(dramatic music)
- A man from the town of varick was killed accidentally
When a truck fell on him.
- [narrator] a mysterious death turns into a homicide.
- She believed that her husband had killed his son, levi.
- [narrator] a troubling pattern emerges.
- There was a suspicious death
With karl karlsen's first wife.
- She was taking a bath.
- He collected a million and half dollars of tax-free money.
- If he's the person we think he is,
Then other people are at risk.
- [narrator] investigators searching for answers
In the interrogation room.
(dramatic music) (clock ticking)
- [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.
(ominous music)
(phone ringing)
- Deputies say that 23 year old, levi karlsen was working
On a full size chevrolet pickup truck
When the jacks apparently slipped,
Trapping karlsen underneath.
Karlsen was discovered by his father
And was transported to the geneva general hospital,
Where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.
- The initial report was
That karl karlsen and his wife, cindy karlsen,
Were at their home in the morning
When levi karlsen came over to work on a truck
That was in a detached garage barn.
Karl and his wife had left at around noon that day
To go to a funeral down in penn yan, new york,
Which is about 45 minutes away.
They returned sometime after four o'clock that afternoon.
And then cindy went in the house.
Karl went out into the barn.
- Karl said he found levi on the floor,
The truck on top of him.
- And he told cindy, "call 911.
Levi is crushed under the truck, unresponsive."
(solemn music)
Levi was 23, when he died,
He had left behind two young kids,
And was trying to make a life for himself
After a troubled childhood.
(soft, somber music)
- Levi married very young.
He was a hard-working young man,
Worked hard to support his family.
(soft instrumental music)
- And I think most people would say unfortunate.
What a tragedy, a 23 year old boy is killed for no reason.
Based upon all the information that was given to the police,
It was clearly, in everybody's mind,
It was an accident that happened
When levi was alone in this barn.
- The medical examiner signed off on it
As an accidental death.
(dramatic percussive music)
- Investigators in the seneca county sheriff's department
Have decided that a man
From the town of varick was killed accidentally
When a truck fell on him.
- Deputies say the cause of death was massive trauma
To the chest due to a crush injury.
(clock ticking)
- She said she had heard from karl's second wife,
Cindy karlsen, and that cindy had told her
That she had left her husband,
And that she was afraid he was gonna come after her.
And that she believed
That her husband had killed his son, levi.
It was really kind of hearsay at that point,
But we decided to take another look at it, nonetheless.
(tense music)
- 17 days before the death of levi,
Karl takes levi up to a bank
And he takes out a life insurance policy on levi,
But with a rider
That makes the value of life insurance policy $700,000.
- When I first reviewed the report from 2008,
There was no mention of an insurance policy.
(dramatic music)
- Of that money, karl just spent money freely
And didn't put away any savings for levi's kids.
We realized we need to take a look at this karl karlsen
And see what this person's really like.
(dramatic music)
- In 1991, karl and christina lived
With their three children in a very small house
On a very rural property in the woods.
Karl said that the children were down for a nap
And that christina was taking a bath.
- Karl was out in a work shed and he hears the screams.
(dramatic music) (fire crackling)
He just said he managed to rescue his children,
And pull them out of their windows of their bedrooms,
But he was driven back by the flames and the heat
When he tried to rescue his wife.
(dramatic music)
- Christina was a small-town girl
From rural calaveras county.
Her daughter, erin, recalled the lightness and love
That was in the home when christina was there,
She would take the kids for long walks through nature,
She'd take 'em to the ice cream shop.
- She was a mother that just showered her children
With love and support and guidance.
I put a call into the investigator
That was very passionate about the case back then,
And he literally almost broke down crying
When he received my call.
"oh my god, I always dreamed that someday,
Someday this call would come, and here it is."
- Karl gave three different versions
Of what happened that day, how that fire started.
- He was a volunteer firefighter at one point.
So he has some knowledge of fire.
He claimed that the dog had knocked over a jug of kerosene.
Later, he said that this light blew out.
There's different stories as to what the cause was,
But it was suspicious.
(suspenseful music)
- Karl claims that he had boarded this window up
Because the window was broken.
He used 17 nails.
- Christina had a $150,000 life insurance policy on her
At the time of her death.
Karl got the money
And used it largely to finance his move back to new york
And kind of start over again with the kids.
- The investigator said he was told karl went to new york,
He's new york's problem now,
And we're not putting the money into this case anymore.
Just let it go.
But he then said that he photocopied every single record,
And, "they're in a box in my basement."
- We didn't want karl to get tipped off,
But it came pretty clear
That if we were gonna make any kind of progress with this,
We had to talk to somebody close to karl.
We make the decision to reach out to cindy karlsen.
And she said,
"I left and got out of there
Because I think I might be next."
She said she had hired a private investigator
Because of her fears.
