The nation's railroads become the conduit of a killer. He strikes at random, then disappears. Recurring clues tell police they face the worst predator of all. A ritual serial killer.
He's cunning, deadly, and on the move. The authorities are determined to stop him in his tracks. More than 200,000 miles of train track crossed the United States. From California to Kentucky, few living near a railroad felt safe in the summer of 1999. A serial killer rode the rails, picking towns and victims at random.
him. He left behind a trail of bloodshed, but no trace of where he would turn up next. I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. As the number of victims grew, the FBI enlisted the help of a profiler to help predict the killer's next move. On December 17th, 1998, in West University Place, Texas, a young woman called the police from outside the house of a friend she worked with.
She was worried about her. She told them that her friend, a prominent doctor at a nearby medical school, had failed to show up at work that morning. According to her colleague, this was completely out of character.
She had not responded to phone calls to the house all day, nor had she answered her door. She said she'd see me tomorrow. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing out of the ordinary, and that was yesterday.
The colleague was sure that something was wrong. It's just not my part to do this. I'm just very concerned about it. The doors and windows of the house were locked. From the outside, everything seemed normal.
It's just not my part to do this. It's an important thing. The officers found that the garage door was unlocked.
And inside, the door to the house, wide open. Jewelry on the floor suggested a robbery. The house had been ransacked. The officers moved cautiously.
An intruder could still be inside. The downstairs was clear. But a trail of clothes led to the second floor.
In the master bedroom, they found the doctor. She had been brutally murdered. 222, let me have a supervisor and a crime scene unit to the scene. Detective Kenneth Maha responded to the scene.
Though a 10-year veteran of the department, he was surprised by the report of a homicide. West University Place, just a small little suburb, 2.2 square miles, right in the middle of Houston. Largely residential and an affluent community.
The last time we had a murder was in 1985. The robbery of a pharmacy. The brutality of the crime struck the detective. Blood spatter was all over the place, in the hallway and on the walls and the door. The body was completely covered except for one arm sticking out and her two legs. There was a large bush.
butcher knife that was near the body laying on a pillow. Investigators also recovered a heavy blood spattered blunt object nearby. Both were weapons of opportunity the killer found in the house.
Police contacted the doctor's husband and learned he had taken the couple's two children out of town to visit relatives before Christmas. They'd been gone for several days. The victim had work obligations to take care of that wife so she was not able to travel with him.
Look at this over here. Evidence suggested that the killer had taken his time in the house. He tore open Christmas gifts and rummaged through the victim's belongings.
Contents of a purse were spilled out, and her driver's license was clearly left out and displayed. It was quite strange to see it like that. In the kitchen, the detective found partially eaten fruit. Possibly more evidence the killer had lingered in the house.
He also found the keys to the victim's jeep. According to the doctor's husband, it was the only set. In the garage, there were no foreign fingerprints at the suspected point of entry. But on a workbench, investigators found the broken cover of a steering column next to some pry tools.
The killer must have... stolen the victim's Jeep. We surmised him that he had to break the steering column of the Jeep to actually crank it up and to start it. Here, the murderer made a crucial mistake. When I picked up the large piece of the steering column, I could visibly see fingerprints on the shiny black plastic.
The column cover was bagged for later analysis at the lab. At autopsy, the medical examiner determined cause of death. Multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma to the head.
The victim had been sexually assaulted. The gruesome nature of the murder worried Detective Maha. It just didn't fit the pattern of a random killing. It was a step beyond.
Investigators knew that killers like this usually don't strike only once. Two days later and 200 miles away, San Antonio police found an abandoned Jeep in a motel parking lot. The plates were traced to West University Place. It belonged to the doctor.
The plastic cover of the steering column was missing. Inside, investigators found a guitar and a meat cleaver. The doctor's husband had noted that both items were missing from the house. Someone had hot-wired the jeep in a hurry.
We noticed too that the steering column was just an absolute disarray. The Jeep was fingerprinted inside and out, but technicians found no usable prints. At the police department's forensics lab, analysts made electronic copies of the fingerprints lifted from the Jeep's steering column cover and ran them through an automated matching system.
And at that time we got a positive match on an individual named Carlos Rodriguez. A computer check revealed another name, Rafael Resendez Ramirez. This was forwarded to the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
A search of their extensive database revealed dozens of other aliases and more information on Resendez. He had an extensive record going back more than 20 years and an active warrant on a stolen vehicle charge. Investigators reviewed the suspect's file from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
and learned Resendez traveled regularly and illegally between the United States and Mexico. Most recently, he had been arrested in California for trespassing on railroad property with a loaded firearm and was deported to Mexico. Now it appeared that Rafael Resendez was back in Texas. His transient lifestyle would make him difficult to find. Detective Maha searched the suspect's records for a place to start and found the name of the fugitive's sister.
She lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a prearranged phone conference, Maha spoke with her at the Albuquerque Police Department. We'll be able to get some things, some information about your brother, if that'd be all right.
She wasn't able to tell me a whole lot about current activity of her brother. She did not have much contact with him. She did mention that he would sometimes drift through Albuquerque, stay with her for a few days, and then just disappear.
Detective Maha asked her to call if she heard from her brother. And I think there was a little bit of anger and resentment on her part at having to be involved with it. She really didn't want to be associated with him, if indeed he was a real killer as we thought that he was.
Authorities also asked the public for help. They distributed wanted posters along the train routes Resendiz was known to use. Dozens of tips turned up nothing. In March, three months after the doctor's murder, there was a series of reported sightings in rail yards near San Antonio. Resendez had traveled 200 miles west.
Each time, he fled before police could respond. The suspected killer was still on the move, hopping trains and eluding authorities. With thousands of miles of train tracks to choose from, Rafael Resendiz could be anywhere.
Five months after the doctor's murder, and only 90 miles away in Weimer, Texas, members of a local church went to check on their pastor. He and his wife had not been at church that morning. Pastor!
Pastor! The couple was found, murdered in their own bed. Weimer's a small town.
Murder is nearly unheard of. Texas Rangers and the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene. The preacher and his wife had been bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, a weapon of opportunity taken from their garage.
The coroner set time of death at 24 to 36 hours earlier. The couple had been murdered late Friday or early Saturday morning. Money and valuables lay in plain sight.
Robbery was clearly not the motive. Deputies processed the bedroom with luminol, a chemical that reacts to the protein in blood and other bodily fluids. It revealed the victim's blood and bodily fluid from an unknown source.
