Unsolved Mysteries with Dennis Farina - Season 6, Episode 10 - Updated Full Episode | Forensic Files

next on unsolved mysteries a popular teenager breaks up a fight and then he's found fatally injured on a
lonely road was it a random hit-and-run or was it cold-blooded murder a mother and her son both died
mysteriously more than 20 years apart could there be a connection when a woman vanishes her
husband tells two completely different stories about his wife's disappearance what really happened
to pam page a man and his two sons steal millions of dollars through an elaborate medicaid
fraud when he's finally caught he disappears five compelling cases i'm dennis farina
and this is unsolved mysteries join us won't you [Music] spokane washington 105 am
two friends on their way home are startled when their headlights reveal a body stretched out in the road
thirteen-year-old russell evans has apparently been struck by a card he is barely alive
brian russell is admitted to sacred heart hospital at 1 30 a.m as his parents stand by
doctors struggle through the night to save his life when i got there i just wanted to see
him and so i went right to the trauma room and he was unconscious mom's here i just knew he wasn't gonna make it
the emergency team works frantically but by morning russell evans is dead i'm really grateful that i had those
eight hours because even though he didn't talk to me i knew he was knew i was there
and um that was really important to me the mangled body of a teenage boy lies in the street
perhaps the victim of a careless driver or perhaps the target of a deliberate murderous attack
in the case of russell evans his parents and local police have drawn opposite conclusions from the same set of
evidence russell was an active and popular eighth grader at libby middle school in spokane
by the age of 13 he was already six feet three inches tall he did everything together he's at my
house every day and he was very well-liked had a good sense of humor and he got along with pretty much
everybody he had no problems in the hours before russell died he was with aaron and other friends
hanging out at a local park it was a typical summer evening until they were approached by two other teenagers
hey man come here real quick and what's your name aaron aren't you yeah let me tell you something man
hey hey you guys better take off before there's some real trouble and you don't even know what trouble is oh really
he said you better watch out because of my homeboys but i didn't really think much of it you
know so i just turned around and we left and he got in his car with his friend and took off
after leaving the park russell spent the rest of the evening at a friend's house
and then he called his father to say that he was heading home it was then about 12 30 a.m
based on evidence found at the scene police constructed a hit and run scenario [Applause]
on the impact with the vehicle he was separated from his shoes and shoelaces and other debris he finally came to rest
about 75 feet from where we think he was struck from the bruises uh president russell i
think the most prominent possibility here is that we're dealing with a motor vehicle accident the russell was struck
in the back by a bumper and an ornament we looked at him after he died and i thought he'd been in a fight
later on when the police started talking about hit and run his mom mom and i just couldn't buy that
i mean the injuries weren't there john and sue evans obtained copies of the official police report complete with
photographs they noted that russell's shoes didn't have their laces on somehow they had
been torn out to russell's parents it seemed like an important clue the evans returned to the
scene of the accident with sandy ferris the woman who had found russell there is blood on the shoelace now tell
me how do you get blood on the shoelace if you're struck and driven out of your shoes and throwing 50 feet down the hill
he was about right up there john and sue became convinced that their son had been
struck by something other than a hit-and-run driver and they hired their own pathologists to
investigate while he concluded that russell had been hit by a car he also found evidence of a
struggle he's right about up in here this pathologist came back with the findings that russell had been
in a physical altercation prior to his death if a body flies through the air when
that body hits the pavement there would be some massive scraping russell did not have this
well this isn't making a lot of sense i'll tell you based on their research russell's
parents reconstructed their son's final moments i think it was a fight going back up the
hill according to his hands he got his licks in he had finger bruises on his face on the side of the nose
finger bruising on his upper fore upper arms as though he were being held the people that were allegedly involved
in the argument with this friend of justice were polygraphed because other people were making
allegations about them they passed a polygraph of flying cars when i first got there first thing i
asked him was what happened and he started calling for brian hold me up brian help me out
