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00:03911, what's your emergency?
00:05I just received a call instructing me to vacate our branch
00:08because they're going to come and rob it.
00:13This was clearly different than every bank robbery that I've ever worked.
00:19Then it happened again.
00:22And again, in each of these cases,
00:25what we were left with was a bank employee on their own
00:29attempting to rob the bank.
00:31If the perpetrators are not getting their money,
00:33the bomb was set to go off.
00:35You're somehow involved in this.
00:37It's some sort of inside job.
00:40I said, I need you to open the vault and get out $200,000.
00:44Do what we ask you to and nobody's going to get hurt.
00:48She said, it's my job on the line.
00:51And I said, I don't care about your job.
00:56This was going to end in tragedy.
01:01I'm retired FBI Special Agent Nick Nocera.
01:04I'm retired FBI Special Agent Jeff Blanton.
01:08When serious crime strikes,
01:10the special agents of the FBI answer the call.
01:15Fidelity.
01:16Bravery.
01:17Integrity.
01:20This is fans.
01:30New Britain is a small, tight-knit community.
01:34There's some larger cities in Connecticut
01:37that have much more crime than we do.
01:39I think, relatively, we're a very safe community.
01:44Matthew Yesman was the Chief Financial Officer
01:47for the Achieve Financial Credit Union
01:49in New Britain, Connecticut.
01:51Matt was my rock.
01:54And he and I lived together.
01:58I relied on Matt a lot.
02:01Maybe more than he liked me to.
02:05Mr. Yesman was a very friendly, outgoing individual.
02:11He did his job extremely well.
02:18It was the start of a work week.
02:20Typical Monday morning.
02:22In the phone rang.
02:24Matthew Yesman called.
02:26And the first words out of his mouth were,
02:28this is no joke.
02:31What he described to me was
02:33that he was sitting in his car
02:34with a bomb strapped to him.
02:39He was being held hostage,
02:41and he had two perpetrators
02:43that were holding his mom inside the house,
02:45who also had a bomb strapped to her bed.
02:49He was being instructed
02:51to clear out all the cash from Laval,
02:54where the perpetrators would kill him.
02:58And his instructions to me were
03:01that it was his life.
03:02Please do not call the cops.
03:05What did you do?
03:07I called the cops.
03:12911, what's your emergency?
03:14I just received a call a few minutes ago
03:16from one of our VPs,
03:18and he's instructing me to vacate
03:21our New Britain branch,
03:22because they're gonna come and rob it.
03:27The first couple seconds,
03:28I definitely thought it was a joke.
03:29It's not something
03:30that I've ever heard before.
03:32The executive told us
03:34that Matthew Yesman
03:35was en route to the New Britain branch.
03:39Bank robberies are violations of federal law.
03:42This was clearly going to be
03:43an FBI investigation.
03:45Ninety percent of the bank robberies
03:47that we investigate
03:47are very impulsive.
03:50They're not well planned.
03:52When the executive told us
03:54that Matthew had a bomb strapped to his chest
03:56that takes it to a different level.
03:59The call is so serious
04:00that everybody in the city was dispatched.
04:07There's no situation
04:09that I've experienced like this.
04:12One sniper was in an apartment building,
04:14another was up on the highway.
04:20So we pulled in, parked,
04:22and a few seconds later,
04:24Mr. Yesman pulled in in his red car.
04:39We started yelling to him,
04:41asking him,
04:41did he have a bomb strapped to him?
04:47He acknowledged that he did.
04:51We notified the bomb squad,
04:54but it would take significant time
04:56for them to arrive on scene.
04:59Matthew told me that
05:01if the perpetrators
05:02are not getting their money,
05:03the bomb was set to go off
05:05at 11 o'clock.
05:13I had him kneel down on the ground,
05:15lift his shirt so he could see the bomb.
05:20It looked like a device
05:21underneath a bunch of layers of duct tape.
05:26In the midst of everything
05:27that was happening,
05:28I thought about the case
05:29that happened down in Pennsylvania.
