- 6 hours ago
Accident, Suicide or Murder - Season 6 Episode 1 -
A Man And His Balloon
A Man And His Balloon
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FunTranscript
00:00An empty field in an affluent golf community yields a gruesome discovery.
00:10I immediately saw a deceased white male with a single gunshot wound to the left side of his chest.
00:16This could have been a robbery gone horribly wrong, but there doesn't look like there's any struggle.
00:22Detectives wonder if the victim's past has finally caught up with him.
00:26He knew who did this.
00:28Your father was not a Boy Scout.
00:30He was not a Boy Scout.
00:31I don't know what his business dealings were. I don't know if he pissed the wrong person off.
00:36Why would somebody want to shoot Alan?
00:39You're the only person that knew he was going to be walking out of that gate that night.
00:43Until strange new evidence challenges everything police thought they knew.
00:48Why is he buying a 350 gram weather balloon? It was very strange.
00:54The more we're digging, the more questions we're adding.
00:57And there are no answers.
01:00Many of the searches were in his own voice.
01:03Shut the heart. Do you die instantly?
01:07It was like he was leaving evidence from beyond the grave.
01:10And all of a sudden, this takes a 180-degree turn.
01:40On a quiet Thursday morning, shortly after 7 a.m., West Palm Beach, Florida, Dispatch receives a call from a bicyclist who says they spotted something in an empty field adjacent to the bike path.
01:51We arrived. I immediately saw a deceased white male laying on his back, facing up with a single gunshot wound to the left side of his chest.
02:17First responders, they assessed the body for signs of life, and upon not finding any, they pronounced him deceased at 7.16 a.m. that day.
02:30I immediately called the other detective supervisor and said, we need to deploy our team and get to the scene as fast as possible.
02:37I get my stuff and I head out there. Right now, you're just scanning the area because we're not going to touch the body until the medical examiner gets there.
02:45He's already been pronounced dead. So, you're examining the scene. You're not moving anything yet. You're waiting.
02:52So, patrol officers immediately locked down the scene for preservation.
02:56Detectives turn their focus to the body of the deceased male.
03:00The body was still warm when the investigator came to scene.
03:04The gunshot that we observed was right about here, just near the heart, the left center of the heart, small entry wound, like about the size of a pen.
03:24You could tell it was a low caliber shot.
03:29Detective Moretti also notes the location of the victim's body in an empty field next to the affluent Ballin Isles Country Club and Residential Community.
03:36It's in the middle of a field and it's bright and early in the morning.
03:43So, number one, what are you doing out in the middle of the field?
03:46Right around the corner from the Ballin Isles entrance with the guard shack gate right there.
03:52He's an elderly gentleman, so maybe he was taking a walk. We don't know at this time.
03:57I thought it was odd that he was laying face up, almost like he had kind of fallen over perfectly.
04:07The gunshot wound early on was placed so perfectly in the center of his chest, I thought possibly that we were going to find a firearm underneath him that maybe he committed suicide.
04:18Also, the area is a very safe area. There's not a lot going on there, especially at that time of day.
04:27This could be a suicide. There has to be a gun underneath him.
04:32But when medical examiners at the scene turn over the man's body, they find nothing.
04:39When you don't have a gun and you've got a deceased person right there in an open field with a single gunshot wound to the chest, it looks like a homicide.
04:49Once the medical examiner arrived and gave us permission to move the body at the scene, we found his wallet in his back pocket.
04:59We were then able to identify him as Alan Abramson, a 71-year-old resident of the bordering community, which is Ballin Isles.
05:07Detective Clayton did locate next of Ken, which would have been his wife, Linda, who they reside in Ballin Isles.
05:16And we all went to the house first and no answer, nobody was there.
05:20We checked with security and there was no alarm set or triggered or anything like that.
05:26And so Detective Clayton researched and found that Linda was in Boston.
05:32While law enforcement attempts to reach Alan's wife, Linda, 1,400 miles north, detectives at the scene focus on collecting evidence.
