[dramatic music]
[buzzer blares]
- An inmate at Rikers Island jail makes
a call to the NYPD.
- He said he had information in regards
to a possible homicide that took place.
* *
- But the location of the crime scene--
that's just the first mystery in how this odd case unfolds.
* *
- It's a highly unusual situation that
you would receive information about a homicide that
occurred before you even discover the body.
- It was urgent to find this victim
as soon as possible.
- Sending detectives to the canyons of Midtown,
following the bread crumbs.
- He told me that it was a 45-story building
in Midtown Manhattan with a doorman and an ATM.
- The victim was born and raised in France,
earned a good living.
- As the pieces of the story prove true,
a tragic plot is revealed...
- This was a brutal homicide.
- How could he be murdered in his apartment
and no one hear it?
- That twists and turns in a race against time
to find the killer.
- We were desperate to find him
because we didn't want him to come back
and kill that doorman.
- The entire case hinges on one confidential informant
who then goes rogue.
- You're not undercover anymore.
[sirens wailing]
[dramatic music]
* *
[suspenseful music]
- It's December 1999,
and Times Square is preparing
for the biggest New Year's Eve celebration of all time--
the millennium New Year.
* *
While everyone is on edge about the potential Y2K bug
knocking out the world's computer infrastructure,
here in New York, the city where murderers never sleep,
one of the most upside-down NYPD cases
is about to unfold.
* *
[chilling music]
* *
[dial tone buzzes]
[siren whooping]
- On December 20th,
I was scheduled for a four-to-one tour,
which is 4:00 in the afternoon to 1:00 in the morning.
It was a rainy night.
[thunder rumbles] [distant siren wailing]
Around 8:00 at night, phone rang in the squad.
[phone ringing]
And there was a gentleman on the phone,
and I asked him what was the nature of his phone call.
He told me that he had information
in regards to a possible homicide that took place.
[dramatic music]
He heard the victim was duct-taped
and he was stabbed with a knife.
Then he was left under a couch.
* *
And he believed that it happened
a couple days before he called me.
- So Artie said,
"Well, why don't you come in and talk to me,
and we'll see if we can iron some of this out."
And he said, "Well, I can't come in and talk to you.
I'm in Rikers Island."
* *
- Rikers Island in the Bronx contains
New York City's largest jail
and houses many of the city's most hardened criminals
and con men.
- As far as inmates calling me from Rikers Island,
I couldn't say that ever happened before,
but everything is taken seriously,
so, you know, we were going with it.
He told me it was a robbery that went bad,
and they ended up killing the victim.
The informant found this all out
while listening to the phone calls
of the other inmate at Rikers Island.
He overheard all his conversations.
It was kind of urgent to get as much detail as we can
to start the search, but he wanted me
to come to Rikers Island and talk to in person.
- He said, "But don't come tonight.
"It would be suspicious.
"They'll expect that I'm talking to the cops.
I don't want that. Come tomorrow."
[suspenseful music]
- So the next morning,
detectives race to Rikers Island
for a face-to-face meeting
with the confidential informant.
- Our informant believed
the possible location of the homicide was
in a 45-story building,
and that the victim would be on the 42nd floor.
And he hold me that there would be a balcony
and that the door would be open.
And it had a doorman,
and there was an ATM around the corner.
- The informant also added
that the victim was a white male
with a high-paying job,
but the source was still holding back information.
- The informant wouldn't tell the detectives
who committed the crime.
- Our guys quickly discover why:
The informant is looking to make a deal.
- He felt that it was like his bargaining chip.
- He was charged with possession of a weapon,
and he had prior felony convictions,
so he was looking at some serious time,
and he wanted a deal to get out of jail quickly.
- But then he makes a mistake.
- During the course of talking to Caddigan,
the informant let slip the name of the inmate
he was getting the information from.
- The inmate's name was Paul Person.
The informant told us that
Paul Person was arrested on a gun charge
a couple days earlier, and he needed bail money.
So Paul Person contacted his girlfriend
and a friend of his.
He wanted them to go do a robbery
for bail money to get him out.
- The informant said that Paul had information
about this rich white guy.
He was gonna be taking money out of his account
due to the Y2K crisis coming up
and was gonna store a large sum of cash in his apartment.
