[ telephone ringing ]
♪
Carole: There is nothing behind those beady eyes
But an evil, sick man.
I don't want anyone in my family
To run into him on the street.
We made a deal with the devil.
♪
The winner of '85 was a brutally cold winter.
The day of the crime, we had 20, 30 below wind chill factor,
But that day, everything was just bright white snow
And clear as can be.
♪
[ telephone beeping ]
[ dial tone ring ]
[ busy tone beeping ] [ sighs ]
Come on, dad.
My parents lived on a farm about seven miles out of minot
And it's in an isolated location.
Still getting a busy signal?
Yeah. [ sighs ]
It's got to be all the ice and snow.
The storm must've taken down their phone line.
[ hangs up receiver ]
Yeah, you're probably right.
Never could get through on the phone.
[ busy tone beeping ]
That's why we drove out.
When you got to the farm,
We both went to the garage door
And that was locked.
And they never locked that door.
But I had a key, so I locked that and I went in.
[ breathes heavily ] oh, god.
I figured that there was something wrong
But I never expected anything like this.
In the kitchen, everything was a mess.
Most of the dishes were out on the kitchen floor,
And everything was just smashed, thrown around.
Dad?
Dad, are you here?
There was a tv on in the living room,
And I think that was making some noise, too.
[ tv static rushes ]
The whole situation was creepy --
I mean...
Just hard to describe.
[ static continues ]
I stepped into the dining room area,
And I could see dad laying on the floor.
♪
And he had...
Blood all over the floor.
♪
I knew that he was dead.
I can see that as if it happened yesterday.
Just stays with you.
♪
Mom...
And that's when I turned to check on mom.
♪
They just stepped into the bedroom.
She had bullet holes in her.
♪
I know my mother was dead
Because of the way she laid there, you know...
Looking up at the ceiling
With her eyes open.
♪
Just gone.
Out of emotions.
♪
My mother, cora, and my father, charley.
One thing they lived for was their grandkids and family.
Family was important to them.
You're in very good health.
They had a lot of life left in them.
I never thought that this would be the last picture.
So, this just wasn't right.
[ police sirens wailing ]
Narrator: Investigators descended on the crime scene.
Erck: On Saturday afternoon, when I arrived,
There were several patrol units at the scene already.
Man: There he is -- the residents.
The abernathey house...
Was terrible.
Cora's purse was dumped on the table in the dining room.
That was the first signs of an apparent robbery.
Male subject on the floor of the living room area.
Charley had two entrance wounds
To the back of the head.
And his throat was slashed very deep.
There was a lot of blood in that area --
On the carpet, on his body, up the wall,
Out into the kitchen...
From another room.
To the left, there was the bedroom
Where cora was lying, and it was very evident
That she had been shot several times and her throat was cut.
Seven shots, altogether --
Two to charley's head, five to cora's head --
And both had been cut
On the throat with a knife.
It was just --
It was just a bad scene...
...The worst I'll probably ever see...
...And the worst that I did in my 35-year career.
♪
Bad things don't happen very often here.
And...
When you have a double murder,
It's extremely unusual.
I wasn't called to the scene until about four hours later.
What the hell is going on in here?
And I walked up to vern erck,
And I said, "vern, I got two questions.
Why wasn't I called earlier,
And what are all these cops doing in here?"
Hey, easy with that. Hey, hey! Put that down!
Hey, vern.
Not one of them are wearing gloves.
What are they all doing in here? I tried to stop them.
I was overruled.
There were people that really had no reason to be there.
They'd probably never ever, ever seen a murder scene.
Not many of us have.
I'm sorry, sir. I'm not in charge over here.
Well, you're in charge now.
[ police siren wails ]
Ah, no. You've got to be kidding me!
A deputy comes flying down the road --
Sirens going, lights going --
And he pulls up right up to the garage,
Right where the tire prints would've been.
It was cold! It's rural area!
They didn't walk out there.
You know they had a car,
And we would've had those tire prints
Had nobody driven into that driveway.
What on earth is going on here?
I want all nonessential personnel out of the scene now.
Alright. Alright everybody, listen up!
If you're not a tech, I need you to drop what you're doing
And leave the scene immediately.
[ claps ] let's go!
Come on. I got something you need to see.
Slorby: There was a chair in the middle of the living room.
It was pretty clear that mr. Abernathey was murdered
Sitting in that chair.
