The FBI Files S4 Marathon Part 2: Watch the Greatest Crime-Solving Moments of All Time | Real Crime

On a highway in Northern Virginia, a brazen daytime shooting of employees from the Central Intelligence Agency stunned the country. The FBI would be called in, but the nationwide search quickly became a far-reaching international manhunt. Agents hoped that after years of investigation, a daring operation halfway around the world would put an end to the global pursuit.

Nobody should die that way. I’ve never seen anything that horrific. One of the duties of a pathologist is to determine the cause of death.

In Langley, Virginia, a terrorist fired into rush hour traffic. The victim seemed randomly selected, but the motive appeared to be political, targeting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. I’m Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office.

The FBI quickly became involved in the investigation, processing more than 2,000 leads and crossing an ocean in the effort to deliver justice.

Langley, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC, is home to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. On Monday, January 25th, 1993, another work week had started for thousands of CIA employees who routinely commute to their jobs at America’s global intelligence agency. Workers of varying security clearance and experience waited at the long light to turn left into the CIA compound.

All were alone in their cars except a young couple who had met at the CIA and had recently been married. As newlyweds, they seemed to have their entire life ahead of them.

Then the young man was struck from behind by a gunman’s bullet. Two employees behind the shooter fled from their vehicles as the man walked forward. A third employee sped off before he could fire.

More ran the red light as their cars were peppered by bullets. The gunman then shot into a sixth car, hitting the 61-year-old man twice at point-blank range. Behind that car, the shooter realized the first man he shot was still alive.

He aimed at the wounded man, killing him but sparing his wife. Only one other employee remained, frozen by fear. The 66-year-old was killed instantly by two quick shots.

After the young woman heard the killer speed off, she ran for safety. Dozens of burned 911 calls flooded the switchboard in Fairfax County, Virginia. All available units were ordered to respond.

Emergency personnel from several towns raced to save those that clung to life. Fairfax County Detective Fred F. was assigned as lead detective.

One of the first steps was to make sure that the scene itself was safe. “We weren’t sure what type of individuals we may have been dealing with, so we had to set up an armed security around the scene to prevent a further attack.”

Choppers searched for the fugitive from overhead. Several motorists reported seeing him flee into the surrounding woods after he drove off. The CIA immediately dispatched its tactical security forces to comb the 250-acre compound in and around headquarters.

An exhaustive search turned up nothing.

Authorities secured a three-mile radius and closed busy Route 123 except to emergency personnel. At the crime scene, police found two dead and three critically wounded. Four others escaped unharmed, three of them women.

FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett arrived moments after the shooting. “The first thing you do when you walk into a crime scene is ask, what’s the obvious? Well, the obvious is this appears to be directed towards the CIA.

It might be directed towards the individuals that were shot, but it was clearly somebody who wanted to make a public statement during the rush hour traffic.”

The victims were rushed to area hospitals as investigators began to interview the survivors. Their first step was to alert the public and area law enforcement to the description of a fugitive and his vehicle. But most witnesses saw little, and their accounts varied.

“The witnesses stated that the suspect was a male, mostly olive-complected type individual, armed with a rifle, and that was pretty much the composite description we were able to put together. Height varied. The vehicle ranged from being a brown station wagon to a blue truck.

I think a lot of the people were in a panic situation and were shielding themselves from being victims.”

One woman got a closer look than most. She described the shooter as a man with dark hair in his early 30s, wearing a tan jacket and dark pants. Though he had her in his sights, for some reason he chose not to shoot.

“We looked at the individuals that were killed and we said, could there be a connection? Had they done something in the past that someone could want to take revenge on them for, whether it be personal or professional? Because you got to look at this both ways.”

The immediate crime scene covered an area of 50 square yards. Glass and shell casings littered the roadway. Forensic technicians needed to record every detail before the bodies of the two slain victims could be removed from their cars.

According to Fairfax County Crime Scene Detective Jeff Miller, “I have a duty to them, and my duty is I have to be their voice. They’ve been murdered. Here’s this person who’s silent forever, and somebody has to speak up for them.

So that’s the way I look at it. I’m their voice, and it’s my job to find whatever it is that’s going to help us find or identify the person who’s responsible.”

Crime scene investigators recovered ten empty shell casings. They believed they were likely fired from an AK-47 towards the back of the cars where the gunman began firing. Technicians also recovered one live round.

“The forensic evidence always tells the truth. It’s never clouded by someone’s perception. It never lies to you.

It’s always telling the truth, and it’s my job to find it. All I have to do is find it, and once I find it and I’m able to examine it, it’s going to tell me exactly what happened.”

The live round on the ground told investigators that the weapon was a semi-automatic and had most likely jammed before the killer fired his first round. Noting the location of the casings in relation to the shattered glass enabled the team to determine the trajectories and order of the gunman’s bullets. Investigators also gathered glass samples from each of the vehicle’s broken windows.

They hoped the combination of several types of glass found in the same location would prove significant. “You had a number of different cars. Each of the cars was a different manufacturer.

It had a German car, an American car, a Swedish car. The glass that’s put in these cars is all different. If some of this glass had spattered back on the shooter, even though it was microscopic, someone who had these three different kinds of glass on their clothing, that might be probative of the investigation.”

While investigators continued to gather evidence at the crime scene, agents and detectives visited nearby hospitals to speak to the remaining survivors. The young woman who had lost her husband in the assault hadn’t seen much since she hid below the dashboard most of the time. She said that the man could have shot her at any moment, but like the previous female survivor, he turned away instead of firing.

She also told investigators that she and her husband normally used a different entrance to drive into the CIA compound. FBI Agent Brad Garrett wondered who else might have known what was going on. “We immediately started looking at who within the CIA, disgruntled employees, present employees that may have had a relationship with these people, that could have retaliated for whatever reason.

There’s a lot of bizarre people that have applied to work for the CIA, and they’ve rejected a lot of people.”

At the Fairfax County Command Center, the female witness who had gotten the best look at the gunman worked with a police sketch artist. Based on her description, investigators believed the suspect was of Hispanic or Middle Eastern background. She had not gotten as good a look at his vehicle but recalled that it was a station wagon.

Investigators released the drawings to the public, hoping to elicit leads. “One of the first things we had to do was to get out through the media that afternoon a phone number or a system where the potential witnesses that had been in that area that morning could contact us. We needed to isolate a phone number for that purpose and get it out to the media as quickly as possible.”

As calls poured in, agents and detectives were still grappling to find a clear motive for the shooting. If they could deduce a reason for the shooter’s actions, it would limit the potential suspect pool. Agents searched the victims’ backgrounds for possibilities as to why they may have been targeted.

“Once we started looking at the backgrounds of the individuals that were shot, and we looked at the circumstances as to why they were at that intersection, it didn’t appear, at least to me, that there probably was a link between them being shot, those particular individuals being shot, and the person or persons that shot them.”

Just eight hours after the shooting, Fairfax County Detective Jeff Miller examined the cartridges recovered from the pavement at the crime scene. He confirmed the shells were from an AK-47 assault rifle, a weapon used primarily by Russian and Chinese armies. Upon closer inspection, Detective Miller discovered a latent fingerprint on the shell.

“The difficult part about this whole situation was that a cartridge case is a cylindrical shape. The fingerprint went about 300 degrees, almost all the way around this cartridge case. So what I had to do is photograph it in different steps.

I’d photograph it, and I would turn it about a sixteenth of an inch, adjust the light so it was exactly the same, and photograph it again. Then I would continue to do that over and over so that I had photographed the entire circumference of the cartridge casing.”

The hour-long process yielded one complete fingerprint. It was investigators’ first solid lead. Detectives fed the print into a system that was connected to 185 other databases throughout North America.

“We could take that one latent fingerprint and send it to any automated fingerprint system in North America and ask them to search their database to see if that fingerprint was on file or was recorded within any of their automated systems.” Unfortunately, the extensive search provided no match. Either the suspect had no record, or he had not committed any crimes within North America.

The next morning, police looked for witnesses among area commuters on Route 123 who may have seen something unusual on the morning of the attack. They handed out flyers with a sketch of the suspect to 3,000 motorists. Intense media attention generated sightings from across the country.

None immediately panned out, but the reports were maintained in the command center’s growing database. Through the night, patrols on the roads around Northern Virginia and the Washington DC area remained on high alert.

That evening, a car fitting the description of the suspect’s vehicle was pulled over by a Virginia state trooper. The trooper called for backup, then approached the vehicle. He had no idea if he had the shooter or if the man was carrying an AK-47.

On January 26th, 1993, 36 hours after a lone gunman opened fire with an AK-47 in front of CIA headquarters, killing two and wounding three others, Virginia state troopers stopped a vehicle that fit the description of the suspect’s car. “Here, sir, put your hands up. Keep your hands up.”

The killer had been described vaguely as having an olive complexion, medium build, and dark hair. The man troopers stopped also fit that description. A fingerprint check confirmed he was not the fugitive.

By now, dozens of personnel from the CIA, ATF, and the FBI had joined Fairfax County Detective Fred F.’ s team in pursuit of the murderer. “As additional manpower was needed for different areas, they were brought in and supplemented us.

The FBI was very generous. They supplied us not only with the hard technology, the computers and so forth, but their clerical state staff to maintain the information management system that we had designed, that we felt we could process the leads as they were coming in.”

FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett was concerned that despite recovering a fingerprint from a shell casing at the crime scene, investigators were still unable to identify the perpetrator or his motive. All they knew for sure was that the gunman used an AK-47. “So I made this decision.

I said, let’s go back and look at all the AK-47s purchased in the last year. The reason we did that was that typically people who commit these kinds of acts buy their weapons a short time before they commit the act.”

Over the next several days, ATF agents visited gun shops in the Virginia and Maryland area outside of Washington DC, since the purchase or possession of firearms is forbidden within city limits. They discovered that 1,000 AK-47s were purchased in Northern Virginia over the past year. Another 600 had been purchased in Maryland.

Agents gathered records of every purchase and entered the gun owners’ names into the command center’s large computer database. They also checked at firing ranges within 100 miles of CIA headquarters. Agents questioned gun owners directly.

“ATF agents, we’re investigating the shootings near the CIA headquarters.” They asked if anyone remembered a person in the past year who matched the suspect’s description and had practiced with an AK-47. Nobody remembered anyone that even fit that description.

By February 1st, a week after the shooting, investigators hoped their growing database of witness descriptions and gun purchases could provide a common link among the thousands of names and police reports entered so far. Agents and detectives set parameters for the database to cross-reference the suspect’s physical characteristics with those who made a recent purchase of an AK-47 and who had a local address. The computer returned one name: 28-year-old Mir Aimal Kasi.

He had purchased an AK-47 three days before the shooting. He was a Pakistani immigrant who lived in Herndon, Virginia, and was reported missing three days after the shooting by his roommate.

Investigators immediately dispatched a team of agents to track down Mir Aimal Kasi. Kasi was not at home, but the roommate who reported him missing worked at nearby Dulles International Airport. Kasi’s roommate, also a Pakistani immigrant, was employed by a security company to operate a magnetometer that checked passengers for weapons.

He told the FBI that he hadn’t seen Kasi for several days. He said he was unable to talk at length since he was on duty but would meet agents later at his apartment in Herndon, Virginia, to answer all their questions. The roommate added that he was scheduled to fly back to Pakistan later in the week but would cooperate with authorities until then.

When investigators arrived to question the roommate again, he wasn’t there. They soon discovered that the roommate had changed his travel plans. “A lot of the plans and commitments that he had told the FBI agent and the detective on Sunday had started to change.

He gave a notice at his apartment that he was going to be leaving on Tuesday instead of Thursday. He switched a flight to Pakistan back to Tuesday, which was the first opportunity he would have to fly out of the country. We started finding all this information.

He shut his utilities off at his apartment. In other words, he was preparing to leave the United States in a big hurry.”

With less than 24 hours until the roommate’s flight departed, agents maintained constant surveillance, hoping to catch the roommate or Kasi at home. Their perseverance paid off. They found the roommate alone at home.

It appeared that both Kasi and the roommate were not planning to return. The man didn’t know where Kasi was now but consented to allow the investigators to search what was left in the barren apartment. In a suitcase stored in the bedroom, agents discovered a Beretta and Makarov automatic pistols, ammunition for an AK-47, and a bulletproof vest.

The roommate denied any knowledge of the weapons and claimed that the suitcase belonged to Kasi.

Investigators continued to search the apartment. Under a couch, wrapped in plastic, they found another gun. It was an AK-47, the same type of weapon used to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 two and wound three in front of CIA headquarters.

The roommate said he didn’t know the weapon was there and added that he had only met Kasi a few months earlier when Kasi had first moved in. “The roommate told us that Mr. Kasi initially came to him through another Pakistani because Mr.

Kasi was looking for a place to live. The roommate said fine, you can live with me, and they set an amount of money for Mr. Kasi to live with him.”

They hoped the FBI lab could confirm forensically that they had found the murder weapon. But for now, their prime suspect, Mir Aimal Kasi, was still unaccounted for.

By February 8th, 1993, two weeks had passed since a lone gunman opened fire with an AK-47 in front of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, killing two CIA employees and wounding three others. The FBI, ATF, and Fairfax County Police believed 28-year-old Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani immigrant, was their prime suspect. At Kasi’s apartment in Herndon, Virginia, investigators continued their search where they had found an AK-47, the same type of weapon used in the CIA shootings.

Kasi was missing, and his Pakistani roommate, who was scheduled to return to Pakistan the following day, had no idea where Kasi was now.

According to FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett, “The roommate told us that he really didn’t spend much time with Mr. Kasi. The roommate worked two jobs, Mr.

Kasi worked a job. They would occasionally go to the mosque together to pray, but their interactions with each other were very limited. They were in the apartment many times at different times of the day when the other one was gone.”

Hoping to assuage investigator suspicions of him, the roommate signed his consent to assist with the investigation. In a closet, investigators found a field jacket similar to the one witnesses had described worn by the shooter. The roommate told them the coat belonged to Kasi.

Outside the apartment, the roommate pointed out Kasi’s vehicle parked at the curb, a small pickup truck. Officers confirmed it was registered to the suspect. Inside, they spotted a map that was open to the CIA headquarters area in Langley, Virginia.

Close by, they also saw a clipping about the CIA director. Agents would need to secure a warrant before they could conduct a more thorough search.