[suspenseful music]
- Many people are growing anxious that
that the Y2K bug will erase their bank account balances
at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000,
and begin stashing their money at home.
- So on the day that the robbery occurred,
Paul Person told the informant that his girlfriend
and his friend took the subway to 50th street
and then walked into the building
where the crime happened.
- With such a lengthy criminal background,
the detectives have doubts
about the informant's credibility,
but they urgently need to check his story out.
- In regards to finding out who the suspects were
that actually committed the crime,
it was important to us
to find this victim as soon as possible.
- Based on the clues given by the informant,
the apartment building is most likely located
in the adjacent precinct to the north of Caddigan's.
He brings them in for help.
- It's a highly unusual situation that
you would receive information of a homicide that
occurred before you even discover the body
and the scene.
- But Artie Caddigan from the South believed
the guy had good information
and that the body's in the apartment as we speak.
[dramatic music]
- So we went out canvassing buildings
near a subway entrance
at least 42 stories high.
- But they have a problem:
Midtown Manhattan is world-famous
for its soaring buildings and skyscrapers.
- There were about 80 to 100-- maybe more--
buildings that are higher than 40 stories.
It's a needle in a haystack.
We split up into teams, and a couple of us went north.
A couple of us went south.
- After hours of searching,
Detective Caddigan begins to question
his informant's information
as they approached one of the few buildings left.
- 235 West 48th Street was
a very nice, exclusive building.
You know, high-end-- doorman, concierge.
They had balconies.
- And there was an ATM in the building.
- We asked the doorman if there was a resident
on the 42nd floor that would fit
the description of the victim.
- He said he did,
and he told us his name was Thierry Matheron.
- This particular doorman-- right away he said,
"We usually see him during the week.
We haven't seen him. He hasn't been around."
- We were like, okay,
there's a good chance this-- it was all checking out
according to our informant.
[suspenseful music]
The super of the building escorted us up
to the 42nd floor.
When we got off the elevator,
and you look down the hall to the apartment,
you could see his mail was piled up.
- As we opened the door...
* *
We could smell a deceased person.
* *
- We could see a body was laying in the living room.
And then we also saw
a blue couch has been turned upside down on top of him.
He was duct-taped-- hands, feet, and his mouth.
The informant had described
how the balcony door was left ajar
so that, as days went on, as the body started to smell,
it would help to get rid of the smell.
- The whole crime scene was
just like the informant described it.
[tense music]
* *
- He had been wearing glasses,
and the glasses were crushed. [glass shatters]
And, like, a kitchen knife protruding from his neck,
and blood on his clothing, the floor.
* *
This was a brutal homicide.
* *
- There was no forced entry into the apartment.
- But the subjects ransacked the apartment,
looking for what they believed was a large sum of money.
- We were unable to locate any wallet of Mr. Matheron,
or credit cards.
We didn't find any cash laying around.
- Further evidence that the killing was
a robbery for the Y2K cash,
exactly as the informant described.
But is the rest of his story true?
- We have one name at this point:
Paul Person,
who is in jail.
- The more urgent mystery-- who are Thierry's killers?
- We needed to start finding out who the suspects were
that actually committed the crime.
- As the crime scene unit dusts for fingerprints,
they come across a potential clue.
- We find an answering machine
blinking unheard messages.
- Hello. You have a call from an inmate
at a New York State correction facility.
* *
- Coming up...
- We just wanted Mr. Person's own voice on tape.
- It was an extremely dangerous situation.
- He told him to go back and kill the doorman.
* *
[gun cocks]
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
- NYPD detectives are processing
the murder location of Thierry Matheron
in his Midtown high-rise that they had been led to
by a confidential informant locked up in Rikers Island,
and they discover an intriguing piece of evidence.
- During the search,
we find an answering machine blinking unheard messages.
- Hello. You have a call from an inmate
at a New York State correction facility.
- Then the voicemail comes on from an inmate,
asking Thierry to answer the phone.
There was concern in his voice for his safety.
- The upstate facility is not Rikers Island,
so this mystery caller is no one we currently know of.
It's a new odd-shaped piece in this odd-shaped puzzle.
Our detectives know so little about the victim,
but they come across a business card
they hope will shed some light.
