- 6 weeks ago
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00:00Last night we were having dinner and we heard a car in our driveway running.
00:27Last night?
00:28Yes.
00:29Last night?
00:30Oh, it was about 8.30 or 9.00.
00:31Did you look out and see the car?
00:33Yeah.
00:34What color was the car?
00:35It was dark.
00:36A lady was driving, but I think there was a man with her.
00:40There was a man lying on the ground, face up.
00:45He was alive.
00:47And she said, he's okay, we're gonna get him back in the car.
00:50And so I felt like, who is this?
00:52What's he doing on the ground?
00:54At this time will work hard to understand, sound, sound.
01:06On the morning of August 12th, 2020, we received a 911 call about a motionless black male laying near a private driveway by the woods.
01:16When we arrived on the scene, the first thing we do is activate all our body cameras and
01:21begin to survey the scene.
01:32Preserve evidence by having EMS come in there with just one officer, and then a lead detective
01:37will come in and then take over the investigation.
01:46Anytime we get dispatched to a scene like this, we don't know who the individual is, what
01:54occurred during it, and everything that led to that moment is a mystery.
02:03It was pretty unsettling to not know exactly who this was at that moment in time, a true
02:08John Doe.
02:16I was wondering how he had ended up in the middle of the woods in this particular neighborhood.
02:22There was no car there.
02:24The body had been discarded in the woods.
02:26The obvious signs of the trauma was a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
02:30He believed it was a much smaller caliber, possibly a .22.
02:34He had been murdered, dumped, and then the vehicle that he had arrived in left.
02:39It's tough seeing a murder victim because it's someone's life that was taken.
02:49This person probably has a family, and nobody asked to be murdered.
02:54Whenever something like that happens, you kind of have to focus on the task at hand and
02:59kind of bury those emotions down.
03:01That way, you can focus and get justice for this individual's family, because it's like
03:06a puzzle.
03:07Shooting is way off the road.
03:08I know, but...
03:09No shoes?
03:10He's got major trauma to the left side of his face.
03:12No shoes?
03:13No.
03:14So the one bizarre thing about it was that this gentleman looked like he had gone to
03:19the gym or was going to the gym, just had forgotten to wear his shoes.
03:23He was wearing a light gray tank top and some athletic shorts, and the athletic socks that
03:29he had were kind of partially pulled off of his feet.
03:32No shoes.
03:33That's weird.
03:34Yeah.
03:35When someone is missing shoes, that tells me that either they just left without shoes
03:41on or someone has taken their shoes to cover up evidence.
03:46So I would put that in the very suspicious category.
03:50That's not normal.
03:51Going uphill, or do you think he's coming down a roll, landed like that?
03:58He looks like he was dumped.
04:00My initial assessment was that he had been dumped there.
04:03It did not appear that he would have walked there without shoes and just randomly died in the woods.
04:09So I still haven't ID'd him.
04:12So in the very beginning, the biggest mystery was to try and determine who this gentleman was,
04:18to identify him, and then to find out who would have wanted to have murdered him.
04:22I called the investigator with the state police and requested he bring a mobile APHIS machine.
04:28Essentially what a mobile APHIS machine is, is you can take the fingerprint of anybody,
04:33deceased or living, and if they have any sort of criminal history, it will bring up their
04:38criminal history based on their fingerprints.
04:40You guys know what's on the corner?
04:42Yes.
04:43Okay.
04:44After the mobile APHIS unit was used on the deceased,
04:47it came back to a black male by the name of Mario Miller.
04:58Not only was he a man of integrity, but he was a great father.
05:02I was most definitely a daddy's girl.
05:05Pretty much stuck to him.
05:07I never got in trouble.
05:10I was a good noodle, a good student, because I didn't want to have conversations with him
05:16where he had to use that more firm tone in his voice.
05:21So schooling was very important to him.
05:26It was in the middle of the day.
05:27I got a phone call from my dad's girlfriend, and she was crying, crying, crying, crying,
05:34and trying to, like, talk, talk, talk, but she couldn't really get her words out.
05:37So, and then she kind of says, like, the detective is going to call you.
05:42The detective called, and he just was like, we found your dad deceased.
05:47It was a brain fog because of the how and the who and not knowing who,
05:52and it just being this, like, mysterious homicide.
