The Han Family Murders | Full Episode | Forensic Files

♪♪ -We don't want to accept that there's actually evil that walks amongst us. But it does.
And this was pure evil. [ Camera shutter clicks ] -The Han family. I felt better whenever I spent time
with Henry, Jennie, and Emily. Henry was born to be a healer. -Henry was the guy.
In the alternative medicine world, patients would come in from all different parts
of the country to see him. When you go to the clinic, it just kind of oozed of peacefulness.
He had the magic. -Emily had her own little table and her crayons. Her mom, Jennie, was there working in the clinic.
It was kind of good therapy to be with the three of them. -They did make a good team.
-We were business partners with Henry, and we were becoming friends. -We really had a beautiful road ahead of us.
♪♪ -He had a 10 a.m. meeting with his normal investment group. -It was probably, you know, a good 45 minutes after
the meeting was supposed to start that we all kind of went, "Where is Henry?" -If he was going to be two minutes late, he called.
-We're trying to call Henry and it was going straight to voicemail, -So for him to miss this meeting would be a big deal.
-Yes. -He just wouldn't. Something was not right. -We all had a pit in our stomach,
and we were trying to find a reason why that pit shouldn't be there. Emily's birthday is coming up.
Maybe they took her to Disneyland. Somebody's got to go over to their house and check on them.
Mark finally gets in touch with Don Goldberg. -Very unusual not to get any communication
from either Jennie or Henry. By midday, I decided to go to the home. From the outside, it looked normal.
Went to the front door, the door was closed, but it was not locked. The two vehicles were in the garage,
which you could see through the windows at the top of the garage door. Then I called 911.
They came over and did a welfare check. -Around 5:30 that evening, two deputies arrived.
Made entry, called out, no response, and then started to look to see if there was any sign of foul play,
and that's what led them to open the garage door. And then if you walk around the first car,
they can see what appears to be three bodies wrapped in plastic and duct tape. -Within a minute or two,
sunk in that the -- the three bodies were Henry, Jennie and Emily. My friends were gone.
There was a certain amount of shock that sets in. -We didn't hear back from Don.
We didn't eat that night. We didn't sleep that night. -A five year old. Three days short of her birthday.
It shook us all to our core. It was rough. Things started rapidly going into the next phase.
Who, how, and why? It's a huge home. There was biological evidence throughout. Primarily in the upstairs,
in the bedrooms where the murders took place. The smell of bleach was there, indicating a cleanup attempt.
An entire family killed, presumably while they slept. We knew there was a monster out there,
and we were going to find him and get him. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Mark and Marla Palumbo were concerned
when their friend and business partner, Doctor Henry Han, failed to show up for a meeting on March 23rd, 2016.
They would learn the horrific reason why the following day from a news report. -I was in the kitchen on my computer
and I kept checking and I just remember screaming, "They're all dead." -Doctor Han, his wife Jennie,
and their five-year-old daughter Emily were found dead in the garage of their Santa Barbara home.
Mark had just seen them on his way back from a business trip. -We went out for dinner, played connect Four with Emily.
-He brought his phone to me, and I'm just looking at all these pictures of Emily,
and they were taken the Friday before. -Just horrific. -Yeah. And she was just goofing around with a book.
Making all these funny faces. And you could tell she was loving life. -The Palumbos had recently embarked
on a new business venture with Doctor Han. -I really loved the guy. I mean, he really was smart and curious and open minded.
-He had to come with food and in shorts and flip flops. You know, just no air about him.
-But what made you trust him? -His passion. -Yeah. He cared about people. -Don Goldberg had known Doctor Han for more than 25 years
and thought of him as a brother. To Don, he was just Henry. -I was approximately ten years older than Henry,
but he still called me his younger brother. You just don't come across a friend like Henry.
It's once in a lifetime... friendship. -When they met, Henry was making a name for himself
after emigrating from China, where he came from a family of physicians. He would soon take over the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic.
