A beloved day care owner mysteriously disappears.
She was a pillar of the community.
There's something wrong.
She is not someone to go missing
without telling anybody.
All I want to do is find my friend.
And a longtime boyfriend
raises more questions than answers.
We're dealing with
bone-chilling temperatures outside
and a boyfriend who did not report th
his pregnant girlfriend missing for 24 hours.
In the dead of winter,
detectives race against the clock...
I got very faint whiffs of an overwhelming odor.
We knew that something had happened.
Something had taken a horrible turn.
When a new suspect comes to light...
Everybody was just pointing the finger.
To an outcome that no one saw coming.
And he says, "I got her."
♪
It was beyond imaginable.
♪
New York City, the land of opportunity
where people from around the world
come to make a better life.
Growing up on the small Caribbean island
of Saint Vincent,
education was everything to Anndrea Caruth,
and when she moved to New York
with her father in her early 20s,
she launched her dream
to teach and influence young minds.
That dream came to an unthinkable end.
It's rare for me to be shocked by an outcome,
but this case still surprises me to this day
for not seeing what was right under our noses all along.
♪
In the Bronx neighborhood of Baychester,
39-year-old Anndrea Caruth has transformed the house
she shares with her father and longtime boyfriend
into an early childhood center called Kiddie College.
She was amazing at her job, really hands-on teacher.
She was a very, very important part
of the community
because the children there, she served.
Even though she doesn't yet have her own kids,
she's hoping to start a family after recently getting engaged
to her longtime boyfriend, Lincoln Grant.
Good times were coming, and she knew it.
♪
As a friend, I chose to call her Angie
'cause she looked more like an Angie-type person.
We would do a lot of little things that girls do.
She liked shopping,
and we would get the fish on the grill
and just sit on her porch and eat it.
We did facials every month.
So after Christmas, I said to her,
"Let's make plans.
"After church, I'll come and get you.
We'll have brunch."
♪
That particular Sunday, I'm calling.
She's not picking up.
I called again. Nothing.
♪
Then I called her again. I'm, like--start worrying.
I said to myself, "We made plans,
"and she's never done that to me.
Why isn't she picking up her phone?"
Julia assumes her best friend,
Anndrea Caruth, is blowing off
their Sunday brunch plans
to hang out with her boyfriend-turned-fiancé.
I'm getting really pissed off.
So then I texted her.
I said, "You know what? I'm going home.
Whenever you're ready, call me."
♪
Monday morning, my phone rang,
and I saw her name showed up.
So I'm like, "Mm, I'm not picking up."
♪
It rung again. Angie.
I'm not picking up. I was still upset.
♪
And then I saw a message from Angie's phone
saying, "Hi, Julie, it's Lincoln.
"Angie didn't come home last night.
Is she with you?"
I'm like, "That's odd.
Why is he asking me if Angie's with me on a Monday morning?"
Her kids supposed to be coming in to the day care.
Like, Lincoln, come on, now.
You're calling me from her phone.
She's always home at 6:00 on Sunday
preparing for her kids the next day.
You have to have known something was wrong.
Lincoln tells Julia that he hasn't seen Anndrea
since Sunday morning.
He thought Anndrea met Julia for brunch,
but when he woke up the next morning,
she never came home.
Now he's worried.
Julia reveals that Anndrea never showed up.
♪
And so I'm like, "Tell me what happened
when she got up in the morning."
He said that she got up, like, at 10:00.
He saw that she put on her sweater and left the room.
He told me, "And I thought she went downstairs
to make tea."
He said he just turned and went back to sleep.
I'm like, "You slept all day?"
He's like, "No, I got up at, like, 3:00."
♪
And I'm like, "But her phone is home."
♪
You have absolutely no idea what got over me.
And I just like, "Oh, my God."
I said, "Lincoln, just call the police.
Call the cops."
Anndrea's fiancé calls 911.
Patrol comes out and takes an initial report
from Lincoln.