If this was the vehicle used by the killer, witnesses’ descriptions of the car at the shooting had been wrong. Though the roommate had cooperated with investigators, Fairfax County Detective Fred F. wasn’t going to take any chances.

“We knew Mr. Kasi’s roommate was planning on leaving the United States because he had purchased airline tickets for a flight out of the United States which was one way. He was not planning on returning.

He was deemed a material witness to the investigation and subsequently taken into custody and held based on his ability to flee the United States to Pakistan.”

At police headquarters, investigators continued to question Kasi’s roommate. He told them Kasi had worked as a messenger for a local courier service since August of 1992, six months earlier. In February 1992, Kasi had received political asylum and a work permit from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“We were fortunate in this case that we had Mr. Kasi’s prints because he had no criminal record in the United States, but the immigration service here in the US had fingerprinted him at one point because he had asked for asylum here in the United States. So they had a fingerprint card that we were able to get from them.”

Lab technicians were called in to process the forensic evidence through the night as the roommate told investigators more about Kasi. He said Kasi was usually quiet, but when he watched television news reports, he became enraged at how Muslims were being treated during conflicts in Bosnia, Iraq, and Israel. That’s when Kasi vowed to take action.

The roommate eventually admitted that Mr. Kasi had told him that he was going to go do something big. “We asked him to define big, and he said, well, I’m not sure, but maybe a shooting of some sort.

And he mentioned going and doing something big at the CIA, the White House, or the Israeli Embassy.”

Agents believed the roommate was not connected with the shootings, but he was not permitted to leave the country until the investigation was complete. Lab examiners compared the fingerprint lifted from the shell casing found at the shooting to Kasi’s fingerprint on file at the INS. They matched.

Investigators also confirmed that the serial number of the weapon recovered in the apartment matched the serial number of the Chinese-made AK-47 purchased by Kasi three days before the CIA killings. Kasi had presented two forms of ID for a Virginia State Police background check, and the purchase had been approved within minutes.

FBI lab examiners then compared bullets and shell casings test-fired through Kasi’s AK-47 with the bullets and shell casings collected from the crime scene by Fairfax Detective Jeff Miller. “The firearms examiner was able to say that the bullets at the crime scene were fired from the gun that was collected from Kasi’s apartment. He was also able to examine the cartridge casings that he test-fired at the laboratory from the AK-47 and compare them to the cartridge casings that I collected at the crime scene, and he was able to say that the cartridge casings at the crime scene were in fact fired from the same weapon.”

Technicians next examined the field jacket seized from Kasi’s apartment closet. If this was the same coat witnesses had seen the shooter wearing when he fired point-blank into their vehicles, tiny shards of glass would be embedded in its material. “You had glass from a German car, glass from a Swedish car, glass from an American car.

If he had all three of those types of glass in his clothing or on his shoes, then that would be pretty obvious that he was, if not there, at least he was near the scene when it happened, because he’s got all this glass on him.” They were able to find glass particles in his clothing that matched the type of glass that came from all the vehicles at the scene.

Investigators had enough evidence to charge Mir Aimal Kasi with capital murder and malicious wounding. The FBI also filed charges of flight to avoid prosecution and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to Kasi’s capture. Agents fanned out to interview members of the Washington area Pakistani community.

They were looking for Kasi’s friends, acquaintances, or anyone who would come into contact with him. “We learned that Mr. Kasi had gone to a market in Herndon, Virginia, and the individual who ran the market had a connection at a travel agency.

We learned through this individual that Mr. Kasi had come to him on the afternoon of the 25th, the day of the shooting, and bought a one-way ticket to Pakistan.”

The manager said that Kasi had only one suitcase and needed a ride to the airport, so the manager drove him there himself. Agents confirmed that Kasi boarded a flight to Quetta, Pakistan, a city less than 80 miles from the Afghanistan border.

Two weeks after the shooting spree at the CIA headquarters, a worldwide manhunt for the killer got underway. The investigation would begin 8,000 miles away from the crime scene in the Muslim nation of Pakistan. In February 1993, 32-year-old Pakistani Mir Aimal Kasi was wanted by the FBI for killing two and wounding three CIA employees on the highway outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Two weeks after the shooting, agents learned that on January 25th, Kasi had boarded a one-way flight to Quetta, Pakistan, a city less than 80 miles from the Afghanistan border. By now, he could be anywhere.

Finding the fugitive halfway around the world presented overwhelming problems for FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett. “One of the difficulties in investigating any case overseas is that first of all, you have no jurisdiction to begin with. You’re just another citizen, a US citizen traveling to a foreign country.

So the key in catching any fugitive obviously is developing intelligence information, and you do that typically through informants.”

The FBI turned to DEA Supervisory Special Agent Gregory Lee for help. Since Pakistan had been a major source country of heroin and hashish, the DEA already had established many reliable contacts and informants over the previous ten years. At the time of the investigation, Agent Lee was the resident agent in charge of the DEA’s office in Karachi, Pakistan.

“Well, the working environment there is a complete contrast to what an FBI agent would be used to working domestically in the United States. It’s like you literally fell out of a tree and then showed up at a place that is foreign to him in every way, to include the language, the infrastructure, how to get around, who to see. We can provide him with protection, with weapons, with anything he needed to help conduct his investigation.”

In a country of 135 million people that was politically volatile and had rampant corruption among officials, the FBI would need all the help it could get. Agent Garrett also realized that Kasi would have many sympathetic supporters who could hide him in Pakistan or even in neighboring Afghanistan. “He would be respected in Afghanistan.

In fact, he was respected in Pakistan. The CIA in particular and the US government in general is not well liked in either one of those countries, and as a result, people didn’t want to give you information about him because they thought what he did was, in some people’s words, heroic.”

In March of 1993, the US State Department declared Kasi’s alleged attack on CIA employees an act of terrorism and raised the reward for information leading to his capture to $2 million. With the groundwork established, Agent Garrett boarded a 21-hour flight to Karachi, Pakistan. When he landed, DEA agents had already arranged for him to meet his first contacts.

Agents distributed pamphlets and matchbooks with Kasi’s photo, publicizing the $2 million reward in English, Arabic, and Punjabi to as many people as possible. The reward generated leads from as far away as Thailand and London, but informants in Pakistan claimed Kasi was hiding among the small border towns and tribes in Afghanistan.

“Kasi’s family originally was from Afghanistan. Their family roots go back to Afghanistan. Keep in mind that the city that Kasi is from, Quetta, Pakistan, is only about 80 miles from Afghanistan.

So the natural link between Kasi, Quetta, family heritage, and Afghanistan made sense.” Agents traveled to Kasi’s large family home in Quetta and interviewed his brothers, who were wealthy landowners. They confirmed that he had visited them back in January, a few days after the shooting in Virginia.

Kasi arrived unannounced, carrying only one small bag. That was unusual considering the length of the trip from the US. The brothers also thought it was odd that Kasi was wearing no coat, since winter in Pakistan was then at its coldest.

Kasi only stayed for a few days, then left as quickly as he’d arrived. He didn’t tell them where he was going, and they hadn’t heard from him since. A few weeks later, the brothers became aware that their brother Aimal was a wanted terrorist from reports on CNN.

Agents believed it was likely that Kasi had disappeared over the nearby border into Afghanistan. “We knew that it would be safer for him in Afghanistan because by and large, Afghanistan, particularly back then, is a country that’s just basically a bunch of tribes that control different parts of Afghanistan. At that particular time, it really had no central government that had control of Afghanistan.

So it’s like, who would you even go to to ask permission to come into Afghanistan?”

The investigation had hit a dead end. Agents returned from Pakistan without the fugitive. Kasi’s trail went cold for the next three years.

The State Department raised the reward for information leading to his capture to $3. 5 million. While Agent Garrett waited in Washington for the reward money to flush out a viable informant, he spent time with FBI fingerprint experts.

Since so much time had passed, he needed to learn how to recognize Kasi through his fingerprints in order to be certain they had the right man if he was arrested in a remote location. The agent studied the unique ridges and grooves of each one of Kasi’s ten fingerprints that he’d given the INS years earlier. He was also taught how to fingerprint a resisting suspect under field conditions.

“This is a case that obviously took a large chunk of my life to work on. I guess one of my fears might be that we never would catch him, which is entirely possible.”

In April 1997, after four years of pursuit, an FBI agent at the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, received a call from one of their more reliable sources. The man claimed he had information on Kasi’s whereabouts, but the informant didn’t want to say more over the phone. He told the agent to wait in a public place and that a second man would contact him on his cell phone in an hour.

The crowded streets of Karachi would provide ample cover. If the wrong people saw the informant talking to an American agent, he would certainly be killed. As instructed, the agent waited on the street for the call.

The agent hoped his contact would have viable information that would finally lead the FBI to Kasi.

The informant claimed he not only knew where Kasi was, but that he could put the fugitive in a specific hotel at a certain time to enable his arrest. The informant represented a group of Kasi’s protectors who decided the reward money was too great to pass up. The highest levels of the US government were involved.

The White House approved a secret arrest plan. The Secretary of State then secured permission from the Pakistani leader for US agents to carry out the operation. “Pakistan is very sensitive to their image.

They’re very proud people. They don’t like the idea of a Pakistani being identified as an international terrorist, somebody who would travel halfway around the world to Washington for the purpose of killing CIA employees. To them, he’s an embarrassment.”

Agents arrived in Pakistan with a special ops team from the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. They would need to extract Kasi from a hotel room in a remote desert town in north-central Pakistan, where their informant promised he’d be. Getting his fingerprint was going to be key.

Each member would be assigned a task based on a surveillance report of the hotel’s layout. Agents secured a room across from the hotel where the informant claimed Kasi would be staying. They had no way to independently confirm if Kasi was there.

All they had was the informant’s word. The informant told investigators that Kasi’s room was on an upper floor. Based on the informant’s description of the interior layout, agents would have to first secure the lobby and then the stairwell before they could enter Kasi’s room.

The informant added that the hotel did not lock its front door and had no security guard.

“We took that information, we developed an arrest plan, how we were going to enter the room, who was going to do hall security, what we were going to do once we were in the room. It’s extremely important when you do arrest scenarios that everyone know exactly where they’re going and what they’re supposed to do.” Each had their assignment.

Once they secured the lobby and stairwell, the front agent would coax the fugitive out of his room by calling for morning prayer. They put on body armor and checked their weapons. To hide their paraphernalia, they wore shalwar kameez, traditional Pakistani clothing, over their Western garb.

On June 15th, 1997, the operation to arrest Mir Aimal Kasi went into action. The team arrived at 4:00 a. m.

, figuring there’d be fewer people on the street at that early hour. But when they tried to enter the hotel, they found the front door was locked. “We can’t get in.

So here’s four Americans dressed up in Pakistani garb standing out at 4:05 in the morning outside this hotel. Clearly the anxiety was off the charts because of where you were. It’s almost like you’re in a dream a little bit, like this is surreal.”

To make matters worse, the street was filled with people who likely noticed that the Americans were clearly out of place. “We didn’t realize that this particular location was extremely hot in the summer, so people started to work at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. So the street was full of people.

It’s another thing that we didn’t calculate for.”

The informant had been wrong about the locked door. After four and a half years of pursuing Kasi, the FBI had hit another obstacle. On June 15th, 1997, an FBI arrest team disguised in Pakistani garb attempted to gain entry to a locked hotel in north-central Pakistan where they believed suspected terrorist Mir Aimal Kasi was hiding.

But to FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett, it appeared that their informant had misled the team. “When we went up to the hotel, the initial intelligence was that the door would be unlocked and there’d be no security guard. We get there and the door is locked, and then within a few minutes we realize that there is a security guard there.”

Agents summoned the guard and pushed their way into the hotel. The team secured the lobby and moved quickly up the stairs. They hoped the informant had been correct about Kasi’s room number, if the fugitive was in fact there at all.

When everyone was in place, the front agent knocked on the door and called for morning prayer to coax out whoever was on the other side of the door. If Kasi was inside, he may be armed. Agents prepared for the worst.

The door cracked open, and the agents pushed forward. The man put up a struggle and began to scream. He had to be gagged so others in the hotel would not be awakened.

“I tell him, after he comes down a little bit, that if I take the gag off, will you promise not to yell anymore? And he said yes. So we take the gag off, he doesn’t yell anymore.

I ask him his name, he says an obscenity to me in English. He didn’t look like his picture. He gained weight.

I said, you know, I’m not sure if this is the right guy.”

The agent hoped the man’s fingerprint would match prints Kasi had provided for the INS six years earlier. He inked the suspect’s thumb and compared it to Kasi’s known thumbprint. The prints matched.

After more than four years and 8,000 miles, the FBI finally had suspected terrorist Mir Aimal Kasi in custody. But their mission was by no means complete. Not only did they have to get Kasi and themselves out of the hotel safely, but also out of Pakistan.

DEA Supervisory Special Agent Gregory Lee assisted the FBI with logistical support in Pakistan. “You’ve got a guy in custody now, and you’re in a foreign land, about 8,000 miles from home, out in what’s essentially the high desert that would be Death Valley here. You’re trying to get this guy from Pakistan back to the United States.”

Americans holding a Pakistani citizen captive in his own country is dangerous. Agents drove the international fugitive to a waiting helicopter and flew him to Islamabad, where permission for extradition was granted the next day. FBI headquarters in Washington was informed with a code phrase: “The package has been delivered.”

The arrest team flew Kasi out of Pakistan on an Air Force plane to avoid landing in a foreign country. The plane was refueled in midair so Kasi could not ask for asylum before facing justice in the United States.

During the 21-hour non-stop flight, Kasi confided that he’d been in Afghanistan for almost the entire four years while he was on the run. He also claimed responsibility for the shooting in front of CIA headquarters as a political statement against the CIA of the United States. He decided to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 workers before they pulled into the heavily guarded entrance.

He explained that he didn’t shoot any women because Islam forbids it. He said that after the shooting, he was surprised that he was still alive, so he drove to a nearby park, went to lunch, then bought a plane ticket to Pakistan. “I said, well, why did you quit shooting?

You told us earlier that you had all this ammunition on you, and we had found all this ammunition in your apartment. And he said that he ran out of people to shoot.”

