Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 49 - Pet Rock - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a young woman's missing and someone has stolen her identity no one
saw her leave no one saw her arrive back at her apartment but who wanted to harm
her she had received some harassing phone calls prior to her being reported missing eventually the forensic evidence
provided those answers everybody in their brother was trying to make a deal with the devil let he who has no sin
cast the first stone let me tell you I'd have no problem casting all the [Music]
stones life was an adventure for 28-year-old Denise O'Neal it was no trip she wouldn't take virtually no activity
she wouldn't try she always loved to travel always either swimming or having a game of tennis or scuba diving going
to museums and the Arts of course anything in the art she loved she just loved life she really loved
[Music] life after graduating from college Denise took a job as a waitress in Palm
Beach Florida while she looked for a job teaching English she knew the restaurant
business from A to Z and certainly made very good money so why not Denise was a punctual
employee but after missing two consecutive days of work without calling in her manager grew alarmed Denise had
been employed at this restaurant for 2 and A2 years and had never missed a day of work at all her employer notified the
police department and they began a missing person's investigation police went to Denise's
apartment her car was missing but there were no signs of a Breakin her apartment
was extremely neat in order nothing seemed to be in disarray they also checked the phone
answering machine Mach which provided a clue there was an early alert from a credit card company saying there was
some unusual spending on one of her cards later that afternoon police found Ana's car in a parking lot across the
street from her apartment they immediately felt that someone else must have been in the car because uh Miss
O'Neal was a very very uh vidious person and the car was just the opposite a pink
jacket belonging to Denise was on the back seat two soda bottles were on the floor there
was a cigarette butt on the floor of the driver's side of the car and mral didn't
smoke I noticed that there was white sand on the right rear floor mat we had sand on the driver's side and a small
amount in the passenger side in Florida sand is quite common but not this kind of sand it wasn't beach
sand it wasn't black mud it wasn't coarse brown sand it was unique it was consistent with
Limestone police dusted the entire car inside and out for fingerprints we found over 20 prins in
total they were all over the car they were on the inside they were on the trunk they were on the outside of the
vehicle on the day Denise went missing her credit card revealed she bought a pair of women's sneakers at 2:30 in the
afternoon but failed to show up for work at 5:30 so somewhere in between that window
something must have happened to her this was one of the best pieces of evidence for the police cuz it gave them a time
frame no one at Denise's apartment had seen or heard anything suspicious but then a chilling call came
in to 911 do you have emergency uh apparently there's a body in the canal right by our
house by the house where I'm at what kind of body a human body the body was very visible to the
neighbor it looked like had been wrapped up in some large pink sheet dental records
confirmed the victim was Denise O'Neal the body was bound her hands and feet were tied up with several
implements shoestrings a dog leash a multicolor dog leash we were numb for like days we knew
we had the barrier and we walking up um Palm Beach Boulevard it was so hot and we were
freezing we were so cold and yet it was hot and you think you're dreaming you think you're going to wake up but you're
not waking up all the horror the fear that that poor girl went through prior to her death the
total disregard for human life it puts a lot of pressure on police to come up with a murderer cuz you know people feel
like you know this could happen again to any one of us the medical examiner determined that
the cause of Denise O'Neal's death was asphixiation she'd been strangled to [Music]
death they also found evidence of sexual assault when the swab from the victim was analyzed in the DNA section a male
profile was de velop investigators were puzzled by the two electrical cords used
to tie the sheet around Denise's body these objects I've never seen before I was very suspicious as to what they even
were I had no idea research identified them as heat rocks a heat rock is a pretty simple device it's a fake rock
that gets heated up by electricity and people use it to warm cold-blooded animals like a pet snake
investigators also found some unusual black hairs on the bed sheet microscopic analysis showed these were dog hairs my
killer is going to own a black dog my killer is also going to own a reptile whether it be a snake or a lizard my
killer is also going to have some type of association with a size 36 belt because it's a size belt that we found
wrapped around Denise's body the sand found in Denise's car was similar to the sand in the area near her
body proof Denise's car had been used to transport her body investigators knew that Denise had been abducted sometime
between 230 and 5:30 on the day she disappeared her neighbors said they didn't see or hear anything suspicious
