[Narrator] A good-natured, fun-loving man.
He was just a wonderful person.
He was so funny and so charming.
[Narrator] Enjoying his retirement years.
At that point in his life, he was very content,
very close to his family, his nieces and nephews.
[Narrator] Is brutally gunned down
a month before his wedding.
It was point blank, assassination.
[Narrator] Investigators pieced together
a series of clues.
We had to look at what role had that upcoming wedding had
and what happened.
They had their arguments, they had their differences.
Was the scene staged
to cover up unintentional killing?
The investigation kept hitting dead end
after dead end.
[Narrator] And chase down multiple suspects.
It was a whodunit.
We were hoping for that break to come.
[Narrator] Revealing a plot fueled by greed.
He was somebody who had had a criminal history
of theft and assault.
[Narrator] Just when police are close to making an arrest.
It was like he had just got smacked in the head
with a baseball bat.
[Narrator] They uncovered damning evidence pointing
to a surprising suspect.
You never expect anything like this.
And then all the sudden the killer
was right in front of us.
[light music]
[Narrator] On a warm July afternoon in 2014,
the sleepy Pittsburgh suburb of Kennedy Township
is rocked by a panicked call to 911.
[ominous music]
[Narrator] The woman who made
the 911 call, Carol Lapaglia,
says the victim is her soon-to-be husband,
59-year-old Jack Parkes.
When I arrived on scene,
the first thing I noticed is that the victim's head
was covered in blood.
It was on closer examination that you could see
it was a gunshot wound.
One challenge we had right out of the gate
was that there was no casing or gun found.
We don't move his body until it can be photographed.
It was possible there was a gun underneath him
that no one had seen.
So, we weren't 100% sure if the gunshot wound
at that point had been self-inflicted or homicide.
We looked for awhile.
Unfortunately, we didn't find any type of gun.
[Narrator] Detectives search for any signs
of what happened to Jack and who pulled the trigger.
It was pretty clear right off the bat that this was
some type of a home invasion or robbery that occurred.
It didn't look like a struggle had ensued in the room,
but once you walked through the victim's house,
the further you got into it,
the more you realized the level of disarray it was in.
And as you went into the dining room,
you started to see jewelry box here,
a drawer gone through here, papers rifled through,
upstairs there was just complete disarray.
The drawers were all pulled out.
The clothing that was inside the drawers
was strewn everywhere, jewelry boxes flipped open,
empty watch boxes laying there.
We were trying to be determined was the scene staged?
Was someone just trying to make it look
like a robbery or a burglary
and when in fact they're just trying to cover up
an intentional killing
where they intended just to walk in and execute somebody?
The house was dusted and processed for DNA and fingerprints.
We then began to process the outside of the residence,
looking for any type of forced entry
and none of that was found.
Our first thoughts were the victim either Knew
the actor or was familiar with him.
That's just our first impression.
So, you know, who was friends with the victim,
who would have access to the victim,
who had opportunity to the victim, and who would he trust?
It really was a shocking case.
He was killed execution style.
This homicide happened in an area
that we don't normally have murders.
[Narrator] Jack's death is the first homicide
in Kennedy Township in 10 years,
the news stuns his family and friends.
When I got that phone call
and I heard Carol's voice,
I knew something was wrong.
And she said, "Jack's gone."
I said, "What do you mean gone?"
She said, "He's dead."
And then she said, "He was murdered."
And I just went into shock.
[Narrator] Jack Parkes was born the second of five kids
in Pittsburgh in 1955,
friends and family where everything to him.
Jack always made friends.
He was one of the best people I've ever known.
He would do anything for anybody.
We first met in first grade,
we hit it off all through high school.
After that it was a good ride.
Jack was so well liked.
He'd be charming when he wanted to.
And funny, he was just a wonderful person.
[Narrator] In 1989, a chance encounter
changed Jack's life.
Jack met Carol at the local bar
and I guess they hit it off.
They were two peas in a pod.
Soon as he brought Carol, we fell in love with Carol.
Jack was very close to his family.
He had about nine nieces and nephews.
Jack and Carol used to have their nieces and nephews
over for sleepovers,
making the popcorn and just having a good time.
You'd a swore that Jack and Carol were the parents.
