Terrifying Events | "48 Hours" Full Episodes | Forensic Files

We ready? That's a question New Yorkers have been asking themselves a lot lately.
Are we ready for another blackout? For a bus hijacking or a bombing or another murder by the .44 caliber
killer? I know that I'm not usually known for any public exhibitions of temper, but I want you to know I'm
damned angry. The city is preoccupied with a killer who in one note signed himself the son of Sam.
He is compelled to kill. I think people are really shook up. >> People wouldn't come out at night.
They're really scared. The whole city was kind of like in lockdown. No one stayed out past 10:00.
>> People were terrified. And girls covered in blood. Oh my god. Oh my god. We've been shot. We've been
shot. I should have been dead. I guess on one hand I'm happy to be alive. A lot of people died
from the same gun. He struck again over the weekend shooting a young couple in a
Brooklyn lovers lane and today the girl died. The killer's sixth victim. He's wounded seven others. It's just scary.
It's frightening. When you're walking, people just look over their shoulder. And all they do is talk about the
killer. Walks up to strangers, usually couples in parked cars, and shoots them with a large bore revolver. Police say
they are nowhere near solving the case. If you're asking whether we have any indication of who he is or where he
might be, the answer is no. To do this to a young girl and a young boy, he's not human. He was writing about a dog
that talked to him, gave him orders to kill. I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to
kill. He terrified the city. I mean, I've never seen people like that. Yeah, I see that
people never understand where I came from, no matter how much I I try to explain it.
They wouldn't understand what it what it what it it was to to walk in darkness. I remember
we were an hour away from the city and everybody was afraid. After all that, to find out that this was a
sort of a you know, what people describe him as this chubby, shy, lonely guy who had the whole city
buckling at its knees, afraid. It's a strange sensation. Serial killer's about to walk in here
and talk with us. I think there he goes right there. I look like him, right? Hello. Hey, God bless you. Maurice T.
Watt. It's an honor to meet you, sir. Glad to meet you. Thank you for talking with us. Sure. Okay, it's a it's a big
step, you know. It's a big step. >> mis- Yeah, mis- misgivings and nervousness and all these other things,
but >> Sure. Understood. Is this a special place for you? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a
place of refuge, you know. Refuge from the storms of life. And you know, if you know anything about prison, there's a
lot of storms. You know, it's not exactly a happy place in prison. And men are walking around uh carrying a lot of
pain. I know I have a lot of pain inside me over, you know, things that happened uh
and uh this is a place where you could come and pour your heart out to to God. My name
is David Berkowitz and I've been locked up since the time of my arrest, just under 40 years. You just turned 64.
Yeah, I just turned 64. Yeah. How do the guys look at you? How do they see you? How do they perceive you? Um
some guys um really again because of the passing of time they're not even familiar with the the case or anything.
They may have heard about it, but it doesn't just another face in the crowd, you know, no special attention, no
special anything. That's the way I want it to be. In the summer of 1977 New York lost its mind.
Well, this was a a city that looked like Berlin after the war. Uh it was devastated. There were
abandoned buildings. There were waves of arson in which people were afraid to go
to bed at night. We had a blackout in which 3,000 people were arrested. It make you really want to throw up when
you look at what's happened and we got to live here. There's no place for us to go. We had
the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group planting bombs in department stores. We had a record heat wave. George
Willig, a mountain climber from Queens, climbing up the outside of the World Trade Center.
You know, it was a very very different time and people were afraid to walk around.
You know, 1977 among other things was the year that Studio 54 opened. Uh it was a time of sexual liberation,
perhaps the last gasps of the anything goes sexual revolution. I like to disco. I'm a single woman. I feel safe here.
This was uh the era of Saturday Night Fever and it was that throbbing music that became the backdrop for all the
wacky behavior that was going on in the city at the time, including a murder spree by a serial killer.
In New York early this morning, a mystery deepened and a manhunt intensified. A young couple was shot and
wounded while sitting in a parked car. Most of the victims have been young women with shoulder-length dark brown
hair who were gunned down as they sat in parked cars or walked the sidewalks of the Bronx and Queen. And you know,
you're dealing with a crazy guy, you know. You know, you go up to two innocent girls sitting in a car and shoot them or
a guy and a girl in a car and you shoot them for no reason. I wanted to know why he did what he did.
>> That's the one thing about all of these girls and in these cases and guys, they
did nothing to contribute to their own demise. They were sitting talking to each other and this guy killed them.
I mean, I I grew up in the Bronx. I had good good day good times and bad times. I had some struggles over certain
issues that happened and I but I also had times of adventure where I ran played ball with my friends. Really was
a many ways a normal childhood but then also wrestled with self-destructive behavior. Why? Well,
when I was about four or five, I I learned that I was adopted and when I asked about, you know, who my parents
were at at birth, you know, my dad and mom, you know, well-meaning told me that my mother died while while giving birth
to me. Later on, I found out that of course she was alive and well. We had a wonderful
reunion. It didn't even It wasn't even true what they told you. >> Yeah, they meant well because they were
told by the experts, that's what you tell an adopted child when they naturally ask questions.
I Look, in retrospect, that characterized much of my life. I struggled with a lot of depression as a
child and obsessions with death cuz I thought I deserved to die. So, take me to when you're 14. Your mom
dies. Yeah, that was a difficult time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just when you lose someone that
you love is is a sense of mourning. You know, I tried to put it out of my mind. I was carrying around a lot of guilt. I
was carrying around a lot of shame that I deserved to be punished. I I can't explain those things. You
>> For your mom's death? Yeah, I maybe I was angry at God and and then well, my birth mother and then of
course my adoptive mother, too, you know, I found it you know, very difficult. >> The victim that's selected usually
satisfies something on a fantasy level of punishing mother. Could be a wife. And so, every time he
commits a crime against a person that has this thing, he's satisfying this basic need of getting back at the
original individual who they had difficulty with. I you know, it was it was it was just a
challenge. It was a challenge. But I mean, I ended up doing okay. I It was my dad really kept on me to
finish school. I graduated from Christopher Columbus High School and uh in 1971 and I joined the army.
He went into the service and a drastic change took place and a different man came out than went in.
What do you mean a different man went out? How did he change? I went to Korea and I'll never forget that. You know,
you see the advertisements on TV of the guys jumping out of planes and all these
exciting things and you know, and you find out army life is kind of a mundane and routine. You just turn 18, I'm
trying to find my way in life. I wanted to see the world. A man that went in relatively mellow, relatively peaceful
turned around and became a man that was more interested in the fantasy in the world than the
reality. Uh after I got out of the service, I uh went to look up a lot of old friends,
the guys I used to hang out with and things, and found everybody pretty much moved on in the 3 years of absence. So,
I came back to find that I was on my own, kind of, you know, and wanted to eventually get my own apartment.
You know, wanted to find a a girl, maybe get married, and raise a family. And I had the all kinds of
normal, perfectly normal hopes and dreams. What would you tell 23-year-old David
Berkowitz today? Uh, turn around before it's too late, because destruction is coming, you know.
Berkowitz lived in Yonkers, north of New York. Police described him as a loner. His neighbors discussed their
impressions with CBS News correspondent Bill McLaughlin. Did he seem strange to you?
Not strange. When he came in, you know, he spoke, "What's happening?" and everything, but, uh, He was friendly
then. >> Yeah, he didn't seem strange. I never suspected him in this building, out of
every building in Yonkers. He's in 35 Pine Street, you know, that shocks me. So, you're living in Yonkers. You move
up to Yonkers. >> Yeah. You have an apartment up on the seventh floor. Yeah. 70 It's a nice spot. You're looking out
over the Hudson River. >> Yeah, the building was not in any way peaceful. >> Not that way. What was it like? It was
just chaotic. It was just a strange place. There was a strange spirit there. You live right here in this building.
Two, three, four. Used to be number 35. Changed the number in hopes of maybe make people feel a little better.
If they don't recognize where the building is, then I say, "Do you remember Son of Sam?" "Oh, I know where
the building is." Really? So, they know. People are familiar with it. Yeah. A lot
of people know what happened. It's still hard to believe that even something like
that exists in this world. I mean, who goes around killing people? I don't know anybody like that. No, you
try not to think of things like that. It's people in the neighborhood that knew him. They say, you know, he was
very, you know, cool with the kids. He used to give them ice cream, things like that.
And like he was a functional man. Just another guy. >> Yeah. What about the idea that he shot
Sam Carr's dog right behind here? This dog his master is a 6,000-year-old being talking to him through this dog, and
he's banging for blood. The dog got on Berkowitz's nerves. Apparently, the dog barked too much.
Berkowitz could hear it from his window. He tried to kill the dog. The dog didn't
die. And then he said, in his own twisted way, that the dog told him to kill. So, Berkowitz lived on the top floor.
He had a clear view right into the backyard here where the dog lived, owned by a guy named Sam Carr.
Hence the name Son of Sam. I wasn't comfortable there. I felt very isolated. Yeah, I didn't really have
much of a social life. I started to get into a lot of satanic stuff. So, I really was opening myself
up to some very dark forces. Sound like he had a friend or anything. There was nobody. He had a hole in the wall in his
apartment. It said that Mrs. Something-or-other and her kids live in the wall. You know, he's he's bonafide being nuts.
Well, there was just a battle going on at side B. In your head? Uh Well, wherever, you know, just a battle
going on, yeah. Right. Yeah. I guess here's the thing. He's a Christian man. Man who knows right from wrong.
