narrator: A brutal slaying
breaks the calm of a quiet Atlanta suburb.
- It was the last place that you would think
a crime like this would occur.
- She'd been shot at least four times.
It was close range.
I had never seen a shooting like this, where the person
was ambushed, assassinated in their driveway.
narrator: And the investigation
kicks into overdrive
when police are called to several more shootings.
[gunshots]
- It was very alarming
that we had two shootings within an hour.
narrator: And a cryptic note signals there is more to come.
- I found a piece of paper. On one side, it said, "Jack."
And on the other side it said, "better count your body bags."
narrator: But will DNA from an unlikely source
nail this serial shooter?
- I processed it, and it wasn't fingerprints.
It was the lip prints.
narrator: With the body count rising every day,
the clock is ticking.
- We had to catch this person before someone else gets hurt.
- We are really under pressure to figure this out
before we do have to start counting the body bags.
[dramatic music]
* *
[siren wailing]
narrator: If Atlanta is
the dazzling Hollywood of the South,
East Point is its charming, suburban counterpart.
Just seven miles southwest of Atlanta,
the Mayberry-like suburb is a safe haven
for many of Atlanta's men and women in blue.
- East Point could've been anywhere, USA.
Small town, kids playing in the street.
You see the dogs.
You see people planting gardens.
Everybody knows everybody.
Just an ideal place.
- I'm from Atlanta.
I grew up in East Point, Georgia.
Just a good community.
I mean, that's where I played little league.
That's where it's just a good place to grow up
and good place to live.
narrator: But the small-town serenity
is shattered by a 911 call from within.
52-year-old Cynthia Rolle
has not been seen or heard from
in more than 24 hours.
Concerned, her son drives
to the quiet, tree-lined street
she lives on to check on her.
- A uniformed division received a call via 911
from the victim's son saying that his mother, Cynthia Rolle,
was shot in her car in the driveway.
narrator: Cynthia's son is beside himself
with shock and grief
as emergency services are dispatched to the scene.
Uniformed officers are first to arrive to Dogwood Drive,
followed closely by the homicide chief,
Detective Tim Barge.
- And I remember walking down the driveway and seeing
the windows shot out of the driver's door.
And there was the female victim laying in
the driver's seat, slumped over to her right.
Mrs. Rolle's purse was kinda scattered on the floorboard
of the car, and she was clearly deceased.
[police radio chatter]
- She had glass in her cheek. I remember that.
Whoever shot her shot her through the window,
which apparently was up.
narrator: Scouring through the shards
of this shattered scene,
investigators search for any signs
as to what could've happened to Cynthia Rolle.
- There didn't appear to be any type of robbery.
Her purse was still in the car.
- She still had her hand around her bag.
Her keys were in the bag for the car
'cause the keys were out of the ignition.
narrator: The Georgia Bureau or Investigation CSI team
arrives to meticulously preserve the forensic details
and capture a visual record.
- I start taking photographs. 360 degrees.
The house, the carport, the car, the victim.
And then I start taking close-ups of anything
that may have fallen on the ground.
In this case, it was glass.
Items in the car.
There was a lot of trash on
the passenger-side front seat floorboard.
And I noticed that there was a piece of paper
kind of on top of a lot of the garbage.
Had the word "Jack" on it.
It looked like either that's her stuff
or it belonged to maybe one of the kids.
narrator: Investigator McFarlane
thinks the piece of paper is just trash.
But as he does with everything found at the scene,
he photographs and tags it as evidence.
- I took pictures of it, and I'm looking, of course,
for any other evidence. In that case, there was none.
There were no shell casings that I could find anywhere.
- Without the shell casings, we're gonna have to identify
the gun used in the crime
from the bullets that are actually extracted
from her body during an autopsy.
We had determined there on the scene
that she had been shot at least four times.
All of it was close range, and you could just tell
from the gunpowder marks on her body,
the gunpowder on the window itself,
somebody walked right up to the window and fired.
[gunshot]
I had never seen a shooting like this, where the person
was ambushed, assassinated in their driveway.
narrator: As police work, the curious onlookers
throughout East Point are lured to the scene.
- Where Cynthia Rolle lived, that was a safe neighborhood.
Everybody knew everybody.
It was the last place that you would think
a crime like this would occur.
- I remember standing at the bottom of the carport,
looking up at the street
and seeing all the people there,
thinking every one of them could be a suspect in this.