05:34There were similar areas
05:35between the pizza bomber,
05:37Brian Wells, and Matthew Yesman.
05:44Brian Wells went into a bank,
05:46he had a bomb strapped to him,
05:48demanded the money,
05:48and unfortunately that ended tragically
05:51when the bomb did explode outside the bank
05:54and Wells was killed.
06:00Was this a copycat of the pizza bomber?
06:04It was very much real
06:06that there was a potential
06:06for this to detonate.
06:17We went from clearing apartment buildings
06:20to shutting down a part of the highway.
06:26As it got closer to 11 a.m.,
06:28I was worried that
06:29it could be the last few minutes
06:30of Matthew Yesman's life.
06:3530 minutes before the bomb was set to go off,
06:37the bomb squad arrived.
06:45The bomb squad told me that
06:47they couldn't remove the bomb
06:48before 11 o'clock.
06:55They hit me in the gut.
06:59We didn't know that
07:00that would be the end of him.
07:05At 10.59, we just waited.
07:10The clock was ticking.
07:1555, 56, 57, 58, 59.
07:27Nothing.
07:30It didn't detonate.
07:35One of the bomb squad officers
07:37approached Matthew.
07:47They were able to determine
07:48that the bomb was not real.
07:54Matthew Yesman had said
07:55he and his mother had been kidnapped,
07:57and then him forced to go
07:59and rob his bank.
08:02We immediately sent officers
08:04over to his house.
08:08I looked outside,
08:09and our whole front yard
08:10was full of policemen.
08:12And I waved to them,
08:13and I said,
08:14I'm all right.
08:15I'm all right.
08:16I'm all right.
08:19I'm all right.
08:19It's okay.
08:20There's no one here but me.
08:29You want to explore any option
08:32that could have happened.
08:33And one of those things
08:34was that Mr. Yesman was involved
08:36in his bank robbery.
08:39Matthew said that the suspects
08:40left him there,
08:41and they told him to wait 15 minutes
08:43after they left
08:44and then continue with the plan.
08:47When Matt left in the morning
08:49with the bomb strapped to him,
08:53I laid in bed praying
08:55that things would go well.
08:58Please, please, God,
08:59don't let anything happen.
09:02Matt is a very smart fellow.
09:06He's very strong-willed
09:08and he's very convincing.
09:14Matt, you guys, you want me?
09:15Good.
09:17This is your opportunity
09:18to put it all on the table.
09:20If there's something else going on,
09:22we can help you.
09:29He said that when he came home
09:31the night before,
09:33all of a sudden,
09:34there was a masked individual
09:35that came up from behind
09:36and ordered him to the ground.
09:39There was another individual
09:40that came dressed the same way.
09:42They didn't duct tape the headphones
09:43and the hat over his eyes.
09:45He said that everything
09:47sounded kind of digitized.
09:51You know, like when they do it on TV
09:53and they change some guy's voice
09:54and something, like,
09:56pretty similar to that.
09:58Matthew said that they strapped
10:00one of the pieces of C4
10:01onto his, like, stomach area.
10:04They were going to take
10:06two pieces of C4 explosive
10:09and put it by his mom's bed.
10:13At no time during the night
10:15had they ever put anything
10:17under my bed.
10:18So I was not aware of that.
10:21What did they use to
10:22find your hands?
10:22They didn't.
10:23They left my hands free.
10:25Kind of hugged me and said,
10:26don't worry,
10:27we're not here to hurt you.
10:28He brought me in a can of soda.
10:30I had cookies on the counter and stuff.
10:32He brought them in
10:33so I wouldn't be hungry.
10:35I mean, you know,
10:36he was being very nice to me.
10:40Right.
10:42The entire story seemed movie-like.
10:48Something just didn't sound right.
10:50I can say unequivocally
10:53that I have nothing indirectly,
10:55directly to do with this.
10:58It was unusual for someone
11:00to go through all that trauma
11:01and just act so stoic and unfazed.
11:07It seemed to be so strange.