05:42I see a cell phone, earbuds, white earbuds were attached to the cell phone.
05:49We noticed a pair of scissors.
05:51There was some string nearby, some rubber bands and the binder clip.
05:56And I thought that was unusual because I always carry my money like this.
06:04So we're thinking possible robbery, don't know.
06:08This area where he was found is used as a parking lot, an overflow parking lot for the golf community, Ballin Isles.
06:14So some of the items at first we thought possibly weren't involved in the case.
06:18But as an investigator, you want to take everything you can because sometimes in the end, it'll come back and prove that it was part of the case.
06:24While evidence at the scene is processed, detectives are able to reach Linda and inform her that they found Alan shot dead in a field near their home.
06:35Linda is in complete distress, disarray.
06:38The Boston Police Department was there with her for safety reasons while we made that call.
06:44And she advised that she was there visiting her daughter who recently had a child.
06:48From his wife, we learned that they had both traveled to Boston together.
06:54And a few days into the trip, Alan had been complaining of boredom.
06:59He was tired of the cold, tired of the hotel, and decided he wanted to come back home to Palm Beach Gardens.
07:07So he flew back down on his own to West Palm Beach on the 21st.
07:13He told her he'll be back up on the 28th.
07:15Linda described Alan, her husband, the deceased, as the life of the party.
07:23She said he only has friends and no enemies.
07:26He was always having a good time.
07:27He seemed to be happy, and everything seemed to be going well.
07:30And he loved living in that community because he could play golf with the many friends that he had there.
07:35Linda also informed Detective Clayton that Alan would normally walk his neighborhood very early in the morning, around 5.30.
07:43Linda was able to tell us that the property that was found at the scene, the phone was his, the binder clip was his.
07:51We also learned from his wife, Linda, Alan would regularly carry $300 to $500 in cash in his binder clip.
07:57And that she had just given him a watch, and the watch meant something to him coming from his wife.
08:03So we know that the watch is missing, and the money is missing from the scene.
08:09So once we learned that, we thought, wow, he was robbed and killed.
08:13From Palm Beach Gardens, we don't have a lot of homicides come through our office.
08:22It's a very affluent part of town.
08:25It's got great security.
08:28Linda wants to do whatever she can to help us investigate, to find out, you know, who killed Alan.
08:34So then at that time, we determined that we need to interview Linda,
08:37and she advised us that she was going to come home to speak with investigators.
08:41As Linda prepares for a return to Palm Beach Gardens,
08:45detectives shift their focus to the upscale golf community,
08:48and any residents who may have witnessed something to help the investigation.
08:53We had tactical crime units surveilling the area.
08:56We had them stopping cars and interviewing subjects,
08:58so we can gain as much information from them as possible.
09:03Did anyone talk to you specifically this week?
09:05Anybody that stood out to you as suspicious or dangerous or anything?
09:09Yes.
09:09There's a gentleman that always walks or runs this path, elderly gentleman.
09:14Yeah, I don't know.
09:16Unable to find witnesses, detectives turn back to the crime scene,
09:20and what's left behind continues to raise questions.
09:24There doesn't look like there's any struggle, just from outside looking in.
09:28It doesn't look like there was a fight.
09:30The shoes, bottom of the soles of his shoes were clean.
09:34Didn't see any wounds on the hand or anything like that,
09:38and his hat was still on his person.
09:41There was no struggle.
09:43That really put another question mark into this case.
09:46Alan drove his vehicle to the exact location where he would be found deceased less than 12 hours later.
10:05He is there for 55 minutes that evening.
10:09What was he doing in the field the night before his death?
10:13Now you're asking yourself a lot of questions.
10:15At first glance, the shooting death of 71-year-old Alan Abramson appears to be a robbery turned homicide.
10:36But as detectives examine the evidence, nothing about the case adds up.
10:41With no signs of a struggle, we're floating any possibility.
10:46Right now, we're, you know, a few hours in, so we've got to collect evidence,
10:51and we've got to see where this evidence is going to lead us.