They didn't have kids, so when those kids were around,
they were their kids.
[Narrator] Jack had recently retired,
but had big plans for the future.
At that point in his life,
Jack was very content.
Him and Carol we're gonna get married.
They'd been together for over 25 years.
Carol in the beginning really wanted to get married
and Jack didn't.
And then at one point,
Jack wanted to get married and Carol didn't.
And I used to tell Jack,
"You know what?
I'd like to be living when you get married,
when you say I do."
And then when they set the date,
I was so happy, it was gonna be an exciting,
very exciting day.
[Narrator] Tragically Jack was murdered
a month before the ceremony was to take place.
Her and Jack we're going to be married on August 31st
of that year and it just, it was really sad.
It was so close.
[Narrator] At 5:00 PM on July 21st,
two hours after Carol found Jack dead,
police question her at the station.
Talking to Carol was so important because first of all
we had to determine whether she was or wasn't involved.
And we wanted to just get the best timeline from her.
During the interview with Carol when she explained it,
she had left for work as usual, her normal time,
about 5:40, she starts work at six.
Everything was fine when she left for work,
it wasn't until a realtor called her about a potential buyer
for Jack's late mother's home.
And when the realtor couldn't get ahold of Jack,
Carol started to worry.
She tried to call Jack and there was no answer.
So, then she got concerned.
He always called her back every time
that she tried to get ahold of him.
So, I think it was approximately about two o'clock,
she left work and then come over and find Jack of course.
[Narrator] Detectives know that spouses
are always the first suspect and must determine
if they can trust Carol's version of events.
We have a timeline between 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM
when she returns home.
In some cases, if a person is a cold-blooded killer,
they would have killed him before she left the house
and then all of a sudden she finds him and you know,
and the killer was right in front of us.
Her demeanor, she was very upset,
but you can't take a chance by skipping a stone
and not trying to look at her.
[Narrator] Detectives are suspicious
of why it took the couple so long
to decide to get married
and if someone had cold feet.
Something that we thought
is are either one of them having affairs with someone else,
could that be a possible motivation?
And is this upcoming wedding triggering that?
[Narrator] Coming up, detectives uncover a family feud.
They just decided to distance themselves
and not let him come to the house.
[Narrator] And learn Jack's inner circle
isn't as loving and devoted as it first seems.
Things got more contentious.
[Narrator] As police keep digging, more suspects surface.
We learned of several burglaries.
They had concerns about the employees.
They hire criminals.
[Narrator] Just when the investigation
is about to hit another dead end.
We had no idea who would have done this.
[Narrator] Detectives make a crucial discovery.
It was exactly what we needed.
When we got the phone records back, it was, oh my God.
[Narrator] Kennedy Township police are investigating
the area's first homicide in a decade.
59-year-old Jack Parkes was found dead
in his home by his fiance Carol
in what appears to be a robbery.
But since there was no forced entry,
investigators try to determine
if this was actually a staged attack.
And if the motive was something more personal.
When we've interviewed Carol, we had to look at what role,
if any, that upcoming wedding had in what happened.
We had to start looking at every aspect of their lifestyle.
What were the family dynamics?
We had to chip away at a number of things in their life,
things that happened that day,
but also things that might've happened in the past
that could be a motivation for this murder.
They had their differences, they'd have their arguments,
but it wasn't my point to get involved in their squabbles.
We kept talking more and more about any kind of problems
that they had had in their home
and I asked her do either of them have a gun?
And she said that they did not.
[Narrator] Carol says she would never do anything
to hurt the love of her life.
She wanted to marry him.
Jack was her soulmate.
Jack and Carol, they loved each other.
They felt they were already married.
To everybody they were husband and wife years before
the wedding was planned.
Carol was very upset.
It was very difficult to talk to her
while she processed that emotion,
but then to still get the information we needed
to keep moving the investigation forward.
To me, that was a sign that she wasn't involved.
[Narrator] With suspicion shifting from Carol for now,
investigators explore whether theft was the main motive.
The bedroom was ransacked.
The mattress with disturbed,
things were emptied out of drawers.
Carol had indicated to me some items that should be there.
Their wedding rings that they had bought,
Jack collected some coins,
he had some expensive watches.
