An art collector is found dead in his luxury penthouse
on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Doormen make great witnesses.
They know what the people are doing.
Surrounded by treasures.
It's like walking into a cave of wonders.
Precious paintings,
riches of a man who has amassed this fortune.
NYPD begins to vet suspects.
Everybody kind of pointed a finger,
"Hey, you should go look at
this female friend of Mr. Cooley.
Was this the work of a scorned lover?
She was with Mr. Cooley for, you know, 10, 11 years.
She could probably get herself in there.
Or did his generosity come at a cost?
And he helped many, many people.
I would actually characterize him a modern-day Robin Hood
without the bow and arrow.
When you're thinking about suspects,
one of the main things we're thinking about
is was there a financial motive to kill someone?
Investigators uncover a disturbing trail of wealth,
greed and twisted deception.
This was professional.
Someone who was good at taking money from people.
Detective Rodriguez made the discovery,
and I remember him calling me and going,
"You're never gonna guess what.
You're never gonna guess what."
[dramatic music]
♪
When I think of New York's billionaires,
the Upper East Side is the first neighborhood
that comes to mind.
That's where the old money lives.
It's home to posh restaurants,
designer shops along Madison Avenue,
and the great cultural institutions
like the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum.
It's the neighborhood that art collector,
79-year-old Christopher Cooley
has called home for almost 40 years.
What stays with me about this case,
more than Christopher's Upper East Side wealth,
is his big heart and generosity.
Unfortunately, in a place with 8 million people,
the generous can be tragically exploited.
In Christopher Cooley's case, it cost him his life.
♪
Normally, you kind of get this sort of separation
between the people who live in the ritzy building
and the people who run the ritzy building.
White-collar versus blue-collar dynamic.
But Christopher was not that type.
This is the type of man who was very quick
to pick up a conversation with anyone.
He would talk to the doormen,
even strangers out on the street.
I would describe Uncle as a very, very generous person.
He helped many, many people.
I would actually characterize him a modern-day Robin Hood
without the bow and arrow.
[dramatic music]
[phone ringing]
Mom called me at night.
She hadn't heard from Uncle.
And despite the fact that he traveled quite a bit,
he would always check in.
She was nervous
and she finally got ahold of the building super
and said, "Can you check on Uncle?"
Christopher's sister Sarah tells Ray Kazaj,
the superintendent of the luxury building,
she hasn't been able to reach her brother for over a week.
Ray calms her down and says,
"Listen, you know your brother.
He likes to go out of town a lot.
It's possible that maybe he flew overseas
and just didn't tell you."
So Ray hangs up the phone.
He goes up to Christopher's apartment.
There's a stack of newspapers there.
Kind of odd, but maybe it could just be something
where Christopher forgot to put a pause on a subscription
before he left town.
♪
Ray knocks on the door.
There is no response.
Then he tries the door. It's locked.
Now, Ray and Christopher had a close enough relationship
where he had a key to the apartment.
He opens the door.
It's like walking into a cave of wonders.
Precious paintings, rare artifacts, sculptures.
Riches of a man who has traveled a lot in his life
who enjoys art, who enjoys going to museums,
and who has amassed this fortune.
He can see Christopher from the threshold of the doorway
sitting upright in his chair.
Then he feels this waft, this smell.
Realizing that the smell was coming from Christopher,
who was unresponsive,
Ray immediately calls 911.
EMS arrives and within minutes,
Christopher is pronounced dead,
and Homicide is called to the scene.
I was working the 19th Precinct detective squad
when we got the call.
I go, "They got something strange over in the 19th.
We might have something.
So he said, "What do they have?"
He goes, "Well, we have a guy here
but he has what looks like ties wrapped around his neck.
And we have, like, broken glass on the floor."
We drove over and we walked into the apartment.
♪
Mr. Cooley was slouched over with, like,
a pillow over his face.
You could see there was broken glass on him,
blood on his head.
A dispute appears to have occurred
with Chris struck from behind with a glass lamp.
♪
When I saw the body,
the victim's tie will not in a natural position.
The tie was wrapped around his neck twice.
It definitely gave the indication
that somebody utilized that to choke out Mr. Cooley.
