[birds squawking]
The Lassen National Forest
is located approximately 130 miles north
of Sacramento, California.
It is 1,800 square miles,
which means if you like remoteness,
that would be your location.
January 21st of 2000, the middle of winter,
a man named Jerry Levitoff
went fishing around Lake Almanor.
He was going to see if the ice had broken loose
into a stream that flows into the lake,
but he didn't come home.
[phone ringing]
His fiancee tries to call him on his cell phone.
[line ringing]
There's no answer.
And I thought, "There's something wrong here."
I waited until the next day
and I said, "We're gonna go look for him."
So they began to mobilize themselves
into a search party.
They are familiar
with his fishing holes in the area.
We went all the way around the lake.
Jerry!
And then finally found his truck on the west shore.
[women] Jerry!
Jerry!
He was nowhere.
[dog whimpering]
Jerry?
As they walk up to the truck,
they hear a whimpering sound.
Hey!
-Hi, buddy! Hi! -[dog whimpering]
Where's Daddy, huh?
[Johnson] And our pup Stormy was in the back.
Jerry loved that pup,
and I kept thinking,
why didn't he take Stormy with him?
I couldn't make sense of anything.
He's not gonna abandon a puppy
in an unheated pickup truck for two days.
[Johnson] Jerry!
Jerry!
Now, they're terribly frightened.
Where is Jerry?
And what has happened to him?
[Kenda] I spent my career closing murder cases.
But I'm not the only one who answered the call.
It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable,
to catch a ruthless killer,
to find justice for the dead.
That's what it takes
to be an American Detective.
My name is Greg Hagwood.
I am a retired sheriff
and former investigator
with the Plumas County Sheriff's Office.
Growing up, my father was good friends with the sheriff.
I got the opportunity to tag along.
I thought that was a really, really neat job
and kind of fell in love with it at the time.
And so, I got my bachelor's degree
in criminal justice.
In December of 1988,
went to the academy.
Was a patrol deputy in my hometown.
From there, I became the investigation sergeant.
Couldn't ask for anything better.
It was just the best job in the world.
In my time at the sheriff's office,
we had about 100% solve rate on our homicides.
That's a reflection of our dedication, our commitment.
It leaves you with having a real sense of purpose.
It makes you feel good.
[phone ringing]
Detective Hagwood.
I am made aware
that Mr. Levitoff's truck
is located very near the shores of Lake Almanor,
in the winter time cold.
Mm-hmm. Got it.
[Kenda] The greatest danger in January,
in those mountains,
in the wilderness, is hypothermia.
You only have a few hours to survive
before hypothermia makes you unconscious
and you never wake up.
[police radio chatter]
When Hagwood arrives on the scene,
deputies brief him on the man they're searching for.
Jerry Levitoff has been missing for two days.
He is a 26-year employee
of the United States Forest Service.
He was very serious and connected to his job.
His work life was really important.
[Alice Baltimore] He was very athletic
and loving to be out and fish.
One of the encouragements for him
to go into the Forestry
is that he was out with nature.
And eventually, he was signed up in the Hotshot crew.
[Kenda] A Hotshot crew are firefighters
that go back into the deep wilderness,
with your physical ability only,
to cut a fire line to stop a fire.
[Baltimore] And they would jump
from helicopters and planes into fire.
Smoke jumpers, you go through weeks of training.
He really enjoyed that kind of thing.
[Kenda] Very difficult work.
Physically demanding to the maximum,
and dangerous.
Extremely dangerous.
[Mike Madden] It's a very critical job,
required a certain aptitude and skills to do that job.
Jerry was a highly qualified and experienced firefighter.
What makes this case so interesting
is Jerry Levitoff would be one of the persons required
to search for someone missing in the wilderness.
And now, it is Jerry
that is missing in that same wilderness.
This is very ominous.
And Hagwood knows it.
[radio chatter]
Something was very, very wrong
about the totality of all these circumstances.
For Jerry to go missing,
it was just incredibly out of character.
The most common reason
that someone is missing in this national forest
is they get lost.
Jerry can't get lost,
not there,
'cause he knows every inch of it.
We've got to figure out what's going on,
what happened to Mr. Levitoff.
[Kenda] There is freshly fallen snow
over this whole area.
So everything is obscured.
There's no footprints.
The area is white.
If you made a scan,
you didn't see anything
that really looked out of ordinary
except for the truck.