>> Yeah. Who's had loving parents, right? Who's very thoughtful. Um yet at some point there
you killed two people to start this whole thing. She was 18-year-old Donna Lauria who was
sitting in a parked car with a friend late at night when her parents heard the shots. I went down. By the time I got
down, she was dead in the street. My daughter was 18 years old and that's what he took out of my heart at 18
years. It was very difficult time, yeah. Right. But then he did it again. It started out as a typical Friday
night. Drove to 159th Street, 32nd Avenue. Basically, we started making out and like 2 minutes later
Yeah, I was shot in the back of the head, but you know, on the top. The windows just shattered, so I had pieces
of glass all over my arms. I didn't know I was shot, but I knew something terrible had happened. My skull was
blown away. The only thing protecting my brain from the outside world was a flap
of skin. Well, things happen, yeah, but that's that's that's it, you know. And then
again. Then we get to November. We have Damascene and Lumino. They're shot. Yeah, they're standing on the
stoop and he walks up and he fires at them. So, at this point, you have nothing.
What are you thinking? We're thinking we got a tough case here. >> Police have been engaged in intensive
hunt for a man known as the .44 caliber killer. There's widespread apprehension that his crime spree is not over.
>> I mean, it just it just kept going for more than a year. The hardest cases in the world for
homicide detectives are strangers, stranger on stranger. You have very little to go with because you don't have
a motive. You may not have any witnesses, right? So, you you're at a dead standstill. Was there any common thread
with all of these families, victims of Son of Sam? Well, the common thread was these were their
you know, 20-year-olds, they're young, you know, the children. We've got Christine Freund. Again, this
shooting Right. Is there any suspicion? Yes. >> At least two witnesses say the gunman
walked up to the car, crouched, then fired four shots. One of the detectives come over to me
and he says, "You know, that's a big bullet." He says, "And we had a shooting in the 105 with a big bullet." And then
they also had one in Queens. So, that stood me up a little bit. The .44 bullet is big, nearly twice as
big as the conventional .38 caliber police handgun ammunition. The .44 is designed, they say, to kill.
Then we get to March, Virginia, the student. Shoots her right in the face. Starts to get a little curious now
because that shooting is only a block away from where Christine Freund was murdered.
We don't really get into the serial killer until the incident in the park. >> April 17th, 1977. That will go down in
infamy. Until then, you just had a series of of shootings without any real sense.
>> you know, at that time probably, I don't know, 1,500 homicides a year. The big
thing about this one was the .44 caliber bullets. Now, it's not just a bullet. He left a letter to me.
>> I was home in bed and I got a call. Looks like our boy Why? Big bullet. Big bullet. So now I got
dressed and I went to the park. You get to the scene, you get this letter, you read the letter. What do you
think? To me it looked like some kind of a psychopath wrote this letter. Mr. Borelli, sir.
I don't want to kill anymore. No, sir. No more. But I must honor thy father. I am deeply hurt by your calling me a
woman hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam. As far as I'm concerned, that that was
not me. That was not me. This even the that name I hate that name. I despise that name.
>> Which name? That moniker, Son of Sam. That's that that that was not That was a demon.
That that was that was the a demonic entity that I was serving in in my ignorance and my shame. This is no
longer a city case. This is now going to get nationwide attention. No one in the city of 8
million knows who is next. In New York early this morning, the .44 caliber killer tried to kill again.
That was just a a break from reality thought I was doing something to uh appease the devil. I'm sorry for it, but
I I really don't want to talk about it anymore >> Appease the devil? Well, I was at this time I had
was serving him. Yeah, I was serving him. I feel that he had taken over my mind and body and I just
surrendered to those very dark forces. I regret that with all my heart, but you know, that was like 40 years ago.
Effectively, it was him winning over us each time he got away with it. The only substantial clues so far have
been two letters, including one mailed to the New York Daily News. >> The killer chose Jimmy Breslin as his
conduit to a larger public. >> Jimmy Breslin was a great columnist for the New York Daily News. He was
sort of the voice of the people, related to people on a very visceral level. And it was no accident that the Son of
Sam killer started writing to him. Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale
wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by
the sweeper trucks. JB, I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest
in those recent and horrendous .44 caliber killings. In '77 is when the newspapers, you know, started to cover
this. The .44 caliber killer. Whatever. Son of Sam. You would see this stuff. It was on
a newspaper, on the TV, on the radio. It was everywhere. >> I I I I don't want to discuss that. You
know, yeah. Well, when we realized that this was an authentic letter that he had sent to the
Daily News, on one level, we were thrilled because it gave us access to the killer. What I thought was one of
the most disgusting episodes I've seen in journalism. Are you suggesting that murder isn't a big story? I think murder
as a story became in the papers, it was a blown ludicrously out of proportion and with very unhealthy social results.
Jimmy Breslin wrote one to him. Figuring that would trigger Berkowitz to respond again. And I didn't mind that
because I said, "The more he responds, the more the opportunity for us to solve the case." Jimmy was engaging in this
written dialogue with the killer for any number of reasons. One, because there might be more clues as to his identity,
and two, because it was an ongoing tabloid story that obviously would sell newspapers.
I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill. Did
you ever have a moment saying, "Geez, did I cause this? Did this column trigger this?" Not No.
Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the police department was put under a lot of pressure by the press.
>> Slow Sunday Sam Newsday would be 7 or 8 pages. Detectives would walk out and they'd have a TV crew following them.
The New York Mafia is trying to track the killer down. The press stoked Berkowitz, but it also incited 20
million people. >> We used to stay in front of my house and walking, you know, and kiss goodnight,
but we can't do that no more. An element of fear pervades neighborhoods which have not known fear before. People
wouldn't come out at night. They're really scared. And I mean, when they're scared, that's all they do is
talk about the the killer. Civilian patrolling has been stepped up in the neighborhood.
Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder-length dark brown hair.
>> People going out cutting their hair and dying it. >> They were bleaching their hair.
Becoming blondes. Literally, at night, sometimes a thousand, two thousand guys who would
just out there patrolling, looking for this guy. Those phones rang 24 hours. But you guys were everywhere. You shut
down lovers' lanes. I think all the motel owners in the city loved us. We forced everything indoors.
I'm leaving my house, and I'm walking down the steps, and my mom turns to me, and she says, "Robert, be careful." And
I turned around, and the next thing I said was, I'll never forget this. "Ma, don't worry. I'm going out with a
blonde tonight. Good evening. In New York early this morning, the .44 caliber killer tried to
kill again. Robert Violante, 20 years old, Stacy Moskowitz, also age 20, blonde. Both
shot twice in the head as they sat in their car near the ocean in the Brooklyn section of New York.
It was their first date. She was just a very bubbly alive, full of life young lady. Now, it's Saturday night,
the 31st of July, 1977. Correct. And we went to see the very popular movie back then, New York, New York with Liza
Minnelli. And it was a great movie. And it was a just a great night. What what happens after the movies?
So, now we decide to drive to one of the as they call it a lover's lane. Now, we're sitting there a couple of
minutes and we're just talking, you know, kissing a little bit and talking and Stacy turns to me and says, "Robert, you
know what? I'm getting a little nervous." She said, "Robert, let's go." And I said, "Five more
minutes." And in that 5 minutes is when we got shot. I'm screaming now, blowing the horn.
Help us. Help us. We've been shot. We've been shot. The horn died. >> What do you remember from
the shooting itself? The bullet totally destroyed the left eye and most of my right eye.
And uh you know, full of blood, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see Stacey. She's sitting
right next to me. I heard some moaning coming from Stacey. This evening, hospital officials said
Ms. Moskowitz remains in critical condition after 8 hours of surgery. She is given a 50/50 chance of living.
Violante's condition is guarded. He has lost the use of his left eye and probably will retain only 10% of the
vision in his right eye. What can you tell me about your son? We brought him up the right way.
Good boy. Never any trouble. Never involved in any dope. Never involved in any arrests.
What can I say? You told him to stay out of Queens. >> I told him to stay out of Queens. He
says, "Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens." Cuz he used used to go to Queens. He says, "I'll do it for you and
Mom. I'll hang around in Brooklyn." And that's where they found him. Violante, I remember his father was just
destroyed, totally destroyed because he had seen the results of what had happened to his son.
He was my best friend in the world. He was there for me every minute of the day when I was in the hospital.
I think it was my dad that told me about Stacey. At 5:22 p.m. Monday, Stacey Moskowitz
stopped living. The doctors said they had not turned off the life support. It was just that the horrible damage done
by a .44 caliber bullet in the brain was too much. She wasn't worried, you know, cuz she
says, you know, I got blonde hair and you know I told her I don't know how many times
to be careful. My daughter's dead, but I would die right here and now to see this man
punished. To do this to a young girl and a young boy. Find with the child. That woman has a son that's blonde.
To do this to young people, he can't be normal. He's not normal. Man, that's the saddest part that I
never got to really know Stacie. You still think about it to this day? Yeah, that was
really, really the sad part. But when Stacie Moskowitz was killed Berkowitz got a ticket for parking his
car in front of a fire hydrant. >> Yeah. There was a woman there who said, you know, I did see somebody get a summons
on a fire hydrant in front of my house. We immediately started looking at the summonses.
All right, they run the plate and the plate number comes back to David Berkowitz, his address in Yonkers. Comes
out to David Berkowitz, 35 Pine Street. They now decide, again thinking it's a witness, to call him. So they called the
Yonkers Police Department. The girl on the switchboard, she says, "Who too?" Uh David Berkowitz, 35 Pine She says,
"That guy, he's crazy. He shot my father's dog. I know that guy." What's your father's name?
Sam Carr. Which Carr? Who's Sam Carr's daughter? Lives next door to David Berkowitz. Owns the dog that
Berkowitz was >> So, you know, that was like, you know, all of these things fell in in one fell
swoop. Everybody's antenna goes up. When they get up there, they swing by his house
and they see his car. They look in the car and they see a letter to the Suffolk Police Department and they see a duffel
bag that had a gun in and a big rifle. And here comes Berkowitz with a little brown paper bag with his .44 gun in it.