Forensic testing later revealed the woman had been sexually assaulted. It appeared that after the murders, the killer had lingered at the crime scene. He ate in the victim's kitchen and took his time studying their driver's licenses. The investigators at the scene were unaware of the West University Place murder, but not for long.
In May 1999, Texas authorities were on the trail of a fugitive, Rafael Resendez. Fingerprints implicated him in the murder of a doctor in West University Place. Four months later, a preacher and his wife were found beaten to death in their home in Weimar.
The couple's red pickup truck was missing, probably stolen by the killer. Police put out an APB for the vehicle. Department of Public Safety investigators from the Texas Rangers were troubled by the crime scene.
The evidence in the house, partially eaten food and displayed ID cards, suggested a ritualistic killer. The Rangers contacted the FBI's Houston field office to get the opinion of a criminal profiler. Special Agent Mark Young. You have in a crime scene a lot of messages, a lot of forensic evidence, and a lot of behavioral evidence.
You can pick up not only the forensics, the fingerprints, the DNA, the hairs and fibers, and those types of things, but you can also get a look into the offender's behavior. The way he commits that crime is unique. It's different than any other offender. Young noted that this killer acted with extreme rage, but no sign of panic.
What really struck me behaviorally was this offender, unlike a lot of others, spent an incredible amount of time in that house going through everything. Their wallet and purse, respectively, were opened up and their identification was showing. In other words, the offender sat there and looked at their photographs, not taking any credit cards, not taking any cash. Profilers can analyze a killer's behavioral choices in an attempt to reveal details about him.
In this case, after killing the victims, the perpetrator kept striking with his weapon. But then he covered their bodies. This suggested perhaps even he was repelled by the results of his actions.
Displaying the victim's ID cards might be an act of domination, as if he wanted details about the lives he had taken. One of the Texas Rangers Young spoke to had seen something like this before. He realized, because he had some knowledge of the case in West University, that some of the same types of things had happened. And he said, hey guys, could this be connected? Not only are we looking at some MO that seems similar, but we're looking at behavior, this ritualistic behavior, or what we call sometimes signature of an offender.
If there was a connection between the two cases, the forensics lab would find it. One of the advantages we had is that we had forensic evidence in both places. We had fingerprints and DNA evidence in the West University case. We also had DNA evidence at the Weimer location.
DNA analysis revealed that the bodily fluid recovered in both cases matched. The same man sexually assaulted both women. Since the first victim's Jeep had been recovered, investigators wondered how the killer got to the second crime scene.
In both cases, a vehicle had been stolen after the crime. That would have meant, traditionally, that somebody had to bring the person there or that they were somebody from close by. Young studied the case file of suspect Rafael Resendiz.
There was information already in that fugitive investigation indicating that Resendiz got around by train. According to the fire, there were train tracks 50 yards from the doctor's house in West University Place. We turned around and looked. There's a train track immediately across the street from the Weimar location. With the two cases directly connected, investigators believed Rafael Resendez was a ritual serial killer.
The manner that he did these crimes is somewhat evolutionary. You don't just wake up one day and boom, get involved in that type of crime. It's something that you've practiced, you've built up to, and you've done before. And he's not going to stop all of a sudden either. They feared Resendez was using stolen vehicles and the railroads to find his next victim.
At the Houston field office, the FBI's fugitive squad joined the hunt for Resendez. Special Agent Bobby Eckerd led the investigation. We knew that he had fled the jurisdiction and had most likely traveled interstate and, in fact, into Mexico.
Because Resendez... had likely left Texas, they obtained an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution warrant. It would allow the FBI to add its federal resources to the hunt. The first thing that we wanted to do is to find out everything that we possibly could about Resendez.
We knew that he had been arrested over 13 times. I immediately started getting all the prison record pin packets so that I could identify not only relatives but associates. determine his patterns. All the interviews revealed to us that this was a man who was not well known by anybody.
His family had not really had a lot of contact with him since he left home at 12 years of age and moved to Acapulco and eventually to Florida. With little to go on, criminal profiler Mark Young tried to unlock the drifter's past to predict his next move. He forwarded details of both cases to analysts at the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
VICAP analysts use sophisticated databases to identify similar unsolved cases. Immediately, they were able to return to me a case in Lexington, Kentucky. A Hispanic male had assaulted a college student and murdered her boyfriend.
This happened late at night in 1997 near the railroad tracks where these two had been walking. The male was killed by his skull being crushed by a rock. And the female was sexually assaulted.
She was also physically assaulted. Pretty severe injuries. Though dazed by the attack, the young woman somehow survived.
Seeing that her boyfriend was dead, she made her way to a nearby house where residents called the police. She was able to give them an artist's depiction, a local artist, of the offender. Young received the sketch from the Lexington Police Department. I compared it, and I didn't immediately say, wow, you know, this is him. What I felt was kind of a guarded optimism that this could be the same guy.
But a sketch isn't proof. Young needed scientific evidence to be sure. He learned that the Lexington police still had DNA samples from the sexual assault two years earlier. and arranged for the samples to be flown to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. At the DNA analysis unit, examiners began processing the samples.
Examiner Alan Giusti. We look at 13 different unique DNA regions and we develop an individual profile. at each one of those regions.
I describe it like looking at a person's physical characteristics. You can look at one DNA region, and it might be the same as another person's. And that'd be like saying that two people both have brown eyes. Well, that's very common.
