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Short filmTranscript
00:00Who set it up?
00:03Telling you the truth about this.
00:09Everybody else is pointing their finger at you.
00:19What people think when they watch Murder for Hire, your show on TV,
00:23is that it's glamorous, it's a professional hit person,
00:26it's a lot of money, and so on and so forth.
00:28Many times, that's not the case.
00:31We had three people killed in one location at one time.
00:37What the heck? I just left there.
00:40The more victims, the bigger the case becomes.
00:44If there was an intended target, why take two more?
00:49They were looking at the wives.
00:52There was some embezzling going on.
00:55And then it came out, oh, he was having an affair.
01:00He was a Romeo.
01:02He was a player.
01:03A flashy person.
01:05Like Fabio on the horse with the long hair.
01:09But it wasn't like she was going out with Brad Pitt.
01:14Just cold-blooded to execute three people.
01:16Coincidences?
01:18Coincidences?
01:20I don't believe in coincidences.
01:24We all knew who it was, but the only question in my mind was...
01:28My shift for that day started at 3 o'clock.
01:44When I went to work, I found out that my car was over at B&B Automotive being repaired.
01:49They repaired our police cars.
01:54They had the account.
01:56B&B Automotive.
01:57It was almost like a little bit of a center hub for motor vehicle mechanical work.
02:03It was in Windsor Locks.
02:05When we mention Windsor Locks, we always say, oh, we're Bradley, as Bradley International Airport.
02:10A lot of farmland, beautiful homes, you know, nice little community.
02:18So after roll call was over, I drove over to B&B.
02:21I arrived there probably around 3.20.
02:23They said about 25 more minutes.
02:25So I hung out there talking with those guys.
02:29After my car was ready, I left.
02:31I think it was 4.20.
02:34And 10 to 20 minutes had passed since I had left there.
02:38When dispatch reported that there was a call at B&B Automotive,
02:42there was a report of three bodies on the ground with blood around them.
02:51What the heck?
02:52I'm like, I just left there.
02:53The scene was a garage with multiple bays.
02:58When we first went to the scene, there was a long driveway.
03:03And we saw a red pickup truck was parked in the driveway.
03:06Door opened, you know, keys are still there.
03:10At that point, it kind of led us to believe that that vehicle was stopped, approached,
03:14and then somebody was taken out hastily.
03:17They just took back to that building.
03:23We walked down the rest of the driveway.
03:26We go to our right, and it's three gentlemen.
03:30Pools of blood.
03:31It was more like they were gathered in one place, told, keep your head down, don't look
03:39at me, and they were shot and killed.
03:44It was a nine millimeter, it was execution style type of murder.
03:50That's a real cruel manner of death.
03:53This was a major crime.
03:55The victims are determined to be employees of this automotive repair shop.
04:03Robert Steers, Barry Rossi, and Lauren Stevens.
04:11Now, Barry and Bobby were owners of the B&B automotive garage.
04:16Lauren was an employee of theirs.
04:21They were outgoing guys.
04:23They were, you know, great businessmen, great mechanics.
04:26In fact, Bobby was the boomer of the red pickup truck.
04:30So when I got there, the ambulance was already on scene.
04:35And Bob was making some kind of moaning noise, like he was in pain.
04:40He was hurt, and he was transported to the hospital by ambulance personnel.
04:44He succumbed to his injuries later on.
04:49He died at the hospital.
04:52At the time, 50 million things were running through my head as to what happened to these
04:55guys.
04:56You know, I just literally talked to these guys, and it was sad.
05:05Talking to other witnesses who worked in the area, they gave us the timeline.
05:10I think it was somewhere in the E5 area, you know, that the murder took place.
05:16So that was my first murder scene in my career.
05:21After that, you know, I didn't know if I wanted to be a police officer anymore.
05:25It was difficult to deal with for a little while.
05:27And some of the things that ran through my mind, too, was were they waiting for me to leave?
05:34Did they see me go in there?
05:38Did they see me leave?
05:41What if I had stayed there just a little longer?
05:44Could I have helped these guys, you know?