he said it more like a person was in listening distance that his friend should have been there
uh like he thought his friend was close by after the police had gotten there and
they started to put russell in the ambulance we saw a boy in white shorts up in the bushes and he was running up
the hill and i tried to tell the policeman this a couple of times and he kept telling me
to get on the sidewalk i thought maybe that probably could have been the boy that he was calling for
brian one of russell's friends was named brian and i asked brian what he was wearing
that night he said well i was wearing white white shorts and white t-shirt but i was nowhere around
later down the line when the police questioned him he denied owning that kind of outfit
we've asked for him and talked with everyone that we could possibly think of and our assumption is it was just
somebody that was curious that heard the commotion that heard the sirens and went
out to take a look when sue evans arrived at the hospital someone named brian had just called the
emergency ward to ask about russell i don't want any information given out about him now someone by the name of
brian's already called concerning his condition that's odd who would have known about
this unless somebody named brian was at that scene that he was calling for there may be one or two that know
more than they're telling and the reason they're probably not telling is that they are afraid for
their lives evidence from the scene totally convinced russell's parents that he had
been attacked and murdered the police still believe that russell was the victim of a hit and run driver
however officially the case still remains unsolved if you have any information about the
death of russell evans please log on to our website at unsolved.com when we come back two mysterious and
violent deaths in the same family 20 years apart the small town of hooksett new hampshire
like most of new england it springs to life when the winter snows have melted away long days and warmer temperatures
promise better days to come [Music] but one year the retreating snow revealed the body of a missing teenager
the second local girl to be found tortured and murdered one of the victims was a 15 year old
high school student named pamela mason [Music] it was rumored that her killer lived in
the area and neighbors began looking at each other with suspicion 47 year old rina paquette told her
friends and family that she knew who had killed the two teenage girls at the time
nobody took her seriously but 10 days after the second body was found rena's son 13 year old danny paquette
mom came down for breakfast and found that his mother was gone to charlie this is danny speaking yeah i
can't find my mom well she said she was gonna take me to dennis today when danny got up that morning he
couldn't find my mother dan couldn't understand where she was because her purse and her winter coat
were there and it was extremely bitterly cold and it was highly unlikely that she went anywhere without her coat
charlie danny and his uncle searched the property for over an hour but rena was nowhere to be found
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] authorities recovered her charred body they concluded that she had deliberately
set herself on fire reena's death was ruled a suicide however her family remains convinced
that someone had killed her [Music] i don't really believe my mother committed suicide because of the
tremendous amount of fear and panic in the community because of the two earlier brutal murders
i think it was just kind of like kept on a very low profile not to create more public hysteria i feel at the time of my
mother's death person that was found to be the person responsible for killing the young pamela mason girl was the same
person that was responsible for my mother's death within weeks of rena's death a local man
was arrested convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of pamela mason
nearly 20 years would pass before danny paquette discovered a possible link between the murder of his mother
and the killing of the two girls it was danny paquette who had discovered his mother's charred body
perhaps that's why of rina's five children danny was the most impacted by her death
i think everybody's mom is a little security blanket and from there you lose that
emotionally it leads to a lot of problems danny grew from a troubled teenager into
a troubled adult i'm gonna take you back to february the third danny was ordered to undergo a
psychiatric examination at a mental hospital his treatment there led to some unexpected revelations about the past
under hypnosis danny recalled details of the morning that his mother was killed i woke up because i heard it down
[Music] danny became convinced that he had actually seen the person who had killed
his mother he was certain it was the same delivery man who had murdered pamela mason but
there was never any evidence to support his belief danny returned home after five months
and tried to pick up the pieces of his life he and his brother victor spent many
afternoons together motorcycling through the countryside if it was a real turning
