[tense music]
[suspenseful 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.
[police sirens] [tense music]
- The scene is just chaotic.
We had two victims down.
The female victim is laying
in the middle of the intersection.
There's a bunch of blood.
[camera clicking]
I didn't feel a pulse, I couldn't see her chest rising.
I began to do CPR on her.
Maybe about 20 feet away or so, another victim.
He had some sort of wound to the left side of his chest.
- Both of the victims had lost a lot of blood
and had multiple stab wounds.
The victims on the scene were identified as Paiten Sullivan
and Felipe Negron.
Paiten was 17 years old and Felipe was 18 years old.
[camera clicking]
To see something this brutal happen at such a young age
was very shocking to me.
[tense music]
- There was a vehicle parked
facing the west.
When I went and investigated,
there was blood all over inside the vehicle.
Blood outside the vehicle.
Trails leading away from the vehicle.
- Some blood splatter had gone in a direction
differently than where the victims were found.
So we knew that we probably were looking for an injured
suspect who was probably cut as well.
- Witnesses at the crime scene
started hearing screams and shouts,
and could hear a female yelling, "Stop."
And after that, a male yelling, "Stop."
They thought it was a male wearing darker colors
that took off from the area.
- Unfortunately, none of them could give a facial description
or even a race of the suspect,
so we didn't really have much to go on.
We did have a canine unit deployed in tracking,
in an attempt to locate where the suspect had fled to.
[police sirens] [tense music]
- I remember when she said we lost him.
My heart just plunged to the floor.
I, I've never felt like that before,
and I hope to God I never will.
- I was angry and I started shaking.
I went crazy.
And I'm like, why? Why they did that to him?
- I should never have to outlive my son.
[pensive music]
- When I left the hospital, my heart was hurting.
All I could do was feel pain.
- Our life was never gonna be the same.
Like, we were missing a core part of who we were.
[tense music]
- We learned that Paiten had been stabbed 43 times.
Felipe had been stabbed 17 times.
- This is one of the more brutal homicides I have seen.
- When you look at, like, a shooting,
you can do that from a distance.
But when you're talking about a stabbing
that's up close and personal,
this just tells you the amount of hate in them.
We also learned that Felipe had made a dying declaration
to one of the officers,
and that he did give the name Tran Walker.
- We had a name, but we didn't have a story as to
what had happened inside the car, why it had happened.
Locating Tran Walker became the top priority.
- The 911 call came in from the local grocery store
in the vicinity of where the stabbings had taken place.
One of the workers was concerned
that there was a male in the bathroom
who was bleeding and was acting suspiciously.
I immediately asked for officers to go check on this,
as I knew there was a high probability
that it was our suspect.
- When I arrived at the grocery store,
we knew he'd gone back to the bathrooms
so we started heading in that direction.
We had guns drawn.
I opened the door.
I can see this individual standing at the sink.
It is Tran Walker, person that we're looking for.
He had a pretty good laceration to his finger,
bad enough that he needed to go to the hospital.
[tense music]
- In speaking with the doctors there,
I had learned that his hand had slid down the knife
and nearly severed off his pinky.
That is important because a lot of times
when you have a stabbing case,
when there's multiple strikes with the knife,
the suspect often will slip on the knife
and cut their own hand.
They complete the medical procedure they had to do
to reattach his finger.
He is then transported
to the Sioux City Police Department.
[tense music]
- Detective Thompson and I,
we know very little about Tran Walker as a person.
He doesn't have much of a criminal history,
so we were gonna be very soft with him.
- We believe that he was responsible
for a double homicide.
We wanted closure for the family and closure for the case.
We need to start digging in
and trying to get the confession.
[tense music]
- The night that my sister died,
I actually woke up to the sirens driving past my house.
And then I got phone calls from my parents
telling me what had happened.
I didn't really have any thoughts other than why or how.
Paiten is my younger sister and growing up,
the grownups always said,
"When you're older, you guys are gonna be best friends."
And it just really sucks that we never got that.
[tense music]
- Our job is to get him to talk about
what was happening when he was allegedly blacking out.
So we're gonna start pressing him
and kind of put him back in that situation.
Put him back in the car, confront him with reality.
- Why did you run from the scene?
He's saying nobody else was there.
Nobody was chasing him, no one attacked him.
We're just locking him into stories,
getting to observe what his lies look like
as far as his body language goes.
- You can see it hit him where he realizes
that the story he just gave got totally torn apart.
I was definitely worried that he was gonna
end the interview at that point.
I had to do something to make him feel more comfortable.
I had to make this about Tran.
- He had no reaction at all.
Just kind of stared, never cried, never showed any emotion.
He said he felt betrayed.
So now we can go and start using his own language
to get the confession.
- You could see his body language change,
his shoulders sink a little bit, and you know,
his head goes down, just kinda looked defeated.
It was time for him to talk.
[pensive music]
- It was really a spur of the moment thing,
where I began talking with Tran about him in third person.
Sometimes in an interview, a person will talk more about it
if they can act as if they were just watching
and they weren't really there.
It allowed him to get some more distance
from the actual murders.
[tense music]
- He eventually shows us where he ran eastbound
through some yards and over a fence.
[camera clicking]
He found the knife laying in the backyard of a house
and speaking with those homeowners,
they had security camera footage
that actually showed him putting the knife back there.
It all seemed to kinda come together at that point.
