A Squire's Riches | Forensic Files | S14 E5 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next is it a murder suicide or fraud some red flags were going off i think for our
detective bureau investigators followed the money trail for clues there was a 5 million policy that
ultimately we found later there was a lot of items that weren't matching up at all but in the end
only science has the answers i've never seen a case that took so many turns in so many different directions
and really it was bizarre [Music] diesel truck pulling is an obscure sport in the united states
but it enjoys a loyal and growing fan base it actually involves pulling way more
weight than these trucks are designed to pool here we go can he get him and so you have to be a really good
mechanic to be into it for 39 year old building contractor ari squire preparing diesel trucks for these
competitions was more than a hobby it was his obsession to accommodate this pastime ari built
a 2 300 square foot garage on his property in the chicago suburbs ari was a bit of
a gearhead so he had his truck that he was apparently always working on it wasn't considered a dangerous hobby
until one february morning in 2008 when ari's wife called 9-1-1 9-1-1 like county sheriff i think my
garage is on fire they just heard some noise and i and and i out opened the door and it's
all black smoke and there's smoke coming from your garage should i go outside or what do i
do get outside shape okay when the smoke cleared firefighters found ahri's lifeless body underneath the truck
it appeared the truck had slipped off the front jack and uh it had crushed the victim
he'd suffered severe burns over most of his body it looked like the truck fell off the
jack while ari was underneath working on the fuel filter fuel spilled from the filter
onto ahri's clothes the truck broke a fluorescent lamp and a spark ignited the fuel this was
likely an accidental death we've certainly seen deaths of people working under their vehicles that have slid off
of jacks fallen on them and crushed them to death although the body was unrecognizable
ari's driver's license was recovered from his back pocket we rarely actually compare these things
to a driver's license people lie on their driver's license and so sometimes that information
isn't correct the medical examiner wanted to make a positive identification using
scientific methods this proved to be harder than anyone expected based on the extent
of the burns on the face and the hands and the arms we couldn't do fingerprints we couldn't do facial recognition so our
only choice was dna and dental well as it turns out ari squire hadn't been to the dentist in almost a decade
at the fire scene investigators saw something suspicious on the garage circuit panel
checking out all the circuits on those i noticed that they were in all in the off position if the circuit
breakers were off there would have been no electricity to power the light which theoretically had started the fire
i inquired whether the fire department had indeed you know turned those off they said no they hadn't touched the
circuit box at all ari had been working on a diesel truck fuel filter but tests showed there was an accelerant
on ari's clothing more flammable than diesel fuel some red flags were going off i think
for our detective bureau certainly it was consistent with like a gasoline type which would have been more
of a lighter petroleum product when investigators looked into ahri's personal life friends said
there was no love lost in the squire's childless 14-year marriage they did not sleep in the same bed when
i did get to the house i did see that it was obvious that both beds had been slept in that night
it wasn't really a close-knit marriage that was coming out very clearly even more suspicious ari had five
million dollars worth of life insurance and ari's wife denise was the sole beneficiary
but when questioned by police denise claimed she knew nothing about it so we began to
try to find out why the wife would not know these details concerning ari ari's wife moved quickly to cremate his
body before being stopped by police the fire was on saturday and she wanted to have that body released
i think she was making phone calls by monday or tuesday that she needed a body for a cremation it became more and more
obvious that indeed this was a homicide that had been covered up ari squire was working on a diesel truck
fuel filter at the time of his death when investigators recreated the incident they discovered it would have been easy
for someone to release the jack holding up the truck and killed the person working
beneath it a lot of people showed a surprise that ari would not have used safety
equipment when working underneath his vehicle as investigators tried to figure out
what was going on detective morrison was home watching television and saw an episode
of forensic files that was eerily similar madison rutherford case it happened in
new england i'm watching and i'm seeing he took a dead body there was a truck fire he faked his
death and then came back and assumed another identity when i was watching the show i noticed
there were so many similarities between the two cases the life insurance amounts in both cases
were virtually identical madison rutherford he had two insurance policies one for five million one for
two million it was very similar to re where arya had one for five million and one for one
million the madison rutherford case unraveled when forensic odontology proved it
wasn't rutherford who died in the fire and that's precisely what happened to ari squire
when investigators found squire's dentist from 10 years earlier we were able to track down that dentist