So we brought her in for an interview
And she was good at supplying us information.
She said he was emotionally and mentally cruel to her
During their marriage.
Same with the children.
- Most of the aggression was focused on levi growing up,
Even when he was a small child.
At one point,
He actually broke a cutting board over levi's backside.
- And if he wanted something, he wanted it now.
So, very, very poor impulse control type of person,
That if you gave him $20, he'd spend 40.
(dramatic music)
Cindy told us that when they got back from this funeral,
The radio in the garage
Where levi was working was blasting on full volume
And it was on a country music station.
- But the one thing that
Cindy was questioning is, why country music?
Levi hated country music.
He only listened to hard rock music.
- When you put it in context to the investigation,
You think, well, if he's crushed under this truck
And he's dying and he's making noise,
Could karl have cranked up that radio
To cover up those noises?
That really puts it in a more sinister light.
(dramatic percussive music)
- The patterns were simple.
They were easy to see once you really dug into karl's life.
(fire crackling)
Between the insurance money he collected on levi
And on christina and the fires,
He collected somewhere probably in the neighborhood
Of a million and a half dollars of tax-free money,
And he spent through that money immediately.
- We do have a lot of alarming information,
But it's still all circumstantial evidence.
It's possible to get a conviction on a case
With just circumstantial evidence,
But you need a lot of it.
- And that's why we took months to investigate karl.
We were not gonna rush this and screw this up.
(dramatic music)
- Cindy says, "look, he keeps calling me and texting me.
He wants to get back together."
And she goes, "karl and I,
We were having lunch and he admitted to killing levi
'cause he was a burden on the family."
She brings in a recorder.
I'm excited at this point,
Maybe we finally have what we need,
And we try it and the recorder failed.
It didn't pick up any of that.
So, we had a team meeting about it.
Do we see this as an opportunity?
'cause he wants to get back together.
We end up deciding to take a calculated risk.
We picked a place, abigail's restaurant in seneca falls.
- We worked with cindy for many days to plan this thing.
(dramatic percussive music)
- Inside the restaurant,
We put four undercover officers nearby
So they can testify they at least heard parts of it.
(indistinct chatter) (dinnerware clattering)
- Levi karlsen.
We came to know him as a man who had a troubled youth.
He didn't see eye to eye with his father.
So it kind of stood out to us that this death occurs
Right when they've kind of reconciled.
(dramatic music)
- We have investigators in abigail's.
We have investigators outside of abigail's.
But ultimately it's cindy who's gonna try
To convince her husband that it's okay for him to tell her
How he had murdered his son, levi.
- Right away in my mind, that sealed the deal
That what kind of person he was.
I'm a parent, I have four children,
No parent refers to the death of a child as an opportunity.
- Karl had offered his son $50 to do some work
On the undercarriage of this farm truck.
- He doesn't exactly repeat that he killed levi,
But now he expects her to take him back,
And we can't put her in that type of risk.
So, we make the decision to go forward with his interview,
But we're not going to arrest him.
We're gonna see if he'll come in voluntarily.
(dramatic music)
(clock ticking)
We introduce ourselves and say "you know,
We'd really like to talk to you back at our office."
And he says, "okay," readily, almost cheerfully.
And I remember investigator crowley saying,
"don't you want to know what we're gonna talk to you about?"
He goes, "oh, I know what you wanna talk about.
You wanna talk about my dead wife and my dead son."
(dramatic music)
(clock ticking)
- The onset is simply to focus on the death of levi karlsen.
Equally as important was the death of christina karlsen
In 1991, 3,000 miles away in california.
- I was very nervous
Because so much was relying on this interview.
And there was a lot at stake here.
If he is the person we think he is,
Then other people are at risk.
(tense, percussive music)
(dramatic music)
(soft bass music)
- I'd had some consultation
With the behavioral sciences unit in quantico,
And they said, well, if he's a sociopath,
You're probably not gonna get a full confession,
But focus on documenting as many lies as you can.
So, we were planning for the worst, but hoping for the best.
(clock ticking)
- We weren't at all surprised he was sticking his story.
You know, a lie stuck to becomes the truth, right?
If he doesn't falter off that,
It makes it difficult for us to put the case together.
- So, he's admitting that he made these admissions,
But he's saying he did it for a reason.
He did it to, you know, play this game with her.
It's illogical what he's telling us
Because we already knew
That he was desperate to get her back.
Well, the way you get your loved one back is not
By telling him you killed someone.
(dramatic music)
- There's different interview techniques.
One is rationalization.
People wanna save face.
They want to explain why they did the terrible thing
That they're accused of doing.
- A lot of interrogation techniques involve appealing
To a person's sense of honor, honesty, your conscience,
Their sense of empathy and guilt.
The problem is if a person doesn't have a lot of that,
It's gonna be difficult.