We're gonna have to talk to every one of them.
In canvassing the neighborhood,
one of the neighbors told us that they had heard gunshots
in that neighborhood the night before
and had called the police.
narrator: But the officer who responded to the gunshots
the night before reported
finding nothing suspicious in the area.
Cynthia Rolle's body is transferred
to the medical examiner's office for autopsy.
Now investigators ask the question,
who could've gunned down this harmless mother in cold blood?
They turn to her family and friends for answers.
- Cynthia was always smiling, always very personable.
Everybody liked her.
Cynthia had a large network of friends,
and she was very popular in her church also.
So it was just a shock,
the fact that she had lost her life
as a result of a violent act.
That just shocked me.
Question was, who would've done this?
What were the circumstances?
- One of the things that we had to talk to her son about
was what did she do?
And he told us then that she was
a probation officer for the state of Georgia.
- We worked together for several years
as probation officers.
Cynthia had a very, very levelheaded personality,
especially important in dealing with people on probation.
I never heard her say a demeaning word
or anything to anybody.
She was one of those people that kind of, like,
the glue that keeps everything together.
- Being in the position that she was in,
she had a lot of power--
testing them for drugs and alcohol, telling them,
"You violated your parole and you have to go back to jail."
A probation officer with a disgruntled probationer
on her roster could end up easily being a target.
narrator: Investigators ask Cynthia's colleagues
at the probation office to dig through files
for any potential suspects or motives.
- We all just kind of start looking through her case load
to see if there was anyone that
she had had any kind of negative encounters with.
We couldn't find anything of that nature,
so we just were in a state of shock as to why it happened.
narrator: But the autopsy report
reveals an important new clue.
- There were three bullets recovered from her body,
and they were .40 caliber,
so now we knew what weapon type we were looking for.
We continued to scour over her probationer list
and were running checks on every one of them,
just trying to find somebody that may be disgruntled
with her for any reason.
narrator: Days turn to weeks, and tensions run high
as probation officers worry they might be next.
- We were all certified to carry weapons.
We started carrying them because she was ambushed
in her driveway, and so myself, personally,
whenever I got out of my car at home,
I had my weapon in my hand.
- We were able to look at all of her probationers.
Systematically, they were all eliminated from suspicion.
We were worried that this would become a cold case.
narrator: Next, the team interviews
Cynthia's friends and family,
asking if she had any problems with relationships,
any business deals gone wrong,
or any known enemies.
- We were quickly running out of viable suspects
and were becoming discouraged.
narrator: For the next five weeks,
investigators work every angle of the case,
trying to find Cynthia Rolle's murderer.
Then an eerily similar call comes into 911.
- On April the 8th, we got a call
of a shooting on Semmes Street in East Point.
Another shooting with an unknown assailant.
I just can't emphasize enough
how unheard of this is in this neighborhood.
This is my hometown. This was scary
for the citizens and for the police department.
The fact that she was law enforcement as well
is that the shooter is targeting law enforcement.
[gunshots]
- We need to catch this person before someone else gets hurt.
* *
narrator: 52-year-old Cynthia Rolle
had been brutally ambushed and shot in East Point,
a quiet suburb of Atlanta.
Five weeks after her murder,
East Point police detectives have no leads.
The investigation is going cold.
Then 61-year-old Roger Orr sits in his living room,
relaxing with a good book.
- I was reading Louis L'Amour's "Utah Blaine,"
and I was sitting about 4 feet from my front door.
My screen door was closed and latched.
And I heard footsteps out on the sidewalk.
All of a sudden, I heard a noise like
when you wear corduroy pants and you hear them
scrubbing together, or a nylon jacket.
And I said, "Somebody's coming up my front steps."
And so I got up, stepped over to the door.
And just as I reached up to turn the front porch light on,
I saw a silhouette. I said,
"You son of a..." Boom.
Sounded like a howitzer. It spun me around.
I immediately took off to the other end of the sofa
to get away from the front door.
And I took off like a shot upstairs
to get the old family single-barrel.
And I was standing there with the hammer back
and I kept the shotgun trained on the front door.
And he never did show.
He was gone.
I kicked the door shut.
My arm spurting like a fountain.
Grabbed the phone and called 911.
- We received a call of a victim who had been shot
only a few miles from Mrs. Rolle's house.
narrator: Detectives and emergency personnel
rush to the scene of Mr. Orr's shooting.