Affirming that his statement had been given freely and willingly, Kasi signed his confession. After arriving in the US, a chopper transported the prisoner to a secure location under heavy security. Agents delivered Kasi to the Fairfax County Police to face the murder and assault charges.

Fairfax County Detective Jeff Miller remembers that day. “Having him captured and brought back to the United States showed to the whole rest of the world that the United States, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, is not going to just let this sort of thing lie and not do something about it. No matter how long it takes, no matter where these kinds of people may hide, the United States is going to do their very best to try and track these people down and bring them back to justice.”

Kasi was found guilty of murder, malicious shooting, and using a firearm in the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to death and scheduled for execution in 2002. In the wake of the shootings, memorials to the slain victims were established on Highway 123 where they fell to the gunman’s bullets.

The CIA tightened its security at the Langley compound and at all of its offices around the world. The successful investigation would prove to be another in the long line of battles against terrorism.

—

In Memphis, Tennessee, a horrible crime terrified local residents. Most never heard the young mother’s screams, but they felt the loss. As local authorities searched for the perpetrator, they found many who had motive.

Investigators were forced to consider whether this was a random act of violence or a crime of deliberate calculation.

When a wealthy young woman was abducted in front of her in-laws’ home, the police had no shortage of suspects. The 25-year-old victim left behind a tumultuous marriage, an ex-husband, and old boyfriends. All were on the FBI short list.

I’m Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office. As suspects were interviewed, the case grew no clearer. To find the woman and her abductor, investigators would have to first determine the motive.

Tunica County, Mississippi, just south of Memphis, Tennessee, is America’s third-largest gambling destination. Twenty-five-year-old Shannon Sanderson had recently become one of the regulars. On April 19th, 1996, the housewife from nearby Memphis, Tennessee, visited her favorite casino.

Shannon was having a good night. She managed to turn $500 into $5,000 at the high-stakes blackjack table. At 3:30 a.

m. , she cashed out and headed home.

When players win big, most casinos provide a security escort to protect customers from theft. This casino was no exception. Upon Shannon’s request, a guard followed her to the parking area.

It was an hour’s drive to Shannon’s home in Memphis through secluded roads. She knew the route well. She loved to win but could afford to lose.

Less than a year earlier, she’d married her boss, a multi-millionaire who was 33 years her senior.

Earlier that evening, she had dropped off her three young children from her previous marriage at the home of their grandparents in northeast Memphis. It was about 4:45 a. m.

when Shannon pulled into the grandparents’ driveway to pick up her children. She needed to get them off to school on time in the morning. Inside the house, Shannon’s former in-laws were awakened by a piercing scream.

Their former father-in-law rushed to the window to see Shannon struggling with someone in a baseball cap. He raced to assist her. Neighbors also heard the commotion and witnessed the crime.

Within seconds, the mother of three had been abducted less than 50 feet from the front door.

The distraught grandfather called 911. Memphis police were immediately dispatched. In kidnapping cases, a quick response can mean the difference between life and death.

Police arrived within minutes and interviewed Shannon’s former father-in-law. Memphis Police Captain Richard David Wolson, the sergeant at the time, recalls that the shaken man did his best to recall what he had seen. “Her ex-father-in-law heard a commotion and observed a car driving away.

At the same time, some other neighbors on the street heard the commotion and also looked out and saw the car in the driveway and gave a description of the driver and description of the car.”

Despite the dim light, witnesses agreed that the driver had worn a red baseball cap, but their descriptions of the vehicle varied. Some described it vaguely as dark-colored and sporty. Another witness was certain that it was a maroon Chevy Beretta.

“She dropped the kids off by herself too, so none of them could describe the driver’s face. Like I said, it was hard on the driveway close to the street.”

Police found two metal buttons assumed to have been torn from Shannon’s clothing. Close by, they recovered a single artificial fingernail. The victim’s car was searched, but police found nothing to suggest the identity of her abductor or Shannon’s whereabouts.

Her ex-father-in-law had seen Shannon earlier that evening when she had dropped off her children. He and his wife had agreed to babysit their grandchildren while Shannon celebrated her new husband’s birthday at the casino. Their former daughter-in-law had divorced their son less than a year before, but their relationship with her remained amicable, and she visited regularly with the children.

Shannon’s former father-in-law told police the name of the casino where Shannon and her new husband liked to play. The casino confirmed she’d been there and won $5,000, but no one could say if she was with anyone in particular. Later that day, news that the mother of three was abducted just steps from where her children slept horrified local residents.

According to Memphis District Attorney Jerry Kitchen, “She appeared to be a person who was very conscious about the upbringing of her children because she had returned back to Memphis to pick her children up to make sure that they got to school.”

Memphis Police questioned Shannon’s ex-husband, who was the father of her three children. He was at work when the abduction occurred in front of his parents’ home. Though his relationship with Shannon had been stormy, they remained married for almost eight years before they finally divorced after Shannon fell in love with her present husband.

Even Memphis police were reluctant to eliminate him as a suspect so early in the investigation, though Shannon’s ex-husband’s alibi was solid. “Who knows the reason why people get a divorce, but there’s always got to be a reason. I never heard of a good divorce.

She still made him pay alimony even though she was married to a wealthy person.”

Police looked to her present husband to learn more. Since he was a multi-millionaire, they considered the possibility that Shannon may have been kidnapped for ransom. “He owned a large security company here in Memphis, and he was well known.

Everybody wanted to help him because they knew him or knew of him. Being that he was wealthy, she would be a prime target to be kidnapped for money.” So far, he had received no ransom call or letter.

He’d been distraught since being woken at 5:00 a. m. with the news of his wife’s abduction.

Regrettably, the last time they’d spoken that night, they’d had a fight.

It was his 58th birthday, and his teenage daughters from a previous marriage had stopped by to celebrate. That same evening, his wife Shannon had planned to take him to the casino. After dropping off her children, she called to say that she was on the way to pick him up.

He told her he wasn’t ready. His daughters were there, and he wanted to spend more time with them before going out. Shannon became angry.

According to her husband, she felt he was putting his children ahead of their plans. He told her he could be ready in a half hour, but she hung up on him. He expected that she’d cool down and pick him up, but when he tried to call later, she did not answer.

“She and I are just, I guess there’s just such a difference in our age.”

Police asked if he knew anyone who might want to harm Shannon. The husband mentioned an ex-boyfriend against whom Shannon had filed charges of harassment a year earlier. He believed the ex-boyfriend drove a Chevy Beretta.

At headquarters, police checked with the DMV but found no records that her ex-boyfriend or any of his family owned a Beretta. A criminal background check did confirm that a judge had ordered her ex-lover to have no contact with Shannon over the past year.

Investigators went to question Shannon’s ex-boyfriend, but he was not at home, nor had he shown up for work. His sister lived in the same neighborhood, a few blocks from where Shannon had been abducted. She reported that she had seen a suspicious car drive past her house on the night of the crime.

She was out on the porch around the time of the abduction when a maroon Chevy Beretta sped by heading out of the neighborhood. She said she didn’t recognize the driver at first, but when she saw a photo of Shannon’s wealthy husband in a news report, she was sure it was him.

Though Memphis Police had first considered the possibility that Shannon had been abducted for ransom, they now began to consider another possibility. “Always in the back of your mind, due to her being married to a wealthy person and the difference in their ages, something could have happened to her to get rid of her. We just didn’t know, so we tried to cover every angle that we could.”

Memphis Police asked Shannon’s husband to provide a formal statement. With his lawyer present, he filled in detectives about his relationship with Shannon. Police knew that he had met Shannon while she was still married, working at the security company he owned.

She worked for him, but soon their relationship took a personal turn. Their romance led to marriage, but the magic didn’t last long. Nine months later, they began negotiating a postnuptial agreement outlining terms in the event the troubled union broke.

Both had previous marriages that ended in divorce, and Shannon needed to feel certain that she would retain custody of her children. They’d filed it just ten days before Shannon’s abduction.

Shannon’s husband emphasized that it was his wife who wanted the agreement. He claimed money was not the issue since they kept separate bank accounts. When police asked, the husband agreed to reinforce his statement with a polygraph.

Police checked local morgues, jails, and hospitals, but after a week, investigators had no solid leads to Shannon’s whereabouts. Police in Memphis received dozens of calls from local residents. Most were well-intentioned but unproductive.

All had to be checked. One was from a woman named Sharon Powers in nearby Clarksdale, Mississippi, 80 miles south of Memphis. “The abduction was reported in the paper and on the news, and a description of the car was given.

She had contacted the Memphis Police Department saying that she thought that maybe her husband was involved because of the description of the car and the shirt.”

She told Mississippi Police that she believed her husband Lee may fit the suspect description. After the day the crime was reported, he had worn a red cap and left town in their red Chevy Beretta to see his mother. The woman said that she and her husband had been fighting.

Police asked her to have him call when he returned. They weren’t optimistic. Her report sounded like a possible domestic dispute unrelated to the crime.

On May 3rd, 1996, police responded to another call from a concerned citizen trying to help. At a casino in Tunica County, Mississippi, a witness believed he had spotted Shannon Sanderson dressed as a casino employee. But when an officer approached her, he realized that it was a case of mistaken identity.

It was one more call among hundreds of false leads that frustrated the investigation.

After two weeks of searching, local investigators were no closer to finding the missing mother of three. Her family was left only with the hope that she was still alive.

In the spring of 1996, Memphis Police continued their search for 25-year-old Shannon Sanderson, who had been abducted from the front of her former in-law’s home. Investigators had questioned her wealthy husband, past lovers, and area residents, but none offered clues to her whereabouts. In any investigation, authorities try first to eliminate those people closest to the victim.

After more than two weeks of searching, Memphis Police Captain Richard David Wolson feared that time was running out. “Due to her past boyfriends and lovers, we just didn’t know what happened. But as the days went by, the chances of finding her alive were slimmer and slimmer.”

On May 6th, Shannon’s ex-boyfriend finally came in for questioning. He had only recently completed his year-long probation for harassment charges against Shannon. He claimed to be asleep in his mother’s house at the time of her abduction.

According to the ex-boyfriend, he avoided Shannon as his probation required, but Shannon continued to call him, complaining that she wasn’t happy with her new marriage. He added that he would have to talk to his lawyer before agreeing to take a polygraph. He remained a potential suspect, but as with Shannon’s husband, no hard evidence existed to prove nor disprove his involvement.

Then, on May 9th, 1996, 40 miles south from where Shannon had been abducted, sheriffs in DeSoto County, Mississippi, were called to a rural plot of land in the town of Udora. Two people had been inspecting their new property when they noticed a strong odor. Then they discovered a woman’s decomposing body.

The DeSoto County crime scene technician set up a grid around the immediate area. They conducted a line search, looking for anything that might be a clue. They labeled and recorded every item they came across as they drew closer to the body.

Fifteen feet away, they found a woman’s high-heeled shoe. Closer to the body, they marked the location of another.

DeSoto County sheriffs checked their records but found no women reported missing locally. They broadened their search to include larger towns and cities in the region. When they contacted Memphis authorities, police there told them that a 25-year-old mother of three named Shannon Sanderson had been missing for more than two weeks.

The DeSoto deputies learned that she was blonde, approximately 5’5″, 130 pounds, had a small tattoo, and was last seen wearing a dress, high heels, a jacket with metal buttons, and pink artificial fingernails. That description fit the body, but they needed an autopsy to confirm her identity and cause of death.

The medical examiner determined that the victim had been killed by a single . 25 caliber bullet to the right temple. The victim’s clothes were removed and preserved to check for trace evidence that might lead to the killer.

The body, dead an estimated two to three weeks, was too decomposed to recognize, but over her left breast, examiners found a small tattoo that was still visible. It said “I love you Robert.” Shannon Sanderson had such a tattoo.

The medical examiner compared her dental records to x-rays from the body. The x-rays confirmed the ID. This was Shannon Sanderson’s body.

The abduction was now officially a homicide. In Memphis, Assistant District Attorney Jerry Kitchen was called in. His first task would be to somehow narrow the suspect list the police had developed over the past three weeks.

“Here in Memphis, it’s somewhat unusual in that we have relatively few murder cases that we would classify as mystery homicides, where someone’s not either developed as a suspect rather quickly or arrested soon after the incident. But in this particular case, it was a mystery homicide with numerous suspects that were listed as potentially being involved in the abduction and killing of the victim.”

The Assistant District Attorney first called the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to conduct polygraph examinations to help eliminate potential suspects. He also contacted the FBI, since Shannon’s body was found across the Tennessee state line. Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Aken from the FBI’s Memphis field office was assigned as case agent.

“They felt they needed some additional resources. The case was a very difficult case across jurisdictions, and they wanted the FBI to be involved as part of the team working towards a solution because it was not an easy case.”

Memphis authorities hoped that Agent Aken’s experience would help unravel the complexities of this case. Local residents were fearful that Shannon’s killer was still out there, not knowing if or when he would strike again.

In the spring of 1996, the body of 25-year-old Shannon Sanderson, a mother of three, was found in Udora, Mississippi, just miles from her Memphis, Tennessee home. The FBI, together with state and local investigators, needed to shorten the lengthy suspect list that included Shannon’s husband and past lovers. Assistant District Attorney Jerry Kitchen hoped polygraph examinations could help focus their search.

“This investigation was difficult in that there were a lot of suspects in this particular case. Throughout the victim’s life, she had been divorced, and naturally in any type of murder case, you do focus in and you do look at relatives or acquaintances or husbands, any type of relationship that the victim may have been involved in that could lead back to some type of dispute or domestic violence.”

Tennessee State authorities tested several of Shannon’s ex-lovers. They asked them their whereabouts on the night of the abduction. They asked directly if they had abducted or killed Shannon.

All denied any involvement. The tests revealed no deception. Investigators corroborated their alibis and eliminated them as potential suspects.

They also polygraphed the witness who claimed to have seen Shannon’s current husband driving a maroon Chevy Beretta in the neighborhood moments before the abduction occurred. It was the same type of vehicle other witnesses had described that Shannon was forced into. But the woman was found to be deceptive.

The police now believed her claim was false, that she had seen Shannon’s husband driving the getaway vehicle.

They also knew that Shannon’s brief marriage with her wealthy husband had been rocky. For other questions, they wanted to confirm once and for all that he had not been involved in any way. “This crime occurred at 4:00 in the morning.

