Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 40 - Two in a Million - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A millionaire and his family were executed in their own home. And for three years, the murders went unsolved
until a 30-year-old box of bullets and some iridescent fibers revealed the ultimate betrayal.
[theme music] The beach house at Pajaro Dunes in Northern California. On weekends and holidays, it was the perfect getaway
for the Ewell family. The family's patriarch, Dale, was an extremely wealthy man
who made his fortune selling airplanes. -He was quite successful, because he was very outgoing, very personable, convincing.
And he'd go on these ranches and sell farmers these airplanes. Land in their field, sell them planes,
and then teach them how to fly. NARRATOR: Dale and his wife, Glee, had been happily married for 31 years.
Their 24-year-old daughter, Tiffany, was a graduate student in accounting. -Tiffany, very sweet girl by all accounts.
She seemed to do well in school and everybody loved her. NARRATOR: Their 21-year-old son, Dana,
was a business major at Santa Clara University. -Dana was a very precocious child,
very smart, almost too intelligent. I heard once upon a time that his IQ was 165.
It was extremely high. NARRATOR: In 1992, after spending the Easter holiday at Pajara Dunes, Dale, Glee, and their daughter,
Tiffany, returned home to Fresno. Two days later, the Ewell's housekeeper tried to enter the home and sense trouble.
The security alarm was turned off, yet, the doors were locked. Inside she found Dale, Glee, and Tiffany
dead from gunshot wounds. -The thing that I recall most about the Ewell home from the murders is the photographs
of Glee Ewell laying on her back in the den. She had a look of fright on her face even in death.
-I've never seen a house that severely ransacked by any burglar I've ever dealt with,
and I worked burglary before I worked homicide. NARRATOR: Jewelry was missing from the home.
And Dale Ewell's wallet was empty. But there were no signs of forced entry. -How did somebody get in here, turn off the alarm,
because it didn't ring at the alarm company or the police department? NARRATOR: All three were shot with a nine millimeter weapon
while bringing their luggage in from the beach house on Sunday night. -So those tragic things.
Your life is great one second, and a second later, you're gone. NARRATOR: Dana Ewell was fortunate.
He avoided the ambush since he was having dinner with his girlfriend and her family that night 160 miles away.
-He began dating Monica Zent, an FBI agent's daughter. At the time of the murders, Dan Ewell
was with the family and his alibi was FBI agent John Zent. NARRATOR: Investigators found an open box of nine millimeter
ammunition in the master bedroom. And they also found very unusual fibers on the victims.
-I had some fluorescent fibers that glowed under the ultraviolet light in the dark,
and some rubbery stuff that I didn't have a clue as to what it was, except that it appeared to be rubber.
NARRATOR: In their search for suspects, investigators thought that a business associate or rival
may have wanted Dale Ewell dead. Before Dale acquired his business, the company was allegedly involved
in some criminal activity. -He took over the dealership from a former owner who had gotten into a little bit legal difficulty
with marijuana smuggling. NARRATOR: Or Glee Ewell might have been the target. -Glee Ewell had worked for the CIA at one time.
The CIA doesn't tell you a whole lot, but they did acknowledge the fact she did work for them.
NARRATOR: With talk of marijuana smuggling and CIA connections, investigators knew these murders would be difficult to solve.
The cold blooded murder of millionaire Dale Ewell, his wife, Glee, and daughter, Tiffany,
was big news in Fresno, California. -Fresno's had some big homicide cases over the years,
but I would venture to say this is probably one of the biggest ones of the century.
NARRATOR: Investigators suspected that the Ewells were killed on Sunday night when they returned from the beach house.
Glee and Tiffany Ewell drove back separately and were killed first. Dale Ewell got home about a half hour later.
-Whomever had killed his wife and daughter remained in the house for perhaps another half hour.
Why would this killer or killers, why would they remain in the home for a half hour or so
after they had gunned down two people? NARRATOR: But that's apparently what happened.
Dale with shot in the back of his head as he entered the house. -Just stunned and just became numb.
I just could not understand, or believe, or contemplate such a thing. NARRATOR: All three were killed with a nine millimeter weapon.
-Those people were essentially ambushed. It was just seen of pure evil. I don't think there's any other way to explain it.
You can't try to say, oh, well, these people are insane, the perpetrator's insane or anything like that.
The perpetrator in this case was just purely evil. NARRATOR: The Ewell's son, Dana, had an airtight alibi
as did everyone who had keys to the house. Investigators found an open box of nine millimeter
ammunition in the Ewell's bedroom. Was this the ammunition used by the killer? The nine millimeter bullets retrieved from the bodies
had been damaged on impact. But the back end of each bullet, known as the heel, was intact.
-The questions on there had nothing to do with the bullets being fired. It was something that occurred during manufacture
and was something that I hadn't seen before. NARRATOR: So Allen Boudreau removed the casing
from an unfired bullet and compared to the heels of the bullets from the victims.
The tool marks were the same. -These bullets, the murder bullets, came from this box of ammunition.
NARRATOR: An identification number on the box indicated the bullets were made in 1971,