05:46When I look at a case like this, think of a puzzle where you're trying to develop a picture
05:52of what happened.
05:54Number one, you've got to find out who the relatives and relationships that that victim
05:57had, who their friends are, who their enemies are.
06:01There are just so many questions that you need to answer for each individual person.
06:06There were three victims, and you realize all the ancillary things that you're going to
06:13have to do, not just once, not just twice, but actually do three times, and then some.
06:22I'm Karen Ranney, previously Steers, older sister to Robert.
06:27And I'm younger sister to Robert.
06:30We were a family of six.
06:32My name is Debbie Haught, and I'm Bobby Steers' older sister.
06:38I don't think we had a problem growing up.
06:41We had our differences, but, you know, it wasn't anything major where we were pulling
06:45our hair out of each other's heads.
06:46Except for the bathroom.
06:50When I think of my brother Bobby, he had lots of friends.
06:56He had things that I had in common with him, cars in particular.
07:02We found a picture of him when he was 17, and my parents had given him a gift to work
07:07on cars.
07:08He did really well in school with automotive.
07:11It was his passion, and he found the right people to work with.
07:17Barry and Bobby were in a class for mechanics together, bonded, and went to work for their
07:26teacher until they decided, you know, they're going to branch out on their own.
07:29They were going to start their own business together.
07:35That's where they ended up with B&B, Barry and Bobby.
07:38And, yeah, like a married couple.
07:44They were the perfect pair.
07:47How often in life do you come across people that not only become business partners together,
07:52and be friends outside of work as well?
07:55Well, a good 20 years in business together, and I don't think they ever had a fight.
08:00I don't think they ever argued.
08:04Barry, to me, was a more jovial guy.
08:09Bob, to me, he seemed more business, you know, like more direct.
08:14And their business was so lucrative that they took on more employees because of the business
08:21growth.
08:22Lauren Stevens was the goofball.
08:25Lauren always had a grin on his face, always making some kind of joke.
08:31Stories were Lauren would hide, like, Playboy magazines in some of the cars that would come
08:36in to get repaired, of customers that he knew really well.
08:41So I think Lauren was the biggest prankster out of the three of them.
08:47Tell me about the pins you're wearing.
08:51These were pins created at the wedding of Barry.
08:56And they were all...
08:57The three best men, the three guys.
08:59The three guys.
08:59The three stooges.
09:01Because they were always together.
09:02Mm-hmm.
09:03You know, they were always enjoying life together.
09:05And having fun and enjoying life together.
09:08So, you know, God brought them into this world together.
09:12God took them out together because it was meant to be at that point in their lives to be together.
09:18So it happened together because they loved each other.
09:29Shelly was Robert's wife.
09:31They had three children that day.
09:33And I answered the phone, and this girl's on the other end, and she's hysterical.
09:38And it was Shelly, and that's when she told me my brother had been shot.
09:44What breaks my heart, what kills me to this day, is just visualizing the way it happened.
09:52Execution style.
09:52Oh, God, my brother did not deserve that.
10:00Neither one of these guys deserved that.
10:05July 30th, the phone rang at 5.30, and it's my youngest sister saying there's been a murder.
10:11And what?
10:13It's just surreal.
10:15It was a very horrible, horrible night.
10:20Why this happened?
10:21Why did this have to happen?
10:23It was needless.
10:24It was wrong.
10:26When I found out it was at the garage, I just figured it had to be a robbery.
10:34What else could it possibly have been?
10:36And, you know, at that point, we walked through the rest of the garage just to look at the
10:40offices, the safes, the desks where, if money was kept, looking for different motives.
10:48It didn't look like they would have known the person.
10:52There was no other signs of struggle.
10:54There was no ransacking of the offices or anything.
10:57There was money all over the place.
11:02The cash register was full.
11:07Nothing touched.
11:09We kind of, like, looked around.
11:11Their pockets weren't turned inside out.
11:14Everything seemed in order.
11:15It definitely was not a robbery, and it definitely had the markings of a hit, if you will.
11:23I think that if they were shot in the face, it was somebody angry.