10:55At that point, you want to find the crucial evidence, which is a firearm, the murder weapon, or a shell casing.
11:03Investigators combed the field where Alan's body was found,
11:05zeroing in on any sign of a murder weapon.
11:09The field is probably several acres larger than a football field.
11:13We searched that whole field.
11:15Trees, bushes, grass, even a waterway that runs to the south, a canal, we searched with a dive team.
11:22We had workers come out and search storm drains, and we couldn't find anything.
11:28As the sun sets on day one of the investigation into Alan Abramson's death,
11:33detectives hope the next morning's autopsy will provide clues.
11:36The body did not present any defensive wounds.
11:44There was a single gunshot wound to the left chest,
11:47and the defect on the shirt had a little bit of blood staining around the defect,
11:53and then a little streak of blood coming up around the 12 o'clock position and going up to the left shoulder.
12:01Something appeared to us that something dragged through the blood post being shot,
12:09from what we don't know at this point.
12:11And I could see unburned gunpowder particles on the shirt.
12:17Those unburned gunpowder particles tell me that the gun was discharged very close or near contact to the body surface.
12:26We feel this is more evidence.
12:28We have a homicide, and that he knew who did this,
12:32because he let someone get that close to him to shoot him straight directly in the chest.
12:37Despite their theory that Alan knew his killer, detectives have not identified a suspect.
12:44Outrage, shock, and fear.
12:46Tonight, the Palm Beach Gardens community is on edge after one of their own is gunned down
12:51and left for dead just outside a well-to-do neighborhood.
12:54Now, police are on the hunt for the killer.
12:58You did not have people being shot outside of Ballin Isles.
13:03It was not a common occurrence.
13:06This was in public.
13:08It was inexplicable for the police department, and it had to be a really big deal.
13:13Media is barking at their doors, saying, what's going on here?
13:15You know, so they had a lot of pressure on them.
13:17They thought someone was killed here, as many locals on edge,
13:21and there's still many questions surrounding his death,
13:23as police have not confirmed an arrest.
13:29I was sitting at my desk, and the phone rang, and it was the newspaper.
13:34I don't recall the name of the newspaper, but they identified themselves
13:38and, you know, broke the news to me.
13:41It was devastating to hear this, because I had just talked to him, you know, hours before.
13:50I met Alan Abramson through an introduction from another sales rep that was working for me.
13:59I immediately liked Alan.
14:02Why would somebody want to shoot Alan?
14:05He had, you know, he had no enemies.
14:08He was this, you know, happy-go-lucky guy.
14:12He was, like, the model person for that stage of life.
14:21Had a successful career.
14:23Got out of a marriage that he wasn't happy in.
14:27Moved to Florida.
14:28Found Linda.
14:29Had a wonderful relationship with Linda, living in a nice neighborhood.
14:33Alan and Linda were like two teenagers in love.
14:40And he always talked about Linda.
14:43Well, they were a great couple, and a happy couple.
14:46And, you know, I immediately thought about Linda and how I wanted to reach out to her, which I did.
14:52And, of course, Linda was, you know, totally beside herself.
14:56She couldn't even talk, really.
14:59But the grieving Linda, having returned to Florida from Boston, allows detectives to come to her home for a formal interview as they hunt for any information that will help identify Alan's killer.
15:11She was really still grieving and was upset.
15:15It's not an easy thing to handle.
15:17She reiterated a lot of things that she had told Detective Clayton over the phone, that he would carry $200 to $300 cash on him.
15:25Might have been wearing a watch.
15:26You know, there were scissors left at the scene, a small pair of metal, metal scissors.
15:30And we asked if they were hers, if, you know, it was him.
15:33And to her recollection, absolutely not.
15:35She doesn't know anybody would hurt him.
15:39Detective Moretti advised that he felt that Linda had nothing to do with this homicide, that he was able to clear her as a suspect.
15:47Linda tells detectives that Alan recently altered his early morning walks around the neighborhood.
