[ominous music]
- A 911 call came into dispatch.
I was notified to start for Amity Route 1
for a child with a wound to his back.
When I pulled in, the trailer was dark
and I approached the building.
When I entered, one of the first things I did pick up
was a lot of blood on the couch
and blood on the floor.
Beer bottles on the counter.
Cigarettes in the ashtray.
As I moved down the hallway, I got to the last room,
which was a bedroom, and there was blood on the doorjamb.
When I tried to push the door open,
the door opened a little bit and came against something.
I couldn't move it.
So I stuck my head through the opening
and looked down, and I saw a deceased child.
His back had a lot of dried blood
and I saw six to eight stab wounds.
[ominous music continues]
At that point, another officer yelled to me
and he was illuminating something.
There was a male adult body underneath an old chicken coop,
and he was obviously deceased.
- His body was in a bit of an odd position.
It was almost as if he had tried to escape
or get away from a threat.
And he had very similar multiple stab wounds to his torso
that the child had
on the interior of the residence itself.
[ominous music continues]
- At this point,
one of the troopers noticed a third body laying
in tall grass right there in the driveway.
There were so many stab wounds.
He had a major gash across his throat.
It looked as if his head was almost decapitated
at this point.
We were able to narrow down
that the homicide occurred sometime Tuesday night.
The bodies were found 24 hours after it occurred.
So whoever did this has a 24-hour run on us.
They found three beer bottles
that were sitting on the cupboard.
So we have two adult males that are dead.
Is the killer responsible for the third beer?
Also in the cupboard, we found an ashtray.
There were two different brands of cigarettes
in that ashtray.
One person normally doesn't smoke
two different brands of cigarettes.
Maybe one of them belongs to the killer.
[tense music]
There's quite an urgency on our hands
to find whoever did this.
It didn't take long for the word to get out
that we have a killer out there somewhere.
And people were getting very, very scared.
[wind whooshing]
[tense music]
- Bob Strout and his wife lived a short distance down
the road on Route 1.
And Detective Dale Keegan
and I knocked on the door
and basically told them what had taken place.
They expressed that it was a terrible thing
and how bad it was, but there wasn't a whole lot of emotion
or sympathy, which just came across as odd to me.
- This is really, you know, for something like this
to happen in a small town like this,
you just can't believe it.
Can't believe it.
- And when the detectives left Bob Strout's house,
they pounded on doors, but there was a lack of leads.
Someone had killed three people,
and we have no clue who did it.
[gentle music]
- I think my dad lived life to its fullest every single day.
I remember me, him, and my great-grandfather
actually planned a big hunting trip
and we got stranded out in the woods.
The car broke down.
But, you know, my dad made the best of it.
He put up some bottles
that we could practice target shooting with.
He really enjoyed life
and enjoyed making the best of the little things.
My dad and Jeff, they were really close.
They did everything together.
He was like family to me.
We called him Uncle Jeff.
He was a kindhearted guy that, he'd do anything for anyone.
[melancholy music]
Jesse was a grade ahead of me.
He was a jokester.
He loved, loved to joke, pull little pranks.
Every Sunday was NASCAR day.
Jeff would make a whole bunch of food for everyone,
and me and Jesse would go play his PlayStation
or we'd play on the computer.
He was my best friend.
[tense music]
- Each puncture wound seemed to have a puncture, twist,
and then a removal.
And then puncture, twist, remove, puncture, twist, remove,
which had some potential military relation and training.
- About the same time period,
we were getting calls back from our crime lab in Augusta.
It was unique that they found that the three bottles
that were on the scene,
one of them belonged to the victim, Jeffrey,
one of them had belonged to Jason,
and the other bottle was an unknown male DNA.
Also, we were able to find fingerprints
on all three bottles.
So one bottle had DNA of an unknown male
and a fingerprint that was not on file.
Doesn't mean he's the killer, but who is that mystery man?
[birds chirping]
[tense music]
[clock ticks]
- A few days into the investigation,
we had a caller who described seeing smoke
not far down the road off Route 1, not far from the scene.
And investigators went down to that location
and discovered the clearing in the wood
where Jeffrey Ryan's pickup truck was located
and had been set on fire.
- It was burned beyond recognition at this point.
- Also, we had a witness
that saw a maroon-colored pickup truck nearby
where Jeff's truck was found one day after the murders
that they felt looked like Bob Strout's truck,
and that it looked like Bob
and a young male were in the pickup truck.
- We also learned that Bob Strout left the area
after the murder and traveled down to New Hampshire.
It drew a red flag to me
that maybe Bob was more involved in this
than he wished to admit to.
So at this point, I wanted to follow up with Bob
to ask some more detailed questions.
[birds chirping]
When we arrived at Bob Strout's house to speak with him,
one of the questions we had for Bob was,
why did you go to New Hampshire?