And it's clear, Chris didn't die of natural causes.
The detectives immediately call the medical examiner
who comes to the apartment right away.
The medical examiner said that she saw
a particular hemorrhaging inside of his eyes.
The blood vessels in your eyes exploding causes red dots
which, nine out of ten, is from being strangled.
Having glass all over himself.
Having a pillow over his face, I think it's pretty quick
you could also rule suicide out.
This was definitely a homicide.
Somebody choked him.
So Ray immediately called my mom.
By 9:00 that night,
I received a call of what had transpired
that--that Uncle had passed.
I reached out and actually called Ray that night
and we talked about it, shed a tear about it.
It was devastating.
We'd seen him over the holidays
a couple months before,
and he was in good spirits, good vigor.
I cried.
I don't cry much.
Uncle and I were very, very close.
♪
Uncle Christopher Cooley was born in Hartford, Connecticut,
but had been residing in New York city
for the better part of 60 years.
We learned Christopher Cooley
didn't leave any children behind,
but he was married for more than 20 years to Mary Cooley.
Shortly after their marriage, Mary developed MS
and he cared for her for over 25 years.
Regardless of her disabilities,
he carried her and took care of her.
She absolutely was the love of his life.
After Mary died, Christopher kept her memory close.
He spent more time in a house they'd bought together
in Venice, Italy, their home away from home.
He and Mary loved Venice.
He had a home over there for 41 years
right off the Giudecca.
So he would go over there around September
and then back to New York in the spring.
Christopher doted on his extended family
and had devoted friends on both sides of the Atlantic.
He was a very infectious person to be around.
Some might use the word "eccentric"
but eccentric is good.
At Christopher's apartment, the Crime Scene unit arrives
to do an initial sweep.
After Crime Scene takes photos
of the overall apartment and the victim,
it does get very exciting
when you find things out of place
and you know that this is really good evidence
that's gonna help solve this.
There was the fingerprints on the lamp glass
that was broken on him.
Saw a little bit of blood on him.
[dramatic music]
Fischer notices Christopher is still wearing
an expensive watch
and he finds a wad of nearly $200 in his pocket.
♪
Puzzled that such an easy score is left untouched,
Fischer heads to the front door
and thumbs through the dates of the newspapers
outside of Christopher's apartment.
If newspapers are inside the apartment
where I understood Mr. Cooley did read,
like, three different newspapers a day,
you know, he's still alive,
but if the newspapers were outside, okay,
he wasn't there to collect them
so he didn't bring them in.
So that does help us with the timeline
in regards to his death.
So the newspapers were important
because they were piling up since March 5th.
Christopher's likely been dead for at least ten days.
Detectives now wonder how did the killer get in?
There were no signs of forced entry.
As a matter of fact, the door was locked.
♪
Unless somebody had a key, well, how could this happen?
[indistinct radio chatter]
I believe that the person was known to the victim.
So now the question is who wanted to harm him
and had access to his apartment?
We do a building canvass.
Did anybody hear anything? Did anybody see anything?
No one witnessed anything suspicious
and only expressed sadness
at the loss of their dear neighbor.
He was a collector of fine arts.
He was a collector of many things.
There may have been some things of value
in the apartment.
Something's not right.
Who would ever hurt Uncle?
♪
I'm not one to sit on the sidelines.
I immediately drove down to find out who did this.
♪
Coming up...
The only person that was of any interest
was this ex-girlfriend, Apples.
Everybody kind of pointed a finger.
"Hey, you should go look at Apples.
Look at Apples."
♪
Investigators continue to work the crime scene
where art collector Christopher Cooley
was murdered in his Upper East Side penthouse
by someone who has keys to his apartment.
David Seymour is racing to his uncle's apartment
from Connecticut to find out what happened.
When I got to New York, 64th was quarantined off.
The parade was going on for St. Patty's day
but the--the caution tape and all the squad cars
had a bit of a different flavor to it.
[drumming]
Just blocks away from the happy crowds,
David enters his uncle's building
hoping for answers and eager to help.
This was a scene out of "Law and Order."
There were many, many police officers there.
There was expensive pieces of art in there
and he wanted to take them out.