11:11I did think that someone
11:13that Mr. Yesman knew
11:15had to be involved.
11:18Did Mr. Yesman concoct this story
11:20to get money from their credit union
11:22for his own needs?
11:25It's the implication that
11:26you're somehow involved in this,
11:28not as victim.
11:29Okay, by that we mean
11:30that it's some sort of inside job.
11:34I can't believe that the first words
11:36out of their mouth was,
11:38we know you did it.
11:47Talk to your brother and nephew
11:49and they sell you more money
11:50than you gamble a ton.
11:52And then that's completely false.
11:54I mean, I don't gamble a ton.
11:58How could they think such a thing
12:00for such a good man?
12:02And they said,
12:03you don't know what people will do
12:05when they're desperate.
12:08Desperate people do desperate things.
12:13I was asked to do a polygraph exam,
12:16a lie detector test on Matthew.
12:19The regret that I had sitting there was,
12:23could I have stopped this
12:24before it got to this point?
12:29He failed the test.
12:32There was no reaction at all.
12:36He then said that,
12:37although he was truthful
12:38about the actual home invasion,
12:41he knew that the bomb was fake.
12:45He looked at me
12:46and there was a pause
12:49and all of a sudden
12:50he just said, I want a lawyer.
12:54As far as the evidence collected
12:55in his home,
12:56none of it led us to believe
12:58that anyone else was involved.
13:01Because we couldn't corroborate
13:03any of the story,
13:04it appeared that Matthew Yussman
13:05had been the one that concocted
13:07this scheme to rob his own man.
13:18I was a special agent with the FBI
13:20here in Knoxville, Tennessee
13:21on the violent crime squad.
13:26Two months after the Matthew Yussman event
13:29in Connecticut,
13:29I received a call of an attempted bank robbery
13:32in Oak Ridge, Knoxville.
13:41I drove over there
13:42and started the investigation.
13:46The bank was the headquarters building
13:48of the Y-12 Federal Credit Union.
13:52On the surveillance video,
13:53we saw Mark Ziegler,
13:54who was the CEO,
13:56enter the building
13:57and make his way to the vault room
13:59carrying a duffel bag.
14:01We see various employees gathered
14:04around Mr. Ziegler.
14:05We see them open the vault
14:07and Mr. Ziegler then begins
14:09putting stacks of money
14:11into this big duffel bag.
14:15$283,000.
14:18After Mr. Ziegler comes out of the bank
14:20with the money,
14:21the police responded.
14:28Mark Ziegler told us,
14:30as he was leaving for work that morning,
14:32he's approached by two armed males.
14:36His wife and his son,
14:38they were handcuffed together.
14:40He told us that there was a white male
14:42and then a black male.
14:45And then at one point,
14:47the white male left
14:48and then a white female
14:50had come in through the back door.
14:52and asked for milk for the baby.
14:58You would not think that would be part
14:59of a home invasion.
15:01It sounded bizarre.
15:05He told us that he was given instructions
15:08on exactly how this bank robbery
15:09was going to be committed
15:11in exchange for his wife and child.
15:15We could find zero physical evidence,
15:19no video of any other subjects involved.
15:23There was nothing that supported
15:26Mr. Ziegler's account
15:28that someone had come into his house.
15:35This robbery was clearly different
15:38than every bank robbery that I've ever worked.
15:42Then it happened again.
15:51Tanner Harris, an employee of the Smart Bank
15:54in Knoxville, walked into his branch
15:56carrying a bag and told the employees there
15:59that his wife and child were being held hostage
16:02in the car and that he needed money from the vault.
16:06He obtained $195,000
16:09and Tanner Harris left the bank with that money.
16:15The Harris's told us that morning
16:18when his wife Abigail was leaving the house,
16:20she saw two males standing in her garage.
16:23She ran upstairs to where her husband
16:26and baby were.
16:29And the robbers knocked down that door
16:31and kidnapped them.
16:40All we had was that they were white males
16:43wearing ski masks.
