Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre /// Part 1 /// 410 | Forensic Files

[Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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talk some true crime [Music] emergency please help me oh well s SL down slow down we were all shot and hold
up okay where are you at 121 East Amador L cruus ball yes okay and there there were shots fired yes all of us
were hurt huh all of us were hurt I think I'm the only one conscious all of you were hurt okay we'll get an
ambulance rolling please okay what's your name Melissa repass please hurry okay Melissa we've got him dispatched
did you see who did it no sir they told us all to get down they shot me five times okay we'll get them rolling
Melissa just hang on take a deep breath that Patrol unit and round how many people are hurt 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven seven
people are hurt yes I think I seven subjects hurt okay okay Melissa it hurts it hurts
okay Melissa I've got an ambulance and I've got the police officers in route they'll be with you just shortly okay
okay you didn't see what any our money you didn't see what any kind of the men were wearing or anything no
nothing huh they just walked in mhm do you know if they were black men white men one black men they're both black two
black men yeah okay no they've left two black male sorry okay okay it's okay Melissa
there's a fire too there's a fire right on the yes they're going to burn us up are the men still there I don't know you
don't know I don't know they put us in the office they put you in the office yes I need a fire engine too please help
me 10 to okay Melissa she said they locked them in the office she doesn't know if they're still there or not the
door is open there's a fire it's on Amador yeah please can you smell smoke Melissa
yes I can see it okay can I get the fire exting fire department too yes says she
smells smoke they may have L the building on fire no it is on fire it is on fire it is okay
Melissa can I go get by utility one oh okay Melissa we've got him coming hun we've got them coming is somebody
call my mommy okay Melissa there's a police officer there now okay there is yes there he is he's going to try and
find you we in the office just tell I have 33 traffic [Applause] God okay I know hold on Melissa we've got
the ambulance coming they're just down the street huh she advises all seven are shot they're injured they're in the
office where's the office at Mel in the door desk and then you take a right and we're right in the build okay she says
you go in to the first desk take a right and they're right there at the office okay I'm giving the directions on how to
get to you to the police officers that are there oh my God please help me they're helping you Melissa we've got
them rolling okay you got to be brave got to be strong now okay oh God it's going to burn us right now okay can you
see Flames yeah okay it's burning okay oh I got bullets in my feet okay the b in my head you B the B
in your head too I can't my I'm still here go ahead I hear the officers telling you to get out get out
I can't there's nobody [Applause] else was that the police offic to get out then get out okay
[Music] we have been doing this for a long time now captain and we have played and
reviewed many 911 calls on this little garage show of ours and that my friend is one of the more disturbing ones I
have heard on this show or really anywhere yeah what you just heard was a 911 call that came in at 8:33 a.m. on
the morning of February 10th 1990 the caller is 12-year-old Melissa repass whose bravery and quick thinking despite
having been shot several times called 911 and without doubt prevented further loss of life in a case that would later
be dubbed the Los cruus bowling alley Massacre Los cruus is the second largest city in the Great state of New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest shout out to my old friend Jose Salazar Las Cruses today is pretty big
with a population of over 100,000 people our case is 30 years old and this case is going back to 1990 and unfortunately
all of this time has passed and yet this case remains unsolved it looks like the population
was right around 57,000 back in 1990 so the city has almost doubled in size since the day in question Los cruus is
home to New Mexico State University and it's located just 41 miles north of the Mexican border at Sunland Park anytime
you get this close to the Border Captain this could play a part in the bigger picture here if someone did something
terrible and wanted to flee well one would not have to go too far I mean you could enter the Los cruus bowl at 8:00
a.m. or so Rob kill steal thousands of dollars leave by 8:30ish and with the right amount of
horses you're in line to cross the Good Old Mexico line at 9:00 a.m. but the other thing we should point out is Los
cruus was safe in 1989 for the entire year the city of Los cruus only had two homicides 1990 would be an entirely
different situation let's go through the known details of this case on the morning of Saturday February
10th 1990 34-year-old Stephanie cak was scheduled to open the bowling alley for the day a couple of quick things to note
here captain that will be of particular interest it's a Saturday morning after what is regularly a very busy and
profitable Friday night at the bowling alley yeah a lot of bowling alleys have their leagues on Friday nights Stephanie
cak is the day manager at the bowling alley but she is also the daughter of the bowling alley's owner Ronald
cak it's my understanding that Ron started up Las Cruz's Bowl in 1984 so the bowling alley at this time in our
case timeline has been open for 6 years and is operating with a good deal of success Stephanie brought to work with
her that morning her 12-year-old daughter Melissa repass and Melissa's 13-year-old friend
Amy Hower the two were planning to run the bowling alley's daycare for the day now
it's unclear what time the three of them you know manager Stephanie cak and the two girls arrived but we do know they
were the first to arrive at the bowling alley for the day mhm The Next To Arrive
would be employee Ida po game Saturday is typically a busy day for most bowling alleys but on this day at Las Cruz's
bowl there were some events scheduled for this day and they were expected to be quite busy starting at 10:00 a.m.
