[soothing music]
- Brad was charismatic.
- Just a ball of sunshine.
I wanna remember that smile.
- He walked around and he made it apparent
that he was gay.
He didn't hide it.
[Faith] He is an openly gay man,
living in a small town with big judgment.
- This is who he was, and around here
that attracts attention,
and unfortunately, it's negative attention.
[Faith] So when he's found dead...
[Faith] Investigators are left
with an endless pool of suspects.
- Brad had felt like he was being looked down upon
because he was gay.
- What we had was a whodunit.
[Faith] But when a hidden secret is exposed...
- What kinda relationship did they have?
- There's something off about this.
[Faith] It will eventually reveal...
- I know what you did.
[gun fires] [Faith] A killer relationship.
[crying]
[dramatic music]
What really defines a relationship is an association,
a connection,
a bond.
Bonds exist between parents and their children,
colleagues,
neighbors,
sisters,
brothers.
And by brothers, I don't always mean family.
Brothers can be best friends.
Such is the bond that Brad McGarry had
with David Kinney,
and David's wife, Cheri.
The trio's eight-year friendship became a bond
that was unbreakable.
That is,
until the unthinkable happened.
[keypad beeping]
[person crying]
[dark ominous music]
[siren blares]
- May 7th, 2017, I was working as a patrolman,
by myself,
when I received a dispatch.
All I knew at the time was a man was down.
[dog barks] [siren blares]
When I got to the scene,
it was only David Kinney, his wife and daughter,
and they're highly upset.
Mr. Kinney told me their friend Brad McGarry,
he's inside,
in the basement.
[footsteps]
When I entered the garage,
the garage and the basement are adjacent,
and I seen Brad McGarry.
I'm seeing his body there.
I'm looking at a face, the blood,
he's dead.
[radio chatter]
And then I radio for assistance.
[sirens blaring]
[Ryan] It was a Sunday.
It was a really nice day out.
I got a call about 6:30
saying that there was a possible homicide
in Bellaire, Ohio.
[radio chatter]
As I'm arriving on scene,
we had David Kinney and Cheri Kinney remain outside,
and then Chief Kovalyk and I
went on a walkthrough of the scene.
- The basement of
Brad McGarry's house,
there was a narrow walkway
where things were just stacked on each side.
[Michael] There was a lot of blood.
- We could see what looks like a gunshot wound
to the back of his head.
We don't know, is that an entry wound?
It could be an exit wound,
and at that point they weren't totally clear what it was.
[Faith] Joining the detectives is the coroner,
Investigator Skinner.
- One of the things he'll give to us pretty quickly
is a time of death.
We were told three to six hours.
- The scene's starting to tell us that this is possibly
something he didn't see coming,
but we don't know.
It's way too soon to tell without an autopsy.
[Faith] Outside the house,
Officer Martin and Chief Kovalyk
question David and Cheri.
[David sobs]
- First thing that I asked them was,
"What was it that brought you here?"
[dark ominous music]
[Faith] Leaving a wake of sadness and grief
amongst the group of friends he left behind,
detectives wonder,
who is Brad McGarry?
- Brad had some struggles growing up.
He did have a rough childhood.
He didn't have all the things in life that other kids did.
- Brad McGarry was born in October of 1973,
and grew up in Louisville,
a rural village in southeastern Ohio,
with fewer than 200 people.
Brad was raised by a single mother
in a household where money was always tight,
but financial insecurity wouldn't be the only challenge
he'd have to face.
- Being called a (BLEEP)
or being called a fairy,
it was something that you just dealt with.
People just didn't understand.
He walked around and he made it apparent
that he was gay.
He didn't hide it.
He wasn't gonna live a lie.
[somber music]
- The earliest memory I have
of Brian McGarry being in my life
is him playing with my hair.
I had really long, thick blonde hair, and he loved it.
- Brad originally went to school to do hair,
so he started working at the salon,
but unfortunately he wasn't happy
with the money he was making.
So he called me one day and he says,
"Guess what,
I'm gonna become a coal miner."
[soft dramatic music]
- The coal mining industry in the Ohio Valley is huge.
Almost everyone that I know
has a family member within the coal mine.
- I was like, "You're gonna do what?
You're going to be a coal miner?"
It's a different culture from hairdresser to coal miner.
It's a rough job.
I was like, you know, "Be careful."
- I think a lot of the coal miners
do have religious beliefs,
and I didn't think they'd be as willing to accept
Brad's openness of being gay.
- But he showed that you can be an openly gay man
and still be able to do physical labor like straight guys,
and that's kinda what he was wanting to do,
is change the stereotype.