Are there signs of a struggle?
Hagwood looks inside the cab.
He finds nothing out of the ordinary.
There's no blood, no evidence of anything.
He walks around the other side of the truck
and he sees cables hanging from under the hood.
[Hagwood] Jumper cables were attached to the battery.
It was strange.
You naturally start evaluating
and you go, "Okay,
somebody's car break down, he offers them a jump start."
Hagwood's own experience
and his instincts as a policeman
are now kicked into high order.
This is where this began.
This missing person
may not be missing.
They may be a victim of violence.
Something really bad is going on here.
Well, if that's where this began,
then Jerry Levitoff may be very close.
[Hagwood] A couple of my officers,
they called me over.
They said, "Take a look at that lump in the snow
right over there."
I looked.
And I said, "Uh-oh."
There are moments in criminal investigations
that a bad feeling comes over you.
And that's what was going through Hagwood's mind
when he saw that lump in the snow.
He suspected what that lump was.
I brushed away the snow.
CSI here, please!
It was Jerry Levitoff.
He had a very catastrophic wound to the head
consistent with a shotgun blast.
[Kenda] Jerry didn't get lost.
Jerry didn't die from hypothermia.
Jerry wasn't attacked by a bear.
Jerry was murdered
in the most cold-blooded manner possible.
[siren wailing]
[Kenda] Sergeant Hagwood now realizes
he's standing in a crime scene.
We found Jerry Levitoff.
It appeared that
he had been struck with a shotgun blast.
He has a massive gunshot wound to the back of his head.
This is close contact.
The muzzle of the weapon
is placed within two inches of the head,
and the trigger is pulled.
He's been killed execution-style
and dropped face-first
dead to the ground
and covered by the overnight snow.
[indistinct chatter]
[Hagwood] He doesn't have a wallet.
Everybody says he always carries his wallet,
so maybe this is a robbery.
Okay. Let's say it's a robbery.
Then how do you explain
the execution-style killing of this individual?
Why not just order him
to surrender his wallet?
There's something very odd about this.
So now we've got a crime scene,
but it's covered in snow.
Hmm.
So we commandeered some propane torches
from the road department...
and we undertook the process...
of melting all the snow.
Now, we have a rather confined area
to see if any evidence can be located.
We made some discoveries.
There was a shotgun shell
in close proximity to his vehicle.
And then there was a second shotgun shell
in very close proximity to Mr. Levitoff's remains.
[camera clicks]
They also find something interesting.
We located a hood emblem
from a Honda car,
where the jumper cables were.
[Kenda] What could have happened here?
So is it possible that we have someone with a shotgun...
who drives a Honda with a weak battery?
Yes, it is.
We're entertaining endless ideas.
Are we dealing with a set of circumstances
that could be related
to his employment with the Forest Service?
There are some very dangerous people
there in those woods.
And they're there for a reason.
To avoid human contact.
Plumas County continues to have
a presence of cartel drug activity
in terms of large marijuana grows
and methamphetamine.
[Kenda] If you do encounter these people
in a national forest,
you're dealing with professional criminals.
What if Jerry becomes a witness
and has to be eliminated?
Somebody was here.
Somebody had a gun,
and for some reason, decided to take a life.
So, now the question is open.
What caused this to take place?
After we had moved his remains...
his girlfriend, Melany, had been there.
We let her know that we had located him deceased.
[indistinct chatter]
[Hagwood] The grief and shock, it was very present.
It was like I just couldn't believe.
I just felt like
I needed to see him
and I never got that chance.
[Baltimore] We were all in shock.
How could this happen
to this nice man
who served his country,
who loved people?
Jerry was born in Pasadena in 1946.
He was always interested in the service.
So, in 1963,
he enlisted in the Air Force.
[Danny] He loved flying.
I know, in Vietnam, he couldn't talk about much
because he worked on some of the radar
on the jets
that you weren't
supposed to know about.
He came home real stern.
It was like something changed.
He took me aside
and he told me,
"You don't understand what it was like.
"Two days ago,
I was sitting in a helicopter with a machine gun,
and I had to shoot people I didn't want to shoot."
And... [sniffles]
He wanted to get to a place where he could find a way
to really heal,
and he headed up north.
I think was a good place for him to be.
It is a beautiful place.
Forest and streams and lakes
and a place to refresh your soul.
Jerry was a consummate, well-aimed firefighter.