- People-- when they've been shot,
they seem lucid, they seem okay, and then they die,
so we wanted to get as much information
from him as possible.
So we're asking him, "Who did this? Who did this?"
- East Point police came in like a bear was after them,
and I said, "He's gone. He's gone."
- Mr. Orr could not provide us any details of the shooter
because it happened so fast.
narrator: Roger Orr is loaded into an ambulance
and rushed to Grady Hospital.
Detective Barge turns to the evidence at hand.
- In investigating the crime scene,
there was a pool of blood there.
There was a shotgun laying there.
There was a tiny hole in his screen door.
We looked for shell casings. We couldn't find any.
I stood at the front door of Mr. Orr's house
and pretended to be shooting
right at the hole in the screen.
I was trying to imagine where
the bullet casing would've been ejected to.
And when I looked up, there was a metal awning
over his front door, and I followed how I would
imagine the trajectory of that projectile would've gone.
It would've hit the metal.
It would've just come straight down.
And right there on the stoop were two work boots.
And I picked up one work boot and thought, "There's no way."
And shook it and nothing.
And I picked up the other one and shook it,
and a .40-caliber shell casing fell out of the boot.
narrator: The same caliber bullet
found at the Cynthia Rolle shooting.
Then Detective Barge makes a disturbing discovery.
- I picked up a strange note
and it read in yellow highlighter,
"I was locked up for six weeks. Someone must pay."
And on the back of that, it said, "Jack."
I gave it to the detective that was assigned the case.
He saved that as evidence.
narrator: As investigators continue to collect evidence
at the scene of Roger Orr's shooting,
another call comes in to East Point PD.
This one is just 2 1/2 miles away.
- A woman called 911 and said that a man had just collapsed
in her front yard and that he was bleeding profusely
and may have been shot.
I couldn't believe it.
- East Point was a city that
law enforcement absolutely loved.
They worked there. They lived there.
They played and stayed there.
And so, if a city of law enforcement is not safe,
then no one felt safe.
narrator: Detectives rushed
to the 911 caller's front lawn.
There, they find the shooting victim
lying in a pool of blood.
- The homeowner told us that this man appeared
at her front door, begging for help.
narrator: The victim is identified
as 41-year-old Antonio Stephney.
- I went to where Mr. Stephney was.
Apparently, he had been shot inside his car
while he was waiting at the stop sign.
I did the same thing with him as I was doing with Mr. Orr.
Who did this? What happened? And he was nonresponsive.
narrator: The team walks over to the nearby intersection,
where Mr. Stephney's car still sits by the stop sign.
- It was still running. It was in reverse.
And we found five .40-caliber shell casings.
Was clear from that assessment of it
that there'd been several bullets fired into that car.
[gunshots]
It appeared that the shots were fired from behind the car
while Mr. Stephney was driving it.
narrator: The .40-caliber bullet casings
for both shootings are immediately taken
to the GBI lab for testing.
In the meantime, detectives try to put
the pieces of the puzzle together
to figure out what happened to Mr. Stephney.
- The man was at the stop sign.
Somebody walked up to him and shot him.
He freaked out,
threw it in reverse to try to get away--
he didn't know where it was coming from--
and just backed up, hit that curb.
He exited his vehicle
and ran away from the car,
begging for help.
narrator: Unfortunately, Mr. Stephney
succumbs to his injuries.
This is now a murder investigation.
Investigators turn to Antonio Stephney's family
to find out if there was anyone
who might've wanted him dead.
- Detective Barge came up to me.
Did he have any enemies or anything like that?
I was like, "Oh, heck no." Most definitely not.
He was truly a people person.
You couldn't go nowhere around this city in certain areas
where he knew somebody on each side of the city.
And he just one of those person like a celebrity, you know?
He pulls up. You know, "Here come Tony."
Everybody want to be around Tony.
- Tony loved Atlanta, and he cared about people.
He was definitely cared about
elderly people and the homeless.
Just couldn't really see him
getting into an altercation with anybody.
Tony was a hugger and a kisser.
He didn't care whether he was the brother or the sister.
He was gonna always tell you he love you,
call you up five times a day to tell you he love you.
narrator: With news spreading
through the quiet streets of East Point
of three random shootings in less than five weeks,
a fog of dread falls over the town.
- The residents of East Point
were now starting to get concerned about this.
You hear things on the news every now and then,
but to hear two shootings in the same night.
One was a murder in a community
where these things don't happen.