when they have a youth league starting up action and then they were also anticipating a busy lunch hour Ida was
in charge of the kitchen that morning this would mean arriving early before the doors open to prep food so they can
keep up once they start to get busy at 10:00 a.m. yeah there's nothing better than some hot
nachos with that bowling ball grease mixed in the only place that I drink pictures of beer the bowling alley I
don't know what it is I will never get past a great pitcher of beer at the bowling alley everything we just talked
about started before 8:00 a.m. that morning and we know this for good reason because just before 4 8 a.m. another
bowling alley employee will arrive on the scene this is Steve CAC so you can tell by the last name CAC that Steve is
Stephanie's brother also son of the owner and Uncle to Stephanie's daughter Melissa Steve is not scheduled to work
on this day it sounds like he worked there the busy Friday night before he was actually in route to go to class
that morning but he left his backpack there the previous night very simply he was going to swing by the bowling alley
retrieve his backpack and then be on his way yeah I'm guessing he went to the university this is to be a very quick
In-N-Out for Steve right so Steve said that when he arrived he went through the building's main door the only thing that
seems to be strange to him is when he arrived he found that the door was unlocked he says he went and he grabbed
his book bag in the office he saw his sister his niece and his niece's friend he told his sister that the door was
unlocked and advised her to lock the door hey you got to lock the door we're not open yet he then left later of
course he would be asked if he locked the door when he left he says he did not I don't know if this was because he was
in a hurry or maybe he didn't have his keys with him yeah or maybe he was trying to prove a point to his sister
hey when you open up the bowling alley you need to keep the doors locked that's your responsibility all the reports that
we have they have Steve leaving the facility around sometime after 8:00 a.m. some State just after 8 and others as
late as 8:15 the thing here is all reports are in this time frame and only vary by a
matter of just a few minutes so we have employee Ida working in the kitchen and manager Stephanie doing the books in the
office and after Steve leaves the two girls they leave the office and they go to the front of the building to get
something from the vending machines it is at this time that the two girls see two men enter through the
unlocked door one of the men went into the kitchen Ida says she was busy working not aware that someone else had
entered the kitchen she started to chop up some lettuce when she felt something shoved into her side she looked down and
it was a gun the unidentified man had a 22 caliber pistol and ordered her into the bowling alley's office the two
gunmen walked Ida and the two girls into the office where they confronted Stephanie the gunmen ordered the women
and children to lie down face down in a corner of the office the four all all have been corraled all fac down in this
corner of the office while the gunmen were taking approximately $4,000 to $5,000 from the bowling alley safe this
after asking where the safe was and we should note Stephanie is the only one with access to the safe right
now there are some conflicting reports Captain as there always are in these matters but most reports stated that the
younger gunman and note judging by appearance there seems to be a considerable age discrepancy between our
two offenders this will later cause the one unidentified gunman to be labeled and referred to as the younger gunman or
the younger as salant and the older gunman or the older as salant so most reports state that the younger gunman
moved the money from the safe to a briefcase the briefcase was brought to the scene by the
perpetrators there are a couple of reports that one or both of the younger girls was ordered by one of the
offenders to load the briefcase with cash from the safe yeah this is very similar to like a bank robbery but
normally in a bank robbery you have somebody go up to a teller they slide a note saying give me all the money right
they normally don't go to the safe you even see this with like Point Break and and movies like the town where they're
like don't go to the safe it's it's too risky mhm well yes this is a business and yes they only have one safe and
there's not that many employees but this is a large location that these two individuals have to basically uh control
and contain so this is like a bank takeover the lanes itself there were 32 Lanes plus a kitchen an office I mean
picturing this I believe there were pool tables dart boards so this is a large building but at this time because the
the building is not open to the public because they're closed they're getting ready to open there's very few people in
this large space and usually with businesses you kind of have to go to the safe where the in a bank you see that
sometimes they don't want to go to the Vault right but in a business you want to go to the safe because a lot of times
these businesses are trying not to keep a lot of cash on hand or cash in the register itself in case there is some
type of robbery or if you close up somebody breaks in then they have to break into the safe which is usually
very difficult to do to get to the actual big stash of cash but again with this business I mean this is a bowling