It really hit home,
and we were really sad and anxious
to find out what happened,
and bring whoever did this to justice.
[horn honking]
[Hagwood] The examination of his remains
were very preliminary at the scene.
[Kenda] The body is frozen solid
like a side of beef in a cooler.
You can't move joints.
You can't move legs.
The technique is to literally allow it to thaw.
The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death
was gunshot wound to the head.
[Kenda] Are there any other injuries?
Any other evidence of torture
or defensive wounds or anything like that?
[Hagwood] Mr. Levitoff had what appeared to be
a very, very close-range
shotgun wound through his hand.
[Kenda] Well, this is odd.
Did the pain of that injury cause him to fall?
The working theory
was he was running away from the truck.
He has put his hand up to shield his face.
-[gunshot] -[man screams]
Got shot.
The grazing wound knocked him down.
The shooter puts the muzzle
to the back of the victim's head...
And basically executed him right there.
This crime is beyond weird.
To kill with that level of violence
and that amount of coldness,
there's more to this than the theft of a wallet.
You naturally start looking at the circumstances,
the evidence, the scene, the location, the individual.
You need to try to understand as much as you possibly can...
[phone ringing]
...about the person that was the victim.
There was a phone call from Hagwood
and told me they would be coming to question me.
[Hagwood] Talking with Melany,
it seemed Jerry Levitoff was a much loved,
very liked person.
He was just really kind
and he was funny.
He was really loving.
He had a sparkle in his eyes.
It was magic.
[Hagwood] At this juncture in Jerry Levitoff's life,
he had been separated
and going through a divorce process
with his former wife.
Hmm. Interesting.
You want to go back and reverse engineer
in time and place and people,
everything that they were doing.
"When was the last time you saw Mr. Levitoff?"
"What was he doing?"
He was going to Lake Almanor.
So who would have done this?
I don't know. He was well liked.
He didn't have enemies.
There was absolutely no evidence to support
that anybody out there has any reason to do him harm.
So what do you do?
[indistinct chatter]
Well, let's search the place.
Maybe there is something there
that can give us somewhere to go next.
Because right now, we don't have a place to go.
[Hagwood] When you have unfettered access
to a person's house,
you can start to understand their habits.
[Kenda] It is a bizarre thing
to search the belongings of a dead person.
You feel sometimes like you're violating their grave.
But you're not doing it for that reason.
You're trying to find out who did them harm.
We discovered Jerry did have a life insurance policy.
[Kenda] And the beneficiary of said policy
is not his live-in girlfriend.
It's none of his siblings.
It's his ex-wife.
Now that raises a red flag.
You're the ex-wife,
and yet, you're entitled to all this money
if Jerry winds up dead.
Well, you have, obviously,
thousands of reasons to see Jerry dead
because you're gonna benefit by this policy.
And it's obvious that somebody really wanted him that way.
[Kenda] Sometimes, in cases of divorce,
you have simmering emotion after the fact,
and a level of hatred begins to build.
Does it build
far enough to kill?
We need to find out.
So, the first stop is the ex-wife.
[Hagwood] At this juncture in Jerry Levitoff's life,
he had been separated
and going through a divorce process
with his estranged wife, Kris Levitoff.
[Kristine] I just remember telling my daughter,
"Well, the sheriffs are gonna come over
to ask questions about Jerry."
And he was very close
to my daughter.
So I made her go into the bedroom
'cause I wasn't sure
what they were gonna talk about.
And we found this
while we were searching his house.
[Kristine] I do remember them asking me
if I knew who he left his life insurance to.
I was very surprised.
[Hagwood] Are you aware of this?
[Kristine] And I said no.
[Kenda] She never knew that a policy existed.
He apparently never told her.
[Hagwood] She wasn't even aware of that,
and didn't seem even remotely interested.
It wasn't like it was a bad,
devastating breakup or anything.
We got along just fine.
He would still come over
and sit by the campfire and visit my daughter.
He was a good guy.
We all love and miss him.
He didn't deserve that.
There's absolutely no reason
why somebody would want to kill him.
She is totally shocked,
and Hagwood
is experienced enough to know
that all of those emotions and expressions from her
are absolutely appropriate.
One of the aspects that was very important
and had to be addressed in a very timely manner,
was his wallet is gone.
[line ringing]
Given the absence of his wallet
and the credit cards,
the next day, at the sheriff's office,
I pick up the phone
and I just start calling these credit card companies.