11:26But it wasn't somebody angry.
11:27It was somebody who knew what they came to do and did it and was out of there within minutes.
11:38When I was in the garage that day, I usually spoke to Barry.
11:42They were joking around, basically, just chit-chat guy stuff.
11:47I remember we heard the phone ring.
11:49I remember Bob coming out of his office, and he looked a little upset.
11:53And he said to Barry, he goes, can you believe it?
11:55That guy called me.
11:57So Barry just kind of shook his head in disbelief.
12:00And then Bob went back to his office, and I said to Barry, I go, what's that all about?
12:04And he goes, oh, you don't want to know.
12:06So I said, okay.
12:07You know, I'm not going to get into their personal business.
12:09But to me, it seemed like it was an ongoing issue that they had with somebody.
12:13I don't know at the time if it was a pissed-off customer or what was going on.
12:17And that's all I recall.
12:19He was saying, this could be some angry person with a car.
12:25Then it was like they had a, you know, they would hold cars for non-payment.
12:29So was it a disgruntled customer who wanted their car back and couldn't get their car back?
12:36Was it a disgruntled customer who didn't like the way they fixed their car?
12:39At first, we didn't know who were they after, all of them, one of them?
12:48But if there was an intended target, why take two more?
12:54You were scared out of your mind of who's next.
12:59We just didn't sleep.
13:00There was a 24-hour watch at the house.
13:04We took shifts.
13:05So it's very frightening.
13:06The only question in my mind, it was like, who?
13:13There was a mechanic who was not there that day.
13:17So B&B Automotive, they had approximately four people working in there.
13:22Bob, Barry, Lauren, and Les at the time.
13:28But he wasn't there when this happened.
13:36Les was a conservative guy, serious about what he did.
13:43He worked with these guys five days a week, maybe more.
13:46And he probably loved them like they were his brothers, his families.
13:50When I know about Les' he raced cars.
13:54B&B sponsored him.
13:56But then things changed.
13:57They did stop supporting him at one time because money was getting tight, so it could be a motive.
14:13So detectives wondered if Les was involved.
14:17He could have been a suspect or he could have been part of the planning.
14:23That's why he wasn't there.
14:24He could have been the shooter.
14:25We did look into him quickly, and he had a dentist appointment, so he cut out early.
14:34But we've seen before where people will set up the alibi.
14:38They'll make sure they're seen somewhere, or they go to a restaurant.
14:43There is a receipt.
14:44They go through a toll booth.
14:46So that's something that one, as an investigator, would look very, very seriously at.
14:52But it wasn't just your normal type investigation.
14:56A lot of questions, a lot of interviews, a lot of different angles.
14:59And then also, we went to the family side, and we started looking in family members.
15:04The more victims, the bigger the case becomes, because you certainly have a great deal of work that needs to be done for each individual victim.
15:14They would take Barry and find nothing that would raise a red flag, so to speak, in his life.
15:22Same with Lauren.
15:24Bobby, they dissected his life.
15:27And there were some things that caused some very concerning information that needed to really be looked into.
15:36Bobby was married to Shelly Steers.
15:43She just looked like the normal, you know, Winsor Locks married woman.
15:50After they started B&B Automotive, she was working at the shop.
15:54She would go in and take care of all their business side of the scheduling and the bill collecting and the deposit.
16:01She did all that.
16:03Shelly was extremely friendly.
16:04I would just say she's average.
16:07I wouldn't say that she was not like a model person.
16:11She was just average.
16:12She didn't wear a lot of makeup.
16:13She didn't wear a lot of fancy clothes.
16:15Not a lot of jewelry.
16:17I mean, she just wasn't ostentatious about anything.
16:20My assumption is that they met in school, and they got married when she was pregnant.
16:25And I don't think that was something that was planned.
16:29I think it's something that happened.
16:30And they took the course to be responsible and get married.
16:33I think they were married by the time they were 19, 20 years old.
16:37I didn't really know her real well.
16:41But when she was around at family events, she was always cordial.
16:44She was never ugly, mean, or disrespectful.
