JAN: It looked like the perfect family.
They've got a beautiful house, and life's good.
My mother cared about other people.
She always tried to do things for other people.
Time and time again, she was manipulated.
She was bullied.
My brother, Richard, he was a master manipulator.
Everything in his life was falling apart.
My brother was on the run.
People were nervous.
I never could have dreamed what was gonna come.
It's shocking beyond description.
DALE: It was one of the most brutal murders I've ever covered.
It was ghastly.
[theme music playing]
NARRATOR: It's June 1987 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
and 13-year-old Richard Merritt
is center stage in his own home movie.
This is my brother, Richard,
doing a tour of the villa
that my parents and he lived in
when they lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He was known for looking at himself in the mirror,
making sure that he looked good and handsome, and, um,
looks very comfortable in front of the camera,
very confident,
and he looks pretty excited about showing the --
the big villa that they lived in.
[Richard speaking]
NARRATOR: Mom, Shirley, and dad, Robert Sr., met
in 1955 at high school in Mississippi.
In 1965, they welcomed their first son,
named Robert after his dad.
ROBERT: Keeping in mind that my parents were in the military,
it was expensive to live where they were living,
and they were very frugal.
He worked, she would make the dinner,
he would mow the lawn.
You know, they were good at, you know,
dividing the work and working together as a team.
NARRATOR: In 1974, Shirley and Robert complete their family
with the arrival of their youngest son, Richard.
Nine-year-old Robert now has a brother.
I thought he was entertaining. I mean, I liked him okay.
I wouldn't say we're terribly close,
but we're nine years different.
So, I mean, nine years is a long time.
[indistinct overlapping conversations]
NARRATOR: In 1987, after 24 years of service, dad,
Robert Merritt, retired from the Air Force and now has a new
job working for a U.S. defense contractor in Saudi Arabia.
ROBERT: My dad had been in the military for so many years.
My mom worked very hard to support my dad.
My mother was a real estate agent, worked hard to --
to put me through college, and I think they felt they deserved
a time to have fun and to do
something new and different and to travel.
JAN: She was proud of her family,
every one of them -- she told me about her life
in Saudi Arabia, and it was sweet to hear.
She was a wonderful baker.
She loved to bake, and she always brought
the best cakes and cookies in the world.
I mean, you would just not even care about the calories,
they were so good.
You just ate it and paid the consequences later.
ROBERT: My mom got to do a lot more entertaining, which she loved.
She loved throwing parties.
So it was like turbocharged entertainment.
She liked doing things with
the other wives and to support the families.
NARRATOR: The move is a huge step up
for the family financially.
I'm sure they felt they deserved
the income, because they'd worked so hard.
You have to understand that, when you look at
the Merritt family, it was two different families.
There's the early military family before he was born.
And then for a period of time, after he was born,
and then there's the retirement Merritt family,
when mom and dad and Richard moved to
Saudi Arabia, and their income doubled or tripled.
[singing indistinctly]
ROBERT: They had a cook.
They had a driver, they had a person to clean the home,
they had extra money to do things.
They lived in a mansion basically over there.
So, I think, you know,
that was a very impressionable time for him.
He got it in his head that he liked that lifestyle.
[Richard speaking]
I didn't go, because I had graduated from college,
and I was going to graduate school.
So there was no point in me going.
NARRATOR: The Merritts have returned stateside
to attend their elder son Robert's graduation
from Washington and Lee University
in Lexington, Virginia.
Oh, wow. Look at that.
We are at my graduation from college at Washington and Lee.
There's, uh, Richard hamming it up again
in front of the camera.
Looks like I'm reading him the riot act about his behavior.
Yeah, that's a typical interaction between my brother
and I -- he's usually acting out,
acting up, trying to get a rise out of me, and usually,
he succeeded, as you could see in that video.
From that point forward, I had a lot more issues
with his behavior and a lot more issues with him personally,
manipulating the situation to his benefit.