Goes to the car, they jump him. And he says, "You got me." He's on the Son of Sam.
At about 1:00 this morning, 24-year-old David Berkowitz, who detectives believe is the Son of Sam, was brought to police
headquarters in Manhattan. He was wearing frayed jeans and an open sport shirt and he was smiling slightly.
They caught him. They caught him. They caught the piece of garbage. I'll never forget that. My friend Nicky.
What'd you say? I was so elated, so happy. I should thank God he's off the streets. He's not going to
ever be able to hurt anybody else again. I really can't describe how I felt. It was I guess a little bit of everything,
a little bit of excitement, a little bit of relief, a little bit of closure. When
I saw the front page, I was like, "Wow, I didn't expect him to look like that." Police ran ballistics tests this morning
on the .44 caliber gun they say Berkowitz bought from someone else who got it in Texas.
It's an infamous gun. I I could picture the damage that this thing did. You know, when you're looking
at the at the scene of the crime. The ballistics section has just called and told us that the .44 caliber gun
recovered tonight has been tested and the bullets match the bullets recovered from Stacy
Moskowitz. What does this mean? It means we have the gun that killed Stacy Moskowitz.
I mean, these were beautiful young people. >> I understand that, but again, there's
there's no you know, it's just the way it things turned out. It's regrettable, but
that's it, you know. Did you do all these crimes alone? Well, Now, years later, he tells everyone
that he was part of a cult and he was merely one of the shooters. You know, he's he's wacky, you know, I
mean, he's So, for him to say that he's part of a cult, you know, it was just something he came up with
like everything else, you know. Well, I felt that there were demons with me, but that was I'll have to save that for
another time. >> But you were the sole person who pulled the trigger, correct? Well,
a lot of things would happen in that in that case, but I take responsibility, you know.
And and that's it, yeah. You take responsibility for all these senseless murders.
>> yeah. There was nobody else involved. Uh let's just put it this way, there were demons and that was it. You leave
the door open or is that Well, one day maybe I can have a chance to share more, but that's that's we'll leave that at
that, you know. We shot all that down, you know, and I think I told you the biggest claim to fame was when they used
to say that, the cult, I said, "Did we have an incident after we locked up Berkowitz?" The killing stopped. Did
the killing stop? >> Yeah. For him to say years later that he was part of a cult, you know, it was
just more attention. That's all it was about with him. But there are people who believe it. I'm just telling you, the
people that say they believe in it never interviewed David Berkowitz. They never
sat the way I did. In this room? In this room, in this corner. To step back for a second, you walk in I
walk in. >> You lay eyes on him. What are you thinking? What do you see? What does he
look like? >> first I'm looking at him to see what he looks like. I said, "So, what happened here, you
know? How did it start?" 30 minutes, he goes from beginning to end, tells me the whole story. He was
relaxed. >> What kind of demeanor? He's saying this with a straight face? >> it the way you would talk about making a
pastrami sandwich. Uh to to just talk about it like that was scary. I I thought he absolutely
felt he was certifiably wacky. And I thought they would just put him in an institution. The accused killer is
now undergoing a court-ordered psychological examination at the Kings County Medical Center in Brooklyn, where
he will be held in maximum security for up to 30 days. We will engage in uh a normal psychiatric examination.
>> Dr. Shaw What's? He was a court-appointed psychiatrist to analyze him to see if he was
uh fit to stand trial. And he determined he was fit for trial. So, this insane business that goes out
the window. There was no outward sign of emotion, no expressed remorse today as David Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a
Brooklyn, New York court to six random Son of Sam murders, slayings which terrorized New York for more than a
year. So, you you show up in court when Berkowitz was going to be sentenced for the first time.
Yeah. He said some foul things about Stacy. Oh, yeah. To a weird nursery rhyme-like
tune, Berkowitz, who had never known Stacy Moskowitz, sang, "Stacy was a whore."
Mrs. Moskowitz bolted out of her seat and screamed back, "You animal!" And then, Robert Violante, Stacy's date the
night she died, rose and shouted, "You creep!" I reacted, called yourself, you piece of
You should die. You should rot in hell. I was Oh, I just went off on him. David Berkowitz explained his courtroom
outburst. Total anger. Total anger. That's it. Just total outrage and I really couldn't control myself.
Three weeks after his wild courtroom outburst, which led to a delay for further psychiatric evaluation, David
Berkowitz again judged competent to face sentencing arrived to learn his fate. Berkowitz, who just turned 25, was given
a total of six sentences for murder of 25 years to life. What do you say to the victims'
families, to the victims who are still living today? Well, I I've I've apologized many times
and I just always let them know that uh I'm very sorry for what happened that uh
I wish I could go back and change things and that I I hope these people are getting along in
life as best as possible. I never forget, you know, where I came from and what my situation was like some four
decades ago. People that were hurt, people that are still in pain, suffering loss because of my criminal actions.
And I I never forget that. That sometimes weighs very heavy on me. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of took over my
personality. And wherever I went, everything would just stop and everyone and you just hear
whispering. That's the guy that was shot by Son of Sam. And it got to the point where it it was
it became disturbing for me. And um I really felt like I was losing my identity. Didn't have any children
cuz I never got married, never had children. Unfortunately, he ruins not just my
life, 12 other lives plus two families. So, how do you forgive something like that,
somebody like that? You don't. You When you think about the irony, I mean, here's a kid who lost his
mom at 14. And you think about the depth of the pain that you felt. And then, years later,
because of you, Yeah, sure, right. >> six people have that same kind of pain. All right.
>> Seven others injured for life. Mhm. How's that strike you? It's very painful. It's very painful.
I carry around the pain, too. Not not not the same kind, but one that I'm aware of what happened.
Yeah. Yeah. I I draw a comfort, uh, if you can call it that, from from reading about in the in the
scriptures about some of the, uh, well-known Bible characters that, uh, did very bad things and how God forgave
them and God was able to use them in in very special ways, very unique ways, and
they became what what we'd call champions of the faith. And what did a lot of work in my life,
you know. That's why I try so hard in my messages to give a cautionary tale to young people
about not getting involved in in Satanism or the occult or you know, those kind of things, because
I feel that they they too could maybe take a bad path. >> Does it give you satisfaction to reach
young people? Yeah, sure. I get I get letters all the time. I have a a calling to just write to
encourage people from all walks of life. It's something I do on my own on my spare time and, uh, I get a lot of
satisfaction from it, but most of all, I believe that that's what God has called
me to do. Berkowitz is a born-again Christian. He's a minister in prison. He takes a lot of pride in helping
people. That's his thing. What do you think of that? >> I think that's a lot better road to go
down than serial killer. You're in jail. What what else you got to look forward to? You might as well say, "Yeah, I
found God." Why not? But, um I really think he did. You know, that that doesn't mean he's exonerated. If
he's trying to do better with other prisoners, so be it. That's God's way of probably
making him understand how wrong and bad of a person he was. And now God's giving him a second chance
to do right by other people. But, it still doesn't change the fact of how I feel.
I will I'll never forgive. Why not? Why not? Cuz he snuffed out six people's lives,
ruined another seven, plus all the families involved. For people that didn't do anything
to him. You know, didn't bump into him, didn't say nothing to him. So, I I just can't forgive.
Yeah. But, when you look at the front picture right there, those are two yous. Right. Two pictures
of you. That's right. Mhm. Well, what do you see? I see a I see the old man and I see the new man in Christ.
Yeah, I see the one man that was tormented by demons and I see the man that that has the peace of God radiating from
him. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's where I'm at now. Mhm. That's that that's the way I was always
supposed to be. A mayor of hope. You know? Yeah. What is a life worth? I don't know.
Mr. and Mrs. Lauria might feel totally different. You know, they lost their daughter 40 years ago. Does parole is
that attractive to you at this point? >> As a realistic hope, I don't see any hope for parole, no.
I personally I feel there has to be justice for the death of those people. And that's the justice.
Life in prison. 48 hours to miss it would be a crime. Were you at all prepared for what
happened in this case? Tortola is a beautiful mountainous island in the Caribbean.
It feels really exotic but really safe at the same time for a tourist. The ocean all around Tortola is
beautiful clear crystal water that you can see for several feet in. Tortola is gorgeous.
My name is Jen Bloom and I'm the oldest child of David Swain. In March of 1999 my father and his wife
Shelley put together a trip to Tortola. I felt so lucky that her and I had found
each other and connected. She was just a phenomenal, wonderful woman. Shelly was absolutely passionate about
diving. It excited her on every level. She loved adventure. That was one of the attractions.
I'm an adventurous person. She's an adventurous person. On the last day of the trip, my father
and Shelly and their friends decided they wanted to dive this site called the Twin Tugs.
My father and Shelly decided to go into the water first. At some point they separated. They usually separated on
dives. Shelly is specifically interested in her fish counting project. She had a
slate and she would mark the kinds of fish she would see underwater. And I'd go off and take pictures.
He was enjoying himself. It wasn't a lot to see. I was a little chilly and it wasn't that great of a dive, so I
decided to surface. And my father asked him had Shelly surfaced yet cuz he didn't know where she was.
The other diver decided to go in. And 10 minutes later he came up with Shelly's body.
My father went to start the whole CPR process, but she was already gone. She was not responding to anything.
Nothing. I know she's dead. He loved her so much and he loved diving so much and then to lose her to
something he loved, no one deserves that. In most diving accidents, for all intents and purposes, appear to be just
that, accidents. My name is Jeff Morgan. I'm an underwater forensic investigator.