16:48Bobby and Shelly seemed to me to get along really well.
16:52Now, once did she ever say, like, you can't come over, or we're not having you over for a birthday party or a picnic?
17:00You never felt like you weren't welcome.
17:03I went with her to a crazy, like, heavy metal concert.
17:06She wasn't just like my sister-in-law.
17:07She was like my sister.
17:09We were friends.
17:10I thought everything was fine until about two weeks before the incident at the shop.
17:23I had gone down to my brother's boat, and that was the only time I ever saw my brother really distraught.
17:29And he said, I'm almost bankrupt.
17:36And he shared that he found all these charge cards and loans, and he was, she had gotten him into a lot of debt that he was not aware of.
17:48Where all that money was going, I don't know.
17:52I think Shelly had a little bit of a problem at the office.
18:00I'm not sure exactly what, but there was something that, you know, she was no longer working there.
18:08Then, you know, information started to come out that Shelly, his wife, was stealing money from the business because she did control the office side.
18:23It's a speculation.
18:24It's nothing that we can actually say definitively, but this was something out of the norm.
18:32There was something that just wasn't right when it came to Shelly.
18:38What I can tell you about Barry is Barry wanted the business saved and protected.
18:47And so the day after the murders, Barry and Bobby were scheduled to go to the lawyer to put everything in Barry's name.
19:01But they never got to go to that appointment.
19:04Because they were murdered the night before.
19:16What would that make anybody think?
19:21Coincidences?
19:23I don't believe in coincidences.
19:24We interviewed Shelly, his wife.
19:33She was very evasive.
19:36She said she wasn't happy in the marriage, that things weren't working out, that she felt lonely.
19:43She had confided in me that she had seen someone.
19:46I didn't really know anything about the man, other than Shelly met him online.
19:54Trying to get on the internet in the early 2000s, that was a mess.
19:59There wasn't Wi-Fi.
20:01It was dial-up, and it would make all these weird sounds before it got you connected.
20:07Once you turned the computer on, it would be a strange, buzzing-type sound.
20:12Eeeeee.
20:14Woo-woo-woo-woo.
20:16Eee-ee-ee-ee.
20:19Shelly said she reached out to someone, and it started to develop into stronger feelings.
20:26His name was Benedetto Cipriani.
20:29Cipriani or Cipriani?
20:30In Italy, it's Cipriani.
20:33I believe people here called him Cipriani.
20:39We didn't know who he was.
20:41You know, Cipriani's a big name.
20:44Is he tied to the big Cipriani family in Italy?
20:47They own hotel chains and restaurant chains.
20:50He worked in the area.
20:52He was married before, but did not have children.
20:56You know, we figured some Italian good-looking guy, like Fabio on the horse with the long hair.
21:03And then when we saw him, we were kind of set back, like, wow.
21:09He looks old.
21:10He's frumpy.
21:12He was out of shape.
21:13He was short and chubby.
21:16It wasn't like she was, like, going out with Brad Pitt.
21:20And it didn't make sense to us why Shelly would do this.
21:24And it's like she wasn't abused, she wasn't neglected, but it's just that he had a way about him.
21:33They knew each other for two weeks and then met in a hotel.
21:37That's where they, you know, had sex.
21:41Should have never got to that point anyway.
21:43Should have never got that.
21:45No.
21:45If she wasn't happy with their relationship, she should have just done the right thing, the moral thing, and leave.
21:53It wasn't something I would have expected out of it.
22:01She said roughly around a year that she was seeing him.
22:05To listen to this story from the outside, you would just say, you know, were you stepping up?
22:11Like, is it somebody above, like, what you have?
22:15It was none of that.
22:16But what was it?
22:17Speculative could be.
22:19That she was drawn to his money.
22:24He comes off as a flashy person.
22:26He's in business.
22:27He knows people.
22:28He had money.
22:29You know, everything that she doesn't have right now is something that appeals to her.
22:35We were working class families.
22:38None of us had that taste of what money can get you.
22:45We learned Shelly and Cipriani built a house together.
22:49The plan was supposed to have been that once the house was built and ready, she was going to leave.