That behavior started quite early.
NARRATOR: It's Christmas 1987, and Robert Jr. has flown out
to Saudi Arabia to spend time with the family.
ROBERT: This is the only visit I made
to Saudi Arabia while my parents lived there.
This is Christmas in Saudi Arabia.
ROBERT: This is the first Christmas after
my father retired from the military.
My mom and dad always overdid Christmas anyway,
even when we didn't have the money.
When they came into money,
the presents not only became more bountiful and plentiful,
the value of the presents went up considerably.
This is a leather jacket that I wanted
that was very popular at the time.
So I'm interested in my clothing.
Richard is sitting on the floor.
He's clearly disinterested in what I'm doing
and very interested in what he's doing.
[on TV] And free to roam these grounds unescorted.
The lawyer who prosecuted [indistinct] says he was
surprised she was not under tighter...
I can't say that I ever felt
any overabundance of affection from him.
If annoying me and poking me and trying
to get me in trouble is affection then
yeah, he loved me, for sure.
NARRATOR: Throughout 1987, the Merritt family
are an international act.
Eldest son, Robert, lives in Atlanta,
while his younger brother,
Richard, and his parents live in Saudi Arabia.
ROBERT: Richard got all the toys that he wanted
and was obviously playing with
his radio-controlled boat in the swimming pool.
He always got what he wanted to keep himself occupied.
Notice he had not one but two radio-controlled vehicles at
his disposal.
NARRATOR: But things are set to change.
[toy vehicle whirring]
ROBERT: The American school in Saudi Arabia
can accommodate kids through the ninth grade.
So it was decided that my brother was gonna come
live with me and go to a private school in Atlanta.
I was not happy about it at all, because I was
working full-time, and I also was going to graduate school.
So I had a lot going on, and the fact that I had to now
be responsible for a minor child was an added stress in
an already stressful life.
NARRATOR: Despite the brotherly tensions,
there are lighter moments.
ROBERT: I mean, we did have some laughs.
So this is me and my wife, Rachel.
We're up in St. Louis.
And we're goading Richard into coming sledding with us.
[indistinct exclamation]
[laughs]
NARRATOR: But Richard's taste for material pleasures
and being pandered to is never far away.
He was a pain.
I walked into his room, and all of
his clothes were stacked up on the floor.
And I'm like, well, what are you doing?
He laughed. He goes, "Oh, I forgot.
You're not my house boy."
Couldn't make his own food, couldn't do his own laundry,
couldn't do this, couldn't do that.
So I was stuck.
I was his cook, driver, and house boy,
while I was doing all these other things.
Trying to get him to lift a finger to do anything was
virtually impossible.
NARRATOR: By 1993, Richard is enrolled at university.
My parents paid for his education
at the University of Georgia.
NARRATOR: But Richard and the Merritt family
are in for a huge shock.
We received a call from the company physician
that my father was in heart failure
and was gravely ill.
Has to come back from Saudi Arabia
and then retires from the company completely.
NARRATOR: In May 1994, Robert's now wife, Rachel,
gives birth to their first son, William.
NARRATOR: Proud grandparents, Robert and Shirley,
have now relocated from Saudi Arabia to Stone Mountain,
Georgia, and dote on their first grandchild.
There's my mom holding my oldest son,
William, who was born in May.
We're making homemade ice cream.
You can see in my mother's face how
happy she is to be holding a grandchild.
She was the epitome of a -- of a good grandmother.
She would do anything under the sun for them.
I mean, if they needed a babysitter, she was there.
If somebody was doing something special,
she was there, and she would always pull out a picture
or her phone and show us the latest.
It was sweet to see.
Unfortunately, now this house has
a really negative connotation to it.
[group singing] Happy birthday to you...
NARRATOR: By 1995, baby William is one,
and Shirley and Robert Sr. are in their element.
[singing] ...dear William, happy birthday to you.
It's my son's first birthday.