- We were able to determine that
he was an employee at Ernst & Young,
born and raised in France,
was in his mid-30s.
Seemed like he earned a good living,
was able to maintain a well-off lifestyle.
[somber music]
- December 22nd,
in the wee hours of the morning,
we got a call from Nydia Gaffey
She told me Thierry had been found murdered.
When I heard the word "murder,"
I think that just sent
kind of a shock wave through me
because Thierry was so well-liked in the office.
- How could he be murdered in his apartment
and no one hear it, no one came to his rescue?
- He really had compassion for people--
genuine compassion.
And he was always there to lend a helping hand
without being asked.
- I was sickened with emotion.
It felt like someone had punched me in the chest.
I couldn't even breathe.
* *
- All his relatives are over in France.
So we contacted Mr. Matheron's boss
if he would make an identification at the morgue
to positively identify the body.
- It was pretty difficult
for all the reasons you can imagine--
was just beyond belief that
anything like that could happen.
[somber music]
* *
[siren wailing]
- We were able to contact
a local police department
in the town that Thierry's dad lived in in France.
They were sending over two police officers
to make the notification.
* *
- I had to organize the return of the remains
to his family back in France,
and that was one of the most difficult things
I had to deal with.
* *
- The following day,
the medical examiner comes back
with the autopsy results.
[dramatic music]
- The knife wound would not have killed him.
It only went in an inch and a half or so.
What did kill him was the suffocation
from the duct tape around his mouth and nose.
* *
The crime scene unit dusted for prints,
but they didn't come up with any hard evidence
of any sort that was gonna connect the murder
to a particular person.
- After obtaining the medical examiner's report
and finding no prints at the victim's apartment,
detectives need to go back
to where the investigation started--
the jail at Rikers Island--
to learn about their prime suspect,
Paul Person.
- We learned Paul Person and the informant became
acquainted in Rikers Island.
He was able to gain the trust of Paul Person.
- The informant was having
some pretty intimate conversations with him,
and he could hear him speaking
to the outstanding suspects on the phone.
[dramatic music]
- The informant tells our guys
he didn't know the name of the male suspect,
but Paul referred to him as "O,"
and that they had recently got into some trouble together.
- On the 7th of December,
Paul Person and O were on their way to commit a robbery,
and they got stopped for a traffic infraction.
* *
Paul Person jumped out of the car and ran...
* *
And tossed a gun as he was running away.
* *
Cops caught him, and they recovered the gun as well.
Both O and Person were arrested.
- While O was recently released
because he didn't have the gun on him,
Paul Person told the informant
that the gun was O's and not his.
- He wanted to be out by Christmastime,
so he was really angry at O
because he felt like O put him in this position
to begin with.
- Paul said to O, "You got me involved in this.
"Now take my girlfriend with you
and go rob that rich white guy, and bail me out of jail."
- But how did O know the victim?
- Paul Person thought that O had some kind
of sexual relationship with Mr. Matheron.
O said, "I can't rob that guy. He knows who I am."
And Paul said, "Well, then...
kill him."
* *
- The informant states that O says to Paul,
"I don't have a firearm to do this."
And he says, "I'll get you a firearm.
I'll get my girlfriend to get you a gun."
- And then Person tells O, "If you don't do this,
I will do something terrible to your family."
O's seen him shoot people
and was afraid that, even from behind bars,
Person would be able to orchestrate
some injury to his family.
[dramatic music]
- O is left with no choice
but to go through with the plot,
and Paul's girlfriend goes with him
to ensure he goes through with it.
* *
[clock ticking]
- Other than a few bills found in Thierry's wallet,
the culprits are unable to locate any Y2K cash
in the apartment.
- So they found his bank cards,
ask him for his pin number,
then kill him.
[tense music]
* *
- They attempted to use the victim's bank cards
to withdraw money at an ATM,
and it failed.
* *
- According to the confidential informant,
when Paul Person heard the robbery didn't
produce any bail money, he was furious,
and he gives O another chilling instruction.
- Person instructed O to go back,
burn down the apartment to cover up any fingerprints,
and kill the doorman
because he could identify you and my girlfriend,
and, therefore, end up leading them back to me.
[dramatic music]
- Knowing already what these guys are capable of,
we know it's a credible threat.