He was prevented from doing so.
Nobody can go in the apartment.
When I walked in with the keys,
they wanna know, "When were you last here?"
I felt like I was a suspect.
♪
But David was saying, "Listen, we are,
"you know, very affluent and we don't need Christopher's money.
"I can tell you right off that
this does not have anything to do with our family."
I think by the time I left on that night of the 17th,
they had ruled me out at this point as a suspect.
David Seymour was very helpful in giving us
a picture of who Mr. Cooley was
and how he was beloved by his family,
how he was the eccentric uncle.
He was always there for any time
anybody ever needed anything.
He was a very decent person.
[dramatic music]
Detectives now need to talk to Ray Kazaj,
the building superintendent to find out
if he knows of anyone who would want Christopher dead.
You wanna try to speak with the people who know him best,
who he brings into the apartment.
Does he allow people to sleep over or anything like that?
Doormen make great witnesses because again,
they are, like, the keepers of the gate.
They know what the people are doing.
They know who's fighting in the apartments.
The only person of interest to the family
and the friends was this ex-girlfriend Apples.
They say she was actually banned from the building
because due to her violent outbursts and argument.
Everybody kind of pointed a finger,
"Hey, you should go look at Apples.
Look at Apples."
Apples was a female friend of Mr. Cooley
for probably a good ten-plus years.
According to numerous, numerous people,
their relationship was very, very volatile.
♪
Apples is well known to Christopher's friends
and family
from when she first entered the scene over ten years ago.
We met her at an art gathering
or something along those lines.
The amount of people he helped is mind-boggling.
And she needed some help
so he certainly was helping her out financially.
♪
And around a year ago, their relationship had soured
past the point of no return.
[muffled, indistinct arguing]
They would be arguing. They would be fighting.
People were actually really threatened by her.
She was definitely the aggressor in it.
♪
Apples, she wanted something more and he didn't
and he decides to cut it off.
Friends and family say
Apples didn't take the breakup gracefully.
I don't want to use the word "stalking,"
but she certainly was still trying to contact him,
despite the fact that he was trying to not speak with her.
[phone ringing]
Before the breakup,
Apples lashed out at Chris's friends too.
The calls grew more frequent.
She was with Mr. Cooley for, you know, 10, 11 years.
She could probably get herself in there.
♪
Did jealousy drive Apples to kill Christopher Cooley?
Maybe this was a case of a romance gone wrong.
But now, the trouble is how do you track her down?
Detectives, go back to ask Ray,
the super of the building,
if Apples was seen at the apartment
but it's been months since he's seen her.
While detectives search for Apples,
David reports rumors
from many of Christopher's friends in Venice.
♪
I was receiving a bunch of calls.
There was the whole Venice quorum
trying to help with leads.
So many people had an interest in purchasing the property
so I had to go quite a bit.
Perhaps foul play had come from someone in Italy.
So when you're looking at a case like this
where the victim is a man of international wealth
with a home in Venice,
we need to ask if something happened in Italy
that affects his life here in New York.
And the message David is receiving
from Christopher's friends suggests there is.
One of these ladies was convinced
that some of these buyers killed Uncle.
There was a friend who was convinced
that someone who had an interest
in purchasing the property killed Uncle.
No question about it.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
Art collector Christopher Cooley
has been murdered in his Upper East Side apartment.
The most unnerving rumor
about who killed the affable art lover
involves Christopher's coveted Venetian home.
♪
David relayed a rumor that someone trying to buy
his uncle's house had him murdered.
We brought in a special international unit
to look into it,
but it turned out to be a dead end.
And obviously, there's a sense of frustration,
but it is what it is.
♪
Back in New York,
detectives finally get ahold of Cooley's former lover,
Apples, who they tracked down to Christopher Cooley's
phone records.
And she agrees to talk.
She lived a few blocks away.
We went to her apartment and she invited us in.
Right off the bat, she seemed the type,
you know, little edgy.
It was like, "Oh, is this about my boyfriend?"
Apples denies having anything to do
with Christopher's murder.
You take what other people say.
She's constantly screaming and she's constantly,
you know, like, yelling at Mr. Cooley.
