The job of a cab driver --
It's a steady job, but there is that risk involved in it.
I got a call, and they were like, "hey, a taxi-cab driver
Was shot, and it's your uncle."
Houston had never seen a crime like this before.
Cab drivers were the specific targets.
Drivers were very afraid.
They didn't know if they would be next.
What was amazing to me
Was that they start dropping these little clues.
And what was revealed on that video was shocking.
She was either being truthful
Or she's the greatest actress in the world.
In the interview room, it's always a chess game,
Because what do you want to do? You want to checkmate.
Houston, texas, america's fourth largest city.
I served as a homicide detective
With houston's finest for over 23 years.
I've investigated over 400 murders
And solved 90% with a confession.
Once I have a suspect in the room,
I don't quit until I get justice for the victims.
I am homicide detective fil waters.
This investigation was of such a magnitude,
We dubbed it "the wannabe bonnie and clyde."
Sitting here thinking about it now,
What was incredible is that this looked like
To be something that was escalating
Because they're on their track to be serial killers.
We are firstborn nigerian-americans.
Uncle blaise came here in the early '80s.
Blaise had five children.
He would always say family is his number one
And we have to stick together.
Uncle blaise became a probation officer,
But he wasn't financially satisfied,
So he sought the advice from my father.
My dad said, "hey, I'm a cab driver.
You can earn cash, tips. You can make your own schedule."
And so my uncle blaise said, "okay, let me do that,"
And so he was doing that just to earn money for his five kids.
At approximately 4:29 a.M.,
A uniformed hpd patrol officer
Notices what appears to be an abandoned taxi.
He sees smoke coming from the cab, so he stops to investigate.
As he approaches the cab,
He realizes that the fire has gone out.
He opens the driver's door...
And he finds a dead body in the driver's seat.
My partner, brian harris, and I are notified
By the homicide intake desk.
We are going out there to meet
Night-shift homicide detectives who are already on the scene.
Fil and I drove up to this parking lot,
And in the middle of the driveway is a cab.
The windows are smoked out, and inside the cab
Is the body of a male, large frame,
In the driver's seat,
Shot twice at close range.
The victim is identified
As nigerian immigrant blaise nwokenaka,
And his family is notified immediately.
I got a phone call at work.
They were like, "a cab driver got shot, and it's your uncle."
I was like, "what are you talking about?"
When I got home, my father confirmed
That my uncle blaise died.
he never said it, but my dad --
He felt guilty.
And I remember him, um, being quiet
For, like, a long time
And not talking.
Quiet.
He was just quiet.
Yeah.
I loved him so much.
I was just...Speechless.
At the scene, we have the conversation with night shift
About how the officer found the body.
The position his body was in, he knew what was coming.
Imagine the last couple of seconds of your life,
You know you are fighting for your life.
The bullet is fired at an angle, close.
We recover firearms evidence in the form of two casings.
Both are.380s --
One unfired bullet
And one bullet recovered from the interior.
We start to survey the area, and we're looking for video cameras.
Lo and behold, on the business building
That's there in the parking lot, there they are --
Video cameras.
Detective waters located a maintenance man
Who allowed him to review those cameras.
I view the dvr, and now we have blaise's homicide
Unfolding in front of us.
We see blaise's cab pull in.
We see a black female emerge from the cab,
And she begins to walk around the parking lot,
Surveilling the parking lot.
She's the countersurveillance for this operation.
What is priceless is that she walks past the building
And looks directly into the video camera.
And we do get some sense of her shape and her size, her hair.
She comes back to the cab.
She gets into the passenger's side.
What we do see, to our amazement...
...Is the moment the second suspect murders blaise.
After that, we see the female.
She gets into the front seat
And begins to rummage through the glove box,
And we watch what clearly is a male suspect
Emerge from the cab.
After that happens, we see the black female walk off first,
And then we can see the male set fire to the cab.
And then we see him darting across the parking lot
In the same direction as the female.
Crimes are rarely caught on tape,
And so to have this happen in this case was a huge boon.
At that point,
We start pulling still shots off of this video.
While we can't see definition,
We can still see some pretty good shapes,
And they are distinctive in the way they look.
The male is slender, very lean-looking,
The female, a little bigger, a little wider.
And one thing that's notable about the way
She's walking past the camera is she has her arms folded.
Now, this may just be a habit,
But it's something that we're going to note
Because we hopefully are going to have something
To compare it to later on.
When we get back to the office, we contact yellow cab.
