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00:15I
00:16had received a phone call about a missing person.
00:22We checked the house for any evidence of a body.
00:27We found nothing.
00:31It's a cameraman. It's a colleague.
00:33You gotta find him.
00:39I have a message from Linda.
00:42She feels that you'd probably be best to stay out of here.
00:45It could be very dangerous.
00:47She said the zombies will get me
00:50if I leave the protection of this group.
00:55I thought, what is happening?
00:58He had become part of a cult.
01:02I found out she shot the neighbor's dog claiming that it was satanic.
01:12In the basement, there is a new strip of fresh concrete.
01:19Well, you'll be looking a long time for him.
01:23It's not pretty.
01:26History is full of people for whom the road to hell is paid with good intentions.
01:31He killed him and then he said he would kill me and my son if I opened my mouth.
01:50Cheyenne, Wyoming.
01:54It's near the Colorado border.
01:58The surrounding community is primarily ranches.
02:04Wide open country.
02:07Out in the middle of Prairie.
02:10Original Cheyenne.
02:12The houses date back to the 1800s.
02:18The majority of the residents in that part of town are all senior citizens.
02:24Their houses are well kept.
02:26People are friendly to each other.
02:29It is a good place to live.
02:32And so to receive the phone call about a homicide in that part of town is just out in left
02:41field.
02:46On July 17th of 2000, we received the call that there may be a body buried in the basement of
02:52a house in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
02:59The basement was concrete walls, concrete floor, several steps down.
03:07The detectives saw the crawl space.
03:11Once inside, Cheyenne found a section of dirt that appeared to be disturbed.
03:19Off to the right was some concrete.
03:24And then Chey saw tennis shoes sticking up out of the ground.
03:40That tennis shoe was attached to a body, which at that point had been essentially mummified.
03:52At that point in time, the detectives decided to call in the Wyoming State Crime Lab.
04:03They started very meticulously removing the cement that was over the body.
04:15Once the body was removed, we saw indications of bludgeoning, a gunshot.
04:21There was evidence of the castration.
04:23It was a pretty gruesome scene.
04:28When I look at that kind of damage that was done to the body, what comes to mind, that's a
04:33psychopathic action.
04:36Why did this happen?
04:39Why did this happen?
04:39What would motivate a person to do that?
04:42We need to figure out who is responsible.
04:44We need to figure out who is responsible.
05:04In April it is about forty miles away from Chicago West.
05:09It was really a great place to grow up.
05:14My dad was an analytical chemist at Argonne National Laboratory.
05:21My mom was a social worker.
05:24They were great parents.
05:26Alan Ross was my twin brother.
05:30Al was always very studious, very introverted.
05:33I was more the extrovert.
05:35We had a great childhood.
05:38Dad was great with photography.
05:42Dad would do a slideshow or a movie show.
05:46I think that's where Alan's love to film really started to blossom then.
05:51And then in high school, Al got into a film program and he started shooting with Super
05:568.
06:06In the early 80s, Chicago artistically, it was very exciting.
06:11I first met Alan Ross at Chicago Filmmakers, which he had started a few years earlier.
06:19Chicago Filmmakers had editing facilities and they offered film classes.
06:26Just the community that they formed, I wanted to be part of it.
06:32Alan was this tall, lanky guy and funny and sarcastic and witty and he just had such a great energy.
06:43Alan was a city boy with his loft right on Maxwell Street and just hanging out at gritty Chicago locations,
06:56bars, restaurants, White Sox games.
07:00There would be years where I might see Alan two or three times because he was always off filming documentaries.
07:08Filmmaking was everything for him as a cinematographer, nothing else existed.
07:14He was married to his camera.
07:16But in 1986, his mother died of lung cancer.
07:21That spurred his spiritual interest.
07:25In 1993, Alan and a girlfriend had attended a workshop of the Samaritan Foundation at a local hotel.
07:34And he had become interested in the use of spiritual energy in the body.
07:39The Samaritan Foundation was founded originally as a charitable organization to do Samaritan things and to help people.
07:48At its height, there were about 350 members.
07:51They were located in a communal house in Guthrie, Oklahoma, which is on the outskirts of Oklahoma City.
08:02As the leader of the Samaritan Foundation, Linda Green was very charming, very affable.
08:10I think Alan Ross was enticed by the Samaritan Foundation because of his own vulnerability with his mother's death.
08:20And his curiosity as a filmmaker.
08:24He called me, we talked, and he said he was leaving.