06:00So I'm not sure if the tire tracks are important right now.
06:04I would think they would be.
06:05There's some blood on the edge of the driveway.
06:08The victim was laying in the woods, so the whole area of the woods around where he was laying had to be combed for evidence.
06:21The driveway itself, there was a specific set of tire tracks that led up and ended about where the body was laying.
06:30And specifically, there was also two tire spin marks in the middle of the driveway as well.
06:41There's some pretty distinct tread marks that are different.
06:43Like, these don't look the same as those.
06:47These were oversized tires.
06:49Look like performance tires.
06:51See, like, these two look different than these two.
06:56Looks like a Subaru Outback.
06:58Yeah, this is a, this is where, this is where, and then blood.
07:06We looked at the residents' vehicles to see what type of tires they had on their vehicles
07:12to see if it matched the tire wear impressions that we were noticing.
07:15They did not match any of the vehicles that the residents had there,
07:19so not any normal traffic that would be coming and going from that driveway.
07:24While the crime scene was being processed,
07:26detectives began to speak to the residents to see if they had seen anything suspicious.
07:32I came out because I like to pick up any little sticks and I'm a...
07:39Just something to do, get out?
07:40Well, I just, yeah, light.
07:42Did you look out and see the car?
07:44Yeah.
07:45A lady was driving.
07:46The door was open.
07:48There was a man lying on the ground, face up.
07:55He was alive.
07:58And she said, oh, well, he's okay.
08:00We're gonna get him back in the car.
08:03In the meantime, Bob and I were having dinner and he didn't like for me to leave.
08:06We went back on dinner.
08:07So he came out and he said, get back in here.
08:10We're having dinner.
08:11And so I just left.
08:13So when I speak to a 911 caller, and this one in particular,
08:16I know that she's an older lady.
08:18So I work with what she said.
08:20It's her truth.
08:21I have to have to listen to it.
08:23It's a white man lying on the ground.
08:25How far did you walk down there?
08:27Not very.
08:28See that sort of big tree there?
08:29Yeah.
08:30That, that's not where that body was.
08:33That man was.
08:34He was alive.
08:35I can clearly see he was a male though.
08:36Yeah, yes.
08:37And he was alive.
08:39He seemed okay.
08:41Her statement about the night before further corroborated what we were seeing on,
08:46in front of us was that something had happened in the driveway and that it was presumed that he had been
08:52rolled into the woods or shoved or drug into the woods from the driveway.
09:04Patrol officers began going house to house to house in order to try and get as much information as possible.
09:10So that's kind of been my job is to canvas the neighborhoods.
09:13You don't happen to have any cameras or anything at face towards the roadway.
09:17I do not.
09:18I heard that there was the body found right over there.
09:21Yeah.
09:22So we're trying to see if any, if any cameras heard like a gunshot of any kind or something.
09:28So after gathering those statements, we began to canvas the area for cameras, ring doorbell cameras,
09:35anything that can lead to maybe recording of what happened.
09:40But unfortunately they don't, they don't capture what happened.
09:42And a lot of them, they don't pay their subscription for it to hold onto the data or the video recording of the incident.
09:48And that is exactly what happened during this case.
09:51None of the cameras captured anything.
09:54At that point in time, we had very limited information.
09:58We had the victim identified as Mario Miller.
10:01We did not know how he had gotten there, what vehicle he arrived in, who else might have been with him.
10:06And so at that point in time, we had nothing, essentially.
10:10It's pretty frustrating to not know anything.
10:15We only had the identification of the victim, Mario Miller, and a general timeframe for my witness.
10:23And other than that, there was no other information of why or how this had actually occurred.
10:30It was quite the whodunit at that point.
10:40After we had the victim identified as Mario Miller, we had his home address identified.
10:47Detectives began going to that residence to see if we could make contact with anyone that was there.
10:53At that time, we did not know exactly where the crime had even been committed.
10:58As far as we knew, it could have been committed at the house.
11:01And then Mr. Miller was later transported and dumped to where we had found him.
11:06When we arrived at the house, there was no one there.
11:09The front door was unlocked.
11:11There was a work van parked in front of the residence.
11:15And then a car pulled into the driveway and a woman got out.
11:18And she was very upset that officers were inside of her residence.