You look at 13 different DNA regions, it's like saying somebody has brown eyes, is left-handed, is 6'3", has got red hair. The more DNA regions you look at, the more complete the picture you get of the person. After mapping the DNA profile of the perpetrator from Lexington, Giusti contacted the examiners in Texas who had mapped the samples from Weimar and West University Place. By comparing the results that I obtained with the results they obtained, we were both able to determine that we had a possible common donor. In other words, the same person was committing these crimes. In Texas, Young forwarded the news to the other investigators. I was able to call Lexington PD and I heard a lot of hooping and hollering because they thought it was going to be an unsolved case. Lexington police now had Rafael Resendez as their prime suspect. Authorities across the Southwest canvassed homeless shelters and train yards. They knew Resendez was out there, somewhere. On May 28th, authorities found the preacher's truck abandoned near a train yard in San Antonio. It looked like Resendez had returned to the rails. Finding him would be an overwhelming task for Special Agent Eckert and her team. We had no idea. Never faced this type of obstacle before. There are thousands of tracks, there are thousands of trains every day and it was difficult to determine which line that he rode. With a massive search area to cover they had to be resourceful. One way we handled this is we developed a small wanted poster that we gave to the people that frequently rode the railroads. In train yards across the nation, locals were advised to be on the lookout for Rafael Resendez. If they spotted him, they should call the FBI fugitive squad immediately. When we received these calls, we would contact the railroad police. They would pull the person off the train and identify them. Agents and railroad police responded to hundreds of sightings. Each time, it wasn't rescinded. The FBI's best lead was the fugitive's sister in New Mexico. Agents stayed in contact with her, hoping she might hear from him. And if she did hear from him, they hoped she'd talk. So far, it seemed the only way to track Resendez was to follow a trail of bodies. On June 4th, 1999, a Fayette County, Texas woman stopped by her mother's house to check on her. The 73-year-old widow lived alone. The house had been ransacked. There was no sign of her mother. Mom! As she searched each room, her panic rose. Mother! Then, in the bedroom, she found her mother's body. The elderly woman had been bludgeoned to death. In 1999, agents were on the trail of Rafael Resendez, linked to four murders in Texas and Kentucky. As his notoriety grew, the press dubbed him the railroad killer. Now, an elderly widow had been murdered in rural Fayette County, Texas. Like the other victims, she lived near a railroad. The gruesome crime looked like the work of Rafael Resendez, according to FBI Special Agent Mark Young. When you looked at that real brutal style of murder, you felt like, yeah, I could be dealing with the same guy because she was covered similarly. There were jewelry boxes that had been opened up. In other rooms, things had been opened and gone through, and there were items taken. It was a familiar and disturbing pattern. Cash and jewelry had been left behind. Instead, the killer stole trinkets and personal items, as if taking souvenirs. Fingerprints in the laundry room indicated the killer had broken in through a rear window. The print was later matched to Resendez. After slaying his victim, he was in no rush to leave. Not only did he go around to all of the rooms, take certain items, and spend an inordinate amount of time, he went and had some fruit and some bread, which was a thing that we had seen a number of times. I take that to be more of a signature, showing that I totally own and dominate this individual and their belongings, more than a, I'm hungry and I need something to eat. Two distinctive clues at the Fayette County scene seemed intended as a message to investigators. A newspaper had been placed on the sofa, open to an article about the recovery of the preacher's stolen vehicle. In a guest bedroom, they found a toy train. It had been recently unpacked and set up on the bed. It seemed the railroad killer was taunting the authorities. A canine unit followed his scent to the train tracks. From there, the trail went cold. Less than 24 hours later, the next victim was discovered. Another gruesome murder near railroad tracks. This one 95 miles from Fayette County. I got a call in regard to a crime scene in Houston that was being assessed by the Houston Police Department. They were noticing some similarities. A 26-year-old schoolteacher was found sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death in her bedroom. Her driver's license had been removed from her wallet and displayed on a table. Like the other victims, she lived near railroad tracks. The teacher's car, a white Honda sedan, had been stolen. Later DNA analysis confirmed Resendez had assaulted the woman. Now he was killing at a much faster pace. One of the concerns we did have was that this guy was going to evolve into what we call a spree killer. A lot of times in the past, we've had serial killers, Ted Bundy, for instance, that the pressure got so great that they went into a spree mode, and that is they began to kill a number of victims with really no cooling off period. With his last two victims killed in a 24-hour period, it appeared Resendez had made the shift to spree killer. 2014, three-step protection on the conductor. Jumping in, air and brake, go up. On June 6th, a rail yard worker spotted the fugitive in Flatonia, Texas, halfway between Houston and San Antonio. 2014, we have a trespasser on premises, call central dispatch. He immediately notified local police and the FBI. 2014, we've got an emergency situation. Once again, Resendez slipped away. At the Houston FBI field office, Operation Train Stop was created. Now investigators from more than 30 agencies were assigned exclusively to the case. Special Agent Bobby Eckerd was part of the operation that was comprised of two basic squads. You had the one squad that was the serial homicide investigators that were looking into the various homicides, developing evidence. evidence of crimes. Then the other side was the fugitive investigators that their sole purpose was to locate, apprehend and arrest Resendez. The fugitive squad looked for patterns in the suspect's past. able to determine that he followed the crops throughout the United States. In Washington State he followed the avocado route. In Florida he would be involved in the citrus crops. In Kentucky and North Carolina he would pick tobacco. After identifying farm work sites and addresses of friends and family, agents would try to eliminate these comfort zones. You go everywhere that you can possibly think of that the fugitive might show up. By going there, by law enforcement presence in those places, people aren't willing to help out the fugitive anymore. But this fugitive was comfortable traveling fast and on his own without any help. And his murder spree was not yet over. Eight days after the schoolteacher was killed in Houston, her car was found 300 miles away near the Mexican border. Inside was a knife, but no sign of where Resendez had gone. Nearby were train tracks, giving the killer a clean escape to almost anywhere. In 1999, more than 30 law enforcement agencies hunted for Rafael Resendez, known as the Railroad Killer. Whenever a new crime appeared to be the work of the killer, Special Agent Mark Young investigated. I was getting hundreds of calls from departments around the country wanting me to listen to their stories about their crimes. and determine whether the cases might be linked. On June 15, the bodies of a 51-year-old woman and her father were discovered in their home in rural Gorham, Illinois. The local sheriff's office believed Resendez was involved and called Mark Young. As soon as we walked onto the scene, we could have been in one of our crime scenes in Texas. The double rail tracks were right behind the older man's residence. The killer broke in through a back window. He used a weapon of opportunity, a shotgun he found in the home. He stole a few trinkets and ate the victim's food. But this time the killer had added something new. A statement scrawled on