(dramatic music)
- [narrator] an international fugitive
Is caught after 11 years on the run.
- [narrator] can detectives finally get her
To confess to murdering her own husband?
- Her belief was, well, she just got away with murder.
- [narrator] but first,
A young mother vanishes into the night.
- We've been talking for three minutes
And he's already lied.
- [narrator] investigators searching for answers
In the interrogation room.
(dramatic 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.
(dramatic music)
- [lieutenant thacker] samira watkins' sister
Reported her missing
And made it very clear that it was highly unusual for her
To go several days without talking to anybody.
- Sometimes people just get up and leave,
But that wasn't the case with her personality.
Samira watkins was a parent and she had a job.
- Samira's family said that she was a student,
A hard worker, a young mother.
- She was doing her best to do well for herself.
She was in college.
She was seeking a career in the dental field.
- She was just a beautiful young girl
With her future ahead of her.
This wasn't a girl that would typically just go off
The radar without talking to her family,
Without going to work, without reporting to school.
- Those facts definitely gave me reason to be very concerned
That this could actually be more than just a missing person.
- Samira's sister said that the night samira went missing,
Samira worked a shift at her job.
She went home.
She changed her clothes.
She let her sister know that she was going over to talk
To her boyfriend, zachary littleton,
And that she would be home later that night.
She was never seen or heard from again.
(dramatic music)
- So it just made sense to go ahead
And talk to zachary littleton as quickly as possible
To see whether or not samira had actually made it
To his apartment.
He could very well be the last person that had seen her.
(suspenseful music)
- Zachary littleton was a 24-year-old member
Of the united states navy.
He was stationed here in pensacola
At pensacola naval air station.
And littleton was samira's boyfriend.
My goals of this first interview were to find samira.
Missing person, you want to resolve that as soon as you can.
The longer that goes, the more unlikely it is
That that's gonna end well.
A secondary goal was to lock zachary littleton
Into a statement.
- So that later on, should we discover evidence
That's in direct confrontation with the statement
That he gave earlier, maybe he'll break or change his story.
- We learned zachary littleton
Was married to an enlisted navy sailor
Who lived out of town and was caring for their child.
- Littleton was a bit of a playboy.
That's easily an indicator of somebody
That's flat out a liar
And who probably will lie about other things.
The military does not look fondly
Upon members committing adultery.
- You can be demoted in rank
Or you could actually be discharged from the military
For having an adulterous relationship.
- So I thought that maybe he was lying because of that,
But it could also be because he's lying to avoid
Getting in trouble for what we're investigating.
It certainly is a strike against him early on.
I mean, we've been talking for three minutes at this point
And he's already lied.
Most people aren't gonna lie about things
Unless they've done something wrong.
- My first thought was maybe he had his days mixed up.
Samira's sister told us
That when she last saw samira Thursday night,
Samira was leaving to go meet
With zachary littleton at his apartment.
But I really nailed that point down.
Now he's actually saying no,
I didn't even see her at all on Thursday.
I saw her the night before.
- So we're trying to paint the person in corners
And then see if they're going to give us something
Where we can kick the door open
And confront them with the actual crime
That we're investigating.
- There was a period during the interview
Where zachary littleton would refer to samira
In the past tense.
She was this or she was that.
That struck me as odd.
At this point, she is missing,
But she could be a number of places and be perfectly fine.
(dramatic music)
I ended the first interview with littleton
Because I was trying to maintain the ability
To have him come back for a second interview
Later on in the investigation.
Littleton had definitely not relieved my suspicions of him
Nor did he lead me to where she was at.
And as he left, I felt like he very well
Could be responsible for samira's disappearance.
(dramatic music)
(eerie music)
- [announcer] before watkins went missing on October 29th,
She told her mother she was going
To her boyfriend's apartment to talk to him.
- [reporter] nobody saw or heard from her after.
Samira's sister, April joseph,
Says samira only knew the man for a few months.
Family members say the man is a married sailor.
- If we were going to find samira alive,
We really needed to find something out very soon.
Even if she was just somewhere hiding,
Getting some kind of information could help us to find her.
(dramatic music)
- We learned samira watkins had recently become pregnant.
- Samira's family made it very clear
That littleton definitely knew she was pregnant.