When they learn that Anndrea's phone,
wallet, and car keys are still at home,
it raises concern.
However, our detectives are not able to investigate
a missing persons case until 24 hours have passed.
♪
Anndrea is not the type of person
who wouldn't be there without an explanation.
And if she's not there,
that's because there's something wrong.
♪
Unfortunately, with the number
of active cases going on at one time in New York City,
there wasn't enough to indicate
that Anndrea was in any danger.
So the community gets a jump start
on the investigation.
When she went missing, we had, like, a search party.
We asked the neighbors.
You know, we were asking everyone, "Have you seen her?
When's the last time?"
Everybody knew her.
The people at the supermarket knew her.
The lady who did her hair could not believe it.
She said, "She was just here."
♪
We were out there for many, many hours
looking for her, and no one really knew anything.
But waiting for detectives, Anndrea's friend Julia
is getting impatient.
That's when I called Detective Flood
on the Tuesday morning because I was worried.
The investigation was moving too slow.
I remember this particular day,
It was freezing.
Phones were ringing off the hook.
I had picked up the phone.
It was Julia McCall.
She asked if I had
her friend Anndrea Caruth's missing case.
She wanted to know if there was any leads in the case
or any progression since it was reported.
Julia was highly concerned.
She wanted results, like, yesterday.
Not yet up to speed on the details of the case,
the detective tries to reassure Julia.
It is not uncommon to get a phone call
from a missing person's friend or family member
out of concern.
Detective Flood said,
"She probably run away, and she's a grown-up,
so they have to wait till she comes back."
There's a reason
why Julia believes Anndrea wouldn't run away.
That's when Julia told me that Anndrea was pregnant.
♪
Julia is surprised that Lincoln
did not disclose this, but Detective Flood
does not see any mention of the pregnancy
in the initial patrol report.
♪
According to Julia, Anndrea wasn't certain
she would be able to have kids of her own.
I said to her, "You're turning 40 next year.
"You and your boyfriend have been together for so long.
"Why don't you think of starting a family?
"That door is gonna be shut soon.
What are you waiting for?"
Kids were her life.
All she wanted was to become a mom,
to finally have her own baby.
♪
She was so excited. Oh, my God.
She was counting the days and months, you know?
Both she and Lincoln were very happy.
The pregnancy brought them closer together.
She was showing a little bit at five months.
You know, you could see she had, like,
a cute little belly and stuff.
She had raised all of our children.
Now it was like, "Okay, now it's your time to shine."
♪
When we found out she was pregnant,
that helped elevate it to a special category of missing.
All right, let's get out there.
Let's see if this is a much ado about nothing
or this is something serious.
The squad now initiated a citywide hospital canvass.
♪
But her best friend, Julia McCall,
doesn't feel like things are happening fast enough.
All I want to do is find my friend.
You understand? I will do my job to find Angie.
So what I did, I call News Channel 12.
♪
We received that phone call from Julia McCall
alerting us to the fact that Anndrea was missing,
and what really stood out was that Anndrea's pregnant
and we're dealing
with bone-chilling temperatures outside
and a boyfriend who did not report
his pregnant girlfriend missing for 24 hours.
Immediately, we know that this
is gonna be of big interest
to not just the Baychester community,
not just the Bronx, but all over New York City.
♪
News Channel 12 was there, like, in a minute,
and just-- everything just exploded.
♪
Coming up...
I saw a very small red speck on the floor.
It could have been blood.
He had to, like, really get up close
and examine it.
You swab it, you put it back in the tube,
and in a few seconds, either you got blood,
or you don't have blood.
♪
A missing persons investigation is underway
in the Bronx neighborhood of Baychester
for 39-year-old Anndrea Caruth,
who is five months pregnant.
She hasn't been seen at the day care
she runs out of her home for over 48 hours.
She would not leave her students,
so she's not willingly out there.
♪
One of the parents call me.
