Three's a Crowd | Forensic Files | S14 E4 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a suburban housewife is gunned down outside her church i've seen brazen murders in my
career but i've never seen one this brazen the investigation reveals some long-held secrets
you have a lesbian affair you have corruption you know you have murder a love triangle
points in one direction the evidence points in another this had a lot of twists and turns what the hell
else is going to go on here [Music] it was a cold october night in poughkeepsie new york
jeff fassett a local policeman had the night off and was home watching tv with his two
sons his wife susan was a church choir practice my mother was involved in her church pretty heavily
she'd always loved it she'd been involved in the choir for most of her life around 7 30 p.m
jeff fassett told his boys he was going down to police headquarters he did go out to the town of
poughkeepsie to get his paycheck three miles west of his house sometime around 8 30 choir practice ended at the
pleasant valley united methodist church and susan fassett walked to her car to drive home then
shots rang out [Music] people ran to the car to see what had happened and they found susan fasted
morally wounded witnesses saw a light-colored vehicle speeding from the scene no one indicated to us that they could
see a driver or how many people for that matter were in the car in a search for suspects police
immediately looked at susan's husband jeff jeff fassett they learned left the house
during the time that susan was murdered there were rumors in the police force that there were problems in
jeff and susan's marriage we were pretty comfortable that jeff fessett might be involved here
shortly after jeff fassett returned home police converged on his house he begins to see cops across the street
watching him so he's watching them watch him they look like they have you know shotguns and gear on and
they're surrounding the house and they're going to come here and ambush this place
jeff wanted to find out why this was happening he made several phone calls to his
police department to the state police yeah this is facet there's a bunch of patrol cars
outside my house what's going on nobody was coming right out and telling him susan's son jason had made a call to the
church and had learned that his mother had been shot that's the only information he had
dad has been shot not sure what to do jeff turned off all the lights looked as if he was
barricading himself inside the house i remember sitting in the house in dark in silence for what seemed like
a very very long time they don't know what he's going to do now if a man has killed his wife
his children may be next and then he may kill himself two tense hours passed before jeff
fassett and his two sons came out of the house they are led outside with their hands behind their head
handcuffed and tossed on the ground face down like common criminals and i'm waiting to find out what
happened to my mother who all i know she's been shot now all of a sudden we're all you know seemingly under
arrest everyone's crying everyone's upset eventually even jason facette had to consider
the unthinkable i remember sitting there thinking like could this be real am i going to have to
face a reality where my father had done this susan fassett's murder looked like a
professional hit the killer was apparently lying in weight and had planned a quick getaway from the
scene i've seen brazen murders in my career but i've never seen one this brazen that just seemed to vanish
all of susan's personal effects were found on the car indicating that it was not a robbery
susan's husband jeff a 24-year veteran of the poughkeepsie police department denied any involvement in susan's murder
although he didn't have an alibi we could not confirm where jeff was when it happened and jeff's car was
similar to the vehicle seen speeding from the crime scene you look at his record and his record is blemish
free i mean he had absolutely nothing in his record that would indicate that he would turn
violent at all but jeff thought he knew who was responsible he even said to me put me under hot lights beat me with
rubber hoses i don't care what you do to me but when you're all done with me go see fred andrews he is behind us fred
andros was the superintendent for the town of poughkeepsie a man with a terrible reputation
right out of the gate people had told us what a scumbag he was fred andros was a self-centered
mean nasty prick fred andros and susan fassett bumped into each other apparently one day in the hallway in the
town building they started a relationship just one month earlier jeff fassett learned his wife susan was having an
affair with fred andros an affair which had gone on for the last three years jeff put some sort of tape recording
device on his telephone unbeknownst to her in fact she did get caught receiving and
making phone calls to fred andros when jeff fassett confronted his wife about the affair
susan promised to end it things were really up in the air and then one day they just came to us
and said that they were going to work on things they were going to fix things police wondered if fred andros might
have been angry that susan ended their affair but fred andros had an airtight alibi
for the night of susan's murder andros and his wife had friends over to dinner that night
the alibi that fred had for us and having dinner with a police officer was corroborated with the police officer
and in fact his wife so he was there he was not at our crime scene fred andros was despondent and upset he
wanted to know i think he asked things like who would do such a thing and and he cared about her at the
autopsy the medical examiner recovered five bullets from susan's body you're looking for a llama
or a ruger manufactured 45 caliber weapon we determined that andros didn't have a registered 45