22:57But it takes a long time to build a house.
23:00I can only surmise he probably figured my brother would leave at that point, and then he would get her.
23:06And that's not how it happened.
23:12It was 2002.
23:14She called the whole affair off, citing that she had children, she had a husband.
23:21She had realized what she had done, and she wanted to go back to her normal life.
23:29And he just wasn't having it.
23:32He wouldn't accept it.
23:33He kept pursuing her.
23:35He kept trying to contact her, called her.
23:37She was telling me Ben was calling her and calling her and calling her on the phone.
23:41Apparently, like, he sent her flowers.
23:43He brought her clothes.
23:45He bought her jewelry for Ben Cipriani.
23:49He hadn't invested a lot into this relationship.
23:52He was not going to go out unless he was kicking and screaming.
23:58It was almost a year before my brother lost his life.
24:01Ben Cipriani called my brother to notify him that him and Shelly had a relationship and that she had taken money from B&B Automotive to help contribute to building this house together.
24:16He was at work when he got the call, so I'm sure that he needed the time to process, but he was concerned about his family.
24:25Just to reach out to the husband was just, you know, set us back like, wow, this guy definitely wants to break up the marriage.
24:33Now, we weren't sure, we were just surmising that Shelly Steers had half a business, and Shelly Steers had a nice home and a nice area in Windsor Locks, and his wheels must have been turning like a divorce.
24:48How much could she get out of the whole thing?
24:50Benedetto looked at her as being that brass ring that he grabbed onto somebody, you know, is this what he was looking for?
25:03It was at that time that I got a call from Shelly to tell me that my brother had gotten this call at work, and I called Robert, and Robert's response to me was, please go to my house and make sure my family's okay.
25:17I said, are you okay? He says, I'm fine. He says, but just go there.
25:24After the call to my brother at work, my brother didn't leave her, and she obviously didn't leave my brother.
25:31I assumed she was working on her marriage, that she made the decision to not be with him anymore.
25:38As soon as this day hit, it changed the whole family dynamic.
25:42That bond with Shelly and Robert and us ended.
25:47So on the day of the murder, when Bob got that phone call, and, you know, he seemed a little distressed about it,
25:56and I don't know if Benedetto was calling to see if he was still there at work.
26:00I have no idea what's going on, so.
26:02Investigators went through a lot of facts and circumstances, and they focused in on Benedetto Cipriani finding out every single bit of information.
26:17He could find out who he's friends with, who he has relationships with, where he works, what he does, where he travels to.
26:23And from what we learned, he worked at some lapel bottling cap company, and I think he was just a customer service associate in Long Island.
26:36And so, somebody that has money is not going to drive that every day.
26:41He said he was in business.
26:42I'm sure he probably said that to three or four different women, you know.
26:47This is what a guy does.
26:49If you're a real player and you're a real con man, that's how you're going to draw somebody in.
26:55We interviewed his work companions, the people in the office, especially females.
27:01They said that every time he would come in, it was close quarters, arm around the shoulders, you know, a lot of cologne, flashy jewelry.
27:12He thought he was a Romeo.
27:17Then we did talk to him, and that's where he started just one denying it, telling us we're wrong.
27:24You don't have anything on me.
27:27He gave an alibi.
27:30He was at work.
27:31I didn't know what to think.
27:34Something had to be wrong.
27:36It had to be skewed.
27:37What shocks me is that police didn't do anything at that point, because I guess they didn't have enough information to take him in.
27:44He asked Benedetto, can we see your phone?
27:47Can we see your phone records?
27:49And, you know, he says, I have my own privacy.
27:53We're like, okay, we'll get you another way.
27:56And we started just getting warrants for phone records, but it would take months.
28:05The lead detectives, I bug them probably five times a day.
28:09What are you going to do about solving this case?
28:12You're going to get this guy back here?
28:14You're not going to let him get away?
28:16There was quite a bit of boots on the ground in the area of the garage.
28:23Talking to all ancillary businesses to what they saw, what they heard, what they may have heard.
28:29There was one gentleman that did happen to see something.