He said, yeah, you're right.
I went down to drop Thayne off down there
and left him there.
This is the first time any of us ever heard
of the name Thayne.
So obvious question, who is Thayne?
[ominous music]
Bob said that Thayne Ormsby was a friend of the family.
Thayne was staying up here for a couple weeks,
living with Bob,
and was up here at the time of the murder.
- A few days later, Bob took him
to his new apartment down in Dover, New Hampshire.
You know, red flag number one.
Thayne's name's never been mentioned.
Red flag number two, Bob's taking him out of state.
So we need to talk to Thayne.
[clock ticking]
We go knocking on his door to say, okay, Thayne,
we're detectives with the Maine State Police.
We have good information
that you were up at Bob Strout's residence.
Got some basic questions.
His reaction to that was basically, yeah, sure.
I'll talk to you.
- Our job is to make sure to come in calm,
come in kind of nonchalant,
become their friend, if you will.
So he agreed to come to our cruiser and speak to us.
Obviously you can't smoke in a cruiser,
but I immediately said yes, light up.
'Cause I wanted to see what he has for cigarettes.
And what was significant to me is
that the cigarette was a white filter on it,
which in my mind, real quick,
looking at it from the picture,
it matched the cigarette that was found at the scene.
- After we collected Thayne's DNA and fingerprints,
we got out of the vehicle.
And basically Dale made the statement to him
as he is shaking his hand by saying,
you know, if you did this, we're gonna get you.
And Thayne's response to that was, "I know you will."
[melancholy music] [birds chirping]
[water whooshing]
- The moment that I found out my dad died,
I was at his house with my stepmother.
And she sat me down on the couch
and she just said,
"Look, you know, Daddy's not coming home tonight."
I was never gonna be able to go hunting
with him again or fishing.
That was what my life consisted of,
was looking forward to the weekends with my dad.
It's hard to process still,
but when people remember my dad,
I'd love for them, you know, to remember his warm heart.
You know, if someone was broken down
on the side of the road,
he'd be, like, the first one there to stop and help them.
He would do anything for anyone.
And he loved his family more than anything.
[melancholy music continues]
- We got the DNA results back within a couple days,
and we were able to confirm that the DNA
in that beer bottle,
along with the fingerprints on that beer bottle,
matches Thayne Ormsby.
- We had no DNA, no prints,
to point towards anybody else's involvement besides his.
So if he committed these murders,
it's a high probability he did it by himself.
But he was there staying with Bob Strout at his house.
So we have confidence Bob was involved
at least after the fact,
not necessarily in the actual murders themselves,
but in an effort to help conceal Thayne's involvement.
- We had a team of detectives that were gonna put together
and do a strategic interview of Bob
at the same time that Detective Stoutamyer and I
were gonna go to New Hampshire to interview Thayne.
We were gonna do a simultaneous interview.
- We don't want them tipping off the other individual.
So it's important to do these things simultaneously
because you're taking them out
of communication with each other.
And if we find out Bob provided the information
that we needed,
that was the time we were gonna put the added pressure
onto Thayne and change our interrogation strategy.
[horn beeps]
[clock ticks]
[somber music]
- Talking to Thayne, it was very critical for us
to make sure that he knew that we are still, quote, friends,
that he is there to help us,
that he was not under arrest,
that he was coming freely to the PD.
- We were gonna meet with Thayne,
gather more historical information,
and bide our time during the interrogation
until we got the details about
where they were at when they were talking to Bob.
- Most people will say a monster would do this.
They killed a 10-year-old kid.
The guy's a monster.
And someone that did it just kinda play,
I don't know.
"I guess I haven't given it much thought,"
like he says.
How can you not give it much thought?
This is a small town U.S.A., you were a mile away.
Three people got killed and you don't think about it?
[tense music]
[ominous music]
[vehicle roars past]
- Here's this horrible, heinous crime.
You got three people stabbed to death.
The community, the county, the state wants answers.
They want this person reeled in quick
before he does anything more.
And it's just a matter
of whether you can prove who did it.
Bob gave his rendition that Thayne said that he did it.
He killed them all.
But no matter what Bob said,
we still had to get that confession from Thayne
so it isn't anything that he can get away from.
[tense music]
- At the time we were talking with Thayne
while those simultaneous interviews were going on,
we're killing time because we had no awareness
of what exactly in detail Bob was providing.
Thayne was coming across as Thayne,
talking about himself, boosting his ego.
It was almost like talking to an actor portraying Thayne.
- Several times I would leave the room to get feedback
and what's going on up with Bob.
- My knowledge of Bob's involvement
was completely encompassed into a note
that Dale had written on when he came back in
from one of the breaks that we had taken,
and handed it to me saying
that Bob Strout gave up Thayne and that he killed them all.