point for him we spent time together and we started to enjoy life one saturday morning danny was repairing
a bulldozer in his yard while two of his friends worked on a car in the garage at 11 am
danny's friends heard a loud pop [Applause] i ran up towards where danny was working
it appeared to me that he'd been electrocuted we noticed the air escaping from a hole
in the middle of his chest and i thought that it was a welding probe that he fell on when he hit the
ground i the time i didn't know it was a bullet wound danny paquette had been shot through the
heart with a single bullet he died instantly a surge of the area revealed about 50 to 80 yards away
footprints heading toward the woods where it was coincidental or in fact someone's footprint that was fleeing the
scene is speculative at this time local phone service had stopped at the same time that danny was killed and
police later pulled a slug from the telephone line it was the bullet that killed danny
paquette the day danny was shot was the beginning of hunting season and police thought
that he might have been accidentally hit by a straight bullet we were able to ascertain that there
were hunters in a gravel pit approximately a mile away that was sighting their weapons and at the time
if danny was shot accidentally the fatal bullet may have come from this gravel pit for this to happen the bullet had to
travel nearly a mile climb one thousand feet pass through danny and then penetrate the telephone cable
ballistics expert rj gregorio was brought in from new york city to determine if such a shot was even
possible greg leo's conclusion no way i would rule out the possibility that there was an accident that the gun was
fired from a mile or more away rather it was a shot fired in the vicinity deliberately
summoned had deliberately targeted danny and killed him with a single shot but who
update 20 years after danny paquette was killed police arrested 38-year-old eric
windhurst for the murder windhurst was a high school friend of danny's stepdaughter melanie cooper
she claimed that danny had sexually abused her she later admitted that she was with wynhurst when he shot danny
windhurst pleaded guilty and received the sentence of 15 to 36 years in prison he served his time and has been released
for her role in the crime melanie cooper received the sentence of three to five years she has since been released
the death of rina paquette is still classified as a suicide next when a woman in arizona disappears
police suspect that her husband knows much more than he's saying peoria arizona is a comfortable suburb
just outside of phoenix pam and rob page were among those who lived in peoria and by all accounts
their marriage was solid one day however pam page disappeared without a trace rob would later explain that he came
home to an empty house and a letter from pam rob by the time you read this i'll be a
long way from here i have thought this thing out and i've been planning this for several months
the letter said that pam had left town with a woman named sarah rob claimed that he was embarrassed
because he thought that his wife had left him for another woman he did not notify pam's family in
arkansas that she was gone four days later however pam's oldest sister trina i was calling to see how pam was doing
she's gone what do you mean she's gone well i came home on saturday and and she left me a letter
it seemed out of character to me uh for her not to let anyone know that where she was where she was at
but i didn't think about that at first i just had one thing on mine was getting my
word to somebody that she was missing the time you read this i will be a long way from here
pam's father asked to see the letter and rob fax them a copy when i received that fax
letter i knew that something was bad wrong one thing i looked at signature i had
birthday cards and letters from pam and the the signature wasn't her signature rob told pam's family that a missing
person's report had already been filed but when one of pam's sisters called the local police she discovered that they
had never even heard of the case detectives began their investigation by questioning rob
he told them that on the day of pam's disappearance he had gone to several auto park stores
at one his truck wouldn't start rob said he called home and got no answer so he phoned for a taxi
rob told police that he never went into the house only the garage he got a part for his truck and rode his bike back to
the store when the truck finally started he drove home and that's when he found the letter
the letter said that pam had taken all of their money sixty thousand dollars in cash out of
the safe at the video store rob said he went to the store and confirmed that the
cash was gone the letter also said that pam had left the couple's corvette at a local donut
shop rob claimed that he found it the next day soon police began to question the
details of rob's story none of the employees at the last auto parts store remembered rob asking about
an ignition switch robert said that his truck which was very distinctive was parked at the store
for nearly four hours that afternoon none of the employees ever recall seeing that truck being out from the store or