15:51And he was meeting a golf buddy for coffee, a member of the Ballin Isles community named Victor.
15:57He had learned from Alan's wife, Linda, that Alan was supposed to meet Victor for coffee that morning of his death.
16:06One thing stood out.
16:07In order for Victor Greenstein to go home, he had to drive past the crime scene to enter his neighborhood.
16:16Why wouldn't you call 911 if your friend doesn't show up at Starbucks?
16:19Victor has not reached out to Linda or Palm Beach Gardens detectives in the days since Alan's death.
16:25And the question is, why not?
16:29I thought Victor Greenstein was a person of interest.
16:49Detectives investigating the killing of 71-year-old Alan Abramson have just learned that Alan was set to meet a friend the morning of his death.
16:57Because Victor Greenstein was supposed to meet Alan for coffee that morning, and then Alan didn't show up, Victor was definitely identified as an early person that we wanted to talk to.
17:09Victor, how are you doing?
17:11Victor, how are you doing?
17:11Good to see you.
17:13Well, not, like, how long have you known Alan?
17:17Basically, when he moved in the Ballin Isles, I'm going to say five years.
17:21From what we understand, that you and Alan recently started meeting at Starbucks.
17:27He gets a small coffee, tall cotton with two ice cubes.
17:32Now, Alan doesn't show up on Thursday.
17:35You call, he goes to voicemail, you call again.
17:39The last time I tried him was 6.49, I think.
17:45And I probably left around, yeah, I left to a 7, 5 after 7.
17:49Is that out of character for Alan not to show up?
17:51You know, I mean, I thought nothing of it, that maybe he overslept, or whatever, I mean, I wasn't going to go to his home and ring the doorbells, they can't wake him.
18:00Quite frankly, that's what I kind of figured.
18:02As an investigator, you put yourself in my shoes, okay?
18:07You're the only person that knew he was going to be walking out of that game that night.
18:13You're there, he doesn't show up, you call him.
18:17Okay, so where do you go after that?
18:19I went to the gym.
18:20What gym?
18:21When you left the Starbucks that morning, I would assume you went westbound on PGA towards Mellon Island.
18:30I went right by that lake shore.
18:32How many police guards do you think were there?
18:34I don't know, six maybe, seven.
18:36It was, and guys, honestly, it felt bad.
18:39You should have never gone on me.
18:41In hindsight, I mean, maybe it sure, it didn't.
18:45So Victor had told us that he did see the crime scene, he saw all the police cars, but he just didn't think anything of it.
18:52What would you say the general consensus of Mellon is amongst the community, amongst his friends?
18:57How would you describe him to somebody who never met him, which is us?
19:01Well, it's a guy you'd want to go out and have a beer with, or hang out with, or spend four hours on the golf course with.
19:07He was just a fun guy.
19:09Did he talk about any business dealings that are coming up, or anything like that?
19:13Having to meet anybody, anything at all?
19:16No.
19:17And how would you describe, if you know, his relationship with Linda?
19:21I think it's great.
19:23Two second marriages, both bad first marriages, from what I understand.
19:26And I think they were just really soulmates.
19:30Do you know anybody who would want to harm him?
19:32No, I do not.
19:34But detectives are eager to learn more about Alan's past, specifically the family he built before he met Linda.
19:43They set out to question Alan's ex-wife and their two grown children.
19:49We found out that Alan had two adult children that were estranged from him, his daughter, Rachel, and his son, Daniel.
19:58Alan's children didn't have a great relationship with him.
20:00He was remarried and had three stepchildren.
20:02He didn't really speak to them that often, and it seemed like he was losing his relationship with them.
20:08That makes us want to talk to them and interview them extensively.
20:12Are they angry enough to have something done to their father?
20:16These are all questions that you have to have answered.
20:19Over the phone, you said you've been basically estranged since 2003.
20:23Yeah.
20:23What made you estranged?
20:25He was a distant dude.
20:26Like, he had a hard childhood.
20:28He didn't have a maternal mother, and he didn't have a paternal father.