11:22She identified herself as Savannah and further explained that she was Mario's girlfriend.
11:28And she was caught off guard that we had been inside of her residence.
11:32However, she was a little bit more understanding once the circumstances were explained to her.
11:37Initially, when we made contact with her, we did explain to her that Mario was deceased, that we were treating it as a homicide investigation.
11:52However, we were very specific about what information we gave because at that point in time, anybody is a suspect.
12:11So, is it a car accident, foul play? What are y'all trying to say?
12:20Right now, I can't go into too much detail because it is an open investigation, but it is being investigated as foul play.
12:27We did ask about the van that was parked out front.
12:30She explained that that was for Ace Glass, where Mario was employed.
12:34But she said that his everyday drive vehicle was a black Dodge Challenger.
12:40She said it was his prized possession.
12:43And so, after Savannah had described Mario's vehicle to us, it did make a little bit more sense, the tire tracks that we had seen in the driveway.
12:54At that point in time, we had his vehicle description, and we knew that it was missing.
13:01A bolo was issued for that make, model, as well as the license plate, so that if it was run anywhere in the country, it would show as a stolen vehicle.
13:11As an investigator, if I hear that the decedent's prized possession is missing, that immediately is a red flag to me.
13:18If their pattern of life is different than normal, that's a clue to something is wrong.
13:26At that point in time, again, without knowing the motive for the killing, finding his vehicle could lead us back to who was responsible for his death.
13:37His vehicle missing, the timeline is also very important to me.
13:43I need to know when the decedent was seen alive last.
13:46Asking Savannah exactly when the last time she had seen him was important.
13:53Because at that point in time, we knew that he had been murdered the night before in an approximate time span.
14:01And we had to fill in the time gaps of exactly where he was in between when Savannah last saw him and when he was found deceased.
14:10He wakes up earlier before I do, so he's usually going to work at the gym about 5.30.
14:18When you go to the gym, what's his usual attire for the gym?
14:22It's usually a Muslim shirt, a white Muslim shirt, and some shorts.
14:28Nikes.
14:29White flag.
14:30Different color.
14:31We did find it very odd that she said that he wore a very specific shoe every day to the gym
14:37and that we did not locate any of those shoes with him at the scene.
14:43At that point in time, anything would have been an option to exactly why he wasn't wearing shoes.
14:49I usually wake up about 6.04.
14:52I go to work.
14:53What time did you get back home?
14:55It was about 6-something.
14:57And he still wasn't here.
14:59So with him not being there, that wasn't super out of order because he might have been at the gym?
15:03I go to bed early, about 8.30, 9.00.
15:06In bed, sleep.
15:08Wake up.
15:10Notice he's still not there.
15:12So I call, and I'm like, you know, nobody answers.
15:15So I'm like, at this point, I'm pissed.
15:18Savannah did tell investigators that she was frustrated that she had not been able to speak to him that night.
15:25But I think the biggest key information that Savannah did give us was that she told us that before the homicide, she had overheard Mario with whom she believed was a female and that maybe that they were intoxicated, but she did not know who he was speaking to or what the conversation was about.
15:42Like a day or two ago, he was on the phone late at night with a female when he claimed that his sister was at a party.
15:51If Mario was having an affair with another woman, it could have been jealousy and it would have been one of those motives that we would have looked a little bit harder at Savannah with.
16:01However, the fact that she was also telling us that he was very private and secretive with his phone, that he had a conversation and she didn't know who he had been speaking to earlier, just made me want to get his phone records more than anything at that point in time.
16:17So when we started questioning Savannah about any of Mario's friends or associates, she said that she didn't know any of his friends, but she did mention one man whom she only knew as Duke.
16:31I don't know too much about him.
16:34Is that his real name or nickname?
16:35I think it's the nickname.
16:37Is he white male, black male?
16:38Slash.
16:39It is pretty frustrating when all you have is just a nickname, but a nickname is still better than nothing.
16:46And what we had at that point in time was not very many known associates or friends.
16:51So having the name of Duke was at least something to work on.
16:55Detectives spoke to all of Mario's coworkers on the phone and one of the supervisors was able to identify Duke as Marcello.
17:05So it's important at that point in time to speak to any of Mario's friends.
17:10We needed to speak to his friend Marcello.
17:13And hopefully he would give us more information of exactly why and who had killed Mario Miller.