And that the baby was his.
- Her family said that zachary littleton
Was not happy about this information.
- Zachary littleton was so against her pregnancy
That he encouraged her to get an abortion.
(suspenseful music)
On the night that samira went missing,
Samira's phone had pinged a tower
Right in the area of littleton's apartment.
Zachary littleton told me in this initial interview,
He never saw her that night.
We were beginning to see more vividly that littleton
Was very likely to be responsible
For whatever happened to samira.
(dramatic music)
- We decided to ramp up our approach a little bit.
This interview was not as laid back as the first.
We still did not know where samira was,
If she was alive, dead.
We really hoped we'd get some answers.
We're seeing if we couldn't get him
To either add information, break completely
Or to set traps for later,
Understanding in the investigative process.
- Hmm.
- That's totally unnatural.
Anybody in this situation who was innocent,
They're gonna be racking their brain,
Thinking about what happened to this person.
And now it's a matter of challenging to see
If he'll come off of that story.
- And me standing up and raising my voice
And projecting a little bit more,
It's testing to see if they're susceptible to a person
Showing dominance over them.
- At this point, the main thing that concerned me
Was his avoidance of the pregnancy issue.
He has to realize that him being the father
Of her unborn child puts him pretty high on the motive list.
And I wanted to talk about it.
- This matter of trying to present new stresses,
To see what he might be susceptible to
In the hopes of your breaking new information loose.
- We're almost in a debate.
And we're seeing if we can use the intelligence side
Of the debate to get him to change his mind.
It's another strategy that we'll employ to try
And get someone to change their story.
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
- On the morning of November 3rd,
Some jet skiers found a large duffle bag
That was washed up on shore of a waterway,
Very close to pensacola naval air station.
The bag had a foul odor coming from it.
There was insect activity on and around it.
And there was even blood that was seeping out of the bag.
(suspenseful music)
(camera clicking)
When the sheriff's office got there and they opened it up,
They did find a body of a female inside of that bag,
(camera clicking)
Deceased.
- She had no clothing on except a bra
And she was curled up in the fetal position
Inside of the duffel bag.
- The other portion of it was that her face was taped up,
Which is also a behavior that someone
Who has a relationship with a victim will do
To hide their face, almost as if to hide the shame
Of what took place.
- A latent fingerprint examiner was able to conduct
A fingerprint comparison on site.
And they were able to report that indeed,
This was samira watkins.
We later learned that cause of death was asphyxiation,
Most likely a strangulation.
It completely changed the whole look of the investigation.
It was now a homicide and littleton was our main suspect.
- When we opened the bag,
There's a few things that we learned.
First and foremost, she was missing an earring.
- When samira went missing,
We knew that she had been wearing both earrings
Because we obtained the video surveillance
From her employer.
- Finding that second earring would be so important.
If I found it in the possession of an individual,
They would certainly be potentially the killer.
There was also a couple of paper towels in the bag.
You could clearly see that it had a distinct pattern on it.
(dramatic music)
It was more or less pulled up
Into the driveway and just abandoned.
- So we started pulling video footage from the area.
We found a local restaurant where we found footage
Of littleton walking in the night
That she ultimately disappeared.
- It puts him in the area where her car was dumped.
- He made mistakes, he made big mistakes.
(suspenseful music)
- During that search, we found some key pieces of evidence.
(camera clicking)
We did find a roll of paper towels
That matched exactly the print of the paper towel
Found inside the bag with samira.
But the biggest thing found at littleton's house
Was that matching earring, the earing we'd been looking for.
- That was a direct link between the victim,
The scene and the suspect.
- Any doubt that I had,
Which wasn't much, was now eliminated.
I knew that zachary littleton was our killer.
(dramatic music)
Littleton's arrest took place
At the pensacola naval air station.
It was a really good feeling to know
That this was gonna be a case that we did resolve.
And it wouldn't be one that would be hanging out
As a cold case down the line.
(dramatic music)
- I believe the night samira watkins went missing,
She drove over to zachary littleton's apartment.
At some point while she was there,
He strangled her to death.
He placed her body inside of the duffel bag.
He drove her to the naval air station.
He threw her body in the water.