and the price sticker on the box revealed it was purchased at a local hardware store.
When police called the hardware store, the owner said he still had all his sales receipts, even the ones from 30 years ago.
-And they found the receipt for that ammunition made out to Dale Ewell. NARRATOR: Proof that Dale Ewell and his family
were killed with his own ammunition. -It had to be somebody that knew enough about that family
to know that there was a box of nine millimeter ammo in dad's bedroom. Which meant it was an inside job of some sort.
NARRATOR: And the bullets looked like they had been fired through more than just the barrel of a gun.
-These bullets went through something that marked then unlike any normal gun barrel.
And it could be a flash suppressor, sound suppressor, silencer or something along that line.
-What robber would come to a crime scene with a silencer on a gun? NARRATOR: Could it have been a hit man?
The forensic evidence gathered and the Ewell family home painted the bizarre picture of how Dale Ewell, his wife,
and 24-year-old daughter were killed. Someone with a house key turned off the security alarm
and murdered them with a nine millimeter weapon using ammunition belonging to the victim, Dale Ewell.
It looked like a botched robbery. Some money and jewelry were missing, and the only forensic evidence was the bullets
and the yellow luminescent fibers. -From the scientific end of the investigation,
what I had to work with was relatively little. NARRATOR: The only remaining family member,
the Ewell's 21-year-old son, Dana, had a rock solid alibi. He was with his girlfriend and her family.
-There really was never any question about his alibi, where he was on Easter Sunday when
his parents are being killed. -What innocent guy gets an attorney and wants us to contact the attorney to contact him just
to get information on their parents or their sister? That made no sense. NARRATOR: Dana Ewell also had a clear motive.
He was the beneficiary of his parents' estate. -Dana Ewell stood to inherit approximately $8 million.
It would have been approximately $4 million had his sister not also been murdered.
-Dana was a prim and proper type kid, went to class with his $200 shirt and his $100 tie
that he let everybody know that's what it cost. NARRATOR: He also made some unusual inquiries
after the murders. -Dana Ewell called me at the coroner's office and interrogated me as to the progress of the autopsy,
what we'd found and so forth. -It is really unusual for some close family member
to call and ask for the details of the case in the way he did. NARRATOR: And investigators learned
that Dana had some character flaws. Apparently he had plagiarized a term paper in his business
ethics class and failed the course. Investigators also learned that Dana was a loner.
His only friend was his former college roommate, Joel Radovcich, so they decided to give him a call.
-The first thing Joel said, upon being phoned by Detective Souza, was are you going to arrest me?
It was an unusual thing to say. NARRATOR: So unusual that police put him under surveillance,
and found that he didn't use the telephone in his apartment. Instead, he'd use a pay phone nearby.
-They had two pay phones mounted on the outside exterior wall of the 7-Eleven store.
He would look down at his waist level and then dial a number. We deducted the fact that he was looking at a pager.
NARRATOR: An undercover officer positioned himself within earshot. -I want no [bleep] stock options.
I want a quarter million, and I want it now. NARRATOR: Radovich demanded quarter of a million dollars,
and also wanted advice on how to invest it. -Joel was in a world of his own, like no one was around him.
The only thing they were talking about was their investments, and where they were going to invest the money.
NARRATOR: According to phone records, Joel was talking Dana Ewell. A check of Joel's financial records
indicated that he was spending freely despite not having a job. -He was taking helicopter flight lessons at the Long Beach
airport, some of which costs $500 an hour. No job, no source of income, and he's
spending this kind of money. -They found that the checks for some $5,600 odd for Joel's
lessons had been paid by Dana directly. This was a very curious event. This was something that led directly
to a financial link between the two suspects. NARRATOR: And Joel Radovcich purchased several very
suspicious items prior to the murders. During a surveil of Joel Radovcich, the detectives found that Joel had ordered books
from a publisher in Boulder, Colorado. And, in turn, he had these books shipped to a man named Jack Ponce.
NARRATOR: One of those books described how to make a homemade silencer. A background check revealed Jack Ponce was a 23-year-old law
student and Joel Radovcich's life long friend. Records indicated that Ponce say owned a nine
millimeter semiautomatic weapon. -Jack Ponce said initially that the weapon had been purchased
for the purpose of shooting opossums in his attic. Investigators found the whole opossum shooting scenario a bit
hard to swallow. NARRATOR: During police questioning, Ponce denied any involvement in the Ewell murders
and said his nine millimeter gun had been stolen. -We've probably heard that story a few times in our career.
NARRATOR: This murder investigation had been complicated and time consuming. By this time, three years had passed.
And Dana Ewell told everyone who would listen that detectives John Souza and Chris Curtice were
too inept to solve the case. -Dana Ewell, he would call us Mutt and Jeff, and Bert and Ernie.
And we weren't smart enough to find the murderer of his family. -And Ernie and Bert couldn't find a gun in a gun store.
-And the only reason we had a cop's job is because we couldn't get no other job.