17:26We had identified Mario's close associate as Marcello.
17:31We were able to locate him and convince him to come to the police department to speak to me.
17:36Just go ahead and have a seat there and I'll let you check on that left.
17:39I'll be right back with you this second.
17:43My approach with Marcello was to treat him as an excellent witness.
17:49I still believe that he was involved in Mario's murder in one way, shape, or form.
17:57However, I had no evidence to prove that.
17:59Can you give me some history between the two of you?
18:02Like how did y'all meet?
18:03I was homeless.
18:04Okay.
18:05I was homeless.
18:06I started working for 8th class.
18:08Mario was working at the company.
18:11Me and Mario came really, really tight when he convinced me and helped me.
18:16When he was describing his relationship with Mario, he made it sound like Mario had taken him from being in a very bad spot and given him a career, a job, income, and actually really helped him out like a true friend.
18:32You said he's your boy.
18:33You said y'all were tight.
18:35Y'all been together?
18:36Mario has done more for me than I've done for him.
18:39You know what I mean?
18:40Mario helped a lot of people, man.
18:43It was very strange that Marcelo would refer to himself as being extremely close friends with Mario, but Savannah have very little knowledge of exactly who he is or what their relationship was.
18:56While speaking to Marcelo and I could tell that he was lying to me, I finally just asked him point blank, what do you think happened to him?
19:05Who do you think would have done this to your friend?
19:07And if you know who it is, you should tell me.
19:10What do you think happened to Mario?
19:12I don't know, man.
19:14First I thought it was carjacking.
19:16Do you think somebody would want a jacking for that car?
19:19Yeah.
19:20The only motive that he could give me that he could think of was that it was a carjacking, and that was the only motive that he would give me.
19:27So I did find it very strange that he went immediately to that as his response, instead of thinking, well, you know, he's been in an argument with so and so, or it could have been this person.
19:38However, he went immediately to, it could have been a carjacking.
19:42I was hesitant to let him go.
19:44However, given that I didn't believe he was being 100% truthful with me, I knew where he was, and I knew I could come back to him at a later time.
19:54Then several days later, Savannah had called the police department to say that Marcelo had gone over to Savannah's house to talk to her to try and figure out what had happened to Mario and was looking for things.
20:08She said that he began searching in the bedroom as well as searching in the garage.
20:13So she became very suspicious that Marcelo had information or knew a lot more than what he was telling detectives.
20:21When I hear information like this, I start to think, how is this relevant to someone getting murdered?
20:28It's definitely suspicious.
20:31We went back to Savannah's house.
20:34When we searched the house, we located a cell phone in the sofa.
20:39Savannah said, Marcelo was sitting there, and that phone there between the seat cushions is not my cell phone.
20:46So at that point in time, I thought that that was Marcelo's phone.
20:50I wrote a search warrant for it, and I was able to determine that that was Marcelo's cell phone.
20:55We knew that we needed to speak to Marcelo again.
21:04My dad showing me love and affection was more so showing up on birthdays, showing up for Christmas, just showing up.
21:16Him physically being there was enough for me because I got to see siblings who didn't have a dad, and he would be that dad for them.
21:26So I have a lot of siblings of siblings who might consider him a dad because he just showed up for all of us.
21:35From the moment I found out about my daddy, about who could have done this, I mean, my mind spiraled, right, because it was so random.
21:45I was questioning everybody, even family, because I didn't know. We didn't know. Nobody knew.
21:57So about a week later, myself and another detective went over to Marcelo's house, and he very cordially invited us in.
22:06When he sat down on the sofa, I could see the butt of the pistol sticking out from between the seat cushions.
22:12I believe that this pistol may potentially be the murder weapon.
22:17And so I asked Marcelo to come back to the police station for another consensual interview with me.
22:23During my second interview with Marcelo, he said that he didn't kill Mario.
22:29So I changed my line of questioning to find out more information about Mario's life.
22:35Marcelo did indicate to me that one of Mario's weaknesses was women.
22:40Mario had multiple children. I believe it was seven children.
22:46That he was taking care of all of his kids, so he had to work particularly hard.
22:51When Marcelo mentioned to me that one of Mario's weaknesses was women, it also reiterated what Savannah had said to me, that he was very private on the phone.