The victim’s husband had indicated that he went to bed and that there was no one else that he was with, and so he really had no alibi. That was an area that was difficult for us to get over because we could not lock down exactly where he was and what he was doing other than what he was telling us.”

Feeling investigators contacted Shannon’s husband to be polygraphed. Though he had previously agreed to do so, on advice from his lawyer, he declined. His lawyer claimed that heart medication he was taking may have induced a false reading.

For Captain Wolson, the husband’s refusal didn’t alleviate the suspicions that surrounded him. “I couldn’t understand if he didn’t have anything to do with it, why he wouldn’t be wanting to cooperate. Being a homicide detective, you’re suspicious, and it just made him that more suspicious.”

In terms of incriminating evidence, the investigation was at a standstill. Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Aken hoped to refocus the investigation by examining leads that may have been overlooked. “We have to look at all of the possibilities.

That’s part of the battle in the beginning, is not to get too far down the road in speculating about what kind of guy this could be and what his relationship or non-relationship would be to the victim. What we did then is identify what other possibilities we still need to explore.”

One possibility, though not a promising one, was Sharon Powers, who earlier reported that her husband may have matched the vague description of the suspect. But now she wasn’t so sure about her previous claim. She told police she’d overreacted, reinforcing their belief that she’d only been trying to get back at her husband for leaving her.

“She said that her husband had left town, that they had had some marital disputes. They felt that perhaps this report was really just sort of sour grapes and that she was trying to get her husband, maybe estranged husband, into trouble of some kind. So they really just simply did not know how much weight to give this rather conflicting and kind of half-hearted story that she was telling.”

Though her husband wasn’t a serious suspect, police wanted to talk with him. A bulletin for Gerald Lee Powers was issued, stating that he was wanted for questioning in Tennessee.

FBI agents and Tennessee investigators met to review the casino surveillance tape of the blackjack table where Shannon had won the now-missing $5,000. Her growing pile of chips would certainly make her an attractive target. They viewed the tape to see if a stalker could be seen.

Agent Aken questioned why he would wait so long to make his move. “Clearly she had been winning for a while. She was there late at night.

There were a number of factors that made her visit to that casino rather high risk, and yet we had this abduction occurring almost an hour to an hour and a half after she left that environment. So first we had to determine, did it have anything or nothing to do with her visit to that casino?”

The tape showed Shannon but was inadequate to reveal whether she was being stalked. Investigators were no closer to finding the truth. As they contemplated what to do next, the investigation veered in an unexpected direction.

On May 22nd, 1996, near Hebbronville, Texas, 750 miles from where Shannon was seen forced into a car described as a Chevy Beretta, a vehicle fitting that description erratically swerved away from a border checkpoint. The vehicle had Mississippi plates. One of the patrol guards raced after it, believing the driver to be a potential border jumper or smuggler.

In May of 1996, as the investigation continued into the kidnapping and murder of a young Tennessee mother, US Border Patrol agents chased down a fleeing maroon Chevy Beretta with Mississippi plates, the type of car described by witnesses in the abduction. Caught at a dead end, the suspect resisted. “Drop it, drop the knife.

Up against the car, up against the car, then back down.” When confronted by the agent’s gun, he complied. He had fourteen $100 bills in his pocket.

The driver said his name was Gerald Lee Powers but held no driver’s license to prove it. A cursory search of the car revealed no illegal drugs or aliens, but in the trunk, border agents recovered a stolen weapon registered in Arkansas. The car was locked and remained in that spot under armed guard until FBI agents could conduct a more thorough search.

Special Agent Evan Ray from the FBI field office in McAllen, Texas, was contacted, since assaulting a border patrol officer is a federal offense. Agent Ray confirmed the identity of the driver when he learned that Gerald Lee Powers had been involved in another altercation at the Mexican border. “I spoke to US Customs officials who indicated that they had had an incident that day as well in which an individual had fled and had left several pieces of identification behind on the counter when they fled.

So we were then in possession of several pieces of identification of Mr. Powers.”

A license plate check revealed that the vehicle was registered to his wife Sharon in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Agent Ray also discovered that Gerald Lee Powers had a violent past and was currently wanted for questioning in the abduction and murder of Shannon Sanderson. After contacting Memphis authorities, he traveled to Hebbronville to process Powers’ car on site.

The Chevy Beretta matched the vehicle witnesses had described at the abduction. Agents hoped something inside would link the vehicle and Powers to the murder of Shannon Sanderson. A sheet and pillowcase, along with the trunk liner, were bundled into evidence bags.

“When you’re retrieving evidence like that, you have no idea what the results of the laboratory examinations are going to be in the end. You just try to get the best and the most evidence that you can and let the lab do their job.”

Agents were less hopeful they’d find something in the car’s interior, since it appeared to have been recently cleaned and vacuumed. Hundreds of miles from the nearest evidence response team, Agent Ray improvised with the tools he had at hand. “One item that we needed to search for were hairs and fibers in the backseat area.

We didn’t have the specialized equipment that the evidence response team would have, so I used an unopened lint roller that I had at the office, of the type one might use on a suit, as an adhesive lift.”

Initially obscured by the front seat, the agent found a pink artificial fingernail on the floor. It was similar to those the victim had worn at the time of her abduction. Memphis Prosecutor Jerry Kitchen believed this could be the clue that could definitely place Shannon Sanderson in Powers’ car.

“Agent Ray had called us and told us that he had found a fingernail in the back seat area, on the floorboard of this vehicle, which is where we had felt, based upon the witnesses’ information they had given us, that the victim had been placed in the back seat of the vehicle that took her away.”

Memphis authorities came to Laredo to question Gerald Lee Powers about the murder. Powers told them that he knew nothing more than what he’d heard on the news. He admitted to being at the casino that night but had left early to check on his terminally ill neighbor.

While the interview continued, investigators spoke to his neighbor in Clarksdale, Mississippi, who denied that Powers had been there at that time. “We weren’t 100% convinced Gerald Powers was our suspect. We just felt it was kind of suspicious that he was trying to give a false alibi.

Of course, the neighbor was very ill and could have been mistaken because he had been there at different times.”

Investigators hoped that Powers’ wife Sharon might be able to corroborate the neighbor’s statement. She had initially told police her husband fit the description of the suspect who witnesses glimpsed at the abduction, a man who wore a red baseball cap. Now she added that he made frequent trips to the casino where the victim had spent her last night.

Still, she did not know if he had visited their neighbor that night and denied that her husband had anything to do with the abduction and murder of Shannon Sanderson.

Investigators feared they might just be wasting their time, but FBI Special Agent Jennifer Aken wasn’t so sure. “We sensed her ambivalence. We knew that she had come forward even with her kind of half-hearted story.

We knew she’d come forward for a reason and that there was more she needed to tell.” Agent Aken realized that she would need to invest a great deal of time to develop the trust of Sharon Powers.

As the dialogue with Sharon Powers continued over several weeks, the FBI contacted Tom Scott, director of surveillance of the casino where the victim had gambled prior to her abduction. Scott was asked to confirm if Gerald Lee Powers had been recorded that same night on any of the 600 cameras in the 95,000-square-foot casino. “Jennifer Aken from the FBI gave us a basic description of what the suspect possibly was wearing on the night in question, and that’s what we went with, a general description of from shoe color to jeans to a certain type jacket and possibly a ball cap.

Any given day, you can have approximately 3,000 to 10,000 people within a casino.”

Scott and his team searched hundreds of hours of footage looking for a man in a red baseball cap and yellow shirt. Their main focus was the blackjack table where Shannon spent most of the night. “If the suspect is stationary, it’s pretty easy, but in a casino, it’s quite an exciting place to be in, and everybody kind of wanders around.

They go to slot machine to slot machine or restaurants or table games. We could not locate the individual.”

Investigators looked to Sharon Powers for more detail about her husband’s activities that night. They did what they could to make her feel comfortable. One of her neighbors, a police officer, provided her with reassurance and support.

She was a woman torn between her empathy for the victim and her feelings towards her husband. “She was in love with this man. I think it was difficult for Sharon to accept the fact that the victim had been a mother of three young children.

She herself was a mother of three children and very much related to the victim.”

Slowly, Sharon Powers worked through her internal conflict. She began to open up, revealing what her home life was like with her husband Gerald Lee Powers. She said he ruled the house.

Her three kids from previous marriages were afraid of him. Sharon admitted that she was too. He kept a bell on his chair.

When he rang, Sharon came running. Despite his controlling temper, her feelings for him were deep. “This is a woman who had really kind of lived under the thumb of Gerald Lee Powers for a number of years.

I believe by then they had been married four or five years. I don’t want to say she liked it that way, but that was what she was used to, that was familiar. It was not familiar to her to be breaking with him, to be disloyal.”

Despite her fear, Sharon continued to open up to investigators. On April 19th, the day Shannon Sanderson was abducted, Gerald came home acting nervous. He was angry because she thought he’d spent the night with another woman.

She noticed blood on his shirt and a cut on his arm. He claimed he’d fallen down at a casino he’d been visiting. Sharon didn’t believe what he told her, but she didn’t press it.

For now, Sharon refused to say anymore, and neither would her husband. Without something stronger, Prosecutor Jerry Kitchen would be unable to press charges on Gerald Lee Powers. “We still didn’t have anything concrete that he had been involved.

It was just an instinct, I think, that was leading us at this point that he was our man. But at the time, we did not have the results back from the lab.”

Investigators hoped the FBI would reinforce their hunch that Gerald Lee Powers was responsible for leaving Shannon Sanderson’s children motherless.

In the summer of 1996, after Gerald Lee Powers was indicted for assaulting a border patrol officer in Texas, the FBI and Memphis investigators suspected he was also responsible for the murder of a 25-year-old mother of three. But lacking physical evidence, Memphis Prosecutor Jerry Kitchen was unable to charge Powers for his involvement or to know for certain if one of the victim’s former lovers hired him to commit the crime. “There was always that possibility.

The way she was killed and the manner in which she was abducted, it appeared like it wasn’t just something random, that it had been something planned. All the other suspects that appeared to have a motive or possibly emotional reasons why someone would want to have someone killed, like jealousy or rage or other factors.”

Investigators hoped the suspect’s wife, Sharon Powers, could tell them more. Reluctant at first, after many meetings over several weeks, Sharon grew more comfortable. She finally opened up to FBI Special Agent Jennifer Aken.

“When she finally told the story in its entirety, what we heard was really a chilling tale of his stalking of the victim, the abduction of the victim, and then taking her to this rural area and robbing her of not only the $5,000 that she had won that night but also of the jewelry that she was wearing.”

Sharon’s story was strong, but without corroborating evidence, it would not be enough to convict or even indict Gerald Lee Powers for murder. Trying to help, she told investigators that her husband had thrown the murder weapon, a handgun, into an abandoned canal near the casino in Mississippi. Memphis Police Captain Richard Wolson accompanied local divers to help search for the handgun.

“Sheriff department’s divers dove into this hole and crawled inch by inch searching for this pistol. We never did locate it. And then that’s when Miss Powers told us that he had thrown it into the river, which was about a hundred yards away.

The current at that location was too swift for anybody to dive in the Mississippi River.” It left investigators with more doubt and no corroboration that Sharon Powers was telling them the truth.

The suspect’s wife also told them about a school bus driver from Mississippi whom her husband believed had seen him close to where he dumped Shannon’s body. Police tracked down the driver, who confirmed Sharon’s story. At 7:00 a.

m. , about two hours after Shannon Sanderson had been abducted, the driver noticed a maroon Chevy Beretta backing down the dirt roadway of the vacant property where the victim’s body was later found. The bus driver remembered it because the property had been vacant for so long.

But the driver didn’t see who was in the car and didn’t get the license plate.

Searching for further corroboration, investigators turned to Tom Scott, director of surveillance of the casino. This time, Sharon Powers provided them locations of where to look for her husband in the 95,000-square-foot casino. “We did a recreation and did a walk-through on where, if we were the suspect, where we would have gone through certain areas.

We pulled some tapes. Eventually, we were able to identify just from his shoes in a particular location where the suspect was standing. We pulled a bunch more shots, connected the shoes.

We finally put some legs to the shoes and were able to identify a person in a distance shot walking through the casino from the upstairs looking down towards the suspect. We then connected more shots and followed the suspect down an escalator, walking past the table where this victim was playing, and followed the suspect out through our front door on videotape.”

The video was compelling and confirmed Gerald Lee Powers was in the casino that night, but it didn’t prove that he had abducted or murdered Shannon Sanderson. Hoping for physical evidence that would connect Powers to the victim, investigators searched behind a tavern in Mississippi where Powers’ wife claimed he had buried the victim’s jewelry. The suspect had told her they were wrapped in tin foil.

Under a couch in the back, just as Mrs. Powers described, investigators located a small bundle of foil. Inside, they found pink plastic wrap holding rings identified by the victim’s husband as belonging to Shannon.

Now they needed to prove forensically that Gerald Lee Powers had in fact been the one who wrapped them. Investigators went to Powers’ home to search for the source of that plastic. In the kitchen, they found a roll of pink wrap.

They forwarded the roll along with the bundled rings to the lab for comparison. While they waited for the results, investigators turned their attention to the pink artificial nail found inside Powers’ car after he was arrested in Texas. From autopsy photos, investigators found at least two nails were missing from the victim’s hand.

If the nail from the car matched those remaining on the victim’s hand, it would prove that Shannon had been in Powers’ car that night.

But there was a problem. Shannon had already been buried, and her husband was against exhuming her remains. “She had already been interred, and so we had a hearing in court to have her disinterred and to have the ability to examine these fingernails to see if they were in fact her fingernails or not.”

Against her husband’s wishes, the judge ordered the body exhumed. In early July, three months after the murder, investigators retrieved the body of Shannon Sanderson. Her remaining artificial nails were removed and sent to the lab for comparison with the others.

The results were negative. The nail in the car wasn’t hers.

Investigators hoped the other evidence at the FBI lab in Washington DC would provide more promising results. Inside the tin foil ball recovered in Mississippi, examiners removed the pink plastic wrap wound tightly around some rings. The FBI needed to connect the rings physically to Gerald Lee Powers.

To do so, examiners compared the plastic they were wrapped in to the sample retrieved from Powers’ home. “The FBI agent who examined it indicated that it wasn’t the exact piece that was torn off, but that it matched that roll exactly as far as the polymers and the dye and all that, which shows that this was the source that the material had come from that was wrapped around the rings.” It was the first piece of forensic evidence linking Powers to the victim.