She indicated that the watches should be in the boxes.
When we first processed the areas of disarray,
none of those items were there.
That was our first big clue to go off of.
I knew that if we could find that jewelry,
we could find who was involved.
We didn't know if the person who took it
might've given it to someone else,
but we had to start with where is it?
Who has it?
And how did they get it?
[Narrator] The next morning, the autopsy report comes in.
He was taken out with one shot
to the right side of his head.
It took it to a level where you know that as someone
who probably came there with the intent
to either use that weapon to intimidate or control Jack.
There was a projectile that was recovered from his skull
and we were able to determine
that we were looking for this .380.
So, that was a good start for us.
Now, we knew what kind of gun we were looking for.
During the victim's autopsy,
you could see that there were no wounds on his hands at all.
There were no scratches.
There were no broken fingernails,
nothing that seemed to indicate that he had
had a chance to fight back.
He had been caught completely off guard.
[Narrator] During Carol's interview,
she indicated to police that Jack's nephew, Bradley Johnson,
is someone they should look into.
Bradley was living across the street
with his mother and father,
across the street from Jack.
And he was always over there.
And from what I understand,
he was one of the last ones to see Jack alive.
We made contact with Bradley
and Bradley had told us
that he had gone over to Jack's house on the 21st.
And he said he got there around 10:30 in the morning.
[Narrator] Detectives find that timing suspicious.
They know Jack was killed sometime
between 6:00 AM and 3:00 PM that day.
I asked him, I said,
"Bradley, what did you go over there to talk to him about?"
He said, well, Jack's mother had passed away.
And he knew that Jack was looking to sell the home,
but Bradley wanted to negotiate a deal with Jack
and he wanted to talk to Jack alone
because he said, "You know, I just,
I don't want Carol weighing in on this.
I want this to be a Parke's family matter
and I wanna discuss it with him."
In his words, "I didn't want her putting her two cents in."
And that was a phrase that seemed to hint
at some kind of animosity.
[Narrator] Bradley tells investigators
that he finds Carol too controlling
and that she shouldn't have a say in this family decision.
Jack wanted to wait
until he could talk with Carol about it
which sort of defeated the purpose
of why Bradley had gone there when she wasn't home.
So, he said he ended up leaving
and they were gonna revisit the conversation later.
[Narrator] As investigators press him further,
Bradley reveals an alarming fact.
We did ask him about any firearms that he owned.
And when Bradley told us he owned a .380 caliber pistol,
kinda was like, okay, this may be something.
Maybe something broke bad
'cause now we know Carol leaves for work at 6:00 AM
and Jack's alive at 10:30 because Brad's telling us
he's over there.
He indicated he had left about 11:15.
With Bradley's timeline,
it definitely seemed that Bradley was very close in time
to when Jack would have been killed
and he put himself there.
He had the same type of gun.
[Narrator] Had the discussion
about Jack's mother's house turned fatal?
With the timing of Bradley's conversation with Jack,
it made me wonder whether things got more contentious
than he was alluding to in my interview with him.
Or did he leave there upset?
Or did somebody else come back and do something to Jack?
It had to be looked into.
[light music]
[Narrator] 12 hours after Jack Parkes was found dead,
investigators chase down leads
around their latest person of interest,
Jack's nephew, Bradley Johnson.
When I found out that Bradley was a suspect, I was mad.
I was really upset knowing that they thought that.
But then again, when it comes to an investigation,
police are doing their job.
[Narrator] Bradley and Jack had a disagreement
and he admits to owning the same caliber gun.
So that definitely stepped up our interest in Bradley.
This is a gun that we needed to take a look at.
Bradley's gun was collected,
taken to the lab where it was test fired.
the ballistics on the gun did not match the projectile
that was recovered from Jack during the autopsy.
[Narrator] With nothing concrete linking Bradley
to the murder, he is dropped as a suspect.
Detectives also corroborate Carol's alibi.
On the day that this happened,
we were able to verify that she was at work
and she was accounted for at that time.
We were able to eliminate Carol as a suspect.
[Narrator] Looking for new leads,
detectives speak to the other nieces and nephews
who were close to Jack.