She's like, "You're watching Channel 12 News?"
I'm like, "No, why?"
She's like, "I just see,
they say Ms. Caruth is missing."
And I just lost it. I started crying.
I was like, "What do you mean missing?
What do you mean missing?"
♪
Homicide is dispatched to the home.
A frantic Lincoln lets detectives into the house
and begins to answer questions.
We found out she was perfect physical, mental health
other than her being pregnant with his child.
We asked why Anndrea went missing.
He was like, she was going out with her girlfriends.
When he woke up, she wasn't home.
Maybe she stayed over her friend's house.
At first, we could not determine
if it was a voluntary or involuntary disappearance.
Was there a fight that may have happened
that he's not telling us?
And I've had these cases where, you know,
one spouse finds out the other spouse is cheating.
Here we go. Now we got a problem.
Detectives are trying to get a feel of the relationship
between Anndrea and Lincoln
to see if she may have had a reason to just leave.
Lincoln stated that their relationship was strong.
There was never any type of arguments,
physical or mental abuse.
♪
I did ask Angie that a long time ago,
and she said, "No, Julia, we never argue."
I'm like, "What type of relationship is that?"
Angie and Lincoln been together
for probably about 15 years.
Lincoln Grant, much similar to Angie,
is very quiet and reserved.
♪
She never looked at anybody else but Lincoln.
It was always Lincoln.
♪
The couple recently got engaged,
and shortly after, Lincoln moved into the house
Anndrea shares with her dad, William Caruth.
Every time I spoke with her about Lincoln, she was happy.
He was a construction worker,
and he was very handy-- a handyman, hard worker.
He believed in the American dream.
♪
Like Anndrea, Lincoln had also moved
from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent to the Bronx.
Growing up in the islands, it's tough economically,
so we all come up here for economical reasons
and a better life too.
Anndrea's parents never married.
Her mom still lives in Saint Vincent.
Angie's dad, he paved that way
for her to come up to America,
and then he helped her get her house.
Lincoln was living with Anndrea upstairs,
and Dad was living downstairs in his apartment.
Angel, Anndrea's sister, lived across the street,
up a little bit.
The whole Caruth family lives in the neighborhood.
♪
Anndrea's longtime boyfriend,
now fiancé, Lincoln,
departs for his construction job in Manhattan,
and Detective Flood is soon joined
by Detective Chris Skulsky from Homicide.
By the time I was pulling up,
there were already members
of the 47 Detective Squad there.
There was still a uniform presence there,
and there was a media presence there.
♪
When I arrived,
her father, William, was downstairs
in his living area.
Her boyfriend, Lincoln, was already gone.
He's a contractor. He had to go to work.
I did find it a little odd, but he had to go to work,
or he wasn't gonna get paid.
He had a child on the way,
couldn't really afford to miss a day's pay.
♪
Because Lincoln can't be ruled out yet
as a person of interest, detectives are eager
to question Anndrea's sister, Angel,
when she comes up
from her dad's basement apartment.
So speaking with Angel, Anndrea's sister,
I don't think she had ever heard of any problems
going on with respect to their relationship.
Nobody raised any flags in Anndrea's family
towards Lincoln
except for her father, William.
Detectives entered the basement apartment
where Anndrea's dad, William, lives.
♪
There was incense burning, which is quite common in,
you know, the Caribbean culture.
♪
Anndrea's father, William Carruth,
was an older gentleman.
You could tell the man worked for a living.
♪
William is worried and tells detectives
he hasn't seen his daughter for three days.
He last saw Anndrea right around New Year's Eve.
Either he was on the phone, or she was on the phone.
It was like--almost like a hi and bye type thing
and went back inside.
I actually asked him if he suspected Lincoln
in any way, shape, or form.
We learned that the day after Anndrea disappeared,
Lincoln yelled down to ask him where Anndrea was.
William says he found it strange
when Lincoln said he hadn't seen her
since the previous morning, and he's not the only one
who's raising questions about Lincoln.