23:06She was not allowed to ask where he was going, or to see his cell phone, or to know about his social media.
23:25So I had asked him specifically if there was a woman in particular that he knew about that he was hanging out with, had been dating on the side,
23:36if maybe he was having an affair with another woman or anything like that that would have given motive to his murder.
23:43He did not know. At that time, I didn't believe he was being truthful with me because he was in possession of a gun.
23:51But we did get the results back from Marcelo's pistol. It was not the firearm that had killed Mario.
23:57Now that I've questioned Marcelo extensively, I was almost back to square one of, if Marcelo didn't kill Mario, then who did?
24:08I did not have any evidence to prove Marcelo was directly involved with the murder.
24:25So we were writing search warrants on Mario's and Savannah's social media accounts.
24:32We also requested a geofence warrant from Google.
24:37A geofence is essentially you give a latitude and longitude of multiple different points around the area where the crime had occurred.
24:51Approximately four months into the investigation, we got back the results of the geofence warrant.
24:58The results showed that on August the 11th, the day of the murder, at about 7 o'clock p.m.,
25:06there was one device present at the crime scene that was not supposed to be there, and it wasn't Marcelo's.
25:14So this one device came back to the man named Stephen Rice.
25:20We needed to know who is Stephen Rice and why was he at the crime scene.
25:30Once we had Stephen Rice identified, warrants were written for his social media accounts.
25:36Then we were able to identify two other associates of Stephen Rice, Kai Shayla Hill and Devontae Herod.
25:48We were able to get enough probable cause to write search warrants on both Kai Shayla Hill and Devontae Herod's social media and phone numbers.
25:58We needed to know their personal connection to Mario.
26:05After reading the messages between Kai Shayla and Mario, I know that Kai Shayla and Mario had agreed to meet on multiple different occasions for sex.
26:19That gave me thought that maybe this sexual involvement could be a motive for why Mario had been killed.
26:29Then during the search of Kai Shayla Hill's Facebook account, I was able to see her conversations between she and Stephen Rice, between she and Devontae Herod.
26:41The picture that actually stood out to me the most was one that was dated three days prior to the murder of Kai Shayla holding a .22 Walther pistol.
26:56We knew that Mario was killed by a .22 caliber.
27:00And this picture put Kai Shayla Hill in possession of a .22 several days before the homicide.
27:06I also got Snapchat accounts for Kai Shayla and getting there was one message between Kai Shayla Hill and Stephen Rice on the night of August the 11th saying,
27:22Are you scared?
27:25And approximately one minute later, the response from Stephen was, I'm not scared.
27:30I'm just nervous.
27:33Approximately one more minute goes by and Kai Shayla's response to Stephen was, when we turn on this street, pop him.
27:44When I read that, my thoughts were Kai Shayla is telling Stephen to kill Mario Miller.
27:52We immediately searched pawn records.
27:55And we did find that Miss Hill had pawned the gun down in South Arkansas.
28:00So Detective Anderson and I went down and found the person that bought the gun.
28:05After retrieving the firearm, the pistol was inspected and different swabs were taken for potential DNA evidence.
28:15These samples were sent to the crime lab.
28:19The results back from those swabs showed that the blood evidence on that pistol did belong to Mario Miller.
28:26That was a needle in a needle sack.
28:32And it was solidifying the case that Kai Shayla Hill, Stephen Rice, and Devontae Herrod were all involved in Mario Miller's murder.
28:43But what was the motive for the killing?
28:54At this point in the investigation, we are very excited.
28:58So that's when we reached out to our partners at the U.S. Marshals to actually locate them.
29:04Using social media and cell phone tracking, we found Mr. Rice and Miss Hill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
29:12And Devontae Herrod was found in Memphis, Tennessee.
29:17We traveled to Pine Bluff to interview Stephen and Kai Shayla.
29:24And the first person I interviewed was Kai Shayla.
29:28Hey, I'm Detective Anderson.
29:31I work for the Fayetteville Police Department up in Fayetteville.
29:35But, before I ask you any questions or anything like that, if you are under arrest, I need to make sure that you understand what your rights are.
29:42Okay?
29:43Are you all right?
29:46I'm just praying and just, I'm just confused.
29:50I don't know.
29:51Well, no, I need to scare me and I don't.