♪
What do we have here?
And on the back of the chair --
Wood slat across the back --
Blood on it.
Hey, this is crucial.
I'm gonna want pictures of this, not just video.
Hopefully, we got a print on the back of that.
And yeah, that was a wild moment.
I'm -- I'm sorry, sir.
That's mine.
I moved the chair.
That's where I grabbed it.
Well, I find out one of the deputies
That was videoing the scene
Move that chair to get a better view.
So his print was on the back of that chair.
Damn it!
I was a real pissed, and I was real disappointed.
The whole crime scene investigation
Was basically botched.
There weren't.22 casings found.
But it was not something to brag about at all.
Well, what about the shells?
There's about 1,000 people in this county
That have guns that would match.
Including you and me.
There's just no other evidence.
Our crime scene didn't give us any suspect.
Somehow, we're gonna have to go the other way around
And go form some suspects
Out of the clear blue.
[ sighs ] these people were shot and they were stabbed.
They were butchered.
We've got a maniac on the loose,
And absolutely no idea how to find them.
♪
Carole: I did not know there was a video taken that day.
♪
[ sighs ] that was videotaped before they closed the caskets.
So I looked up to look inside.
I hate open caskets.
You know, it's hard enough to prepare for one funeral.
But to prepare for two...
I really miss my mom and dad.
My mother called me every night.
[ chuckling ] and my dad, I could hear him in the background
Every once in a while, "would you let that girl
Get in the house and feed her kids before you bug her?"
My dad was my stability.
[ voice breaking ] I was [indistinct].
And of course, my mom, you know --
Who doesn't want their mom?
But yeah, I felt alone.
♪
[ exhales sharply ]
♪
It's not unusual for the killers
To show up at a funeral.
You're hoping you'll see something --
That killer behaving differently,
Not kind of behavior you'd expect to see at a funeral.
It didn't lead to anything,
But it could have.
Mrs. Abernathey?
I'm so sorry about your parents.
Thank you.
Do you suppose we could speak privately for a moment?
Yeah? Let's go this way.
Usually, there is a connection
Between the killer and the victim.
The family is bound to have at least some information
That turns out to be helpful.
[ whispering ] I apologize for having this here
But we're trying to move quickly.
There's a possibility
That the robbery was a cover-up...
...And that your parents actually knew the killer.
Is there anyone you know
That may have wanted to hurt your parents?
I don't know if I should tell you this.
I had some problems with my ex-husband.
Carole: They asked me about my ex-husband.
He was absolutely unhappy because of the divorce.
There was the time that he was in the ward county jail
And he had made some off-the-cuff comment
About my dad not liking him
And probably blaming him
For us separating.
But...
I don't think he would go so far as to hurt them.
Carole's ex husband was an obvious lead
In this kind of case.
You frequently have that connection --
Bad blood because of a bad marriage.
♪
We had talked to her ex-husband.
♪
Do you know cora and charles abernathey?
Uh-huh.
"somebody killed them.
We feel that it was somebody
They knew.
We're here to find out where you were on Friday."
Friday.
I had school.
And after school -- came home.
What'd you do Saturday?
Went ice fishing.
"okay, who went ice fishing?"
"uh, just me."
"just you?" "uh-huh."
Did you get along pretty good with charley and cora?
♪
I didn't get along with charley.
"charley and I still had spats,
Especially after the divorce
Because as far as he was concerned..."
He'd just as soon never let me see their daughter again.
They have any enemies you know of?
I was their only enemy.
Did you in any way, shape, or form
Have anything to do with their deaths?
I would've never considered anything like that.
It would have been against my ex-wife,
Not against them.
He said if he would've done anything
It would've been to carole.
Slorby: There was a number of us that were pretty confident
We're gonna get our man.
Boy, am I excited.
Narrator: The investigators' suspicions take an unexpected turn
When the.22 caliber shell cases
Yield an incriminating clue.
Okay, so what's so important we had to be down here
At 5:00 in the morning?
I was looking at the shells...
Slorby: On the ballistic examinations, on the bullets,
One was a twist to the right
And the other was a twist to the left.
So that tells you you've got two firearms here.
Even a double-barrel weapon's
Gonna have the same twist on each barrel.
We still got nothing to tie anyone to the scene.
Yeah, we need more.