-I had several patients who had had medication side effects. They would say, "I went to see Doctor Han
and it went away," and it was like, "I got to meet this guy." -Doctor Glenn Miller, a psychiatrist,
says he and Henry developed a mutual respect and even partnered on a book about how Eastern and Western medicine could work together
to improve patients quality of life. -Henry's practice was flourishing as far as active patients he would see,
like in a month, it was hundreds. But he also tried to balance it. -In 2009, that balance he was seeking became a reality
when Henry met and married Jennie Yu. -He seemed incredibly happy. It was good to see Henry that happy.
-Jennie was absolutely warm and lovely. -When they had Emily, the dream was complete.
-Henry was just on cloud nine. He was very proud father. -They were often together at the clinic
where Jennie had quickly become Henry's right hand, says her friend Isaiah Oregon.
-He really trusted her and let her kind of take the reins. -In the spring of 2016... -It's my turn.
-...they were getting ready to celebrate Emily's sixth birthday. -Where should I go?
-Wherever. -Go wherever? -We were making plans for her birthday party. And you know, I had all her presents wrapped.
-But just three days shy of her birthday, her loved ones were stricken with grief.
-I don't really have adequate words to describe how I felt. The sadness is too deep.
-As night fell on the Han estate on Wednesday, March 23rd, Don tried to process what he had just witnessed.
He had called 911 when he couldn't find the Hans anywhere, and he was with sheriff's deputies when they discovered
the bodies in the garage wrapped in plastic. -None of it made any sense at all. -Prosecutor Ben Ladinig says it was shortly before midnight
when Santa Barbara sheriff's investigators obtained a search warrant and began to piece together
what had happened inside the house. It appeared the family had been shot while they slept upstairs on the second floor.
Henry in the couple's bedroom, and Jennie and Emily across the hall in Emily's room.
-Emily's room was tough to see. Mom probably read her stories to have Emily go to sleep
that night and was sleeping with her. -What did that tell you about the depravity
of the kind of person who could do something like that? What were they after? -We didn't know what he was after.
But the depravity, I've never seen anything like it. -Detectives picked up on the distinct smell
of the murderer's attempts to cover his tracks. -The smell of bleach was there. We had bleach bottles found.
There were bleach stains on the carpet and throughout other items upstairs. And then you see bloody things in a washing machine.
-All the bedding which had been stripped from the beds, was found piled in the laundry room and in the machine.
-The washing machine -- the alarm had gone off because the load was unbalanced. And within there are a huge group of bloody sheets.
-Wedged in pillows in the laundry, crime scene, investigators found a .22 caliber bullet and bullet fragments.
Three matching shell casings were found within the wrapping of Jennie's body, and one was later found lodged between the baseboard
and box spring of Emily's bed. -We had one bullet that was a through and through.
It was perfect for comparison for the murder weapon. As things are going, we start to find clues
as to who potentially could be involved. -Inside a paper bag next to Henry's bed,
detectives found a document signed the last day Henry was seen alive. It provided a name.
-It's basically a four page business contract between two partners. Partner one, Pierre Haobsh and partner two, Doctor Han.
-Don Goldberg knew a Pierre that Doctor Han was associated with, but Don thought he was harmless.
-I did not think that Pierre was capable of murder. I never really saw Pierre become angry or agitated.
-But the Palumbos had a bad feeling. -You didn't trust him? -I did not. ♪♪ ♪♪ -This community was left with a scar.
-The indelible scar left by the murders was the kind that not even Doctor Han could have healed.
-Oh. It was like a bomb exploded. Nobody could move for weeks. There was something very, very, very dark going on.
-Kymberlee Ruff says Doctor Han treated her family for two decades. -He could do anything.
-Ever since she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after giving birth to her son,
Kymberlee says Doctor Han's holistic approach allowed her to nurse her newborn while still treating her tumors.
-No matter how scared you might be or frightened, you just love feeling like it's going to be okay.
Yeah, he was something. -Instilling hope may have been one of the secrets to why his patients say Doctor Han could heal
just about anything. -Doctor Han, like, saved my life. -Sheri Buron was also a young mother with cancer
when she went to Doctor Han. -My daughter Abby was 15 months old. I felt a lump under my armpit.