But the case was by no means complete. More compelling proof came from a single fiber among several found in Powers’ otherwise immaculate car. “We have a dress fiber that was found in the vehicle that he was driving that night that matches the fiber from the dress that the victim was wearing.

That was very significant as well.”

Authorities were convinced that Gerald Lee Powers had murdered Shannon Sanderson, but they weren’t convinced he’d acted alone. They believed it was possible that others from her past could claim a motive for wanting Shannon dead. Memphis Prosecutor Jerry Kitchen decided to confirm it with Powers himself.

“So we went to Laredo to interview the defendant before we charged him with this murder. There was the possibility that if he cooperated and was able to prove to us that someone else was involved, that we would withdraw seeking the death penalty. But there was nothing that he was able to provide us with.

So we were convinced then at that point that no one else had been involved in her abduction and murder, and proceeded with charging him alone.”

Powers had plenty of time to contemplate this murder. He watched her for several hours in the casino, then followed her for another hour back to Memphis. He had ample time to change his mind.

Instead, he hardened his resolve. He abducted a mother of three, robbed her, then shot her at point-blank range. The criminal court in Tennessee didn’t need much time to decide Powers’ fate.

After deliberating only 15 minutes, the jury recommended death for the murder of Shannon Sanderson. Gerald Lee Powers awaits execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee.

—

In the late 80s, Florida’s cocaine imports were among the highest in the nation. Regional territories were enforced with intimidation and murder. One dealer bowed to no one, not even law enforcement.

Desperate to stop the violence, authorities turned to the FBI.

A suspected 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealer would stop at nothing to keep local and federal authorities from building a case against him. When his organization started targeting the government itself, federal agencies went on high alert. I’m Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office.

He was a desperate man, driven to desperate measures. Bringing him down would take the combined efforts of the DEA, the ATF, and the FBI.

Fort Myers Beach, Florida, July 18th, 1987. It was a Saturday night in a Gulf Coast beach town with a thriving nightlife and a booming 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 trade, not far away from the tourists. Many local residents spent the weekend at private parties.

For some, that included cocaine. At one party, several men waited for their friend to return with more drugs. He’d been gone for about a half hour when they heard what sounded like gunshots.

At around 10 p. m. , the owner of the car whose vehicle was used for the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 run saw that it was now parked out front.

Inside, he found his friend shot to death.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Department responded to the scene. A forensic technician found only one identifiable fingerprint on the car. It belonged to the vehicle’s owner.

Lying close to the driver’s door were seven empty . 22 caliber shell casings. Investigators determined the victim had been shot at close range.

An autopsy would reveal eight bullet wounds in his upper body and traces of cocaine in his bloodstream.

The owner of the car said that the dead man was his friend, 29-year-old Craig Kren. Reluctantly, he told homicide detectives that the victim had left earlier to buy cocaine. The victim’s girlfriend suggested police should question her boyfriend’s cocaine dealer.

He owed the dealer money for drugs. The dealer had a reputation for violence. Lee County homicide detective Tom Cantinos learned the dealer’s name was Jeff Sanic.

“Jeff is a young kid from Fort Myers Beach who had established himself as what I thought to be a mid-level 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealer on the beach. Through talking to Craig’s associates, I learned that Craig owed Jeff a large amount of money, and the reputation was that you better pay your bills with Jeff or he’s going to send someone to collect it.”

The next day, an unexpected visitor appeared at the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. It was the alleged cocaine dealer himself, 23-year-old Jeff Zanic. He asked to see the detective investigating the previous night’s killing.

The reputed dealer with a history of arrests had heard he might be a suspect and wanted to set the record straight. On the night of the murder, Jeff Zanic claimed that he and his girlfriend were at a restaurant for a late dinner. He said that he had talked to the victim in the parking lot just before the couple sat down to eat.

After a few minutes, the man left. The reputed dealer said he and his girlfriend were at the restaurant from about 9:45 until 11:00 p. m.

And he had more to offer than his word. Jeff Zanic handed the detective his restaurant receipt. The waiters who served them confirmed the story.

It appeared he had an airtight alibi. But to the seasoned detective, it seemed Jeff Zanic was trying too hard to cover his tracks. “I had investigated enough homicides to see all different types of suspects and how they react and the reasons why they commit murder.

For this young kid to come in as well organized as he was, with an alibi, with witnesses, with receipts, he became my number one suspect.”

On a tip, the detective questioned a member of a local rock band who was also known to deal cocaine. He admitted that the victim sometimes bought drugs from him directly, which made Jeff Zanic, allegedly the largest dealer on the beach, angry over the lost sales. At about 11:15 on the night of the murder, Jeff Zanic came to the lounge where he was playing.

According to the performer, Jeff Zanic boasted that he had just had the victim wasted and that it would teach the people of Fort Myers Beach a lesson.

The musician’s story was one of many over the next several months that confirmed what police already suspected. But even in the underworld of Fort Myers Beach, rumors and innuendo were not evidence of murder. “Everything that I got was hearsay.

No one would really give me sworn testimony that says I saw this or I saw that or I know this and I know that. It was all he-said, she-said type of intelligence information, which is maybe okay for 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 cases but not with murder investigations. You need sworn testimony of people who actually saw something happen.”

Then, in the summer of 1988, over a year after the murder, the detective finally got a break. A young woman came forward claiming to have witnessed the killing. She had not spoken up sooner because she was addicted to drugs and was protecting her former supplier, Jeff Zanic.

Now she was clean and wanted to tell the detectives what she had seen on the night of July 18th, 1987.

She was on her way to the cocaine party that evening when she witnessed the shooting. The gunman was her former boyfriend, a man who worked for Jeff Zanic. But the detective would be unable to speak to her boyfriend directly.

Just a few months after the murder, her boyfriend had committed suicide.

She told police that she also had direct knowledge about Jeff Zanic and his organization. The woman said Jeff and his right-hand man operated out of a local pizza parlor that Zanic owned. The dealers stored his drugs and money at several different locations and moved between them to avoid detection.

Few people knew where he actually lived. Jeff Zanic had many people on his payroll, but she knew only a handful. Her former boyfriend was one of them, hired by Jeff Zanic to do whatever the dealer needed done.

She and Jeff had also had an arrangement. In exchange for storing drugs and guns at her apartment, Jeff had paid her rent.

Unable to corroborate her story with other testimony or physical evidence, the detective could not charge Jeff Zanic with the murder. “I followed up on those leads and I was not able to substantiate any of the information that she gave me at that point. So without the trigger man, without a gun, without eyewitness testimony, I couldn’t get Jeff.

I had no physical evidence, no testimonial evidence that enabled me to bring charges against Jeff.”

The homicide detective looked to the Lee County Narcotics unit for help. Detectives began surveillance on Jeff Zanic’s pizza parlor, hoping to identify someone they could turn against the dealer. The place was a popular spot.

It would take time for officers to discern the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 traffickers from the legitimate customers. To complicate matters, Jeff Zanic changed his name legally to Jeff Matthews, presumably to sever ties to his past crimes. “Jeff was the type of person where he wanted to be a clean-cut businessman.

Jeff even went to the point of changing his name from Jeff Zanic to Jeff Matthews to try and help him with his reputation.”

Over several weeks, investigators noted which people frequented Jeff Matthews’ place without picking up any food. Investigators spotted one man who visited often. A license plate check revealed his name was Steven Franken.

Detectives speculated that Franken might be their connection to Jeff Matthews. Investigators called DEA Special Agent Dennis Bolam, who was already familiar with Steven Franken. Agents believed Franken was a low-level cocaine dealer who procured his supply from Jeff Matthews, but they had no proof to link the two men.

Agent Bolam hoped to use an informant close to Franken. “I received some information from a cooperating source that Mr. Franken was distributing cocaine out of his house on Hibiscus Street in Fort Myers Beach, and that he was distributing to quite a few people down at the Fort Myers Beach area.”

Their informant, recently arrested for possession, was one of Steven Franken’s biggest customers. For his cooperation in controlled 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 buys from Franken, the informant would receive probation. If the purchases were successful, agents would be able to arrest Franken, then press him for direct testimony about Jeff Matthews and his organization.

“Steven Franken was important to the investigation. He had quite a bit of knowledge as far as the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 trafficking that was taking place down at Fort Myers Beach and with Jeffrey Matthews’ participation in this 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 trafficking.”

The informant returned after several more buys. DEA agents finally had what they needed to make an arrest. On August 25th, 1988, agents secured a felony arrest warrant for Steven Franken for the sale and distribution of a controlled substance.

Once Franken was in custody, agents searched his house. Inside, they found pre-packaged cocaine, scales, and cash. In exchange for a shorter sentence, Franken agreed to cooperate with agents.

He admitted that murder suspect Jeff Matthews was his cocaine supplier and consented to say so in front of the grand jury. Franken was released on bond until then.

As investigators continued to hunt for evidence in their case against Matthews, deputies in nearby Collier County, Florida, responded to a crime scene on October 2nd, 1988. A surveyor had discovered fully clothed, skeletonized human remains in a rural dump site. It appeared the body had been there for the past several weeks.

Though there was no wallet or other ID, detectives did notice a paper bracelet on the victim’s wrist, similar to those used by hospitals and nightclubs. Investigators gathered dental records from local families who had recently reported their loved ones as missing. They hoped one of them would match the unknown victim.

The dental records, along with the body, were sent to the medical examiner for comparison. He first determined that the victim was a white male in his 20s, killed execution-style with five . 38 caliber bullets to the head.

From the body’s wrist, the ME removed the paper bracelet. He confirmed it was an admission band from a nightclub in Fort Myers Beach. Dental records from a missing 22-year-old man last seen leaving the club confirmed that the murder victim was Thomas Sellers.

Collier County Sheriff’s detectives visited Sellers’ father to give him the bad news. The father told the detective his son had a cocaine problem and believed the young man owed his dealer, Jeff Matthews, $11,000. It was also rumored that his son was last seen leaving the club with a man reputed to be a hitman for the dealer.

But once again, investigators were unable to find evidence to corroborate the rumors.

Agents and detectives’ only direct witness to Matthews’ operation was Steven Franken, a low-level dealer arrested months earlier. They hoped his grand jury testimony would be enough to arrest a cocaine supplier suspected of ordering two executions.

On January 27th, 1990, as the DEA and Lee County, Florida sheriffs continued to pursue suspected cocaine dealer and murderer Jeff Matthews, detectives received a call about another possible homicide. At around midnight, a man was unpacking boxes in his new home when he heard the sound of a car careening towards his house. The vehicle didn’t stop until it reached his backyard.

Inside, the driver was dead.

Lee County Detective Tom Cantinos was one of the first to arrive at the home in St. Carlos Park. “Initially I was told it was a motor vehicle accident.

There is a dead body in the car. The closer I looked, the more I realized that he didn’t die from a car accident. He died from a bunch of bullet holes.”

The driver’s license found on the victim identified the dead man as 22-year-old Steven Franken, the primary witness scheduled to testify against 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 kingpin Jeff Matthews at a grand jury hearing just two days away. It seemed Matthews was aware that without Franken’s testimony, investigators wouldn’t have enough evidence to bring an indictment against the cocaine dealer suspected in two killings and now a third.

According to DEA Special Agent Dennis Bolam, “I think the timing of the murder was because of the timing of the grand jury. The information we received as far as Jeffrey Matthews being involved in other shootings and murders at Fort Myers Beach, and that Steven Franken had some valuable information as far as Jeffrey Matthews’ 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 operation.” But now the grand jury would never learn what Franken knew about Matthews.

The federal witness was likely dead before he crashed.

Detectives decided to search the surrounding area to determine where the shooting had taken place. “Something happened before the guy hit the house, or else he wouldn’t have driven through the house. So I walked down the dirt road about several hundred yards, and I found what looked like some attempt at a roadblock.

Large and small branches covered the road, strewn by what must have been a vehicle.” To the left side of the site, detectives found several . 22 caliber shell casings, the same caliber as the bullets later removed from Steven Franken’s body.

Footprints, as well as tire impressions from a separate vehicle, were discovered close by in the loose dirt. Technicians made plastic casts for later comparison should a vehicle or suspect be located.

From their placement in Franken’s wounds, officers determined that the shooter had fired at the driver’s side of the car. “My immediate thoughts were that someone had constructed this roadblock to slow a car down, slow the car down enough where someone can jump out of some brushy area that’s along both sides of the road and shoot the person driving that car.” The gunman must have known when Franken left work and the route he traveled home.

The victim probably stopped briefly when he saw debris in the road, just long enough for the shooter to take accurate aim. Clinging to life for a few more moments, he likely accelerated down the road and into the house.

Though suspected murderer and 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealer Jeff Matthews was believed responsible, investigators were once again left with no direct evidence tying Matthews to the crime. The fact that Steven Franken had been a federal witness enabled authorities to broaden the investigation to include the US Attorney’s office and the FBI. Together, they needed to develop a strategy to snare Jeff Matthews and put an end to the violence.

Retired Special Agent Guy Nais was part of the team. “The FBI immediately started working with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 Enforcement Administration. Nothing was done without telling the other agency involved what was going on.

The FBI did have a lot of manpower that they could put on this matter. They did have tremendous ability for the technical aspect of the investigation.”

They knew Matthews was still operating in the area, but the dealer was well insulated. The only way to get to him was through his 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 operation and employees. But after the informant Franken was murdered, finding someone else to cooperate would be no easy task.

“What made it so difficult was that we didn’t have a lot of people come forward and voluntarily supply information on Jeffrey Matthews. Most of the people knew that he was capable of committing murders, and they were intimidated by him.”

Agents turned to a man behind bars whom they believed had been an insider in Matthews’ organization. Serving a ten-year sentence on concealed weapons charges, the Fort Myers Beach, Florida man was reputed to be one of Matthews’ former hitmen. He agreed to tell what he knew about the dealer’s 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 operation in exchange for a shortened sentence.

Just before his arrest, the alleged hitman admitted that Matthews had ordered him to surveil Steven Franken to learn the man’s schedule. With that information, Matthews would be able to silence Franken before he could testify against him. The convict denied knowing who actually pulled the trigger, since he was behind bars before the murder took place.

