[Lisa Moore] We loved gathering,
graduations, birthday parties, you know.
The holidays have always bee important to all of us.
There you go!
[Aaron Moore] It was a happy moment.
If you don't take advantage of those moments in time,
when they go by, you can never get them back.
[Chris Martin] They just seemed to be happy
Just one great, big happy family.
But you never see what's behind the scenes.
The word "missing" just wasn't making sense.
And then it was just like the nightmare just began.
But, in hindsight,
it's always 20/20.
There were lots of red flags.
[tranquil chatter]
[narrator] It's July, 1988, in Puyallup, Washington.
And the Ferguson family has gathered for a Sunday get-together.
Sunday dinners, throughout our lives,
were-- were very important.
It was a family tradition fo as long as I can remember.
That is Niecy, my daughter.
And I'm sitting there in the dress.
And that's my Grandpa Harry
and Ella-May, my grandma.
[narrator] The pre-dinner entertainment is a two-on-two basketball game
[Lisa] We all lined up our lawn chairs in the front yar
like we were watching a professional basketball game
[narrator] The players are Lisa's 27-year-old brother, Randy,
and their sister, Dawn Marie
Lisa's husband, Aaron Moore
and his sister, Rose.
Randy is with Rose on one team,
and it looks like Dawn and Aaron are the other team.
[Aaron] Randy's height and physique was a plus for his basketball skills.
He was 6'3"
and that, to me, was a little bit intimidating.
I chose Dawn Marie
because I assumed she had some skills.
And I gave him little Rose
because I knew she couldn't play basketball.
I thought we would win the game convincingly.
-Get off me now. -Say what?
But it turned out I have to give Randy props.
He was a very good basketball player.
As you can see in the video, he-- he could shoot.
[Rose] Ooh!
Unfortunately, Dawn and I lost the game
to my little sister and Randy.
And he won the game convincingly.
Yeah! We won!
That's what you get!
[Lisa] Aaron can't get it open either.
Later that same year,
we gathered for my grandmother's 68th birthday
Randy's sitting next to Gram,
which he normally did.
He loved his Gram.
[Harry speaking]
[Harry chuckling]
-[Lisa] Are those done? -68 and counting.
My grandparents lived with my parents for many, many years.
They were like another set of parents to us.
Ella-May absolutely adored Randy, without a doubt.
You could see it. It was easy to see.
Oh, I think she thought the sun rose and shined around him.
Um, I guess because he was the only boy
So she just really thought he was something special.
[narrator] Randy was born in 1960 in Detroit, Michigan
He has three younger sisters
Lisa, Laura and Dawn Marie.
Randy was protective of all of us,
him being the only male, you know.
He took that role as a big brother
and there only son very-- very seriously.
As a child, Randy was kind of an introvert and quiet.
As he, you know, became a teenager,
I think he was very, uh, social with playing football
and talkative.
But I don't remember him really hanging out with a lot of people.
He just kind of was a homebody.
Randy graduated in 1979.
He joined the Navy.
He became an aircraft mechanic,
just like his dad.
Randy enjoyed being in the Navy and traveling.
I think he really did enjoy that experience.
[Aaron] Randy served five years in the Navy.
He took up a position at Boeing as a machinist
and worked on their aircraft.
[Lisa] His hair was short when he went into the Navy.
And then when he got out, I think he kind of rebelled
and said he was gonna just, um, let his hair grow out.
Yeah, it was different, but he-- he rocked it.
He-- he really did rock it.
[narrator] Lisa and Aaron make Randy an uncle
a few months after he leaves the Navy.
[Aaron] Niecy was born on June 6th, 1986.
Randy, he took care of her like a parent.
That's the only way I can explain it.
He was like a father figure to her.
She would gravitate to him when he came to the house.
She would sit on his lap. She would talk to him.
He would read her books.
And you could see the love between the two of them.
He didn't have any children
but he was a natural at it.
Randy had a really big heart,
um, he loved his family.
He loved being an uncle.
I was in the military.
I had been in the military since 1982.
When I was away at temporary duty,
having Randy step in and look in on Lisa and Niecy
was very important to me.
I didn't have to worry.
My brother would take care of them.
He would take care of my girls.
[Lisa] Who is that?
[narrator] The Air Force transfers Aaron to Germany in spring, 1989.