♪
A lot of people were suspicious of him.
We kind of were thinking, like,
"Oh, my God, what if he didn't want the baby?"
Or I don't know if he had a significant other also,
so it was a messy kind of love triangle,
and then maybe he was trying to get rid of the baby.
We just really didn't know,
but everybody was just kind of
pointing the finger at him.
But in his initial contact with Detective Flood,
Lincoln maintained his innocence.
♪
At this point,
we canvass the entire residence,
which would encompass the middle floor
where the day care is,
the upstairs living quarters, and then downstairs.
We're looking to see what the scene looks like,
if anything's disturbed,
signs of a fight, signs of a struggle.
The lower level didn't appear to be in any type of disarray.
First floor of her home was pretty much converted
into a day care center.
There were bins.
There were books. Everything was placed neatly.
♪
Went upstairs,
visited Anndrea's living quarters
where she resided with Lincoln.
♪
But in the bathroom,
they spot something suspicious on the floor.
♪
Walked into the bathroom.
I saw a very small red speck on the floor.
♪
It could have been blood.
He had to, like, really get up close and examine it.
So sergeant from Bronx Homicide
calls Crime Scene.
Crime Scene goes upstairs to the bathroom in question.
You swab it. You put it back in the tube.
And in a few seconds, either you got blood,
or you don't have blood.
♪
And in this case, we didn't have blood.
♪
They said most likely
it was nail polish or something.
As far as we could tell,
there was no sign of any struggle,
that anything had happened in this area of the house.
♪
Flood recalls his first conversation
with Anndrea's best friend, Julia.
She said Lincoln called from Anndrea's phone.
♪
And in the initial missing persons report,
responding officers noted
that her phone along with her wallet
and keys were there.
♪
But now it's been more than 48 hours
since Anndrea was last seen by Lincoln Sunday morning.
Every hour that passes that Anndrea is missing
without these essential items is increasing
both the mystery of her disappearance
and our concern.
You have a pregnant female
that had gone missing with no phone.
I don't know of any woman on this Earth
that does not leave their home
with at least a cell phone and a credit card.
Angie goes nowhere without her phone.
♪
Anndrea Caruth,
a beloved day care owner who is five months pregnant,
seems to have vanished without a trace
two days earlier.
♪
In the initial missing persons report,
evidence of personal items left behind
prompts detectives to call in the K-9 unit
to search the house and yard
on the chance she's trapped, injured, or worse
somewhere on the property.
Our K-9 unit responded what we--a cadaver dog.
It's a police dog
especially trained to detect dead people.
Cadaver dog searched the three floors of the home,
starting in the basement apartment
occupied by William Caruth.
Dad is elderly.
He's downstairs in his apartment,
so he has the right to come and go,
but, like, the main day care area
and the upstairs was completely frozen
by the police department.
William's apartment is quickly cleared.
They also clear the ground floor.
♪
When the dog reaches the top of the stairs
and searches the bedroom floor,
detectives are following closely.
♪
Dog did his thing. We find nothing.
She wasn't there.
♪
As the crime unit moves around the house
collecting evidence, they notice something odd.
Doing the walk-through,
we didn't see Anndrea's phone, her wallet, keys.
The fact that patrol noted Anndrea's phone,
keys, and wallet were home on their initial visit
Monday morning was significant.
But now on Tuesday,
as detectives can't find them in the house
while Lincoln is at work is even more mysterious.
♪
Detective Flood needs to talk to Lincoln again
to see if he knows where they are.
I had reached out to Lincoln personally,
and we spoke over the telephone.
He had Anndrea's keys, her phone, and her wallet.
♪
When I heard that,
another kind of red flag went up like,
"Wait a second, you have them. Why?"
♪
Patrol is immediately dispatched
to Lincoln's work site.
♪
I told him that these officers
were going to give him a ride
to the 47 Precinct Detective Squad.