[soft dramatic music]
[Faith] As Brad continues to grow his career,
he meets David Kinney,
a 20-year-old, newly married rookie,
whom he takes under his wing.
- Coal mining is a very dangerous job,
and Brad took care of David,
just like he took care of all of his other friends,
and looked after 'em to make sure that they were all safe.
[soft guitar music]
[Abby] Brad and David just became best friends.
They would do everything together.
They were always telling jokes,
just playing pranks on each other all the time.
[Mary Kay] David introduced him to his wife and children.
Brad loved children,
so he always had a soft spot for the kids.
[Faith] And the kids loved him right back,
which endeared Brad to Cheri.
- David, Cheri and Brad
were more like family than friends.
- They just fell in love with Brad.
He was a gay friend who was a good friend of the family.
- It was just a natural thing.
We have openly gay family members.
It's not nothing unusual.
- Christmas, birthdays, Brad was invited in as Uncle Brad.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] It's clear the Kinneys
had a very close relationship with Brad,
but were they close enough for Brad to confide in them
about his romantic relationships?
- One of the most important things
that any investigator should zero in on is,
who are their intimate partners?
There's something that drives that thin line
between love and hate.
It's all one big, nasty emotion.
- David and Cheri said that Brad
was recently in a romantic relationship
with a man named Scotty,
and they indicated to us
that it wasn't a healthy relationship.
- At this point in the case,
we need to know who this Scotty is,
and wanna learn more about him.
It's extremely important that we identify this Scotty.
[sirens blaring]
At first, Scotty played it off like,
"Hey, we messed around a couple times.
It really wasn't that big of a deal."
- Is this a hate crime or not?
A whodunit is not what you want.
- Oh. [cries]
[dramatic music]
[siren blares]
- Any true crime junkie knows
that when a homicide investigation gets underway,
the first person law enforcement looks at
is the spouse or significant other.
Detectives need to rule them in,
or rule them out.
In the case of Brad McGarry,
investigators learn about his former boyfriend,
a man named Scotty,
but you can't question someone if you can't find them.
- We definitely want to talk to him,
but we need to have Scotty's last name.
[suspenseful music]
[Faith] As investigators work
to track down Scotty's identity,
they continue to process the crime scene,
looking for any clues as to why Brad was murdered,
and who may have done it.
- Things are scattered all over the place.
The kitchen:
you see drawers out,
silverware,
articles scattered on the floor.
You go in the bedroom,
you see the, the drawers are out.
- I'm in this house and I'm thinking,
with how ransacked it is,
did Brad walk in and catch some robbers,
and there was an altercation?
That would explain why Brad's dead.
- If there was a forced entry,
there would be indicators,
a door,
a window.
There was none of that here.
- What I'm seeing is, somebody that had a lotta nice stuff.
Doesn't appear to be that there's anything missing.
One of the things that you need to do
in any type of investigation
is get to know your victim as soon as possible.
[Faith] With the town of Bellaire shaken
by the murder of one of its own,
Detective Allar and his team work through the night,
and by daybreak,
news of Brad's death hits the airwaves in Eastern Ohio.
[Male Reporter] An investigation is underway in Bellaire
after a man was found dead in his home.
[Female Reporter] And we're told he was a coal miner in the area.
- I'm driving to work,
and I'm listening to the local radio station.
[Female Reporter] We've learned the victim
was 43-year-old Brad McGarry.
- It talks about this murder
of a Brad McGarry
in Bellaire,
and you hear that and like all the sound stops around you.
And I was like, "Did I hear that right?"
[Female Reporter] Bellaire police say they received a call
about 6:15 Sunday night, after a couple and their daughter
found McGarry dead in the-
- My mom told me Brad had been murdered,
and I fell to the floor,
crying.
I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest.
It was the worst news I have ever gotten in my life.
- How do you tell your child that--
that one of her favorite people in the entire world
is now gone and will never come back?
- It's really hard. [cries]
- One of the hardest things detectives have to do
early into an investigation,
is to interview friends and family of the deceased,
who are still so raw with grief.
As tough as it is, it's absolutely necessary,
as those closest to Brad may hold the key
to solving his murder.
- Wendy was telling us that in the last year,
Brad had felt like he was being looked down upon
because he was gay.
[dramatic music]
- Let's think about Brad's situation.
He's a gay man in a deeply religious city
of close to 4,000 people,
so the detectives have to consider,
by just being himself,
did Brad have a target on his back?
- I grew up in this area my whole life,
and you'll have prejudices wherever you go.
- A small town,
everybody knows everybody's business.
- This is who he was, and around here,
that attracts attention,
and unfortunately it's negative attention.
- You gotta look at that and say,
is that a problem for Brad?