Lisa and Niecy go with him to live in Europe.
And then in the summer of 1989,
my grandma and grandpa had their 50th wedding anniversary.
Me and Aaron and my daughter, Niecy,
were not able to attend,
which was very hard,
because it was such a large family event.
They sent us videos to Germa
and so that really made me feel like I was still a part of all that.
There was a lot of cameras going on,
um, including Randy taking pictures.
Picture-taking took a long time in our family
because there were so many of us.
So it was kind of a comedy act.
Yeah, Randy was like peeking over the back,
probably because he doesn't wanna be in the picture.
Looking great, guys.
[Aaron] He wasn't so much the guy who liked to have his photo taken.
So it was very tough getting him to get into the picture
or get into the video.
He didn't feel comfortable putting himself out there.
Made him look vulnerable. Made him feel vulnerable.
Randy's shyness and him being an introvert,
um, probably kept him from really meeting a lot of people
especially, you know, a woma
Me and his sisters probably at some point,
you know, were like,
"Hey, you gotta, you know--
You gotta put yourself out there a little bit."
You know, to-- [laughs]
You know, to meet somebody.
He needed a little pushing, you know, with that--
even though I know it's what he wanted, you know.
He wanted to be married and have a family.
And we knew he was a great catch.
We knew he'd be a great husband and father.
We were just hopeful that he, um,
would find somebody sooner than later.
[Lisa] This is Christmas 1993
at my sister Laura's house.
So we had moved to-- um, from Germany to Michigan
and we were not able to be there for Christmas that year.
They called me while they were opening up their presents.
There's Randy opening his silverware.
Niecy wanted him to open his gifts
while she was on the floor.
[Aaron laughs] She buys him some plates for his present.
Him being a bachelor, I mean, he ordered out.
I think Lisa buying Randy those plates for Christmas
was a little subtle but no so obvious hint
that she wanted him to settle down.
[Lisa] He obviously just used paper plates.
So I don't know that he appreciated my gift
that I got him. [laughs]
I think me and my sisters wanted him to find love,
we really did.
He was getting older and, um,
I think he was probably wondering
if he was ever gonna really find somebody
and-- and have children.
By the summer of 2000,
Randy was six months from turning 40.
And one evening when Randy h come over after work,
he saw one of our neighbors in her front yard.
He had came over and said, you know,
"Who's that?"
I had already met her down at the mailbox.
She introduced herself as Angela Phillips,
a nurse,
and that she was a single mother of four.
I thought she was nice.
She was friendly.
I thought she was pretty,
that she was very talkative
And we thought it would be a perfect person for Randy.
July, 2000,
Lisa and I decided to put a barbecue in at our new place
where we would use the opportunity to introduce Randy to Angela.
Lisa kind of grabbed Randy by the arm
and she's like,
"Randy, I'd like you to mee my friend named Angela."
And from there, it was just-- it took off.
Once they met each other, it was fireworks and rockets
and there was nobody that was gonna slow that relationship down
Angela had four children
with a young man named Claude Walz.
Lisa Marie,
Claude and Kristin
and Burl.
Randy took them as a complete package,
all four of 'em.
He took on that responsibility wholeheartedly.
He embraced it.
[Lisa] In September,
I received a letter in the mail
that said it was from a private investigator.
The letter said they were looking at the crimes of Angela
and that she preyed on men that were 40 and over.
The letter claimed she had fraud.
It just really like blew up our world.
[narrator] The private investigator doesn't reveal their name
and they leave no address, nor contact number.
[Lisa] My mom called Randy and said,
"We need you to come to the house."
And my mom told him,
"Do not bring Angela with you."
And he-- he just-- I don't know that he believed it.
He insisted right away that it was, um,
an ex-boyfriend of Angela's
and that he was just trying to cause problems.
[narrator] Randy confronts Angela
about the allegations in the anonymous letter.
[Lisa] To her, the letter was just so ridiculous.
And maybe it could have been her boyfriend.
Maybe it could've.
I just started questioning it.
And I started looking things up.
She said she graduated at one place,
and I'd look up online
and find out she didn't graduate at that place.
And, Randy, he thought all of the littl things weren't big things
and that he could look over those things.
I feel like it was something--
somebody telling us something that we needed to know.
It was a warning.