-Even though she had the prescribed surgery and chemotherapy, she credits Doctor Han with her survival.
-There were so many people that passed away around me, he got me through it. -What was the impact for you of his loss?
-It's the fear of if something comes back, and I'm trying every day to be positive
and try to stay with his level of calm and how much confidence he had that like everything's taken care of.
-That conviction is what had drawn the Palumbos, who worked in the skincare industry
into their partnership with Doctor Han, hoping to treat various skin maladies. -Henry was very interested in CBD.
-Having used CBD in his practice to treat pain and inflammation, Henry wanted to harness its full potential.
It was groundbreaking science at the time, and he wanted 25-year-old Pierre Haobsh to help develop it.
-Pierre, from what we gathered, had a lot of experience, uh -- in laboratories in this case relating to CBD.
-Henry had taken a liking to Pierre after meeting him through another associate,
but the Palumbos were uncomfortable with Pierre from the start. -You know how when you meet somebody,
you can't put your finger on it, but something's not right. That was Pierre. -There was always this kind of little boiling simmer.
-When it came time to do the lab work, the Palumbos say the results were disturbing.
-What we came to find out was he was using toxic materials. When we called him on it, he said, you know,
"I'm just learning more about the molecules." It was just weird. -As it turned out, Pierre wasn't a formally trained scientist.
He didn't even have a college degree. -The more you got onto that surface, the more you realized that he could talk a game
and stay over the folks heads a bit scientifically. -Sounds like he was sort of a snake oil salesman type, right?
-He was. -Sophisticated one. Yes. -Yeah, very sophisticated one. -There was more eyebrow-raising behavior --
Pierre had also made odd charges on Henry's account. -I was doing all the finances and I'm like,
this doesn't look right. -Not a business expense. -Not at all. -After Marla flagged the charges to Henry,
he discovered they were for escort services. -Henry was, "You won't believe this! Pierre's out."
-That was the final straw. -That was Henry's final straw. -But then, a few weeks before the murders,
Mark and Marla say Henry brought up Pierre out of the blue. -Henry mentioned that he had learned a lot more
about Pierre's upbringing, how much Pierre had to overcome from his childhood. Mark nor I really responded.
We didn't want to have Pierre back in our fold at all. -The Palumbos were not alone in being wary of Pierre.
Jennie's friend Isaiah says Jennie also had concerns and confided in him about them four days before the murders.
-It was weighing on her heavily. Do we trust him? Do we give him another chance?
I was like, absolutely not. If he stole from you before, he's going to steal from you again.
-But Pierre had already ingratiated himself back into Henry's goodwill. -Henry had a very trusting nature.
Henry had shared with me that Pierre told him that he was ill, that it was late-stage cancer,
and that he was going to do what he could to help Pierre. -Using Henry's good nature by lying to him.
By manipulating him. -Authorities learned that Pierre had been an overnight guest at the Hans home
before the murders, and had formed a new partnership with the healer. There was that contract found in the master bedroom
they had signed the last day of Henry's life. But prosecutor Ben Ladinig says it didn't seem legitimate.
-It was like a college sophomore drafted it. It was not notarized, not witnessed.
-Detectives had found something else of interest. -A brilliant detective found packaging to the plastic wrapping
that all three of the Han family were wrapped in. In a trash can in the kitchen area
next to packaging of 3M duct tape, similar to the duct tape that was used to wrap all three of the bodies.
-He recognized the plastic wrap was a Home Depot brand and reached out to the company's security department.
-And Home Depot was, within hours of us gaining entry into the house, able to run those two items together to see
if they had been purchased in the Southern California region within the last several days or weeks.
-A Home Depot in Oceanside, California, had security footage of a man who matched the DMV photo of Pierre Haobsh
who also happened to have an Oceanside address. -And that was, bam -- We knew. He's walking out with three huge plastic rolls
and sure enough, duct tape. -So within hours of the crime scene being discovered,
Pierre Haobsh became person of interest. -Yes. -But where was Pierre now? Detectives had a hunch.
Data from the Hans cell phones, which were missing, showed they were traveling south,
further and further from Santa Barbara. -Then, inexplicably, Henri's phone goes dark.