(dramatic music)
He thought that he had gotten away with it,
But then law enforcement was so quickly in touch with him.
And that's why he started telling the lies that he did.
(dramatic music)
My job prosecuting the case
Would have been much more difficult
Without the two interrogations
Because the jurors would not have gotten to see
Zachary littleton's cold demeanor,
His lack of concern for samira
And the fact that he was lying in both interviews.
- [bridgette] zachary littleton was sentenced
To life in prison without parole.
Justice was served.
- This was such a tragic case.
It involved a young mother and her unborn child.
And because of that, there was a special sense of desire
To do justice for them.
(dramatic music)
- Karl didn't show up to work,
Which was not like him at all.
He never missed work.
So people started calling and, of course, they called me,
Do you know where he is at?
I was like, no.
One of his friends started calling around
And ended up calling the police.
(dramatic music)
- When the newton falls police department arrived on scene,
They did not notice any signs of forced entry.
Everything looked okay
And they eventually contacted carl's parents
And they made an entry to the house.
(dramatic music)
- The officer that went in
Immediately smelled a terrible odor.
The odor, was in his mind, a dead person.
(suspenseful music)
- And then they found my brother.
- We found carl located at the bottom of the stairway,
Covered in a tarp and a comforter with gunshot wounds.
- How I found out was my oldest brother called me.
Carl was a kind person, very patriotic,
Family-oriented person.
Carl was in the military for roughly 25 years.
He flew combat missions in bosnia
And he flew missions over in the middle east.
And the c130s is a big plane.
It's kind of slow.
So they kind of, they're a target when they're up there.
So it takes a special kind of pilot.
- Everything we heard about him
Painted him as a good citizen,
A contributing member of society and a true victim.
- From looking at the condition of the body,
The estimate was he had been dead two or three days.
- We discovered he had three gunshot wounds,
Two to the torso and one to the head
And the gunshot wounds sustained to carl's head
Was at close range. (gunshot echoing)
(dramatic music)
- It was obvious signs of foul play, instantly apparent.
(dramatic music)
We were told that claudia was originally from brazil,
That in the late '90s, she moved to the u.S.,
Became a naturalized u.S. Citizen.
- Carl met claudia through match.Com
And he dated her for a couple months.
And then for whatever reason,
He decided to run off to las vegas and go get married.
That was a little impulsive for him.
Six to nine months into the marriage,
He started expressing some concerns
About being married to claudia.
He just said he wasn't happy with her
And wanted to get away from her.
I believe she was taking his money.
That's what he believed.
So he started talking to me about wanting to get divorced.
- There were multiple efforts by the police
And others to contact claudia hoerig.
They could not connect with her.
- Nobody really knew where she was.
And so she was quickly a person of interest.
(dramatic music)
- Investigators learned that claudia
Had recently purchased a .357 magnum at a local gun shop.
We had also spoken to witnesses who told us
That she had gone to a shooting range to practice shooting.
Obviously that raises some red flags.
(dramatic music)
- It was very clear from the track of her phone,
That it was going to the pittsburgh airport.
From there, we found flight records
That indicated she flew from pittsburgh to new york,
Where she purchased a separate plane ticket
To take her to brazil.
Within a matter of a couple months,
We had claudia located in brazil,
But based on brazilian law and the brazilian constitution,
They did not allow for their extradition of citizens
To a foreign country, even if they're suspected
Of committing a crime such as homicide.
- So the u.S. Government, they just ran into a brick wall.
Brazil just didn't want to cooperate.
Claudia was just living freely out in the open.
Her belief was brazil would never extradite her.
So she just got away with murder.
(dramatic music)
I was looking at a couple hours,
Almost every night corresponding with the embassy.
I just really wasn't willing to give up.
- That family never let go to the idea
That anybody could get away
With killing their son, their brother.
Our case was in the late '90s.
Claudia becomes an american citizen.
She signs her documents,
Taking allegiance with the united states of america
And denying her loyalty to brazil.
That got us in the door.
I said, I don't want her brazilian ass.
I want her american ass.
(dramatic music)
- It was a huge relief to get her back.
It was a big block off my shoulders.
(dramatic music)
- Out of the blue, just mid-flight,
She says, you know, a wife doesn't kill her husband
Without a good reason.