And as--in speaking to her, you're like,
"Well, where is this person?"
She never lost her temper. She never lost her cool.
I don't see it. I don't--I don't hear it
at this point, but you know, again,
you don't look at a person and go, "Okay, this is not her.
This is definitely not her. We have to rule her out."
We came to find out that Mr. Cooley
was helping her pay for her apartment.
The detectives did a great job seeing that, "All right,
"well, this one here, he's still paying her rent.
I doubt it she would kill him."
She wasn't gonna kill her golden goose.
Also, when we looked at her, she was an older woman.
She was slight in--in physique.
I don't think that she would've been
physically capable of doing
what--what it took to take out Mr. Cooley.
And when detectives checked the building logs,
there's no evidence that she paid Christopher a visit
in the days leading up to his murder.
The police sort of realize it's not possible for Apples
to have done it.
But she tells detectives there's one woman
who paid him a visit just before his death.
And according to Apples, that woman might know who did.
She mentions, "Hey, you know, you--
maybe you want to go talk to Christine Skalski
in--in a different tone of voice.
Yeah, there was-- there was definitely
a little bit of sarcasm.
Now, we have to find Christine Skalski.
As detectives search for a woman named Christine Skalski,
Christopher Cooley's friends and family
gather for a funeral,
some traveling all the way from Venice to attend.
We had the service roughly a month
after the passing of Uncle.
We pushed the service just to make proper arrangements
and get our wits about us
that it had been ruled a murder.
The funeral is not only attended
by family and friends.
Detective Juan Rodriguez also shows up to pay his respects.
It's almost a standard practice by detectives.
You pay your respects and you stay in the back of the room
and you're kind of hoping somebody comes up to you
and, you know,
and gives you information that you're looking for.
Sometimes the murderer may be there, you know what I mean?
But there were no leads for Rodriguez that day.
All he found at the funeral were Christopher Cooley's
heartbroken loved ones.
I saw David Seymour.
You know, David introduced me to his sisters,
and the sisters were emotional, they were crying.
They were telling me to get justice.
You want to do so good for these people.
At the funeral, detectives get the phone number
for Christine Skalski.
from Christopher's sister Sarah.
The only hitch, Christine lives in Tennessee.
I actually had met Christine several times.
She was actually staying with him for a period of time.
I took her and Uncle out to dinner
and got to know her a little bit.
She was close with him, but she tells the police
that she didn't have a romantic relationship like Apples did.
She's a very soft-spoken, nice lady,
so it never crossed my mind that she was on a list
to really be examined as a culprit.
[siren wailing]
Using cell tower triangulation technology,
detectives determined
Christine's cell phone location
was in Tennessee in the days leading up to the murder.
But she admits she was in New York
a month before Christopher was killed.
She stayed at Christopher's place.
While in the apartment, she comes across slippers
and a bathrobe and she asked Christopher,
"Whose is this? This doesn't look like yours."
And he goes, "Oh, this is just the man I met
at the Lenox Hill Hospital.
He's, like, this investment banker.
I let him stay at my apartment for a couple of days.
I'm thinking about giving him some money."
And just like that, Christine is ruled out,
turning her from a possible suspect into a source.
What he unearthed,
the people he helped over the years was tremendous.
Tremendous.
There was a friend who fell on some hard times
that he actually let stay
at his apartment for several months.
We know Christopher to be the kind of guy
who was very open-hearted, very forthcoming,
very willing to strike up conversations with strangers.
Now the police are thinking,
"Is this our suspect we should be focusing on?"
Bringing somebody you don't know that you just met,
that's definitely an avenue we needed to explore.
[dramatic music]
♪
For the month leading up to his murder,
Christopher Cooley hosted a man
he just met at the hospital
in his Upper East Side apartment.
Christopher told his friend Christine Skalski
he was thinking of investing
in one of the man's financial ventures.
According to Christine,
there's something suspicious about it,
but she didn't remember his name.
♪
She tells them Christopher Cooley
had been at Lenox Hill Hospital
a few months before his murder
to be treated for a kidney ailment.
So we go to Lenox Hill Hospital.