the wall. A lot of people thought, oh, God, we've got some other type of offender here that's making a political statement. But Young knew better. He had reviewed the fugitive's prison file, including his correspondence. He had been writing political messages and letters that we were able to view in the past. We've been reviewing his prison background. That was even further indication to me that this is the same offender because this now is the rest of his fantasy coming out. In his own mind, Resendez was a deep political thinker. But authorities knew he was a vicious predator. He was tied up in his chair, and she was straight across the office tables. They believed he got to Gorham on the train and left in the victim's car, which was recovered the next day 60 miles south near the Kentucky border. Police across the country checked cold cases looking for murders Resendez might have committed. Special Agent Young investigated one in Hughes Springs, Texas. In October of 1998, a woman had been beaten to death with an antique flat iron. Though unsolved, the murder had been thoroughly investigated and documented. And I felt like there was a good possibility that Resendez was responsible for that case, too. Didn't you tell me? We had blunt force trauma. She was an elderly victim. She was not sexually assaulted, but she was covered in a similar fashion. And in looking at his crime scene photography... I see where her identification had been placed up as if the offender looked at it. Because the spree killer could be anywhere, the FBI placed Rafael Resendiz on their 10 most wanted fugitives list. His mug shots were posted with 30 different aliases. Special Agent Bobby Eckerd hoped it might shake new leads free. What this does is it raises the awareness of the case, the fugitive status, and it also allowed for us to offer up to $50,000 for the successful apprehension of Resendez. News of the Resendez case swept through the country. On heightened alert, agents and police searched hundreds of freight trains and train yards. It was as if Resendez had disappeared. Don Clark, then special agent in charge of the Houston field office, held press conferences to help spread the word, but he was candid about the case's difficulty. Many of us have never been involved with before. We are dealing with a lot of unknowns here. We're dealing with a lot of pieces of information, and it's a very difficult investigation for all of the agencies. The story led news broadcasts nationwide, and with eight victims now dead, the public was terrified. Eight is more than enough, many more than enough. One is more than enough, and that's all that I can assure the public. is that law enforcement is working together to try and get this person out of the street. The fugitive was deceptively smart and incredibly dangerous. He could move across the country easily and slip across the border at will. What we were trying to let people know was this is not some railroad hobo or bum that doesn't have any sense traveling around. This is a guy with a good eye. that knew how to evade law enforcement, that we needed a lot of assistance in capturing. This is a guy that was attacking innocent people in their sleep, and there was nobody really safe. The reward for the fugitive's capture climbed to $125,000. Calls came in from all over the country. In late June, Resendez was spotted at a homeless shelter in Louisville, Kentucky. But he never stayed in one place for long. Before the police could arrive, he was gone. Sergeant Mark Barnard of the Lexington, Kentucky Police Department warned the public. If I lived near a railroad track, I'd certainly have it well lit. I'd check and make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. I'd know my environment, my neighbors. I'd check my doors and windows. The tips kept coming. We had 3,178 calls that came into the command post. From those calls we generated over 1,100 leads. In other words, things that needed to be done throughout the United States and in Mexico. One credible tip was phoned into the Denver field office. The caller reported seeing Resendez at a house in Commerce City, Colorado. After authorities traced a phone call from the house to the Mexico town where Resendez had family, the tactical arrest team responded and moved in for the capture. Seven months into the search for Rafael Resendez, an arrest team raided a house in Commerce City, Colorado. They secured the occupants and searched the house. But Resendez was nowhere to be found. And authorities later determined the tip was a case of mistaken identity. Texas Rangers and the FBI agents kept in contact with a fugitive sister in New Mexico. She assured them that she had not heard from her brother, but promised that if he called, she would contact them. But at the FBI command post in Houston, the next big lead concerned a relative no one knew about before. before. Agents learned Resendez had a wife in Mexico. Special Agent Bobby Eckerd followed up on the surprising new lead. The command post became aware that he had a common law wife because she was interviewed by Mexican media. And a local station got a copy of that interview and showed it, aired it locally. At that point, we brought his wife to Houston for a two-day interview. Authorities needed to know as much as they could about Resendez, his patterns, and the places he had stayed. And did he write you all the time? She provided us with a lot of information about Resendez and his habits over the last two or three years. She advised that he brought her jewelry, he brought her figurines, sometimes little angel figurines. He brought her a guitar. I knew that a lot of these items had been stolen from crime scenes. And it in fact turned out that these items were linked to the homicides. She said Resendez had been in Mexico very recently, but she hadn't seen him in days. She was cooperating because she feared he wasn't safe there. In Mexico, bounty hunters were after him. Resendez was running out of places to hide. On July 10th, 1999, investigators received a phone page from Albuquerque. It was the fugitive's sister. Yes, I'm returning your call. She needed to talk to authorities. Okay, we're on our way. according to Special Agent Mark Young. There were relatives in Mexico that were being approached by law enforcement, by bounty hunters, by curiosity seekers. There were people that really didn't care how they got him across. You know, dead or alive, I want the reward money. She said her brother had called her. She did not want him to be harmed. Law enforcement told her that we could effect a safe surrender for him and we would agree to treat him humanely and get him in custody to resolve this thing. On July 12, 1999, Rafael Resendez agreed to turn himself in to a Texas Ranger at a small border crossing. Respecting his sister's wishes, authorities agreed to let him walk across and to take him in with a minimal arrest team. One of the most vicious serial killers in the nation's history was taken into custody quietly and without incident. In follow-up interviews with Mark Young, Resendiz would confess to a total of 13 murders, four of them not yet connected to him by authorities. He could recall in incredible detail crimes that occurred several years before. After discussions with him, I would contact the jurisdictions that had primary control of the investigations that he was referring to. And we resolved two homicides in Florida, Marion County, Florida, one in Colton, California, and one homicide in Barrow County, Georgia. The question in everyone's mind was why. In the interviews, Resendiz made the sickening claim that he killed to wipe out evil. Yet among his victims were a doctor, a preacher and his wife, a teacher and elderly people. All upstanding citizens, well loved by their families. The search for Rafael Resendez took eight months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In court, he attempted to use an insanity defense to explain his crimes. But in May of 2000, he was found guilty of first-degree murder. Four days later, Rafael Resendez was sentenced to death. Two brutal murders in two small towns located hundreds of miles apart. The crimes seem random and unrelated. As investigators search for a motive, they make a startling discovery. Both murders are the work of a cunning crime ring. Local police and the FBI must untangle a web of lies to stop