parents give much affection to each other.
I feel like they had a good relationship...
as friends.
I remember my mom saying that she still loved
my dad, but she wasn't in love with him anymore.
NARRATOR: Carla and Steve divorce in 2007.
Steve did not want the divorce, but because of their two
children and all the grandchildren,
they were very nice to each other,
very civil.
So after the divorce, it was like a new chapter,
and she just was, like, feeling good about herself.
I think she was reliving some of her younger years
that she missed, because she was 21 when she got married.
NARRATOR: Carla begins online dating.
I was always a little apprehensive about meeting
people on this, um,
you know, dating website.
Not too many months after, she told me that she met
a really nice guy and that she was enjoying talking
with him.
NARRATOR: The new man in Carla's life is 40-year-old John Benton Lewis.
DAMICO: He was a little bit different,
not what I pictured my mom to ever date.
She showed me his profile with, like, weed plants.
I would never picture her being with someone that --
that did that.
But here she is in her forties, you know,
wanting to kind of relive those twenties again.
John had tattoos, he had a motorcycle,
and he was good at fixing things.
BURRINGTON: He was a man of few words,
but she enjoyed his company.
She was very happy with him.
C. PRUETT: John would cook, and he would clean,
and he would fix things around the house.
I think that's what she was looking for.
BURRINGTON: He made her feel very good,
made her feel very important,
something that she never ever, ever had in her past life.
My sister told me that he did have a criminal past.
He did have a felony for burglary,
but she did say that he had changed
and was getting away from all of that stuff.
And I said, well, you know...
you know better than anyone.
C. PRUETT: John told my mom that he had had cancer
previously, and he had a lot of pain from that.
John was on disability income, and that
and the small engine repair
was what he considered his income.
BURRINGTON: John had a medical marijuana card,
and he did smoke the marijuana
because he was in pain because of the cancer that he had.
I felt like it was excessive, but, you know,
it is used for medical things. I get that.
So, um -- so yeah, I was very accepting to him.
He told my mom about the things that went on
in his past, and my mom had a huge heart,
and she always saw the potential in people,
and I believe that she saw a big amount of potential in him.
The end of April 2009, and they were already living together.
C. PRUETT: My mom was very successful in her career.
She was in the accounting area at Bayer Pharmaceuticals.
In the summer of 2010, she bought
a house in Niles for her and John.
It was a three-bedroom ranch-style with
a really nice sun porch on the back and a pool.
My mom loved it.
NARRATOR: Carla and John might be a tight couple,
but John often ducks out of important family
milestones, like the wedding of Carla's daughter, Danielle.
That's me and my dad. He's walking me down the aisle.
Oh, there's my mom.
She's super happy.
BURRINGTON: There's Carla right there --
and Steve -- they definitely were fine
being around each other.
DAMICO: My wedding was in Idaho.
My whole family came out to -- to celebrate.
It was just nice having my mom there for it.
John was invited to the wedding,
but he didn't -- he didn't come.
My mom said that he doesn't like flying.
He doesn't like being around a bunch of people.
But it's also because he couldn't
just smoke his weed whenever he wanted.
BURRINGTON: Sometimes when you go away,
outside the state of Michigan, that would be
frowned upon if you were someplace else
and trying to do that.
We got very used to John's excuses
for why he wouldn't come.
Carla would always have loved if John would have came
with her, but she always told me
she understood why he didn't, and she was
fine with that, but she would call him a lot.
She'd go call him and come back in
and be like, "Oh, I think he misses me."
When she got home, she'd say,
you know, "Look what Johnny got me."
He would get her flowers.
So it would kind of show like, oh, he -- he does care.
He's just quiet and not a people person.
NARRATOR: Back home in Michigan,
John makes up for his absences at family
events by spending quality time with Carla's grandkids.
C. PRUETT: This is John on a go-kart
pulling my three oldest boys on a sled.
[chuckles]
Noah's in the front, Adam's in
the middle, and Isaiah's in the back.
He had wanted to do something with us, because there was snow,
and I remember he would take us around the block.