- We were desperate to find O,
because we didn't want him to come back
and kill that doorman.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
[siren wailing]
- After the botched robbery ended
in Thierry Matheron's murder,
Paul Person immediately orders another hit
from his jail cell at Rikers.
- Person called O up and told him to go back
and kill the doorman, who could identify him
and his girlfriend.
- Detectives get to the doorman
and find he's unharmed.
He recalls letting the perps up that day.
- He gave a basic description.
They weren't masked.
They actually knew Mr. Matheron's name.
They knew he was up on the 42nd floor.
* *
- Since the confidential informant had told our guys
that O and Paul Person had been arrested together,
they pull Paul's arrest record and discover that
O's real name is Oliver Johnson.
[suspenseful music]
- They called him O on the street,
and he and Paul knew each other
from the Bronx, years ago.
- Oliver Johnson had
a fairly lengthy criminal history himself.
He went to prison for burglary for four years.
- For the doorman's safety,
they make arrangements to give him the week off.
- And we also sent detectives to sit on the building
to keep an eye on it.
If O shows up on the scene,
we can pick him up and arrest him.
- By checking Rikers inmate visitor records,
detectives identified Paul Person's girlfriend
as Nakia Shannon,
but her background check is puzzling.
- She didn't have any previous arrests.
- It was somewhat surprising to believe
she had committed a crime like this,
certainly, without being pressured into it by someone,
and given that this was the first arrest
that she ever had.
- While our guys are out looking
for Nakia Shannon and Oliver Johnson,
they also wanna make sure that
Paul Person remains behind bars.
- ADA Schiels placed a hold on Paul Person.
He was not to get bailed out of jail.
[tense music]
- We weren't interested in speaking to Person
because he was in jail. He wasn't going anywhere.
We were interested in finding
Oliver Johnson and Nakia Shannon.
[sirens blaring]
- We're looking for Oliver, and come up with addresses
and known associates in the Bronx.
Detectives hit those locations,
but he was not at any of them.
So he was not apprehended that night.
- Our guys also have a Queens address for Nakia Shannon,
but they strike out there as well.
So they devise a plan to get
Paul Person's confession on tape
with the cooperation of their confidential informant.
- The informant was looking for a deal for himself,
so he was willing to take a chance.
So the next day Detective Delgrosso and I
go to Rikers Island
and we meet with the people in intel
who have the equipment to wire up an inmate.
- We just wanted Mr. Person's own voice on tape,
as opposed to just hearsay from the informant.
He was a little nervous,
but he knew that he had to follow through with it.
[buzzer blares]
- It's an extremely serious, dangerous situation.
[tense music]
- We told him, just start a conversation with him.
Just ask him what's going on
with the plot to kill the doorman.
Where's Oliver Johnson? When's he supposed to do this?
And so on.
* *
Paul Person just told him similar things that
he had told him previously,
the difference being, now we had it on tape,
rather than just having to rely
on the informant's word for what was said.
[dramatic music]
And it also was helpful because we were trying
to find out where Johnson was,
and the information we got was that he had gone down to D.C.
- He was nervous that he was gonna get picked up.
So he took off to Washington.
* *
- While a team in D.C. searches for O,
Thierry's friends gather in the city.
[somber music]
* *
- In New York, we organize a memorial service
at Saint Malachy's Church on 49th Street.
- I think it was really important for everybody
to be able to come together as a community
and, you know, express themselves.
- People were just, like, looking for answers.
How could this possibly happen to this guy?
* *
[distant siren wailing]
- Detectives unraveling that very question
get a call about Paul Person's girlfriend.
[tense music]
- Other detectives had picked up Nakia Shannon
at her home in Queens,
and she was brought to the precinct to be questioned.
* *
- When we explained that we knew what happened,
we knew about Oliver Johnson,
we knew about her getting the gun,
and all this other stuff,
and it was in her best interest to cooperate.
* *
[tense music]
- Nakia Shannon said that she didn't know
that O was gonna kill Thierry.
- She also wants to protect her boyfriend, Paul Person.
She tells us that Paul Person had nothing to do with it.
- I mean, basically she blamed the whole thing on Oliver.
- Paul Person was the father of her child.
So she didn't want to see him go down at all.
- We basically laid it out to her and said,
"Look, if you continue to lie,
"you're just gonna get charged like everybody else.