Get him in an interview room. I'm on my way over there.
♪
The big question Detectives Flood
and Skulsky now want answered is,
did Lincoln take Anndrea's belongings with him
to the work site to destroy or tamper with evidence?
Myself and Detective Skulsky,
we want to properly vet him.
"Why did you wait a day to call?"
And he had a plausible explanation.
He says he thought Anndrea just forgot
to check in at home, "But I did call."
So okay.
Would she just go hang out at a friend's house
for a day or two
and him just be indifferent to it?
I don't agree with it personally.
Like, you know, if my pregnant wife
were missing, yeah, I'd probably call.
But the one big red flag was when he went to work
and had all her belongings.
Why would you take her stuff with you to work?
I don't think he thought anything of it.
♪
Lincoln insists he brought them to work
for safekeeping.
I asked him, and I'm like,
"Would you mind if we took custody
and control of that?"
And he did. He gave it to us.
Lincoln strongly maintains his innocence
and a deep sense of worry.
He was concerned of her whereabouts.
She was pregnant with his child.
Detectives run a background check,
which confirms Lincoln has no criminal record.
While detectives wait for a warrant
to search the phone for evidence,
Lincoln agrees to give a written statement
while he is held overnight.
He started writing.
And myself and Skulsky then exited the interview.
At that point, we were called back out to the scene.
♪
It's night, and news crews surround
the home of Anndrea Caruth,
who has been missing for 2 1/2 days.
♪
We miss her. We love her.
We're worried about her and the baby,
and we really want to find out what happened.
♪
She was a pillar of the community.
She was always just Ms. Caruth, Kiddie College.
I just would tell everyone, "Go to Kiddie College.
"It's the best school ever.
She's gonna make sure that your kid is a star."
♪
If you couldn't pay,
she would still allow you to bring your kids there.
What kind of difference do I think
that makes in a child or a family's life?
Words cannot explain.
♪
Local news programs are now covering her case
as their top story, with updates for their viewers
almost every hour.
She's such a loving person. We need to find her.
News coverage can help an investigation
because tips often flow in, but it can also bring the heat.
I would say there was pressure
just because of the high volume of media presence,
I would say but if this were my family,
I would want answers, like, yesterday,
so with that mindset, I just wanted to bring this
to some type of resolve and closure for this family.
I called my friends.
I said, "I want you guys
to meet me at the house later."
They were crying and blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, "You guys have got to stop.
We have to be able to find Angie."
If she was dead, I couldn't bring her back,
but I have to find her killer.
You're always under an extreme amount of pressure
to find a missing person.
You don't want to find a missing person dead.
♪
So when we got called back to the crime scene,
we walk into the house,
and I got very faint whiffs of an overwhelming odor...
♪
And then it was gone.
And if you walk to another side of the room,
maybe you caught a whiff of it,
and I'm looking and I'm asking, like,
"Do you smell that or is that just--is that me?"
Like, "Oh, I smell it too."
♪
Coming up...
There was a lot of suspicion about who did it.
He told me that they were soiled linens, bed linens.
When I finally got that answer,
I had to take a second to just process that.
♪
Two days into the investigation,
despite the K-9 unit finding no trace of Anndrea,
Detectives Flood and Skulsky can't make sense
of why her personal essential items
would still be in the house.
They returned to the home to further investigate
the theory that she never left.
♪
When we got back to the crime scene...
♪
I got very faint whiffs of an overwhelming odor...
♪
And then it was gone.
♪
At this point, we do a more thorough search.
I went on downstairs and met Detective Flood.
It was very dimly lit.
Again, you have incense burning.
♪
William was downstairs in his living area.
♪
And that's when I saw
the two large black garbage bags.
♪
It looked like there was, like,
these, like, streaks of, like, dirt,
like it was leaned up against something.
♪
I asked what was in them.
He told me that they were soiled linens,
bed linens in there.