08:28And I said, where are you going?
08:29And he said, Oklahoma. And I said, Oklahoma?
08:33I said, what?
08:37Oklahoma City is not Chicago.
08:42Alan left and went to Guthrie.
08:45And after several months, he came back to Chicago to get his stuff.
08:54He was with another friend.
08:57The two of them sat me down at a little table and put out this chart in front of me.
09:03And they were, oh, we have to show you something.
09:07And they started swinging this pendulum over this chart.
09:10And I didn't get it.
09:12I was like, I didn't understand what they were so excited about.
09:15I didn't see anything happening there.
09:19As part of their ideas for the group, you could use this dousing pendulum to answer questions about your life.
09:27Alan was definitely immersed in the Samaritan Foundation.
09:30I thought, this is really strange.
09:34He had a very critical, sharp mind.
09:38When you open yourself up for a spiritual journey, you don't know if the spiritual forces you're dealing with are
09:44good ones or bad ones.
09:48History is full of people for whom the road to hell is paid with good intentions.
09:54Shortly after he went back to Oklahoma, I got this postcard from him that said,
10:01Dear Robert, don't know if I told you I got married, moved to Oklahoma.
10:05P.S., by the way, I've retired from life.
10:08I highly recommend it.
10:10We were all flummoxed.
10:14Alan suddenly, one day, told his friends that he was married.
10:19I think that Alan had become, in some sense, infatuated or involved with Linda Green.
10:25I think that Linda had specific qualities that have satisfied needs that Alan had.
10:33Deeper than emotional needs, but spiritual needs.
10:36Linda had initiated a divorce with Dennis Green, who is Linda Green's husband at the time that she met Alan.
10:44He said to me, he goes, I've never been happier.
10:47He had a lot of different women along the way.
10:49I've never heard him say something like that.
10:51It was a twin brother.
10:52What, am I going to argue with him about it?
10:53I said, man, all right, you know, let's see where it goes.
11:02At this time, Linda Green decided to abandon Guthrie and move the Samaritan Foundation to Cheyenne.
11:09And so Alan went with them.
11:11The common denominator in many cults is social isolation.
11:16The group draws you in and then they encourage you to cut your ties with family and friends.
11:24And you become isolated and embedded in the group.
11:34And then in 1995, I was assuming Alan would come back to Chicago for the holidays.
11:43Thanksgiving, he always would call on the house phone.
11:46So we all thought he might have been doing something or couldn't get to a phone.
11:50It was definitely a bit odd.
11:52And so then Christmas came about and nothing.
11:57Alan, when he would go off working on a project, we just kind of let him do his thing.
12:02It was before cell phones, so we weren't able to, like, text and do all that.
12:05But Alan always made a point to never miss a holiday or a birthday.
12:12No matter what Al was involved in, he never missed a date.
12:16Al was very consistent.
12:18The red flags did go off.
12:21You know, you get those gut feelings.
12:22This rush went through me like I've never felt before.
12:27And I knew right then, we all kind of look at each other like,
12:33there is something wrong.
12:36We started to get some bizarre faxes from Linda Green,
12:40saying how NASA was after her and the CIA was after her
12:46and the Russians were after her.
12:49I thought, what is happening?
12:52He had become part of a cult.
13:11In early 1995, Brad Ross was getting very uneasy,
13:16because he never heard from his brother before the holidays.
13:20Alan disappears off of communications.
13:24Nothing in the new year.
13:28We started checking with people and nobody had seen him.
13:32I was extremely worried about my brother.
13:36When he moved to Guthrie, it was like I already knew it was not Al,
13:40because Al was a city guy.
13:42I just had a sense, you know, there was something wrong.
13:47In March 1996, Brad Ross contacts the Cheyenne Police Department to do a welfare check
13:54at a communal house of the Samaritan Foundation.
13:57That's the last place he knew Alan was.
14:06When they arrived, residents let the Cheyenne Police Department know that Alan Ross had gone off to a film job,
14:15and no one was really quite sure when he would be back.
14:20They corroborated that, yes, Mr. Ross is in and out all of the time for work.
14:27There's nothing illegal about leaving town and not telling people where you went.
14:32So there's nothing really suspicious about that.
14:39March 28, 1996, four months after Alan went missing,
14:47we had gotten some bizarre faxes from Julia and Samaritan Group leader Linda Green.
14:55Julia Williams is a member of the Samaritan Foundation.