29:52I'm just a good study and it's been an ideal.
29:54Hopefully, I don't have to stay here.
29:56I understand.
29:57I spoke to her at length just to get a feel of how truthful she was going to be with me.
30:05Well, I'm really sorry to hear about that.
30:08I hope everything turns out okay.
30:10Yes, I'm forgetting.
30:12So, the murder that I'm working is with a guy named Mario Miller.
30:18Do you know anybody about that name? Have you ever heard that name?
30:22Not Mario.
30:26So, but I think I kind of want to be talking about.
30:33Coachella, she was very good at acting.
30:37She would play off very much that she didn't know what I was talking about.
30:42Can you describe him?
30:43So, maybe we're talking about the same person?
30:45I think he's black.
30:47And after a while of her lying to me, I finally made the statement to her.
30:58I know that you know Mario.
30:59I know that you've had a relationship with Mario.
31:03Why won't you tell me exactly what your relationship was with him?
31:07So, when was the last time you talked to Mario?
31:10Last time I talked to him, I can't give you the exact date.
31:16Okay.
31:17You said that y'all hooked up.
31:19Yeah.
31:23So, you didn't have sex with him or you did?
31:25You know what I'm saying?
31:26We did have sex with him, but I'm saying, though, the last time I talked to him was a couple of times after.
31:31He kind of got mad.
31:32He's like, oh, what's wrong?
31:34When he got a boyfriend or not, he's supposed to be doing it anyway.
31:37Right.
31:38Yeah.
31:39I don't know.
31:40So, I was just like, no.
31:41I was just like, no, I can't do it.
31:43Were you in love with him?
31:46Yeah.
31:47Were you in love with him?
31:48Yeah.
31:49Were you in love with him?
31:50Yeah, I was doing enough to cry, and he died.
31:54Her response to me went from, I don't know a Mario Miller to, yes, I know Mario, and I'm
32:00very upset that he's dead.
32:02I was in love with him, and I'm crying about this.
32:07But Kaishela told me, at that time, she was with Devante Herod, that she was his girlfriend.
32:15At that time, I was believing that maybe Kaishela had told Devante about Mario, and that Mario may have been killed because of it.
32:26And so...
32:27So you told Devante about that?
32:29Yeah.
32:30Okay.
32:31I told Devante, I was like, amen.
32:32I was like, amen.
32:33I was like, amen.
32:34This is gonna be killed.
32:35And like...
32:36I didn't just tell him that he tried to break me, and I didn't say he tried to force himself
32:40on me, but it was just like more like aggressive, aggressive, like aggressive touch.
32:44And he was like...
32:46And he was like...
32:47He was like, so basically what you're telling me is...
32:51Let me put it...
32:53Let me put his hands on you.
32:55Like, that's why he wrecked you.
32:56And I was like, no.
32:57He was like, don't worry about it.
32:59Don't worry about it.
33:00I'm handling it.
33:01Then he was like...
33:03You shouldn't have any shit.
33:04You shouldn't have any shit in my ass anyway.
33:07After speaking to Kaishela for an extended amount of time, we knew that Devante was involved
33:13in the murder.
33:14We just didn't know the extent of his involvement in the murder.
33:19Or how Stephen Rice was involved.
33:24But I knew Kaishela was a linchpin to all of this.
33:37So, after speaking to Kaishela for three or four hours, I knew that she was starting to
33:44give me some more information.
33:47I felt like if we continued to speak to her and continued to press her, she would eventually
33:52tell us most of the truth about what had happened.
33:57We presented Kaishela with the Snapchat messages to Stephen Rice.
34:02Her explanation for them was that she and Stephen were talking about a video game that they
34:09liked to play.
34:19The hard thing for Kaishela to be able to get over evidentiary-wise was that we also had
34:26the geolocations of where they were specifically at the crime scene.
34:31And when those messages were sent.
34:34So, when you're driving around with Stephen, sending him Snapchat messages.
34:40So, why don't you send a message to Steve saying, when we turn down this road, pop his ass.
34:48When Kaishela realized that we had this evidence, she tried to throw the blame that Stephen had
34:56just murdered him.
35:01And after Steve shot the light, what happened?
35:06I was just kind of like, oh my God, oh my God.
35:13At this point, she's realizing that she is going to prison for a long time.