Shelly's equipment, the mask was broken, the mouthpiece from the snorkel was dislodged. That lends
itself to believe that a struggle may have ensued underwater. It is very suspicious.
She had a couple medical things that could have gone wrong. Was it a mild stroke or a mild heart
attack? Yeah, I didn't read anything in the autopsy report that would lead me to
believe that it was a heart attack. Could have been a seizure. It could have been a headache. She could have
panicked. Once panic sets in, almost every rule that you can think of is out the window. We don't know what happened
to Shelly Ann in 75 ft of water. I would characterize it as an accident. I truly
do not believe that this was an accident. In my opinion, it was murder. Shelly's last breath.
It was the Caribbean vacation Shelly Tyre had been looking forward to. Sunny, sailing, and scuba diving with her
husband and friends in Tortola. And in March 1999, it finally happened. They put together a
really fun trip. Got to do a lot of different things where they were sailing all around the British Virgin Islands,
and they were diving off the sailboat they were living on. But on that fateful last dive, something
went horribly, mysteriously wrong. Now, Shelly was dead. And the Tortola police wanted to talk to her husband,
David Swaim. He called his daughter, Jen. And he said, "I'm so sorry. I wasn't with her.
I don't know what happened, but Shelly died today." And he was crying and he was very upset and he was doing his best
to get her home. He said, "The autopsy's going to happen. There was cops." Tortola police began questioning David
about every detail of the dive. And the local medical examiner performed the autopsy. But no one could figure out
just how Shelly died. So, after a few days with no evidence of foul play, authorities ruled Shelly's death an
accident and released her body to her husband. It had been a really rough flight. He
had to load the coffin onto the plane himself. And he came off the plane. >> David's son, Jeremy. Came over to me and
Jen and he gave us a hug and he said, "It's all right. It's going to be all right." And he was genuinely
hurt. Shelly Tyre was small in stature, but her impact on David and his children was
enormous. And 10 years after her death, David still remembers why he fell in love. She had a a heart bigger than her.
She had passions and drive that had no equal. A middle school principal at prestigious
Thayer Academy outside Boston, Shelly was anything but straight-laced. The Penguin Plunge.
Every New Year's Day on a frigid Rhode Island beach, 500 to 1,000 people all go racing into the 37° water. Shelly
stripped down to her swimsuit. The water hit you, you get that that sort of shock. Shelly turned this beet red
color, goosebumps head to toe, shaking uncontrollably with a ear-to-ear grin. With such a love of adventure, it was no
wonder Shelly found David so attractive. When she met him in the early '90s, the
divorced father of two teens was running a dive shop in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
The ocean was his passion. Then way back with this one to push and then you pull
this one in a lot. >> My father is a teacher. He's a naturalist by nature. >> And you only have so much energy anyway.
>> He taught me and my brother that the most important thing in the world is to teach and share what you know and be
excited about the ocean. What we'll do is we're going to paddle out around this point so that On one of his kayaking
tours, Shelly went along. Suddenly there was this lightning storm going on and my father just took charge
the whole thing and attached his boat to her boat and rode them out of it. Shelly
was impressed by David's courage and leadership. He moved in and in October 1993, they were married. Back then,
Shelly earned far more money than David. >> Well, here we are at Ocean State Scuba
pool side. He says he sank nearly every dime into the dive shop. All the training necessary Shelly's parents were
worried. So David signed a prenuptial agreement. He would get no money if he and Shelly divorced. Dad never cared
about money. Shelly herself couldn't have cared less about money. >> No. She just decided this is it. This is the
guy I want to be with. He loves adventure. He's not afraid and he'll always be there. But on that dive in
Tortola, even David admits he wasn't there when Shelly needed him. While their friend stayed on the boat,
David and Shelly dove into the water. Swam our course that we had all agreed upon.
Got to the wrecks. And we went our separate ways as we always did. David says he has no idea how Shelly
died because he wasn't with her. And that's exactly what he told her parents, Richard and Lisa Tyre. We got a
telephone call and um it was David. He said Shelly's no longer with us and he indicated he wasn't there
and didn't know what had happened. I knew that they were unhappy with me when I made the phone call that night.
We just assumed that divers always had buddies, the buddy system, and I kept saying, "Well, weren't you her buddy?"
And he said, "No, I left her." You said you split up during the dive, which you said you normally do. But doesn't that
go against standard practice? I'm not I'm not a diver. I understand that. How many times have you broken the speed
limit? Every diver at one time or another is diving alone. Shelly had done solo dives
before, and David says he tried to help her parents understand what could have happened, explaining that even something
small like a headache could have caused Shelly to lose control underwater and make a mistake.
Do you think it's possible that she just panicked? >> Sure. Panic is the end result of
something else. I don't know what factor got Shelly, but I think some factor got her started.
Who knows what it was? In fact, Shelly had panicked on previous dives. She even wrote about it in her
dive log, which David gave to her parents, but it didn't seem to help them. Because
they're not divers. You know, unless you're a diver, that this is going to be so foreign.
It would be very foreign. But what was really foreign to her parents was how unemotional and
matter-of-fact David seemed about Shelly's death. I'm just not I'm not an out outwardly warm fuzzy guy.
But your wife just died. And your behavior didn't seem appropriate for a man in mourning. My daughter saw it. My
son saw it. But around Jamestown and at Shelly's school, the talk was about how well David was doing without Shelly.
>> This isn't right. He's too elated almost about this. This guy is too happy. Don
Badger taught at Thayer Academy. He says David didn't appear to be in mourning even at the school's memorial service
just weeks after Shelly's death. It wasn't any solemnity to what he was saying and it bothered so many of us
there. It It really did. Then, when David collected more than $600,000 from her estate, he started
spending a lot of money very visibly, making pricey renovations to the dive shop, taking vacations, and even dating.
People were looking for answers. David's friend and fellow scuba instructor, John Langella, says despite
appearances, there's no doubt in his mind that David was grieving. >> he was upset. He was not right. He
didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know if he could ever go back in the water. He called me and he said,
"I'm not doing well. When is this pain going to go away?" Sandy Wheeler is David's ex-wife, Jen and Jeremy's
mother, and has known him for 40 years. He was in a lot of pain and he didn't know how to handle the pain. But if he
was in pain, the people who needed him to express it most of all were Shelly's parents. And for whatever reason, David
just could not do it. In the year or two after Shelly's death, he was not able to say the things that the Tyres needed
to hear. >> When I heard through the grapevine that they were starting to throw the word
"murderer" around, I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. Every cell in
my body wanted to go over there and just like knock on the door and say, "Are you
insane?" Diving is a beautiful sport that's inherently dangerous and it went horribly wrong. And
accidents happen. This is just a horrible accident, a mister. I don't have the answers.
David Swain says his inability to explain Shelly's death led her parents to assume the worst.
That he murdered their daughter. How did that make you feel knowing that your in-laws thought you had killed
their daughter? >> Sad. I mean it made me sad, but Not angry? They didn't know diving.
One year after Shelly's death, the Tyres hired an attorney and sent him and his team of experts to Tortola in search of
the answers David didn't have. We just wanted to know the facts. He never told us the facts.
Over the course of several months, the team uncovered evidence they believe proves David was lying.
We asked a leading expert in underwater investigations to examine their findings.
In reviewing the facts in this case, this was much much more than just a simple scuba diving accident.
Sergeant Jeff Morgan with the San Bernardino, California Sheriff's Department offered to sit through case
documents provided by 48 hours. He also attempted to replicate underwater key parts of Shelly and
David's fatal dive. Anywhere right around in here with What first troubled Sergeant Morgan about the case was the
short amount of time David performed CPR on Shelly. Typically, you don't start CPR until as a rescuer you can no longer
perform it till you're exhausted. How long did you perform CPR? Hm, that's the big magic question.
Minutes. Was it 5 minutes? Was it 10 minutes? Was it 4 minutes? I don't know. It was
minutes. David was very emphatic that she's gone or she's dead. I don't think that's uh that's an
inappropriate response. I don't think that you can declare a person dead in a in that short of a time span. There was
nothing left to do. Nothing. If you are performing CPR on somebody that is responsive,
sure, I would have gone until hell froze over. But, she was not responding to anything.
But, it wasn't just David's behavior that afternoon that raised red flags. Tortola police discovered Shelly's
equipment was damaged. The police didn't make much of it, but the expert hired by
her family's attorney did. Engineer Bill Oliver designs scuba gear. What was unusual
about Shelly's mask is the strap was broken from the side of the mask here, and where this pin here is intact on
this mask, it was missing from hers. Shelly's snorkel, attached to the same side of the mask as the broken pin, was
also missing its mouthpiece. My belief is something pulled the mask off of her face, and I
can see in a scenario where she resisted that, she held onto the mask, and in the
tug-of-war, some things gave. Bottom line is, somebody intervened besides Shelly Tyre with this equipment
to uh to get it in that condition. Sergeant Jeff Morgan agrees. Shelly didn't die in an accident.
She was murdered. What's more, he says only one person could have been responsible. In our
reality, there was nobody else in the water at the time of Shelly's death but David
Swain. I think that David swam up behind her and shut off the air supply, held onto
her until she was struggling, uh reached up, grabbed the mask, ripped the mask from her face, and held onto
her until she stopped struggling. Did you kill Shelly Tyre? Did not, would not, could not. This
thought, this craziness that I would do something like that to Shelly is just it's just so revolting.
But the Tyr's insist David had a motive. Right before the trip to Tortola, Shelly
decided to change jobs and take a substantial cut in pay. The dive shop that David had
was very much supported by Shelly's income. If Shelly was going to take a pay cut, his business may not survive.