(clock ticking)
- So, at that point it's like, well, did he just lawyer up?
I thought there was a good chance we were done.
(dramatic music)
(soft instrumental music)
(clock ticking)
I was very aware that the current case law says
That when they ask for an attorney,
It has to be a clear declaration.
So, that was a deliberate way I phrased it to him.
- I felt we were on solid ground on that once he indicated
That he did wanna continue talking to us.
My background was mostly child abuse cases
And getting child molesters to talk
About what they did was very difficult.
So I was used to giving that sympathy,
Rationalizing, minimizing.
- We're trying to give karl a reason
To tell us what truly happened.
We realize that he didn't do this because of the methadone,
But nobody wants to admit they did it
Because they took out a life insurance policy
On their son, either.
- He quickly turns the conversation to himself,
Which shows signs that he's narcissistic.
We knew it was gonna probably be a marathon,
Not a sprint.
(dramatic music) (clock ticking)
- He deflects a lot.
You'll hit him up with something,
And then he'll just kind of switch the topic.
(dramatic music)
We talked, nothing else is working.
We can try some deception.
Now, when you use deception in an interview,
It's allowable to a point,
But where that point is, is in a gray area.
So you're taking a risk when you do it.
- Now, we already knew there was no concrete time of death
On this case.
- Tom came up with this concept,
That through medical technology,
We were able to tell exactly what time he died,
And we knew what time karl had left.
(somber music)
(suspenseful music)
(clock ticking)
- I think he's not crying here.
He's trying to put on a show for the camera
And for all of us that he's emotional here,
But the walls are closing in on him.
That's what his body language is telling us.
(dramatic music)
When I come in, I play it off as naive.
Like, I know nothing about this case.
And I go in there with a goal
That I want karl to repeat every detail
Of the 1991 death of his wife.
- It's not so much about getting a confession.
It's about getting the inconsistencies.
(dramatic music)
The reason why I had karl draw out the picture
Of the home is, it's gonna contradict things
That he said to the investigators in 1991.
- But we knew that it was plenty big enough
For an adult to go through.
So why is he lying about that?
- Karl karlsen can't keep track of the lies.
He can't remember all the lies he's told.
Karl's a trained fireman.
He has access to a pickaxe, a truckload of tools.
He makes no attempt to pop this plywood off
And get his wife out.
He sits in the vehicle with his children,
Listening to the screams of their mother.
(dramatic music)
(clock ticking)
This is about bringing the facts of the case to light.
Also, we know that this is recorded
And we want the jury to see this.
- Nonverbals are striking.
I mean, when you did that, you could see his demeanor,
His head's hanging almost in shame.
Either that or feeling terrible because he's thinking,
"uh oh, I might be caught here."
(ominous music)
(suspenseful music)
(clock ticking)
- John's connection with karl is almost
Like a father-son relationship
That started early on into this interview.
We know that we have our best opportunity
To get to the truth by leaving john in that room alone.
I could tell,
He's ready to tell me something really big here,
And gave him all the encouragement I could.
(tense music)
(dramatic music)
(karl crying)
- He comes out with his final version
That he caused the truck to fall on his son,
And then basically walked out and left him dying on the floor.
I was disappointed we didn't get an admission
On the reason he took out the insurance policy.
I kind of wanted to just keep going,
But I knew that it was not the right thing to do.
So at that point, we decided that we'd call it
And put an end to it.
- There is never gonna be justice,
But we had to bring some type of closure
To the family who had been tormented for so many years
And so many times by this evil monster.
(dramatic music)
- [jeff] karl karlsen is a sociopath, pathetic human being.
And he was a budding serial killer.
I think he derived a high for murder.
I think he enjoyed it.
(clock ticking)
- Karl karlsen will spend 15 years to life in prison
For murdering his own son.
Well, today karlsen's brother said
While he's happy to have closure,
There is still one thing that bothers him.
- I think the most troubling part for me personally,
Not speaking for the rest of the family,
Is he showed no remorse today, and that bothers me.
The smirks, the grins,
It's like it was a game,
And it wasn't a game, it was people's lives.
(soft instrumental music)
- This wasn't a job, this case.
This was about levi.
This was about christina.
It was about all the people
That got their lives destroyed by karl karlsen.
The scary part was he took out life insurance policies
On his two granddaughters.
- It's insane to even think
That you could take out a policy like that
And not inform the mother, but he did it.
And I have no doubt they were next.
(dramatic music)
- When I think of both christina and levi,
I think of people who were never fully able
To reach their potential,
Not just because their lives were cut short,
But because they lived with karl to begin with.
I just wish they could have gotten away
And lived their lives.
- Sometime after the conviction,
Levi's ex-wife came to our office with her two daughters
And she said, "I want them to meet
The officers that saved their lives."
I'll always remember that.
(somber music)