So why don't you cooperate with us?"
And then we said, "Will you help us find Oliver?"
- Nakia Shannon agreed to make a phone call
to Oliver Johnson's girlfriend in the Bronx
to see if she could find out where Oliver Johnson was.
[phone ringing]
Turns out, O never went to D.C.
When she called,
Oliver Johnson answered the phone.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
[siren wailing]
[dramatic music]
- It's been two days since investigators found
the body of Thierry Matheron.
Paul Person's girlfriend, Nakia Shannon,
agreed to help NYPD track down her accomplice,
Oliver Johnson, also known as O.
A phone call to his home in the Bronx
reveals his whereabouts,
and detectives move quickly to apprehend him.
* *
- Detectives were just about to knock on the door,
and he opened the door to leave.
* *
- Oliver Johnson is arrested
and brought in for questioning.
- At first, he claims he had nothing to do
with Thierry Matheron's murder,
but then detectives show him something that
makes him change his tune.
- We showed him Nakia Shannon's statement...
that said that he was the one who orchestrated all of this.
And he started saying that he was pressured
by Paul Person to do it.
- That's kind of Oliver's twist to it.
Oliver was trying to push the blame on Paul and Nakia.
- Assistant District Attorney Schiels tells Oliver Johnson
that he will go down for first-degree murder
unless he confesses to everything.
After weighing the consequences,
O takes the deal and comes clean.
- Oliver tells us that he was in a cell,
upstate New York, with an inmate,
Steven Lee, who was up there for a parole violation.
Steven tells him that he picked up homosexuals
and performed sex acts for money.
- He said he met Mr. Matheron
at the Port Authority bus terminal.
Mr. Matheron paid him for sex.
- So he gets picked up a few times by Thierry.
Oliver tells me that
Thierry wanted Steven to move in with him.
- But Mr. Matheron kept noticing every time
the police were around, Mr. Lee was very nervous.
So Mr. Lee confessed to him that
he was currently on parole from a robbery charge,
and there was a warrant out for his arrest
because he still had time for his robbery conviction.
- Mr. Matheron had Steven turn himself in
to clear up his parole violation,
and he was going to let him come to live with him
when he got out of prison.
- Oliver was in a cell with Steven Lee.
Steven's always telling Oliver about this rich guy
who's in this luxury apartment
with a nice view over Times Square.
Steven lived on the street,
so to him, he's living a lavish lifestyle
in Midtown Manhattan.
[tense music]
Thierry would confide in Steven.
This is how he got the story that Thierry was gonna take
all his money out for the Y2K issue coming up
because he's afraid of it being in the banks.
So Steven, he's filling Oliver's head
with all this information.
- Eventually, Steven introduces
his cell mate, Oliver, to Thierry.
- So now Oliver gets out of the state prison
prior to Steven getting released.
- Now he goes home, back to the Bronx,
and I'm sure he doesn't have a job,
and he needs money.
- So Johnson contacted Mr. Matheron
and began to visit him and, supposedly,
get money loaned to him by Mr. Matheron.
- Oliver Johnson starts telling Paul Person
about this rich white guy, Thierry Matheron.
Paul said, "If the money's in the apartment,
let's go rob him."
[suspenseful music]
- The day before the robbery, Oliver Johnson calls up
Thierry Matheron with a bogus story.
- "I'm gonna come by tomorrow with some shoes for you
"to send to Steven Lee up in prison.
Are you gonna be home?"
And Matheron said yes.
* *
- We realize that this is the guy who was
calling Thierry's apartment from the correctional facility
and leaving the voicemails on the day of the homicide.
- Just by coincidence,
Matheron had gotten a phone call from Steven Lee,
and he was on the phone with him
when Johnson and Shannon walked in.
Matheron said, "Hey, here's your buddy on the phone,"
and he gave the phone to Johnson.
- Steven Lee was surprised that they were there.
He assumed that they were trying to move in
on his squeeze or get money from him.
Oliver hung up on him.
- Then Oliver Johnson makes a shocking allegation.
- Oliver Johnson puts all the blame on her,
saying she brandished the gun,
she was the one to put the duct tape on the guy,
she was the one who stabbed him,
and that he only put a small piece of tape him.
It was all her, it wasn't me.