Could there be somebody that has
such a bias towards same-sex people...
that they're gonna kill him?
[Faith] While investigators take into account
that Brad's murder could be the result of a hate crime,
in a town of nearly 4,000 people,
where do they begin?
And, is there also a possibility
that Brad was killed in a crime of passion?
- Wendy was able to give us Scotty's full name.
We knew it was time to- to interview him.
- What kinda relationship did they have?
Were they deeply involved and had an argument?
Because if they did,
it could possibly be a lover's quarrel that went sideways.
[dramatic music]
[dark ominous music]
[Faith] Just over two days into the investigation
of Brad McGarry's shooting death,
detectives in the tiny town of Bellaire, Ohio
are no closer to solving the crime
than they were when Brad's best friends,
David and Cheri Kinney, called 911.
Although they don't yet know who killed Brad,
investigators are hoping that an autopsy
might uncover more specific details of how Brad was killed.
- The autopsy showed that there was two gunshot wounds
to the back of the head,
and they were from a 22-caliber weapon.
- We're seeing that the shots were fired
within 10, 15 feet.
Someone just walked up behind him and shot him twice.
All we have are the wounds in Brad's body,
so there's not enough data for us
to estimate some other things,
like the height of the killer,
or to try to figure out more details.
The most likely explanation
is that this was a ambush killing.
Whoever killed Brad had to be someone
that he was comfortable enough to turn his back on.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] With these new details,
detectives track down Brad's ex-boyfriend, Scotty,
whose information they just received
from Brad's good friend, Wendy Neubauer.
- Once we had Scotty's last name,
we end up finding the residence of Scotty,
and we went out to the property.
[knocking]
[Faith] Investigators arrive at Scotty's
last known address,
and are met by his parents.
- They're like, you know, "He's not here.
He's actually in jail in West Virginia."
So we're like, "Okay, when did he get there?"
And he had been there for almost a month.
[dark ominous music]
What I know for a fact is, Brad was killed on May 7th.
I could prove that Scotty was incarcerated,
so he by his own hand, could not have killed Brad,
but Scotty could have paid someone to do it,
or he could have asked a friend to do it.
[Faith] Scotty's parents have no knowledge
of their son's relationship with Brad,
but detectives have a plan.
They arrange a jailhouse interview
and make a strategic decision
to inform Scotty of Brad's death,
gauging his reaction for guilt or grief.
- They talked about his relationship with Brad.
It was a brief relationship,
and by Scotty's own admission, it was over.
He's very upset to hear about Brad's death,
and in their notation, appropriately upset,
and he claimed that he did not kill Brad.
Scotty was a bit of a bad seed,
didn't have the best reputation,
but didn't have the reputation
of going to killing people either.
So at the conclusion of that interview,
we pretty much closed the door on Scotty.
- With Brad's ex-boyfriend crossed off the suspect list,
detectives wonder,
could this have been a hate crime?
If so, that just deepens the suspect pool,
but it's a pool of people investigators believe Brad knew,
a pool of people Brad was comfortable enough with
to turn his back on,
his coworkers.
- You got Brad, that's openly gay,
working in a coal mine.
We gotta look into that.
Has anybody really taken an issue with him?
Was this guy persecuted
because of his sexual preferences?
And you'll have prejudices wherever you go,
where people don't like this group of people
or that group of people, it's everywhere,
and you're never gonna get rid of that 100%.
But we had a lot of contacts in the coal industry,
so we're lucky we were able to cut through the BS.
We were able to call people that we knew and trusted,
and say, "Hey, what's the score on this?"
Talking to Brad's coworkers,
it seemed, for the most part,
he was extremely well-liked,
that there wasn't a lot of problems,
and there- there certainly weren't any reported incidents
that seemed to have any huge substance,
to where somebody had a grudge.
A whodunit is not what you want.
It's almost a curse word with investigators.
At that point, we need to revisit this.
Who's his friends?
Who's his enemies?
We should really be looking at friends and family.
[Faith] On Tuesday afternoon, May 9th,
after interviewing witnesses for two consecutive days,
detectives catch a lucky break
when Brad's cousin,
a woman named Schuyler,
comes down to the station
with new information.
[Ryan] Schuyler was telling me
that Brad had another relationship,
a man named DJ,
who he was gonna meet to have sex with.
- And we know that Brad shortly thereafter ends up dead.
What we're looking for is,
who's in the middle here?
This was huge.
- But, we don't know who DJ is,
and just like we dealt with with Scotty,
if we don't know who he is, we can't find him.
- The next crucial step in the investigation
is to identify who is DJ?