He did tell investigators about another unsolved homicide. He claimed that Matthews had committed it. He said that one night at the pizza parlor, a contractor was repairing the tiles on the kitchen floor after the restaurant closed.

The hitman had brought over a new silencer for Matthews’ gun. He claimed the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 lord killed the contractor just to test the silencer.

Agents hoped to get Matthews to corroborate the hitman’s stories. The convict agreed to call Matthews to set up a recorded meeting. He asked Matthews to come by the prison to drop off some new music.

Matthews agreed. Agents would be ready to record the conversation on audio and video, hoping Matthews would incriminate himself. “We received approvals from the US Attorney’s office as well as the jail to install these recorders.

Then after we installed everything, he never did show up. Jeffrey Matthews is very elusive, surveillance conscious. He insulated himself pretty well.

Even his closest friends didn’t know where he was residing.”

Matthews’ last suspected victim may have been silenced, but the alleged murderer remained free and was becoming more desperate.

By early 1990, the FBI, DEA, and Florida authorities continued to pursue suspected 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 lord and murderer Jeff Matthews. Since 1988, he had been implicated in four executions in the Fort Myers Beach area. For Lee County homicide detective Tom Cantinos and dozens of agents, a lack of hard evidence and verifiable witness statements kept Jeff Matthews just out of reach.

“Two years have gone by and I still couldn’t get my hands around Jeff Matthews. There was nothing there for me to follow up on. It was dead end after dead end after dead end.

All the time I knew Jeff was my number one suspect, and he was getting stronger and stronger and bolder and bolder in his criminal activities on the beach. It was very frustrating.”

On February 12th, 1990, a judge agreed that investigators had enough circumstantial evidence against Matthews to search the dealer’s pizza place, the likely headquarters for his operation. They served the warrant after hours to avoid endangering customers. From the restaurant, investigators seized documents, phone records, and bank and credit card statements.

They also confiscated Matthews’ Trans Am. The tire treads were compared to impressions found at one of the murder scenes. The results were negative.

Upstairs from the pizza parlor, investigators searched an apartment where Matthews was rumored to sometimes stay with his girlfriend. The couple was not there, nor did the searchers find any cocaine. But they did recover Silver Tip .

357 cartridges, . 45 caliber cartridges, . 22 caliber cash, additional phone records, and most importantly, .

22 caliber bullets, the same caliber used in at least three of the four executions. They were sent to the crime lab to be compared with the spent . 22 caliber rounds retrieved from the victims.

Tests of the bullets’ metallurgic composition did not reveal any matches. It was one more dead end in a grueling case.

Though there was no direct evidence linking the alleged 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealer to the murders, DEA Special Agent Dennis Bolam and his team believed they had enough to indict Jeff Matthews and several associates as part of a continuing criminal enterprise. “We had concerns at that point that by leaving him out on the street, he could commit additional murders. So we felt we had sufficient evidence at that point, and that’s the reason why we went and got the indictments to go pick him up.”

But Matthews was nowhere to be found. Friends and associates claimed that he had left Fort Myers for parts unknown. His girlfriend, also named in the indictment, agreed to cooperate with investigators to help locate the fugitive.

Through a tapped phone line, she made contact with Matthews on his cell phone. The suspected murderer refused to say where he was. She told him she was worried about the indictments.

Matthews vowed that he would find out who was talking to authorities and 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them, plain and simple. He hung up seconds later.

The next day, a confidential informant gave Lee County homicide detectives a promising tip. They learned that Matthews had rented a car with a borrowed credit card on the night Steven Franken was murdered. An evidence technician compared the tire treads from the rental car to a plaster cast of the tracks collected at the scene of the ambush.

They matched. It was the first hard evidence linking Matthews to one of the four murders. Unfortunately, it didn’t prove that Matthews had driven the rental car to the crime scene, nor that he had pulled the trigger.

“We were trying to gather as much information about Matthews as we could. We weren’t even successful in finding out where this guy lived. We heard he lived in this big house, we heard he lived in that big house.

He drove this car, he drove that car. But he was never there. We were never able to pin him down to where he lived.

We only knew that he drove one car, and that’s a black Trans Am. He was like, you know, he was everywhere but nowhere.”

Then, on the night of March 16th, 1990, Lee County detectives responded to a call from the home of a Fort Myers Beach fire inspector. A pipe bomb was thrown into his driveway, filled with . 38 caliber bullets.

The explosion sent ammunition and shrapnel ripping through the inspector’s car and house. It also damaged a storage shed in a neighboring home. No one was injured.

The inspector said he had no idea who might be responsible. Detectives asked him for a list of businesses that had failed any recent fire inspections. One name stood out: Jeff Matthews.

“I responded to that scene. Learned that this fire inspector conducted a fire inspection of Matthews’ restaurant and did not give him a very good write-up as far as the fire conditions of the restaurant. Once I heard that, I said, this is Jeff sending this guy a message.”

But if it was Matthews, he had left no trace. All police had to go on was the spotty testimony of a neighbor. The neighbor had heard tires squeal just before the explosion.

When he looked outside, he saw a white hatchback race away. It had been too dark to see the license plate.

If Matthews had been involved, Detective Cantinos pondered his change in tactics. “I remember thinking that was a significant change in Jeff’s operation. Before, he was targeting other 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealers.

Now he’s targeting government officials. Being that he was a Fort Myers Beach fire inspector, that is something different that Jeff was doing.”

The detective returned home well after midnight. He tried to unwind, hoping to get some sleep. At about 2:00 a.

m. , the sound of an explosion sent him rushing to the window. “That sounded like a transformer blowing up, a car backfiring, fireworks.

I mean, there’s a number of things that happened in my neighborhood that that sound could possibly occur.” The phone rang two or three minutes later. It was one of his associates who was on the DEA task force.

“Tom, the DEA building just got blown up.”

The Fort Myers DEA office was moments away from the detective’s house. “I was one of the first ones on the scene, and I saw the entire DEA building engulfed in flames that were hundreds of feet high. I mean, it was just an incredible sight for me.”

Investigators immediately suspected fugitive Jeff Matthews. It was the first bombing of a DEA office in US history.

Thirty firefighters battled the blaze for almost an hour. Dozens of agents, US Marshals, and deputies from six neighboring counties were also called in. FBI Special Agent Guy Nais was among them.

“When I arrived on the morning of the bombing on March 17th, DEA agents informed me that the suspect in this matter was most likely an individual that they indicted two days before, one Jeffrey Matthews.”

If this was the work of Jeff Matthews, the cocaine dealer’s violence had escalated to horrific proportions. When law enforcement becomes the target, no one is safe, and Matthews was still on the run.

On March 17th, 1990, two days after the federal grand jury indicted suspected 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 lord and murderer Jeff Matthews, the DEA office in Fort Myers Beach, Florida was firebombed. Agents suspected Matthews was responsible, but he was still at large. The FBI and Lee County Detective Tom Cantinos believed the fugitive was also the prime suspect in another bombing that occurred just hours earlier.

“We realized that in all likelihood that the pipe bomb at the fire inspector’s house was a diversionary tactic to pull law enforcement resources away from the patrolling area of the DEA building in order for Matthews to firebomb the DEA office.”

By dawn, all that remained of the building was a burned-out shell. Investigators now began the task of assessing what was left, how it happened, and where the evidence was buried, hoping to identify the perpetrator. FBI Special Agent Guy Nais called in specialists from headquarters.

“We brought in bomb technicians from our laboratory in Washington DC as well as some FBI agents from the Tampa division to conduct the investigation. The investigation consisted of going through all the debris that was left at the site, basically by taking it through a shovel and sifting through till we found out what incendiary device was used.”

They determined that the fire was caused by a pipe bomb taped to two five-gallon gas cans and tossed through a window. It landed in the office of DEA Agent Dennis Bolam. He believed the aim was no coincidence.

“My feeling is that Jeffrey Matthews is trying to destroy the evidence in the case. I had the case files on the Jeffrey Matthews case in a file cabinet right near the window. Amazingly, the fire and the explosion went right past it, and everything was intact as far as tape recordings and notes and so forth.”

Because of the early hour, no one was injured, but damage was estimated at $4 million. Through scattered witness accounts, investigators pieced together a possible scenario for the bombing. No one knew how many people were involved, but neighbors heard only one car and one door open then close.

Investigators figured those responsible stopped close to the building for a quick hit-and-run.

The bombing had a profound effect on area law enforcement. Agents struggled to deal with the physical reality of the destruction and their emotional reactions. “I was shocked, and then I was angry, and then I was more determined to get him at that point than anything.

It changed my life because I had to have 24-hour guard on my house as well as the other agents and the prosecutor in the case. I had a wife and two small children that I had to worry about, and they had to be protected. I knew that he was still running around out there and that there’s a possibility that he could do this again.”

FBI lab examiners inspected the remnants of the bomb. Nails used as shrapnel were packed into a metal pipe five inches in diameter with a unique threading and surrounded with gunpowder. Duct tape held the pipe between two five-gallon tanks of gasoline that helped to spread the fire when the bomb went off.

One hundred DEA agents joined the team, and the four-person FBI office grew to more than 50. Investigators began tracking down where the bomb materials may have been purchased. Teams of agents canvased every hardware store and gas station for miles around.

The pipe used in the bomb had a unique threading. Agents found the store clerk who had sold this unusual item just days before the explosion. The clerk identified Matthews as the customer who had purchased it.

Agents asked dozens of gas station employees if they remembered anyone purchasing gas in five-gallon tanks during the past week or so. One remembered that a man fitting Matthews’ description had done so recently.

The evidence was mounting against the bomber, but agents still had no idea where he was. They interviewed his friends and associates to determine with whom he’d been in contact. One told them that he had written to her, begging her not to believe what she read about him in the newspapers.

But she had believed the articles and agreed to have her phone monitored so agents might trace a call from Matthews. “He was elusive. We never knew where he would be at any given time.

He was always on the move. So we utilized a trap and trace. We knew that he utilized a cell phone, and we were trying to zero in exactly where he was.”

With a signed affidavit, agents went to the company that handled Matthews’ wireless account. If there was a hit on a cell tower from his phone, authorities would be alerted. They discovered he was still in Florida.

“We had even aerial surveillance set up in the Orlando area where we found out where his cell phone was coming from, to see if when he made a call that we could get people there quickly in an attempt to apprehend him.” But agents were unable to trace Matthews’ calls closer than a two-mile radius.

Then investigators received the tip they were hoping for. They raced to a Fort Myers storage facility where the manager had recognized Matthews from the media. The fugitive was presently unloading a truck there.

Agents hoped they would get there before the suspected murderer and bomber escaped again.

In the spring of 1990, FBI agents raced to arrest 26-year-old fugitive Jeff Matthews, suspected in four murders and the bombing of the Fort Myers, Florida DEA building. A team of agents responded to a call from a storage facility manager who had seen the wanted man on his property. Agents approached the suspect, ready to use deadly force.

They removed his wallet to check his ID. The man was not Jeff Matthews.

After two years of pursuit, Lee County, Florida Detective Tom Cantinos was disappointed but not discouraged. “I just knew that at some point, guy, we were going to get him. He was too active, he was too violent.

What concerned me was at what cost before we got him. We just didn’t know how long it was going to take and how many dead people it was going to take for us to get there. That was my concern.”

Investigators received a tip from a realtor who claimed to have rented a house to Jeff Matthews before he was a known fugitive. They found common items, including duct tape and hardware store bags, that might be linked to the bombing. Then they came across something that seemed clearly connected to Matthews’ crimes.

As DEA Special Agent Dennis Bolam recalls, “There was a note, and the note was addressed to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. I don’t know the exact verbiage that was used in it, but it’s something to the effect of ‘Catch Me If You Can.'”

Investigators sharpened their resolve to find him before anyone else was killed.

On April 9th, 1990, Matthews called his friend’s tapped phone. Agents were prepared to strike if the woman could keep him on the line. This time, he was calling from a pay phone.

According to FBI Special Agent Guy Nais, “We were able to determine that he was in the Orlando area. Agents were sent to different quadrants where they could be within 10 or 15 minutes of different pay phones that we thought maybe Matthews was using.” Field agents waited for the word as precious seconds ticked by.

The woman asked him where he was, but Matthews was anxious to hang up. Despite his best efforts, they got the trace.

Agents set out to apprehend him before he vanished again. “Our people were able to put a location on where the phone call was coming from. Agents were only about 5, 10, 15 minutes away.

They arrived at the scene. He was still talking when the agents arrived. FBI, you’re under arrest.

Put your hands up. Put your hands up.”

After almost three years of pursuit, investigators arrested Jeff Matthews without incident. To avoid the death penalty, Jeff Matthews pled guilty to supervising a continuing criminal enterprise, committing homicide to further that enterprise, cocaine trafficking, and bombing a federal building.

On July 31st, 1990, Matthews asked to speak to DEA and FBI agents. He said they needed to move on something right away or more innocent people would surely be killed. The convicted killer had a storage unit in Gainesville, Florida, loaded with explosives in a booby-trapped van.

Agents immediately notified the bomb squad. “I had concerns that he may be trying to set us up, maybe have his last hurrah before he went away to jail, and that we might be sending some agents into a really dangerous situation.”

As Matthews had described, agents found a red van parked inside a storage unit rigged to explode. A bomb squad diffused the devices and secured the area. With the booby trap rendered harmless, investigators quickly removed the dozen pipe bombs they found in the van.

They also recovered an AR-15, a Mac 10, a Mac 11, and a . 22 caliber handgun with a silencer. “There was a rubber mask, Halloween masks, there was police raid jackets, there was additional bombs, bomb-making equipment, manuals on how to make bombs, how to make booby traps, fuses, and equipment to make bombs, including pieces of pipe, piping, and timers, and so forth.”

Matthews also told investigators where they could find the body of the contractor murdered in his pizza parlor more than two years earlier. Though Matthews claimed that his hitman had done the actual killing, he said they kept him in a freezer. Matthews said he and the hitman had carried the body in a freezer to the house Jeff was renting and buried the victim nearby.

It was the same house where investigators had found Matthews’ taunting note. They located both the freezer and the body just where the killer said they would be. For this crime, Matthews pled guilty as an accessory.

“𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 dealers just don’t start off a business by killing people, and most of them don’t 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 people. But Jeff was a very violent, organized person, and that made him dangerous and that made him even harder to catch.”