Anytime anybody calls in to the yellow cab dispatch,
It's a recorded system, and so yellow cab
Provided a copy of that recording.
The caller on the dispatch for the yellow cab
Identified herself as shante --
Had a distinctive raspy, low voice.
Shante was calling to request a cab
To meet her at a gas station
In the 1900 block of dairy ashford.
So we go to the gas station, and we find the pay phone
Where shante makes her phone call.
We're hopeful there's going to be video at that gas station.
To our disappointment, upon our arrival,
There are actually no video cameras in existence
At that gas station.
The only leads we had was a yellow cab recording of shante.
People underestimate the power of women.
How threatening would it be if somebody is a cab driver,
And they already know that they are picking up a female
Versus picking up a male?
She's not a threat.
If I was a cab driver at 2:00 in the morning
In the west end of houston
Picking up a female, that's a no-brainer.
That's amazing money. That's a safe cab ride.
When we get back to the office, we have the conversation
With night shift, and, man, I can't believe it.
They said that a second cabby is discovered murdered,
Killed two days prior.
Well, this is huge. These two suspects --
They are on their way to being serial killers.
In October 2010, we have a serious situation.
The cab was burned out,
And the cab driver was found dead inside.
On the video, we see our suspects
Carrying out what appears to be a planned event.
The only lead is a recording of a woman
Calling the victim to his death.
But, to my amazement, a second cabby was discovered murdered,
Shot twice at close range two days prior.
We were thinking it's got to be connected.
This was a body that was discovered
By somebody just merely doing their job,
Checking the drainage pipes,
And while he's doing his duty,
He stumbles across a man in a ditch,
Tossed away as if it was a piece of garbage.
The victim was found in north houston.
He's been shot once in the rib-cage area
And once in the head.
You had matted grass that led down to the body.
There's drag marks on the back of the skin.
That tells me that more than one person was involved.
There's no way that this was one person
Who could have carried this size man.
Not only that, you see, actually, tire tracks
That lead to the embankment.
The victim in that case is identified by a passport
That he has on his person as mohammed el sayed.
He is a cab driver.
But now where's the cab?
A cab driver named raef barakat calls in.
Raef tells us he's the owner of the cab itself.
Raef has loaned the cab to mohammed el sayed,
And there came a point in time
Where mohammed was supposed to return it to raef.
That didn't happen.
So there were alarm bells that went off for raef.
Raef's next step is to report his cab missing,
Along with mohammed el sayed.
We have two squads working on this.
There is no way that brian and I
Can do everything that needs to be done.
Mohammed had been a student.
He had several children, and he was trying to provide for them.
Mohammed el sayed was an american-born egyptian.
He was an instructor, a teacher, in arabic to u.S. Military.
He was hardworking.
He was living the american dream.
Every yellow cab is equipped with gps systems.
The cab is found on the west side of houston,
A recovered cab on the same street
Where blaise's cab shows up.
These two cabs are dropped on the same street
Within two days of one another. This is not a coincidence.
There's blood inside raef's yellow cab,
And, very quickly, it is clearly established
That the murder scene isn't that embankment
But is indeed inside that yellow cab.
His wallet was missing,
So it was the first sign that robbery is the motive.
We recovered a fingerprint off of the door.
But the fingerprint by itself is not sufficient
Because hundreds of people ride in cabs every day,
And so those prints could be from just anybody.
Firearms evidence recovered from the cab
Is one spent casing,.380,
And we also find a live round inside the cab, also a.380.
From the other murder scene,
We also had a.380 from a shell casing that was left.
Now the mystery -- can we find that gun?
We find the gun,
We find the murderers.
At that point, we contact yellow cab.
We want to find out if there are any dispatch calls
Involving this particular cab.
And, lo and behold, what we find --
Shante's made another call.
We have shante, same voice.
She's making the phone call
That calls not only blaise's cab
But called mohammed, as well.
We find this phone call from shante
Comes from a gas station
In the 12700 block of whittington.
Well, that just happens to be
Probably less than half a mile
From the other phone call
In the 1900 block of south dairy ashford.
So the immediate revelation there is
They live in this area.
But we're still in search of videos.
Been to one gas station, and that was a bust completely,
But we go to the second gas station,
And that's where we hit pay dirt on the videos.
There we see near the time that the phone call is made,
There's a black female.
And we also see a skinny, thin male with her.
We've got to determine whether or not the images
On the video are shante.
We have got homicide detectives that go there,
Interview the manager,
And they have not a great photo of shante.
The manager -- he says, "you know what?
I think that woman is here. I think she lives here.