Lots of balloons, lots of decorations,
lots of family members and friends.
So see, there's a cake. My mother made that cake.
A homemade cake.
There was no way that my mother was gonna allow us --
we even said, "Well, we'll just buy a cake."
Dude!
"No, no, no, I'm gonna make the cake.
I'm gonna make him an Elmo cake," because he liked Elmo.
NARRATOR: Later that afternoon, Richard finally gets
his brother's attention
by arguing with him about a camera tape.
[Robert speaking]
[Richard speaking]
Richard enjoyed getting a rise out of somebody,
whether it was a laugh or a comment.
That was always an objective of his.
NARRATOR: Finally, it's Richard's turn to settle down.
Richard met Janine at college, at the university.
And, uh, I believe she was a year or so younger than him.
She appeared to be very bubbly, friendly individual.
NARRATOR: After graduating college, Richard and Janine marry.
They were both on track to become professionals,
he a lawyer, her a veterinarian,
and they were very focused on that goal.
They seemed to get along well.
They liked to have fun. Everything seemed great.
They were a good match.
NARRATOR: Richard is eager to enter the legal profession,
but passing his exams is proving difficult.
His first opportunity to take the exam would
have been the July following his graduation in May.
He took that exam and did not pass.
He then sat for the exam again in the following February.
He did not pass that second time.
I honestly was concerned about whether or not he had
the aptitude to be an attorney with having that many failures.
He was lazy.
NARRATOR: The repeat exam failures come at a great cost to retake.
But Richard is still financially able
to keep studying for the bar.
I suspected that he was getting
some assistance from somebody from family.
I kind of put it out of my mind initially.
It was only in the third attempt,
one year from the first time he took the exam,
that he passed.
His goal upon graduation from law school was to be
filthy rich -- he made that quote.
He was gonna be a jet setter.
And basically the message was,
"I'm gonna leave you in the dust."
NARRATOR: In November 2000,
the Merritt family gets some devastating news.
ROBERT: My father died suddenly when they were
on a trip to celebrate their anniversary.
My dad was my mother's everything.
JAN: He was her rock.
That was the impression that I got,
because she was so lost without him.
It devastated my mother.
She was heartbroken.
NARRATOR: Six months after her husband's passing,
Shirley hosts a family gathering
and plays with her newest grandchild, Molly.
MOLLY: Mom, say cheese.
[Shirley speaking]
MOLLY: Mom, say cheese!
[Shirley speaking]
CHILD: I bent mine stiff right now.
[Shirley speaking]
ROBERT: She ended up spending a lot of time with
my family, because I had children at the time.
So the grandkids were a great comfort to her.
NARRATOR: Shirley's youngest son,
Richard, sits on the couch with his wife,
Janine, holding Robert's second son, Andrew.
That little fellow right there,
He had no idea what he was --
what was in store for him later.
It's hard to watch everybody so close, and then...
later, what a turn it would make.
NARRATOR: With help from her family and friends,
Shirley begins to slowly rebuild her life
and gets a job at the local children's hospital.
It hadn't been too long since she had lost her husband,
and I suggested to her that maybe she would like
to come to work as a PRN,
which would be just to work whenever somebody
was sick or needed to go on vacation.
And she thought she liked
the idea, she applied, and she got it.
NARRATOR: Shirley also takes pleasure in seeing
Richard's legal career finally take off.
She was very proud he was a lawyer.
I mean, that was just the epitome for her that she --
her son had become an attorney.
He ended up at the Attorney General's office
for the State of Georgia.
Then he moved more regularly into private practice,
and he worked for several firms,
one after the other after that time.
NARRATOR: Richard rubbed shoulders with Atlanta's elite,
indulging in their lifestyle.
They wanted to travel and have fun and live the good life,
nice clothes, nice cars, nice experiences --
success and all the trappings.
NARRATOR: In 2003, Richard buys a home in the town of Smyrna,
just outside Atlanta, because they're gonna need
the extra space.