But Jennie's is still on, and it keeps going south. We're getting basically digital footprints leading
down to the Oceanside area from a dead woman's phone. ♪♪ ♪♪ -Anytime you're trying to stop somebody
that is wanted for homicide, the stakes are going to be high. -The day after the Han family was found murdered,
a manhunt was underway in Oceanside, California, nearly 200 miles from the crime scene.
Sergeant Anthony Flores and his partner were part of the local Oceanside police team
assisting the Santa Barbara investigation. -We had come in to work with our Special Enforcement section,
and we were going to be the stop car for that day if given a window of opportunity to take him into custody
or potentially stop him. -Meanwhile, undercover detectives were conducting surveillance
at the residence Pierre Haobsh shared with his father and updating all units, including the homicide team
that had driven down from Santa Barbara with prosecutor Ben Ladinig. -All of a sudden, we get chatter on our intercoms.
"Dad's on the move." -The surveillance team followed Pierre's father as he drove to a Walmart parking lot,
where security cameras captured him meeting up with none other than Pierre. -That's dad driving in sedan
and then you see the Lexus following shortly behind. They appear to be communicating briefly together.
You can just see that trunk pop on dad's car. -After transferring two large duffel bags to Pierre's car,
they both drove off. -We gotta move quickly. -It was a little after midnight, and we just got the update that the suspect was on the move.
As we're traveling, we're hearing that he's pulling into the ARCO station. He had a few miles of a head start.
-The other units and Ladinig had pulled over by the ARCO station waiting for the arrest team to arrive.
-And all of a sudden, you see an unmarked car drive right through the middle of that intersection.
Sparks fly and it just basically comes in and pulls in and lays on the brakes. Two huge dudes get out of the car
and pull a gun on him and prone him out. And our eyes are like saucers. -We're like, "whoa." -Wow.
-It's 200 miles away that this investigation started and it culminated here. Sergeant Flores had handcuffed Pierre.
What do you remember about that arrest? -I remember it going down really fast. All of our senses were heightened.
-Within 48 hours of the murders. Investigators had the Han family's alleged killer in custody.
Pierre Haobsh waived his Miranda rights and started talking to detectives. What he told them was something out of a spy thriller.
He claimed that his life was in danger. He claimed he was being targeted because of a scientific marvel he had invented.
-Pierce said he had gone to Doctor Han's house earlier in the week to install one of his
perpetual energy devices, and that the plastic wrap and duct tape he was seen purchasing were for that purpose.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Pierre said he had left Santa Barbara around 2 p.m. on March 22nd, the day before the murders
after signing the contract, but detectives pushed back. ♪♪ ♪♪ -Pierre was adamant he would never hurt the family,
and insisted the shadowy figures who had been after him had killed the Hans and were trying to frame him for murder.
♪♪ -It was this massive conspiracy to keep this next level energy system from getting out to market.
"James Bond," "Mission Impossible," this fantastical life. -Pierre's outlandish story continued.
But then detectives received an unexpected call from someone who claimed to have information about the murders.
-I'm a pretty rough-around-the-edges guy. I have rough-around- the-edges friends.
-TJ Direda was a marijuana grower who said Doctor Han had approached him about supplying CBD-rich strains.
TJ had also met Pierre. -Doctor Henry had told me that he was like a prodigy street chemist.
He had done some stuff that was ahead of his time. -So a little bit of a mad scientist, perhaps?
-Yeah, I would say. -According to TJ, Pierre had a penchant for making up grandiose stories
to seek attention, but he befriended him nonetheless. -He was that awkward kid that wanted to fit in,
and I was the guy in high school that stuck up for kids like that. So I took an interest in him in that regard.
-Do you think he trusted you then? -Oh, he absolutely trusted me. -As TJ revealed to detectives,
Pierre had reached out to him via text the morning of the murders. The message, sent at 9:39 a.m., said,
♪♪ What was he asking for? -Uh, he needed my help moving something. -He says Pierre told him he was in Santa Barbara
and needed to talk face-to-face. So TJ had him come to his house in Thousand Oaks
about an hour away. -The first thing out of his mouth. "Just so you know, I'm a monster."