One gun was fired in the bedroom,
One in the living room.
That strongly suggests there's two people --
Two killers, two perpetrators.
The ex-husband working with somebody?
Maybe.
And that's what you're looking for --
A pair of suspects.
And that's my earliest
"wow" moment.
After they were killed, I'd go out there every night.
Every night after work, I'd go out.
And we still had the horses out there then,
So I just used that as an excuse.
Just sat there.
♪
Just to go out there and think, I guess.
[ whispering ] I don't [indistinct].
♪
Narrator: Now searching for two suspects,
Detectives canvass the rural area around the abernathey home.
♪
Hello, ma'am.
We're, uh, awful sorry to bother you.
Do you remember the night of the blizzard?
Well, we were wondering if you might've seen
Anything strange,
Anything out of the ordinary?
We spoke to between 15 and 20 neighbors,
And most of them -- seen nothing, heard nothing.
Woman: But you might want to talk to my son.
Please, come in.
Sometimes canvassing gets you nothing.
Other times, it gets you everything.
I feel strange saying this.
It's about kevin.
The parents raised the name -- kevin austin, their son --
And they were only talking in terms
Of their problems with him.
Well, he's been taking money from us.
He forged some checks in our name
And there's just something unusual about him.
I think...
This was bothering them for a while.
They just felt he needed, you know,
To straighten out his life.
Ma'am, not to minimize what your son did,
But stealing money from you?
I mean, what makes you connect that
With what happened at the abernathey farmhouse?
They didn't think he would be involved in anything like this,
But you know, if someone talked him into it
He maybe, maybe would've went long.
Thank you for your time, ma'am.
We'll be in touch.
♪
This story seems pretty flimsy to me.
I mean, at least the ex-husband had motive.
Detective, about him --
We checked his story.
And? It all checked out.
Someone saw him ice fishing that Saturday.
He couldn't have got from north dakota to minnesota in time.
Erck: He had a good alibi.
He didn't stay on the radar very long.
I guess this kevin austin's story's all we got.
Well, vern, I know kevin.
Forgery charges a few years ago.
Really?
Well, what do you make of him?
Kevin austin --
He's just a minor crook
In the minot area.
Nothing really substantial stood out about him.
Doesn't strike me as the violent type.
He had a friend, though.
This guy was a different story.
What's his name?
Newnam.
Calvin newnam.
Calvin newnam had a violent history,
And I had previously, as a [indistinct],
Prosecuted calvin newnam for an aggravated assault,
And I think he probably felt I treated him fairly.
I think he had a certain comfort level with me,
But I had that history with him.
Calvin trusts me.
Why don't you let me go talk to him.
Let's do it.
♪
Thanks for meeting with me, calvin.
Thought I'd seen the last of you, slorby.
What's this about?
I want to talk to you a little bit
About what happened last year,
About what you did.
Slorby: Calvin tried to break into a car,
And the guy caught him in the act,
And...
Calvin hit him over the head with bolt cutters,
Knocked him out,
And took off.
[ sighs ]
Why are we going through that again?
You told me you should've killed him.
He said, "I should've just killed the guy,"
And he said it kind of coldly.
You know I mean? It wasn't --
It wasn't in jest.
Calvin newnam fit
A killer's profile.
[ sighs ]
And I did my time for it.
[ windshield wipers swishing ]
Where exactly are you going with this?
♪
You hear about the couple that got murdered
At the farmhouse?
What's that got to do with me?
I heard that your friend kevin austin
Might've been up to you.
♪
Well, slorby,
It's been great catching up but...
I think we're done here.
♪
Cold out there, buddy.
Take care of yourself.
♪
They did hang out together,
And we needed to put them
At the crime scene doing the crime,
But we don't have any evidence putting him there.
Maybe we can't place in there because they weren't there.
Well, if they were there and they left anything,
We did a beautiful job helping them cover their tracks.
The whole case -- the whole case --
Depended on a confession. 100%.
There was absolutely no other way it was gonna be solved.
Absolutely none.
We got to get to them somehow.
We got to knock them off balance.
You know, two people can keep a secret if one's dead.
[ chuckles ]
And that's their weakness --
Is there's two of them.
That's the weakness.
Divide and conquer.
Wait a minute.
We don't have any physical evidence.
But they don't know that.
What are you getting at?
And verne erck
Came up with this crazy idea.