16:45Both armed, one thin-billed and one a heavier set.
16:51Now we've had two bank extortions in Knoxville
16:54in the span of three months.
16:57A bank robbery where employees are kidnapped
17:00or families are held for ransom
17:01are incredibly rare.
17:03And we're asking ourselves,
17:05was this a copycat crime?
17:10The same law enforcement descended upon the Harris House
17:14and the Smart Bank,
17:15combing it for any kind of forensic evidence.
17:22No forensic evidence was found.
17:25No hairs, no fibers, no fingerprints.
17:30In each of these cases,
17:32all we were left with was a bank employee
17:34going into their bank on their own,
17:36attempting to rob the bank.
17:39The FBI have always treated bank robberies
17:42as a serious threat.
17:45There was a lot of pressure to get this solved.
17:53Then I received a call from Special Agent Jeff Bland
17:55in Johnson City.
17:59There had been an attempted bank robbery
18:01that occurred at Northeast Community Credit Union
18:04in Elizabethton by a young lady, Rook Lyons,
18:07who worked at the bank as a teller.
18:13Elizabethton is a suburb of Johnson City.
18:16Things like that just don't happen in small towns.
18:19She said that there were two guys that came to her house.
18:22They got guns?
18:23She came in with a bag wanting her to open the bottle.
18:26She had come in, claimed that someone had kidnapped her
18:29and she needed the contents of the safe.
18:33But we didn't have anything to corroborate what she had told us.
18:38This was a bank employee who knew the place,
18:41coming in with an amazing outlandish story.
18:46Local law enforcement were going to charge her
18:49for trying to rob her bank.
18:54But I wanted to get into a little bit more detail.
18:59My name is Brooke Lyons.
19:01I was a teller at Northeast Community Credit Union.
19:06The morning that everything happened was just another ordinary day.
19:10I had a little boy, Carson, who was three at the time.
19:14A thriving little three-year-old boy, wild as he can be.
19:22And I can remember walking out of the house, and I got Carson in the car seat.
19:28And I heard leaves crunch behind me, which caused me to turn around.
19:34And there was a slender, shorter, built man in a ski mask.
19:40And at that point, I fall back into the car.
19:45And at that point, I see another man standing on the other side of the door.
19:52Who was much larger, heavier as that man.
19:55I actually ended up kicking the skinny one in the chest to try to get him away from me.
20:00And that's when he pulled the gun out.
20:04They'd taken the gun and just pressed it into the side of my head.
20:08And said, no, get in your car now.
20:11You're going to rob your bank today.
20:16So we're driving, and Carson had started crying.
20:21And I just remember holding him.
20:25And he would just, he would pat my chest.
20:28Like, it's okay, Mom. We're going to be okay.
20:40When we got to the credit union, they handed me a black duffel bag.
20:45And said that I needed to get $200,000 out of the vault.
20:50And I begged and pleaded for them.
20:54Please just let me take him inside.
20:56I'll do what you want me to do.
20:57Please just let me take him inside.
20:59No, he has to stay here with us.
21:01Just do what we ask you to, and nobody's going to get hurt.
21:10And that was the hardest decision I think I ever had to make.
21:16Because my biggest fear was, this is the last time I'm going to see my baby.
21:31I remember going into the credit union.
21:34The girl that I worked with at the time was actually supposed to be a personal friend of mine.
21:38I said, I need you to open the vault.
21:40They have Carson in the car with a gun to his head.
21:43I need you to unlock the vault.
21:46And she just looked at me and said, it's my job on the line.
21:55And I said, I don't care about your job.
21:58That's my baby.
22:01And I begged and pleaded.
22:05And the only thing I can remember is grabbing the bag and turning around and looking up and said, you
22:11just killed us both.
22:19Walking out of the bank with that bag empty, I thought I was going to have to watch my child
22:23die.
22:29I'm never going to see him again.
22:32And he's my whole world.
22:39I opened the door.
22:41Just begging.
22:42Begging and pleading.
22:44I don't want you to ask, please don't kill us.