♪
William tells detectives that Monday night, he had sex
with a woman he had been dating
and that he discarded the soiled linens
in the garbage bag afterward.
♪
So got some gloves, looked.
They were soiled linens.
♪
We're not trained to collect evidence,
so this is one of those things
where you would ask Crime Scene to swab for us.
♪
At that time, I didn't feel comfortable
saying it was or wasn't something
because I didn't know.
He's an elderly man. He was compliant.
Looking at William's living area,
I didn't see anything that would indicate,
like, well, where would he hide a body in here?
Because, you know, he's got a couch
and not much else, nothing disturbed.
I mean, if you were guilty of something,
you wouldn't allow the police
to come in your residence and search.
But detectives remain suspicious
about the odor in the apartment
and the dark substance on the outside of the bag.
♪
Flood starts to dig into Anndrea's relationship
with her dad.
Tuesday night, Detective Flood told me
he'll be at the house.
Come down. He would like to talk to me.
I said, "Okay."
♪
Most parents from the islands,
they always think that when you get older,
you have to take care of them.
He helped her get her day care running
and her house and everything.
His name was on the deed.
She gave him the basement of her house
where he can reside forever.
Anndrea told Julia she was grateful
for her dad's help to build a nest egg,
but she still needed him to help with the mortgage.
So she said to me, "He wasn't contributing at all.
He was kind of, like, living free in America."
♪
According to Julia,
Anndrea and her father would argue from time to time.
♪
I think her father felt entitled,
like he was the one who had her up here
and gave her a roof over her head
when she first came.
He would find ways to get money from her.
Julia believes that the financial issues
had caused a serious rift.
One day, she came to me, and she said
she had to give him 500 bucks
'cause his insurance was gone.
That means he couldn't pay it, so they cut the insurance off.
♪
Another time, she told me, "He came to me,
"and he told me that the house is cold.
He's going to find a guy to fix the boiler."
So he came to her a couple days after that
and said that the boiler would cost 900 bucks.
♪
Angie's a very smart girl.
She knows when you try to pull a fast one on her.
So she went, and she got her own guy,
and the guy checked the boiler out.
Guess what.
Her father turned the boiler off.
What dad does that to his daughter?
♪
These are the little things he would do to her
to get money from her.
I took note of that because, again,
at the onset of my involvement in the investigation,
William Caruth, the father, was there
pretty much the whole time.
She also tells Detective Flood
that recently, Anndrea's neighbor
heard something suspicious
coming from the basement where William lives.
♪
So then the neighbor is telling me
that she heard a lot of knocking,
banging downstairs in the basement
'cause her house is right next to his.
She saw him carrying a lot of buckets of dirt
out of his apartment.
♪
And that was a little suspicious,
but he's her dad.
♪
A detective from my office
was already obtaining search warrants for phones,
and we immediately asked for a warrant
for William's apartment.
♪
The warrant was granted,
and then Crime Scene responds.
At this point, we now conducted
a very methodical, thorough search
of Dad's apartment.
♪
William opens the door.
He was even eating porridge or something.
I explain to him that I want to take a look at the bags
if he would be okay with that.
He said, "No problem."
So I go to where the bags were, and I ask him--
I'm like, "You know, did you tamper with these?
Did you touch these? Are these new bags?"
And he goes, "No, no."
Detective Flood asked the forensics team
to test the garbage bag for blood.
So they take what's called an OPTI test.
As soon as the chemical hits the surface of the bag,
several areas immediately begin to glow.
It shows that it is blood.
♪
So at this point, we have to freeze
Dad's apartment now.
I immediately get on the phone,
and I call my squad commander at the time.
I let him know we have blood in Dad's apartment.
♪
It's been 2 1/2 days
since Anndrea Caruth went missing.
Detectives have just confirmed the presence of blood
on a garbage bag in the basement apartment
of Anndrea Caruth's dad, William.