He had told me right then and there that he had killed Doctor Henry, his wife, and his child and needed help.
-Did he give you details of what he did? -He did. -TJ told detectives Pierre said he had tried
to put the bodies in his car, but they wouldn't all fit and Henry was too heavy,
details Ladinig says only the killer would know. -How the killings were done, how the bodies were wrapped up,
how he had the doctor's phone. -TJ told detectives Pierre had also revealed his motive -- $20 million,
that he planned to drain from Henry's accounts after killing the family. TJ says he didn't know if what he was hearing was
another one of Pierre's far-fetched stories, and until he knew for sure, he decided to play along.
-I just wanted to get him out of the house and confirm whether what he had just said was true or not.
I said, let me work on it and I'll call you later. -Once Pierre was gone, TJ tried to reach Doctor Han
and anyone who might have information, to no avail. -I didn't want to call the police because I didn't --
I wasn't sure yet. It was chaotic. It was -- it was scary and also confusing. -Pierre kept messaging him.
Around 5 p.m., when TJ still hadn't provided any assistance, Pierre texted him with a proposition.
What did you think the reason for that all-of-a-sudden trip to Vegas? -At that point, I wasn't sure. It didn't sound right.
He was probably going to kill me and somehow make it look like I had something to do with it.
-You were going to be the fall guy. -Right. TJ made up an excuse why he couldn't go.
And Pierre would send him one final text at 7:35 that night. ♪♪ Ladinig says Pierre had just returned to the crime scene
with a big truck to transport the bodies, but law enforcement had beaten him to the scene.
-He knew his goose was cooked. ♪♪ ♪♪ -Pierre Haobsh's arrest near Oceanside, California,
had come at a critical juncture. He was armed with a nine millimeter handgun that was in plain view on the driver's side floorboard.
He also had his passport and those duffel bags, which he had received from his father minutes earlier.
-To-go bags. Basically, whatever you need -- clothes, everything for the person to live for months.
-Haobsh's father was also detained and questioned, but he was released later that morning.
-We could have charged him as an accessory, but we didn't have any indication that dad was involved
in any way, shape or form in the killing. -The next day, during a closer examination
of Haobsh's car at the crime lab. -You name it, we found it in that car. -There was Henry's wallet, credit card,
and social security number, along with an expended shell casing. There were also the victim's phones and tablet,
all wrapped in aluminum foil, in an attempt to evade tracking. -In the trunk, you lift up where the spare tire would be.
The murder weapon, suppressor, silencer, ammunition. -A week after the murders, the autopsies revealed the victims had been shot 14 times,
three each into Henry and Jennie. And most disturbing, eight in Emily. -That ammunition is the same stuff
that we found at the crime scene in the decedent's bodies. Match, match, match, match, match -- everything.
-Pierre Haobsh was charged with three counts of first degree murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.
-It was one of the most challenging cases, if not the most challenging, case I ever came upon.
-Defense attorney Christine Voss, who was with the public defender's office at the time,
represented Haobsh. -He really wanted to be vindicated. To me, the goal was for him to not get death.
-At the 11th hour, the DA's office agreed to waive the death penalty in exchange for a more expedient bench trial,
which meant a judge, not jury, would render a verdict. On October 25th, 2021, more than five and a half years after the murders,
the prosecution delivered its opening statement and laid out its theory of the case
that Pierre Haobsh had plotted the murder of the Han family for financial gain. They painted him as a career con man who, up until the murders,
flaunted his intelligence and supposed wealth. -His entire life's drive was being rich.
-He sent screenshots of his Chase account from anywhere from about $3 million up to $940 million
to various people, attempting to dupe them that he is this jet-setting billionaire.
-Haobsh claimed he had received big offers for his energy technology. -I'm not a scientist,
but I don't know that there's a such thing as a perpetual-energy machine. -But several years before the murders,
Haobsh was actually being paid to build one. -It was gonna be a new source of energy,
as if he was, you know, an Elon Musk. -Samantha Spidell met Pierre Haobsh circa 2012,
when he moved into a penthouse apartment in a luxury high-rise she managed in Tempe, Arizona.