22:46Please don't kill us.
22:46I did try.
22:47I did try.
22:48No one would open it.
22:58And I will never forget the words he said to me.
23:03No harm.
23:04No foul.
23:05No one saw our faces.
23:19After they dropped us off, I just remember sitting and squeezing him.
23:22And I didn't want to let him go.
23:24Like I wanted to physically hold him to know he's right here.
23:39We get down to the police station and they just interrogated me.
23:43It was like they did not believe anything that was coming out of my mouth.
23:50This was a case for the FBI to handle because you have serious violent violations of federal law occurring in
23:58numerous places.
23:59And all I can remember is Detective Blanton coming through the door.
24:08He said, that is enough.
24:10We're done.
24:13I can't describe in words the fear that I saw on her face when I first walked into the room.
24:17I saw someone who had just been broken.
24:22At least two men held a three-year-old, helpless, defenseless child at gunpoint, threatening his life.
24:29I can't think of the type of evil that it requires to do something like that.
24:37She was still terrified about her son.
24:40She was terrified about his safety and his well-being.
24:48I knew she was not a suspect, but I had no idea who the suspects were.
24:53However, there were two robberies with similar M.O.s earlier in Knoxville.
24:58We were really almost out of investigative leads and were struggling to piece together who did this.
25:08The only thing that we had knew was a video of the car from the Paris bank surveillance.
25:16We see Mr. Harris walk out of the bank and he goes to a single car.
25:23We see him hand the bag to a person sitting in the front seat.
25:29And the car speeds out of the parking lot.
25:34There's a tussle over the bag because he doesn't want to give the money and then see his wife and
25:39child drive off.
25:43And you can see that Tanner's just defeated.
25:54When I heard about the Brook Lyons robbery, it clearly matched what had happened with the Harris's.
26:02The Harris's both stated that as they were driving away from the bank,
26:05these subjects had donned Halloween masks that looked like old men.
26:12And they had a yellow-tipped crowbar.
26:17They both had on ski masks, but when I took my blindfold off to go into the credit union,
26:22they had on old men Halloween masks.
26:27And I noticed that there was a yellow-tipped crowbar laying on the console.
26:33The Harris and the Lyons were clearly the same crew.
26:38They had struck again.
26:41The MO of this crew and what they did was very similar to the Ziggler's account.
26:48But the description was a little bit different.
26:51There was not a black male and there was not a white female.
26:54So it seems like there may be two crews involved, or there was a copycat crew.
27:06The level of intimidation and violence that these subjects used was concerning to us.
27:13There was a tremendous amount of fear in the community that this was going to happen again.
27:22We were dealing with a very sophisticated, organized crew that are evil, criminal geniuses.
27:30They're not leaving evidence behind.
27:34Brookline and the Harris's really never saw their faces.
27:39From the descriptions that the Zigglers provided us, we had a thin-billed black male bald with a orange sunburst
27:46type tattoo on his neck.
27:49We had a heavyset white male, and we had a white female with big red lips.
27:57We knew that these were hardened criminals.
28:00They were not going to stop.
28:02And that if we didn't get them, this was going to end in tragedy.
28:10We were throwing a lot of resources at this case, reviewing hundreds and hundreds of hours of CCTV.
28:20We were looking at photographs of tattoos from past bank robbery subjects.
28:27But these bank robbers, they were like phantoms.
28:33I was hoping to get lucky, and during the search of Brook's residence, Agent Brian O'Hare, he said,
28:39Hey, last month, his son-in-law was involved in a vehicle chase.
28:44This was so random in such a unique circumstance.
28:52My son-in-law was driving from North Carolina to Tennessee and said someone wrecked him.
28:58And the people who ran from police were carrying black duffel bags.
29:05I wondered if those two individuals might be associated with this.
29:12There were multiple dash cams in this particular pursuit.
29:19As I was driving along, I saw two cop cars with their lights on behind this SUV in the distance.
29:28All of a sudden, that SUV was on me.