anyone ever working on it and one particular employee stated if that truck had been out in front of his business he
would have known it finally three weeks after pam disappeared the arizona state crime lab
confirmed that the signature on the letter was almost certainly not dance mr page uh refused to believe me and was
adamant that his wife had in fact signed the letter after continuing to question
mr page about the signature on the letter he admitted to me that he in fact did sign that letter
it was a stunning turnaround enough to make rob page a suspect suddenly he began to tell a completely
different story now rob insisted that he had actually found the letter in the family computer
a few days before pam disappeared mr page stated that while he was on the family's home computer he discovered a
letter that he claims his wife had authored in which in essence that she was going to be leaving him
i was working on the computer just now and i found something very interesting mr page stated um he confronted his wife
about that letter i'm sorry you found this i wrote this a long time ago oh then you weren't planning to leave me
huh no i wasn't i wrote this one i was upset well then you're not gonna take our money and run off why do you have to
blow everything out of proportion according to rob's new story a few days after the confrontation he came home to
find a house in a mess [Music] rob told police that most of pam's clothes were gone along with the family
pictures and one of their dogs pam's credit cards and house keys were on the kitchen table but rob could not
find her driver's license rob claims that after making these discoveries he decided to act
he went downstairs and added four sentences to the letter in the computer printed it out and signed pam's name
he then drove her corvette to the donut shop went to the pay phone across the street and called a taxi mr page stated
that he fabricated some of the things he did because no one would ever believe him
that his wife had in fact left him had he not done this due to mr page's inconsistent statements
throughout this investigation as well as the suspicious circumstances surrounding
the disappearance of his wife he was offered a polygraph examination on several occasions and he declined to
take a polygraph on each occasion that it was offered despite the suspicions about rob page
police found no evidence that he had done anything wrong except change his story no charges were filed and the
investigation ground to a halt this is a picture of your sister pam as a last resort pam's sister jimmy rice
consulted carol pate a psychic in little rock arkansas pate had worked with the little rock
police for 10 years working only from a photo of pam the psychic recounted a disturbing scenario
thank you i saw her with a man in what appeared to be her house and she was arguing with him
he knocks her to the floor he's trying to strangle her he grabs a pillow and all of a sudden she's she's quiet
[Music] then a female comes she assists him on placing her in the trunk now i'm seeing them pull out of the
garage and they're driving then i'm seeing a factory and it's gray in color and there's a railroad track parallel
then he pulls over on the side of the road and removes the body and begins to dig
the name coolidge comes into my mind and two four one jana thorson an arizona newspaper
reporter covering pam's disappearance followed up the clues thorson did find a gray factory building
near some railroad tracks in peoria nearby she found a sign with the numbers 2-4-1
a route that ran from bob and pam's house to the home of a friend passed both these sites and ended at a street
named coolidge there is no way to evaluate carol pate's information until it is known whether
pam page met with foul play or chose to disappear as for rob page he still insists that
his wife is alive rob page declined our request for an interview and has since divorced his
missing wife police say that he is no longer a suspect in this case and they still have no idea what
happened to pam page pam has red hair and brown eyes and is five feet eight inches tall
if you have any information about the disappearance of pam page please log on to our website at
unsolved.com coming up how did sheldon weinberg manage to steal 16 million dollars from new york's medicaid program
we recently profiled the disturbing story of a new york businessman named sheldon weinberg along with his two sons
weinberg stole an estimated 16 million dollars of taxpayers money funds allocated to medical care for the poor
sheldon weinberg and his sons operate at the bedstuy health clerk clinic in one of brooklyn new york's poorest
neighborhoods they employed over 25 physicians and catered primarily to medicaid recipients
but their real specialty was fraud they were submitting up to thirty thousand dollars a week in false
spellings to the government they began small manually writing up uh phony records and
phony bills but once they started getting away with it they realized the scam was working
the weinberg started using a computer to create bills and medical records for non-existent charges their profits