We ask for, you know, a list of names,
anybody who could have came in contact with Christopher
while he was there.
And we're talking about getting the information
who's staying in the hospital room with him.
You can't just walk into the hospital and ask a nurse,
"Hey, who was that guy's roommate that was staying here
a couple of days ago?"
There are privacy laws.
The doctors rightfully won't divulge that information.
So it's a mystery man for now.
♪
While detectives continue to find a way
to get names from the hospital,
Christopher Cooley's nephew is still mourning his uncle
and is desperate to sort the details
of Christopher's estate.
♪
It was several weeks before the DA
would let me in the apartment.
As executor of Christopher Cooley's estate,
David Seymour begins reviewing his uncle's financial records.
I was just going through items in the dining room table
and I found his checkbook.
And then David makes a startling discovery.
Uncle would always write who a check was to
and the dollar amount or what it was for,
except the last check was missing
with nothing written down.
♪
So then I went back through previous months' checks
and I immediately saw something that stuck out to me
like somebody hit me with a baseball bat.
Found a check for $1,425.
I saw the signature. This is a forged check.
Uncle would always sign a certain way
so the mechanics were all wrong.
My immediate suspicion was he had an idea
what might be a safe amount to write.
The forged check, dated March 2nd,
is made out to someone named Steve Garland.
Detectives wonder if this could be the mystery man
Christopher had met at the hospital.
Great. Here we go.
We need to talk to Steven Garland.
Around that time too,
we started getting other things back.
Soon after, detectives hear back from Lenox Hill Hospital.
Pieces of the puzzle really begin to fall into place.
Administrators can't provide the medical history
of Christopher Cooley's roommates,
but they do have something that proves useful.
So they came out with a list of seven names of people
who could have came in contact with Christopher
while he was there.
We looked at all seven individuals.
The name Steven Garland kind of popped
like a firework going off.
Detectives call back Christine Skalski
who recognizes the name Steve Garland.
You know Steven Garland turns out to be
the investment banker
who stayed at Christopher's place.
But even with this major break,
the investigation is far from over.
Maybe he's just--he forged a check to himself.
Maybe somebody else killed him. We don't know.
Detectives do a deep dive into Garland's past
looking for anything that might beef up
their case against him.
We started doing background information on this guy.
We ran at him,
and turns out that he was a criminal.
♪
Steve Garland was the kind of con man
that you hear about in movies.
Garland's career as a con man began in Indiana.
He would walk around with cards
that he made up that he was some type of CEO
for like Goldman Sachs.
It was incredible.
He was a true-life, like, con man.
♪
He was essentially a professional.
Someone who was good at taking money from people,
being able to persuade people to do things for you.
He would usually prey on women.
He would promise them money,
promise them things, and then take it away and run off.
The smooth-talking con man
would often find his victims online.
He'd then arrange an in-person meeting.
He'd speak the right language, the right lingo,
had the vocabulary for it.
Steve Garland was giving his target deals
that they couldn't pass up.
"I could turn that into thousands of thousands
of dollars overnight."
I think that was his-- a lot of his con.
For a lot of people who are in these sort of
desperate situations
who may need the money when everything else in their life
seems to be falling apart,
why wouldn't you hook onto this?
With a check in his pocket,
Garland would move on to his next mark.
He swindled an elderly couple
out of money in Indiana.
Turns out he was arrested numerous times
for larceny type of crimes.
It's kind of hard and you take it a little personally
when you have to deal with a con man
whose prey is the elderly people.
To me, he's like one of the lowest of the low
because you can't mess with the elderly people
and think that it's okay.
Now the time was to get out there and find Garland.
We were crunched for time.
♪
Coming up...
We requested video. There he was, you know,
on March 2nd on video cashing the forged check.
It looked like there was, like, blood on his shirt.
Detective Rodriguez made the discovery
and I remember him calling me and going,
"You're never gonna guess what.
You're never gonna guess what."
♪
Detectives just discovered that Steven Garland,
the hospital roommate that Christopher Cooley befriended
and invited into his home is a career con man
with a string of arrests for larceny in Indiana.
After a lifetime of conning people,
Garland was a wanted man.