People were starting to get worried.
narrator: With pressure mounting
to restore peace to East Point,
Barge and his team scour
the area where Antonio Stephney was shot,
searching for any clues
that could lead them to their killer.
- At this crime scene, as we're processing the car,
one of the uniformed police officers came up to me
and handed me a piece of paper
that had the name "Jack" written on it.
I thought that someone was leaving us notes
and that the two were connected.
This all happened back to back.
This showed us that we had a serial shooter who was
willing to kill three others, so he wasn't done.
* *
[percussive music]
narrator: The serene streets of East Point
have been rocked by a series of shootings
that appear to be connected.
And as the investigation unfolds,
police discover
a disturbing piece of evidence.
- When I saw that note, my immediate thought was
this is definitely connected to Mr. Orr.
[gunshot]
Because that piece of paper said "Jack" on it
and this piece of paper just said "Jack" on it.
So my thought was, we gotta connect these two victims.
narrator: Investigators recall a similar note
discovered at the Cynthia Rolle crime scene
five weeks earlier.
- One of the first detectives that had been on the scene
at Mrs. Rolle's shooting told us,
"Hey, that night that we were at the Rolle's residence,
"there was a big piece of paper amongst all
of the scattered papers in the passenger floorboard."
- The other piece of paper that was in her car
had "Jack" written on it.
It was done in highlighter.
narrator: With this new information,
Detective Barge rushes back to the police station
to look at the evidence from Mrs. Rolle's shooting.
- It went into the case file that we had of active cases,
of which Mrs. Rolle still was.
And that's where the photographs were.
And a few of us were standing around
as we were going through it
just to confirm what that detective had said.
And there it was. We saw it.
The piece of paper laying on the floor
that just said "Jack" on it.
narrator: Ballistic tests on the two sets
of shell casings from the Orr and Stephney crime scenes
confirm detectives' suspicions.
While no shell casings were found
at Cynthia Rolle's crime scene,
a .40-caliber bullet was retrieved from her body.
- The shell casing collected from Roger Orr's crime scene
and Mr. Stephney's crime scene were fired from not just
the same weapon type, but the exact same weapon.
Mr. Orr was shot by the same person
that shot Mr. Stephney.
narrator: Since all three murders involved
a .40-caliber firearm and a note from Jack,
the team must determine
what ties the three victims together.
- We do a deep dive into the victimology of each target
and could find no commonalities
between the victims.
We look into each person's life and try to uncover
any Jack that they may know, and we came up with nothing.
So we're back at square one.
narrator: As fear intensifies
for the citizens of East Point,
the police department doubles its efforts
to identify the killer in all three of these cases.
- We were wondering if there was any commonality
between the victims.
Did they shop at the same grocery store
or, you know, whatever the similarity was.
So we were really looking at
every possible connection between these people.
- Once we figured out these were connected,
you know, we had all hands on deck
trying to solve the case, trying to find a lead.
- We still had people stealing bicycles,
stealing plants off the porch
or whatever that we had to go to.
But we did that as detectives.
We're looking for paper on the floor that says "Jack."
We're looking for any notes that this person's leaving us
to give us clues of what he's gonna do again.
- It felt as if this individual
was trying to antagonize law enforcement.
Is it really a Jack? Is it someone who is trying
to throw off law enforcement by using Jack?
narrator: But it isn't long before Jack strikes again.
- Four days after Mr. Orr and Mr. Stephney's shooting,
on April the 12th, we got a call of shots fired
on a street in East Point.
Detectives arrived on the scene.
We were all kind of on edge
'cause we just had two shootings four nights before.
And Mrs. Northern, Barbara Northern,
and her mother, Beulah Northern,
who was visiting from out of town,
were sitting in their living room,
watching television, and they heard a gunshot.
[gunshot]
Their window shattered, and their TV just exploded.
- We asked Mrs. Northern exactly what happened,
and she said she really didn't know other than
she heard a gunshot and the TV went out.
- We found a bullet lodged in the TV.
In the front yard, we found a .40-caliber shell casing.
narrator: The casings are the same caliber
as the other three shootings, so the team immediately
starts looking for any other signs of Jack.
- Detective Barge was standing there,
and he looked over at Mrs. Northern's vehicle
and noticed that there was a note
under the windshield wiper.
- I was actually focused on looking for paper now,
and I found a piece of paper folded up on her car.
On one side, it said "Jack,"
and on the other side, it said,
"Better count your body bags."