However, the forensics team
is unable to immediately confirm
if the blood belongs to William,
the woman he is dating, or his missing daughter.
They now prepare the bag for collection into evidence.
And that's when one of the investigators
saw what appeared to be
dry blood on the wall.
♪
We now have two persons of interest
who live in the house:
Lincoln, who is still at the 47 Precinct,
and William.
Her father, William, allowed us to come in.
♪
I'm looking around his apartment,
and it's very sparsely furnished.
Looking at the floors.
See nothing, you know, had been dug up.
Looking at the wall like, is there a new Sheetrock here?
Like, what are we missing, you know?
What are we missing here?
I think somebody found a hammer.
♪
Nothing indicative of a crime.
Detectives notice he's been burning incense
in his apartment ever since the last visit.
On numerous other investigations,
I walk in, and there'll be some type of incense,
so, again, nothing out of the ordinary.
But the timing seems suspicious.
Detective Skulsky instructs William
to stop burning the incense.
♪
Now we're getting a little more steady
smell of death.
♪
I think one of the reasons
why the dogs didn't pick up the odor at first
when they went - I into his apartment easons
was the incense that was burning.
♪
So we immediately then take William Caruth
out of the apartment.
We begin a very thorough search.
You know, walking around like a bloodhound.
Like, I got to catch the smell again.
♪
Now we're getting a little more.
Not steady, but we're getting a little more smell.
♪
Going into the furnace room, nothing.
But the smell was much heavier right around that area.
♪
Across from the furnace room, there's a closet.
♪
A detective from the 47 goes over to a closet.
Opens a closet. Like any other closet.
Stuff on the floor, nothing crazy.
♪
He starts taking stuff out, like bags, and looks down.
He says, "There's a blue tarp on the floor of the closet."
♪
You know, not completely unusual
but a little suspicious.
♪
He takes the tarp off, plywood floor.
♪
And as he went closer to the plywood,
he's like, "Yo, it's right here.
It's--the smell is coming from here."
And he lifts up the plywood, and there's a hole.
♪
In the hole, partially covered
by gravel and river rocks,
they make a horrifying discovery.
♪
And he says, "I got her."
So we all run over there, look down.
There's Anndrea's body.
I recall she was in the fetal position,
and we're like, "Okay, well,
now we have our answer, unfortunately."
♪
Emergency service was able to get her body
out of that hole
and basically pronounced her deceased.
She had blunt force trauma to her head.
She had what appeared to be ligature marks
around her neck area
in what appeared to be, like, a strangulation.
She died very violently.
♪
Put yourself in those families' shoes.
There's always that ounce of hope
that maybe it's not as bad as it seems
until you finally get that bad news.
We can't bring her back.
We can't bring her unborn child back.
We can't erase the pain the family's gonna feel. k.
All we can do is
bring the person responsible to justice.
♪
We knew that something had happened
and something had taken a horrible turn,
but there was a lot of suspicion
about who did it.
♪
William Caruth is taken down to the 47 Precinct by patrol.
Lincoln is already there.
Our detectives now need to nail down
who was responsible for her death.
Was it Lincoln Grant, William Caruth,
neither, or both?
You know, something's afoot,
and we need to dive into this right away.
Back at the 47 Precinct,
our detectives first approach Lincoln
with the news about his fiancée,
Anndrea Caruth.
♪
Myself and Skulsky sat him down,
and we told him that we found Anndrea.
♪
And for just a moment, he looked very happy.
Like, just a very happy emotion ran over him.
But once Lincoln saw the look on Detective Flood
and I's faces and he realized that it wasn't good,
he just slumped back down and started to cry.
♪
We informed him--we said, "We're now treating this
as a homicide investigation,"
without giving him the particulars.
♪
He never requested to leave,
never requested an attorney, and was so concerned
that he didn't want to leave.
Basically, professing innocence.
♪
It was a rough going for him.
And I think it was especially tough
because it happened right under him.
