(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Every suspect accused of a crime
has the right to remain silent.
Many agree to be interrogated anyway
but they can stop the interview at any moment,
making it a race against time.
Justice hangs in the balance.
(suspenseful music)
- I was at the station and I was doing some paperwork
and a gentleman walked in
and he was requesting a supervisor.
Brian Heisler said that his main concern
was where his sister was.
(suspenseful music)
- Brian said a day or two earlier,
he'd gotten a phone call from Phil
and said that Roberta had passed away in Memphis, Tennessee,
about 750 miles from Hartville, Ohio.
- Philip told him
that Roberta had passed away in the vehicle
and two EMS personnel took her body
and said that they were going to take her
to the coroner's office.
And then Philip left and came home without Roberta's body,
so Brian was definitely very upset
and just wondering what happened.
- I end up speaking with the chief
because the situation just didn't make sense
and there was definitely more to the story.
- If the story that Philip told was true,
that she passed away of natural causes in Memphis,
that would not be a crime.
But not knowing where her body is,
now it's a crime
because you have to properly care for the corpse.
Especially if you're out of state
and you have a death like that.
There would have to be an autopsy.
Sergeant said, "So, what are we gonna do?"
And I said "We're gonna find her."
(gentle music)
- Roberta was friends with my grandmother.
They lived in the same neighborhood.
When I first met Roberta, she was shy
and, you know, reserved, kind of keeping herself.
But when Phil wasn't around, she would open up.
She was very uplifting and very kind.
She was gentle, but she could put her foot in the ground
if she really needed to,
so she could stand her ground.
I got to know her through playing cards, Euchre.
Roberta really helped me understand the game.
She may not have always shown it,
but deep down, she had a competitive edge.
I feel like she would bring a smile to your face
'cause she would remind me of, you know,
my grandma.
(ominous music)
- Our decision was to interview him at his home
so he would feel more comfortable.
My goal was to get him to open up
and explain what happened to his wife,
so I wanted to act like I didn't know that she was missing.
- During that interview,
there was an uneasy feeling because I know if that was me,
I would definitely not be home
when my wife's body is somewhere else.
- Even though I spoke with him,
he still wasn't giving a lot of answers
to help us find Roberta.
- And in this day and age,
you can't just drop a body off with some paramedics
who are down in Memphis, Tennessee
and not know where they took her or what they did with her.
I still felt that there was more to the story
and obviously we need to get to the bottom of it
to figure out where she is,
so we can give the answers to the family.
(suspenseful music)
(siren wailing)
I contacted the coroner, contacted multiple EMS agencies,
multiple hospitals in the general area,
and there was nothing matching that name
or description of Roberta.
I thought the plot was thickening
and it was definitely getting weirder by the second.
At this point, I believe
there might be some foul play involved.
(dog barking distantly)
(suspenseful music)
- I realized that we needed to go in and search the house
because she could be laying dead in there.
She could be alive in there.
We don't know anything other than what Phil said
and if I would've interviewed him at the station,
I wouldn't have the ability
to ask him to let me search the house so easily.
(suspenseful music)
- We didn't know if she was dead or alive.
The purpose was to make sure that she wasn't in there
or there wasn't some blood-soaked area on the floor.
- [Larry] We walked all through his house.
(eerie music)
- He lacked compassion.
If my wife is missing,
I have a little more concern about her whereabouts.
- So my gut reaction to this whole thing is he killed her
and he's gonna do everything in his power
to not divulge that he killed her.
I decided I was gonna start pushing him a little bit.
- I was testing him
because I didn't know to what degree I could push him
and keeping him comfortable with me was very important.
(ominous music)
Later that day,
I reached out to the hotel manager in Sparta, Kentucky.
The room that Philip got that night
was underneath a camera
and the desk where he checked in had a camera
and he said, "Chief, there was no couple.
It was just him."
- At this point, where is Roberta?
The hotel was not that far out of the state of Ohio.
- And that was the first, real, concrete evidence we had
that she did not get to Memphis.
(ticking)
(knocking)
- Come on in.
(indistinct)
- Sure.
- Want to sit down?
- How are you doing?
- I'm feeling stressed, tired.
- My goal was to confront him
because I wanted to see how he would react.
(clock ticking)
You can almost see it unfolding in front of you,
how he dips into an emotional state.
He's caught in our crossfires at this moment.
(tense music)
- I was concerned he could come out with a weapon
of some sort.
I was literally prepared to take out my firearm
and shoot him.
(suspenseful music)
- I didn't know if he would be a threat to himself
or a threat to us.
You could see my right hand was sitting on my side arm,
just in case he came around the corner
with anything aggressive.
- When he started to come out,
yeah, we didn't know what he had or what he was doing
so we were ready for anything.
But I believe he literally went to the bedroom
just to collect his thoughts
so he could come out and just give us another story.
- We went down and we looked at maps with Phil.
I definitely was mixed about it
because he was a very, very good liar.
I didn't think that she was in the river.
But once he's stuck to that story,
we have to disprove it or we have to prove it.
(tense music)
He brought out a helicopter and boats
and all-terrain vehicles to go along the shorelines.
And he conducted a good search.
- But we never found the body.
(eerie music)
(siren wailing)
- His spontaneous actions told me we're touching a nerve
that's causing him to try to dig his way out of it.
We decided we were gonna come back the next day
with a cadaver dog to go through the house.
(ominous music)
As we entered the residence,
you could tell the cadaver dog
really wanted to go in a specific direction.
We ended up going into the basement
and K9 Jet bolted directly for a red bin
that was located under a table.
