(intense 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.
(suspenseful music)
Justice hangs in the balance.
(intense music)
(sirens wailing)
- When I arrived on scene,
there were people sitting on their screened in patios
while we were out there.
They watched it all.
Everyone in the neighborhood was worried
that something bad had happened to Fred.
- It was all woods in the back of those mailboxes.
And I was afraid that whoever did this might still be there.
- Everybody was scared.
I mean, this actually frightened everybody.
- [Tommy] And Fred’s wife, Sherry was
screaming and yelling.
She was just frantic.
(indistinct radio chatter)
- The bloodhound tracking team members
were preparing to begin their search for Fred,
and that’s when we noticed the door to the mailbox was open.
(dramatic music)
We had found blood and a pair of glasses.
Someone had been drug through this pool of blood.
One of the team members saw something
that caught his eye in the woodline.
And when we illuminated that area with light,
it was a dead body.
(dramatic music)
There was a wound on the back of his head that was bleeding
and there was a shoelace that had been tied around his neck.
Having no more information than that,
there’s a lot of question marks.
We’ve gone from a missing person to a homicide.
(dramatic music)
(pensive music)
- Fred lived about 30 feet across the courtyard from us.
If you knew him, you liked him.
You know, simple as that.
The thing that I enjoyed most
was having a little Maker’s Mark with him in the afternoon.
- Fred was the only neighbor
’cause it was a new subdivision going up.
He introduced himself to us and he said,
"If we need anything, I’m right next door.
If you need me, call me."
- He told us about how he was getting married
and he was gonna be bringing his wife
from Kentucky to Myrtle Beach in a couple of months.
(gentle music)
- He loved her. And Sherry thought the world of Fred.
- Fred did very well for himself.
I don’t think money was an object to him.
Fred gave Sherry anything she wanted.
- They went to Holland, they went to China,
they went to New York.
He bought her a sports car with a convertible top
and anything she wanted.
You know, everything was just perfect.
(dramatic music)
- They put the shoelace around his neck,
cinched it tight and left him to die
there in the woods like an animal.
The location of the crime tells me
that it was a crime of opportunity.
They wanted it done quickly, they wanted it done officially,
and they wanted it done now.
- Fred was probably 240, 230 pounds.
So we knew that whoever had done this
had to have the strength to drag Fred
into the woods approximately 25 feet.
(edgy music)
- They were about a size 13 work boot
and they had a very long stride.
I’m looking for someone most likely a male,
who’s very large and very strong.
(pulsating music)
Sherry had said she went to bed around 10:00 PM.
She woke up around 10 minutes before midnight
and noticed that Fred wasn’t in the bedroom.
She assumed she would just go downstairs
and he would still be working,
but didn’t find him anywhere else in the condo.
Noticed that the mailbox key was gone
and his cell phone was gone.
I took that opportunity to advise her
that Fred had been located and he was deceased.
She was immediately inconsolable and collapsed on the couch
to the point that she actually lost consciousness.
I couldn’t find a pulse.
I’m positioning myself to begin CPR
when suddenly she took a deep, agonal breath
and she came back.
(indistinct radio chatter)
(tense music)
- She thought that the driving was weird, driving so slowly.
She also said that when the truck entered the parking lot
that the lights were already off.
- She told me that she sat there a few minutes
and then she says, "I grabbed my bag."
She says, "And I hurried up and locked my door,
and I went to my townhouse."
And she said that truck just stayed there.
- She thought that was very abnormal
and suspicious behavior for that neighborhood.
But we did not have a license tag number,
we didn’t have a description of a driver.
Leads really weren’t developing at that point.
(tense music)
(intense music)
They had some sort of disagreement
about a trashcan receptacle.
Other people in the neighborhood heard
he would do harm to Fred Engel.
- People said he is terrorizing the area.
Nobody has a problem with Fred except this kid.
- Everyone I talked to felt like
he could be capable of murdering someone.
So that immediately made them suspect number one.
(intense music)
We went and recovered video surveillance footage
and it was exactly the way
that juvenile claimed it would be.
That completely excluded him from the list of suspects.