And you know what's interesting about that woman?
She didn't pay me her rent.
And I told her about it.
She's getting close to getting evicted."
But then, all of a sudden, she shows up with the money
To pay the rent
After blaise has been killed.
So the manager directs them to a lady identified
As crystal jones.
Based on the information that we received
From the apartment complex,
We had just enough to get a probable-cause warrant.
Once that warrant is signed,
We set up surveillance on the apartment...
...And here comes our target.
Our hearts are pounding.
Is this our shante?
In October 2010,
We have a double homicide involving cab drivers.
Within 48 hours, you've got two cab drivers that are dead.
Houston had never seen a crime like this before.
The yellow cab drivers were very afraid.
They didn't know if they would be next.
And what we're looking for now is clearly a male and a female.
We dubbed it "the wannabe bonnie and clyde."
Both victims had been called into service
By the same raspy-voiced female named shante.
Thanks to shante, we'd been led to ashton park apartments.
The manager believes that shante
Is a woman living on the property,
A lady identified as crystal jones.
We set up surveillance on the apartment,
And, lo and behold, here comes crystal jones.
The person that we're looking at has wild hair,
Same kind of body type that we saw on the video.
Detectives bring crystal jones
To the homicide division,
Where I place her in an interview room.
Is this woman I'm about to interview --
Is she the one responsible for a double homicide?
It's not hard to notice that the voice of shante
Is not the voice of crystal jones.
As she speaks, I'm not hearing that raspy voice.
I'm not hearing that tone that she used with the word "shante."
At that point,
I show crystal the picture of our shante.
She was fairly positive that this was her sister franchesca.
Crystal dropped her off at a hotel with a man that night.
She tells us about franchesca's boyfriend,
Black male, 5'10", thin to average build.
The way she described him, baggy t-shirts
And the way he wore his clothes,
Quite similar to the description that we saw on the video tape,
So we needed to find franchesca, and, more importantly,
We also needed to find her boyfriend.
Crystal tells us franchesca
Is going to be with her boyfriend at the suites.
It's an area known for high crime,
High prostitution, high-risk lifestyles.
Crystal wants her sister out of there,
So another set of detectives -- they gather them up
And bring them back to the police department
So they could have a conversation with them.
We have got homicide detectives that are helping us out
And interviewing people.
It is clear to me based on her demeanor,
Her voice, her appearance,
Franchesca's not shante.
I am evaluating these interviews
That were conducted by other detectives,
Because I have a prime responsibility
In this investigation.
Arthur appears to be a little bulkier
Than what the figure on our video shows to be.
His hairstyle is a little bit different.
Arthur appears to be calm. He's answering the questions.
He's not having to stop and think.
My assessment is we can eliminate franchesca and arthur.
They're not our bonnie and clyde.
As the fire goes out on our lead on franchesca,
Our firearms examiner comes downstairs and reignites it.
The information from the firearms examiner --
This is the clue that blows this case wide open.
In October of 2010, the city of houston is on edge
As a result of the killing of two cab drivers.
As we are busy eliminating suspects from our investigation,
Our firearms examiner informs us
That she's identified the murder weapon specific
To a cobra fs380.
The fs380 would explain the live rounds
That we're finding at these two scenes
Because these weapons are known to malfunction.
A.380 cobra,
Which is a fairly unique gun.
So detective waters took that information,
And he went back and looked through
The houston police department offense report system.
In a city of over 2.5 million people,
A metropolitan area of over 6 million people,
We have one report
With a cobra.380.
And this report comes in about a month before our homicides.
A man named curtis henderson had his cobra.380 stolen,
And so a detective talks to curtis henderson.
Curtis henderson had allowed chaz blackshear and a young lady
By the name of danielle to stay with him,
And when they left his apartment,
He noticed that his gun was missing.
That's the first light bulb that goes off.
We've got a transient couple
Living with this man.
Chaz blackshear -- he had a rap sheet.
He had convictions for drugs and guns,
And the information included fingerprints.
So, immediately, with that information,
Fil calls the fingerprint lab.
"I want you to make a direct comparison
Between the fingerprint recovered off that cab
And chaz blackshear."
And the fingerprint on the cab comes back to chaz blackshear.
And that's when the floodlights come on.
We now believe that we have our wannabe clyde,
And bonnie may have just told us where clyde and her are staying.
Shante alluded to the ashton park apartments,
But we got a problem.
These apartments where they're allowed to lay their heads --
Of course, they're not on the lease.
We have the general location,
But we don't know what apartment number.