Now, the perpetrator's not only saying,
"Hey, I've been out for six weeks. Someone must pay."
He's telling us to count our body bags.
We are really under pressure to figure this out
and put an end to this as soon as possible
before we do have to start counting the body bags.
The investigation showed that the shooter
left these notes after he put them in his mouth.
- It wasn't fingerprints.
It was the lip prints.
* *
[percussive music]
narrator: A serial shooter is
terrorizing the tranquil Atlanta suburb of East Point.
With four shootings and counting,
East Point police are investigating the crimes
at a dizzying pace.
The gunman has shot down a probation officer,
a hospital worker, and has shot at three others
who were relaxing in their homes.
The latest shooting reveals a new, alarming threat.
- We have this note from under a windshield wiper,
and it's signed "Jack."
What this showed us
is that we had a serial shooter
who'd already killed two people,
was willing to kill more.
We've got to stop him.
[somber music]
- East Point police just announced,
"We got a serial killer."
And I remember talking to Detective Barge
when he called again to ask was I okay.
I told him no.
I said, "This serial killer's out there,
you know, posting up in the middle of the night."
- Tony was our rescuer. Tony was really our refuge
person that we could run to and all would be well.
I couldn't even imagine why somebody would shoot him.
So it was just painful 'cause, you know, each day,
you feel like it was useless as what went down.
- When you have a serial killer on the loose,
some of those ordinary things that you would do
every single day are not things that you really want to do
because you don't know where the killer is
or who the killer is.
The media is everywhere.
Everyone is in the street, trying to break the big story
of who could this possibly be.
- It's East Point, a family-oriented neighborhood,
but it's not the same since the shootings started.
- We don't even feel okay in the daytime.
It's just--it feels very uncomfortable now.
- I don't know what the shootings
are all about. Do you?
- Will there be an easy answer?
Obviously not.
narrator: Investigators know they have to do
everything they can to keep their residents safe.
- We contacted state resources, the GBI,
trying to get a profile of the psychological makeup
of someone that would do something like this,
just to give us something or someone to look for.
narrator: Detectives continue to look into
each victim's background
to try to find a connection between them.
They interview neighbors, family, and friends
to try to identify any known enemies
or any common thread that ties them together.
Meanwhile, CSI teams continue scouring the Jack notes
for forensic evidence, where they find the killer
left his mark in a very personal manner.
- It wasn't fingerprints.
It was the lip prints.
- The investigation showed that the shooter
left these notes after he put them in his mouth.
- And I gave it to the lady fingerprint examiner at GBI.
I said, "Can we do anything with this?"
And she said, "Yeah, I think I know a guy down in Jacksonville
that has done some research on comparing lip prints."
- It was explained to us that
lip prints are as unique as fingerprints.
And further, they were able to
extract DNA from those lip prints.
And this was nationwide and the first time that was ever done.
The DNA profile was run in the police database
and came back with nothing,
which means the serial shooter was not in our system
because he had never been arrested for a crime
that required him to submit his DNA.
So now, we just needed lips to go with it.
narrator: The investigation continues
for the next two weeks
until April 24th, 2001.
- We got off work at midnight.
Detective Barge and I, we went to get
some late dinner after we got off work.
My pager went off.
It was the 911 center calling me,
and they needed detectives on Washington Road,
where a lady had been shot.
- When I got there, there were several police officers there,
uniformed police officers there.
The victim, by the time I got there,
had already been taken to the hospital.
- What we found was that lady Rosa Lewis
had backed her car into a parking place
and was getting out of her car sometime around 12:40 a.m.
And she was shot several times in the parking lot.
- She'd crawled to an apartment and beat on the door,
screaming for help, and her roommate opened the door
and found Rosa shot multiple times.
- The physical evidence at the scene showed
shell casings all around the car.
The car actually had bullet holes in it.
We did another big search of the crime scene,
looking for a note.
- And there was no note from the elusive Jack
anywhere at the crime scene.
narrator: While the team finds no notes from Jack,
the .40-caliber casings match the other shootings,
so investigators continue to scour the scene
for links to the other crimes.
- We thought that it could be connected to the other cases.
We spoke to the roommate. The roommate told us that
Ms. Lewis had been living with her for a few months.
- While we were talking to her,
the other detective noticed
a jacket hanging in the closet...
That had some type of insignia on it
indicating the probation office where Cynthia Rolle worked.