28:36It was just before the murder took place.
28:39He thinks he saw someone approach the vehicle and then talk to Bobby Steers.
28:48More of an aggressive type talk, and then all of a sudden Bobby getting out.
28:54And then they walked down towards the garage.
28:57He gave a description, you know, as good as he could.
29:05We were just shocked.
29:11From the witness, we were told that it was a dark hair, Hispanic type male.
29:17When you hear, probably it was a Hispanic that came in and shot them, it's like, okay, that makes no sense.
29:28It just confused things more.
29:30We looked at Cipriani, but we knew he didn't fit the description of the witness who saw the young man.
29:37So he got ruled out as being the shooter, but not as far as being a suspect for the homicide.
29:45There was an individual who was arrested by another local police department in Connecticut.
29:58It was for unrelated charges.
30:01He had information to what had occurred at the automotive shop at Linger Locks.
30:05He said he was the uncle of Eric Martinez.
30:10He, just a young kid in Hartford.
30:13Benedicto Cipriani was seeing his mother and was living with Eric Martinez in his house, which kind of really solidifies that this is how much of a player he is.
30:31He's with another woman trying to pursue a woman who's married.
30:35We find out only later on that Eric is the product of a rape.
30:45And this is where Benedetto knows how to get into people's heads.
30:54And then he starts explaining to Martinez that he has a guy, Robert Steers, that raped a Hispanic girl.
31:05And Martinez being Hispanic, unfortunately, he believed it.
31:12I don't understand how people can take people's word for that without having proof.
31:18I think he was a sick individual.
31:20Can't imagine what Shelly had seen in that man.
31:23I think Cipriani knew what he was looking for.
31:27He was looking for somebody to do a job for him.
31:29So he used the dating site to say, oh, who's got teenage kids?
31:34Who can I meet up with?
31:36Because he was approaching those kids with the plan to kill somebody.
31:48Benedetto tells Martinez that he wants Bobby's killed.
31:54And then Eric knew a friend.
31:58Jose Guzman was the shooter.
32:01He is the guy that had the gun.
32:03And then the person that drove was Michael Castillo.
32:07When these two get there, Guzman approached Bobby Steers coming out in the red pickup truck.
32:14Bobby Steers was the motive.
32:16Unfortunately, instead of just killing him when he brought Bobby to the garage, then he discovered Barry and Lorne.
32:25And that's when he just shot all three.
32:34Benedetto gives money.
32:37Martinez's uncle said it was $7,000.
32:40And everybody, you know, got some of the proceeds to murder three people.
32:47It wasn't a heck of a lot of money to take three lives.
32:51That just breaks my heart that people don't value people's lives as they should.
32:55You know, they could have gone to the police about him.
32:58They could have done a hundred things.
32:59They could have called the shop to say, hey, somebody's trying to hire me to kill you.
33:04But they didn't do anything.
33:05They just went along with it.
33:08It was exciting.
33:09It was like, wow, you know, it's like a home run.
33:12It was nice that somebody came forward.
33:14This picture of the murder for hire, it all comes together.
33:19We've harassed Jose Guzman, Eric Martinez, Michael Castillo.
33:25But we didn't have, you know, enough probable cause to take Cipriani into custody to approach him.
33:31We're just here to say that it's not going to get us anywhere.
33:34When we looked into Cipriani more, we found that he had purchased phone cards.
33:41And Martinez was on the other side with that phone card.
33:44It was that transaction there.
33:46Then we knew that Benedetto was connected to other people.
33:51Once there was an arrest warrant, the detectives started to look for Cipriani.
33:56He was gone.
34:00After the murder took place, he told the people his, you know, employment and that he was going back to Italy to take care of his mom.
34:12And he flies to Italy.
34:18How'd you let him out of the country?
34:20He's a suspect.
34:21He's a suspect.
34:22I was livid.
34:23I was absolutely livid that they couldn't at least take his passport away because he was a person of interest.
34:30But legally, there was nothing they could do to stop him.
34:33And he's got dual citizenship.
34:36Italy did arrest him.