a dangerous gang that will kill a man for his identity. In the United States, identity theft costs citizens billions of dollars. In some cases, it costs the lives of innocent people. I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. In 1999, a bizarre murder led to... Agents and police on a manhunt across the south. Their mission, to catch a killer who stole the identities of his victims. And have the survival skills to disappear forever. In Henderson County, Kentucky, on March 10th at 3 a.m., the sheriff's department receives a bizarre call. A man reports that a stranger is outside his home. The resident tells police that the stranger broke into his truck and is sitting in his driveway honking the horn repeatedly. When sheriff's deputies arrive, they find the attempted car thief is a 62-year-old man. He is soaking wet and suffering from severe hypothermia. The man identifies himself as Richard Dorman. He says two men abducted him at gunpoint and threw him in the Green River. He tells police he broke into the truck to try and get someone to help him. Police take him to the hospital. Lieutenant Frank Gropp, the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, is called out to question Richard Dorman. Lieutenant Gropp does not recognize the name, but he knows the face. It's between 2 and 3 in the morning, and we converge at the hospital. As soon as I see the guy, he looks like the photograph. He's the guy in the photograph. The photo is from a bank surveillance camera. Gropp has been searching for the mysterious man in the photo for four weeks, ever since he responded to an emergency call to a local farm. Farmer Jack Norris lived alone in Henderson, Kentucky. On February 3rd, Lieutenant Gropp made a gruesome discovery after a call from one of Norris's neighbors. When I got out there, deputies led me to a building adjacent to the victim's home, in the building that the victim had kept. It was a shed, actually, open-faced. And the contents of the shed was hay from the floor to the top with a space to the left where you could walk. And over in that space was the victim's body. And at that point, we knew we had a murder. Jack Norris'body was covered with blood. It appeared he was beaten to death. Looked like something had punctured his back several times. There was a pickaxe up toward the entrance. Closer examination, we could see blood on the handle. Blood on the handle? On the pick itself. An inch or more of the pickaxe was wet. Deputies continued to search the area. Near a wood pile, Gropp found a pile of hay. Underneath are dried blood stains. Closer inspection, I could see blood splatter up and along the wood that was stacked there, which was telling me that was the actual point of impact. That's the scene of the crime right there. Gropp found a heavy iron pole next to the stack of wood. There was blood on it. To pick up an item that is that heavy and beat a man in the head like that, it would tell me that the person that's swinging this, weapon is angry, aggressive. He's doing it with force and doing it with a purpose. Investigators searched the victim's house for clues. They hoped that inside they would find something to help them make sense of this senseless act. They definitely had time. Norris'home was ransacked. Drawers and cabinets were opened and searched. Whoever this was took their time. Either took their time or there's more than one individual doing two things at the same time. Although the murderer tore the room apart, nothing of any value appeared to be missing. The murderer tore the room apart, but the murderer was still alive. In fact, the victim's wallet was found in his pocket. One of the things that struck us was the calendars were still on January 31st, which was Sunday. They had not been flipped over to February 1st. So, as an educated guess, we put the murder at Monday morning. Later, we used the mail carrier and the mail that was in the mailbox, and pretty much that confirmed. He never did get his mail from Mundy. Sheriff's deputies canvass the area. The victims neighbors provide an intriguing clue. Right away, the neighbor's telling us that this man carried two wallets. We have a wallet missing. It's the wallet with his ID. One wallet he had ID, the other wallet he carried for different reasons. But the wallet and ID is missing. The second wallet and the missing ID only added to the puzzle. Police recalled finding an empty box of checks at the victim's home. Gropp thought perhaps he'd found the motive. News of the Norris murder spreads quickly. Local residents were afraid. Who did this and why? For days, the Henderson County Sheriff's Office tried to unravel the crime, but nothing seemed to make sense. Then, suddenly, they got an unexpected break. A bank in Union County called with intriguing information. The bank notified us that they had received a check from an individual off of Mr. Norris'account, that they had compared the signatures and that, from what they could tell, it was a forgery. The only thing missing from the Norris home was an ID and a box full of checks. Perhaps the missing checks would lead them to Norris'killer. We went to the bank. This was just an excellent tape of this individual standing there at the counter, white hair. He had signed a name or used the name Cleo Campbell. The man with white hair is Richard Dorman. Hours after Jack Norris'murder, Dorman called himself Cleo Campbell and cast a check on Norris'account for $1,100, almost the exact balance in the account. Lieutenant Gropp knows who Dorman is, but why was Dorman posing as Cleo Campbell? After the Norris robbery, when Gropp got the photo, he began searching for Campbell. We checked surrounding counties for the person and the name, Cleo Campbell. There was no Cleo Campbell that met the description in the area. We go on the internet, we look up every Cleo Campbell that we can find nationwide. If I found a Cleo Campbell in any particular state, I would contact the local law enforcement agency. And they'd call me back one after the other saying, you know, this is not the guy. Investigators searched for the elusive Cleo Campbell for weeks. But nothing panned out. It was as if Campbell never existed. Then Gropp learned that Campbell was the name of a robbery victim in Alabama. The mystery surrounding Richard Dorman was deepening. Lieutenant Gropp has a lot he wants to ask Dorman. And I said, well, Cleo. And I said, you don't mind if I call you Cleo, do you? That's how I've come to know you. And his eyes are just, they get big. Dorman realizes he's been caught. And in a real polite manner, he says, look, I don't want you boys to be offended, but this goes across state lines. You're going to need some federal people in this. You're going to need the FBI. Lieutenant Gropp calls in the FBI. Special Agent Paul Pape is brought in to interview Richard Dorman. Dorman launches into an incredible story. He tells the agent that he agreed to meet a man named Charlie Stewart at a truck stop in Clarksville, Tennessee. Charlie Stewart, according to Dorman, was the ringleader of this group that went around and... stole checks and cashed checks and assumed other people's identities. He said that he was a check casher. Charlie provided Dorman with false identification in the Norris check. The day before he was abducted, Dorman was told there was a problem and Charlie wanted to talk to him about it. Special Agent Paul Pate. As he waited for Stewart, a young male came up to his car and said, Are you Richard Dorman? And Dorman says, Yeah, I am. What's it to you? And at that point, the young male lunged at Dorman and tried to start... He had a stun gun in his hand and was trying to stun him with his stun gun. Another older gentleman came around to Dorman's car and had a gun. a little derringer and pointed at right at Dorman and at that point Dorman seeing the gun stopped resisting and said basically what's this all about and the older gentleman said Charlie wants to see you. Dorman and the two men drive north until they reach the Green River in Kentucky. Dorman said they pulled over on a dirt road there right next to the river, got Dorman out of the car, and went to the back of the trunk and gave Dorman a cigarette. The older, older male said to Dorman that, uh, we gotta take you to see Charlie, but before we do that we need you to get into the trunk. Dorman had no choice. The two men