And we both looked at each other and thought "Wow."
We asked the roommate, "Whose jacket is that?"
She told us it was Rosa's.
She told us that Rosa worked for the probation office.
It just hit us like a ton of bricks.
Is it that the shooter is targeting law enforcement?
I mean, this is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
[dramatic music]
We saw white paper, like printer paper,
a black Magic Marker, and a yellow highlighter
laying side by side.
To be face to face with somebody who's that evil,
who's done stuff like that, who seems so nice--
it's unnerving.
* *
narrator: During the spring of 2001,
Atlanta's charming hamlet of East Point
is being terrorized by a relentless serial killer.
Now, he struck again
and this time, investigators finally uncover
a clear connection between two of his victims.
- Ms. Lewis was a probation officer
for the state of Georgia.
- And it was the Georgia probation office
where Cynthia Rolle worked.
- We were treating the case, you know, very seriously
and called out all the detectives that we had
because we wanted to do another canvass of residents
to include the community. You know, we were asking,
"Did anyone see anything suspicious?"
narrator: During the canvass, police find a witness
who claims to have heard a gunshot and noticed a car
speeding away shortly afterward.
- She looked out her window once the gunshots
and she did see a blue Dodge, possibly an Intrepid,
that had sped away from the crime scene.
narrator: An APB goes out for a blue Dodge Intrepid.
Word soon gets out
that a second probation officer has been shot.
State and local authorities have to assume
anyone with a badge could be next.
- My district director called me
and said that Rosa had been shot.
So I got up, took out, and went to Grady hospital.
I told the nurse, "You all need to get security
"at this door because this lady is a probation officer.
"Someone has attacked her, and that person
may try to come back and finish the job."
So we are on edge again.
You don't end up shooting two probation officers
and it just be coincidental.
[tense music]
narrator: Detectives go back to the list of Cynthia Rolle's
and Rosa Lewis' probationers,
determined to identify a suspect.
- We employed the same tactics of investigation
that we had done with Cynthia Rolle.
We got the roster of all of her probationers
and just started going through them, saying,
"What about this person? What about this person?
Who was mad at her?"
- Ultimately, there was nothing that was found
that jumped out at us
where anyone would want to harm her.
narrator: Detective Barge digs into Rosa Lewis' background,
starting with her roommate.
- She disclosed to us
that Rosa had recently gone through a divorce.
She was amicable with her ex-husband
and had just moved in there with her recently.
The roommate also told us that Rosa's ex-husband
owned a construction company in metro Atlanta.
He lived just outside the city of Atlanta
and was a big figure in the youth organization
of his church.
narrator: Barge drives to 44-year-old youth minister
William Charles Lewis' house
to deliver the terrible news.
- We wanted to just to notify him
that his ex-wife had been shot,
was critically injured,
and was at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta.
We knocked on his door... [echoing knocks]
Got nothing. Knocked on his door again.
Nothing. As we're turning to leave,
a dark Intrepid
pulled into the driveway,
and we looked at each other and said, "Look at this.
"I mean, that looks just like the car
that was described to us at Rosa's shooting."
[dramatic music]
So our radar is up.
The man got out of the car.
He looked a little disheveled to us.
His shirt was untucked.
He just looked like he just woke up.
And he introduced himself as William Charles Lewis
and asked what was going on.
His reaction was nothing like we expected.
His immediate response was, "Why did this happen?"
And then he said, "This is out of character for Rosa."
Well, being an investigator,
those were the absolute wrong things to say.
Not once did he ask how she was.
Not once did he ask where she was.
He was fishing us for information
to see what we knew.
narrator: Lewis invites detectives into his home,
where they meet his son,
whom he shares with the victim, Rosa.
- We met with his son, who was a teenager.
And we talked to his son separately
and just asked him, "Hey,
where was your father all night?"
And he said, "He was here all night.
He was home all night."
He just drove up while we were here,
so something's not right here.
narrator: As Detective Barge looks around the house,
the pieces of the puzzle start to click.
- We saw white paper, like printer paper,
a black Magic Marker, and a yellow highlighter
laying side by side.
Anybody can have these things,
but it's starting to add up here.
We started to suspect
Mr. Lewis was the perpetrator
as soon as he asked us why this happened.
That was the moment that I thought
I might be talking to the guy who did this.
[tense music]
We need to get out of their space
and do this in our space.
* *
narrator: Investigators take Lewis and his son
to the police station to be interviewed.