It put those of us on the plane
In a really tenuous or unique position.
We don't know enough about the case to question her.
But on the other hand,
We have no legal obligation to make her stop talking.
And she spent the next couple hours of this flight
Telling the story that she wanted to have heard.
(dramatic music)
Although I didn't have the facts of the case,
I was in the unique position of, you know,
Having sat on that plane with her for so long
That we had a rapport.
My role was just to try to keep her comfortable,
To keep her talking.
(dramatic music)
If she doesn't give this statement
To us in this room on the video,
Now it's her word against ours.
I felt more pressure or stress
Than I have in any other case.
Knowing the seriousness of the crime
And the amount of effort that so many people
Put in for so many years,
We felt like we can't screw this up.
- She told these guys everything on the plane,
But now that the cameras are rolling, this is what counts.
(suspenseful music)
- She viewed me as the good guy in the interview.
She felt comfortable with me.
So really the only role I could play is the one I played
And that was to reassure her and to keep her talking.
- This is where I started wondering, is this gonna happen?
Or isn't it?
Can't force anybody to make a statement.
If they ask for a lawyer, the interview's over.
If they choose not to talk anymore,
That's their constitutional right.
Whether or not this interview takes place
Is solely her discretion.
(suspenseful music)
- Um.
- During the interview,
Claudia was claiming to be a battered wife,
Which we found no evidence of.
- What she was saying didn't match
What the detectives were hearing from any of his friends,
Family, former girlfriends.
In those cases where you have that type of abuse,
There is always, always some type of corroboration.
In her case, there was zero.
If she needed to feel like she had somebody on her side
And it's difficult.
You know the horrific thing they did,
But you have to put that all aside
And at least act like you're their friend,
Act like you believe them,
'cause you want them to keep talking.
- One of the things that I noticed right away
Was how rehearsed everything she said seemed to be.
There were a lot of statements that she made
In the interview room that were just verbatim.
Just word for word, what she had said on the plane.
Even some of her hand movements,
It was like she had been practicing this story.
And that struck me as really odd.
- I can't say that I've really been made aware ever
Of somebody who bought a gun or obtained a gun
To commit suicide that went
To the shooting range and practice.
Here's the thing from the aspect of an interview,
Sometimes a lie is more powerful than the truth.
- We just had to let her keep talking
Because the more that she does that,
The worse it is for her.
(dramatic music)
I was really nervous at that point.
- Generally, there is only one time
That person's gonna sit across from us.
This is basically your one chance.
(gunshot echoes)
- It was a relief.
She confessed to shooting him.
Now mike could ask the tough questions.
- We did not believe her.
We were never able to find any information
To substantiate claudia's claims of being pregnant.
- I was sitting there thinking,
How could anybody believe this.
Right from the beginning, it felt like theatrics.
I think her narcissism overshadowed
Her intelligence and commonsense.
And that when she walked out of that room,
That she probably felt like a winner.
(dramatic music)
- My personal belief is I think she wasn't real pleased
That he had rejected her.
He wanted to get divorced from her.
I don't think she was used to that.
And I think she was vindictive.
- [juror] we, the jury in this case,
Duly and paneled and sworn and affirm,
Find the defendant, claudia c. Hoerig
Guilty of aggravated murder
As she stands charged in the first count of the indictment
Dated this date signed by all 12 jurors.
- Claudia was sentenced to life in prison
With the possibility of parole after 28 years,
Because that was actually one of the stipulations
To the extradition.
- You cannot overestimate the value
Of interviews and confessions.
- I got very angry and I got up real fast and I shot.
- It's instrumental to our convictions.
The confession brought out her lies,
Which were contradicted by the evidence,
Which in my opinion, is the best kind of evidence to have.
- I was relieved.
I don't take cases personally at all, ever,
But this case was so different that I was happy
To see some closure for the hoerig family.
(dramatic music)
- The impact on my family was pretty big for that 11 years,
Takes a lot out of you.
It was a huge relief to finally get her convicted.
- Tenacity pays off,
Had it not been for the tenacity of the family,
For the investigators involved,
This case never would've come to a successful conclusion.
- Justice is a journey.
It doesn't end until it's done.
We owed one last mission for karl
And his service to this country.