alley this is not it's it's not like a lot of people have worked in a bowling alley if I if I told you well I'm going
to go rob a restaurant or something a lot of people have worked in the restaurant they kind of understand how
it works so and what what I'm getting at is that these two individuals had to know a lot about who worked there if
there was security what time people were arriving how they arrived what exits there were well and regardless of who
loaded the cash into the briefcase I did bring that up because I think we'll swirl back into that a little bit later
but either way soon after all of this commotion in the office another bowling alley employee this is 26-year-old Steve
teron he's the bowling alley's mechanic he walks into the bowling alley with him
is his two daughters 2-year-old Valerie Terron and six-year-old Paula hogen no relation to Ida the two little kids they
were going to spend the day at the bowling alley's daycare while Steve worked his shift not seeing anyone in
the alley Steve and the two girls entered the office and unfortunately stumbled onto the robbery and
progress the three of them were ordered just like the previous four down to the floor and to put their heads down the
gunman then shot all seven victims multiple times at Point Blank Range then the offenders gathered a bunch of
papers from around the office scattering them about the desk and the floor and ignited the papers setting the office on
fire before fleeing the scene the bowling alley fire was reported at 8:33 a.m. so let's examine the time
frame of everything going on here real quick before we get too far along a lot of things start to go into motion around
8:00 a.m. this is when Steve cak arrives to get his backpack and leaves without locking the door sometime between a few
minutes after 8 and 8:15 per the reports so during a very short time frame as little as 17 minutes to maybe 29 minutes
at the very very most and I think Captain this all went down closer to the 17-minute range I would
let's call it 20 or so minutes two guys enter the bowling alley take four persons hostage from three different
locations inside the bowling alley they robbed the joint reports state that the men searched through filing cabinets or
desk drawers or both stole money from the safe and the register if there was money in the register yet and what time
was the bowling alley supposed to open 9:00 a.m. okay so that to me like I said it's the knowled know of the business
who works there the exits what time they have to have this all done so there's not the public involved and this was
very quick we'll get to the money we're going to shoot any eyewitnesses and then
we're going to set the place on fire which one get rid of the witnesses as well but also will get rid of any
evidence fingerprints anything that they might have messed up fire destroys all that right and not only did they shoot
all seven victims they managed to control all four and then on top of that intercepted three more victims
controlled them before shooting all seven and reports stated 25 shots in total were fired then the two gunmen set
the office on fire and fled the scene all in a very short amount of time [Music]
[Music] all right we're back cheers to you Captain cheers to all the Pirates the
911 call heard in today's trailer the the call came in from our little hero this is 12-year-old Melissa repass who
has been shot multiple times five times this in the hands and the head the hands
likely as the result of trying to Shield herself the call comes in at precisely 8:33 a.m. James hash is the man working
dispatch that took the call that day the call lasted a total of 4 minutes and 2 seconds and you can hear here on the
call that an officer or officers arrived on the scene before the end of the call
so a good response time by our Police Department of under 4 minutes and by 8:37 a.m. a nightmare that started just
25 or so minutes earlier now we have police fire rescue and Emergency Medical Services dispatched and some of them are
starting to arrive at 1201 East Amador Avenue the Lac cruus bull First Responders were walking into
hell responding to a dire situation of a robbery a mass shooting and a fire yeah
execution of seven people officers responding to the call arrived and they found a smoldering fire in the bowling
alley office with a lot of smoke now at home we have detective Chuck Franco he gets a call from his sergeant
saying there has been a major crime several people are dead we need you here right away down at the crime scene his
boss didn't go into specifics simply saying there was a major crime and we need you here now he wouldn't say
anything else detective Franco could hear and feel the severity of the situation just from the brief call but
also the serious tone of his Sergeant on the call but when the seasoned detective
arrived at the scene he had no idea what he was walking into this would be one of
the most horrific crimes in the history of Los cruus Amy Hower Paula hogin and Steven teron were pronounced dead at the
scene valer Tron was rushed to the hospital but declared Dead on Arrival the survivors were rushed to the
hospital the dead were left in place in the building for Crime Lab personnel which arrived on the scene around noon
the dead were removed from the building at 400 p.m. we have Dead adults but we have dead children as well mhm I mean