When John was interacting with my kids,
most of the time, I was not there.
I always assumed that it was because he was too introverted,
but I don't really think he liked me very much.
NARRATOR: Six months later, Carla and John tie the knot.
BURRINGTON: It was a outside little wedding
with a little gazebo,
just pretty much family, and it was wonderful.
I was glad to see that
she seemed very happy again.
And while I wasn't sure about how John was,
I assumed that he must treat my mom really good for her to
be as happy as she was.
I was like, well, you know,
he's a little quiet and mysterious, but, like, maybe --
maybe they're good together, maybe opposites do attract.
I was just happy that my sister was showing a lot of
love for this guy, and he seemed to be for her, too,
but we can all be deceived by people.
BURRINGTON: My daughter Tessa's wedding was
in Grand Rapids in Michigan.
So it was a couple hour drive.
I am in the front row with my mom and my dad,
yep, and there's Carla and John.
John felt more comfortable, because it was in Michigan
and they had the Michigan medical marijuana rules.
OFFICIANT: Tessa Leigh Burrington...
It was a very big thing for him
to have attended the wedding.
DAMICO: I remember him being there in the family photo,
but he was probably going outside doing smoke breaks
every 10 minutes.
Him and his marijuana.
He socially didn't like being around a bunch of people.
He didn't seem like he cared
enough to try to have a relationship with anyone.
NARRATOR: That same year, John starts to grow
cannabis plants at home in the basement.
BURRINGTON: We heard about a room that John had built.
It was a grow room, and it was like behind a wall.
I was a little apprehensive about it.
I was thinking, I don't like that
my sister has this in her house.
I thought at this time that he was just
growing that medical marijuana for him.
And then all of a sudden, I heard that he was
actually growing it not just for him, but other people.
DAMICO: He would post about it on Facebook too, to show that
he supports cancer patients
with marijuana, and he'd be cooking tablets for,
like, cancer patients.
Carla is very trusting.
So if he says he can sell it to medical people,
she can see the good in that.
I was thinking, I'm not really sure about this,
because he had a felony, and when you have
a felony, I'm not really sure if you're supposed to be
selling the medical marijuana to other people.
By 2016, John had become quite outspoken
about wanting the legalization
of marijuana to happen.
DAMICO: John got his truck all decked out.
I mean, he seemed super proud of it.
BURRINGTON: This is John's truck that's got the marijuana
leaf on the front and on the windows.
And there's the phrase on
the back that, "Cannabis cures, 7Leaves."
"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey,
he is obligated to do so," a quote by Thomas Jefferson.
I thought, wow, he's definitely getting
obsessed with this.
[John Lewis speaking]
NARRATOR: John takes his advocacy
for medical marijuana to the streets.
This was a Cannabis Cures motorcycle rally.
That's probably John's bike right there,
because it was the same color green.
He was known around the town
on his motorcycle and on his truck.
I think he took on the role of being
the main person, the kingpin, on vocalizing about
legalizing marijuana.
It was just getting a little bit out of control.
And I just felt like, wow,
you're really crossing some lines on doing this
the right way.
DAMICO: Christmas of 2016,
me and my family were staying with my mom
and John at their house in Niles.
This was the first Christmas that we were
spending together with all of the grandkids.
We'd always be on Snapchat doing
Snapchat filters.
And my mom, she'd just be like doing --
doing the goofiest Snapchats.
Oh, my goodness.
C. PRUETT: My mom loved having all her grandkids
and all her kids.
It's just was her favorite thing in the whole world.
DAMICO: It's Christmastime, but John was a little
bit more off than he usually is.
BURRINGTON: People would come over, and they would come over
when we were there, and I'd ask my sister,
"So who are they?"
And she's like, "Well, they're are some of the,
you know, people that he sells his medical marijuana to."
I have my kids with me, so I'm a little more on edge.
Like, who are these people?
Like, random people coming in here, because they just didn't
look like they were here for anything good.
It just seemed like it was happening more frequent,
and, like, at nighttime.