According to Sergeant Morgan, that along with the couple's prenuptial agreement meant Shelly was worth more to David
dead than alive. That provides for a motive to commit murder. Everybody keeps thinking that I'm doing
all this for money. I'm just as happy being flat broke as I am when I'm fat and rich.
Probably happier flat broke. Less hassle. The Tyr's weren't buying it. They were
now convinced David murdered their daughter. But authorities in Tortola still refuse to rule Shelly's death a
homicide. So in 2006, the Tyr's sued David in a Rhode Island civil court for wrongful death. Is that part of the
reason why you're fighting this to keep Shelly's memory alive? Yes. Yes. Very much so.
In a videotaped deposition, David testified he and Shelly swam together for 10 to 15 minutes before they
separated. I have a vague recollection of circumnavigating the wrecks, poking around the wrecks, and seeing
Shelly still interested in looking at something around there. And that's the last time I saw her as I
swam off towards the reef. But the Tyr's attorney tried to prove David was with Shelly when she drowned.
Based on the air left in Shelly's tank, he calculates she stopped breathing just
8 minutes into her dive. She battled for her life at the point and place and time exactly
when he was with her, she was burning her air. Right up to the point where he shut it off.
He then showed the jury a videotape demonstration that he and his team prepared illustrating their theory of
how David Swaine swam up behind Shelley, turned off her air, and killed her. In less than 3 hours, Do you have a
verdict? the jury found David Swaine responsible for Shelley's death and awarded the Tyres $3.5 million.
But the Tyres say this has never been about the money. Money has nothing to do with it.
Nothing. It's We just want Shelley. Armed with a civil court victory, the Tyres' attorney convinced Tortolan
authorities to reopen their investigation. A year and a half later, island prosecutors charged David Swaine with
the murder of his wife. David did not fight extradition and wound up in a Tortolan jail.
What? Now what do we do? How do we Who does this? With his trial now looming, Jen and
Jeremy will travel to the island to help prove their father is innocent. But before they can do that, their father
will first have to explain this woman. 10 years after his fatal vacation with Shelley, David Swaine again has a
Caribbean view. But this time, it's from inside a jail cell in Her Majesty's Prison on Tortola.
He has been here awaiting trial for nearly 2 years. It's a journey that I didn't want to take, but if I'm forced
to take it, I'm going to do the best I can with it. His children, Jen and Jeremy, have come to Tortola to help him
prepare his defense. He's very hopeful. He believes, he has to believe. We all all of us have to put
100% of our belief into that this will be okay. This is a man's life we're talking about.
Even as Jen and Jeremy are fighting for their father, their stepmother Shelly is
still very much on their minds. I wanted to go to a place that would be special to me, where I could
pay my respects in peace, doing something that Shelly and I shared, because Shelly and I used to dive
together, too. See you in theater. We went down the line. And I had her wreath up on my arm.
There is a pipe, and I put the wreath down on top of that. That was that I said goodbye.
Jeremy said goodbye, but could not let go of a troublesome detail. I went back a couple more times,
because what was coming up really bothered me. He was most bothered by claims that his
father was with Shelly when she stopped breathing. Prosecution experts claim that the amount of air left in Shelly's
tank showed that she was alive for only 8 minutes. I went down to the site. I used that amount of air that she
consumed, and it took me 15 minutes. Jeremy says the prosecution's 8-minute calculation doesn't add up. He says
Shelly just wouldn't breathe air that quickly. Not if she was running a marathon under the water, which she had
ever used up air that fast. The only explanation, according to Jeremy, is that Shelly was alive a lot longer than
prosecution experts believe, meaning David would have been long gone and nearly back to the boat at the time of
Shelly's death. The only thing that everybody can agree on is that there was some external force
applied to her equipment. For his criminal trial, David has the help of two experienced Boston defense
attorneys, Tim Bradl and Neil Tassel. They argue that Shelly could have ripped off her own mask in a panic. It's right
in the PADI beginners manual. Panic divers are prone to reject their gear. In other words, rip their mask off. You
believe that she panicked underwater? >> Absolutely. That's what all the evidence
appears to be. Now with these lawyers helping to prepare for the criminal trial, David's children are feeling
hopeful about their chances. We know the truth is on our side, so we actually have the upper hand. If you
just stay with the truth, it's all going to be good. But staying with the truth will mean talking about another possible
motive for murder. About a year before Shelly's death, David got very friendly with a chiropractor who visited his dive
shop named Mary Basler. Mary Basler came along, bright, happy woman, willing to talk.
Mary Basler might have been willing to talk, but when David kissed her one summer night, she told him she was not
willing to get involved with a married man. I'm as guilty of being curious beyond I what I should have as anybody.
Perhaps still curious, David wrote Mary that fall, inviting her to spend the weekend with him in Killington, Vermont.
The letter said, "I promise to return you in a rejuvenated state or in need of rest,
whichever strikes our fancy." You invited her to Killington for the weekend. Wasn't that going to be the beginning of
something? No. It was just going to be a a friendly weekend in Killington? You make it sound like a guy can't have
a girlfriend. Does your wife know that you invited her? No. Mary didn't go to Killington, but
soon David wrote Mary again, telling her, "I'm wanting to be with you, but I can't change this mess I've got anytime
soon." You made a reference to a mess that you need to get out of. Well, I think I made a mess by
letting my curiosity get the best of me. You weren't describing your marriage to
Shelly as a mess. No. David addressed that letter to soulmate Mary. You thought Mary was your soulmate?
It's a nice word, isn't it? Did you envision a future with Mary Basler? At that time, no.
But according to both David and Mary, after that kiss, nothing happened between them. It was a stupid,
inconsiderate mistake. That is until Shelly Tyre died. Two months after the fatal trip to
Tortola, David Swaine and Mary Basler started a relationship. When my father started dating Mary soon
after Shelly's death, I remember thinking he's running. He's never dealt with emotion in a strong
way. It's starting to come up, and so he's running to this woman. David and Mary dated for
about a year. I don't think it's about whether he was having an affair or not. It's about whether he killed his wife or
not. David's ex-wife, Sandy Wheeler. I asked him straight out, "Did you do this?" And he said, "No, I did not do
this." And I believe him. What prompted you to ask him did he kill Shelly Tyre? I think I just needed to
hear it from him. I never thought he did it, but I think I just needed to hear it
from him. You were married for 12 years. Yeah. And within that time, did you ever see a
violent side Never. >> to David? No. Never. But it turns out David's early life was
far from peaceful. >> David was a person who kind of wanted to leave things the past is the past.
And now with his life on the line, David Swains defense will delve into secrets he has protected for decades. His mother
died the first year we were together. From what? She was killed. They went from respecting him as the man
that their daughter chose to spend the rest of her life with to calling him a murderer.
They basically made him the scapegoat for a mystery that can't be solved. While the mystery may never be solved
Jen and Jeremy are hoping at the very least evidence presented in a Tortola court can convince the tyers that their
father is an innocent man. He's never given us reason to doubt him. He's a quiet guy. He's a reserved guy.
He doesn't express himself particularly well. I really feel in a big way that those things put him in jail.
It was after all David's unemotional, strangely detached response to Shelly's death that first raised the suspicions
of her parents. But Jen says that's the way her dad has always been. My father was uncomfortable around
emotion and emotional experiences. And I never ever saw him upset. >> That dispassionate demeanor says Jen is
the product of an unspeakably horrific past. He grew up in a very complicated and abusive household.
There was sexual and verbal abuse going on. When David was 9 years old, his father,
Donald Swain, was convicted of sexually abusing another young family member and sentenced to 2 years in prison.
He grew up learning to not speak about things because you it just made it worse when he did.
David says he, too, was preyed upon by his father. What happened to you at the hands of your father?
Horrible things. Can you share some of them? >> No, I'm not going to share those.
In the early 1970s, Donald Swain began living as a woman and changed his name to Diane. It seemed to leave another
scar on David. But it was in 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that David's already fragile world
completely shattered. His brother murdered his mother when I was a baby. 47-year-old Betty Swain was bludgeoned
to death by her own son, David's 8-year-old brother, Richard. Your own brother killed your mother.
Yes. How did that affect you? Horribly. That was just another incredible loss. David was 20 years old when his mother's
body was found in the family's station wagon 5 miles away from her home. Sons don't kill mothers. Former
Minneapolis assistant district attorney Jim Erickson remembers Betty Swains murder for its brutality.
I think a garbage bag was put on her head and she was then hit again and again. There was plastic
embedded deep in her head in her skull. After a 9-day long trial a jury found Richard Swaine guilty.
This kid killed his mom. He just snapped. 33 years later David Swaine, just like his brother,
stands accused of murder. No shortage of tragedy in our lives. I don't know if you've had the occasion
to suffer a loss where you didn't get to say goodbye, but I've had two now and then that's just
that's just wrong. As David's trial approaches his attorneys Neil Tassell and Tim Bradl
hope to use the traumas of David's past to explain how his bizarre response to Shelly's drowning
turned an accident into an accusation of murder. He is a peculiar personality who because
of his traumatic upbringing deals with emotional events in a very stunted way. And it was misperceived by
Shelly's parents who essentially started a boulder rolling down off a mountain that was not going
to stop. But the defense's biggest worry what will happen when this emotionally crippled man takes the stand to defend
himself in court. I can't control what's going to happen. I just have to let it happen.
He's scared as anyone would be. Thousands of miles away from home accused of murder.
10 years after Shelly Tyre's death, David Swains murder trial in Tortola is finally underway.
Shelly's elderly parents have flown in determined to see justice done. They lost their daughter.