You know, I've got to see
if there's been any activity on it.
Hello, this is Detective Greg Hagwood.
When you have someone
engaged in such a brutal act of senseless violence...
against, apparently,
one of the nicest guys in the world...
you've gotta kick it into the next gear.
Gerald, or Jerry.
I explain to them who I am, what I'm doing.
-[line ringing] -Hello,
this is Detective Greg Hagwood.
Bingo. Landed on the right credit card.
Now we have something we can chase.
Let's get a look and see if there's been any activity
since he's been reported missing.
[Kenda] They provide a date and a time
that is after the date and time
of Jerry's death.
So, wherever that card was used,
it was most likely used
by the person who killed Jerry.
[Hagwood] One of the initial purchases
that our suspect had made
with our victim's credit card
was at a car parts store in Elko, Nevada.
He bought a car battery.
Leads right back to those jumper cables.
Here's a guy that needs a battery
and he's willing to kill for it.
This is him.
[Hagwood] The credit card use,
it's sequentially marching across the state of Nevada
and then into Utah.
It looks like our shooter is eastbound and down.
[Hagwood] I'm on the phone
with a credit card representative.
He goes, "Holy smokes,
that credit card's being used right now
at a gas station in Flaming Gorge, Utah."
Well, I'm awake now.
That's a huge sense of urgency
when you know
your bad guy, at that moment in time,
are at this address,
engaged in this behavior, making this purchase.
There is a moment in every case
when the smoke will clear,
and you get this distinct feeling in you
that "We're on to something here."
I very quickly identified the law enforcement agencies
that have jurisdiction
and the information I'm trying to blast out to them
as rapidly as I can
is, "Be on the lookout
for anybody in possession of these credit cards."
[Kenda] So our man, our shooter,
was at this gas station
at three o'clock in the morning,
and Hagwood is three states away.
He'd like to close that gap instantly,
but instantly isn't gonna happen.
So I called my sergeant,
told him to get a bag packed,
and get down here to the office.
We have to go to Utah right now.
[Kenda] Sergeant Greg Hagwood
is a man of perseverance.
He's a homicide detective.
He won't stop.
He won't give up.
He will do anything until he has his hands
around the throat of who killed Jerry Levitoff.
[Hagwood] So, my sergeant arrived
and we drove from Quincy to Reno, Nevada,
which is the closest airport.
And we flew to Salt Lake City, rented a car.
We're setting the land speed record.
[Kenda] And they hammer that car
at 100 miles an hour-plus
until they reach Flaming Gorge, Utah.
[Hagwood] We went to the truck stop
where Mr. Levitoff's credit card was used.
-Hey. -[shopkeeper] Hi.
We start talking and interviewing staff.
[Kenda] Well, the midnight clerk is still on duty.
They asked, "Do you remember this particular transaction?"
They said, "Yeah, I think I remember."
"It was that guy, and another guy was with him."
Another guy?
Okay. Uh...
Wow, we may have another suspect.
[Kenda] They look at their surveillance tape
and there is a clear image
of a disheveled-looking person
as if he is a kind of person that lives in the woods,
and the other guy's an average guy,
a little older, maybe, than this first guy.
They paid separately.
-Thank you. -[shopkeeper] Thank you.
[line ringing]
Hey, it's Hagwood.
[Kenda] So they run those credit cards,
and the other person's name is Greg Cook.
Now we're gonna want to get to know 'em a little bit,
so you're gonna run a criminal history on 'em,
run a credit check.
Lo and behold,
that individual had been arrested
for a charge of drunk and disorderly conduct
in Plumas County
many years earlier,
and had been booked into the Plumas County Jail.
Plumas County, California,
is where our victim was killed,
eight hundred miles and three states away
from this gas station.
Is that a coincidence?
No one in the homicide business
believes in a coincidence.
Well, there's our connection to Plumas County, right?
[Kenda] Now our man
is in the same gas station with the shooter
using the victim's credit card.
He's got to be part of this.
He's got to be a suspect in a homicide.
It turns out that Greg Cook has an address on file.
He's from Wyoming.
Ten minutes north in Flaming Gorge, Utah,
and he's not hard to find.
[dogs barking]
[car doors closing]
[Hagwood] Hi, there. Are you, uh, Greg Cook?
[Cook] Yes, sir.