[dramatic music]
- Detective Ryan Allar has just learned
that Brad McGarry was in a secret,
long-term romantic relationship
with a man named DJ,
and that DJ was going to Brad's house
on the day Brad was murdered.
So who is DJ?
- Could this be the lover itself,
or could this be someone that's jealous
that Brad's in another relationship?
Who is DJ?
[dramatic music]
- And I'm like, "Wow, okay."
It was kind of just...
in shock.
Schuyler tells us that DJ
is just a nickname of David Kinney.
David Kinney did not tell us
that he's in this long-term sexual relationship with Brad,
and there could be a lotta reasons for that.
I can think of one big one right off the bat.
We talked to David.
He was with his wife,
and he might not have wanted to mention to her that,
"Hey, you know, by the way,
I've been having an affair with him for years."
Doesn't mean he killed Brad,
but he's already keeping things from us.
That's the biggest takeaway that I had at that point.
- There's a lot to consider here.
David has been withholding
crucial information from investigators,
so they're right to be suspicious of him.
Perhaps David had been keeping his affair
a secret from Cheri,
or perhaps she knew all along,
and took matters into her own hands.
Could this affair be a motive for murder?
- We know that her husband was involved
in a sexual relationship.
We had to look at her and say,
"Was she involved in this?
Did she find out about the affair and go and kill Brad,
and David's helping her cover this up outta loyalty?"
Could that be what we're dealing with here?
- Investigators look into the Kinney's marriage,
and learn that, by all accounts,
the two seemed happy.
And it's still unclear who knew what,
and if David or Cheri had anything to do
with Brad's murder.
To get answers, investigators wanna talk to David.
- All this is making him a person of interest
that needs to be re-interviewed.
- It's time to have DJ or David,
or whatever he calls himself,
come in and have a chat.
[Faith] On the evening of May 9th,
David Kinney is escorted into an interrogation room,
but before they begin,
detectives ask David for access to his cell phone.
- He had told us about conversations
and text messages he had with Brad prior to Brad's death.
It's important to us to get this timeline.
[David sobbing]
[David inhales]
[David exhales]
[Faith] Meanwhile, in another room,
Detective Cruse has been studying David's phone,
and has information to share with Detective Allar.
[door opens]
And it's like, "Go, give me, what do ya got?"
So we were able to confirm through David's phone
that David sent text messages to Brad
that corroborate what Schuyler was telling us.
Doesn't mean he killed him.
It means he lied to us.
- So now it's getting to the point
to where I need to ask the more difficult questions.
[dramatic music]
- Detectives in Bellaire, Ohio have just uncovered proof
on David Kinney's cell phone
that he was not only Brad McGarry's best friend,
he was also his lover.
A significant detail he conveniently left out
when initially questioned at the crime scene.
But Detective Allar masterfully pulls
the true story out of David Kinney.
- At first,
he really played it off like, you know,
"Hey, we messed around a couple times.
It really wasn't that big of a deal.
We were more friends."
- I'm listening, I'm asking questions.
So I'm letting him tell me things.
I'm trying to take what he's giving me,
plugging it into the case.
- David has not only lied to investigators, a big no-no,
but he's just been exposed as living a double life.
To determine if he's a killer,
Detective Allar needs answers to some important questions.
If they were best friends and lovers,
what reason would David have to want Brad dead?
Did something occur between them
at the time of Brad's death?
And how deep did this relationship really go?
- Brad was attracted to David Kinney.
They were good friends at first.
David was married.
He also had children, and as the friendship grew closer,
Brad started telling me
that he felt that David was attracted to guys.
He had just a lot of questions.
He wanted to know about gay sex.
He wanted to know about what gay people did.
And you know, Brad basically said,
"Okay, follow me and I'll show you the life."
[Faith] Behind closed doors,
a sexual relationship flourishes.
And over the years,
Brad and David find ways to be alone together.
- David Kinney didn't want his wife to find out.
It was a vicious circle of highs and lows.
David was having fun,
but Brad was slowly falling in love,
and that's what made it so difficult for Brad.
Very confusing for all parties involved.
[dramatic music]
- He's worried about his wife finding out,
and at this point, I honestly told him,
"Whatever you want to tell your wife's your business.
I'm not the marriage police here.
- Even though David may be a closeted bisexual
who was sleeping with his best friend,
it still doesn't necessarily make him a murderer.
But to clear him,
Detective Allar needs to pin down David's timeline
and that of his wife Cheri,
during the hours prior to the murder.
[Faith] David is precise in laying out his movements
the day Brad was killed.
So the detectives take another look at his cell phone
to see if they can corroborate his story.
- Detective Cruse is looking for the pings
off the phone towers.