On October 1st, 1990, 26-year-old Jeff Matthews was sentenced to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He will never again be free to terrorize the people of Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

—

Thirteen-year-old Amy McNeil had her whole life ahead of her. But when she was kidnapped on her way to school, her future was in peril. The first call her terrified parents made was to the FBI.

They hoped that the combined experience of agents and local law enforcement would flush out the kidnappers before they took her life.

Wealth has its rewards but also brings its dangers. Kidnapping is one of them. No ordeal is more horrifying for a family than to have a child taken.

I’m Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office. Kidnapping cases are among the most challenging for law enforcement, who often must remain out of sight yet close at hand, ready to move in at a moment’s notice.

About 20 miles south of Fort Worth, Texas, lies Alvarado, a small town in rural Johnson County. A few wealthy residents found Alvarado a safe haven away from the state’s urban centers. The McNeils were among them.

They lived as one of the area’s most prominent families, partly from the return that Mr. McNeil made by selling an early design of the handheld calculator.

At 7:15 a. m. on Friday, January 11th, 1985, they began their day having breakfast together as was their usual routine.

Afterwards, their teenage son would drive himself and his 13-year-old sister Amy to school. On the way, Amy and her brothers stopped to pick up their cousin as well. He and his family lived in a separate house on the McNeil estate.

At about 7:45, they were finally on their way to class.

Then, from behind an abandoned truck, a sedan pulled out across the road, forcing the teenagers’ Jeep off to the side. A gunman jumped out of the car and approached the Jeep. He demanded that Amy get into the sedan.

The blond-haired man warned her brother not to contact the authorities. He would call the family in a short while with his demands. Instinctively, the teenager started to get out to help his sister, but the kidnappers threatened to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 him and his sister if he tried to follow them.

As they raced off with the 13-year-old, the teenagers couldn’t make out the license plate. In a matter of seconds, the girl was gone.

They turned around and sped home. The boys told the McNeils what had happened and repeated the kidnappers’ warning not to contact the authorities. Mr.

McNeil ignored the demand and called the FBI field office in nearby Fort Worth. Former FBI Special Agent Clint Brown, a 30-year veteran, understood that when a kidnapping occurs, every second counts. “I’ve worked many kidnapping cases, and in not a single case did the subject get away with it.

The number one goal in all cases like this is the safe return of the victim. All activities, all actions are all geared toward not doing anything to endanger the safety of the person who has been kidnapped.”

The FBI’s first task was to set up a recorder on the family’s phone. By capturing the kidnapper’s voice, they hoped to identify him or the place he was calling from. The FBI also informed the local phone company to be prepared to trace any incoming calls.

Agents instructed the father on how to handle the call. He needed to insist on proof from the kidnappers that his daughter was still alive.

Disturbing former Johnson County Sheriff Eddie Bogs, who called in the Texas Rangers moments after he arrived, was the fact that the kidnappers hadn’t tried to conceal who they were at all. “They just, as we call it, they just bare-faced it, just no mask, no disguises, anything. That means there’s not going to be a victim around to tell who they are, what they look like.

They’re going to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her.”

Uncovering the kidnappers’ identities might prevent that. Using an Identi-Kit that included hundreds of facial features, investigators worked with Amy’s brother and cousin, building a composite of the man who held the shotgun. The teenagers had never seen the man with stringy blonde hair before.

They also provided a description of the kidnapper’s car. “It seems like the people who engage in this are people of questionable and limited mental capacity, and very often they have delusions based on 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 use. Very often the need to get money to promote their 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 habits is what drives them.

That certainly impairs their ability to think or plan or pull this off successfully.”

At 10:00 a. m. , over two hours after Amy had been abducted, the phone finally rang.

It was one of her kidnappers. “Did your son tell you I had your daughter?” The man demanded $100,000 ransom.

Half was to be in $100 bills, the other half in smaller denominations. None of it could be sequenced. As instructed, Amy’s father pleaded to speak to his daughter, but the kidnapper refused.

Her captor insisted Amy was still alive and that her father could speak to her when the man called back to say where to drop the ransom. He added that if the family called the FBI, they would never see Amy again.

The call lasted less than a minute, not long enough to establish a trace for the technology of 1985. Agents played back the recording, listening for any background noise that might reveal the location. They figured the call was likely made from a pay phone since they could hear wind and traffic noise, but they heard nothing more specific.

No one in the family recognized the kidnapper’s voice.

Though Amy’s family was wealthy, her father did not have $100,000 in cash available since most of his assets were tied up in investments. He called his associates to fly in on chartered planes with whatever cash they were able to withdraw.

The next call they received was not the one retired Sheriff Eddie Bogs had hoped for. The press had learned of the kidnapping from one of McNeil’s neighbors. “I got a call from my chief deputy, and he said that he has all sorts of media representatives out there wanting a story.

They knew that there had been a kidnapping, there had been a ransom demand, and they demanded to talk to somebody about the story, and that they were going to go on the air with it.”

If the kidnappers discovered that law enforcement was involved, they would likely dispose of Amy before the ransom was delivered. Investigators discussed what they should do next as precious minutes ticked by. The FBI instructed the family and the Johnson County Sheriff on how to proceed.

“Here’s what you do. You have your chief deputy call each one of the reporters in, ask him for his ID, ask him who is the very top man at his station that he can talk to, and then tell that top man, we’re not going to confirm whether or not you have a story, but if you do have a story and you run it, you could possibly cost the life of a little girl.” Every local press agency agreed not to run the story until notified by the sheriff.

Just before 1:00 in the afternoon, the phone rang again. It was the same man who had called earlier. On a separate line, an agent contacted the chief of security at the local phone company, who was standing by hoping to trace the call.

He trapped the number and began to track its origin. Mr. McNeil begged the kidnapper to let him hear his daughter’s voice.

This time, the man allowed the frightened girl to speak to her father. Her eyes were concealed to prevent her from knowing where she was. “They haven’t hurt me.”

Despite his own fear, he reassured Amy that everything would be okay and that she would soon be home. That’s when the man grabbed the phone.

The kidnapper said that he had not yet secured a location for the ransom to be dropped. “What do you mean you’re having trouble getting a drop zone?” Again, he promised to call back later.

The room fell silent. As former Texas Ranger Bill Gunn recalls, “It was very heart-rending to listen to it. She was frightened, and of course Mr.

McNeil was frightened. The conversation was very short. Mr.

McNeil encouraged her to keep her upper lip up and remember who she was, and that was the end of the conversation.”

They hoped the trace would be successful. The security chief reported that the call had originated from outside the phone company’s calling area, and since the call had been terminated, it would be impossible to trace it through the neighboring system. The phone company was able to determine that the call was made from somewhere in the town of Kennedale, 25 miles north of the McNeils’ estate.

Amy was still in Texas, close to Fort Worth. But without a specific location, investigators had little to go on. “We had no idea, no evidence, no witnesses, no leads, nowhere to go.

The only thing we had was the description of a car. I did have my troops, what few I had, to go out and start in a perimeter and expanding the perimeter, checking every farm, every house, every housing addition, everywhere they could for a car that matched the description that we had.”

Johnson County deputies fanned out over a 30-mile radius from Alvarado up to Kennedale, searching for the kidnapper’s car. They also alerted other local officers to be on the lookout for the four-door sedan. Yet without a license plate, it was not likely they’d locate the vehicle among the rural expanse.

Almost six hours after 13-year-old Amy McNeil had been abducted, her father’s friends from Texas and Arkansas had begun to arrive in Alvarado, carrying tens of thousands in cash. Texas Rangers escorted them from a small airport to a local bank, where the currency would be processed before it was paid to the kidnappers. Wearing latex gloves, Rangers recorded and bundled the $100,000 ransom.

They assembled half of it in $100 bills as the kidnapper had instructed. Another $50,000 was compiled from smaller denominations. Retired Texas Rangers Sergeant John Dendy helped direct the processing.

“They had quite a time raising that amount of money on such short notice. But after they got the money, the Rangers that were at the bank started to get clean bags to put it in, in other words, no fingerprints, plastic bags, and made copies of the bills so we’d have the serial numbers on each bill. Everything was loaded up, and then all we had to do then was sit and wait until more demands came in.”

In the late afternoon, deputies had located a car that fit the description of the kidnapper’s vehicle, parked 20 miles from the McNeils’ estate. A license plate check revealed that the sedan had been stolen the day before from Mesquite, Texas, 50 miles east of Alvarado. Inside, deputies found no obvious signs of Amy or her abductors.

They impounded the car and continued to canvas the area for witnesses who may have seen the driver.

At the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, the FBI processed the sedan for forensic evidence. From the interior, they removed several sets of fingerprints. But without a suspect’s prints to compare them to, the recovered prints could not help identify Amy’s captors or their current whereabouts.

By 11:30 p. m. , 16 hours after Amy had been taken, her family had received three more phone calls but still had not been told where the ransom was to be dropped.

They hoped this would be the call that could secure Amy’s release. It was the same man who had called earlier. Once again, the phone company initiated a trace.

Amy’s father told the kidnapper that he had the $100,000 prepared as the man had requested. But the caller said that it was too late. The ransom drop he had in mind was at least 200 miles away from Alvarado.

By the time Mr. McNeil reached the location, it would be light, too risky for the kidnapper to take a chance on being seen. The father pleaded to make the exchange tonight.

The man refused. He said he’d call back tomorrow to make the arrangements.

“We didn’t think they would let us have her back alive, you know, in good shape. We had no idea what they’d done to her in this period of time that they’d had her.” Agents waited for word to see if the trace had been successful.

It hadn’t. The call was not long enough. Once again, the phone company had failed to secure the kidnapper’s location.

Investigators could only hope that 13-year-old Amy McNeil would survive the night and eventually be reunited with her parents.

By 5:00 p. m. on Saturday, January 12th, 1985, a day and a half had passed since 13-year-old Amy McNeil had been kidnaped on her way to school in Alvarado, Texas.

One of several unidentified kidnapers had called Amy’s wealthy family seven times. He demanded $100,000 in unsequenced currency but had not told the McNeils where to drop the ransom. Though the kidnaper had also warned Amy’s family not to call the FBI, Mr.

McNeil had done so and was joined by several agents, a dozen Texas Rangers, and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.

Her abductors had promised to call again at 5:00 p. m. with the location of the ransom exchange and to confirm that Amy remained unharmed.

Despite the agonizing weight, former Special Agent Clint Brown and his team wasted no time in preparing. “When the instructions were anticipated, a plan was devised to deliver the ransom money with Mr. McNeil driving the car and carrying the money himself for delivery, so that anybody would see the car.

It was the limousine that he had. They would assume he was in the car by himself. Actually concealed in the car would be two FBI agents.”

The agents also outfitted Mr. McNeil with a mini cassette device to record any conversations he may have with the kidnapers if they should approach his limousine. The interior of the car would be wired as well, and the two concealed agents would be heavily armed.

At 5:10 p. m. , the kidnaper called again.

He told Mr. McNeil to drive 40 miles alone in his limousine from Alvarado on Interstate 30 to East Dallas and take Exit 51. There he would find a gas station.

The father was to be there by 7:00 p. m. in order to receive further instructions on the pay phone by the vending machine.

Mr. McNeil spoke to Amy briefly before her abductor disconnected. She was scared but unharmed.

The call was too brief to be traced.

A contingent of FBI, Texas Rangers, and Johnson County personnel would follow McNeil’s car at a distance. The team would be fully equipped, as retired Texas Ranger Bill Gunn remembers. “We got all of the assets available, tracking devices, aircraft.

We had a tracking device on Mr. McNeil’s car so that if we lost contact with it on the ground, both aircraft could receive the signal.”

Amy’s father promised his wife that he wouldn’t come home without their daughter. He was fitted with body armor and provided with a sidearm in the event the kidnapers attacked him. The two agents with him would be armed with shotguns and semi-automatic pistols.

They checked their radios to make sure they could be heard by the follow team.

Retired FBI Special Agent Rod Kicklighter was assigned to ride in the limousine and advise the concerned father. “I recall one of our main instructions to him was not to let himself be taken hostage, and we talked through that quite a bit. He was to deliver the money, and we would then take over and try to effect the arrest.

But he was in no way to get involved himself.”

McNeil got the go-ahead to leave for the gas station in East Dallas, 40 miles away. When the limo had reached about a mile, the agent instructed the others to follow. Since the kidnaper had provided a specific route to the Dallas gas station, former Ranger Sergeant John Dendy and the others feared that the kidnapers could be surveilling the limousine as it traveled.

“We had no idea where they would be, who they were, what they were in, or anything about them. In order for them not to become suspicious of any of us, we kept a good distance behind the car.”

As the stretch crossed county lines, the Rangers radioed ahead to local authorities. They informed traffic patrols not to stop the speeding unmarked cars and provided license plates for their vehicles. Several units raced ahead to set up surveillance of the service station in East Dallas.

While most maintained an outside perimeter, one team held a distant view of the pay phone. They stood by, ready to act in the event that the kidnapers revealed themselves or their 13-year-old hostage.

Agents reported that the limousine had just reached Exit 51. The phone had begun ringing at exactly 7:00 p. m.

when Amy’s father rolled into the service station. It was the eighth call he had received from his daughter’s kidnapers over the past 34 hours. The man did not give the father the news he had hoped for.

He told Mr. McNeil to take Interstate 20 East to Tyler, Texas, almost 100 miles from Dallas. At the US 69 exit, he would find another gas station where he’d receive another call at 9:20 on the pay phone outside.

For retired Special Agent Clint Brown, it was difficult to predict what Amy’s abductors might be planning. “We could tell the kidnapers were not very well organized. They seemed somewhat ill at ease, confused.

Some of their plans seemed to change. They didn’t seem to have a clear idea of where the money was to be delivered, and so it even appeared to be stalling at times, trying to formulate a workable plan that they thought they could use. So it did not appear that they had thought this out very well at all.”

At the second gas station in Tyler, Amy’s father was directed to drive to a third one in Longview, 40 miles further east, by 11:00 p. m. From there, he was ordered to drive 60 more miles north to a fourth gas station in Mount Pleasant, Texas.

Precisely at midnight, he’d receive another call at the pay phone outside.

By now, investigators had covered over 180 miles, traveling for well over five and a half hours. They hadn’t anticipated the long trip, and two surveillance aircraft were forced to turn back to refuel in Dallas. Despite their frustrations, the team was determined to outlast the kidnapers.