I'm not naive about things.
Whereas, like, my mom, she's more of a don't ask,
don't tell.
And I asked her, I was like, "Do you have a gun?"
She was like, "No, I don't have one, but I think John does."
It scared me for my mom, really.
In May of 2017 is when
John opened his 7Leaves
Compassion Club store.
Whatever you could sell for marijuana, as long as it was
legal, he was selling it.
Carla put forward the finances.
She thought it sounded like a good thing.
My mom was very supportive of him, because
that's something that he had dreamed about doing.
BURRINGTON: Within the next couple months,
Carla started sharing with us that she wasn't feeling
too good about this shop.
John doesn't hardly come home till late at night.
He's there all day and all night.
And even on the weekends, he's just
not caring about anything except these drugs.
Then, all of a sudden,
there was women that were texting him.
And women, you know, that were coming up there,
regulars, and she wasn't feeling comfortable
about that at all either.
I think at this point,
Carla was getting very frustrated with things.
I know they were having conversations about that
they were going to have to close
that shop, because they were losing money.
He was very upset about what she was saying,
because he was having the time of his life right now.
He was the center of attention with all the marijuana people
in Niles and had all these girls calling him for
different reasons and didn't want to get off that pedestal,
that's for sure.
NARRATOR: Carla drives two hours to Muskegon
to look after her mom over the weekend.
My mom took my boys up there to help
grandma with all sorts of things in her little apartment.
A. PRUETT: She was sick or had just had surgery or something.
And so we were just went up there to help her.
It was like how a normal weekend with her would go.
But, before we left, my grandma
had been on the phone with somebody
looking very angry and upset.
And I remember asking her if she was okay,
and I remember her telling me that she was like,
"Yeah, everything's fine."
I felt like this was a different kind of upset and mad.
It's like something had happened, something bad.
NARRATOR: That afternoon,
Carla drops her grandsons at Christy's house
and heads home to John and Niles.
C. PRUETT: I believe it was, like, four o'clock.
We all said goodbye, and I gave her a big hug.
Never expected what happened next.
Had I known, I wouldn't have let her go home.
[line ringing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[dispatcher speaking]
[John Lewis sobbing]
[dispatcher speaking]
Sunday, August 13th,
at approximately 5:45 p.m.,
a 911 call was made by John Lewis.
[indistinct radio chatter]
PIFER: I was probably four or five miles north
when our priority tones came out over the radio.
It came out as a robbery in progress.
We didn't know how many people were there.
We didn't know who was involved.
[indistinct talking]
PIFER: We didn't know how many people were still in the house.
[indistinct radio chatter]
We grabbed our rifles.
We didn't know what we were walking into.
We started to search the main level, which
was a single-story house with a basement.
As we worked our way into the basement,
you could start to hear someone saying, like,
"She won't wake up, she won't wake up."
NARRATOR: The voice is coming from behind a bookcase in
the corner.
We made our way to that corner, and when we looked,
there was a makeshift bookshelf that had been turned
into a door,
into like almost a hidden room.
It was a hidden room where they were growing marijuana.
We all had got to this door and started announcing, saying,
"Come on out."
Mr. Lewis came crawling out.
You could see he was covered in blood.
Still in the room was a female.
She was face down.
She wasn't moving, unresponsive.
[Officer Pifer speaking]
We had medic come down and pronounced
Carla Lewis deceased at that point.
[cellphone chimes]
C. PRUETT: One of my friends messaged me.
"I'm just wanting to make sure that your mom's okay.
I heard there was a shooting on her road."
And I tried calling my mom and texting my mom.
I tried calling John.
I had woken my husband up like, I have to go over there.
There is a line of cop cars blocking off their house,
and I was like, "No, it can't be her, it can't be her."
You're, like, numb, that's for sure.
You just -- you can't even...
fathom it.
DAMICO: Couldn't, like, wrap my head around everything.
Just didn't believe it.
I was like thinking, too, like, who would shoot my mom?
Like, she's the sweetest, kindest person
I've ever met in my life.