I had really come to a point in the investigation
very rapidly, where I’d run outta leads
and things seemed to be slowing down.
(clock ticking)
(ominous music)
The most important piece of forensic information
that came from the analysis of Fred’s laptop
was that he powered the laptop down about 11:00
and Sherry reported that she woke up around 11:50.
So that narrowed the timeframe down for the murder
to a 50 minute window from 11:00 PM to 11:50.
(pensive music)
I had found a block of phone calls and text messages
between Sherry and a 502 area code,
which came back to the Kentucky area.
And there were phone calls that were made
and received to this number during the time
that she claimed she was asleep the night of Fred’s murder.
And that was a big alarm bell.
This number wasn’t found in her previous calls list.
That tells me she deleted all of the phone calls
she had made during the time period
where she claimed she was asleep.
I knew then Sherry has a lot of information
that she’s keeping from me, not only now,
but since the very first moment of the investigation.
(clock ticking)
(eerie music)
I also had cellular data that showed Timmy Rogers’
cell phone leaving a hotel in Myrtle Beach,
traveling to the crime scene,
traveling back to Kentucky at the exact same time
that Sherry Engel decided to return back to Kentucky.
All of these pieces of information coming together
has just made Timmy Rogers the prime suspect
in Fred Engel’s murder.
(suspenseful music)
They said, "Yep, he’s been staying here
off and on for months."
They said he had a small Chevrolet pickup
that was burgundy or maroon in color.
And they had seen Sherry and Timmy in a passionate embrace
that included tongue kissing in the lobby of the hotel.
He obviously has a very close relationship with Sherry
and lots of information had come from Sherry’s family.
They all had begun to think that Sherry
may be involved in Fred’s death.
- Sherry’s family really loved Fred
and are very eager to talk to the police.
She has been seen several times with Timmy Rogers,
especially around the time of planning for the funeral.
Whispering, going off in private
and Fred’s not even cold yet.
- Fred’s a legitimate international businessman.
I feel like Sherry believed there was a large estate
that she would inherit.
All of these pieces of information that I had
were starting to come together
and I had enough probable cause to seek arrest warrants
for Timmy Rogers and Sherry Engel.
(eerie music)
We found Sherry coming out of a drugstore.
Her whole demeanor changed.
Her eyes sunk and she knew exactly why we were there.
Timmy was located at his residence.
He didn’t provide any resistance whatsoever.
My initial impression of Timmy Rogers,
he seemed large enough and physically capable
of actually doing this.
A 6’4" guy that literally used to be a lumberjack.
(clock ticking)
- We are dealing with a lot of circumstantial evidence.
There is no DNA, it was going to be a challenge
at convicting two people.
- I felt like that would be important
to our prosecution team to get
at least one of these people on board
and break the case.
- Fred was just a genuine person.
They did go to Holland and they did bring back
my granddaughter a pair of wooden shoes.
- Sherry and Fred didn’t appear to have any problems at all.
- I was shocked to even hear
that Sherry was even considered a suspect.
I could not believe it, not at all.
(gentle music)
(intense music)
- With Timmy’s demeanor,
I didn’t feel like I could push him very far, very fast
and I wanted him to feel like he could talk to me.
- It was really important to me to begin opening up
the conversation about his relationship with Sherry
and that’s the goal.
To give them some sort of stimulus
that causes them to provide information about the case.
- When I asked him why he didn’t stay with Sherry,
I made a note.
It seemed to panic Timmy.
Even leaned forward to see if he could figure out
exactly what I was writing down.
I knew that was a button I could go back and push
and amp up that stress level anytime I needed to.
That’s a very valuable tactical tool.
- At this point I had been conversational.
I had tried to be his friend
and that hadn’t gotten very good results.
So now’s the time to turn up the heat.
It was important to me to cut him off
whenever I felt like he was lying so he would understand
the amount of information that I already had received.
And I wanted him to understand that there were
significant consequences to the crime
that we were investigating.
(edgy music)
It was an opportunity to make Timmy believe
that Sherry Engel was providing
all of the gory details of this case.
When people realize, in those situations,
that someone else may be speaking for them,
very often it comes very important to them
to tell their own story.