soared from thousands to millions of dollars we bring these numbers up why not hey it looks good they used medicaid
like it was a private bank account for them and from that bank account the weinberg's led the high life on the
backs of poor people i think their appetite for conspicuous living for fancy clothes and
especially shoes was only outdone by imelda marcos for seven years the money rolled in
but the weinberg's elaborate scheme started to unravel when authorities investigated their billing practices
auditors spent weeks carefully searching through the clinic's records and tracing
the phony billings if you look at the medical charts you'll see that a four-year-old boy
was uh shown as having smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and haven't drank a
quarter of booze a day you found men with gynecological problems and that's the type of things that
jumped out off the paper ratchet sheldon weinberg and his two sons ronald and jay were convicted of grand larceny
conspiracy and 63 other counts relating to their fraud scheme ronald weinberg was sentenced to five to
15 years in prison jay weinberg received an eight to 25 year sentence with additional time for
tax evasion they served their time and have been released sheldon weinberg faced a 7 to 21-year
prison term but just before sentencing he and his wife disappeared update within three hours of our broadcast
sheldon weinberg was arrested by fbi agents in scottsdale arizona where he and his wife were living under assumed
names right after the show aired we got specific information from callers who had seen them all over the scottsdale
area and one of the callers told us that the weinbergs were using the alias davita
and this corresponded with information we previously had back here in new york they were traveling under that name so
when the caller told us that he had seen people that looked like the weinberg's using the name davida in
scottsdale we knew we had our man weinberg was brought back to new york and three days later appeared before new
york state supreme court justice ruth moskovitz who reimposed the seven to 21 years sentence
i do not regard this as a white-collar crime this is a crime of violence to all of
the people of new york city this is a crime of violence to the medicaid recipients
medicaid state funds should not go so that people could live in trump towers so that people could live in luxury on
florida estates authorities have recovered less than six million of the estimated 16
million dollars that weinberg and his son stole from taxpayers after serving 16 years in a new york
prison sheldon weinberg was released his son ronald has also been released and his son jay served its time and has
been released you find yourself in a strange and alien place you scan your surroundings for clues
even your own possessions are unrecognizable finally the terrifying realization you
don't know where you are you don't even know who you are you are suffering from amnesia
that's exactly what happened to a woman who one day woke up in a park in new orleans
it's horrible and it's it's so sudden like you're not prepared for it you don't expect things
like that to happen to you i didn't know what to do i know i had to go get help somewhere
the woman thought her name might be gigi she carried a strange assortment of things
four pairs of scissors a gold-plated table setting ups forms used only by company employees
and deposit envelopes from banks across the northeastern united states she was also carrying 26 tubes of
lipstick 24 lip liner pencils and lots of other cosmetics police reviewed hundreds of missing
persons files doctors probed and tested even sodium amitav a so-called truth serum was given
to gigi nothing worked her past remained a secret that no one could unlock she has made a conscious effort to
assist me on every phase of trying to find out who she is through the law enforcement agencies through the
media if she was in fact trying to conceal her identity she would not have signed the releases
that allow us to do this doyle mcgee was puzzled by the total absence of anything personal in gigi's
wallet or handbag he feared that this was no accident somebody has gone to great pains to make
sure that we don't know who she is the wallets are fairly new they had absolutely nothing personal in
them no personal photos no credit cards no checks what could have triggered gigi's amnesia
experts believe that she experienced something so horrible that in her own defense her memory simply
shut down update during the broadcast of this story several viewers called our phone center
saying that they did recognize gigi she was identified as belinda lynn from wilmington delaware however none of the
callers could tell us how she got to new orleans or why she lost her memory [Music]
next the reunion of a young woman and her mother launches a new search for two long lost sisters
in san francisco california jackie dragon grew up in a typical middle class home
she knew she had been adopted but had no information about her birth parents but for some reason jackie had an
extraordinary interest in films and television shows about women in prisons there was some strange sense of security