In fact, he'd been arrested in Indiana in 2016
for cheating a woman out of $84,000.
When he was released on a $20,000 bond,
he headed for New York City.
Lenox Hill Hospital, to be precise.
He was here in New York getting treatment.
As it turns out,
there was one thing this con man wasn't lying about.
Maybe he was a fraud in life,
but his cancer diagnosis was quite real
and he was suffering from it and he needed treatment.
♪
And who does he find at a Manhattan hospital,
at Lenox Hill?
Christopher Cooley.
Possibly his greatest, easiest target.
He was a rich, wealthy man
who was so generous.
Lenox Hill Hospital is one of the best hospitals
in New York.
A lot of the rich and famous, they go to Lenox Hill Hospital.
Even as he was suffering from this deadly disease,
Steve Garland had to keep going.
Conning people was his job.
This was his livelihood.
And there was no way he was gonna stop,
especially when greeted with a wealthy man
such as Christopher.
A lifetime of conning people is one thing
but to kill someone is completely different.
♪
Things really started to heat up
that Garland was our guy. Here we go.
Now let's start focusing really, really hard
on--on Garland.
Around the time of the homicide,
Garland was supposed to show up for a court date in Indiana
which he didn't.
Detectives are now following a warrant that was out
for Garland's arrest in Indiana.
When we were running his name, we found out
that Garland had been arrested in New York on March 2nd.
♪
If Garland was arrested on March 2nd,
it seems he has an alibi in Christopher's murder,
which our detectives estimated to be on March 5th,
the day Christopher stopped collecting his newspapers.
♪
You know he was locked up
so no way he could be in the apartment.
But as they gear up to go back to the drawing board,
the autopsy comes in from the coroner's office.
We get to the autopsy. That reveals everything.
The report reveals Cooley was killed on March 2nd,
not the 5th.
Garland doesn't have an alibi after all.
His arrest didn't happen until several hours
after Christopher's murder
when he went to get cancer treatment
at the New York hospital.
♪
Indiana found out that he was here in New York
getting treatment
and knew when he was supposed to show up there
on March 2nd.
Contacted the detectives down here.
So at 5:00, Steven Garland walked in to get a treatment.
NYPD arrests Garland on the Indiana warrant
completely unaware of Christopher Cooley's murder
at this point.
They take him to Rikers Island
to await extradition back to Indiana.
Rikers Island is one of the biggest correctional complexes
in the world at more than 400 acres.
It sits like a fortress in the middle of the East River.
♪
Rikers Island is a jail
that's on its little own island for itself.
It houses inmates that are awaiting trials
or anybody who gets one to two years sentence only.
Garland was held there.
Now, with this new discovery,
detectives had to Rikers to pick Garland up
but there's a problem.
Garland was sent back to Indianapolis.
We missed him by one day.
♪
NYPD here now has this monumental task
of trying to extradite Steve back to New York from Indiana.
♪
NYPD contacts police in Indianapolis
and gets the ball rolling on extradition.
In New York City, we have all the evidence that we need
to arrest him ourselves,
but we're now waiting for an extradition order
from Indiana.
And it's frustrating
because you don't know when it's gonna happen.
As they wait for authorities in Indiana
to return Garland to New York City,
they contact Cooley's bank.
We requested video.
There he was, you know, on March 2nd, you know,
on video cashing the-- cashing the forged check.
♪
He's in video.
He's wearing a shirt that sort of stood out.
It looked like there was, like, blood on his shirt.
♪
The check was cashed
at around, like, mid-- noon on March the 2nd
and he was arrested at 5:00 in the afternoon
on March the 2nd.
We definitely knew we were 100% on the right direction.
They have the motive, they have the video,
but it's circumstantial evidence.
Detectives need proof that Garland was at the scene.
Juan Rodriguez made the determination to go to Rikers
to look for property.
Now the time was to get out there
and get that smoking gun.
We were hoping to recover a shirt that he was wearing.
There has to be some type of DNA on that shirt.
We pick up the clothes
and bring it back to the 19th Precinct.
And the detectives were like, "Oh, there's nothing here."
The blood-splattered shirt
was never collected from Garland.
He somehow discarded that shirt.