Jack was born in 2004.
He was ecstatic that he had a son.
ROBERT: He had grand plans -- gonna fish,
he's gonna play golf.
His son would be a chip off the old block.
NARRATOR: It's Christmas 2005, and Richard is loving being
able to spoil his new son with special gifts.
NARRATOR: Two years later, Richard and Janine
welcome the daughter, Mia, into the family fold.
Mia arrived in 2006.
He had the boy, now he had a daughter.
I think he was excited by that.
My name is Rich Merritt.
I'm the managing partner of the law office
of Richard V. Merritt.
Since I'm the only lawyer here in little downtown Smyrna,
obviously, my practice is very grassroots and community based.
In 2010, Richard opened his own law firm.
JIM: He was impressive.
Rich had his own firm.
He drove a Porsche, he had success in the courtroom.
He's got a beautiful wife,
beautiful children, and the respect of his peers.
I would expect that Richard probably would have been making
somewhere in the ballpark of $150,000
to $250,000 at that time.
It looked like the perfect family.
They're going on these wonderful trips.
They've got a beautiful house, and life's good.
They had a plan, and they were
going to achieve it, absolutely.
NARRATOR: But in May 2017, Richard returns
from a vacation to a court summons.
The original allegation was from the Hanson sisters,
Clare and Ingrid.
Richard Merritt was their attorney,
and it had to do with settling a lawsuit.
What Merritt did in their case is he took
the settlement check without them knowing it.
NARRATOR: Richard had settled the case for $70,000
and pocketed the money.
They never knew the case was settled.
But what they learned was,
he just stole the money, never told them.
They went to court and took out a citizen's warrant.
Richard Merritt was arrested, and at the point of his arrest,
he surrendered his law license.
He didn't even fight it.
He said, "I give up, you can have it."
ROBERT: I was disappointed.
I was embarrassed, and I just didn't understand.
I just couldn't fathom how one would get to that
place, honestly.
NARRATOR: Mom, Shirley, who paid for her son's law
qualifications, supports her son by turning up in court.
She couldn't talk about it. She was embarrassed.
She didn't want to admit that this
was going on with her perfect family.
They're not perfect,
and this is what my perfect son has done.
NARRATOR: Police undergo an investigation into Richard's
fraud charges and find out there could
be up to 17 victims in total who Richard had stolen over
$450,000 from.
While he was in jail still, in Cobb County jail,
Janine served divorce papers on Richard.
They were divorced relatively quickly,
and he was out of their lives.
DALE: When he loses his wife,
he's lost his kids, because she has custody of them.
Everything that Richard Merritt appeared to cherish,
that meant the world to him, is gone.
NARRATOR: Richard is sent to await trial at the Cobb County jail.
Only a substantial bond can bail him out.
Mom, Shirley, comes to his rescue
and prepares to pay his legal fees.
JAN: She put her house up for his bail.
It was, I think, $400,000.
And I guess that's why she began to work so many hours.
She became, I don't wanna say feeble,
because she could still do things.
But to look at her, she would be walking up the hall to come
to work, and she was stooped over, and just her whole
demeanor had changed.
I really thought she was sick.
ROBERT: My mother begged for them to let him stay with her.
She was going to protect him and help him.
I think that was a huge mistake.
NARRATOR: In January of 2019, Richard is brought before
the court to face sentencing for his fraud.
The person I saw on the video at the sentencing looked
ice cold, looked frightening,
looked menacing, looked scary.
I didn't even recognize him.
He looked like he was completely disconnected from reality.
NARRATOR: Richard has no choice but to plead guilty
to all charges.
He's sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered
to compensate the victims
with a total of close to half a million dollars.
For mom, Shirley,
it's almost too much to take.
She looked so alone, and she was, you know,
Robert wasn't there.
Nobody was there.
Breaks your heart.
NARRATOR: The judge gives Richard two weeks to get
his affairs in order before surrendering himself
to prison to serve his sentence.