that i felt in watching the stories and you know the women interacting in these in their lives in their relationships in
prison at the age of 12 years old jackie made a surprising discovery i was sneaking around in my father's
closet and looking through a box of papers and what i found were legal papers and
as i read through them i realized they were my adoption papers jacqueline stark it was a big thing it was a turning
point it was something that i knew from that point on that someday i would find those people in that paper
i searched you know off and on for a number of years when i got the information that i wasn't born in some
hospital somewhere but that i was born in prison [Music] jackie learned that she was born at a
women's prison in chicago her mother marge ryder was serving a one-year sentence for her part in an
armed robbery after more than nine years of searching jackie finally located her birth mother
hi may i speak with marge ryder please speaking and what i realized was that in a way
i was setting myself up to feel rejected all over again does the date february 16th 1964 mean
anything to you what did you say your name was again well my name is jackie i can't believe you're calling me
not for a second did she hesitate she was happy that i called and i felt so relieved and so lucky
well do you have time to talk right now i've got all the time in the world to talk now yes
marge talked about the agonizing decision to give jackie up for adoption i convinced myself that the best thing
to do for jackie was to give her a home that i assumed had two upstanding parents that there was
security in that home that she could be guaranteed an education all the things that i knew at that time in my life
there was no way i could possibly give her any of that after she had left they came and told me that jackie had
gone to her new home in some other state and it hurt same as it's certain now that's one memory i didn't lose
a few weeks after saying goodbye to jackie marge completed her sentence and was released she never again got in
trouble with the law she married and lived a conventional life but when she talked to jackie years
later marge did have some dramatic news one of the first things she said was i never thought any of you girls would be
calling me and then she let me know that there were two other sisters it was very exciting i couldn't believe
it was like there's more you're kidding there's something more that i didn't know
marge's first daughter laura may was just 18 months old when marge went to prison
she was left in the care of marge's grandmother the courts just stepped in because she
was too old a woman to raise a infant child and i think i think they lost her as
well as i did laura may was ultimately taken by the cook county welfare department and
became a ward of the state marge never saw laura may again after her prison term marge gave birth
to a third daughter dawn marie she too was given up for adoption i had often gone over in my mind what if they come
looking for me i felt i was giving each child the very best that i could give them
[Music] marge ryder flew to california and met her daughter jackie for the first time
[Music] this is laura may and this is you of course wow you can definitely tell it's family
she really looks the same look at all those knees i guess thanks to our viewers jackie dragon and
marge rider's dreams of reuniting their family finally came true after we first broadcast the story they
were contacted by laura may now called susan and by dawn marie whose adoptive name is carlin
three months later they all got together at jackie's home in glendale california
hi susan oh it's good to meet you i think when i first started feeling really comfortable is when we went out
and took some polaroids it's a very once in a lifetime kind of a thing to find a sister that you've never met
everybody smile each one is totally individual they're all strong i've found out
[Music] and they've done good with their lives i'm probably [Music] [Music] you

This episode includes: Teen Tragedy, Real Twin Peaks, Missing Page, Update: Robbinghood, Gigi's Amnesia and Prison Mom.

Brief Summary

Five mysterious cases include a teenager's death, family tragedies, a woman's disappearance, and a Medicaid fraud scheme.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Russell Evans. A popular teenager is found fatally injured on a lonely road, raising questions about a hit-and-run or murder.
Rina Paquette's Death. Rina Paquette's death is ruled a suicide, but her family believes otherwise.
The Disappearance of Pam Page. Pam Page disappears without a trace, leaving behind a suspicious letter.
Psychic's Disturbing Vision. A psychic reveals a shocking vision of Pam's fate, suggesting foul play.
Judge's Strong Statement. The judge emphasizes the violent nature of the crime against Medicaid recipients.
Jackie's Emotional Reunion. Jackie discovers she has two sisters after reuniting with her birth mother.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just knew he wasn’t gonna make it.

2:26WatchMar 16, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.