handgun nor did he have a vehicle that fit the description of the vehicle that was leaving the
scene the victim's husband jeff fassett didn't own a 45 caliber weapon either but the medical examiner discovered one
additional clue [Music] susan had intercourse within 48 hours of her murder when jeff fassett was questioned about
this it was news to him they test that semen against jeff fassett's dna and it's not
a match police asked fred andros if he'd had sexual relations with susan fassett
before her murder and he said no he had told us that he hadn't seen her in a month
and had never been intimate andros explained why he was unable to have sexual relations
fred had said to us that he was unable to perform sexually due to the medication he was taking
fred said he was impotent but that was clearly discounted by the numerous interviews with the prostitutes
in the area that that was nothing but a hoax he was picking up prostitutes every day
for crying out loud i had confirmed through his wife that he wasn't having relations with her
but he was he was picking up hookers every day when asked to provide a dna sample
andros refused they really have no legal reason to order a dna sample from fred andrews
you have to have some evidence yeah and they have none to try and obtain a court order to go to a judge and say
this guy was alibi not near the scene he doesn't have the type of weapon that was
used he doesn't have the type of car that was used you know that that starts to detract
from your from your real hard suspicion if susan fassett didn't have sex with her husband or
fred andros then she was having an affair with someone else which opens up a whole new pool of
suspects for the police susan fassett's autopsy revealed she'd had sexual relations within two days of her
murder dna from that encounter did not match her husband jeff so who was it her former lover fred
andros denied it was him although he refused to provide a dna sample we knew it wasn't jeff and we're
thinking it had to be fred who else would it be because we absolutely could find nobody
else that was involved with susan that would have had sex with her a couple of days before the murder
so detective art boycott called andros and set a trap i told him i'd bring him up some lunch
um he said sure that's great i uh brought him hamburger french fries and a drink
and right after we got in the car and started talking i said here's your lunch fred here's your drink here's your
your hamburger and fries but andro said he wasn't hungry and didn't touch anything he was in the
middle of the day lunchtime the sun was coming in through the car he had a flannel jacket on
i cranked up the heat hoping to uh kind of sweat it out of them the car got hotter and hotter
but andro still wouldn't touch anything so i cranked up the heat more and so he went ahead and took a drink
and once he took the sip out of that straw i knew i had what i wanted essentially fred is handing over his dna
tests confirmed that fred andros's dna matched the dna taken during susan fassett's autopsy
within 48 hours of her death he had had social relations with her he had told us that he hadn't seen her
in a month that's a big lie it was like a bomb going off that was something that fred
you know deliberately hid and we wanted to know the good reason why when faced with the forensic evidence andros
had no choice but to admit he lied but he claimed he did it to protect the killer
during the course of that interview after a time fred andrews had offered up the name dawn silvernail
as a possibility of the one who had committed this murder fifty-year-old dawn silvernail was a
state employee with no criminal record and was married with one grown son she's a housewife she's got a college
education she works with the disabled she's got a great reputation she's never ever been
in trouble andros told police he was having an affair with dawn silvernail at the same time he was having an affair
with susan fassett in fact he said the three of them had five or six sexual encounters
together i told him i'd never done anything like that before and i went to the house and she was there
and he introduced me to her and we talked for a few minutes and then we went upstairs and we
[Music] engaged in a three some with the three of us there that lasted maybe half an
hour fred would videotape susan and dawn having sex and then fred would be involved in the
threesome between them fred andros suspected that dawn silvernail and susan fassett
started seeing one another alone and perhaps had a lover's quarrel dawn denied it i never had any contact
with susan fassett unless fred called me and set it up and we met with fred in fred's presence
i never had any independent contact of any type with susan ever dawn also denied having anything to do
with susan's murder saying she had no motive to harm her she was so calm so cool so cooperative
that we had to think geez maybe not maybe maybe she's not involved in this thing
a background check showed dawn owned a 45-caliber handgun like the one used in susan's murder she also had a vehicle
registered to her that fit the general description of the vehicle seen leaving the scene
but ballistic tests reveal susan's gun did not match the striations in the bullets used
in susan's murder it looked as if the gun had been tampered with up until that point my career
i've never seen that where the rifling has been totally removed out of a weapon it was incapable of being compared to
any projectiles that we had found at the scene if fred or dawn silvernail were involved
in susan fassett's murder police still had no evidence to prove it dawn silvernail admitted she'd had
sexual threesomes with susan fassett and fred andros but denied any involvement in susan's murder
dawn's 45-caliber weapon didn't match the bullets used in susan's murder but her neighbors told police some
interesting news they said that dawn and her husband would often fire their guns