35:18We have her.
35:19She's done.
35:23I don't believe the crying was because she loved Mario.
35:26I believe it's because she knows her life's over.
35:28All of the evidence led to her being the mastermind for the entire thing.
35:36We knew that we needed to speak to Stephen Rice to get the full story.
35:43In any interview, my main goal is I want to build rapport with anybody I'm interviewing.
35:47With Stephen Rice, specifically, we are from two different worlds.
35:54Sorry to keep you.
35:56I'm sorry to keep you.
35:57I'm sorry to keep you.
35:58I'm sorry to keep you.
35:59I'm going to get you a cold water, too.
36:01I'm sure we'll get you a cold water, too.
36:02I'm sure we'll get you.
36:03Uh-huh.
36:08Like I said, I'm not a detective.
36:09I don't want to say it's a PD.
36:12When I got in the interview room with Mr. Rice, he absolutely shocked me.
36:16Because I only asked a few questions, and then he just started talking about the murder.
36:22To be honest, I wasn't prepared for that.
36:24I was prepared for a long interview.
36:26And then when someone just tells you the truth, it really throws you off.
36:31And you have to adapt to that.
36:35So what you did shoot him, where, what happened?
36:39You did like, you know, you shoot somebody who went out for a 50 miles an hour.
36:42That's not going to be good.
36:43So tell me how that happened.
36:44That's what I was able to do.
36:45It's really shocking to wait where you've been waiting and driving.
36:47Okay.
36:48It's really hot.
36:49Because, like I said, I had just been kind of bonded.
36:51Then he told us that Kaishela had devised a plan that she was going to contact Mario.
37:00Have Mario come over to Devante's house under the guise of picking her up.
37:07And that Steven would be given a ride by Mario.
37:11And during that ride of giving Steven a ride to his house, Steven would murder Mario.
37:20When Mr. Rice admitted to pulling the trigger, it made me feel odd because I'm looking at a person and I'm thinking,
37:28he doesn't think much about just killing a guy for someone else for some dumb reason.
37:34So I'm literally thinking, okay, this person is a psychopath.
37:37Our other suspect, Devante Herod, never confessed to actually being a part of the murder.
37:52Though I did not have any evidence to prove that he was directly involved with the murder,
37:58I was able to locate footage with Steven and Devante in Mario's vehicle months after the murder.
38:07And then a year after the murder, we got a notification from the Dallas Police Department
38:13that they had located Mario Miller's car abandoned in their city.
38:17I believe that on August 11th, 2020, Kyle Shayla Hill had used Steven Rice and Devante Herod to her advantage to murder Mario Miller.
38:35To both get some sort of retribution against Mario, maybe for his treatment of her.
38:41Also of an easy score of a vehicle, potential money, and a way out of town.
38:48Later I did find out that Marcello had stolen a large amount of methamphetamine and had been arrested.
38:56But after going through all of the physical evidence, as well as all the data that we had,
39:02we were able to confirm that Marcello had no involvement in Mario Miller's homicide.
39:08Mario hit a lot of people.
39:11Mario hit a lot of people.
39:16On February 29th, 2024, Steven Rice was sentenced to 36 years in prison for murder and tampering with evidence.
39:26Cashayla Hill turned state's evidence and testified against Steven Rice in the matter.
39:31She was sentenced to 40 years for accomplice to murder.
39:34Evante Herod was sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping cover up the murder.
39:41The essential mystery at the beginning of this was not even knowing who our victim was.
39:53Not having any identification on him or any family to notify or any friends to talk to.
40:00And so starting from there to figure out who he was, how his life was, to ultimately who murdered him, I believe was quite an accomplishment for this department.
40:13I do think about the pain that families go through.
40:18When you work an investigation like this, you get close with the family.
40:23At the end of the day, they're missing a loved one, so it hurts my heart that this happens.
40:32But it also gives me great pride to help give the family some closure.
40:35I miss my dad.
40:40He was so funny.
40:48I just miss that laugh.
40:54The type of person he was, regardless of what was going on around him,
40:58he really didn't let his trials or his tribulations change who he was personally.
41:05As a human being.
41:08Just as a person.
41:12So, maybe he did find that joy.
41:18Maybe he did learn to be happy regardless of his circumstances.
41:25I'm sure he did.
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