-I'll be damned if some kid like that's going to make fun of us. NARRATOR: Investigators now had three suspects in the murder
of Dale, Glee, and Tiffany Ewell, the Ewell's son, Dana, his college roommate, Joel Radovcich,
and Joel's friend, Jack Ponce. With a search warrant, investigators found a number of interesting items
in Joel Radovcich's apartment, including a half dozen tennis balls with holes drilled through them.
-I found out that the dyes that they use in these yellow, orange, and purple, pink tennis balls
are FDA approved dyes because children and dogs chew on tennis balls. And it was very interesting, but I found out
everything there is to know about tennis balls. NARRATOR: The fibers from these tennis balls
were consistent with those found on the murder victims. Proof that the tennis balls were a part
of the homemade silencer. -Jack Ponce was arrested at a restaurant where he worked as a bartender.
Joel was eventually arrested at his favorite Taco Bell where he seemed to eat three times a day every day.
Dana, however, was nowhere to be found. Radovcich admitted nothing. Jack Ponce, however, didn't want to face the death penalty,
so he decided to cooperate. He was the one of the three who, as the police say, rolled over.
He agreed to turn evidence against Joel Radovcich and Dana Ewell, tell them everything he knew.
NARRATOR: Ponce originally told investigators that his nine millimeter weapon had been stolen.
He now admitted he sold it to Joel Radovcich for $500. A few days later, Ponce said Joel returned the gun
and told him to get rid of it. -Joel told Jack that he was the one that killed the Ewell
family, and he described the inside of the house, where he was, how he did it, what happened,
the sequence of events. And we knew all that, but it was never in the newspaper.
NARRATOR: Ponce said he disassembled the gun, threw the parts in dumpsters and buried the barrel
in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. In an unbelievable stroke of luck, the barrel was still there.
-Been there for three years. Surprisingly and luckily, we have an open lot in LA
that stayed vacant and wasn't paved over, or concreted over, for three years. NARRATOR: Holes had been drilled into the gun's barrel,
consistent with the information in the books that Joel Radovcich ordered. Investigators dipped the barrel in a special solution
to remove the mud and rust. Then attached it to a rifle and test fired it using the same ammunition
found at the crime scene. Amazingly, after three years in the ground, the test was conclusive.
-Lo and behold, these test fired bullets looked very much like the Ewell bullets in their general character
and appearance. -That was the part that contained the forensic evidence we needed to establish that weapon was used in the murder.
NARRATOR: Four prosecutors, what happened was unthinkable, but perfectly logical.
After all, the evidence showed it was an inside job all along. Dana Ewell wanted his parents' money,
and he did not want to wait for them to die of natural causes. And he did not want to share it with his sister either.
So he hired his roommate, Joel Radovcich to kill them all. Radovcich decided to use an assault rifle
with a homemade silencer reinforced with tennis balls to further reduce the noise.
Dana gave Joel the house keys, the alarm code, and told him where his father kept
the box of nine millimeter ammunition. To establish his alibi, Dana had dinner that night
with his girlfriend and her father who happen to be an FBI agent. When Glee and Tiffany came home, Radovcich ambushed them.
He shot Tiffany first, and then he followed Glee into another room and shot her.
About a half hour later, Dale came home, and Joel was waiting. Tennis ball fibers left at the scene
were consistent with the fibers found in Radovcich's home. Prosecutors believe that Glee Ewell knew who was responsible.
-She had met Joel before. Of the three, she's the only one that got a look at Joel.
And I believe knew that her son was killing her for the estate. NARRATOR: Jack Ponce was given immunity in exchange
for his testimony. Dana Ewell eventually turned himself in. And in 1995, he and Joel Radovcich
were both convicted of first degree murder, and murder for financial gain. Both are serving life in prison without parole.
-I believe that the physical evidence in this case was a really big deal, and probably
carried the weight of conviction. -He was an arrogant young man. He was an extremely arrogant young man
who thought he was smarter. A very smart young man, don't get me wrong, but he thought he was smarter than a bunch
of streetwise cops. -We weren't lax in our job. It just took a long time to put it together
to get enough evidence to go to court. [theme music]

A millionaire and his family were executed in their own home. For three years, the murders went unsolved and then a 30-year-old box of ammunition and some fluorescent fibers revealed the ultimate betrayal.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

A millionaire family is murdered in their home; the son and his accomplices are eventually convicted after a complex investigation.

Key points

The Ewell Family Murders. A millionaire family is brutally murdered in their home, leaving investigators puzzled.
Inside Job Revealed. Forensic evidence points to a shocking betrayal from within the family.
Dana Ewell's Alibi. Dana Ewell had a rock solid alibi, but motives began to surface.
The Arrests. Key suspects are arrested, but one turns informant, revealing the chilling details.
Conviction and Sentencing. Dana Ewell and Joel Radovcich are convicted of first-degree murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Your life is great one second, and a second later, you're gone.

Reflecting on the suddenness of tragedy.

3:09WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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