During our interview of Carol,
she had told us about her nephew, Michael Lapaglia,
who was almost like a son to her
and he had been at the house a lot.
They got along good.
Michael joined the military.
Jack was very proud of Michael.
Jack took pride in the nieces and nephews
because he watched them grow up.
Michael was brought in to the homicide office
and interviewed about Jack's murder.
And during that interview,
Michael had said that he was unemployed.
He was trying to seek help through the VA hospital due
to his PTSD from being in the Army.
Michael had been discharged from the military due
to his use of cannabis.
[Narrator] Michael also admits he'd fallen out
with the family, including his aunt and uncle
and hadn't seen them in a year.
He specifically denied being over near the victim's house
and he made reference to them being estranged.
Michael had a bit of a drug problem
and Carol and Jack decided
to distance themselves from Michael
and not let him come to the house.
[Narrator] Detectives still need to know
where Michael was when Jack was killed.
We knew Carol left around 6:00 AM.
We knew that Bradley was there about 10:30.
We knew Carol found him around three o'clock.
So, there's a window of opportunity of about four hours.
He told us he was at home in Sharpsburg
on the day of the incident July 21st,
20 minutes away from Jack's house.
He said that his girlfriend
had kind of unexpectedly taken the day off
and they spent the day together,
nothing out of the ordinary.
He gave us some landmarks on our timeline
that we could check out.
Michael and his girlfriend, Melanie,
had gone and done some shopping in the town
that they lived in.
He said that he had had a doctor's appointment
at the VA hospital later that afternoon.
These were things at businesses and locations
that we could check from doing surveillance video
or getting sales transactions.
Michael's girlfriend, Melanie,
did corroborate his activities
and she stated they had spent the day together.
It was determined that his alibi had checked out.
[Narrator] A day into the investigation
with Jack's closest circle clear,
investigators escalate the search
for the missing jewelry.
We were physically going to many pawn shops
to try to see if anybody had sold this jewelry.
We didn't get any traction with that.
That's when we started doing a canvas of the neighborhood.
When we were doing our neighborhood canvas,
so many people had mentioned near their house
there's a meat factory
and they had concerns about the employees.
We had heard things like, "They hire people with records.
They hire criminals."
From talking to Carol, she said
they have a straight view into Carol and Jack's home.
And Jack had mentioned sometimes
he would let people use his phone or use the bathroom
when they were on their break.
And it upset her.
In a case like this, you may see, hey, look at this guy.
He got some gold on, it's a crime of opportunity.
We knew that they got their morning break
right around the time when people stopped hearing from Jack.
So, we definitely wanted to look into that
and see what the consensus was over there.
I think we did like almost 40 interviews
of all the employees to see who they were.
[Narrator] One worker in particular peaks police interest.
Ronald Blevins was a name that came up
from multiple employees.
In the context of people who had gone over to Jack's.
This may be the person that Carol was aware
that had come over there.
Ronald Blevins was somebody who had had a criminal history
of petty theft and assault.
So, he was on our radar for sure.
[Narrator] Investigators work quickly
to bring Ronald in for an interview.
Ronald indicated that he had known Jack
and they were actually friendly
and that's why he was allowed to come into the house
when Carol wasn't home.
Carol said she would get upset with Jack.
She would say, "Jack, don't just let anyone in our house.
You can't do that."
And he would just kind of shrug it off,
but she just didn't want people coming into the house
that she didn't know.
[Narrator] Investigators ask Ronald point blank
if he had anything to do with Jack's murder.
He said he had no involvement in Jack's death.
The day that Jack was killed, Ronald didn't come to work.
He had actually taken scheduled vacation
for Friday and Monday.
Ronald Blevins' alibi checked out
and we were able to eliminate him as a suspect in this case.
[Narrator] Desperate for a new lead,
investigators look for similarities
with other robberies in the area.
After Jack's murder,
we talked to the local authorities.
And during that, we learned of several burglaries.
One of which an older lady was burglarized
and about $5,000 worth of quarters were taken.
[Narrator] Jack's killer had stolen his coins
as well as jewelry.
Is this the same person?
And could they strike again?
The neighbors were very afraid.
We still have a killer out there.
It was a whodunit.
When something like this happens,
you think that anything's possible now.