They ask him what happened in the gas station.
He was struck by the confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you were in the store with another guy."
It was just me and this guy talking.
That's it.
Cook informs these officers that he is a chatty person.
He bumped into this guy in this gas station
at three o'clock in the morning,
he struck up a conversation with him.
Nothing more than that. Didn't know him from Adam.
He had no idea who this person is.
Even though he doesn't have an alibi,
he doesn't have a real way
to prove anything,
what he says makes perfect sense.
He's somewhat of a vagabond who wanders around
and talks to perfect strangers.
Lots of people do that.
[Hagwood] Thank you for your time.
We went back
and we double checked the video tape.
As it turned out,
this other guy had absolutely no affiliation,
connection or anything to do with our case.
We were about that far
from taking this person into custody,
but you dot your "I's" and you cross your "T's".
[phone ringing]
Hagwood.
Hagwood gets a phone call about the APB he put out.
It was one of my partners.
He goes, "Hey, Fish and Wildlife officer
up in Flaming Gorge, Utah,
they've made an arrest."
[Kenda] The Forest Service officer
tells Hagwood on the phone,
he and a Fish and Game warden
responded to a report of illegal fishing.
You have a fishing license with you, out here fishing?
[Hagwood] So this Fish and Wildlife officer
encounters this guy in violation
of some fishing regulations.
[Kenda] They're looking at this kid,
writing him his ticket,
the officer looks in the window of the car
and sees credit cards on the dash.
The Fish and Wildlife officer says, "Holy smokes.
"Hmm."
[Kenda] On the credit card,
he sees "Gerald Levitoff."
[officer] Put your hands on the hood.
Right now! Put your hands on the hood! Do it.
[Hagwood] He takes this individual
down at gunpoint.
Now Hagwood feels so good.
This is the guy.
A young man named Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien.
This guy's wanted for murder,
but his crime is fishing without a fishing license.
Little things can catch up to you.
[police radio chatter]
We went to the Daggett County Jail.
Sat down across the table
from this Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien.
He looked disheveled.
Unkempt.
Did not have what you would call a healthy glow.
There just didn't seem to be a whole lot there.
You look into their eyes,
and, you know, you're coming up zeros.
And personally and professionally,
I wanted to know.
I wanted him to tell me what he did, why he did it.
What was going through his mind?
[Kenda] Why would anybody kill this forest worker
in the most brutal manner possible
over a misdemeanor theft of a wallet and credit cards?
I have, in the past,
enjoyed a tremendous measure of success
getting people to tell me what they did.
You have the right to remain silent...
And I read him his rights.
Do you understand your rights?
I want a lawyer.
He decided he did not want to make a statement,
and that was really, really disappointing.
And so, I kind of felt a sense of personal defeat
that Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien
wouldn't talk to me.
That's always frustrating.
But often, it's also common.
Confessions are very rare
and everybody wants a lawyer.
It's the way it is.
Hagwood is faced with the ultimate problem.
If you don't have a confession
or an incriminating statement from your suspect,
you better have compelling evidence.
And in this case, we did not.
The only evidence
that Dickey-O'Brien has in his possession
that makes him arrestable in this case
are the victim's credit cards.
Does that constitute
a murder case?
It does not.
If they don't find something else,
they're gonna have to turn loose
Mr. Dickey-O'Brien,
and let him pay his fishing ticket
and move on with his life.
[Kenda] Being in possession
of a homicide victim's credit cards
is, of course, enormously suspicious,
but Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien,
he can explain that away in a courtroom.
You can leave no stone unturned.
Failure is not an option.
[Kenda] Hagwood presents his information
to a Utah judge,
and that judge signs a search warrant for the car.
[Hagwood] So, we went to the arrest site,
to the campground.
[police radio chatter]
[Hagwood] When I arrived,
I'll never forget talking to the officer up there.
And I said, "He's driving a Honda, isn't he?"
And he goes, "Yeah."
I go, "Go to the front...
and tell me it's missing the hood emblem."
[chuckles] And he goes,
"How'd you know that?"
I go, "I've got it."
So check one on this list.
Clear and convincing.
[indistinct chatter]
[Kenda] He opens the trunk...
and concealed inside...
is a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun.
And we've got very compelling evidence
that this is, in fact, our guy.
We spent a day long processing his camp.
We had the sawed-off shotgun.
We had matching ammunition.