I was just in complete shock.
We try to get some basic information from Mr. Lewis.
He had said that two big black guys essentially
had come into his house and tried to rob him.
They shot into his marijuana room,
hitting Miss Lewis, missing him altogether.
SUAREZ: We took Mr. Lewis to
the Niles law enforcement complex,
where we could do a video interview
with myself and Lieutenant Rick Bigger.
DET. RICK BIGGER: Um...
SUAREZ: He was just wearing jeans
and a pair of tennis shoes.
We just kind of talked to him, get some basic information,
kind of pin him down to a story.
He said that Carla had gone to go visit her mother.
So she was gone for the weekend.
Then she had just arrived that Sunday afternoon.
He said once she arrived, they never left the house.
Nobody went anywhere.
She basically shared her weekend
of what she had did with him.
They go downstairs into that grow room
where the marijuana plants were.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking, sobbing]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
-Uh-huh. -[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
BIGGER: They're just shooting.
The grow room, it was very small.
I want to say maybe it was 10-by-10,
10-by-12 with a small entrance door.
You're looking at the casings,
you're looking at holes in the wall, it gives you kind of
an idea of what happened.
My first thought is okay, well, they killed her.
How in the world did he escape harm?
Because that doorway is so small.
How did he not get injured?
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
And we're getting a little bit
of history information about his business.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
BIGGER: Oh, okay.
Then we asked him, does he have any enemies,
things like that, or is there anyone that he suspects of
committing the homicide?
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking, sobbing]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
We asked him if he suspected them of being involved,
but he would never really give a straight answer on that.
[John Lewis speaking]
[sobbing]
SUAREZ: The story that John tells us just didn't make sense.
We needed to find out the truth.
We started to transition from
a soft interview into an interrogation.
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
And he was adamant that he didn't have a gun,
never owned a gun, never purchased a gun.
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
-[sobbing] -[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
He was telling us that they had
a happy marriage and that everything
was great between them.
Carla was happy, he was happy, and everything was great.
Then he kept asking us if she was dead,
if she was deceased, that he had to go see her.
[John Lewis speaking]
And John would just start blubbering.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking, sobbing]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
SUAREZ: All the information he's given us,
it just doesn't jive, he just was sidestepping it.
We needed to start putting pressure on
John and see where it goes from there.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
Around nine o'clock, we received a call
or a notification from dispatch
that an individual named Justin Hicks had called in
and had information.
SUAREZ: During the interview itself,
we got a text from a detective.
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[Det. Fabian Suarez speaking]
They had made contact with this individual, who
I believe was working construction in
John's business.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
Detectives then responded to speak with Justin Hicks,
and Justin Hicks explained to
the detectives that around 1:53 that day,
he received a text message from John requesting
that he come over to John's house.
John turns over a key and requests Justin Hicks go
to the shop and retrieve ammunition out of the shop.
Justin does that, goes to the shop,
retrieves the ammunition, and keeps it in his vehicle.
And then later saw like Facebook postings that
the police were out at the Lawndale residence
and thought that that was suspicious.
Justin Hicks turns over eight boxes of Tula Russian-made
nine-millimeter ammunition and a magazine
for a nine-millimeter pistol.
It was Tula brand ammunition, which is steel casings.
Nine out of 10 times,
you're going to find brass casing at a homicide scene.
The steel casing, well, that's kind of the ordinary.
The ammunition that was given to us by Justin Hicks,
it was the same caliber, the same steel casing
that is linked to the crime scene.
It connected John Lewis to the homicide.
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
SUAREZ: Once we received the text from the other officers
of the individual who had come forward,
we knew, okay, this is definitely --
we were on the right track, he's definitely lying.
So we confront him with that.
We mentioned the name of Justin Hicks.
[John Lewis speaking]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[exhales]
-[Det. Rick Bigger speaking] -[John Lewis speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[Det. Fabian Suarez speaking]
[Det. Rick Bigger speaking]
[John Lewis speaking]
SUAREZ: His demeanor was okay, I'm not going to cooperate.