that's just makes it worse the yes it's a special kind of evil it's a certain kind of evil that thankfully does not
exist in very many people walking on this planet that took out just some regular good people on that very sad day
well it seems these perpetrators it seems almost like their actions are very militant you know we're going to go
in there we're not going to be in there long we're going right towards the money
we're going to take all the eyewitnesses we're going to put them all in one location we're going to cover our
surroundings we have new eyewitnesses that come into play we put them into the office now we're containing the
situation we're going to shoot all of them I think all that was premeditated once we get them into the office there
we've seen takeovers before we've seen robbery's gone bad we've seen all these things before and a lot of times even if
there's violent violence towards the people that they kidnapped or took hostage or however you want to phrase it
there there's sometimes discussion like in the Hi-Fi murders there's almost like
a discussion of what do we do with these individuals in this case it doesn't seem
like that at all seems like no uh step one go into the building step two two take all the hostages and put them into
the office step three get all the money step four shoot all the hostages step five light the place on fire and then
take off you're right you're absolutely right it really looks like the two of these gunmen had agreed upon everything
that they set out to do that morning before arriving inside the walls of the bowling alley this is actually a better
case study of what we did what a month or so ago when we covered the high-f five murders that's labeled as an
indiscriminate homicide robbery case study the problem with that is once there some of the offenders decided to
torture the hostages that's not part of that whole bit it's only a part of that story of that case here it's even more
precise even more just straight up coldblooded we have a mission to carry out and let's
let's go for it here's what we're going to do a b c d and e and then we're out of there this is a very perfect case
study for indiscriminate homicide robbery just meaning that no matter who is in there they are going to be taken
out because we don't want any eyewitnesses afterward the early reports were that
four are dead three are wounded police would not comment on the identities of the survivors but did say that the
survivors were believed to be in critical condition detectives were hoping to get some good information from
them well and hold on I I think one of the reasons that they did that is like I said again the knowledge that these
individuals would have to know to carry out these crimes so precisely they would
possibly know some of these individuals the individuals might not know them but that the perpetrators would know those
individuals if that makes any sense at all well even if they don't they know that they're in the hospital right so
it's the same situation as the Hi-Fi murders where we have some survivors thankfully we have some survivors who
might be able to identify these guys by description at least or give clues or leads to the detectives and they're not
going to say who these people are they don't want to make it they don't want to make it any easier for you to locate
them in the hospital and we very likely have officers set up for security purposes to make sure that these two
gunmen don't come back and try to finish the job after they learned that they were unsuccessful in killing all all of
the witnesses cuz we know that that was their goal right police set up 10 roadblocks in and out of the city
stopping every vehicle and asking the driver and passengers questions we know we are looking for two men we are
looking for two guns who got away with about $4 to $5,000 that's the simplest form of what
we are looking for police set into motion a massive Manhunt for The Killers immediately this included but was not
limited to the following Los cruus City police State Police the counties Sheriff's Department University Police
US Customs the Border Patrol and the federal drug enforcement agency six aircraft and helicopters were used this
including a US Customs Blackhawk helicopter but the suspects successfully eluded capture right but we okay but we
have no eyewitnesses outside of the bowling alley so we don't know what these individuals were traveling in well
let's get to to leads and suspects here and see what we do have because we do have some leads on the suspects and some
fairly good ones I guess first remember Steve CAC who left the bowling alley right before this Robbery Homicide went
down right he says during his quick stop that he saw two guys and given the very
short time frame we are working with these two guys might be the perpetrators he says he saw two guys one older than
the other both he believed could be Hispanic he saw the men come from from around the back of the building to the
side of the building one guy gave the other what appeared to be a briefcase I believe Steve said it was the younger
suspect that then kind of kneeled down and looked at Steve Steve told the investigators about
this and provided a description this very shortly after the case broke now two other Witnesses a man
working outside said he saw men matching ing this description given to police by
Steve that he saw the two men running from the bowling alley parking lot another individual working nearby said