(eerie music)
- As soon as you open the red bin,
you could smell
a very distinct odor.
- There were what appeared to be stains of blood
and in the bottom of that tub was a white plastic bag.
And inside that white plastic bag
was the front of a sweatshirt that had been cut off
that said Hartville Ohio USA.
- I believe he definitely cut off for a reason
because that's gonna indicate exactly where she was from.
- I had a conversation with our coroner.
Unfortunately, she said, "Look, if there was more blood,
I might be able to say yes, this is a homicide."
But it was just little specks,
little stains of blood here and there.
And that was frustrating.
We needed to find the body of Roberta Snider.
(suspenseful music)
We found out he used Roberta's credit card
on the way to and from Graceland.
- And the first stop on this journey was in Wooster, Ohio.
- Which is an hour away from Hartville, Ohio,
and he filled up with gas.
- So I contacted the general manager of the store
and asked her to review video from that date.
- And that video shows Phil pulling in,
but there's nobody in the passenger seat.
It's just Phil all by himself.
- That obviously tells me that she was not in the vehicle
40 minutes from his residence.
(ominous music)
- I have never before interviewed a murder suspect
in a psych ward in a hospital.
But after getting some assurances from the staff there,
we went ahead and did it.
(tense music)
(ominous music)
- He knew we were getting very close
to being able to prove what he did
and he didn't wanna play ball anymore.
But he never said, "I want a lawyer,"
he never said anything that would prohibit us
from further investigating.
(eerie music)
I was interviewing a couple people
for positions in my police department
and Joan Bauer is a rockstar police officer
and we hired her.
- I talked to the chief about this case
because it was all over the news.
I asked him, "Hey,
can I take a crack at this, you know, undercover?"
That is my background.
The chief was like, "Yeah, let's give it a crack."
They showed me a picture of him,
but I did not read any police reports so I could develop
the undercover person that I needed to be
without being biased.
I started doing surveillance
and he made it pretty easy for me to get a pattern
very quickly.
(suspenseful music)
At lunchtime,
I observed his truck at a local fast food restaurant
and I went in.
There was a lady sitting at a booth next to me.
So I positioned myself so that I could put the camera on him
and I began to talk rather loudly to the lady.
I gave my story
that I was in town taking care of my sick mother.
(ominous music)
Right after,
I had pretty much laid out why I'm in this small town.
He meets with a friend
and he moves his seat closer to where I'm sitting.
You can see that he looks away
and he lost interest during that.
So, in the beginning,
I'm deciding how I'm going to mold the character
to befriend him.
(eerie music)
- He did appear to be somewhat lonely.
So I created the person who just needs to hang out and talk
during the day.
(ominous music)
He believed I was just liking him for who he was
and then it started with his wanting to help me
take care of my mother.
He told me how I should kill her
and then if I did, to call him and he would come help me.
And from there, I started to change the script
and ask him more about himself.
He said, "My wife died not too long ago,"
and I pretty much acted like I was surprised.
It seemed like I was getting closer to the truth
and what he did to Roberta.
He called me and asked if I would meet him
10 miles from Hartville,
and he explained he wanted to tell me more about Roberta.
He did not want people to hear.
I had to be really careful
because this was a form of interrogation
that had to be done gently.
(ominous music) (siren wailing distantly)
I did have a feeling that we were right on the cusp.
He felt like no one trusted him.
And I created just a person that wouldn't judge him.
I went into the restaurant.
- He was a lot more relaxed than he had ever been.
It was like we were long-lost friends
and right away, I could tell that
he was gonna tell me the truth.
The video recorder died like, right at that time.
But I did have the backup audio device going.
It was very eerie
and you could almost like, see it peel off of him,
the stress of just carrying it all this time.
That was a shock and I had to roll with it.
I knew that from then, I had to get the confession that day.
And so I was able to push him
with, if I agree to do something like that,
you have to trust me enough to tell me,
you know, everything.
- It was a full confession.
He used his hands as visuals for how he killed her
and just laid it out there for me to pretty much accept it.
- I knew then that I had him,
however, I did not know whether I had it on the audio
or the video.
So I left it with him that we would meet later that day.
(ominous music)
- We agreed to meet down at the FBI office
so that we could all hear it
and decide whether or not this was indeed a confession.
- When I heard Phil Snider,
I'm thinking that, "We got you Phil, we finally got you."
And I told the chief, "It's time, go arrest him."
(tense music)
- We entered the restaurant
and he was in disbelief that we had a warrant for him.
- Right up until he got his handcuffs put on,
he thought for sure he had fooled us.
- Here we go.
(indistinct) (police radio chatter)
(ticking)
(ominous music)
- He took him to Bullitt, Kentucky
and showed him a dumpster
that he claimed to have put Roberta's body in.
- We tracked down where the landfill was
and we went out there
and we watched a 200,000-pound bulldozer
leveling everything.
It compresses everything.
So she's somewhere in that 500 by 500 foot grid out there,
anywhere up to 25 feet below the surface.
But we just didn't have $15,000,000
that would allow us to bring her back for proper burial.
- We thought we could come up with more for the family,
but that was the end of the line.
That was very sad.
- We said a prayer for her and we left.
It's not a happy ending for anybody,
but there's bad people in the world
and we need intuitive cops to conduct these interviews
and to be flexible with how they deal with people
to bring justice to a case, justice to a family.
- I thought we lost somebody
that you could look to and could learn a lot from.
I would love to tell her thank you,
'cause she was always kind and treated me with respect.
It will always stick with me.
I'm glad I got to meet her
and I'm glad that she was a part of my life.