Alright, here's the idea.
We call the reporters.
We'll tell them we have a big break in the case,
Tell him we're closing in on our suspects,
That we have -- we have a ton of evidence
Waiting on processing
And maybe, hopefully,
Austin and newnam are watching.
And hopefully,
We can crack one of them.
[ chuckles ]
We had no clue
If it's gonna work or not.
It sounded pretty stupid to me
But what else we gonna do?
You know what, why not.
What we got to lose?
God help us.
We set up a number of fake news conferences
For the sole purpose of attempting
To deceive our killers.
We believe the motive is robbery.
Reporter: Erck told reporters
Family members have been interviewed
And have been very cooperative.
Slorby: The whole idea
Was to convey a message
That we're getting real close
To making an arrest.
Reporter: The reason the investigation is taking so long
Is because there's a tremendous amount of evidence
That has to be processed by the state lab.
Everything we put out there...
...Was bull.
The thing that really sticks out, in my mind,
Is the "tire tracks."
We know we don't have tire tracks,
But they don't know...
We don't have tire tracks.
That was our first news conference.
"we've got tire tracks,
And we're going to be making some comparisons."
We hoped...
That our perpetrators watched tv.
[ chuckles ]
Reporter: Officers believe the killer -- or killers --
Will be captured soon.
♪
Narrator: With the trap set,
Investigators attempt to confront both suspects
But focus heavily on calvin newnam.
I bet I went up to his house at least three times.
We made sure
That they saw us taking pictures of the tires...
...And saw us measuring and taking notes,
Like we're taking notes on the tires.
He obviously... [ camera shutter clicks ]
...Thought we were getting real close
Even though we weren't.
But again, all that's important is his own reality,
And he thought we were.
Hopefully...
He succumbs to it.
[ film advance lever clicks ]
The idea was to...
Use some psychological pressure
Not just through the media
But in person.
Keelan: At the time, I was assigned to investigations.
So I got ahold of calvin at his house,
Knocked on the door,
Trying to be friendly,
Try to get inside his mind.
[ knock on door ]
Come on in.
I came back off and on
For a little over six months.
There was something inside of me that was telling me
That I think he'll come around,
And we kind of got to be friends a little bit.
Hi, leo.
Good to see you again, buddy.
He'd be laying on his couch with the cat on his chest
Here to take pictures of my tires again, leo?
No. No, they're still processing that stuff.
Just wanted to chat.
Well, then, have a seat.
[ cat purring ] this is willow.
Just a baby, aren't you?
I don't know if you want to call him an oddball or eccentric
Or... But yeah, he was different.
Not a normal person you meet on the street.
[ purring continues ]
Gone on. Pet her.
♪
Ah, she likes you, leo.
Calvin's a little complicated.
He's quiet, he's an introvert,
But I knew his past history,
And he could be a very violent, you know,
Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde-type of person, too.
You guys making any progress
On that farmhouse business?
Still working it.
I hope he had better suspects than me, leo.
You know I can't talk so much about that.
[ purring continues ]
Maybe it was miss willow.
Were you a bad kitty, huh?
I could tell his defense mechanism
Was slowly starting
To slow down a little bit.
He was more comfortable with me.
♪
Man of god, huh?
[ purring continues ]
That's right.
I found out he and his father
Were ordained ministers.
I said, "you know, I'm a born-again christian.
You must be a born-again christian, too."
God's got a purpose for you, leo.
He's got a purpose for you, too.
What do you suppose that is?
I could tell you needed to talk to me about it.
He knew it was time, and he wanted to do it.
I think you know the answer to that.
I believe god thinks
It's time for you to tell the truth.
And I brought it to a head, finally.
I asked him if he would come to the police department.
We need to talk there.
There's a lot of people waiting near the truth, calvin.
♪
He knew I knew
That he was guilty.
♪
Calvin.
I have your word on that?
Yes, sir.
♪
[ purring continues ]
♪
And 5:00 on the button next day,
He was down at the police department --
September 25th, 1985.
Calvin, you're doing the right thing.
I know this isn't easy.
He was getting a little antsy
And I said to him,
"calvin, it's like into a nightmare, wasn't it?"
♪
And he goes, "[ sighs heavily ] yes, leo, it was."
And he started to sob.
At the end, I think calvin felt very guilty,
And he felt bad about being guilty.
I need an attorney, don't I?