He's getting information off of David Kinney's phone.
The towers put David Kinney at Brad's house
at the same time Brad McGarry was killed.
- Now we can put David at the scene when Brad arrives home,
you know, around three o'clock,
right around the hot zone
for when we really believe the shots were fired.
- So now it's getting to the point
to where I need to ask the more difficult questions.
- David's cell phone evidence might seem incriminating,
but here you see Detective Allar
avoiding making any accusations,
and instead, giving David a chance to explain.
By doing this,
he's trying to get David to reveal his role
in Brad's death on his own,
whatever it may be.
But David refuses to budge.
He's telling me this story about,
he's waiting for Brad with this weed eater,
and Brad comes pulling up with a unknown male in the car.
[ominous music]
[Faith] After eight long hours of questioning,
Detective Allar decides to call David's bluff.
[dramatic music]
- David Kinney has just confessed to two things,
having a long-time affair
with his best friend, Brad McGarry,
and killing him.
But what we don't know for sure,
is why.
- David Kinney relayed that Brad had a pistol,
and David disarmed him,
and then shot him, claiming this was self-defense.
Okay, David, how'd that happened?
[dramatic music builds]
This is the man that killed Brad.
I know what you did.
I said, "David, you're going to jail."
- David Kinney's lies have finally caught up with him,
and there's more than enough to charge him
with Brad's murder.
But his wife Cheri's possible involvement
is still unclear.
For the last eight hours of David's interrogation,
Cheri has been waiting outside.
The only question investigators now have is,
did Cheri have a hand in this homicide?
- David says he wanted to tell Cheri his version of events.
So we put her right in the interview room,
and after we left,
we're watching this unfold through the cameras.
And what we're looking for, the whole team,
is really eyeballing her reaction.
Did Cheri have any idea about the affair,
knew about it or suspected about it?
- It's very sugar-coated, but he tells her
that they've been involved in a sexual affair.
Cheri was kind of,
just...
in shock.
She has no clue about the relationship with Brad.
- Cheri finds out that her husband was betraying her
with this man that she considered family.
[Cheri cries]
She finds out her husband willingly brought her daughter
to discover a body,
and she finds out that her husband killed this man.
All this stuff, all at once,
just thrown at her feet.
- I mean, our hearts really went out to her.
You know, her entire world gets blown up.
[Ryan] For a parent to bring a child
to find Brad's murdered body,
what kind of father would do that.
[dramatic music]
[Hank] What I think happened was,
David and Brad had an argument on the phone.
They had probably had several conversations.
- David said that there was no way
he was gonna leave his wife.
He was stuck in a relationship
that he didn't want to be in.
- Brad threatened to tell Cheri
about their homosexual relationship.
He was going to show her pictures
and text messages that he had--
- And say, "Look, look what he's doing to you.
He's doing it to me too."
And that was the motive.
The only way out of this relationship was to kill.
- I believe that David Kinney made up his mind
that Brad McGarry had to die,
so he lured him there with the promise of sex,
killed him, [gun fires]
and then covered it up the best he could.
[Faith] With his verbal confession memorialized
in an interrogation video,
David Kinney is arrested for the murder of Brad McGarry.
- Sometime about midnight,
I get a phone call.
Cheri tells me
that David killed Brad,
and I was in utter shock.
Who thinks that their child would kill somebody?
[soft somber music]
[Faith] On February 14th, 2018,
following an eight-day trial,
David Kinney learns his fate.
- We the jury, duly impaneled and sworn,
find the defendant, David Carl Kinney,
guilty of aggravated murder, as charged in the indictment.
- David Kinney is sentenced to life without parole,
and a year later, loses an appeal.
He will spend the rest of his life
in the Belmont Correctional Institution
in St. Clairsville, Ohio.
- I will miss the fun, loving, caring spirit that he had.
I can't believe David took that away from me.
- Brad was just a ball of sunshine.
Whenever I look at pictures of Brad, I just see that smile.
I wanna remember that smile,
that laugh.
- I do miss him,
very much every day,
yeah.
- The tears that I'm crying is not only for my son,
but for Brad's family.
I would not say I've lost just as much as Brad's mother.
There is no way I can compare my life to her life.
She literally lost her son,
who will never have a life.
- There is a famous saying that love conquers all,
and many of us believe that to be true.
Perhaps Brad, in his desire to find a life partner,
thought love would find a way.
His bond with David was that strong.
And David, a man who found himself in love with two people,
thought he could have it all.
But love built upon lies,
mistrust,
and cruel deception
is never destined for a happy ending.
Sadly, what may have once started
as a hopeful love story,
was turned
into a killer relationship.