demanded his wallet. And all of a sudden the vehicle takes off with him in a trunk and plunges over about a 20-foot embankment into the Green River. When the vehicle hits the river, the trunk pops open. Dorman is able to swim out of the trunk before the car summaries. He grabs onto a log and drifts downstream probably 100, 200 yards. The abductors think at this time, well, he's either drowned or he's going to freeze to death because of the temperature of the water. Dorman tells agents he had never met the two men who tried to kill him, but he certainly worked for Charlie Stewart. Stewart is a man all too familiar to Lieutenant Gropp, a man Gropp believes must have been involved in Jack Norris'murder. Now he has to prove it. To be continued... In Henderson, Kentucky, a mysterious man claims two men tried to kill him by throwing him into the Green River. He tells police a known criminal named Charlie Stewart is behind his kidnapping and attempted murder. Henderson County Sheriff's Investigator Lieutenant Frank Gropp knows Stewart only too well. Charlie Stewart is infamous in this area. He's well known. He's been involved in all sorts of different criminal activity. Charlie Stewart is a suspect in the murder of a farmer in Kentucky. And Stewart is also wanted in connection with a homicide in Alabama. On the morning of February 8th in Alabama, five days after the Norris murder in Kentucky, a Morgan County deputy responded to a call. Someone abandoned a van at the old Gum Pond Rock Quarry. The front end of the vehicle was submerged. The deputy checked out the back. Inside he found an old quilt, stacks of paperwork, and the body of a man. The victim's wrists were bound. His face was covered with duct tape. Body in the van at the rock quarry. He was not breathing. You could not see any chest movement at all. It was obvious that he was dead. Detective Terry Kelly is a criminal investigator with the Morgan County Sheriff's Office. When an officer comes across what appears to be especially a homicide, but any crime scene that can be processed for evidence, he observes what he can, backs off, calls the investigators, and we arrive and take the scene from there. Investigators secured the scene and waited for the forensic team to arrive. Captain Mike Corley. Patience is hard in a case like this, but we knew that the damaging of evidence or the contaminating of evidence would be crucial in court. The forensic unit arrived. at the rock quarry. The victim was a white male. He appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s. The forensics persons started their processing of the scene, which is photographing, measuring, checking to see if they could observe any latent prints on the vehicle that would be worth processing. Let's see if we can get it open. Investigators opened the other door and spotted a dark blanket. I see your hands! I see your hands now! And we saw that move. Someone says there's movement. It kind of scared all of us, I'll tell you the truth. We were not expecting that. Get an ambulance. We're getting an ambulance. Under the material, investigators found a woman. She had been badly beaten. She was duct taped up also. She had a duct tape around her mouth, around her hands. What happened? What happened to you? I'm so upset that it seemed forever. Police questioned the only survivor, Florence Nichols. It seemed forever, but it was a long time. She told them what happened. Did you see what the guys looked like? Florence and her son James had just gotten home from a flea market. He was a businessman. You know, he had a little shop that it was kind of a mom-and-pop type of gun trading and guitars and musical instruments. And they lived together in Eva, and they pretty much always had there in the Eva community. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. It was a young man asking for directions. He forced his way into the house, and then he attacked her. But she tells investigators she heard a second man's voice. As far as she could tell, he ran through the living room and down the hall where her son James was. A few minutes later, she was thrown into the back of her own van. Something very heavy was thrown on top of her. It was the body of her son. According to Florence, the van drove for a few minutes then stopped. She had been in that van for probably 14 to 16 hours, as best as we can reconstruct. The whole time with her son who was deceased on top of her, fearing for her own life. It had to have been horrendous. I'm amazed that she survived. She knew deep down that these people intended to kill her. I think she had no doubt in her mind. Florence Nichols described her attackers. The man who came to the door was young, late teens or early twenties. She didn't get a look at the other one. She had no idea why anybody would want to hurt her or her son. Investigators searched the Nichols'home looking for clues. Nothing appeared to be missing. In a fairly large gun collection, there was a fairly large amount of knives, collectible knives. There was so much stuff left that would have been good items to steal. It doesn't appear to be a robbery. If it's not a robbery, why would they kill someone? What was the motive? What was going on? So it's a very strange case at first. Investigators returned to the Nichols home. They wanted to go over the house a second time in case they missed something. This time, Florence Nichols told them she carefully went through her belongings and discovered a few items were missing. Some collectible guns, some knives, about $200 in cash, and her son's checkbook. If those checks are going to show up somewhere forged and pass somewhere else, that could lead you back to your perpetrator. So in a way, it's good news that the checkbook was missing. The FBI and police are now working two homicides and a string of robberies they suspect are linked to Charlie Stewart. There was an eerie parallel between the Alabama and the Kentucky murder cases. Lieutenant Frank Gropp. Charlie Stewart being from here is an obvious connection from here to there. The type of murder is the same. It appeared that the man in Alabama was murdered. For his identification, and that fits what we're looking at. So at that point, we kind of focused on Charlie Stewart. When a case comes together, that's exciting. And when the pieces fell together like this, that was just, it was more than I could ask for. We felt that this was it. But to solve the puzzle, investigators must first find Charlie Stewart. Agents turn up the pressure on Dorman. Dorman begins to give the agents the details of Charlie Stewart and his deadly identity theft ring. I've been working with Stuart for a couple of three years. He was always provided with ID that at least appeared to be him or looked like him. He would walk into a bank very calmly, knowing he had a stolen check and sometimes a check of a dead man, and was passing that and wouldn't even break a sweat. Not a nervous bone in his body. He was a pro. Ironically, Dorman himself was targeted by Stewart's deadly scam. When Stewart hired two men to kill Dorman, they took his wallet before they dumped his body. Let me out of here! Let me out of here! So far, police and the FBI have identified two members of the identity theft ring. Richard Dorman is in custody. But the most dangerous one, suspected murderer Charlie Stewart, is still on the run along with his unnamed accomplices. The FBI and police hope Dorman can lead them to the men before they target another victim. The FBI and police in Alabama and Kentucky are working two homicide investigations they think were engineered by the same man, Charlie Stewart. In Alabama, a man was found murdered in a van beside his badly beaten mother at a rock quarry. Pulled up about one in the morning. The night before the bodies were found, a deputy responded to a call at the rock quarry. A resident complained that someone had stolen his tractor. When the deputy first arrived to check out the area, he saw a gray 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix. The vehicle's hood felt warm, but the driver was gone. The deputy got the plate numbers and searched for the driver. But when he got back, the Grand Prix was gone. The Grand Prix was parked 150 yards from where the van was found the next morning. Captain Mike Corley. It was just too, too coincidental to have not been related. The Gray Grand Prix