they heard the gunshots but saw nothing based off of what Steve saw and what he reported to police as well as the other
eyewitness that we just discussed here is the descriptions of the perpetrators that was released to the newspapers one
man is described as Spanish with a dark complexion approximately 29 or 30 years of age 5' 10 in in height and weighing
170 lb the suspect possibly had a 6 to 8 in blue steel revolver in his possession
he was last seen traveling in a Westerly direction from the intersection of espia
and Amador Avenue the second suspect is described as a Hispanic male 5' 6 in in height weighing 135 240 lb with a medium
build and dark complexion he has black hair comb back and brown eyes approximately 45 to 50 years of age so a
discrepancy of 15 to maybe 20 or more years between the two perpetrators yeah and we do end up with a vague vehicle
description and we also end up with sketches as well yes yeah we we'll get to that part of it because the first
descriptions that come out of our suspects are these computer generated I don't know if that's the right term
computer generated images but they're computer images that are put together and released we do end up with vague a
vague vehicle description in the papers anyway it says the suspects may have been driving a
green older model utility van or truck or pickup and some descriptions of this state that it was a
4wheel drive vehicle that to me Captain for vehicle description is about as vague as it can
get when it says older model utility van or truck or pickup it's kind of like we
don't really know yeah but this is also in a time where there was less vehicles on the road like that anyone whether
you're familiar with this case or not is will be familiar with the sketches that
the captain was talking about the suspect sketches that come out this actually comes out 5 days into the
investigation and the way that this comes about is these are not technically different it's not different
descriptions of the two suspects it's just a better composite drawing of the two suspects right what we have at first
is the old system would be you sit down you tell the detectives you tell somebody what you saw and they go okay
well point to which nose perpetrator A's nose looks like and okay so maybe it's nose C10 on their
nose category and then somebody punches that into a computer and after you go through each of the features of the face
and the body then it will it will the computer will put all those together and now you have an image of what this
person looks like based off of what your eyewitness says each of the features look like once put together the pictures
that were released to the paper to be honest with you Captain it it was hard for me to discern exactly
what I was looking at with those old pictures now what we have here is we have Steve scac who says
I sat down with somebody else and they actually did a handrawn sketch of what I was telling
them and when they turned over the page and showed me I said wow that looks exactly like the two guys that I saw so
days into this we have a physical somebody sitting down and having an actual sketch drawn of the two suspects
we have our number one witness who says it looks just like the two guys that he saw that day that will then become what
I would refer to in this case as the famous composite drawings for the Lac cruus bow case it's the one that even if
you don't know this case very well but you're kind of dialed into True Crime and you're dialed into to Crime you have
seen these composite sketches before you've seen them somewhere even if you weren't looking in to this case well
yeah cuz if you're looking at the one sketches the first thing you think is oh crap Eddie Murphy did this several
people have said that one of the one of the persons in the composite has a resemblance to Eddie Murphy yeah like
coming to America Eddie Murphy I don't I look at Eddie Murphy and I don't see a man that has aged more
than a few days in physically over decades we're talking decades Eddie Murphy still looks very
young to me well I was talking about the thickness of the mustache and the thickness of his hair reminds me more of
coming to America than it does like Beverly Hills Cop or yeah Beverly Hills Cop good or like Dr
dittle what I meant Captain by famous composite sketches is that when researching other
cases these composits pop up on the internet if you go and you try to look up another case and you you're looking
up for suspect composite drawings in that case there's a good chance that on your image panel there this image will
be in that row and that's why when we started really looking into this case a few months ago I thought it was kind of
Haunting for me to see the composite sketch of the two suspects because I'm like I've seen that several times before
now I have the case to connect it to and who would have thought that the Donkey from Shrek would be capable of murderers
this heinous the one thing that's interesting to me about the uh vehicle description the vague vehicle
description yeah this is 30 years ago this is a 30y old case what we have seen with the the composite sketches of the
suspects that has been sent out and plastered everywhere over the following three decades after this case broke
we've also even seen age progression sketches based off of those original sketches from
1990 what is left out of the future suspect information is this vehicle description what that what I'm kind of