[Aaron] Three months into the relationship,
Randy buys Angela a house in Carrington Hills,
a beautiful two-story home for Angela and her children
Summer of 2001,
Randy and Angela notify the family
that we were gonna have an addition to the Ferguson family.
[Lisa] Um, we were so incredibly happy for him
so happy he was gonna be a daddy.
[Aaron] Knowing that they were pregnant,
Randy proposes to Angela
and they get married September, 2001,
in a really intimate ceremony in Tacoma, Washington.
He was very excited for his future.
He got an attractive wife, a beautiful child coming
and four additional childre
that he totally embraced in taking care of.
He was committed.
My name is Alison Ferguson Moore.
I am the daughter of Randall Ferguson
and Angela Ferguson.
I was born February 27th, 2002,
at Tacoma General Hospital.
Everyone always tells me that all he wanted was to have kids.
On the outside, he looks a little scary.
And then, finally, they had me.
And then he was kind of able to drop the hard, macho act
that I think everyone saw.
[Alison] My aunt told me
she saw a softness to him when I was born.
I could definitely tell that, like, he cared about me,
he loved me, you know.
He was just so proud to be a dad.
And he always had that camera on little Alison.
He waited almost 40 years to be married,
have a wife and a baby.
And he wanted that happily ever after
more than anything.
[Aaron] On camera, video, the family looked perfect.
It looked like they were living...
a life a family would normally live.
But behind the scenes, there was stuff brewing.
[Aaron] I started to notice a little bit of tension
in Randy's and Angela's relationship.
I could tell that something was going wrong.
The disagreements Angela and Randy had
was due to some credit card debt
that Randy had to settle for her.
[Lisa] Randy was very financially stable.
He took pride in having a great job,
a great income.
So the fact that she could be messing with his credit,
I'm sure he was very, very upset about that.
[Aaron] After the debt was settled,
it seemed like Angela and Randy worked through the rough patch.
And it looked like they were moving on with their relationship.
[Lisa] Randy really needed t make this marriage work
because it wasn't just Randy and Angela anymore.
It was this precious little baby.
And I know he never would've wanted that to be broken.
[woman] She's got a whole handful.
[Lisa] Alison's first birthd was very sweet.
Randy was so excited,
her turning one.
She was such a sweet little girl.
[Aaron] Angela was very attentive,
trying to keep Alison focused on what presents was from whom
and wanting her to make sure
she thanked everybody that brought her birthday presents.
It was a happy moment.
I was even thinking maybe there might be another...
addition to the family after Alison.
When we met Angela and Randy,
they were sitting on their front porch
and it was in the summer.
There was about a year difference between
Kalen, my daughter, and Alison.
As time progressed,
Angela and Randy and our family,
we became real close.
But towards the end of 2004 was when you started seeing
the cracks in Randy and Angela's relationship.
Angela would make the snide comments about Randy.
She would make statements about how
he would rather spend time with Lisa and her family.
She would tell us that they aren't sleeping together.
And she started complaining about not having enough mone
that Randy was cutting her o
because she was spending too much money.
It seemed like she was angry all the time.
You could hear her constantl yelling at somebody.
[Lisa] February 5th, 2006,
Randy and my dad went to Detroit for the Super Bowl.
He was so excited about that trip.
He-- he couldn't wait.
I think Randy took it as a relief to be able to get out of the house
and be able to spend some time with his dad.
Maybe he could talk to Dad.
Maybe Dad could give him advice.
[Lisa] When he got back from the Super Bowl,
we had all gathered in Tacom for my nephew's birthday.
We knew just by looking at h
that things were probably much worse than-- than he was saying.
Later, um, that week,
Angela called me on Thursday
and told me that Randy was missing.
I was like, "What do you mea 'he's missing'?"
Angela said she last saw Ran on Wednesday.
She said they got in a figh
and he just left.
I immediately got off the phone, called his cell phone
which went straight to voicemail, which didn't make sense,
'cause we always contacted him on his cell phone.
And even if he was at work, he kept it on.
It just-- it didn't make any sense.
I just figured he must've been somewhere
thinking he maybe made a decision to leave her.
My brother couldn't be missing.
He would've came to my house
How would he have ended up missing?
[Ben] On March 24th, 2006,
a lady by the name of Angela Ferguson
came into our Sheriff - South Hill Precinct
and reported her husband missing.