not know what happened strange no clue later that same day someone used Denise's ATM card to withdraw
$700 from her checking account the working assumption at this point for the cops was that whoever used that ATM card
probably killed Denise O'Neal unfortunately the surveillance camera at the ATM wasn't functioning
properly so it was impossible to tell who made the withdrawal then in investigators noticed
something on the local newscasts this man one of Denise's neighbors kept turning up in various
news stories about her disappearance this Behavior really struck police as odd because he wanted
to be in front of the camera and he wanted to be interviewed in an interview given before Denise's body was found he
made a surprising reference she's very quiet yeah I I try saying hi there sometimes she just don't say nothing so
we always kept to herself what was most interesting was that he referred to Denise in the past
tense she's very quiet yeah his name was LS cabalero and he was Denise's nextdoor
neighbor and was unemployed but when police went to interview cabalero he wasn't home I happened to
knock on door 737 which was right across the hall call from her apartment of 738 while knocking on the door I heard a
dog bark through a window investigators saw the Dog and Its coloring seeing a black chat with my own
eyes the hair on the back of our necks stood up detectives asked another neighbor about
calero the guy said the the only guy I know is the guy and he pointed up the guy that lives up there there you know
the guy with the uh the chow and the boa constrictor said wow wow in the search for Denise O'Neal's
killer investigators Prime Suspect lived just a few feet away from Denise's apartment it was her neighbor Lis
cabalero when we first walked up on cabalero he told us he didn't say it directly but told us he really didn't
like Denise he described her as being snoody calero denied any involvement in Denise's murder and said he had no
relationship with her other than to say hello we discovered that Mr cabalero was
in serious financial trouble he had a phone bill of $6,000 from phone sex lines that he had been calling that he
was behind in his rent and that he could be evicted at any time Detective IV obtained a search warrant for cabalo's
apartment what struck me immediately was the large amount of pornography inside the closet the type of pornography that
was there dealt with a lot of violence it was real real sick stuff we did not find Denise O'Neal's fingerprints inside
calero's apartment but they did discover other Clues I walked into the actual bedroom area and as I started to turn to
the left I observed what appeared to be and thought was a fish aquarium they found Impressions at the bottom of the
tank and it looked like they might be where the heat rocks had been a pair of heat rocks and the electrical cords were
wrapped around Denise's body police also found a pair of black men's sneakers in
cabalo's closet they didn't have any shoel in them Miss O'Neal had been bound with black colored
shoelaces there was also a reddish brown stain on the bedroom carpet that might be blood to be sure investigators turned
out the lights and sprayed the stain with luminol three very distinct blood stains
emerged it appeared to be consistent with the outline of the buttox area of a human being also in cabalero bedroom
investigators found several other important items we found a pair of scissors and trapped within the hinge of
the scissors appeared to be blue colored fibers we knew that Miss O'Neal had been
wearing a blue colored garment that had been cut cabalero maintained Denise had never been inside his apartment but
under a cardboard box investigators found a gym membership card and when I picked
it up and turned it over and it had Denise O'Neal's name on it I was ecstatic I didn't know her he says in
front of the cameras well I've got you now because she's dead and her card is inside your
house detectives believe this clue was left at the scene by a desperate Denise O'Neal
I can't prove it but I'll always say that she put that card there that's the way it hit
me my first question was have you ever detailed Denise's vehicle Louis cabalo's response was he's never been in her car
or never detailed her car but analysts found cabalo's Prince inside Denise's car when faced with this evidence
cabalero changed his story he now claimed he was an unwitting accomplice he said the real killer was his friend
19-year-old Isaac Brown so Isaac approaches her and friends her in the hallway uh yes he
approached her he DED her from behind as she was going into her door so now she's into your apartment yes Isaac
has her on the belly and U I'm a little bit hysterical I never thought it was going to happen Brown who had no
criminal record also confessed but said the killer was cabalero who was broke and desperate for money Brown said
cabalero had been planning to Rob Denise for months there was just loose talk from cabalero saying that man I need I
need to come up I need to I need to hit somebody I need some money right now and
only person I can think of that's got some money right now is right there and he'd always point across the hallway
everybody and their brother was trying to make a deal with the devil in other words every bad guy in this case was
wanting to confess and plead out but get the best deal they could Brown's prints
were found on a soda bottle in Denise's car proof he was involved despite Brown and calero's conflicting versions of