in california after some phone calls the file was so old there were no x-rays he did get a hold
of a dental note about a certain tooth in a certain filling the dentist had seen him for a large cavity on a lower
right molar and the dentist had placed a very large silver type filling in the tooth when investigators checked
the victim's teeth there was no such filling the body that they had the burned body was not ari
squires if it's not ari square who is it and why are they underneath there one clue came to police through a
missing person notification a woman called police to report her 20-year-old son justin newman was missing
he worked at the local home depot store and hadn't been seen since the fire he told me he had met a
man that comes into home depot quite often and he had pulled justin aside and asked
justin if he'd like to make more money so joseph said yeah that sounds good you know justin told his mother the man was
ari squire and that he was going to do some work at ari's house he was supposed to be
meeting with ari squire on february 23rd the day that arie squire was believed to
have died he says mommy offered me 15 an hour he says and you know right now i could we
could really use that money then the day after justin went missing his mother got a text message from his
cell phone it said mom go on to missouri to work call you next week justin's mother was
very skeptical justin doesn't text you know cause there which wasn't justin he he would pick up the phone and call me
there was no way he would text me he could just call me as police tried to trace the origin of that text message
they re-examined the burned body justin was five foot six 140 pounds virtually the same height and weight
as ari squire scientists compared dna from justin's toothbrush to dna from the victim they also took a
dna sample from justin's mother when they came to me for the swab i looked at her and i go it's my son in
that morgue isn't it she goes no no no we're just doing this because this is what we do i go yeah and you're full of
baloney and i knew it when she came and did it i just had that feeling when we finally got the dna results back
we were able to positively identify the body that we had as justin newman police put out an all
points bulletin for justin newman's car which was missing they assumed if they found newman's car
they'd also find ari squire just one day after the arson fire that killed justin newman
denise squire received an email from her husband ari my will and letters are in my file
drawer to my left and my office they are located in a priority mail envelope addressed to you
three days after the fire she received another email from ahri's email account when will my ashes be returned to you
where are you planning on dispersing them is there anything you need thank you denise
with my love ari it appeared to me that he was trying to find out where we're at in the
investigation without coming out and saying hey you know how they how they doing today did they
buy this denise denied any involvement in justin newman's murder and claimed she had no idea where ari was
but now another home depot employee told police a story that turned the investigation
upside down one of justin's co-workers comes up to the cops and he says i know ari squire he was in here all the
time and this is the part that's really weird he was asking me to do work for him too
justin was not the primary target ari had single out another home depot employee who better
matched his age and physical description that person was sandy lively a remarkable physical match to ari
squire it's a creepy picture he's the hunter and i'm the prey that's not exactly how i thought about
it he was stalking i mean that's how i felt he didn't know that he was a possible victim
he had no idea until we brought those pictures and we went i mean it was scary that was really
scary strangely ari who normally didn't wear a beard grew one in the weeks before the murder
ari starts to make himself look even more like sandy lively and by growing a beard the two almost
looked like twins when sandy agreed to do some work for ari ari gave him this extraordinarily detailed job application
i've never seen the application and asked where a tattoo was at and what they were of
and the piercings if i had any piercings anywhere that i don't see how that would
make it make a difference if i have a piercing if i want to be a carpenter finally
sandy agreed to meet ari at his house but fortunately for sandy the meeting never took place
i was supposed to go to ari's on a saturday morning and the night before my daughter had a
slumber party for her 10th birthday party and kept me up all night so i overslept
just a few hours later that same day prosecutors believe ari grew impatient and called his fallback target justin newman
justin thought he was there to do some freelance construction work prosecutors think ari used chloroform
since there was no evidence of blunt force trauma [Music] ari stripped justin down to his
underwear and re-dressed him in his clothes and shoes he placed justin under the truck
pumped up the hydraulic jack and then let it fall killing justin instantly in order to hide the identity
of the body ari doused it with more diesel fuel than the fuel filter would have held
then used a more flammable accelerant to propel the fire he wanted to make it look like the truck
broke the fluorescent light creating the spark that ignited the fire but that's not what caused the fire
the circuit breakers were off so there was no power going to the light he most likely
used a match and the amount of fuel on the body was inconsistent in a mount and makeup
from the fuel held by a truck's fuel filter [Music] ari clearly didn't realize that fire