Later that same day,
there was a report of a car discovered in Gig Harbor, Washington.
And the car was, uh, over an embankment.
[Detective Tim Donlin] An officer responded.
The vehicle, when it was found,
was about 20 miles away from Puyallup.
And it was a dark maroon-colored Dodge Intrepid.
It rolled down this hill and then came to rest against a tree.
But it didn't look like there was a major impact.
He went down just to make sure that there wasn't somebody hurt inside it,
uh, found that the vehicle was empty.
Uh, the keys were in the ignition,
uh, but nobody was around.
He used the vehicle keys to open the trunk.
That's when found that there was a male body in the trunk of the vehicle.
There was not one, but two bullet wounds to his head.
The vehicle was run through the system
and the registered owner wa found to be Randall Ferguso
from Puyallup, Washington.
[Lisa] A police detective called me
He told me that Randy's car was found down an embankment in the woods.
And he said, "We found a body in the trunk."
I told him, "My brother has tattoos.
And he always wears a T-shir with a flannel.
Could you please just go down and tell me if
the person in there has those things?"
And he told me that...
the things I had described to him were true.
At that moment, a part of me died.
[Tim] Later that same night another detective and I,
we went to Mr. Ferguson's home.
We told Angela that we did find Randy's body
and positively identified him and, uh, that he was dead.
She was just beside herself
'Cause we talked to Angela that night,
she was telling us that it w Wednesday, uh, the 22nd,
when she last saw Randy.
It was about five o'clock in the evening when they got into an argument.
I asked Angela if she knew of anybody that might wanna hurt Randy.
Randy's car was taken to our-- our precinct,
uh, to be processed for evidence.
It was noted that the front driver's seat of the vehicl
was pushed up towards the steering wheel.
Randy is over 6 feet and was a big guy.
So, to us, that indicated th
whoever drove that car out there
was someone smaller in stature.
[Tim] Considering that ther was two bullet wounds to his temple area,
uh, there should have been a lot more blood in the trunk of the vehicle.
It was obvious that Randy ha been killed elsewhere.
So now we basically had at least two crime scenes.
One was the vehicle,
and then one was at an unknown location.
Two days after we had found and discovered Randy's body,
we canvassed the neighborhoo
There was one neighbor that came forward
and said that he had information
that he thought was relevan or pertinent to our investigation.
In February of 2006,
uh, Randy had gone to the Super Bowl with his father.
And a neighbor had noticed that while Randy was out of town,
Angela had another man come by the house.
[Tim] A few weeks later,
the neighbor saw the same ma return to Randy's home
and he was...
taken aback enough that he actually filmed it.
[Ben] When we watched the video,
you can clearly see Angela coming out of the home with her daughter
and this other male subject
[Tim] And the neighbor then told us that he recognized the person.
And the man's name was Lawrence.
Angela had told the neighbor's wife,
um, that she was having an affair with this man.
And also that Lawrence's ca had been seen
at Angela's house on Thursday morning.
Now you've got suspects to look at.
You can look at her. You can look at the boyfriend.
We wanted to talk to him as quickly as possible.
So on March 27th,
our detectives contacted Lawrence
and brought him down to the sheriff's headquarters for an interview.
He told us that he had met h a couple of months earlier,
and they kind of hit it off
So Lawrence told us he had actually moved some of his belongings
into, uh, Angela's home.
And that was on Wednesday, the day that Randy went missing.
And then Lawrence told us-- it was very surprising,
that Angela had written him a note.
He obviously was confused about this.
But that's, in fact, what he did.
He packed up his stuff, and at that time,
he moved out of the house.
And then he said he hadn't seen Angela since then.
[Tim] As I was talking to Lawrence, I felt that he was genuine.
So we let him go, uh, at that point.
[narrator] Investigators conclude that Lawrence had no prior knowledge of
and no involvement in Randy's murder.
After the interview with Lawrence,
we felt like we were on the right track.
So we brought Claude Jr. in
um, in the early morning hou of March 28th.
He had told us...
that he had overheard, uh, Randy and Angela having an argument.
We felt that he was not being truthful with us
about what he knew,
that he knew more than what he was telling us.
I made the phone call to Angela's and Randy's house.
The grandparents wanted to see Alison
and "would it be okay if I come and picked her up for a few hours
and bring her to the house?"