And we'll never know how. They know they'll never know how. For Jen and Jeremy, seeing the two people who they
once considered their grandparents is particularly painful. The times that I tried to connect with them over the
grief of losing Shelly, I was rebuffed. They don't want anything to do with me. But they were forced to sit
uncomfortably close to each other in the tiny courtroom. Cameras were not allowed, but
microphones recorded the moment when prosecutor Terrance Williams laid out David's motive for murder. Money and
another woman. This man here, his wife is killed and all his dreams came true. All his dreams came true.
Most damning, says the prosecutor, within months of burying his dead wife, David rekindles his relationship with
Mary Basler. The wife dies in March and by May, they're having intimacy. It painted
David Swaine in a very bad light. David's defense team is working with local council
Hayden St. Clair Douglas. It was a jury of nine people, seven of whom were women. Women jurors who he believes
won't like the idea of David dating Mary so soon after Shelly's death. But that's not the defense team's only
worry. Prosecutors show the jury Shelly's damaged diving gear, tell them how David
stopped giving her CPR, and present their theory that David held her down and turned her air off.
They had to come up with some kind of scary story that would make the jurors who are not divers all say, "Oh, that's
what happened." David's only chance, take the stand to defend himself. His defense attorney questions him
first. Did you kill Shelly Tyre? I did not, could not, would not dream of taking
the rock of my life out of the world. No, I did not. Did you in any way deprive Shelly Tyre of air?
The last thing in the world is I would deprive Shelly of anything. That's why I certainly didn't deprive
her of air. Then the prosecutor tries to rattle David. You held her down. I did not. And
made her become unconscious. I did not. David begins to lose his patience when Prosecutor Williams pushes him about
those letters he wrote to Mary Basler, calling her his soulmate, and inviting her to spend the weekend. You desired
her. I certainly desired her friendship. You desired her in a sexual nature. Not to where you're suggesting, no. Do
you often write love letters to ladies? No. This is not a love letter. It's not love
letters? This is not a love letter. Okay. You came off as arrogant, a little hostile,
smug. What were you thinking when you were up there? I mean, this is a moment for you
to win sympathy from the jurors, to make a connection with them. And how well do you know me?
Not well at all. But I know how you're supposed to comport yourself if your life is on the
line. So, you would want me to be something I'm not. I am what I am. I think people would
want the truth. In what seems like a fatal blow to the defense, the judge refuses to allow
certain testimony about how long Shelly was alive underwater. We had data on her air consumption that
was derived from her own dive logs. A defense expert was prepared to testify that Shelly's last breath occurred more
than 20 minutes into the dive, long after David says he left her side. Unfortunately, the judge viewed our data
with suspicion. And I don't know why. But the prosecution does present its evidence that Shelly died 8 minutes into
the dive, when they say David was still with her. That's when I started to get really
scared. That was the first day I thought we could lose. Now it's all up to the jury. It takes
them only 4 hours to reach a verdict. Up until I saw the jury walking in, I was pretty hopeful.
Guilty of the offense of murder. David Swaine has been found guilty of the murder of his wife, Shelly Shelly Tyre.
David Swaine is sentenced to life behind bars. As authorities take their father away,
his children are stunned and angry. I have never doubted my father's innocence. He is completely innocent.
>> man. The jury made a mistake today. They made a mistake today. >> did not allow our witnesses to say their
full share. Our father is an innocent man. But Richard and Lisa Tyre say that they know the truth. And they thought
their long journey to get justice for Shelly had ended. We feel extremely good that people like David Swaine
won't be able to hurt any more women. From his Tortola jail cell, David Swaine could still see the ocean he loved so
much. He could even taste the salt in the air, but he wondered if it would ever wash over him again.
Do you think you'll ever walk? Will I ever walk out of here as a free person? Yeah.
To not think that would be to give up. I'm not going to give up. Swain did not give up.
Two years after his conviction, a three-judge panel overturned his guilty verdict
because the trial judge had refused to let the jury consider accidental death as a defense.
The judges also decided there would be no new trial. Too much time has passed and witness memories have faded since
Shelley's death more than a decade ago. David Swain walked out of court a free man.
No judicial body has declared him innocent. The Tyre's attorney, Wren Olin, spoke for the family.
And two distinctly different juries have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of
Shelley Tyre. Swain quickly returned to the United States and issued a written statement still insisting Shelly's death
was an accident. But for the Tyre family, David Swain is still a guilty man. For a parent whose daughter has been
murdered, it will never go away. >> Aaron, this is Florida. Nothing strange here.
The house was beautiful. It was 4,000 square feet. It had a pool, a garage apartment.
It was a great house. The only problem was upstairs, some of the rooms were too small and just the functionality did not
work for some families. I could understand why they'd want to renovate it. When did you first meet Shanti and
David? >> David just called me on the phone and asked if I'd come by and take a look at
the project. He said that they had done some work. I wasn't at all prepared for what I saw when I got there.
They had fully disassembled this house to a degree that I'd never seen before. It was rather astonishing.
It was largely wide open, like you're inside of a giant shoebox. This house became more than just a
project to David Tronnes. It was his life. He obsessed on it. This house is the center point to the story and
ultimately led to Shanti's demise. This case all started with a call to 911 placed at approximately 3:51 p.m. on
April 24th, 2018 by David Tronnes. Hello. And David says that he came home and found Shanti floating in the bathtub.
Is she not pretty? Did that story make sense? Absolutely not. Shanti was extensively beaten.
It makes me emotional. I feel bad for her family and for her son. It's upsetting that she won't get that
life with him. Clearly David Tronnes, from the very beginning, is a suspect. Absolutely.
Dave was asked to go to the station Thank you. and voluntarily remain there for hours. Just have a seat there.
It'll be a little bit. He did not request counsel. He consented to swabs, to clippings,
to a search of his person. Dave went into that interview with an agenda. They'd never been more in love.
We were so happy. And he just started getting confronted and confronted and confronted. I told
you she was murdered. Murdered. Someone took her life from her. And there's nothing you can't even fake it. That's
how much you could give it. And it became a war of wills in that room. I don't have any explanation for
her the severity of her injuries. And didn't David win that war of wills? He was not
broken. Well, Dave didn't confess. Am I boring you? It seems pretty clear these two detectives, they went into
this room, decided that David was a murderer, and then went the extra mile to try to put a file together to prove
such. >> Did you guys get into an argument? Was she It's about the house? No. Is it possible that without this house
Shanti might still be alive? I think that's completely true. Delaney Park is a well-established
neighborhood. It's been around for over 100 years. Tara Stevens knows Delaney Park inside
and out. She's a realtor who buys and sells homes there. It's a great place to live, to raise a
family. A lot of outside activity, great school system. It's a It's a great neighborhood.
So, Delaney Park is a mile or so from downtown Orlando. Ryan Vescio, a former prosecutor with
the Orlando State Attorney's Office, got to know the area well when he led the investigation into the death of Shanti
Cooper in April 2018. Did Shanti ever indicate to any friends or family that she was afraid of anyone?
No. So, you guys knew each other approximately 5 years this month? Vescio and investigators dug in to learn
all they could about Shanti and her husband, David Tronnes. The couple had been married for more
than a year. Everybody we spoke to about Dave and Dave's background said that he was
highly intelligent. That's what made him successful when he worked in business. And how would you describe Shanti?
Shanti Cooper was a hard-working, dedicated mom who cared deeply, deeply about her son. Her son was her world.
Shanti's son, Jackson, was then 8 years old. She shared custody with his father,
Jim Cooper, whom Shanti had divorced in 2013. She launched a lucrative financial
software business and worked out of her home office. How did she meet Dave Tronnes? Dave was
outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time. They met over the internet and started exchanging messages and
profiles, and that turned into emails. Investigators later found this document on Shanti's computer that shows just how
smitten she was. Dave, I will have to say I think this will be a delicious, detour, amazing,
magnificent, life-changing detour. I've had a pep in my step since we started this little email affair.
In Minnesota, David had just ended a long marriage, but within months of meeting Shanti online, he moved to
Orlando. Dave fell in love with Delaney Park and the house at 218 East Copeland Drive, a
house that came complete with its own gargoyles. We sold it to him for 607,500, which was a really, really good deal.
How did he pay for it? Cash. Dave put the house in trust for himself and his mother, and soon introduced
Shanti to Tara. They seemed very happy. She was a beautiful, very nice person. I
enjoyed meeting her. Tara did not feel quite the same about Dave. Dave's personality
changed a little bit after the contract was signed. I just saw a very different side of him. He was like a a guy or a
child who wants to get their way and they don't stop until they do. You were glad when the deal was over? Absolutely.
I was very glad. I didn't get a good feeling from him. Cindy and Dan Dow are Shanti's relatives
by marriage. They didn't like Dave at first, but it wasn't long before Cindy had a change of heart.
I love her, so I grew to love him. We absolutely adored him. The first time we had lunch, he walked in and he said,
"How lucky am I? I get to have lunch with two of the most beautiful women that I know."
I mean, that's charming. In 2015, Dave and Shanti moved into their new home and attempted to remodel
it with Shanti footing the bill. What did Dave do all day? It's a great question. If you ask Dave,
he says that he worked on the house and worked on the renovations and took care of the property and cleaned the pool.
Contractors came and went. Demolition went on and on, but the renovation was an expensive failure. By 2018,
the main part of the house was unlivable. Shanti was reduced to working and sleeping above the garage in a small
apartment. Where did Dave sleep? I think he slept downstairs with the dogs. Maybe not all
the time, but I'm pretty sure he was down there. Desperate to resolve the housing
situation, Dave turned to Keith Ori, a local house renovator who also appeared on a reality TV show called Zombie House
Flipping. Neighborhoods are under attack from zombie houses. What is Zombie House Flipping? Zombie
House Flipping is a house flipping TV show where we take houses that are the worst of the worst.