doesn't destroy everything justin's teeth didn't resemble aries clearly proving ari wasn't the victim
i think that he had plans for me and you know i blew his plan that day i think about it every day
every day all day sometimes that comes and goes the whole the whole thing with justin you know
i don't know if would it have been different if i'd have showed up but the case was far from over
ari squire who tried to fake his own death and defraud the insurance company of 5
million was still on the loose investigators think that ari squire's motive for setting the arson fire and faking
his own death was money he was about to turn 40 years old and he could no longer afford to pay his
monthly premiums for his 5 million dollar life insurance policy and those premiums were about to go up
the insurance premiums were 2 dollars a year but he came to a point where they were going to be jumping up to thirteen
thousand dollars a year and he was broke he didn't have the money investigators also found evidence
ari squires construction company was virtually bankrupt at the time of this incident the housing boom had now
crashed people were starting to retract there wasn't any work his project down in florida his kind of
33 unit condo project was failing in bankruptcy and he was having a lot of financial difficulties to fake his own
death ari squire needed someone who looked like him in height weight and physical appearance
he gave me his number and took my number and called me every day and stopped in every
day and pretty much was pretty persistent when sandy lively failed to show up for
his appointment with ari in frustration ari turned to his second choice justin newman and dna positively
identified that it was justin who perished in the arson fire just the worst feeling i've ever
had my entire life he was my best friend i just and and now still nowadays i just
look and i go i just can't believe he's not here he was uh happy all the time nothing ever bothered him he's a hard
worker like to like to have his fun too he was a nice guy police assumed ari fled to missouri because
that's where he said he was in the phony text message he sent to justin's mother police in missouri
had been on the lookout for justin newman's red sports car and nine days after the fire an alert
police officer found it in a motel parking lot the motel's not your typical family motel was more
of a run run down type motel the clerk the motel identified ari squire as the man who
rented the room the room was registered in the name of justin newman the policeman decided to approach the
room without backup and he knew most likely ari would be armed and ready before he can get through the door
a loud gunshot he walks in there's a body there and there's the gun laying there
the victim had justin newman's identification the same color hair and eyes but despite the attempt at disguise
dna confirmed the dead man was ari squire he knew he was in some deep deep you know he took the easy way out
because he knew he was going to go to jail he was going to jail for the rest of his
life the thought of being behind bars for the rest of his life forget it it wasn't going to happen
ari squire in his self-consumed mindset and his narcissism was too cowardly to come back face the
music and be forced own up to what he did donna fiorito filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit
against denise squire for the death of her son justin and the jury awarded her six million
dollars i just can't believe he's not here that that man and his wife irish square and
his wife always had money but it wasn't enough for them they had to go they had to go kill a young kid that had
his whole life going for him a criminal investigation into denise squire's possible involvement
continues this isn't the end of the case we still have ongoing issues that we're
investigating at this time denise's attorney denies she was involved she knew nothing about the plan she knew
nothing about the design she knew nothing about this newman man who was deceased
however the emails exchanged between ari and denise squire after the fire leave little doubt in the minds of
investigators he needed denise involved because they weren't going to give the five million
dollars to him who were they going to give it to denise so in order for him to get anything out of that she
would have had to have been involved [Music] ari squire spent months planning the
murder but science inevitably had the upper hand in finding the truth worthless piece of
nothing in the world a coward that took the easy way out after he took the life of a 20 year old
kid that had he had a whole life ahead of him in this case forensic science worked forensic
dentistry forensic odontology worked i'd never seen a case that took so many turns in
so many different directions and really it was it was bizarre you can't fool science
you can't uh by definition it's science and it works and it's repeatable and it's verifiable and it's accepted
you

In 2008, Illinois emergency response came upon a garage fire and a man was found crushed beneath a truck.

Brief Summary

Ari Squire faked his death to commit insurance fraud, leading to the tragic murder of Justin Newman.

Key points

Ari Squire's Obsession. Ari Squire's passion for diesel truck pulling led to a tragic accident.
The Mysterious Fire. A fire leads to the discovery of a lifeless body under a truck.
The Shocking Twist. DNA evidence reveals the victim is not who everyone thought.
The Final Revelation. Ari Squire's plan to fake his death unravels with forensic science.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Only science has the answers.

0:23WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

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