- And what we decided to do was talk to his son first,
without his dad.
Sadly for him, he was just finding out
that his mother had been shot, she was possibly gonna die.
That upset him to where he explained to us
that he didn't know where his dad had been all night.
[dramatic music]
At that moment, I felt that we needed
to talk to William Charles Lewis,
and I felt that we more than likely
had the serial shooter.
narrator: As Detective Barge sits across from Lewis
in the interrogation room,
the stakes become all too real.
To be face to face
with somebody who's that evil...
- It's unnerving.
So outwardly, I'm in charge of the whole thing,
but inside, I'm thinking, "Oh, my God,
I'm sitting here with a serial killer."
* *
narrator: Detectives finally have
a person of interest
in the serial shootings that have rocked East Point
over the last six weeks.
The suspect, 44-year-old William Charles Lewis,
is the latest victim's ex-husband
and has been completely under the radar until now.
Detective Tim Barge interviews him
at the East Point police station.
- He denied the whole thing.
We got called out of the room,
and we're handed a letter
that had been brought to the police station
by Mrs. Lewis' boss.
- After Miss Rose's death,
Miss Lewis gave me a letter...
[dramatic music]
And asked me to keep this letter,
and she said, "Just hold on to this.
If anything happens to me, I want you to read this."
When Miss Lewis was injured,
I went back to my office that morning and read it,
and it implied
that we should take a look at her husband.
- And we confronted William Lewis with that letter,
and we said, "Your own wife told us who did this.
And I think you did it."
And he just never admitted to it.
narrator: With no confession,
and only a circumstantial case mounting against Lewis,
detectives know they need to gather
some kind of physical evidence
to get a conviction.
- We got a search warrant for his phone records
and were able to triangulate his location,
his phone's location, during each shooting,
and all of them put him within a cell tower
of the shooting at the time that it happened.
* *
- I took lip prints from him when he was arrested.
I went to the store and bought some lipstick, red,
and I had pieces of paper made up for comparison
to see if the lip prints on the target item
and his lips-- were they the same?
* *
He didn't like it 'cause I was--
I had put lipstick on his lips.
* *
- We got a search warrant for his blood as well
because DNA had been extracted from the lip prints
on the notes that were left.
- We were notified by
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
that the DNA extracted from the notes
were all from Mr. Lewis.
- The DNA matched every single note that we had.
There was no doubt that it was William Charles Lewis.
* *
narrator: Lewis refuses to confess to police,
and he claims he doesn't know the other victims.
- What he was trying to do
was just throw the police department off.
He leaving the notes at random crime scenes.
He realized that we couldn't find
a connection with any of them.
He felt that there was no way that he was gonna get caught.
His last victim was his ex-wife.
He might've gotten such a thrill,
he might've continued on.
- When those in the community found out
that this serial shooter
and, quite frankly, serial killer
was a minister,
it was really hard to forgive.
* *
- Based on the totality of circumstances
and the evidence that we had collected,
and in consultation
with the Fulton County district attorney's office,
Mr. Lewis was charged with 26 separate counts
related to the shootings and the murders.
* *
narrator: Lewis pleads guilty
to the murders of Cynthia Rolle
and Antonio Stephney
and the attempted murders
of Roger Orr and Rosa Lewis.
He is given multiple life sentences
with no possibility of parole.
[somber music]
- Rosa was a strong person, and so, consequently,
little by little by little, she got better.
And finally, this lady was up and able to walk.
* *
[soft music]
narrator: With the sniper finally off the street,
cautious calm settles over the tiny hamlet,
but to some, the town will never be the same.
- I think it took away the East Point,
the "Leave It to Beaver" world that I grew up in.
These victims were 100% blameless.
narrator: William Charles Lewis
left behind more than a trail of body bags.
He left heartbroken friends and family
who missed their loved ones every day.
- What I miss most about Cynthia
was just that gorgeous smile she had.
She smiled all the time.
She was never angry about anything.
So I missed all of that about her.
* *
- The phone call saying that I love you,
hugging you and kissing you--
yeah, that was Tony.
Sometimes, you just wish you could feel
that hand holding,
and he'd walk beside you,
holding your hand, just be staring at you
just to tell you he love you.
I miss it. I really, really miss it.
* *
- Well, there's never closure for these crime victims
or their families, but at least it's--it's a part.
The door closes a little bit.
And it's justice for the victims
and their families.
* *