20:31And he's telling a guy who, like, shouldn't have had kids.
20:34And we were just sort of like, my brother and I were an afterthought.
20:38Right, well, you told me on the phone that you wanted me to know that your father was not a Boy Scout.
20:43He was not a Boy Scout.
20:44That he was a big partier.
20:45Big partier.
20:46He was obnoxious.
20:47Yes.
20:47And he knew what buttons to push.
20:48He did.
20:48Could you elaborate on that?
20:50He could be very offensive.
20:51He could be loud.
20:52He would just like to say things.
20:53I think my dad really wanted to, like, be more of a party guy again.
20:57Just once he got Linda, he, like, became Mr. Party guy again.
21:01I know, you know, my father liked to drink.
21:04My father liked to party.
21:05Even at the funeral, they were like, Alan would love to have a cocktail or two.
21:10You said that your dad was unfaithful to your mother.
21:13As far as I know.
21:16Elaborate.
21:16When you were little, yeah, they would come for the summer, like, college students.
21:24And then one year, my mom got a letter from one who was Mormon and was making amends for all the things she had done.
21:30One of them was apologizing for my father.
21:33Having, like, been romantic with him.
21:37My parents were still, like, allegedly happily married.
21:39And my dad was on match.com actively.
21:41And he left people printing profiled out and left them on the table.
21:47He was just cocky to, you know, like, that was a cocky move.
21:50And it was that he was doing that to my mom, even if you are unhappy.
21:54But who leaves it out?
21:55Like, you said, no buttons to push.
21:58Or just so cocky, like, you think you won't get, like, I don't know.
22:02Do you know anybody would want to cause your father on?
22:07The short answer is no.
22:10I don't, I also wasn't that involved in his life now.
22:14So I don't know what he was doing.
22:16I don't know what his business dealings were.
22:18I don't know if he pissed the wrong person off.
22:21Detectives also speak to Alan's ex-wife and learn that all three members of Alan's estranged family
22:26have alibis hundreds of miles away on the morning of the killing.
22:31While his family are ruled out as suspects,
22:33the details they've shared forced detectives to reconsider Alan's spotless reputation.
22:38A man 71 years old has a past.
22:42There's a whole world of things to dig into.
22:46Why did he leave his wife alone in Boston?
22:49Who was he coming here to meet?
22:51Was he having an affair?
22:52Was he living a life that his wife Linda didn't know about?
22:55Police in West Palm Beach, Florida are searching for clues in the mysterious death of Alan Abramson.
23:17They suspect information on his cell phone may hold the key to finding his killer.
23:23A forensic extraction was completed on Alan's cell phone.
23:27And I had looked over that report but didn't see anything really of any evidentiary value.
23:34So I decided to start manually looking through the phone.
23:38I was able to get into his Google Maps timeline which started to paint a picture of where he had been over the last few days.
23:48It showed him going from the airport on the 21st to his house on that day with an Uber.
23:56He went to Bank of America.
23:58He went to a gas supplier for like helium propane on 95 to another gas supplier.
24:05What it also showed is the night before, so on Wednesday the 24th, it showed that Alan drove his vehicle to the exact location where he would be found deceased less than 12 hours later.
24:23He is there for 55 minutes that evening.
24:28Doing what?
24:29We don't know.
24:30After that almost hour passes, he returns back home and then that morning, the Google timeline picks back up again, shows him in a walking distance from his residence to that same field where he was found deceased.
24:46It was very unusual.
24:50What was he doing in the field the night before his death?
24:53And there's nothing there.
24:54It's in the middle of nowhere.
24:55It's in an open field.
24:55In the meantime, while everybody's doing everything else, we were able to obtain video footage from the guard shack at the Ballin Isle's entrance of PGA.
25:07We start looking from the previous days there, so we've got him leaving on the 23rd.
25:14He's walking out the gate at 5.50 a.m.
25:17Alan was on his way to meet Victor for coffee.