Is anything broken? I think we have a termite problem. And what we do is bring them back to
life. I looked at the house, I realized that the structure was suspect, and uh politely stepped outside. An engineer
discovered the only thing holding up the house was 2 in of stucco. It was rather
astonishing. They took away all the interior dividing walls, and basically what was left was a two-story shell.
Weren't you tempted to just run for the hills? Yeah, but at the same time, you rarely come
across a challenge that's that uh that bold. Keith was up for the challenge and began shoring up the
interior. And then, he got the go-ahead to use the house in the next season of Zombie House Flipping. This
is Zombie House Flipping. It was mid-April 2018, and filming was set to begin in early
May. But there was a problem. Getting Dave and Shanti together to talk in fit in person
was proving to be really difficult. Keith went to the house to meet with the couple one last time to be sure they
were on board. And they both said, "Yes, we understand." And then, she took off immediately just and left. I got a sense
that she was pissed off at him. Fasciano said Shanti had been trying for years to get her name on the trust that
owned the house, but Dave never followed through. And it seemed like things just
sort of culminated to a boiling point. It was only days before Shanti's murder. She desperately wanted stability in her
life, but was living in a house that was anything but. Her name was not on the deed, and she'd
already spent a lot of money on what was essentially Dave's house. >> Shanti was the bankroll, the sole
bankroll to almost a quarter million-dollar renovation. >> What did she get for her $250,000?
Well, a lot of headaches and heartaches. Thank you. Shortly after Shanti was pronounced
dead, Dave Tronnes went to Orlando Police Headquarters. Look at her as soon as I
can. Where he remained without a lawyer for 14 hours. We got to figure this out together,
okay? >> Of course. He didn't attempt to conceal anything. Richard Selesky is Dave's
attorney. He gave the law enforcement access to everything that they needed, everything that they wanted, and he laid
himself out there for examination by all. We want to say how sorry we are for your loss. At the start, Detectives
Teresa Sprague and Barb Sharp seemed sympathetic. Take a minute, okay? I know this is
super tough. They're very good at building rapport and have a tremendous amount of experience. If you have a
suspect who's willing to talk, you just hit play and sit back and let them go on
and on and on. And that's what Dave does. Dave sticks with his story. He took the dogs to a park in the
afternoon, and after he returned, he found Shanti, still wearing her pajamas, floating in the tub. So,
I could hear the water is running. See her laying. One of her legs is kind of sticking up
and out a little bit. And it's just extremely awful. I need you. Can you tell me what your
address is? He tells the detectives that he tried to perform CPR, but couldn't get Shanti to
breathe. She was dead when first responders arrived. Dave has a lot to say, and a lot to say to try to convince
the detectives that he wasn't involved in his wife's death. That means something like
well, either she slipped or she fell, or she blacked out. Why did he agree to sit
down and talk to these detectives without an attorney? Because he had nothing to hide, and he didn't think
that it would hurt him. But the veteran detectives began to pick at his story and question how Shanti's
bloody cheek and bruised eye came from a slip in the tub. And this is This is what I found.
Somebody who slips and falls doesn't receive the amount of blunt force trauma to focused areas in the head. Detectives
also had spotted blood on Shanti's bed and suspected that's where she had been killed. But Dave says the blood likely
was from Shanti's period. It did get on the bedspread, and it did get on the foot of the bed. There was
lot of other evidence that would be inconsistent with this being blood associated with a
menstrual cycle. Detectives also suspected, and Shanti's autopsy later confirmed, that she was strangled.
But Saleski says, as frustrating as it may have been to authorities, Dave can't explain Shanti's injuries.
Not because he's lying, but because he simply doesn't know. He took his best guess based upon what
he come to find. He doesn't know what happened, is the point. The detectives press on for hours,
taking turns and peppering Dave with tougher and tougher questions. Did you two argue? No, absolutely not. Did you
fight? Absolutely not. Did you harm Shanti in any way? Absolutely not. Sharp and Sprague also question his
timeline. Dave says that he called 911 about 5 minutes after he found Shanti. You've got to help us understand. But
detectives insist that doesn't match what they found at the house. There's no splashing of water anywhere in the
bathroom. The inside of the tub is dry, completely dry, and she's damp. She's not even wet. So, you've got to help us.
Can you do that? I've tried to tell you everything. They're drawing conclusions based upon
observations, and they're moving forward based upon these assumptions. They try to zero in on a possible
motive. Did she catch you with another woman? Did she have a boyfriend? Did Was she about the house? No. But given
the sorry state of the house, detectives begin to wonder if that had something to
do with Shanti's murder. I can't imagine how stressful it must have been. You know, not living in the home you
want to live in and it's taking two plus years, three years. Um I'm I'm sick to death about what
happened, but nothing happened today because of there was no animosity between us
whatsoever. And he says Shanti wasn't upset that her name wasn't on the trust that
owned the house. So, we had kind of talked about it and debated it and we finally just said it doesn't really
matter. Let's just move forward. Teresa and Barb are tenacious. They don't stop. They're well versed in
interrogation techniques. You know, we saw the good cop, bad cop. We saw manipulation. Barb Sharp even moves her
hand to Dave's knee and adopts a more subtle tone. It'll be okay. We can't help you until you help us.
Before Teresa Sprague begins another attack. She treats you like a landscaper, like the pool boy.
Probably because she's bringing in the money. As the hours tick by, What do you want your mom to think about
you? They try anything they can to get him to confess. You just want to talk, right?
This almost became a game of psychological warfare in that interview room. Dave began the interview by saying how
happy he had been with Shanti, but almost eight hours into the interrogation, the detectives aren't
buying it. You claim to love that woman? I would be under the table in a ball if I was in love with
that woman and she was dead. I I would be inconsolable. Do you think that he was penalized because he didn't
act the way detectives wanted him to act? Oh, time time and time again. You know, you fake cried for about seven or
8 hours today. Not one tear came out of your eyes, not one. There's a lot of conclusions being
drawn off of what they considered to be an odd affect of Mr. Tronnes. And I think that that's a dangerous thing to
do because we all react to stress differently. We all grieve differently. Dave even agrees to take a polygraph,
but by then it was the middle of the night. And investigators couldn't find anyone
to administer it. They had to let him go at the end of the interview. How did they feel about that?
>> You always want to make the arrest right up front. You do. With Dave Tronnes free, police would
have to keep digging for clues. But even they were surprised by what they found. Is it fair to say that Dave
Tronnes was living a double life? >> At least two lives. She didn't slip and fall. It's not a
possibility. Even though detectives were outright accusing Dave Tronnes of murdering Shanti. He strangled her.
Some of her relatives, like Cindy Dow, believed him. Are you kidding? My bet my last dollar that it wasn't
him. I thought he was innocent. You honestly did, Cindy. Why? I think it was just the growth of our
relationship and how she adored him. Absolutely adored him and it looked very mutual to everyone. Did she ever express
any concern or fear of Dave? Never. >> Never. After being questioned by detectives,
Dave headed straight to his home in Delaney Park, and that's where Cindy found him.
I stood him up and turned him around and looked at his arms and there was not a scratch on him.
There was nothing. Cindy, did you ever ask him point-blank, "Did you have something to do with the death of
Shanti?" I did. What did he say? No. I would not kill the love of my life. Defense attorney Richard Zaleski says
the problem with this case is that detectives and prosecutors were convinced from the start that Dave
Tronnes was Shanti's killer. Zaleski says the bias of the investigators is clear from the police
report. They've already suggested that they have it figured out, like bull in a china shop trying to make this work at
all costs because they've done nothing to develop other suspects. But Vecchio denies that. He says detectives checked
out every possible suspect and got lucky when an important lead fell into their laps. A worker from Club Orlando called
and shared that they knew of Dave Tronnes because he was a patron at the club. What is Club Orlando? Club Orlando
is a same-sex bathhouse. Did Dave have a membership at Club Orlando? Several memberships. Every 6 months, Dave
renewed his membership. Detectives headed to the club to investigate and found a long-time club
employee who in this police-recorded interview says he witnessed Dave having sex at the club. I was just walking
through and I saw David uh he was giving oral sex to this guy. From what everybody who
knew Shanti has said, she would absolutely have not tolerated it, put up with it, endorse it. It just wouldn't
have happened. There's a significant possibility that Shanti knew all about it. And why do you believe that? Because
none of her family members seem to know anything about it. And and her family members seem to indicate that if Shanti
did know, she'd be upset. >> And and I appreciate that. But what you tell your mom and dad about your sex
life and what you do behind closed doors, you know, people are people, adults are adults, and life is messy.
But Veshia wonders if Shanti ultimately did discover Dave's duplicity on the night she was murdered. Had that
revelation made Shanti threaten to turn off the money spigot once and for all? But she would be killed because of a
house? Well, what would somebody do when they were about to lose the most important thing in their life?
Because in April of 2018, the most important thing in Dave's life was that house.
Dave told Cindy and others that he believed Shanti may have been murdered by a burglar. And the defense claimed
that $5,000 in cash was missing from the house. Also missing, Shanti's diamond engagement ring, valued at approximately
$15,000. >> That was highly, highly suspicious. The detectives wanted to get to the bottom
of it. Why couldn't it have been exactly as Dave said, that he leaves and someone
breaks into the house, beats her, leaves her there, and Dave comes home? Why doesn't that fit? Well, the lack of
forced entry, this scene did not have any sort of evidence of a struggle. There's thousands of dollars of
valuables that are left in plain sight. A private investigator hired by defense lawyers canvassed neighbors asking them
about a particular homeless man who reportedly had been seen around Delaney Park. It was said he resembled the actor
Woody Harrelson. What about the transient that everyone describes who looks a lot like Woody Harrelson?