Well, you have a right to an attorney.
Uh, just --
Just call tom slorby.
And I said, "calvin...
He's a ward county prosecutor now.
He'll be prosecuting this case."
Calvin, it's his job to put you in jail.
No. He's a good man.
He'll do right by me.
Okay.
Well, that's -- what could I say?
That's calvin. [ laughs ]
And tom came down.
There just was a rapport
That was built up
And he had a certain comfort level with me.
Joe: There was a rumor around town
That mom and dad had money stashed around the house.
The rumor wasn't true.
Listening to that cool, calm, collected voice,
Just reaffirms my feelings
That there's no conscience,
There's nothing behind those beady eyes
But an evil, sick man.
♪
Then I cut her throat.
[ sighs ]
Well, calvin, I know this couldn't have been easy.
I appreciate you telling me the truth.
Like I told leo,
I trust you.
We could put the two of them together
The day of the murder.
It wrapped up the whole case.
The ploy, it worked.
The tire tracks,
The fake news,
Going to his house,
It worked perfectly!
We never would've got a confession
Without putting the psychological pressure on.
♪
There was no undoing that confession.
These are his own words,
But he realized
That we tricked him.
And hey,
I'm not a bit ashamed tricking him, okay.
Not a bit. Kind of proud of it, actually.
He refused to testify against austin.
So based on that, I had no choice
But to dismiss the charges against kevin austin.
And I was concerned. I was concerned.
From a law enforcement perspective,
When a guy like kevin austin is free,
You never feel that the community's safe.
Just the fact that he was out and angry
Because he'd been implicated,
It made me feel scared.
♪
Joe: Calvin retracting his statement
Meant that kevin was gonna walk free
Without his testimony
'cause they didn't have enough evidence
On kevin to prosecute him.
I was pretty upset about that.
♪
I had no case against kevin austin.
Kevin austin was a free man
As to this murder.
Carole: Kevin austin just made me shudder.
I didn't ever want to face that face.
I don't want anyone in my family
To run into him on the street.
I just wanted him to be as far away from us as possible.
♪
I was state's attorney for ward county at that time
And the timing of calvin newnam
Changing his mind to cooperate
Came right right when I left office.
[ alarm echoes ]
[ door clangs ]
I lost my re-election bid for a fourth term
In November of 1990.
Heard you lost your job, slorby. [ chuckles ]
Bet that that makes you pretty happy.
He was mad at me.
I trusted you.
You tricked me.
Slorby: He saw me as the devil.
Didn't want to deal with the devil.
And why he sat there for that six or seven years
Is pretty much inexplicable to me.
I'm ready now.
You're ready?
[ breathes deeply ]
But I'm not doing it for nothing.
Slorby: My successor made a deal with him.
To modify his sentence,
He decided to testify
Against austin.
Finally, kevin austin was arrested.
Reporter: 30-year-old kevin austin is in custody tonight
In the ward county jail,
Facing two counts of double-a murder.
He faced similar charges seven years ago
But those charges were dropped.
Calvin newnam did testify
At the kevin austin murder trial.
Kevin austin was found guilty of both murders, as well.
♪
Carole: Calvin demanded a reduced sentence
To testify against kevin.
We made a deal with the devil.
But by the time we got out,
Quite frankly, we were banking on the fact
That he would be extremely sick or dead.
♪
I think I don't want to acknowledge
That he really did get out,
That he lived to get out.
I don't know that I've come to terms with it yet.
He was supposed to die before now.
Honest to gosh, he was supposed to die before now.
Calvin is now released with no conditions --
Not parole,
Not probation -- completely free.
I'd rather that calvin had never been released from prison.
♪
Joe: Calvin's release brought up a lot of memories, you know,
That had kind of faded a little bit.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive those guys.
The forgiveness part is not for him.
[ whispering ] it's for us.
And I have hated him for many years.
♪
But it's gonna take a while. [ chuckles ]
My sister and brother and I, we've --
We lost a lot of years with our parents.
Dad was very protective of my mother.
I'm sure my parents were scared to death,
And and with mom laying in the bedroom
And probably hearing everything that went on.
I can only imagine what was going through her mind
When she heard the gunshots and somebody coming through.
That's the worst part of it -- as many people that they had
That loved them and family,
And this should be the last two people they ever seen.
Not right.
Just not right...
♪