-He pulled up and had this bright-red Ferrari. It was very flashy. -Ladinig says had Haobsh duped a group of high-rolling investors
into financing his invention until they realized it didn't actually work. -He had basically defrauded all these people,
and the money dried up. When the murders were committed, I think he had less than $500 to his name.
-Hmm. Prosecutors presented a detailed timeline retracing Haobsh's movements, including his digital footprint
in the days before and after the murders. They say as early as March 17, six days before the murders,
he had looked into impersonating the doctor at his bank. -He's searching for Asian disguises and real flesh masks.
-Like a "Mission: Impossible" face mask? -Right. 100%. This is his fantastical world that he lived in.
-There's no evidence he ever purchased a mask, but a timestamped receipt and security video
placed him at an Arizona gun store four days before the murders, purchasing ammunition and two firearms,
including the alleged murder weapon. -.22 pistol with a threaded barrel for what is a silencer, a suppressor.
-On March 20, he was back in Oceanside, California, buying supplies before driving up to the Hans' house,
under the guise of installing the energy machine. Instead, Ladinig says Haobsh bugged Henry's computer
with a spyware app called a keylogger. -What keyloggers do is every stroke, every click of the mouse,
every navigation page you go, it documents all of it. -To their surprise, investigators also found the keylogger on Haobsh's laptop.
On March 21, while Haobsh was still at the Hans' home, the keylogger had recorded
chilling search terms on his laptop. -What part of the skull is more penetrable?
What ammunition would be better? -As a guest in Dr. Han's house? -Yes. -And staying there for the two nights before,
planning this execution-style murder. -Yes. -Pierre Haobsh left the Han residence on March 22,
but prosecutors allege he went back around 4:00 a.m. the next morning to carry out the murders.
They say later that day, he began frantically trying to siphon money from Henry's accounts.
-He's using phones. He's using fake e-mail accounts. He's doing all these things
from personal identifying information of Dr. Han's that he stole earlier that week.
-A Chase fraud alert had flagged an attempted payment for $72,000. Meanwhile, Haobsh also rented that big truck
he allegedly drove to the crime scene, hoping to move the bodies. -There are black-and-whites all over that house.
The crime scene's being processed. -The Palumbos say the meeting they were supposed to have with Henry
just hours after he was murdered had foiled Pierre Haobsh's plans. -He thought that he had that whole day to clean up his mess
before Henry would be missed. -He wasn't fast enough. -I think we screwed it up for him.
Happily. -That's when prosecutors say he fled, driving south toward Oceanside, Ladinig argues Haobsh's subsequent searches
betray his guilty conscience. Incredibly, he even consulted an online psychic named Count Marco
and asked him... -And Count Marco replies, "Well, what did you do, Pierre?" -Pierre Haobsh never gave Count Marco an explanation.
But on the stand, he couldn't stop talking. [ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ -This was a tough case.
But that didn't change the fact that Pierre was entitled to a vigorous defense. -Defense attorney Christine Voss was in an unusual position.
-This was a really well-investigated case. Because my client wanted to have a trial
and wanted me to turn every stone, I did. -Turn every stone and raise any possible reasonable doubt.
You argued that there were elements presented that were implausible, unprovable,
and simply impossible. Those were your words. -Yeah. -Voss expressed concerns that the alleged murder weapon and silencer
found in Haobsh's car didn't match up. -It absolutely did not connect to the firearm
that they believed was the murder weapon. -She seized on discrepancies in the location data
from found in Haobsh's car and phone that the prosecution had used in its timeline.
-He could not possibly have been in San Diego and Santa Barbara simultaneously, or Thousand Oaks and Santa Barbara Simultaneously.
But that's what the GPS data showed. -And she attacked the credibility of the prosecution's star witness, TJ Direda.
Voss questioned why Direda waited nearly two days to contact authorities and argued in that time,
he could have gotten details about the crime scene that the prosecution claimed only the killer knew.