- Coming up...
- Paul Person is out of jail. I was shocked.
- He's whispering Paul was gonna rob the place.
So I said, "How do you know?"
He said, "Well, we got a gun on us."
I'm like, "Get out of there."
[dramatic music]
* *
- NYPD detectives and ADA Tom Schiels
are getting confessions from Oliver Johnson
and Nakia Shannon about their roles
in the murder of Thierry Matheron,
but they are pointing fingers at each other.
- Our guys thought to put the screws on Nakia Shannon
to get her to own up to her involvement
or face the maximum charges allowed by law.
- So Shannon held the gun to the guy.
- Johnson duct-taped Matheron,
and when Mr. Matheron was taped up,
when he started making noises trying to breathe,
Johnson was afraid that he was going to alert a neighbor
and that he would be caught.
That's why he stabbed him in the neck.
- The large sum of cash
stashed away in the victim's apartment
that Oliver Johnson heard so much about
during his conversations with Steven Lee
never existed.
- All they got from Mr. Matheron was
$40 cash that they found in his wallet.
They jumped in a cab and went back to the Bronx.
- At this point, Johnson and Shannon
are in the soup.
Going down.
They've both proven that they have committed these crimes.
[suspenseful music]
- There's also enough evidence to indict Paul Person,
but there's still another individual that
our guys need to speak with.
- Steven Lee from the state prison.
He was brought to the district attorney's office
because he apparently was unaware that
Thierry Matheron has been murdered.
[tense music]
- I told Steven Lee that
his friend Mr. Matheron had been killed
and that it was on the day that he last spoke
to him on the phone.
He had called many, many times after that
and never got an answer,
and he didn't know what had happened.
- He didn't take it very well.
He was a huge guy.
He was, like, 6'6", about 300 pounds.
He dropped to the floor and cried in the fetal position
for quite a while before we could get him up.
- He was truly grief-stricken by the loss of Mr. Matheron.
[tense music]
- While the district attorney's office
is preparing indictments against Oliver Johnson,
Nakia Shannon, and Paul Person,
the confidential informant,
as per his deal with ADA Tom Schiels,
is released from jail.
But detectives get alarming news out of Rikers.
[dramatic music]
- Paul Person is out of jail.
I was quite shocked.
* *
- Although Assistant District Attorney Tom Schiels
placed a hold in the system
to keep Paul Person from posting bail,
the unthinkable happened.
- The hold was somehow missed,
and Paul was then bailed out of jail.
* *
Immediate reaction was that Paul Person was gonna
seek out the informant and possibly harm him.
* *
So our main thing was
to try to find the whereabouts of Paul
and make sure that the two of them didn't interact.
- Our team is desperate to find Paul,
so detectives turn
to their confidential informant for help.
They give him a pager in case Paul Person makes contact.
[distant siren wailing]
- Later on that night, Paul notified him.
[phone rings]
The informant called our office and told me that
he was gonna meet with Paul.
And we told him, "Under no circumstances
do you go meet with him."
And that's when he said, "No, I have no choice.
I have to."
* *
He didn't know what Paul wanted
except that he wanted to see him right away.
- The informant says, "I'll be undercover.
"I'll get him to come into Manhattan with a gun,
and then you can arrest him."
And we said, "No. Do not do that.
"You're not undercover anymore.
Stay away from him. Don't answer his phone calls."
- They were thinking that
Paul Person has something over the informant.
[suspenseful music]
[pager beeping]
- For the next week or two, the informant doesn't respond
to any of the beeps.
[pager beeping]
We were concerned.
[car honking]
And then one evening he calls the precinct
and says he's in Queens
with Paul Person at a barbershop.
And the detective who answered the phone call
is dumbfounded at this.
Well, what? Are you outside?
"No, I'm sitting in the barbershop.
He's about 8 feet away. He's getting his hair cut."
- But he never tells us the location of the barbershop.
He just said that it was in Queens.
He's whispering Paul was gonna rob the place.
So I said, "How do you know?"
He said, "Well, we got a gun on us."
* *
I'm like, "Get out of there. You're gonna get in trouble."
He said, "That's all right. I work for you guys."
I'm like, "No.
Just get out of there. Leave."
He said, "I can't. If I leave,
he's gonna know something's up."