was now investigators'best lead. Investigator Terry Kelly. It was decided to put out what we call a bolo, be on the lookout for this vehicle, this Gray Pontiac. So that was broadcast over the air to local law enforcement. News media likes to have scanners. They picked up on it, of course, questioning it. us and we responded let them know that yes we were looking for this vehicle it was a vehicle of interest possibly in this homicide we simply wanted to talk to the people that were in it see if they saw or heard anything unusual in that area that night we had several telephone calls several sightings tips came in but none of them turned out to be the car they were looking for We appreciate you coming in, sir. A few days later, a local man contacted the Morgan County Sheriff's Office with a promising tip. He told investigators that they should take a look at a man by the name of Larry Butler, who owned a gray Grand Prix. According to the man, Butler left town on a motorcycle around the time of James Nichols'murder. The Grand Prix had not been seen since. When police pulled up Butler's criminal record, they learned that Larry Butler was an alias. His real name was Charlie Stewart. He has numerous aliases and a long, long criminal history. Burglaries, robberies, violent crimes. And a current warrant on him out of the state of Florida. When you see somebody with that kind of criminal history that suddenly disappears the night of a homicide nobody's heard from since, you know, I might be a little cynical as a law enforcement officer, but it makes you a little suspicious. Lieutenant Chuck Zander from the Morgan County Sheriff's Office makes several visits to Stewart's home, the trailer in an isolated area. Each time, Stewart's wife tells him she has no idea where he is. Investigators also question Stewart's neighbors. We'll be in touch. We had received a word that Charles Stewart had come to one of his neighbors and wanted him to catch a check on a dead man's account. Of course, that sent flags for us. He was very afraid of Stewart. He was convinced that... Stewart would set his trailer on fire and wait until he ran outside and shoot him as he came out. That was his words. That's the kind of person he thought Stewart was. The neighbor also tells investigators that the day before Nichols'murder, he saw Stewart in his Grand Prix with two other men. Unfortunately, he didn't get a good look at the men with Stewart. Agents and police hit another dead end. The FBI is involved in an intense manhunt to try and capture suspected murderer Charlie Stewart and shut down his identity theft ring. Agents already have one of his accomplices, Richard Dorman, in custody, but he hasn't been able to lead them to the fugitive. After weeks of working the stalled case, the FBI gets a break. Special Agent Paul Pape. Someone calls me at the office and said that they had information that I needed to hear. This person tells us that the two people responsible for these murders are Billy Lyon and his father, Larry Lyon, both from Henderson, Kentucky. According to the cooperator, Billy Lyon told her they intended to rob a tobacco store in Evansville, Indiana, where he used to work. He planned to kill the manager and steal the safe. That was supposed to happen fairly quickly. So, with this information, a new sense of urgency is placed on a case where we not only have old murders, but now we have one that's pending. So we have to act immediately on it. Lieutenant Frank Gropp of the Henderson County Kentucky Sheriff's Office. Have you ever seen any of these men? Agent Paul Pape and I, the Long City Police, set up a photo array which consists of six or more photographs of like individuals, individuals who look similar, and we show that to Dorman. That's the other one. Dorman quickly picks Larry Lyon and his son, 18-year-old Billy Lyon, out of the photo array. We initiate surveillance on Billy Lyon's house in Evansville, Indiana with the FBI and the Evansville police. And we also have the house in Henderson, Kentucky where Larry Lyon is living under surveillance. The plan was to go obtain search warrants and arrest warrants both in Indiana and Kentucky for the two suspects, their houses, their cars, and get everyone coordinated, bring up the extra help from surrounding areas to to coordinate these searches. But as all plans go, this one didn't work out. There he is, there he is. Billy Lyon leaves his house and heads toward Henderson where his father lives. Let's go, let's go guys, let's go, go. So at this point we have to make a decision. Do we let Billy Lyon go and run the risk of one, losing him, or two, him going to Larry Lyon's house and coordinate with him to go do this tobacco store murder? So we made the decision that we needed to stop Billy Lyon and arrest him. Driver, turn off the ignition and put your hands out. Shortly after they entered into the state of Kentucky, the Henderson Police Department pulled Billy Lyon His vehicle over, along with undercover units from Evansville PD and the FBI, and we took Billy Lyon into custody. Agents questioned Billy Lyon at the Evansville police station. You could tell from his attitude that he knew at that point that the gig was up. He is obviously apprehensive about speaking to us. As Billy is being questioned, Henderson deputies maintain surveillance on his father's residence. They observe Larry Lyon leave in a hurry. Yeah, he's leaving now. Go pick him up. Authorities fear Lyon has heard about his son being arrested and that he's trying to make a run for it. Lieutenant Frank Gropp. At that point in time, I believe you have one city cruiser that's behind him that initiates a stop. The city officer would hold his position until other officers arrived. But Larry Lyon never gave that chance to happen. Hands out your window! Rachel, get up! Rachel, get up! He's moving! He's moving! Hold it, Rachel! Stop! He's got a gun in his hand! Larry Lyon is rushed to a hospital in Evansville, where he dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At the Evansville police station, Special Agent Pape continues to question Billy Lyon. I don't understand why you would just... My thought is if I tell him that his father just killed himself, that will be the end of the interview, understandably. So I didn't tell... him about his father at that point. I continued with the interview. At first it was almost like pulling teeth to try to get him to say anything. And he really opened up when I when I told him that I knew Charlie Stewart was behind this. and that he was responsible for, at least in part, in telling you and Larry to go ahead and commit these murders. And the first thing that Billy said to me was, Charlie Stewart's a psycho. They proceeded to tell us about the Jack Norris murder and the Nichols murder in Alabama and the kidnapping of Dorman and putting him into the river. He laid all the guilt on Stewart, that Stewart was directing them to do that. Billy Lyon tells Special Agent Pape that Stuart will be impossible to catch. He's smart. He knows how to survive in the wilderness. And he's extremely dangerous. In Alabama and Kentucky, FBI agents and local law enforcement dismantle a gang of identity thieves willing to kill a man for his driver's license. Only one member remains at large, the ringleader, Charlie Stewart. The FBI closes in on the fugitive. Two of Stewart's associates, now in custody, tell authorities the fugitive is dangerous, self-sufficient, and able to live off the land. Investigator Terry Kelly has helped chase Stewart for more than a year. He supposedly had money stashed in several different locations that he could keep running to. He was excellent in the woods, able to hide out, a master of disguise. Mr. Stewart was very... good at changing his appearance. DENNIS FARINA A combined task force of FBI agents and local law enforcement raids Stewart's trailer. Special Agent Scott Brochures. We didn't find any evidence on the murders, but we did find a lot of interesting things. He had cut a hole in the bottom of his house trailer where he could get out, get out the back. We found a van that was like in the bushes that we didn't even see it when we first arrived. But it had like the telephone wire out there where we could have communications back to his house trailer. Inside the van, agents find 20 weapons and ammunition. He could have used it as a bunker and