inferring from that is that maybe at some point the detectives believe that including this very vague vehicle
description might be hurting that information more than it's helping so I think it's purposely left out
because I think that they go this might not have anything to do with our case at
all what we end up happening have happening is that we have Steve CAC who is called by police and brought down to
the Border because they pull over four guys who were stopped in a vehicle and they have a large sum of cash with them
they want to know if Steve believes that any of these guys were the gunmen for that he saw lcu's Bowl right he says he
cannot identify any of the four men as being one or both of the two men that he saw that day well it makes sense though
hey we're going to send two people in we got two people in the vehicle and maybe
the idea was to hit multiple places and they just never did well and necessarily
the other two guys don't always have to know what the other two guys were up to earlier that day right or the previous
day regardless what's important here is Steve says those the people you're showing me are not the two people that I
saw uh at lcu's Bowl before the murders now there is one very bizarre incident this all the while police are securing
the bowling alley murder crime scene setting up and executing roadblocks questioning and searching the area and
conducting what very quickly became a massive Manhunt this is on the same day as is
the lcu's bull massacre around 2:30 in the afternoon police found a man wandering around the
streets he was the victim of a stabbing that took place shortly before they found him it's thought that the man who
is only identified as a male in his 30s identified the person who stabbed him and maybe even identified the as salent
by name and now police are looking for that guy too the attacker was described in the paper as a male 20 to 30 years
old 5'8 to 5' 11 in tall the stab victim was taken to the hospital to be treated
for his wounds unfortunately that man died while undergoing surgery the police have stated that this crime has nothing
to do with the Lac cruus bowling alley Massacre and I fully believe them 100% because could you IM imagine a better
break for police right in this very difficult situation where you are very quickly executing a massive State and
even at the border Manhunt for two mass murders that you don't have a solid ID for or solidication of the vehicle
either what a better break that one of them decides to stab the other one and now you got one in in a hospital bed and
you're out looking for the other one and and he's been identified by the person that he stabbed yeah it's kind of like
scream at the end where he you know he has to stab his partner so they can cover up the murders yeah so those two
things to deep have nothing to do with one another but remember we stated earlier that lausus the whole city for
the entire year of 1989 only had two homicides on this single day in 1990 they have a situation where two
separate incidents ended up in homicides and the one unfortunately was multiple homicides four people were killed in a
press conference that evening the police chief apologized to the room full of reporters this for not having much
information to pass along to them this poor man told the room he was sorry but it has been a very hectic day well like
you said with such a safe area the whole department and the community has to feel
somewhat defeated yes 100% I mean we have the police chief who feels defeated some other feedback some other thoughts
going on at the time we have a statement from Captain Fred Rubio he said the following he said we're looking at the
motive as robbery were looking at the motive that for some reason or other they decided to rid themselves of any
Witnesses and we also have a local business owner that was interviewed by the papers who offered up some
speculation saying that he thought that the persons responsible studied it I'm guessing meaning the business in the
building and planned it the robbery especially because Friday night after all of the leagues and everything and
the business that's one of their busiest nights meaning they would make off with
a pretty good take on Saturday morning the case was also featured on everyone's favorite old show Unsolved
Mysteries and aired in April of 1990 on season 2 episode 19 it was one of four stories some may remember it it was the
Bobby Kennedy episode well and also we're thinking that they got roughly around 4,000
$4 to $5,000 is what has been reported so that'd be roughly $8,000 to $110,000 in today's money so we're not talking
about like this could get you out of trouble if maybe you owe somebody drug money
maybe you owe some some bad gambling debts or whatever right but this is not money that's going to set you up for the
rest of your life right right 100% it's not life changing money unless you're in
some serious hot water with somebody yeah unless it's getting hot in the hot tub on in the H on Unsolved Mysteries
the lasu's bowl murders segment was titled no one spared it was a short part of the episode and the story was the
only one that fell under the wanted category that's kind of a shitty pun don't you think what's that no one
spared well that's the thing cuz you got strikes and Spares that's the thing with
Unsolved Mysteries that I that I like to try to uh point out when we do reference