[light music]
[Narrator] Police investigating the cold-blooded shooting
of Jack Parkes, suspect his murder
could be linked to another recent robbery
in then neighborhood.
We learned that during that burglary
there were some items similar to what Jack had
that were taken and it was a burglary
that happened during the day,
which is the timeline we were looking at
in this particular incident.
Oftentimes in our investigations,
we see that residential burglaries are done during the day
in bedroom communities
where the chance of the people inside the home
being at work are better.
And that way they can go in and they can take what they need
without fear of being caught.
[Narrator] With Jack being retired and home all day,
had he caught the burglar red-handed
and paid the ultimate price?
The neighboring police department already
has a suspect in custody.
Vernon Zelinsky was identified as a possible suspect.
in this case.
He had been recently arrested.
The items that Vernon was accused of taking were coins,
well, Jack had coins that were missing.
So, Vernon Zelinsky was tracked down and he was interviewed.
We really just wanted to do an interview
and determine what connection, if any, he had to Jack.
During the interview,
he said that he had been arrested for the burglary,
but that burglary was at an old employer's house.
He denied knowing Jack.
And he said that the date that this happened
he was actually at work.
We confirmed that through his new employer
that he was working that day
during the timeframe that this would have occurred.
Vernon was somebody we were absolutely able to rule out
of being directly involved.
At that stage in the investigation,
we had no idea who might've done this and why.
[Narrator] 48 Hours after Jack's murder with no arrests
in the case, fear is growing in Kennedy Township.
Everyone was concerned that how in broad daylight
can someone walk into a house,
kill somebody, and walk out without even being seen?
The hardest thing to comprehend was the murder.
It was point blank, assassination.
Stone-cold killing.
You never expect anything like this.
I know I didn't.
Waiting for an arrest,
you're still in that daze of trying to process it all.
He's not coming back.
It's just too unbelievable.
Is this gonna be another murder unsolved?
We had a lot of information to go on
and we were constantly moving the investigation forward.
People were being eliminated.
Further suspects were being developed.
[Narrator] Three days after Jack was discovered dead,
police get a major break.
A local pawn shop in Sharpsburg, PA,
which is another small little borough
within Allegheny County,
the owner had called the local police due
to some suspicious activity.
On the day of the incident, July 21st,
he said a gentleman came in with a cache of gold
and was trying to sell it to him.
What the employee found to be concerning was
first of all, the jewelry was manipulated.
It was very distinguishable pieces, but they had been,
it seemed to be hammered or just manipulated in a way
that would make them hard for law enforcement to identify.
It threw up a red flag to him,
but also he seemed to think that this was a person
who had sold him stolen jewelry in the past.
So, he didn't buy the jewelry,
but he also had the foresight to know
he wanted to see where this jewelry might've come from.
He knew it was important to get a picture of it.
So, he took a photograph of the items
that this person was trying to sell.
He provided us with the photographs
and they were taken to Carol who viewed them.
She became very upset.
She started crying
and she said, "That's our jewelry."
It felt like we were closing in.
Based upon the photograph of the jewelry,
we were able to get that out to the local department.
They could share with the pawn shop owners in town
if anyone comes in with it.
[Narrator] Investigators hope they
can identify the seller.
The pawn shop owner was able to give a good description
of the person who brought the jewelry
and a younger white male, black hair, and thin build.
That description was provided
to the local police chief in Sharpsburg
and he thought that fit the description
of a white male from that area.
It gave us a very good lead in this case.
A photo array was put together
to include eight individual photographs
and they were shown to the shop owner.
We have a set of instructions that we give them.
And we say,
"The person that we're looking for
may or may not be in here,
but if you see the person indicated on the lineup."
So, once he reviewed the photo array,
he did identify who that person was.
It was a huge break.
It was exactly what we needed.
[Narrator] Coming up, police find stunning evidence
pointing to Jack's killer.
In the video, we knew exactly who it was.
This was a shock to everyone.
You never thought that would happen.
It would be that person.
[Narrator] But, making an arrest wouldn't be easy.
She provided alibis for him and just denials.
[Narrator] Until investigators find proof no one can deny.
Those records don't lie.