We had the items that he purchased
with Jerry's cards,
and his car had a brand new battery.
[Kenda] Two and two equals four,
or in this case, two and two equals Dickey-O'Brien.
[Hagwood] Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien
was sent to Atascadero State Penitentiary,
which is a medical facility in central California,
where they treated him
in an effort to bring him to a level of competency
to stand trial.
He has a history of mental illness.
Dickey-O'Brien was diagnosed as being bipolar,
and has been taking
antipsychotic medication for years.
[Hagwood] And after a lengthy period of time,
Atascadero said, "Hey,
he's competent now to stand trial."
[Kenda] In order to plead
not guilty by reason of insanity,
you've got to show some demonstration
of how insane you actually probably are.
So he had to explain what he was doing
when he shot this man,
and he explained...
He is in the woods.
[owl hooting]
It turns out that Dickey-O'Brien,
in the past several months, ran out of money completely.
So he stopped buying his medication.
So he is spiraling into psychosis.
[mumbling incoherently]
And he explained that he has voices in his head
and the voices told him
that the government was out to get him,
and they were
surveilling him constantly
and eventually,
they were gonna kill him.
Their voices also tell him he should stay in the woods.
Away from people
and away from any sort of technology,
and he selects the woods
where our victim likes to go fishing.
[music playing on car radio]
[Hagwood] Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien
had been driving kind of aimlessly
into the next morning,
and he ended up at Lake Almanor.
And his battery dies in his car,
because of course, he's broke,
and he can't afford to fix it.
Along comes a man in a pickup truck.
Hey, can I help you?
"Have you got any battery cables and a jump?"
"I have cables."
And he goes into his truck and he gets his cables.
[Hagwood] Jerry, in an act of good citizenry
and just kindness...
[indistinct chatter]
[Hagwood] ...created this encounter
with a psychotic homicidal person.
What are you doing all the way out here?
Oh, I'm in the Forestry Service.
[Kenda] And he explains he's on his off time
and he's gonna fish today,
but he identifies himself as a federal employee.
In the twisted brain of our man Dickey-O'Brien,
this is a CIA assassin.
He pulls out his shotgun
and says, "Stand over there by that tree
so I can kill you."
[Jerry] Hey, man. Whoa, whoa.
-I didn't do anything. Hey. -Move!
Hey, just take my money.
[Dickey-O'Brien] Now! Go!
Here, here. Take it. Take it!
Jerry Levitoff threw his wallet at him.
Our man opens fire.
[Jerry screaming]
The first blast hits him in the left hand
and knocks him down.
[Jerry screaming]
He puts the muzzle to the back of his head.
No...
[gunshot]
Mr. Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien,
having just committed the most brutal homicide,
probably slammed the hood down
with a measure of enthusiasm
that caused the hood ornament to break off.
Which wound up at the scene
along with the two expended casings
from his shotgun.
Jerry Levitoff is alone,
covered by the overnight snow.
The courts determined...
that Rain Dancer Dickey-O'Brien
was, in fact, mentally ill,
but not insane,
in the sense that he understood
what he was doing to the victim, Jerry Levitoff.
Eventually, he pled guilty.
He's been sentenced to life without parole.
Jerry was so well known in the community,
and so well connected.
I asked the family if we could do a fireman's funeral,
and they said yes.
The whole community was there.
I presented the family with the flag.
Everyone thought that was probably
the perfect thing for Jerry.
He deserved it.
So we did.
[Johnson] We got his ashes,
and the family and I
went down in the water to Lake Almanor,
which we both loved...
and released the ashes.
[Baltimore] He loved the outdoors.
He loved his life.
Why he was taken away, I don't know.
[sniffles]
Some people's tanks are filled to the top
and they've got a good measure of life,
and Dickey-O'Brien's tank was empty.
There just wasn't anything there.
And that might help explain
a willingness to engage in such horrific behavior.
[Kenda] Dickey-O'Brien stands out from all the others
in one simple way:
his lunacy overtook him
and he became violent
and exceedingly dangerous.
Hagwood was able to stop the pattern.
Because Detective Sergeant Hagwood
was relentless,
which is what
homicide detectives need to be
until they have the person responsible
where they want him,
which is standing in front of a judge.
Next time on American Detective...
Even before I walked up to the pile
you could just smell that smell.
It looked like something you would see in a horror show.
If you think this is going to end well you're sorely mistaken.