it because a lot of times we we don't get any information like um the the cases are never called what the victim's
names would be or what the case goes on to be known as you know we covered boys on the tracks which generally that case
of the of those two teenage boys is known as boys on the tracks that case I believe was called friends till the end
or something like that right and this one was called no one no one spared and you're right it absolutely is kind of a
bad pun there um but it's also that was the intention of the two gunmen was to get rid of all seven of these people or
what what's terrifying is it didn't matter to them how many people were there at all if it was one they were
going to attempt to kill one person if it was 7 10 12 whatever it was going to be they were going to attempt to kill
that many people it was only about a 4 minute piece but one thing that I think is
really kind of cool that that we should give a big kudos to Unsolved Mysteries for you got to keep in mind that they're
recording and producing all of these episodes in advance of them being released right this case took place in
February February 10th of 19 90 it was in April that they aired the their coverage of the Los cruus
bowling alley murders and it was really just the wanted segment flashing those composite sketches of the two suspects
and asking the public for help think about the turnaround on that it's two months turnaround really that's them
stepping in some people would look at that and say they only did four minutes on this big case mhm that's them
stepping in and saying after the fact providing some kind of help any help that they could well and
it's tough sometimes when these cases come out and they start getting some legs on them in in the social media
world and people say cover them and you go well there's not a lot of information
out there and maybe we don't have a source that we can get information that's not out in the media yet like
we've had well like we've been able to do in many cases mhm but some of the cases when it's it's a missing person or
it's a murder of a child you just put out the episode the best you can and hopes that it gets people talking and
leads to some results the interesting thing that I found here Captain was I went back and I was looking okay well
what was going on on the local scene right around the time of the Unsolved Mysteries episode that featured this
case and what I found was we have police chief well then police Chief Ron Axel um he says
publicly that 312 potential suspects had been questioned by that point so about 2
months later that's a lot of potential suspects that they have spoke to by this point and it does look like the unsolved
mystery spotlighting the case did generate some leads but those don't seem to have really have gone
anywhere the piece did Inspire future filmmaker Charlie Min to make a fulllength documentary film called a
nightmare in Los crues the documentary was released around the 20th anniversary of the massacre so in 2010 it came out
and it features actual crime scene video pictures and interviews with family members since its release more tips have
been reported to the local police and this film really got a lot of folks talking
not just talking about potential leads or potential suspects but it got people that were very close to the crime the
victims themselves to get out and talk you know sometimes it takes the passing of time for people to not be afraid or
to have some time to grieve for their lost loved ones before they can come out and speak to what they know about the
case or their feelings on a tragedy such as this [Music] a lot more to dive into tomorrow and
until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre /// Part 1 /// 410

Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

This week Nic & the Captain go through the details, updates and speculation of a horrific mass shooting. The Las Cruces Bowl shooting of 1990 is one of the most well known unsolved cases of the Southwest, but there is still hope. Investigators believe that after 30 years of searching this case is still very much solvable. Join the conversation and find out if the Garage agrees. Beer of the Week - Aztec Death Whistle Garage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5 Thank you to this week’s sponsors! Save some CA$H with our promo codes!

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Brief Summary

The episode details the Los Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre and the 911 call from survivor Melissa Repass.

Key points

The 911 Call of a Young Hero. 12-year-old Melissa Repass calls 911 after being shot multiple times during a robbery.
A Day of Tragedy. On February 10, 1990, a robbery at a bowling alley leads to a mass shooting.
Cold-Blooded Execution Plan. The gunmen had a chillingly precise plan for the robbery and hostages.
Composite Sketches Released. Witnesses provided descriptions leading to composite sketches of the suspects.
Unsolved Mysteries Feature. The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, generating public interest.
A Nightmare in Los Cruces. Filmmaker Charlie Min creates a documentary about the massacre, featuring real crime scene footage.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Oh God, please help me!

Melissa's desperate plea during the 911 call.

6:06WatchNov 13, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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