♪
It's like, he was right there and couldn't save her.
We were on the phone every day for hours, crying.
♪
He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat.
The rug was pulled out under him.
♪
No longer suspicious of Lincoln,
now it's time to deliver the news to Anndrea's father.
William was in an interview room.
I walked in with Detective Flood,
again reintroduced ourselves to him.
And we said, "Mr. Caruth, we'd really like
to speak to you about your daughter Anndrea."
♪
He looks up at the both of us, and he says,
"I think I need a lawyer."
♪
Detectives Flood and Skulsky are at the 47 Precinct
attempting to interview William Caruth
when he asks for a lawyer.
♪
Your daughter's missing. She's pregnant.
We haven't told you we found her body.
We haven't told you you're a suspect,
and first thing you say to us is, "I want a lawyer"?
Okay, you got it. Can't talk to you.
It's over.
I think he knew we found her.
♪
Lincoln Grant is cleared as a suspect,
but Anndrea's father is arrested and charged
with second-degree murder.
He's fingerprinted, and a DNA swab
is collected from both of his hands
and is sent off to the lab.
♪
The hammer found in William's apartment
has Anndrea's DNA on it.
The medical examiner's office
also finds William Caruth's DNA under Anndrea's fingernails.
♪
It indicates to me in those last moments
that there was a fight and a struggle
and that she was fighting for her life,
and unfortunately,
she lost.
♪
She must have put up a fight
protecting her baby.
♪
Can you imagine what this girl went through?
He was killing both of them,
she and the baby.
♪
Wow.
♪
William, why did you kill her?
When I finally got that answer
that William Caruth was in custody
for his own daughter's murder,
I had to take a second to just process that
because it was beyond imaginable.
You murderer!
That was your own daughter!
I had never encountered anything
quite so sick and twisted
in my years of reporting previously.
♪
After the arrest was authorized,
we then transported him down to Bronx Central Booking.
♪
And on the way, Mr. Caruth just starts to talk.
♪
He says, "I brought my kids here,
and they all went to college first, before I did."
♪
He just wanted respect, you know?
And no one was respecting him.
He had nothing, and his kids had everything.
From what they know of the investigation,
detectives piece together the night of the murder.
♪
Anndrea and her father had a very strained relationship.
There was rumor of a financial motive.
It seems that Anndrea was in the process
of refinancing the house, and William found out.
♪
One theory we believe-- so on Sunday,
there was a problem with the heat.
♪
Based on their interview with Lincoln,
police believe that William turn the boiler off
knowing that Anndreaiew would come downstairs
to find out why the house had become so cold.
♪
She went downstairs to the thermostat
to confront her father,
like, "Are you messing with the heat?"
Police believe that William was waiting out of sight
with a hammer.
And at that time is when the fight
and struggled ensued.
As Anndrea turned toward the furnace,
William pummeled her from behind with the hammer.
♪
She had no enemies.
The dad was her only enemy.
♪
Two years later, William Caruth stood trial
for the death of his daughter.
♪
In October 2018,
he's found guilty of first-degree manslaughter.
♪
Even though police believe
William knew what he was doing that day,
the jury didn't think there was enough evidence
to support that it was premeditated.
♪
25 years is the maximum sentence
that you can receive for a manslaughter conviction,
and the judge said that that was handed down to William
because he showed no remorse for what he had done.
♪
Though justice prevails in this horrific case,
there's still a tremendous void in the Baychester community.
This is a terrible, terrible--
Terrible tragedy.
We had a vigil for her and her unborn baby
with a lot of candles,
a lot of balloons and teddy bears
and prayers.
♪
We were just really sad
in that she wasn't able to be here.
She's here in spirit.
I miss her so much. It's not funny.
It's like, I would do anything to have her back.
Anything.
♪
Yeah.
Sometimes I'm home,
I just call her name out of nowhere.
Like, "Angie, I wish you were around."
♪
Yeah.
Mm.
♪