When we knew that Bob had given up Thayne,
we knew that was when we were gonna take our turn
and we were gonna hit the gas pedal.
And I just looked at it and tucked it in my notepad
knowing that Thayne was our killer.
He was one that committed these three murders.
- Thayne could be easily distracted.
So if you take him down a line of questioning
and then take him down another line of questioning
and then bring him back to where he left off,
he'll forget what he may have told you
and might contradict himself.
Our intent was to poke holes in his story.
- He drew a pretty accurate diagram.
I thought unique that he was able
to actually draw those rooms better
than I could at that point.
So very telling that he was in that house.
[tense music]
I could see where cracks are starting to happen in his story
where I caught him in a lie.
I could feel my temperature going up.
We got three dead bodies there,
one involving a kid,
and you're lying during an investigation.
I find that very relevant.
And I had to pull myself back under, too.
Okay. Don't get nasty here. It's okay.
So I quickly had to move on,
but I wanted him to know
that I do know what's going on here.
[ominous music]
- You can see him thinking like,
oh crap, you caught me in another lie.
He wanted to distance himself from
where the boy was down that hallway.
He ran down the hallway, hid in the master bedroom,
so he would've had to walk right by the bathroom
to kill him.
- We've put him on the defensive,
and he's trying to scramble to come up with explanations
for the questions we're asking him.
He just is befuddled,
and I think this is the first time
that he's felt like he's kinda losing control.
- Getting inside somebody's personal space
is an interrogation technique to put them off,
make them feel uncomfortable.
A lot of times, we'll give ourselves the chair with wheels,
with casters, and them the chair that won't move.
So as you get up close to them, they can't back up.
Situationally, he's feeling a lot of weight
and a lot of pressure.
Now, physically he's feeling pressure.
So it kinda adds and adds to that mentally as well.
- So this event, meaning the murders.
So in a way that's a bit of an admission.
He's really getting close to breaking
and telling us what happened.
[tense music]
[ominous music]
- When we walked outside, he walked up to me
and he asked me what he was looking at.
I said, "Well, Thayne, this is a pretty serious issue.
It's not like you stole a candy bar from the grocery store.
You got three dead bodies back there,
one of which is a 10-year-old boy.
It's kind of a big deal."
So we kinda paused for a moment.
He sat down on the steps
and I could see the tears coming down his cheeks,
which made me focus on his eyes.
And I noticed that his eyelashes were straight
about 80% of the way,
then the very tips of 'em were all burnt and curled.
And I said, "Thayne,"
I said, "I know you burnt the pickup truck."
I said, "Your eyelashes are all burnt on the ends."
And then it was only a moment later he said,
"So are we ready to go back in?"
[Thayne sighs]
[Thayne sniffling]
[ominous music]
Finally we got a confession.
We have enough now to arrest him.
Now everything else on top of that will just add to it.
- I guess a case like this
will always have questions of why.
Why would he go down there to kill Jeff?
It made absolutely no sense to me.
- What he did was horrible. It was horrible.
But we had accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.
We reached the end goal,
and the end goal is for him to confess to the murders.
- Thayne wasn't stupid. He was a smart guy.
And I think throughout his life,
he's been able to persuade people by using his intelligence
and his ability to talk.
And I think he tried to utilize that same tactic with us
and we just weren't gonna buy it.
[tense music continues]
[dog barking]
[clock ticks]
The job isn't over.
There's still investigation work that needs to be done
back up in northern Maine.
If you could find the murder weapon, that is very important.
There was a swampy area right off the side of Route 1
and Thayne literally just took the knife
and threw it right into the water.
So once we gathered information from Bob
about the location of it,
we elicited the use of the Maine State Police dive team
to go up to that area to try to locate the knife.
And they actually were able to, through the use of a dam,
lower the water level down enough
to expose it laying right there.
It all fills in one piece of the puzzle
and glues aspects of the case together.
[tense music continues]
[clock ticking]
- Thayne was convicted.
He gets sentenced to three consecutive life terms,
plus 15 years for the arson.
- The three life sentences, in my opinion,
were appropriate for this case.
If you're gonna hand out one life sentence for one victim,
you gotta hand 'em out for all three of them.
- As far as justice for the victims,
you can't bring them back.
And they were robbed of their lives,
but their family members were robbed of their future.
[melancholy music]
- I've been told since my dad had found out
that my mom was pregnant with me,
he was excited and he just couldn't wait.
He couldn't wait to become a dad.
He treated me like I was the world to him.
And that just has always felt so special to me, so,
I wanna be someone that, you know,
my dad could be proud of.
And Jesse, he's been gone for 13 years,
but in my head he's still my best friend.
I don't know if I believe in heaven,
but I'd really like to think that they're up there together
and maybe my dad and Jeff are watching NASCAR
and drinking a beer.