25:19We were able to pull up video footage from Starbucks showing Alan entering in and meeting Victor for coffee.
25:27So that's when we were able to confirm that Victor was telling us the truth, that he did regularly meet him there, and that he did meet him there several days before the homicide.
25:37We would talk regularly.
25:39I actually met him for coffee on several occasions.
25:41And as I slowly got to know Victor, you could clearly see that he had nothing to do with the shooting, and we were able to rule him out as a possible suspect.
25:50And then on the morning of the murder, Thursday the 25th, we have Alan on video walking out.
25:59Alan was shown on video walking out of the gate at 5.53 in the morning, carrying something in his left hand.
26:05We let it play, see if we can hear anything, because it also had audio.
26:1337 and a half minutes later, you hear an audible gunshot, plain as day.
26:20Detectives can hear the shot that killed Alan Abramson, but with Alan out of the camera's view 200 yards away, they can't see who pulled the trigger.
26:30So we've got 37 minutes of unaccounted for time.
26:33What happened in that 37 minutes?
26:35I walked from that guard arm to the location where he was found, and I just took a normal walking pace, and it took me four minutes and three seconds.
26:46So you minus four minutes from the 37, we got 33 minutes of unaccounted for time.
26:50What is happening in that 33 minutes?
26:53Investigators wonder if the package that Alan carried can provide answers, a package that was absent from the crime scene.
26:59We want to know what that was.
27:02Like, is that something that could help us?
27:04Was he exchanging something with somebody in the field?
27:07What was he carrying?
27:09For answers, investigators turn back to Alan's timeline within his cell phone data and look for any unusual movements before the shooting.
27:17A trip to the bank, then to gas supply companies catch their eye.
27:20Eventually, we get the documentation from Bank of America showing he withdrew $300 cash.
27:29I got surveillance video of him withdrawing the money.
27:32Then detectives go to Nexair and find out at that time that he purchased a 40 cubic foot helium tank.
27:42He paid cash for it.
27:44We were able to obtain the receipt.
27:45Alan asked the air supplier for another 40-pound tank of helium, but they were sold out and referred him to another store.
27:54So Alan went to that air supplier, bought another 40 cubic tank of helium.
28:01He paid cash for that as well.
28:03We got the receipts for that.
28:05And so why is he buying 80 cubic feet of helium?
28:12I don't know.
28:13It made no sense.
28:17To make sense of the strange purchases, investigators turn again to the data found within Alan's phone.
28:25On February 1st, I was going through Alan's emails in his Gmail account,
28:31and I had found that he had placed an order for a weather balloon on Christmas Day 2017.
28:39I thought a weather balloon purchase about a month prior was odd.
28:49Investigator Machado follows her instincts and digs deeper into Alan's unusual purchase.
28:55She finds emails from Alan to the weather balloon supplier dating back months before his death.
29:00October 17th, 2017, he emailed High Altitude Science.
29:06Will a 350-gram balloon be able to hold 65-plus cubic feet of gas?
29:11Also, what will the approximate diameter of the balloon be at launch?
29:14Those are very specific questions, if I would say so.
29:22What we're thinking now that we've got those emails, okay, that might explain the helium.
29:28We eventually go back to the residence again, and in the garage, on a shelf, was an empty box from High Altitude Science, empty.
29:42Linda had no knowledge that that was even there, had no clue about why he would be purchasing weather balloons, had no clue whatsoever.
29:50Okay, well, now what?
29:56At this point, we still kind of have nothing until a detective comes up with kind of a wild theory.
30:20Investigators working the mysterious shooting death of Alan Abramson are spitballing ideas as they search for his killer.
30:31A few of our detectives were together with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators, and they started talking about a theory.
30:40There was an episode of CSI Las Vegas where a person had tied a handgun to a regular helium party balloon and had tried to shoot themselves, and the balloon took the gun away.
30:57Maybe Alan committed suicide by purchasing the weather balloon, tying a string to the weather balloon, attaching the gun to the string of the weather balloon, and shot himself.