He was a slick guy.
But something else jumps out at Detective Rodriguez.
Detective Rodriguez made the discovery
and I remember him calling me and going,
"You're never gonna guess what.
You're never gonna guess what."
[dramatic music]
♪
Detectives need physical evidence
to connect Steve Garland
to the murder of Christopher Cooley.
And when they collect the clothes Garland left behind
in Rikers Island, there's no shirt,
but they find a lead that could be even better.
♪
I remember Detective Rodriguez calling me
and going, "You're never gonna guess what.
You're never gonna guess what."
When he got arrested, he never had time
to get rid of his shoes.
Rodriguez takes a closer look at the shoes left behind.
They look like the same shoes he was wearing
when he cashed the check.
When I got the shoes,
I remember grabbing one and you can feel the moisture.
I was like, "Why is thing wet for?"
I said to myself, "This guy washed the shoe."
So I flipped over the shoe and I'm like,
"There's blood here."
Detectives wonder if the blood
is that of Christopher Cooley.
Called Crime, they come and they vouchered
the shoe for DNA.
With the shoes sent to the lab for testing,
detectives play one last card.
I went to Indiana and I
went with my Homicide detective, Tommy Fischer.
We were gonna interview him in regards to this homicide.
In the back of your mind, you're like, "Oh, con man.
He's gonna talk his way around everything."
But your ego also says, "Hey, I can get this guy to confess."
We went to the correctional facility.
Finally, detectives are face-to-face
with the man they've been hunting.
He just kind of looked like a, you know,
a disheveled, rundown older man.
He was very-- he was very polite.
And, "Hey, NYPD, New York's finest.
I love you guys."
The typical con man.
"But unfortunately, guys, I'm not gonna speak to you.
I'm gonna request the right to speak to an attorney."
We didn't get the confession.
♪
Not long after detectives land back in Manhattan,
they get some good news.
The lab tested the shoes
against the blood that they had from Mr. Cooley
and the blood came back a match.
So not only do they have Mr. Garland on video
with the shoes on, now they have Mr. Cooley's
blood recovered from those same shoes.
♪
They also run Garland's fingerprints
taken while he was at Rikers Island.
The icing on the cake, they wound up recovering
his fingerprints from the lamp shards.
That's the home run right there.
That put him at the crime scene of my victim.
That was a good moment. Good feeling.
Detectives present their evidence,
the fingerprints, the DNA match, the forged check,
and the financial motive to the grand jury.
Garland is indicted for the murder of Christopher Cooley.
The NYPD asked the Indiana governor,
who at the time was Mike Pence,
to have Garland sent back to New York.
But Unfortunately, the governor of Indiana
was a little preoccupied with his election
then it took a little while to try to get the extradition.
♪
As the time ticks by,
Garland's cancer ravages his body
and he claims he's too sick to travel.
That was an unbelievably frustrating situation.
Being he was such a con man, I thought,
"Oh, yeah, I have cancer. How bad is it really you know?"
But it turns out it was bad.
In August of 2017,
detectives get an unexpected call
from an official in Indiana.
You're never gonna to believe this.
He died.
Like what?
Steven Garland died of sepsis
at the Plainfield Correction Facility in Indiana.
He got what he gave and he was an evil guy.
When I heard that he had died,
I had no sympathy.
I think the irony of how he died,
not being able to breathe
due to cancer of the lungs,
is perhaps poetic justice.
♪
Even though they never had a chance to prove it in court,
detectives believe they know what happened.
After the two men met at Lenox Hill Hospital,
Christopher Cooley took in Garland as a friend,
inviting him to stay in his apartment
while getting cancer treatments in New York.
Garland began to cheat him out of money
and Christopher picked up on it.
Steve wasn't having it.
A fight broke out.
He strangled Christopher.
♪
There isn't a week that goes by
that I don't think about Uncle in some way.
Not having Uncle be part of our life
is a big--a big loss.
There has been an emptiness to all the family.
Uncle had different views of life,
a different take on things.
To know Uncle was quite an adventure.
There was always a good bottle of wine to be had
and--and many, many huckster laughs together.
He is who he was, you know?
I will never forget that.