He must wear an ankle bracelet.
ROBERT: Mike Jeffcoate is one of my cousins, and he
had offered to drive my brother to turn himself in.
NARRATOR: But as the jail day arrives,
Mike Jeffcoate receives a text from Shirley.
There's been a change of heart.
Mike Jeffcoate received a text
stating that he did not need to come,
that my mom and my brother had some things they needed
to talk about and work out and that she would take him.
I guess it was about 5:30 or maybe a little bit later,
I received a phone call from Cobb County informing me that
Richard did not show, that he had not turned himself in,
and they were going to go look for him.
My comment back to them was, "Has anyone spoken to my mother?
"I'm concerned about her wellbeing.
"Could somebody go to her home
and make sure everything is okay?"
NARRATOR: Officers respond to the home of
his mom to conduct a welfare check.
ROBERT: Nothing looked strange.
No broken windows, no doors ajar, no nothing.
My brother's car was in
the driveway, but my mother's car was gone.
NARRATOR: With no sign of forced entry,
the officers aren't able to enter the house, so they leave.
Police turn their attention to tracking down
Richard Merritt.
They analyze the data from his ankle bracelet.
DALE: Police have a really good idea of what happened.
They were able to follow.
They think he got into Shirley's car,
his mother's car, and he takes off, and he starts driving out
of the city and heads toward northwest of the city.
NARRATOR: Data analysis shows that at 4:14,
the anklet lost signal...
near Cartersville.
[siren wailing]
Police respond to its last known location.
They know exactly where his ankle bracelet is.
They were able to drive right to it.
They found it.
It was in a trash can behind the gas station,
and that was when they first
realized Richard Merritt is on the run.
NARRATOR: Early next morning,
a worried Mike Jeffcoate gets a spare key to Shirley's house
and pays her a visit to find out what's going on.
He gets into the house.
He was obviously very concerned about what has
happened and is everything okay and is Shirley okay,
and while moving about the house,
he sees her dead body at the bottom of the stairwell.
And...
immediately alerts the police that she's been killed.
NARRATOR: Police arrive on the scene.
It was shocking beyond description.
She had been stabbed repeatedly.
The knife blade had been left in her face,
and the knife handle had broken off,
and then she had been beaten in the face.
A barbell was left near her body with blood on it.
DALE: She was bludgeoned with a dumbbell,
a heavy weight, her head smashed in,
stabbed multiple times, stabbed in the head,
bludgeoned in the head.
It was one of the most brutal murders I've ever covered.
It was ghastly.
It was so brutal.
NARRATOR: With no signs of forced entry
and Shirley's wallet still on the kitchen table,
there is only one possible suspect.
ROBERT: I had no doubt that Richard
was the likely suspect in the murder.
NARRATOR: While police release a BOLO for Richard
and his mom's Lexus,
detectives visit the gas station near
to where his ankle bracelet was found.
Surveillance video catches his every move.
Pretty soon after he cut that bracelet off,
they have video of him inside the gas station.
So they know exactly what he looks like.
They know exactly what he's wearing.
He walks out of the gas station
with a bag of food
and gets in the car.
They know exactly what car he's in.
They have an idea where he's going,
but he could turn around and go a different direction,
because he knows the law, and he knows
they can trace the ankle bracelet.
He probably knew they had video of him.
This is a murder suspect on the run.
They now believe he's killed his mother, and he's missing,
and they don't know where he is.
NARRATOR: On February 12th, 2019,
the Merritt family gathers for Shirley's funeral.
ROBERT: The atmosphere was very sad, very somber.
I mean, people really just didn't know what to say.
A lot of shaking their head.
A lot of concern about finding
Richard and understanding why this happened.
JAN: There was lots of police around,
because it had been mentioned that,
you know, sometimes criminals come back to a funeral,
and, you know, that just shook us all up.
NARRATOR: But he doesn't turn up.