[light music]
[Narrator] Detectives have just identified the man
who tried to pawn murder victim Jack Parke's jewelry.
His name, Bryan Gibbons.
He's been a known thief
to the local police department.
We went after that lead strong.
We were feeling pretty confident that Mr. Gibbons
may be our man, or at least know who our man was.
We were very excited and very motivated to go find him.
[Narrator] Bryan has a long history of petty crimes,
but investigators need to determine if he's a killer.
Four days after the murder,
they get a warrant to search his home.
Specifically, we were looking
for any of the very distinguishing items that
Jack Parkes had.
Unfortunately, we didn't find any of the victim's jewelry
in house, but we did find some items
that did turn out to be stolen from someone else.
Based upon the search at Mr. Gibbons' residence,
we were able to arrest him
and have him sent to the county jail.
[Narrator] Investigators question Bryan
about Jack's missing jewelry.
He said that he didn't have anything to do with it.
At that point,
we were trying to determine if perhaps he'd been given
some jewelry to sell that maybe he didn't know its origin
and he went to go sell it.
We really just wanted to see if we could come up
with any connection to rule him either in or out
on the homicide of Jack Parkes.
[Narrator] Bryan tells detectives
he doesn't know the victim and has never been to his home.
He said he had no connection to Jack at all.
He denied having any knowledge of the Jack Parkes' homicide.
We asked, "Well, what's your alibi?"
And he goes,
I was arrested for entering an abandoned house that day.
And that was confirmed.
Bryan was not the killer.
He had a solid alibi.
It was clear that he was not the same individual
who had come in to the store on that Monday
and tried to sell the jewelry.
[Narrator] The pawn shop owner mistakenly identified
the wrong person.
The investigation kept hitting dead end after dead end..
We thought we had it, but then once we eliminate him,
we took a pause.
We just step back a minute, not start all over,
but then keep everything else in perspective.
[Narrator] While detectives hunt for new leads,
Jack's loved ones struggle with their grief.
Instead of looking forward to Jack's wedding,
five days after his murder, they attend his funeral.
When he told me he was gonna get married,
his brother and I would have stood up for him.
I was proud 'cause I was never a best man.
And there I was
carrying his casket.
God, to have something like that happen
in such a quick time.
It's devastating to everybody.
You feel the hurt,
but it really doesn't sink in until the funeral's all over.
And then the shock is over, it's reality.
He's gone.
[Narrator] Fearing the case could go cold,
a week after the murder police step up the hunt
for Jack's stolen jewelry,
hoping the culprit is still attempting to sell it
at a pawn shop.
We all just sort of fanned out
and we took particular geographical areas.
We knew there was still a person that was out there trying
to sell Jack's jewelry
and we had to just keep holding out hope
that the pawn shop would take their identification,
that they would keep good records.
That's what kept us going honestly.
There is a detective in the city of Pittsburgh
who is a pawn shop records analyst
and I reached out to her and I told her what items
that we had missing.
And on August 4th I heard back from her
and she told me that she had found the jewelry,
where it had been sold.
[Narrator] Investigators race to the pawn shop.
We had to go take a physical look at it,
see who, if anybody was on camera.
Some store policies, all they have to do
is take an individual's driver's license number.
They don't even have to make a photocopy of it.
So, we were trying to remain optimistic
that somehow we would get an image of the actual person
who tried to sell that jewelry.
It could have been anyone at that point.
[Narrator] The pawn shop has surveillance video
and what detectives see on tape is jaw-dropping.
It was, oh my God.
We knew exactly who it was.
In the video, it was Michael Lapaglia,
which was Carol's nephew that Jack raised
like one of his own.
This was a shock to everyone.
When we first had dealings with Michael early on
in the investigation,
he did provide an alibi of
about businesses he was at, doctor's appointments.
Michael, had his girlfriend, Melanie,
saying that he was with her during the time
that Jack would have or could have been killed.
So, it was kind of going back, trying to rephrase
what he had initially told us.
We still had to do a little bit more digging.
We had to work on if we were missing something.
Early on when we talked to Michael,
he had given detectives his phone number.
I wanted to get his phone records.
[Narrator] While investigators wait for those records,
they call Michael back in.