I mean, when you got nothing better, you throw everything against the wall and see if something sticks.
This home is at 218 East Copeland Drive. Detective Teresa Sprague tracked Woody down and recorded this interview. You
see there's a large blue dumpster in the driveway. Have you ever been there? No. Nothing placed Woody inside Dave and
Shanti's home, but Vecchio says his interview shows police chased down every lead including checking out her
ex-husband. Shanti had had a bad divorce. This was not an easy end of the marriage. Did you look at Jim Cooper?
Yes. Mr. Cooper was interviewed and Jim Cooper was eliminated as a suspect very early on.
He had an alibi. On August 29th, 2018, 4 months after Shanti's murder, Dave Tronnes was arrested on a charge of
first-degree murder and held without bail. And how did the two of you react when
you heard that? I wasn't believing it whatsoever. I thought they were just trying to solve a
murder easily. I always had the suspicion. Dave's arrest gave prosecutors another
piece of the puzzle. Shanti's missing engagement ring. The ring is probably one of the most powerful and damning
pieces of evidence in this case. As long as that expensive ring was missing, Dave
Tronnes could argue that a burglar had murdered Shanti. But the day he was arrested, police found it among his
possessions. We searched the room in his mother's house where he was living, and lo and behold, we found the rings in
his suitcase in his bedroom. Still, Dave's arrest was not the end of the investigation.
It led to a cascading series of new revelations that surprised even a veteran prosecutor like Ryan Vecchio.
This was a case that had so many twists and turns, I would no longer make assumptions of anything.
You don't learn this stuff in law school. After the arrest of Dave Tronnes, investigators received a tip that took
them completely by surprise. It led them to Minnesota and back in time to when a
much younger Dave was married to a woman named Carol. Former close friends of Carol told detectives that they believed
Dave may have been poisoning her. >> As soon as Carol got married to Dave, she started suffering a bunch of unknown
health issues. That made prosecutor Ryan Vecchio wonder if Shanti could have been poisoned.
>> In Shanti's case, she had appendicitis and had to have an appendectomy. Shanti
had had that emergency appendectomy eight weeks before her death. Appendicitis and poisoning have similar
symptoms, and Dave told detectives that Shanti had digestion problems right up to the day she died. She hasn't found
since the appendectomy a diet that she can eat regularly and feel good. Vescio needed more information, so he
and Detective Teresa Sprague went to Minnesota in November of 2018 to meet Carol face-to-face
and recorded this interview. I have issues with chronic pain and immune system issues that are not
necessarily definitive. Carol told Vescio she also struggled with gut issues and that Dave cooked
most of their meals. >> Has it ever come into your frame of thought that your marriage to David Tronnes or him
cooking or making you drinks was making you sick? No. Have you ever thought that
any of your issues related to your health problems was him poisoning you? No. Carol said her health issues continued
even after her divorce from Dave, yet Vescio says he remains suspicious. >> It very well could have been a scenario
to where Dave was providing both of them with items that caused them to be ill. We
just could never have real concrete proof of it. Vescio wondered if there was another
reason Carol seemed to be protecting her former husband and whether it had anything to do with Dave's finances. We
saw thousand pages of bank records belonging to David Tronnes. One thing that we
noticed was that Dave and Carol still had a joint bank account together. That account at times contained hundreds
of thousands of dollars, but Carol said she simply had forgotten to take her name off that account.
>> People who are divorcing each other don't leave assets on the table and they sure as heck don't leave them together.
It's unclear where that money came from. Vessio believes that Carol, who was not
charged with any crime, could be helping Dave manage his money while he's in jail.
I think that Carol is involved in David's finances and has some level of control.
The surprises in the case kept coming. Soon after Shanti's death, detectives had placed a surveillance camera pointed
toward the outside of Dave's house. Detective Sprague was interested to see who was coming and going out of the
house and that camera ended up actually turning into a pretty valuable piece of evidence. That camera captured images of
private investigators hired by Dave's original law firm coming and going. Detectives believe that when one of
those lawyers, Robert Mandel, realized that the PIs were on camera, he placed a call to Vessio. I never ever expected
that he was going to tell me that he in fact had an item of physical evidence that he had been holding on to
for 11 months. Never would have expected it in a thousand years. And what was that evidence? They were a set of
purported bloody sheets and it literally literally took my breath away. That defense attorney,
Robert Mandel, told Vessio that the defense team had acquired the bloody sheets from the garage apartment where
Shanti was found dead, but had never turned them over to the prosecution. But Ryan, as shocking as that is, that
wasn't the only evidence that later turned up, was it? No, I ended that call with the defense attorney and said,
"Listen, if you have anything else, now is the time to tell me." And about 10 12 hours later, the next
morning, I got another call from him. And that's when he said, "I have one other item that I think we have to turn
over." That item turned out to be a green cord. Mandel told Vecchio that a private
investigator removed it from the house and preserved it in an evidence bag because Dave was threatening to kill
himself. Does that make sense to you? No, makes zero sense to me. Why go get the item and then treat it as
if it were a piece of evidence? Remember, the autopsy revealed that Shanti had been strangled and Vecchio
believed there was a real possibility that the green cord could be the murder weapon.
With the prosecution now in possession of that green cord, tests were conducted to see if indeed it was the murder
weapon used to strangle Shanti. Is there any evidence to indicate that in fact that cord was used to kill Shanti? No,
that cord did not have any DNA on it. But the cord wasn't picked up until weeks after Shanti's death and
authorities believed Dave had plenty of time to clean it. Investigators had spent months examining
all the evidence leading Vecchio to craft his own theory about when Shanti was killed.
We found one single earring was placed on the nightstand. The other earring was in Shanti's ear.
And what does that say to you? That tells me that Shanti was most likely sitting on the side of her bed preparing
for bed taking those earrings out and that's when the attack happened. The sheets and bed frame did have
Shanti's blood on them and Shanti didn't use her phone after 11:30 p.m. The scene
was consistent with this attack happening somewhere in the midnight to 2:00 3:00 a.m. time period. But David
called 911 late in the afternoon saying he had just found Shanti floating in the
tub. Salesky says investigators are jumping to unfair conclusions. A few hours of time off the grid doesn't allow
them to shift the timeline. Prosecutors continued to build their case even as Dave sat behind bars
listening to anyone who had information about Shanti's death no matter how surprising the source. I met David
Trennis in three whiskey. Three whiskey is a housing unit in the Orlando jail where Edward Gismondi
shared a cell with Dave Trennis. He slept next to me and I slept next to him. After getting out of jail, Gismondi met
with Vecchio and Sprague. He says that he and Dave began talking and bonded over a shared interest in obscure
hallucinogenics including Sapo, a poison derived from a South American frog. He said that you could use Sapo to put
in people's salsa and killed them quietly. Killer salsa might sound ridiculous, but
not so far-fetched when you consider that authorities suspected that David poisoned both his wives.
Gismondi supplied even more information that if true was truly damning. He says David admitted that he and Chantel had a
fight before she died. He just said there there was an app on his phone that there was messages on that she had found
apparently that suggested he was having sex with men and she was going to show everybody. And what did Dave say he did?
He snapped. He said he freaked out. And did what? He didn't specifically say that what he did, but that he had killed
his wife. Investigators were unable to corroborate Gismondi's story about the app. We
didn't have any purchase records of apps and we did not see it on Dave's phone. I've read your statement and at no point
do I see anywhere where you had told them that David actually said I killed my wife. But sitting here
now you said Dave told you I killed my wife. Yes, ma'am. In jail he said I killed my wife. Word for word
is what he told me. But why wouldn't you tell the state's attorney's office that?
>> I did. I told them that he had snapped. That's the word that I used. I don't remember if she had asked me did he
admit to murdering her? Like word for word like that? One of the few things both the
prosecution and the defense do agree on is that neither is sure they can believe
Gismondi. He pled guilty to one count of lewd or lascivious behavior and is now a
registered sex offender and still on probation. This individual certainly has credibility issues.
Zaleski took over Dave's defense in early 2020 after the original attorneys withdrew
from the case. Raising doubt isn't going to be difficult here. But Shanti's family has no doubt about
what should happen to Dave. He has to be found guilty. He is guilty. Cindy Dow, who once found Dave so
charming, feels very differently about him now. He should be sentenced to death.
I want him to remember when he looks at me. I want him to remember every lie. Every lie.
When Cindy remembers Shanti, her heart still breaks. >> She was happy, giving, kind,
fun, loving person who had a mission in this life. And she didn't get to fulfill it.
>> Woo!

"48 Hours" cases exploring these terrifying death investigations. Watch the YouTube mini-marathon, which includes "Son of Sam: The Killer Speaks," "Shelley's Last Breath" and "Home Renovation Homicide."

00:00 Son of Sam: The Killer Speaks 41:34 Shelley's Last Breath 01:20:45 Home Renovation Homicide

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, discusses his murders, motivations, and life in prison amid public fear in 1970s New York City.

Key points

The Killer's Identity. Police admit they have no leads on the Son of Sam's identity.
Berkowitz's Confession. David Berkowitz reflects on his life and the darkness that consumed him.
A Night of Horror. Robert Violante and Stacy Moskowitz go on their first date, but it ends in tragedy.
Courtroom Outburst. In a shocking moment, a victim's family confronts Berkowitz during his sentencing.
The Autopsy and Investigation. Authorities ruled Shelly's death an accident after an autopsy, but questions lingered.
Murder Accusations. Shelly's parents suspect David of murder after inconsistencies in his account.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I mean, who goes around killing people?

Questioning the nature of the killer's actions.

11:47WatchApr 25, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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