29:33And they were just swerving left and right behind me.
29:37I felt like they were trying to hit me.
29:40The final swipe is when they clipped the back of my car.
29:43The vehicle of a random car shot around them off the roadway just struck one rev for me.
29:49They went around me, and that's when they hit another vehicle.
30:00Two gentlemen in the vehicle jumped out, and they had, you know, these black duffel bags, and they sprinted.
30:11They just ran, they jumped over, you know, the concrete barrier on the interstate.
30:19They're running from the police with something important enough to take with them when they leave the car.
30:25This was more than just a vehicle pursuit.
30:28This video made me want to find out who these two men were.
30:45They got away into the mountains. It's not safe to pursue them up into there.
30:49Jump and run, jump and run, aisle 40.
30:51The driver was tall and slender, and the passenger short and fat.
30:55Stop!
30:58I had enough to ask, where are these our guys?
31:05The Highway Patrol in North Carolina had recovered several items of evidence.
31:12There was a global positioning satellite that had been left in the vehicle.
31:17The Highway Patrol told me they had already tried to retrieve the data, and there was nothing there.
31:21It had been erased or it was blank.
31:26This is the GPS that was recovered from the crashed vehicle in North Carolina.
31:34I turned it over to one of our computer experts.
31:39He was able to write a computer program that went through the memory of the GPS system.
31:48It was discovered there were journeys that had been deleted from the device.
31:56It indicated that the two people who ran from the Highway Patrol had driven from North Carolina to Knoxville to
32:03appear to have cased out a bank.
32:07I actually called Agent Nocera, and I informed him I don't know who it is yet, but I think we
32:11have identified our bank robbers, and I feel pretty good about it.
32:18One of the addresses on the GPS was a rental cabin in North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains.
32:28Now I had a potential location of where our suspects could be hiding out.
32:36I reached out to the property management company and found out that there were two men that had been staying
32:41in that cabin.
32:45She describes them as some of her best tenants.
32:48Very quiet, paid in cash.
32:52We had to get surveillance on this cabin as soon as possible.
33:00Those general cabins, they're extremely remote.
33:06We're located over a mile away from where this cabin was located.
33:14We're trying to keep these guys under surveillance and trying to learn who they are and what they're doing.
33:21We're primarily using binoculars to see any activity in and around the cabin.
33:31Suddenly, they left the cabin, got in the vehicle, and pulled away.
33:39At this point, it was game on.
33:44We didn't know how this was going to go.
33:46It was an extremely dangerous situation.
33:55The vehicle pulls over to the side of the emergency lane, and a heavyset guy from the passenger seat gets
34:00out,
34:01raises his hands, and surrenders to the law enforcement.
34:03Get out! Get out! Get on the ground! Get down now!
34:08Don't you move! Don't you move!
34:10Don't you move! Don't you move!
34:12Don't you move! Don't you move!
34:14The driver takes off.
34:16The highway patrol pursue and ultimately arrest him.
34:21The driver of the vehicle was identified as Brian Witham.
34:25He was slender and was taken into custody as well.
34:28I attempted to interview the heavyset guy who was identified as Michael Benanti.
34:33How you doing, sir?
34:35Mike Benanti.
34:36Hey, John, what?
34:37Hey, Mike.
34:37Mike Robert.
34:38Okay.
34:39There should be no arrest here.
34:40I did nothing.
34:40I got to throw in that car on the highway.
34:42Right.
34:43You know what I mean?
34:43There's no nothing.
34:44I didn't do nothing.
34:45Okay.
34:46His story was that he was just hitchhiking.
34:48He got a ride.
34:49He doesn't know what's going on or doesn't know what's happening.
34:52I'm the CEO of a company.
34:54Eight years I've been building it.
34:56And this stupid little arrest is going to destroy me.
35:00Mr. Benanti had been in jail for robberies and for trying to kill a police officer.
35:06Just think about other people's lives before you just turn that screw a little too hard.
35:12He thought he was the smartest person in whatever room he was in.