We are going to interview him and see what he has to say
now that we have him on tape pawning his uncle's jewelery.
We decided that it would probably be ideal
to bring Michael and his girlfriend, Melanie,
in at the same times,
being that she was the person
who was providing an alibi for him
and chip away at that and see where the truth lie.
We took them both back to our office
and they were interviewed in separate rooms.
Michael in his interview was initially very adamant
that he had nothing to do with this.
He denied involvement with the murder,
involvement with the jewelry,
and he just would not deviate from that.
[Narrator] Melanie stands by her story too.
She provided alibis for him and just denials.
Melanie is pretty much telling us that he was with her
during the time that Jack would have
or could have been killed.
She was just defensive
and trying to argue with what we knew was not true.
And that was that he had sold Jack's jewelry.
We showed her a picture of the jewelry
and she tried to say it was hers.
And we knew that was a lie.
With neither Michael nor Melanie cracking
under the pressure,
detectives need something to break the deadlock.
When we got the information
about the cell phone records it was a huge break.
We were very happy that it finally had come through.
It was like everything came full circle.
[light music]
[Narrator] Two weeks after Jack Parkes
was shot to death in his own home,
investigators get the break in the case they needed.
Incriminating cell phone GPS data.
When I got Michael's phone records,
I started to see where generally he spent most of his time,
which was consistent with his home.
He told us he was in Sharpsburg,
20 minutes away from Jack's house
on the day of the incident.
Parts of his alibi checked out cell phone data-wise,
but there was an anomaly where about 11:45
his cell phone pinged over in the area
of Jack and Carol's house.
To me the significance of 11:45 was
it is in this time where Carol can't reach Jack.
It would be impossible to be in Sharpsburg
and your phone ping off a tower in Kennedy Township.
The amount of distance between the two,
it wouldn't be possible.
He was not at home.
He was over near his uncle's house.
So 11:45, Michael's phone being over there
was an aha moment.
Those records don't lie.
[Narrator] Detectives wanna see
how Michael will react when confronted
with his own cell phone records.
It was like
he had just got smacked in the head with a baseball bat.
He became very quiet,
took a second, and he just let it all out.
[Narrator] Michael's explanation of why he went
to see Jack only raises more suspicion.
His story changed to self-defense.
Reconciling that just wasn't possible.
Jack was shot one time, right close to his ear.
Basically someone held a gun to his head and executed him.
[Narrator] Michael tells detectives
he sold the jewelry for $1000.
Even more shocking is what he spent the money on.
Michael was following the path of substance abuse.
It was getting to be more addictive drugs
and his use was increasing.
It wasn't recreational anymore.
It was more of the behavior of an addict.
It was heartbreaking for us to know
that someone who was almost like Jack's son,
very close family member, would do something like that
in exchange for a couple of dollars to get high.
I believe Michael went to that house to take jewelry.
He knew Jack was there
and the only way who's gonna get that jewelry
is if Jack was dead.
He walked up to the house
and as soon as Jack met him at the door
and turned his back to him,
he shot him and he fell and he died instantly.
[Narrator] On August 5th, 2014,
Michael Lapaglia is charged with first degree murder.
To say to Carol, "We know who did this."
It was hard.
But, the hardest answer that we had for her
is when she said, "Michael who?"
And he had the same last name as her.
Really, it was hard to tell her that
it's your nephew and it just hit her
and she was very upset.
You never thought that would happen.
It would be that person.
It's still to this day,
so hard to believe that somebody that they loved,
Michael, could have done something like this.
I mean, what he did,
I can't describe, there's no words.
[Narrator] At trial, Michael is found guilty.
On December 9th, 2015, the 24-year-old
is sentenced to life in prison.
He took a loving, caring man
and just executed him.
There was no winners.
We lost Jack, who won?
Nobody.
I will never forgive him.
Michael took away my best friend, my brother.
He took away a lot from me.
To this day I still hate the guy.
Jack will never be forgotten.
In the beginning, it's hard talking about a loved one
without really breaking down and crying.
But you continue to talk about him.
You keep their memory alive.
And that's how he stays with us.
Every day he's here
in my mind, my heart, and my dreams.
I see his face, always smiling.
I know he's flying with the angels.
[light music]