[camera clicking]
- He was transported to the jail where he was charged
with two counts of first degree murder.
He is facing life in prison.
[pensive music]
- [New Anchor] A murder case comes to an end
in a Woodbury County courthouse today.
- Tran Walker is guilty of the offense
of murder in the first degree.
- 19-year-old Tran Walker will now spend the rest
of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
- For us, there is a closure.
We know why, we know who did it,
and the justice has been served.
He won't ever see the light of day.
- I miss the way Paiten loved.
I think about her a lot.
I just think of her smile
and how much she just was full of life.
[somber music]
- With Junior, I'd like people to remember him
by a person who had a big heart.
- He's everywhere with me, 'cause I carry him right here.
He loved Paiten as another sister.
- And they had a special bond.
- And still, they're gonna have it up in heaven.
- There's a bench that faces the park
that's just right where they were killed.
And the memorial placard says,
"It's never goodbye, it's just till next time."
So we put that on the bench for them,
knowing that we will see them again.
[dramatic music]
[tense music] [police sirens]
[crying]
- When deputies arrived, Rachel and the victim
were the only two on the scene.
Rachel Clevinger identified him as Paul Ruffo.
- Rachel doesn't witness Paul's stabbing.
She hears water running in the bathroom,
and she goes in and finds Paul in the bathtub.
- He was unresponsive and they started CPR.
- There was also a wound on the back of one of his arms.
- That's common when somebody's attacked with a knife,
they'll throw up their hands and we'll typically see
injuries on the back of the forearms.
[police radio chatter] [tense music]
- [Officer] Do you have crime scene tape?
- [Officer] Yeah.
- The first thing I noticed was a significant amount
of blood on and around the porch area.
[police radio chatter]
[camera clicking]
- [Sean] I did observe a green shirt
and a hat covered with blood.
[police radio chatter]
- [Sean] We noticed significant amount of blood
throughout the front yard.
And you can see areas that had been matted down
like there was some type of struggle.
We're obviously looking for a bladed weapon,
but we don't find any knives that we believe
are involved in this particular incident.
- Rachel is saying John Rose stabbed Paul.
She indicated she had been in a relationship with John Rose,
but John had gotten physical with her.
So she ended the relationship
and she had been staying at Paul's house
for about two weeks.
Earlier in the evening, Rachel agreed to meet John via text
but was clear that she wasn't gonna go home with him.
- John Rose had a number of domestic violence arrests.
So, and it's important at that point
to get him in custody as soon as possible.
[tense music]
- Going to the unknown is always dangerous.
I'm making sure that my partner's in the back
because if you go in the front of the house,
90% of people run out
the back door.
[somber music]
- My dad was magic.
That charisma, it was like, unstoppable.
He knew how to make you feel like you were
the most important person in the world to him.
More than anything, he loved being a grandpa.
He adored my kids.
That was his calling. [laughs]
My last picture I have of my dad is of him holding my daughter.
The way he's cradling her is just so gently,
like she's made of glass or something.
I think, um, the hardest thing for me
is my kids not being able to experience
the wonderful person that he was.
- Now, we have a homicide case.
He didn't deserve this
and his family deserves justice.
[tense music]
We didn't have a whole lot of physical evidence.
And we did not have a knife.
That's my murder weapon.
So I need that confession.
[pensive music]
- I remember my dad calling
that my brother was dead and he was gone.
It's not like he just passed away in his sleep.
Some monster took his life,
for no justifiable reason.
[tense music]
You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
You have the, you have the right to a lawyer.
- How do you not remember something so significant?
You don't even remember your own words?
That's not believable at all.
- That's it.
- I just wanted to be blunt.
So I thought, well, let's kind of poke the bear a little bit
and see if I get any kind of reaction out of him.
So you guys were dating for about four months.
[tense music]
I wasn't getting anywhere else with John.
He stuck with this very simplistic story,
something that he could remember,
which portrayed him as the victim.
- So we're gonna go dig up other evidence.
[tense music]
[texts dinging]
Text messages on John's phone show that he's jealous,
he's infatuated with her.
And he would do anything, even kill
to get Rachel back.
[intense music]
Marie Rose said it was around 11 o'clock
that John Rose came home
and made the comment that he may have stabbed somebody.
Armed with that information, I went back in the jail
and that's when he said he wanted to speak with me.
- If he wants to spin this tale that Paul Ruffo
is the aggressor, then I'll let him spin that tale.
I got him to say that he had a knife in his hand
and that's a victory.
[tense music]
So as I'm driving southbound on Dunbar, he says,
"I threw it in back of one of these two yards."
We did locate a green Gerber knife.
It was about two houses north of where Paul lived.
It was determined that Paul Ruffo's DNA was on the blade.
I took John back to the county jail.
John Rose is a man that can't control
his emotions or his anger,
and he's getting charged with murder
and he's not going anywhere.
Paul deserves justice.
- When we went to court, I was shaking so hard,
but it was important for the murderer to know
that my dad was a treasure
and it's a huge loss for us.
[tense music]
It is absolutely unforgivable what he did.
The fact that he can never be out, that is justice, to me.
My life has never been the same since.
I miss, you know, his sense of humor
and just the way that he would make me laugh
and all the inside jokes.
I'm still waiting for him to call.
I'm still waiting for him to send me a letter
because it still doesn't feel, it doesn't feel right,
and it doesn't feel real that he's gone.
[somber music]