34:38But Italy did not want to release Benedetto to us.
34:42Italy was a country that would not return someone to the United States if the death penalty was on the table.
34:50So it was working with the federal government, working with the Italian government,
34:54and then proving to the Italian government that he was not going to be executed for committing these heinous crimes.
35:02And it took time.
35:04It's not something that happens instantaneously.
35:06It took a great deal of time.
35:08The phone rang, and it was the state investigator who said, he's on the plane.
35:17I was like this, and then I'm like, I gotta call my sister.
35:24And we were just jumping and screaming, like, oh my God, oh my God.
35:30It's just incredible.
35:32So this tragedy pulled our three families kind of together.
35:43We felt a bit of relief that the justice system is doing its job.
35:48And I was just thankful that it was coming closer to closure.
35:57It was just excitement of, oh my God, he's on American ground.
36:03We got him.
36:05He's going to be held accountable.
36:07When we brought Cipriani back, he lawyers up immediately.
36:14So, you know, it left a wide open scope at that point.
36:19I always thought that there may be one more arrest.
36:22I didn't know if Benedetto was going to say that Shelley was aware of his plan all along.
36:26I don't know if she knew all along or not.
36:30You know, and he kept quiet about it.
36:33I always had a lingering thought, who else was involved in this?
36:39We never really felt Shelley was upfront and truthful from the start.
36:46We interviewed her.
36:48She said that she broke it off, like, months and months before the homicide occurred.
36:53But also, she said that a week before the murder took place, Benedetto and Shelley go to his house.
37:00And Benedetto shows three bank statements saying he depletes his stock, puts it in her account.
37:09Apparently, he gave her $18,000.
37:11And he just wanted Shelley to go with him.
37:15And they had sex again.
37:18I'm angry.
37:19And, you know, once we found the phone records, we saw he did reach out to her.
37:29Benedetto called her at least 30 minutes after the murder took place.
37:34You know, it's unusual.
37:37Was she still part of the plan?
37:40We don't know.
37:41They say money is the root of all evil, and it is.
37:45This really wasn't about love and jealousy.
37:49It was about money, plain and simple.
37:51Cipriano stood trial for the crimes in which he was accused.
38:16He was convicted by a jury of 12 of his peers in Superior Court, and the judge sentenced him to 200-plus years in prison.
38:26We knew he was going to die here.
38:28Now he has to remember and live this every day of his life.
38:32I'm sure every morning when he gets up, he realizes that, you know, this is not worth it.
38:39It's a sad life.
38:40In court, I stared right at him, and I made sure I let him know I'm going to live to see him die in an American prison.
38:52I looked him right in the eye, and he couldn't look back.
38:58He couldn't look back.
39:00Shelly Steers was someone that was looked at very heavily.
39:09It was never determined that she had any firsthand knowledge or involvement.
39:16Through the trial, she said she had no knowledge that this was going to occur.
39:28And the only people that know that for sure is Ben Cipriani and Shelly.
39:35Nobody else knows that for sure.
39:36All the families, they were angry as to why.
39:50Why was there not more blame put?
39:56We were told,
39:58you don't arrest somebody on circumstantial evidence
40:03because you can't go back again.
40:06And that's where it ended.
40:14For us,
40:19we just have to let it go.
40:27If he's able to manipulate people to murder her,
40:30do you think he was manipulating her?
40:33Very possible.
40:35Very possible.
40:36But I don't know.
40:39I may not have gotten all the true answers.
40:42And, yeah, we'll wait.
40:45One day it'll come out.
40:47Mm-hmm.
40:48Yeah.
40:48Two things you learn through a process such as this that are very hard lessons are patience.
40:57There's only one person I have not been able to forgive and they're not the people in prison.
41:10And I leave it to my faith and to God to handle that in the appropriate time.
41:19In a you,
41:21No.
41:21There's only one.
41:21I leave it to my life and that's what you want.
41:24But all the times I want to hold your mind,
41:25especially for you for that for us,
41:28I love you.
41:29Yes.
41:29Maybe I don't know.
41:30No.
41:31Hey.
41:32Bye.
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