31:13And then the weather balloon took off with the gun, and off it goes.
31:18Well, initially, we're back and forth.
31:22Okay, yeah, okay, sure, no problem, this is the movie up, whatever.
31:27So we do some more research with this, and I find that there's a case in New Mexico, a gentleman did try this, did commit suicide, the balloon did take the gun from the scene.
31:38However, it was found about 20, 30 feet away, and it was popped by a cacti.
31:44Okay, this has been thought of and attempted on TV before, okay, so, but it's also been attempted in real life before.
31:54Maybe Alan's the first one that was successful.
31:59This case maybe was not a homicide, but actually a suicide.
32:05At this point, it was kind of the only theory that made any sense, but at the same time, we didn't have enough to prove it.
32:13We just have the purchase of the tanks and the purchase of the weather balloon.
32:19That's all we have.
32:20We've still got to keep digging.
32:22Once we had the theory, we decided to widen our search of the field.
32:31We went approximately 100 feet to 200 feet west of where Alan was found, and we found multicolored rubber bands and string.
32:39At that point, I decided, let's go back out to his house and do a more extensive search.
32:43So, Alan's wife, Linda, led us in the house, and in the top drawer of Alan's office, we matched the rubber bands and the string found in the field.
32:53So, we knew that that string and rubber bands that were found on that morning linked to this case.
32:59For more evidence to boost the suicide theory, investigators take another look at Alan's autopsy report and revisit an unusual finding that remains unexplained.
33:08Our CSI team and Dr. Tormos had noted that there was a thin line of blood up on his sweatshirt that looked like something was dragged through the blood along the shirt.
33:25In all likelihood, once the gunshot was fired, that string from the weather balloon holding that tied the weapon to it went across the chest there.
33:36We now know what happened. We now know how that mark got on Alan's shirt.
33:41Part of the string on the weather balloon leaving a trail of blood.
33:46Despite the mounting evidence, investigators realize they face an uphill battle.
33:52It's very rare that a homicide will be reclassified as a suicide.
33:58We went to the medical examiner's office to reveal what we thought happened to Alan.
34:02He would run the new findings by me and say, what do you think? Is this even possible?
34:08And I would say, yes, but we need more.
34:12We need more facts. We need more evidence to prove your theory. So, we weren't quite there yet.
34:18For the next three weeks, investigators attempt to collect more evidence to support the suicide theory.
34:23But they continue to come up empty.
34:25On February 27th, I was at home and my son had been playing with my cell phone, my Android phone at the time.
34:36And he had said, hey, Google, and he was asking it some silly questions that a seven-year-old would want to know.
34:43And when I took the phone back from him, I saw that it was on a screen called My Activity.
34:51I found that it was recording his voice and I could play his searches back in his voice.
34:57At this point, I am immediately going into work and getting Alan's phone out of evidence again.
35:08Once I got Alan's phone out of evidence, I immediately went to the Google app and I started just scrolling through the past few days.
35:17One of the first searches that came up was, how to commit suicide and ways to kill yourself.
35:25And I just turned to Rick and I said, Rick, we've got it.
35:32This happened in January of 2018.
35:36But these searches started in 2009.
35:40How to commit suicide and ways to kill yourself was in July of 2009.
35:46380 ammo for sale in 2010.
35:51In 2016, his search started to include the weather balloon research.
35:56Sunset and sunset times in West Palm Beach.
35:58Traffic counts in Palm Beach County.
36:00Traffic volume along PGA Boulevard.
36:03He was contemplating this, not for a week, not for a month.
36:09He was contemplating this for 10 years.
36:14And then we learned many of the searches were in his own voice.
36:22Do life insurance policies pay for suicide?
36:29Lifting capacity of a three-foot balloon.
36:34How to tie a large balloon.
36:39Is there a way to hide a suicide gunshot?
36:48Shot in the heart.
36:49Do you die instantly?
36:52Oh my God.
36:54It was like he was leaving evidence from beyond the grave.