what happened their stories were identical on one count they had breakfast together just hours after
dumping Denise's body in the canal they went to an IHOP restaurant off a Commercial Boulevard in 441 in the
city of tamarak investigators Tracked Down the receipt for that meal when it asked for the waitress to enter how many
customers were present it didn't say two customers it said three customers this explained why the 36in belt used to wrap
Denise's body didn't fit cabalero or brown and why the shoes without the shoelaces in Capo's apartment also
didn't fit either one as well that led me to believe very strongly that I had a third killer that I had a third
individual involved with the murder of Denise O'Neal but if there were a third perpetrator leis calero and Isaac Brown
weren't talking [Music] investigators now had two men in custody for the abduction and murder of Denise
O'Neal leis cavalero and Isaac Brown not surprisingly each man identified the other as the
killer complicating things further investigators discovered that a third man was with cabalero and brown on the
morning they disposed of the body it is absolutely shocking the defense now can say the real culprit uh is out
there the real culprit is the person who you have in charge but who was this third man when police did a background
check on Lewis cabalero they learned he'd been arrested a month earlier for car theft and he had an
accomplice he was with acquaintance of his Robert Messer 20-year-old Robert messer's fingerprints were on
file voila lo and behold there was Mr mes uh print on some of the items in the trunk of Denise O'Neal's car when police
arrested Messer he too denied any involvement in the murder Robert mess told me I didn't kill her how dare you
tell me that I'm the killer I'll tell tell you what happened I was there Messer said he did nothing but
that cabalero and brown were both involved Messer said he was in calero's living room when cabalero and brown
raped and murdered Denise O'Neal in the bedroom I sat there with my fingers in my ears and the TV was up loud I can
barely hear the TV now but I heard her screams I heard her screaming all three men were charged with first
deegree murder but when DNA results came back only one of the three leis capero was tied to the sexual
assault based on the forensic evidence and witness interrogations investigators believe
cabalero plan the attack on an afternoon when Denise was doing her laundry [Music]
when no one was around he grabbed [Music] her and forced her into his apartment and with Isaac Brown's help
gagged and tied her up he took her ATM card and forced her to divulge her pin number
calero then left to get some money and on the way back picked up Robert Messer Isaac Brown stayed behind at some
point Denise was able to remove her gy membership card and hide it underneath a cardboard box leaving proof that she had
been in cabalo's apartment when cabalero returned turned with Messer he sexually assaulted
her then used electrical cords from the heat rocks to strangle her to death the trio wrapped Denise's body in
the sheet using the belt shoelaces and the electrical cords they used Denise's car to drive to
the canal where they dumped her her body they tracked sand into the car and left their fingerprints
behind later the three went to breakfast they were absolute bar burned they should have been burned alive all
three of them and I make no bones about it and they say don't who let he who has
no sin cast the first stone let me tell you I'd have no problem casting all the stones Robert Messer was tried and
convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years Isaac Brown was convicted of
five counts including second degree murder chances are this is where I'll die in
prison I don't want for someone else to have to go through what I'm doing when all they could do is just make better
choices than who they call friends make better choices and and you know how they
follow their morals Lis cabalero was convicted of kidnapping and murder and he now sits on
death row I thanked God for forensic signs and thank God for the men and women who donate their time to study it
to bring to Justice these monsters I am very grateful for forensic science Denise O'Neal is one of a few victims
that I've encountered through my tenure with this agency that have affected me I
still think about Denise I still think about her family [Music]

In 1995, Palm Beach waitress Denise O'Neill is abducted and murdered. Her neighbor Luis Caballero arouses suspicions by his odd behavior toward TV crews covering the crime.

Brief Summary

Denise O'Neal's murder investigation reveals identity theft and neighbor involvement, leading to convictions based on forensic evidence.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance of Denise O'Neal. Denise O'Neal goes missing, prompting a police investigation that uncovers dark secrets.
A Chilling Discovery. A 911 call leads police to a body in a canal, confirmed to be Denise.
The Prime Suspect Emerges. Denise's neighbor, Lis Cabalero, becomes the prime suspect in her murder.
The Confession. Isaac Brown claims Cabalero was the mastermind behind Denise's murder.
Justice Served. The murderers are convicted, with Cabalero sentenced to death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We were numb for like days.

Describing the emotional aftermath of Denise's death.

4:25WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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