And for eight months, Richard remains a ghost.
DALE: It felt like he was on the run forever.
NARRATOR: Until September 2019, when there's finally a break in
the case,
268 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee.
DALE: Somebody tried to break into his car,
and the police are called to the scene, and they're checking
the car out, and they get the license and run the tag,
and it's not adding up to the car that
that tag is sitting on.
They get the serial number, and bingo --
Shirley Merritt's car.
NARRATOR: The U.S. Marshals canvass the area for any
possible sightings
after finding receipts from local establishments
in his car.
DALE: He was sort of hiding in plain sight.
He's driving around Nashville.
He's got a girlfriend. He's got a job.
He's got a new name, Mick Malveaux.
He was living the life many people live,
just working, going to the bar, hanging out,
just happened to be an alleged killer.
NARRATOR: With information about his daily routine,
the Marshals stake out the hot spots.
Yeah, we were there,
and here comes this scroungy-looking guy down
the road with a bad beard and tussled hair.
and they watch him, and he goes into a thrift store,
and they come in after him
and arrest him.
He puts up no fight.
He puts up no fuss, and that's it.
NARRATOR: Back in Georgia,
Richard is charged with murder.
Robert discovers his brother had been taking
advantage of his mother for years.
One of the first things I did when I gained
entry to the home was to try to find these documents.
It was far more sinister than I had ever imagined.
I learned
that my mother had loaned my brother large sums of money,
gifted him large sums of money.
He had taken some money, he had forged some checks.
He had pawned some of her belongings.
NARRATOR: By the time of her murder,
Richard Merritt owed his mother
over half a million dollars.
ROBERT: I feel that she was manipulated.
I feel that she was bullied.
I feel that she was taken advantage of.
He did to my mother
exactly what he had done to his clients.
NARRATOR: On May 18th, 2023, Richard Merritt
pleads not guilty and goes on trial.
The case was laid out pretty much as we all
knew it at the time,
that the mother had been violently murdered,
that he'd got in the car, that he'd run.
My best guess is,
he had told her, "I'm not going to prison."
And Shirley said, "If you run, I'm calling the police."
I feel that, at that moment,
Richard Merritt decided, I'm gonna kill my mother.
He had been able to control her
and manipulate her his whole life,
and this time, it wasn't working.
And he can't just get into her car and drive off
and leave her there at the house
where she can pick up the phone.
He knew at that moment, he couldn't run.
He wasn't gonna have time to take his ankle bracelet off.
He was gonna get caught,
and he was gonna get caught quickly.
Richard Merritt had to kill his mother to run.
The norm is the jury takes a long time.
In this case, a murder case,
the jury took an hour and a half.
The fact that it was only an hour and a half
told me so much.
Richard Merritt was sentenced to life without parole.
The one place that he was terrified of going to,
so terrified that he killed his mother
and ran is where he's gonna spend the rest
of his life.
I have absolutely no pity for him.
I think he deserves to be where he is.
I think he can sit there and think
about this for the rest of his life.
The absolute
lack of respect and the clear disdain
that he has showed for his family,
his mother, his father's memory,
is unforgivable.
You're sitting where you need to be.
So that's -- I'm fine with it.
I'm -- I'm at peace.
JAN: Shirley was a good person.
She, you know, was a kind woman at heart.
She had a big heart, and she loved those kids at
the hospital.
She loved the families,
and everybody was hurt when we lost her.
ROBERT: I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone.
Not even my worst enemy would I want this to happen to.
I want her to be remembered for being dedicated to her family.
I want her to be remembered for being dedicated to her work.
She cared about other people.
She always tried to do things for other people.
I'm eternally grateful for all the things
that she did for me and my family.
It's just sad.
Narrator: Next time on American Monster...
Everything on the outside looking in looked perfect.
Aldo was not the same when they were alone.
He was consumed by rage.
We were very afraid.
American Monster all new
next Sunday at 9 on ID.