- The informant quickly hangs up,
leaving our team on pins and needles.
They don't get an update till the next morning
from a cop in Queens.
- I get a call the next morning
from a Queens detective squad that there's a guy here
that was arrested for an armed robbery last night
in a Queens barbershop,
and he says that he's working with you guys on a case.
* *
So I immediately call Tom and say,
"Now we have another issue."
- At which point, I talk to the informant.
I said, "I told you stay away from him.
What are you doing?"
He says, "I was deep undercover."
I said, "Forget undercover. You robbed that guy."
First of all, why?
And he said, "That guy was supposed to put up bail
"for Paul Person, but he didn't,
so that's why Paul Person robbed him."
But the guy says you took some of the jewelry.
He says, "Well, I had to.
"If I didn't take some of the jewelry,
"Paul Person'd think that I had
something wrong going on here."
And I said, "But the barber says you had the gun."
And he says, "Of course I had the gun.
"I didn't want Paul Person to have it.
He might have shot the guy."
And the next thing you know, off the informant goes,
under arrest for the robbery of the barber.
[dramatic music]
- But now, our guys have a massive problem.
- Paul got away.
- And we had no idea where he was.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
[sirens blaring]
- Thierry Matheron's killers are in custody,
but Paul Person, their accomplice,
is back on the streets.
After sticking up a barbershop in Queens
with our confidential informant,
he's managed to elude detectives.
* *
- We got information from the informant
a few days later that Paul was staying
at an apartment in Harlem.
He gave us the address.
We get there.
We find out that Paul is in the apartment.
We had the exits covered.
[sirens wailing]
Finally, the female occupant let us into the apartment.
[dramatic music]
* *
Paul was in a bedroom in the back.
They went into the bedroom...
and arrested him.
It was a big relief that he was finally in custody.
[tense music]
- They tried to question him,
but he wasn't giving it up.
* *
- In exchange for statements against Paul Person,
Oliver Johnson and Nakia Shannon are given plea deals
for second-degree murder.
- We had the actual killer, Oliver Johnson--
the guy who put the tape around Mr. Matheron's face
and stabbed him in the neck.
And we had Paul Person's girlfriend,
who pointed a gun at Mr. Matheron
while he was being duct-taped.
- Oliver Johnson was sentenced to 15 years to life,
and Nakia Shannon spent 6 years in prison.
- They took a person's life.
There's just no words for it.
It still remains, for me personally,
extremely painful,
like a permanent, deep, dark scar.
* *
- Paul Person is charged with felony murder
and intentional murder-- also robbery.
And three years after Thierry Matheron's murder,
prosecutors get to argue their case against him
in front of a jury.
* *
- The jury found the defendant guilty
of robbery in the first degree,
but not guilty of felony murder
and not guilty of intentional murder.
* *
I was disappointed that he wasn't convicted of murder,
but he was sentenced to 25 years in prison
on the robbery count.
* *
- It was obviously a good feeling to know that
the investigation ended
with everybody involved being convicted.
It was justice for our victim and his family.
[upbeat music]
- We used to call it the "backwards case"
'cause we knew who the perpetrators were
before we even knew where the body was
or the crime scene was.
They usually don't happen that way.
It's usually the other way around.
- The informant expediting it for us was
a big asset in the case.
- I know he cooperated throughout
the course of the investigation,
and he testified during Paul Person's trial.
- So the informant got a plea deal
for the robbery of the barber,
and when he got out of prison, he asked me for a letter
of recommendation to get a job
as a porter in an apartment building in Manhattan.
So I wrote a truthful letter saying
this is what you need to know,
but he was a truthful person with us.
And that was the mid-2000s,
and he's been working at that place ever since.
- God bless him, you know?
He's on the straight and narrow,
and he made good his opportunity,
as far as I know.
all: [shouting] Eight, seven, six,
five, four, three,
two, one!
[cheering]
- While there were no Y2K computer issues
during the millennium New Year celebrations,
for Thierry Matheron's friends,
it was still a very difficult time.
- Thierry just had a presence and a personality
about him that was so endearing that
there was a chunk of all of us that got lost
when we lost Thierry.
You know, some part of this world
isn't where it needs to be 'cause Thierry's not in it.
[somber music]
* *