I was really hoping to get some sort of response outta him,
but once again, he was able to regain his composure
and not really provide any information.
So as this information is landing,
his body is just deflating.
I’m moving along at the right pace here
and the response his body’s giving me is telling me that.
- As meek and mild as he may have been,
he stuck to his story like a champ.
He would not come off of it.
I felt like it was important to push him from another angle.
He knew he was having a adulterous relationship
with a married woman.
I hoped that introducing that thought to Timmy
would give him the motivation to speak
and tell us his side of the story.
Having two investigators
interrogating somebody is valuable.
My partner did a great job of stepping in at any moment
that he knew that something needed to be said.
(tense music)
- Immediately, my hopes jumped really high.
It was the first time he had said anything negative
about Sherry in any capacity.
We had crossed a threshold where he was going to be willing
to actually say what he did.
(dramatic music)
(gentle music)
- He was just so secure in his love for Sherry,
in doing what he thought was the right thing
for their relationship.
And that was deny everything, every accusation we had.
(anxious music)
- We really didn’t have any direct evidence
against Timmy Rogers.
And without her breaking down,
I think we go a little bit better than a coin toss
at convicting two people for this murder.
- I had been dealing with Sherry Engel
since the moment this crime occurred
and I felt like that she would be just like Timmy,
she would deny everything.
So I had some pieces of evidence
and information about the case to cut her off.
- I had Sherry’s cellular telephone records.
I had Fred’s cellular telephone records.
She made no phone calls in an attempt to try to locate Fred
because she already knew Fred was dead.
(tense music)
- When I presented the jewelry to Sherry
that I had seized from Timmy,
I thought that that may be an opportunity to push her in
that emotional direction to start becoming truthful.
But she was able to continue with her act
and didn’t really break.
- She shifted forward and back really quickly.
It was really the first time she’d shown any cracks
since the beginning of the case.
(pensive music)
- It was a significant diversion tactic for her
to further paint herself as that grieving widow.
So as an investigator,
you have to have a skillset to be able to push through it
and actually get ’em back on track.
It was important to basically put the whole case out there.
This is what we’re gonna put you in jail with
for the rest of your life.
- She denied, she tried to divert.
So the last tactic I really felt like I had left
was having more pointed language, more sarcasm.
- We came at her from every angle we could think of,
with every piece of evidence that we had,
every possible emotional trigger we could come up with
and it just didn’t get through to her.
(tense music)
I did not expect to really ever speak to her again.
I expected her, from that point forward
to have no further contact with us.
About an hour and a half after
that initial interview with Sherry,
she relayed a message through the sheriff’s office
that she wanted to speak to us again.
That was very surprising.
(pulsating music)
- I think that she understood there was a possibility
that Timmy could be providing all of the information
about what had happened up to that point.
And I think that panicked her.
She trusted him enough to kill her husband,
but she didn’t trust him enough to not rat her out for murder.
(Sherry crying uncontrollably)
Her husband wasn’t shot.
Timmy lied to her, which is no surprise.
Murderers tell lies.
But Sherry’s finally expressing some real emotion,
but she’s still responsible for his death.
It was really important to me to make a strong effort
to get her to state her actual role in this.
- To have her finally provide that information
was such a relief.
She essentially dispatched her own husband to his own death.
And the only way I knew that for sure
is Sherry Engel confessed to it.
(somber music)
(clock ticking)
(pensive music)
- This case was never a slam dunk,
but when Sherry came through and told the story
of what happened, now you’ve got direct evidence.
Sherry’s interrogation was so important to this case
that I chose to turn Sherry as the state’s witness.
(clock ticking)
(droning music)
- Sherry Engel is a master manipulator.
She’s a person that holds ill will in her heart
for many people.
And in this particular case,
that manifested itself in murder.
The saddest aspect of this case is the effort
and the devotion and the love
that Fred Engel had for his wife.
- I would like people to remember Fred Engel
for the man that he was.
He was hardworking, he was generous, he was friendly.
Just a really nice guy.
Sherry, well, there’s a letter saying,
"Please come to the prison where I can explain myself."
You don’t have to explain yourself to me,
explain yourself to God.
(somber piano music)