We are enlisting the use of the marshal service,
And we're going to use their phone-tracking capabilities.
Obtaining the cellphone number via the cobra.380 theft report,
Surveillance is set up on chaz's cellphone.
Once he's speaking on a cellphone, the u.S. Marshals --
They're able to literally pinpoint within 30 feet
Where that phone is coming from.
We find the apartment.
Now we know where he is.
We know that chaz and danielle are dangerous.
Our plan is this --
The marshal services make a tactical dynamic entry,
Secure the scene,
And then I'm going to arrest chaz blackshear, the shooter.
Brian will swoop in and snatch up danielle.
It's a roll of the dice on her,
On whether or not she's there.
Our entry team approaches the door.
They move in quickly, secure the scene.
And we go into in the apartment.
I take chaz. I put him in handcuffs,
And I've got him out.
Brian takes danielle.
That female -- black shirt, shorts.
The exact person, without a doubt,
That we saw on the video.
She's identified as danielle hudson.
We get downtown.
Our strategy here
Is to play one against the other.
Brian takes danielle, places her in an interview room.
I'm going to question chaz.
Chaz's first comment was that he and danielle
Were going to go out,
And in order to get to wherever they were going,
He called a cab.
He's already putting himself
In that first cab with mohammed.
Here's the first denial, when we start talking about
Who made that phone call to get that cab.
Finally get him to make an admission
That it was likely danielle
Who had made the call to summon the cab.
He's picking his hands. He's looking down. He's into it.
I mean, he -- we're doing some heavy picking here,
Displaying deception.
So, as I'm speaking with chaz
And continuing to get his denials minimized,
My thought is after watching that videotape
Where danielle is there while he's killing blaise,
His power comes from danielle.
That's the source of what he acts out.
I do not know what's going on with brian and danielle,
But with chaz, our strategy
Is to bring information into the room from danielle,
Start to break down the barriers to the denials.
In the interview room, it's always a chess game.
As I'm talking to chaz,
I'm thinking in my head,
"I've got the move
That's going to make a checkmate,
And the move is going to be with his queen."
We now believe that we have
Our wannabe bonnie and clyde,
Who committed two capital murders in two days.
We placed danielle hudson and chaz blackshear
In separate interview rooms.
I'm in the interview room with chaz,
And all I'm getting are a bunch of denials.
My partner, brian, is two doors down with danielle.
I'm hopeful that we're getting what we need from her.
Listening to that voice,
That raspy, low voice...
There was no doubt it's the same voice
That I heard on those two recordings.
It was our shante.
We needed a confession to convince a district attorney
And eventually 12 men and women on a jury
That there was no doubt about it,
That we had the right people.
So she affirmed what we, of course, already knew.
"I was shante. I'm the one that made the phone calls."
She is the one putting
The mission in motion.
Her way to make herself look better than she really was
Was to paint the picture of chaz
Being kind of like a really scary guy.
Danielle said, "chaz told me
That if the police ever get on to us,
He will take all the blame."
If I can get that information to fil,
Perhaps fil can use that to convince chaz
Now was the time to tell the truth.
So I had her write that in a note as a reminder to chaz.
His power comes from... Danielle.
He's a junkie, and he needs a fix,
And danielle is the fix.
Chaz is not capable
Of making decisions on his own without danielle.
Separating danielle, this was kryptonite to chaz.
So I'm going to introduce
Danielle into the room on a recorded tape.
I've been dangling the danielle carrot in front of him now.
He's made a leap at the carrot.
He's now in a situation where he has to make choices.
Life's about choices.
Now he's got to make one.
The negotiation was
"you tell the truth,
You'll get to see danielle."
So he was rewarded for telling the truth.
The way that detective waters and sergeant harris
Worked the interviews in this case was absolutely brilliant.
Chaz and danielle chose to take the pleas that they did
In an effort to avoid the death penalty.
Ultimately, a plea agreement was reached
Where chaz blackshear pled to life without parole
On both capital-murder cases,
And danielle hudson pled to a lesser sentence
Of 40 years on the two murder cases.
While danielle may not have pulled the trigger,
Danielle is just as responsible as chaz
For the deaths of mohammed and blaise.
"nwokenaka" translates to "man in charge."
My uncle blaise was a strong, hardworking nigerian man.
He was someone that we admired,
And we miss him.
Blaise and mohammed,
Hardworking immigrants to this country,
Providing better lives for their families,
And it had an impact on brian and I.
We're both fathers.
Mohammed and blaise -- fathers as well.