All the blubbering stopped.
He knew that he was in a bit of trouble now.
SANDERS: The autopsy occurred the next day.
The results of the autopsy indicated that the type of
bullets that had struck
Carla Lewis matched the ammunition that Justin Hicks
had turned over to the detectives.
That gave us enough information to initially
arrest John Lewis for killing Carla Lewis.
SUAREZ: Well, once you make an arrest of the suspect,
you are still building a case to try to convict,
to convince a jury that this person is guilty.
We're taking calls from witnesses,
and we're getting that information,
just trying to build the case even stronger.
I personally spoke to one of the daughters.
Carla had told her that she was under a lot of stress to
bring money into the household,
because the business that John had
opened up just wasn't making any money at all.
SANDERS: John's business was failing.
John owed back rent and was,
in fact, moving to a smaller location in the strip mall.
Carla appeared to be the provider.
According to her family, the financial strain really gave
the notion that Carla was going to end John's business.
The only thing that was gonna help John
be a success was to have immediate access to money.
The family let us know that Carla
had life insurance policy through her employer.
In the event of Carla's death,
John was the beneficiary of the life insurance policy that
would pay John $334,000.
Money could have been a motive for John to kill his wife.
SUAREZ: One of the things that you do,
obviously, in a crime scene is you collect all the electronics,
cellphones, laptops, things like that.
John had deleted quite a bit of Facebook instant messaging
where he was making contact with several women.
One female that had been contacted
confirmed that she had been having an affair,
extramarital affair, with John for several months.
She had asked John Lewis how attached he was
with Carla Lewis.
He had made the comment to her that they
were gonna be separated much sooner than she thought.
SANDERS: Another female had come forward
who explains to us that John Lewis would pay her in cash
and in marijuana to have sex with her.
And that relationship had been going on
for the previous six years.
She had sex with John earlier
in the day the incident had occurred.
What's alarming is that John Lewis asked her if she would
be his girlfriend and leave her boyfriend
if he became a widower.
John Lewis had actually told her that he had thoughts
or plans of killing Carla by using some type of
a prescription drug.
So we had more information for the prosecutor to show that
he did have motive that he wanted to get rid of Carla.
He wanted to move on with his life.
SANDERS: In looking through John's search history,
detectives noted that approximately 10 days
prior to the murder,
John was searching, purchasing pistols
and silencers on the internet.
SUAREZ: That's always good information,
because John is telling us that he didn't have a gun,
he didn't have any ammunition.
Everything else is telling us different.
There was definitely enough evidence to show
that John Lewis was involved with the homicide.
The prosecutor put together a very good case.
It showed that John was just using Carla for her money.
She really didn't approve of it. She didn't like it.
There was several women that were having affairs with him,
one that John had talked about killing Carla.
John was going to get her life insurance
and continue his business.
On the day of the homicide,
after Carla arrived at the residence, John Lewis
asked her to help him in that grow room,
even though her family said that she would do nothing of
the sort.
At that point in time, John Lewis
murdered Carla Lewis by shooting her five times.
[gunshots blasting]
After the fact it happened,
that's when John Lewis called 911 to
report that two males had come in.
[John Lewis speaking]
John Lewis had contacted Justin Hicks
on the day of the homicide,
asked him to go back to his business and to get this bag
that was there and keep it for him,
and that bag contained ammunition.
[Det. Fabian Suarez speaking]
We had matched up the rounds to what
Justin Hicks had turned over to what was on the scene.
That was some damning information in this case.
C. PRUETT: I never would have thought that
we let this monster live amongst us.
Nothing will ever bring my mom back, and nothing
will ever replace all the memories that she's missed.
I will always have an empty spot in my heart
that is shaped like my mom.
DAMICO: I miss her so much.
I never had, like, a relationship with
anybody like I had with my mom.
I hope I see her again and...
that she's proud of me.
BURRINGTON: Our lives are never the same.
You can't ever go back to normal.
But we try and remember the fun that we had together.
Carla's memory can live on so easily,
because she's someone you can't forget.