“We had no idea what they were going to do next. They just kept running us over East Texas. We saw a large portion of East Texas, and we didn’t know when it was going to stop.

But we knew that we were there for the duration.”

But the situation was only getting worse. About halfway to the Mount Pleasant gas station, the limousine began losing power. After racing at speeds in excess of 100 mph for extended periods, the engine simply quit.

Agent Kicklighter feared that the mechanical problem would jeopardize any chance they may have still had to rescue the 13-year-old. “We were all getting a little tense and excited and worried that we’re not going to get to the drop site and that we’re not going to be able to get Amy back.”

Dozens of miles away at the gas station in Mount Pleasant, two camouflaged Texas Ranger snipers had been deployed to surveil the pay phone. At midnight, it began to ring. Mr.

McNeil was the only one who could answer, but he missed the call.

At midnight on January 13th, 1985, just outside Mount Pleasant, Texas, two FBI agents and the wealthy father of a kidnaped 13-year-old girl worked franticly to repair a limousine engine. Mr. McNeil’s limousine was the car his daughter’s kidnapers expected him to be driving alone to a Mount Pleasant gas station pay phone by midnight.

As Mr. McNeil tried to restart his car, two camouflaged Texas Ranger snipers deployed to surveil the gas station watched helplessly as the phone began ringing. Mr.

McNeil was the only one who could answer, but he missed the call for the final location of the $100,000 ransom exchange.

Patrolling the desolate roads around the gas station in Mount Pleasant, the support team was informed that Mr. McNeil had finally found his car’s difficulty. According to former FBI Special Agent Clint Brown, “The car that Mr.

McNeil was riding in began to develop electrical problems. Apparently the alternator wasn’t keeping the battery charged up, and so as time went on, the lights began to dim, and he began to have trouble with the electrical system of the car.” The communications and tracking devices wired to the limo system had drained its power over the past seven hours.

Disconnecting several instruments provided enough juice to get the engine started again, though the headlights were inoperable. The car would move forward. Mr.

McNeil and the two agents pressed on without full power and limited visibility. Their path was lit by an aircraft overhead.

The remaining FBI agents, Texas Rangers, and Johnson County personnel gathered at a separate filling station a short distance from where the kidnapers had planned to call. They debated what to do next, since Mr. McNeil had missed the midnight appointment and they had no way of contacting the kidnapers.

With few options, investigators decided to send the limousine to the Mount Pleasant gas station late, figuring that the kidnapers would probably call again. “We were pretty well counting on the fact that they were going to show up or call. You know, they were desperate for the money.

We reassured them we had the money, and we certainly reassured them we wanted Amy back. So we thought that they would stay connected to follow through with a payoff site.”

At approximately 1:00 a. m. , Mr.

McNeil and the FBI agents arrived at the Mount Pleasant gas station in the troubled limousine, almost eight hours and 200 miles after they had first departed Alvarado. The limousine engine gave out for good. The vehicle wasn’t going anywhere without major repair.

They could do nothing more but wait in the chilly night and pray that the kidnapers would contact them. “Due to the fact that we had to drive very slowly in the limousine, we were late getting to the drop site, approximately an hour. We were somewhat concerned about that, but we set up to wait by the drop site.”

Texas Rangers kept watch, remaining hidden in the field across from the gas station. The fate of 13-year-old Amy McNeil remained unknown. Then at 1:15 in the morning, the pay phone started ringing.

As investigators had suspected, one of the kidnapers called back, eager to get the ransom. He claimed that Amy was still alive but refused to let her speak. Worse still, former Texas Ranger Bill Gunn and his team learned that the assailant had likely spotted the heavy presence of law enforcement on the desolate roads.

“They started out telling him that he had brought the police with him, and they were very unhappy with that. So they finally told him to bring the money to a motel in Mount Pleasant.” At that time, he informed the man, the kidnaper, that he could not move the vehicle again, it was dead.

And the man told him on the phone, “Then they said, well, we’re coming after the money. We’ve got plenty of guns, and there better not be any police officers around.”

The father remained resolute despite his fear of what the kidnapers may have already done to his daughter. He grabbed the ransom bag and stood outside so his daughter’s captors could see him as they approached. Agents hidden in the limousine readied themselves for an armed confrontation.

Retired Special Agent Kicklighter realized a mistake now could cost lives. “The exchange of a ransom during a kidnapping is always one of the most critical elements of the investigation. You don’t want someone else to be hurt or taken hostage and be another victim of a kidnapping.”

Hours passed in the cold January night. The Rangers stayed alert, protecting against an ambush on the road circling the gas station. Investigators saw no sign of vehicles approaching the ransom drop.

By 3:00 in the morning, two hours after the kidnapers had called, it looked as if they weren’t going to show tonight. The Texas Rangers, Johnson County deputies, and the FBI considered what their next move should be. It was decided that they were not going to come, and so the whole surveillance and monitoring situation was called off.

“We’re going to have to start again the next day.”

Agents in the limo received word of the decision to regroup until daybreak. Mr. McNeil insisted they stay, but investigators convinced him that at present there was nothing more they could do for his daughter.

“Mr. McNeil was upset that yet another night was going to pass without a resolution to getting his daughter back. He had done everything that they had told him to do, so there was a great deal of disappointment.”

A car came by to pick up McNeil and the agents. They headed back to the nearby gas station where others had begun to assemble. The two Rangers hiding in the field for the past three hours moved toward the street where the sheriff was to meet them in a separate van.

As they approached, an unidentified vehicle cruised by their position. It was filled with a group of men and a young girl, who headed towards the interstate, southbound. The Rangers called for units.

“Target location, need somebody to pick them up.” As they watched, those believed to be the kidnappers sped off into the cold Texas night.

At 3:45 a. m. on January 13th, 1985, two Texas Rangers believed they had spotted the kidnappers of 13-year-old Amy McNeil racing away from the ransom drop point in Mount Pleasant, Texas.

They alerted all available units in the area. En route to collect the Rangers, the Johnson County Sheriff heard their call and saw the suspicious vehicle on the highway. He gave chase, but the sedan easily pulled away from the lumbering van that former Sheriff Eddie Bogs was driving.

“My van being as slow as it was, they outran me like I was standing still. There wasn’t any way I could keep up. That chase was going over 100 miles an hour.

It was unbelievable.”

Despite his best efforts, the sheriff lost the car and returned to the makeshift command post to provide a detailed account. Amy’s life was now in even greater jeopardy, since there was no question the kidnappers knew law enforcement was in the area. Then a call came in from their remaining aircraft.

The pilot had spotted the vehicle, and investigators still on the road had resumed the chase. Former Texas Ranger Bill Gunn recalls that the suspects were speeding west on Interstate 30. “But that time, the rest of us had gotten involved, and we were in pursuit of the vehicle, and we continued at a high-speed chase down Interstate 30, which would have been a direction going toward Dallas.”

Ten minutes later, Texas Rangers, sheriff’s deputies, and the FBI fell into line. The suspects refused to slow down. As the lead Ranger began to close in, he was fired upon.

A shotgun and pistol pelted his car with rounds. As he prepared to return fire, he glimpsed two girls in the back seat. One was young Amy McNeil, who they were forcing into the back window.

“The people who were responsible for this started firing guns at them out the back windows on each side of the Buick. They would push Amy up into the back glass so that she could be seen, and of course we couldn’t return any fire.”

Construction narrowed the highway to one lane, but the suspects did not slow. Shots hit the grill of the lead car. Slugs pierced the carburetor, forcing the Ranger to stop.

The chase continued at high speeds through three Texas counties before the suspects exited into the small town of Saltillo, Texas. At about 4:00 a. m.

, they stopped on the front lawn of a home, and several fled on foot. They opened fire on investigators. Two gunmen barricaded themselves behind a van parked in the driveway, while a third disappeared behind the house.

None of the officers on the scene were wearing body armor. “When I first got out of the car, I could see this man standing in front of the van. Now this is Sunday morning at 4:00, and no moon as far as I can remember.

Every time he’d pull off a round with that 12 gauge, he’d line up the girl.”

Investigators took cover behind their vehicles and pinned the gunmen down. The suspect’s abandoned car was in the direct line of fire. Amy was trapped inside without any means of escape.

One assailant attempted to break into the home of an elderly resident. She took cover, not knowing what was happening a few feet from where she had slept. As the firefight raged on, investigators knew that they had to somehow get to Amy McNeil before it was too late.

At 4:00 a. m. on January 13th, 1985, the FBI, Texas Rangers, and Johnson County Sheriffs exchanged gunfire with the kidnappers of 13-year-old Amy McNeil.

After being held for almost two days, Amy remained trapped inside her captors’ vehicle with a female assailant on the front lawn of a farmhouse in Saltillo, Texas. Ranger Sergeant John Dendy was one of several who braved the hail of bullets. “I could see one of them behind the front wheel of the car, and that’s what I was mainly shooting at.

I didn’t have any other place to go, and the only thing I know to do is shut them down, and the only way I’m going to do that is to hit one of them.”

Several miles away in another vehicle, Amy’s wealthy father was accompanied by the Johnson County Sheriff and an FBI agent on their way to the scene. They could do nothing more but hope and pray that the 13-year-old would survive the battle.

As the shooting continued, a Johnson County Sheriff’s deputy moved towards the suspect’s car. As Ranger Bill Gunn recalls, “One deputy sheriff ran from the vehicle that he arrived in over to the kidnapper vehicle, and she asked him if he was a police officer, and he said yes ma’am, and she just really grabbed hold of him then and hung on.” The deputy handed the frightened girl to a Ranger, who took her out of harm’s way.

They ran back to the road where more backup arrived. After 44 hours in captivity, 13-year-old Amy McNeil was finally safe.

The Ranger needed to contact the other investigators and to tell her father the good news. Retired FBI Special Agent Rod Kicklighter was in the vehicle as the Rangers’ call came through. “It seemed like hours before we finally got the confirmation that Amy was safe.

I recall Mr. McNeil beating me about the head and shoulders about Amy being safe and they’ve got her. He was ecstatic, as were we.”

While Amy was headed to meet her father, the shooting had subsided. The gunmen had both been wounded. Investigators held their weapons on them, not sure if the suspects still had ammunition.

Then, out of the shadows, a third gunman emerged. Realizing that escape was impossible, he surrendered. From inside the kidnaper’s car, investigtors cuffed the female suspect and a fourth man who had remained there during the shootout.

Rangers confirmed with Amy that all the kidnaper’s were now in custody.

On a deserted highway a mile away, Amy ran towards the waiting van that held Mr. McNeil. Former Special Agent Clint Brown watched the reunion between father and daughter.

“Where I came from, everybody was pretty emotional. We all had kids and daughters and such, so we were pretty emotional just watching that reunion. Everyone was so happy that it had turned out so well that we all shared in that excitement and joy of her being recovered safely.”

No one but the suspects had been hit by gunfire. Both were ex-convicts and high on methamphetamine at the time of the shooting. The elderly resident was also examined.

She had survived the ordeal with only frayed nerves. A license plate check on the kidnaper’s car revealed that it had been stolen in Dallas the day before. Investigators also figured out why the suspects had stopped their vehicle when they had.

“We never could understand why they turned in at this particular house, but we found out later they ran out of gas.”

Thirty-four-year-old James Foot, who had made the initial ransom calls, had previously worked for Mr. McNeil and had hatched the plan to kidnap Amy. For using a weapon in the commission of the crime, he was convicted of aggravated kidna ping and attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Twenty-seven-year-old Michael Mills, who had made the remaining calls, was likewise convicted of aggravated kidna ping and attempted murder, receiving life. The other assailants, 21-year-old Daniel Neca r Jr. and 21-year-old Thomas Barnes, were convicted of the same charges and also sentenced to life.

The 18-year-old woman who was with them was charged as the men were. She had only met James Foot a few days earlier before the kidna ping had occurred. The woman was scared when the men brought the 13-year-old into the house but stayed to prevent Amy from being abused by them.

Amy later confirmed that the 18-year-old had protected her. According to retired Johnson County Sheriff Eddie Bogs, “She was only given a ten-year probated sentence at Amy’s request. The female accomplice really didn’t know what she was getting into at the time when she joined them because they had already been using dope for several days steady before she got involved in it.

It was just that she got involved in something she couldn’t get out of.”

Six months later, on July 4th, 1985, Foot was transferred from the State Penitentiary to the Johnson County Jail to face additional charges. Authorities had traced the weapons he used in the kidna ping to the armed home invasion of a Dallas man. Foot was also indicted in Arlington, where he had attempted to kidnap the child of a wealthy developer days before he took Amy.

Outside in the blistering Texas summer, the prison guard agreed to retrieve a water hose to cool down the inmates. When he left, Foot climbed over the eight-foot fence. He made it under the barbed wire.

Seconds later, the kidnaper disappeared into the nearby woods.

That evening, the Johnson County Sheriff faced the difficult task of informing Mr. McNeil that his daughter’s kidnaper had escaped to where no one knew. Deputies would be stationed outside the McNeil home as long as Foot remained at large, fearing that the convict might seek vengeance on the family.

Mr. McNeil immediately offered a reward for any information leading to Foot’s recapture.

A few days later, a call came in to Sheriff Bogs that seemed promising. “Foot had a cousin that lived up close to Paris, Texas, that called in and said that he knew where he was and had been in contact with him. That cousin also had some criminal charges pending on him and was willing to make a deal.”

Foot had been hiding in the cousin’s Paris, Texas home, 170 miles northwest of the prison. Johnson County deputies prepared for the assault of the single-story dwelling. They readied themselves for another armed confrontation.

As promised, the cousin made certain that Foot was inside at home for the arrest to take place. This time, there would be no shootout. Sheriff’s deputies captured Foot without incident.

He was returned to prison, where Foot will spend the rest of his life.

At the state capital in Austin, Texas, retired Ranger Sergeant John Dendy was among those who received commendation and recognition for the successful conclusion to the case. “Going to Austin, talking to the governor, getting an accommodation. The fact that I knew that I had had something to do with saving this beautiful little girl’s life was worth more than anything else they could do.

That made everything worthwhile. All of 36 years that I’ve spent in law enforcement, that was the top.”

Because law enforcement responded quickly and did not relent, Amy McNeil was reunited with her family and friends, thankful for the determined officers and agents who answered the call.