35:15Extremely arrogant.
35:17But after the trooper searched Michael Benanti, he had a piece of paper that he tried to hide.
35:22And on that piece of paper were the names, addresses, identification of several bank employees and several banks.
35:29So we felt really good now.
35:34We had enough for a search warrant to search that cabin.
35:38When we entered that cabin, I've never seen anything like it.
35:50As I walked through this cabin, it was amazing the amount of evidence that we were able to recover.
35:59We found weapons and a treasure trove of surveillance equipment.
36:06They even had fake FBI IDs.
36:11Then we discovered a black crowbar with a yellow tip.
36:16Now I've got a black crowbar with a yellow tip at a bank robbery in Knoxville.
36:19I've got one at Brook Lyons.
36:21And I've got one at the rental cabin where these two men just left.
36:27Then we found a collection of masks.
36:32That was freaking awesome.
36:35Just remember pulling those out.
36:37We found the old man Halloween masks.
36:41Then we hit the jackpot.
36:45The black male.
36:47Michael Benanti's DNA was found on the bald black male's mask.
37:02They were like Hollywood quality masks that led the Zigglers to identify them as real people.
37:10The masks were used purposely to make law enforcement believe that there were multiple people involved in these bank robberies
37:16and not simply two men.
37:20That sunburst tattoo, they were just fake tattoos just to throw us off.
37:27The layers of deception and tradecraft that Benanti and Witham used was unlike anything that I had come across in
37:34my career.
37:37We now had the subjects that did the Zigglers, the Harrises, and the Lyons.
37:45We also found targeting packs of potential other victims.
37:49They spent their entire days setting out video cameras, scouring the internet, collecting information on family, and putting that together
37:56in packages to determine who their next victims were going to be.
38:04There was a briefcase that had Brooke Lyons in it.
38:10She had been surveilled for a period of time.
38:15Brian Witham initially did not want to cooperate.
38:18But when we presented what was seized from the cabin, he decided to cooperate with law enforcement.
38:26Brian Witham told us that they crossed paths while in prison, and when they got out, they flirted their criminal
38:32activity.
38:36He then told us about a robbery that was committed in Connecticut, where the victim was strapped with a fake
38:45bomb and forced to go try to rob his own bank.
38:49Matt Yussman was 100% a victim of Michael Benanti and Brian Witham.
38:58After nine months of being under police scrutiny, I was exonerated.
39:04To this day, it is something that still haunts me.
39:13This was the highest level of criminality in preparation, thinking through how to do these crimes, execute maximum trauma on
39:24the victims.
39:28For months, I would sit in a chair with a gun in my lap in silence for hours on end.
39:39I called Brooke Lyons, and I told her that we had two suspects in custody.
39:45And I remember she broke down on the phone and just cried and cried and cried because she was so
39:51relieved.
39:51You could actually hear the relief in her voice over the phone.
39:58That was the most satisfying part of this whole investigation.
40:09The federal district court sentenced Michael Benanti to four consecutive life sentences plus 155 years.
40:17As a result of his cooperation, Brian Witham received a 30-year federal sentence.
40:25I am 110% sure if it was not for the FBI, I would be sitting in jail right now.
40:32I haven't seen Agent Blanton since the trial.
40:37Hey.
40:38Brooke, how are you?
40:39I'm so good.
40:39Look at you.
40:40You were the first person to show me that kindness and that validation.
40:45And I'll never be able to tell you how grateful I am.
40:49Seeing you here today, that's what we want.
40:51People like you to have successful lives.
40:55Agent Blanton means everything.
40:57To have that one person in your corner that constantly fought for you to give you the justice that you
41:04needed.
41:05The closure that you needed.
41:08He is my real life hero.
41:16Next time on Feds.
41:18We didn't know who's causing all this violence, but they tore up the community.
41:23My friend died for nothing. He died for nothing.
41:26Brutal murders, drive-by shootings, random shootings.
41:29This case is my life. I will not stop.
41:32I want who did this to my son to pay for it.
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