in the back of their property using the trees for target practice investigators immediately converged on the area
looking for bullets we had to go back in time and find a bullet that had passed through that barrel
before it had been destroyed they recovered dozens of damaged bullets one had distinct striations on the
bottom i was able to make a match to the homicide projectiles from susan fassett
for a positive identification that indeed dawn silvernails 45 ruger was involved in this case
dawn silvernail was confronted with the evidence she kind of hung her head and then said
three times that i shot that poor woman i had rolled down the window [Music] and when she reached up to face in her
seat belt i pulled the gun up and i fired and i shot her but why dawn said fred andros wanted revenge against susan
for ending their affair given fred's ego nobody was going to say no to fred nobody would
break up with fred but why did dawn silvernail do it dawn says andros loaned her more than 15
000 over the 20 years they'd known one another instead of paying him back andros asked her to
murder susan to erase the debt andros basically said she had no choice he threatened my entire family and told
me that if i wouldn't take care of this problem with susan for him that something would happen to somebody
that i loved to find out if dawn silvernail's version was true investigators used a new tool called
webtas webtas stands for the web-enabled temporal analysis system and it's a system developed specifically
for the military and department of defense to assist with information analysis against their different databases
webtask collates information from cell phones pagers emails and easy pass trips investigators compared all this data
from the three main people in this case susan fassett dawn silvernail and fred andros the majority of those
communications were from fred to dawn and what that indicated to us was in fact that fred was not only planning
some activity but also preparing a conspiracy the evidence corroborated dawn's story
the records reveal that within 15 or 20 minutes of the time that she killed susan she stopped at a pay phone and
paged mr andros to signal him that it had been done if you accept what fred andrews says
that this is dawn silvernail with her own motive and her own motivation his story doesn't
make sense that she would stop and of all people simply dial a pay phone and page him
and signal him the only person that she would do that for is a person who was involved and new
at fred andros's direction dawn went to the united methodist church on the night of choir practice
she parked next to susan's car and waited when susan got into her car to go home
dawn fired five shots and sped away [Music] dawn told investigators she left the
murder weapon and phony license plates in a pre-arranged spot computer forensics revealed that dawn
used a payphone to leave a message on fred's pager 20 minutes after the murder to signal
the assignment was done later fred collected the evidence altered the gun's ballistics
and returned the gun to dawn no one knows why susan fassett met with fred andro shortly before her murder but for fred
andros his behavior was particularly appalling he looked in her eyes knowing that she
was going to be dead within 48 hours and that speaks to the character of fred andrews he was
a mean-spirited prick if there is such thing as a napoleonic complex he had it when police went to arrest
fred andros he was waiting for them and they go into his house investigators walking up the stairs and
pow here's a gun shot but fred survived the self-inflicted gunshot in his face i think that it's fitting that he wasn't
able to do it that he only deformed himself and in turn was arrested and was forced to go to
trial fred andros was tried and convicted of second-degree murder and first-class conspiracy
he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison he died of a heart attack after serving
only a few years of his sentence it's entirely appropriate that he died in prison and is burning in hell
dawn silvernail was tried and convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to a minimum of 18
years in prison gullible naive she falls for it believes it and in the end she's a murderer she's a convicted
murderer scary person people look at me like i'm a monster and maybe i am i don't know maybe i am
but i'm a monster who's filled with remorse and i feel for the people i hurt when i did allowed
this man to manipulate me into doing what i did everybody had a part in this and every
lead was just tenaciously followed every item of evidence was collected and tested and
it's just nice when the puzzle fits together in the end

In 1999, Susan Fassett was gunned down as she left church choir practice in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her husband Jeff became the prime suspect, until he was cleared by police, who then suspected to Fred Andros, with whom Susan had her affair.

Brief Summary

Susan Fassett is murdered; her husband, lover, and a third party are implicated in a tangled web of affairs and manipulation.

Key points

A Brazen Murder. A suburban housewife is gunned down outside her church, shocking the community.
The Investigation Unfolds. The investigation reveals long-held secrets, including a love triangle and corruption.
Dawn Silvernail's Confession. Dawn admits to shooting Susan Fassett, revealing the motive behind the murder.
Fred Andros's Manipulation. Fred Andros coerces Dawn into committing murder to erase her debt.
Justice Served. Fred Andros and Dawn Silvernail are convicted of murder and conspiracy.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I’ve seen brazen murders in my career but I’ve never seen one this brazen.

Describing the shocking nature of the murder.

0:12WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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