held off people for a long time. So we knew that he was not going to be an easy catch, and if we did come across him, it was probably going to be a battle. Apparently, Stewart has been preparing for this moment for a long time. And now he's gone. No signs of him? Basically, my job now, since Stewart lived in my area, was to try to find Charlie Stewart. Even though Stewart seemed to be a ruthless individual, he did value his family. As time passes, agents keep up the pressure on Stewart's wife. She continues to claim her husband has not contacted her. Our sources would tell us that his wife was very afraid of him, even though she would protect him, she was also afraid of him. Months pass. There is no sign of Stuart. It is frustrating. It's very frustrating. You work as hard as you can, you develop leads as fast as you can, you look everywhere you can think of looking. After nearly a year, Stewart is featured on a national crime show. We got very few leads, which we felt was unusual because a lot of times you get a lot of leads and more than you can handle, and you have to start picking and choosing the good ones, but we got very few leads, so that kind of led us to believe, well, he's in hiding somewhere, and it's probably going to be in the Kentucky area that he knows real well or the Alabama area. Good afternoon, ma'am. Lieutenant Brashears with the FBI. Agents re-interview the fugitives'neighbors. They are too afraid to say whether or not they have seen Charlie Stewart. If Stewart found out that they had talked to us or given any information, he would get him killed somehow. And they really believed that. They were hugely scared to death of him and really wouldn't give us a lot of information. As time went on and... As I kind of, you know, were able to develop a little rapport with a few of the people, they started cooperating a little bit, and they realized that as scared as they were, they were probably better off getting him captured than having him out in the loose. Slowly, Stewart's neighbors begin to give agents information. We were able to find out that his wife had bought like a sleeping bag and was buying some clothes that were too big for her kids. She bought size 11 boots. and none of her kids wore size 11. She had maybe a 14-year-old, but I was pretty sure his feet weren't that big. It's just more evidence that Stewart is hiding in the area. Authorities try a different approach. We developed several sources within the FBI that we thought we could send in to talk to Stewart's wife, just casually to ask questions about this and that. The FBI brings in a friend of Stewart's who has agreed to help police. The man has known Stewart for years. He's to wear a wire so agents can listen in on his conversation with Stewart's wife. At this point, you know, we're kind of sitting on the edge of our seats. We're just really confident that he's probably going to be there. The cooperator approaches the trailer. The source went in, nobody was there. He knocked on the door, didn't see anything, and he had to walk back down the dirt road to get back to his car. And then as he gets in his car, he looks in his rearview mirror and he thought he saw someone back at the trailer. And he thought it was Charlie Stewart. And he looked around and he didn't see the person again. And he was telling us, you know, I'm sure I saw Stewart. up the trail. I said, I just got a quick glimpse, but, you know, when I turned around, it wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure I saw him up there. Special Agent Paul Pape. Who knows what could have happened or what he was armed with at that time. It would have been been rushing roulette to send us in there, trying to apprehend him at that time. You just don't bum rush the woods to try to find the guy. It has to be, you have to outfox the fox. Agents and police must come up with a plan to trap the dangerous fugitive. Fugitive Charles Stewart is wanted for bank fraud, kidnapping, murder for hire, and murder. The FBI and Alabama authorities believe he is hiding out in the dense woods behind his home. Special Agent Scott Rochers. We kind of started putting together a theory that, okay, he's living back in this woods, either in a tent or in one of those little caves. Maybe he comes back after the sun goes down, spends a night with the family. Before the sun comes up, he heads back out in the woods. I went out with three or four of the guys from our office, and we just hiked out in the woods like we were just hunters. When the agents find evidence Stewart's hiding in the woods, Chuck Zend and Terry Kelly from the Morgan County Sheriff's Office bring in a canine unit to track Stewart down. I'd been looking for Charlie Stewart for approximately a year by now. I put a lot of hours in it and nothing was really coming up to where I was finding him. So I wasn't real optimistic or I probably would have taken more people with me. Not far from the trailer, the dogs pick up a scent. Detective Terry Kelly. Dogs hit a hot track, and they hit it hard, and they hit it fast. Almost immediately. And the chase was on. The dogs immediately took us to a tree and were barking up a tree, which kind of made us a little scared, thinking he might be in the tree, and we saw a deer stand. The deer stand was empty. But the agents were not far behind Stuart. The dogs followed the scent down a ravine to a creek. The deer stand was empty. We got down a little ways and the dogs found a cave. We kind of backed off a little bit because we didn't know what was in the cave. Dogs went in the cave, come back out, but it wasn't real deep. And with our flashlights and things we had, we were able to see if there was food, fresh food, the sleeping bag, other camping supplies. Stuart can't be far away. All of a sudden you see Scott Brashears bounding through the field and it looks like he's doing about a four-minute mile. He's hauling and he's coming to tell us we got a hot track. We got a hot track. We found his cave. We're on him. Captain Mike Corney. As quick as I could I called and I got a roll call of everybody that was in service that day. I called for the air unit. I began to get things in place. We had state police responding, some of the local police officers from the local cities, and the sheriff's office trying to establish a perimeter around this two-by-five-mile wooded area. I probably had between 20 and 30 officers out there. As the dog team calls in their location, Corley positions his men. Every time I got a chance to shift an officer 100 yards, that just took 100 yards away from him. I wanted to tighten that area down, close that noose in around him to where he had nowhere to go. After probably close to three hours of chasing him through the woods, I finally hear on my radio from one of the other sheriff's deputies that a guy's been spotted running in the woods. Help! Stuart is cornered. He pulls out a gun. Put the weapon down! And now probably comes the worst point of the whole search. As we're hearing that they're closing in and the deputies think they have him, I hear shots have been fired. I hear gunshots. I don't know if it's one of our guys, the dog handlers, but then a few seconds later we did hear nobody was hurt and that Stewart had been captured. The chase was over. A long, long chase was over. A chase that started almost a year and a half before. Charlie was a scary man. There was a coldness in his eyes. A very, very scary coldness. I'm very glad he was in custody. Very glad. In January 2002, Stewart and his gang are tried and found guilty of bank fraud, kidnapping, and murder. Richard Dorman receives a life sentence for his role in the crimes. Billy Lyon is also sentenced to life. Charles Lewis Stewart is convicted on all counts. He is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Authorities believe Charlie Stewart masterminded the entire operation. He ordered Larry and Billy Lyon to rob Jack Norris and James Nichols. He then handed off the victims stolen IDs and checkbooks to Richard Dorman, the fourth member of the gang, so he could clean out their bank accounts. Stewart chose his victims carefully, based on the resemblance to Dorman. It's a disturbing scenario. Two innocent men are dead simply because of the way they looked. The unrelenting investigation by local police and federal agents put this ring of killers and thieves behind bars forever. I