-It was not the best-kept crime scene. He was making various phone calls after he heard about the death of Dr. Han.
-But Voss concedes much of Direda's testimony was corroborated by the evidence. -This case was over within the first 72 hours.
-In fact, the only witness who provided testimony that someone other than Pierre Haobsh was the killer
was Pierre Haobsh. During three days on the stand, he repeated the action-packed account
he had given detectives about having shootouts with shadowy figures. Now he said he was sure
they were sent by the Department of Energy. It sounds like there'd be a trail of bodies,
but yet is there proof of this trail of bodies anywhere, to your knowledge? -No. Which further made him believe
it was the Department of Energy. -And what about all that evidence investigators found?
-The DoE planted them there. It's all a frame. All that stuff is framed. The banking stuff -- frame job.
What's in my car -- frame job. -It was difficult for me to embrace Pierre's testimony.
-Do you think he himself believed some of the things he was saying were true? -Oh, yeah. Definitely.
-He was obsessed with the government. -Samantha Spidell attests there were some kernels of truth in his stories.
-Pierre mentioned that his dad had ties to the CIA, and I could tell that he wanted his dad's approval.
-When his father died in 2023, his obituary stated he was a key player in clandestine
Central Intelligence Agency operations during the 1980s. Haobsh also told Spidell
that his sister was going to star in a reality TV show. -She got cast on a newlyweds reality show,
and Pierre was gonna be in it. Come to find out that was true. -In fact, both Haobsh and his father made appearances
on the second season of the Bravo TV series "Newlyweds: The First Year." -Start by filling that up.
-Pierre was even shown giving his brother-in-law a cooking lesson. -More black pepper.
-But prosecutor Ben Ladinig argued any grains of authenticity in Haobsh's life were far outweighed by deceit.
You called him a lying liar who lies about lying. -Right. Lie, lie, lie, lie. Hundreds of lies we found on him.
His life was a con. [ Dramatic music plays ] -On November 24, 2021, Judge Brian Hill would get the case.
None of Pierre Haobsh's family members attended his trial. The judge made his ruling --
guilty on all counts. The judge, when he issued his ruling, said his decision was beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Absolutely no doubt of Pierre Haobsh's guilt. -Yeah. Very satisfactory to hear that.
-I wasn't surprised. -And what was Pierre's reaction upon hearing that ruling? -Well, he was visibly disappointed.
-On April 15, 2022, Pierre Haobsh was sentenced to three life terms without the possibility of parole.
It was little comfort to those still mourning Henry, Jennie, and Emily. -I don't understand how there really could be justice.
-He's still alive, and they're not. He took precious moments that we'll never get.
[ Soft music plays ] -I want him to feel every pain possible for what he did. -Not enough bad things can happen for him.
-Nearly a decade after the murders, the wounds are still raw. -It's hard to think of them.
♪♪ -He was a really good man. You don't replace a Henry Han. No. -Pretty much every day, I think of Henry and Jennie and Emily.
-I love you. -There's an old phrase that a good man and a good family lives for a limited time,
but a good name shall live forever. They lived too short, but their name lives on forever.
♪♪

A beloved doctor and his family are murdered. A suspect emerges with a fantastical story of shadowy figures and intrigue straight out of a spy thriller. "48 Hours"' Natalie Morales reports.

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

The episode covers the murders of the Han family and the investigation leading to Pierre Haobsh's arrest and trial.

Key points

The Han Family's Tragic End. Doctor Henry Han, his wife Jennie, and their daughter Emily were found dead in their garage.
Pierre Haobsh's Arrest. Within 48 hours of the murders, Pierre Haobsh was arrested and claimed his life was in danger.
Pierre's Outlandish Claims. Pierre Haobsh insisted he was framed for the murders by shadowy figures.
Pierre Haobsh Charged with Murder. Pierre Haobsh was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.
Trial Verdict. Judge Brian Hill ruled guilty on all counts, stating there was absolutely no doubt of Haobsh's guilt.
Sentencing. Pierre Haobsh was sentenced to three life terms without the possibility of parole.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It shook us all to our core.

3:04WatchNov 14, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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