36:57Investigators have just found a number of searches on Alan Abramson's phone, which support their suicide theory.
37:19It wasn't just the helium tanks.
37:22It wasn't the purchase of the weather balloon.
37:24This tied it all together.
37:26Armed with a massive pile of evidence, investigators formulate their final theory to present to the medical examiner and the state's attorney.
37:34On the evening prior to us finding him deceased, Alan went out to the field.
37:38And we theorized that he drove his car there and he had the two 40 cubic foot helium tanks in there, prepped them somewhere in the field.
37:49His helium tanks, his string, the rubber bands, probably the scissors, everything was in place and probably ready to go.
37:55That morning we saw Alan walk out past the, he made it out to the field probably in approximately four minutes.
38:05We think that package he was carrying was the weather balloon.
38:08If you remember initially, we had that 33 minutes or so of unaccounted for time.
38:14It takes time to inflate that.
38:16Not a lot of time, but enough time to inflate that.
38:18Then you've got these helium tanks.
38:20We never found the helium tanks, but there was a waste management dumpster in the plaza next door.
38:27And the morning that we were arriving at the scene, the waste management truck was pulling out as we were arriving.
38:34So were his helium tanks in the dumpster?
38:36Maybe.
38:37And maybe Alan was so thorough that he knew that.
38:39He then had time to set up his system of tying the gun to the weather balloon, cutting the string.
38:49We cannot prove, but we theorized that the reason we did not find a shell casing at this point
38:54was we think he tied some type of catch bag to catch the casing when it ejected on there
38:59because that would be taken away as well.
39:01Alan is able to pull the trigger, fall backwards, and let the balloon take away the firearm.
39:14And you ask, where would the weather balloon end up?
39:19There are these things called weather balloon trackers.
39:22Type in the weather conditions for that day, capacity of the balloon.
39:27You enter all that information in, and it gives you a track.
39:30It took off, up, to the west, made a U-turn, and headed east out over the Atlantic Ocean,
39:42and the approximate burst point was about 40 miles north of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean.
39:52Once presented with the totality of information, there is no doubt in my mind,
39:58Mr. Abramson committed suicide, and we changed the manner of death from homicide to suicide.
40:06With the manner of death changed, investigators must now notify Alan's wife, Linda.
40:12We sat down, and we went and started going over step by step from the beginning,
40:16and we're probably 10, 15 minutes into this.
40:19She asked us to, can you please stop for a moment, and I heard her say, did he kill himself?
40:26So she could see where it was going just that early, too.
40:31Linda was taken aback, for sure.
40:33It was shocking to them.
40:35Everything seemed to be fine in life of the party and love of his life, and they were going on trips together.
40:42I believe that she thinks that Alan had committed suicide to benefit everybody.
40:50There were several life insurance policies written out to all the family members.
40:56I mean, you can't take a million-dollar policy out on yourself and then for your family and then kill yourself the next day.
41:03It's not going to cover that.
41:04But these insurance policies were taken out way prior.
41:08The insurance companies tell investigators that the policies were past the point of contention.
41:14Since several years had passed since Alan opened them, they were to be paid out regardless of whether he committed suicide.
41:21So when Alan killed himself, he knew before he left this world that everybody would be taken care of financially.
41:30Even though Alan's family would benefit financially from his suicide,
41:33those around him still find it shocking that such a vibrant man would choose to end his own life
41:39and stage it to look like a homicide.
41:42Not the slightest hint that he was depressed or unhappy with his life.
41:51He was suffering in silence with a smile on his face.
41:56I would want people to know that Alan was the type of person that everybody loved.
42:06He apparently was a master of two lives, two emotional lives.
42:13But he concealed it and did a very good job concealing it.
42:17I think he went through this elaborate scheme so his family would not find out that he did commit suicide.
42:25He wanted it to make it look like a homicide.
42:28He wanted everybody to think that he left happy.
42:32He didn't want to reveal to his family and his wife that he was sad.
42:35At the end of the day, the reason why will really never be known because Alan took that with him to the grave.
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