Aaron went over to pick Alison up.
When they got to my house, they went around the backyar
and all I heard from upstairs was...
the most horrific cries from a child.
And I flew down the stairs a discovered that she had...
told my sister that...
a bad person had killed her daddy with a gun.
[Detective Teresa Berg] Alison is only four,
and she may have seen or heard something
about her father's murder.
And we did decide at that point
that would like to have Alis forensically interviewed,
as we believe she may have information.
We used highly-trained forensic interviewers
that are specific for children.
We have to be very careful about
did she overhear adults talking
or what might have happened
versus what did she actually hear.
Even to this day, I can still hear the gunshots.
Most of the memory has kind of blurred,
but the gunshots have kind of just stayed.
I just remember, like, crawling out from behind the couch
and like running up to him, you know, touching his arm
and then kind of just...
the memory kind of just ends there.
[Teresa] At this point, we were thinking that
maybe not that Alison had actually seen the act,
but that she had heard something.
We believed that something probably happened in the home
and that Angela was involved.
We applied for and was granted a search warrant
to search Angela and Randy's home.
There were no obvious signs of a crime scene or foul play.
However, there was an inordinate amount of empty bleach bottles.
[narrator] Detectives decid to interview Angela's son,
Claude, for a second time.
[Tim] It was my impression that Claude was hiding something.
He was a scared young man and I could sense
there was something that he wanted to tell us.
[Tim] He goes out into the loft area
and sees Randy sitting in a computer chair.
We still had the team at the house conducting the search warrant.
And I got a hold of Teresa Berg
and told her, "Look in this area."
[Teresa] While I'm down crawling on the carpet,
I could see an area that appeared to be cleaner
than the rest of the carpeting.
When I was down on the floo up against a baseboard,
I did find a shell casing.
So I took a box knife,
and I cut down the middle o the carpet in the room
and pulled it back,
and there was a large blood stain.
We then brought Angela back in for additional questioning.
Angela claimed that, uh, she and Randy were arguing
and she grabbed a gun.
She didn't mean to shoot him
Gun just went off.
She said she didn't intend to shoot him.
She just wanted to scare him.
They believe it was intentional, both--
you know, both shots.
Angela then gave us a missing piece
that we just hadn't gotten yet.
[Ben] After she shot Randy,
she had to have Claude help move Randy downstairs
and get him into the trunk of the car.
And then after she dumped hi in Gig Harbor,
she called her daughter, Lisa Marie, to come pick her up.
Which she did.
Angela cleaned the house, she cleaned the vehicle,
then disposed of all the evidence.
Claude and Lisa Marie were charged with rendering criminal assistance.
And Angela was charged with first-degree murder.
[Ben] During the course of the investigation,
we were able to determine
that Angela had obtained a gun from her daughter, Lisa Marie.
Lisa Marie borrowed Angela's car and had her gun with her.
She forgot that her gun was in the car
when it was returned to Angela.
And then Angela had the gun in her possession
that she used on Randy.
Lisa Marie, she said that her mom, Angela,
she had previously asked her for a gun.
She had no idea why she wanted it, though.
It suggested that, uh,
this was something that Ange had been thinking about,
uh, for more than a little while.
It shows, in my mind at least,
some, uh, forethought and premeditation.
I think money was partly a motive in this whole thing
'Cause she did confirm that there was a life insurance policy.
However, there wasn't a beneficiary.
While it may not be a substantial amount,
it was her opportunity to start a new life
with a new boyfriend
and without Randy in the picture at all.
In October of 2007, Angela pled guilty to first-degree murder
and she was sentenced to 26 years and 8 months in prison.
Both Claude Walz IV and Lisa Marie pled guilty
to rendering criminal assistance in the first degree.
They were both sentenced to ten months of community service.
What I miss most about Randy is our conversations,
his advice,
and he gave the best hugs in the world.
I always knew that if anything ever happened to my brother,
that he would want me to raise Alison.
And, so, it wasn't even a question
that me and my husband would do that.
[Aaron] Randy's missed so mu
out of Alison's life.
He missed seeing her grow up
But I know he's watching over her.
We miss him now, but we'll see him again.
Everyone always tells me
I kind of have his sense of humor.
He's kind of just always been kind of the angel on my shoulder.
[Randy] Alison. What are you doing?
Huh?
What are you doing?