14:58She is wealthy, and she does a lot of funding what Linda does.
15:04They were saying how NASA was after her, and the CIA was after her, and the Russians were after her.
15:14They made some pretty outlandish statements.
15:17There's obviously no credibility talking about things that are just crazy.
15:24At this time, there was something happening with the Samaritan Foundation that caused some members to leave.
15:31There was a growing disenchantment and a feeling that there was something not right about Linda Green.
15:41The day after, we had received a phone call from Linda's ex, Dennis Green.
15:49Dennis said that Ellen Ross had been shot and he was buried in the basement.
15:57It knocked me back a couple of steps.
16:02New tenants had occupied the house.
16:06New tenants had occupied the house.
16:07The Samaritan Foundation no longer lived there.
16:11We went to the house.
16:13We checked the living room for any evidence of a homicide.
16:18We saw it like a hole in a wall caused from a bullet.
16:23Hole in a ceiling.
16:24Blood splatter.
16:25We found nothing.
16:29We went to the basement.
16:32We walked down five or six steps.
16:35And then off to the right was a piece of pegboard that was screwed to the wall.
16:40We took the pegboard off, which gave us access to the crawl space.
16:46You could smell dust.
16:49Based on my experience with dead bodies, there was always an unforgettable smell.
16:58That was not present.
17:01Once inside the crawl space, we found a section of dirt, relatively small, like maybe two feet in diameter, that
17:10appeared to be disturbed.
17:13We didn't have any shovels, so we used our hands, some lumber.
17:18We used whatever we could.
17:20And I think we dug down maybe 12 to 18 inches.
17:25And didn't find anything out of the ordinary.
17:31We checked the remainder of the crawl space with our flashlight.
17:35And the only dead thing we saw down there was a dead cat.
17:43At that point, we returned to the office.
17:48And I started making phone calls.
17:52I spoke with Dennis Green, who was living somewhere in Colorado at the time.
17:57And he said that Linda had told him she committed the homicide and that Julia was an accomplice.
18:06Dennis Green told me that Linda had a brother that was a homicide detective with the Oklahoma City Police Department.
18:13I reached out to him.
18:19During my conversation with Linda's brother, he told me that Linda had mental issues.
18:26He said Linda had gone after one of her brothers with a knife.
18:31Shot the neighbor's dog, claiming that it was satanic.
18:37So we didn't give Linda's, Dennis' and Julia's stories really any credence at that time.
18:44And really all the folks in the Samaritan Foundation.
18:48At this point in time, I'm thinking that with Dennis pointing the finger at Linda isn't uncommon for ex-spouses
18:56to have a vendetta against their ex.
19:00Because I know from first-hand knowledge that I didn't see a body in that crawl space.
19:25Alan had been missing since November 1995.
19:30I think that the police just thought that Alan had this crazy wife.
19:35She was nuts, but I felt like there was something really odd going on.
19:42The Chicago film community, or at least the members I knew, were concerned.
19:46There was a lot of speculation about what happened.
19:50This is not like Alan to disappear this long.
19:53He must be dead, or he must be alive, but hiding.
19:57And if he's hiding, that he was hiding from them.
20:01His friend Christian Bauer, who was a German filmmaker, it really bugged him. It really kept him awake.
20:11Christian decided to do a documentary to investigate and find Alan.
20:21I came on as a producer.
20:25Galen called me.
20:26She said, we're gonna solve a missing persons case about a cameraman.
20:31And I was in.
20:33It's a cameraman. It's a colleague. Gotta find him.
20:35I knew that Alan had lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma, so the investigation for the documentary started at square one.
20:47During the investigation, Christian and Galen found out that Linda asked Alan to be part of a sex ritual back
20:54in 1995.
20:56Dennis Green was Linda Green's husband at the time.
21:01Linda told Dennis that she needed to divorce him because she was dying of a neurological disease.
21:10To cure her involved Alan being involved in a sex act with another woman on the back of Linda Green.
21:19A sex act that would result in Alan being officially married to Linda.
21:26I thought, what is happening?
21:28I can't wrap my head around how he had become part of what felt like a cult.
21:36I knew that if I was going to find Alan, I needed to dig some more and see what we
21:43could find about the Samaritans.
21:48Before they moved out to Cheyenne.
21:52The Samaritans Monastery was in Guthrie.
21:57I got in touch with the group that owned the building.
22:01And we needed to find something that would at least have the police department reopen the case and move it
22:10forward.
22:19That building took on almost an Edgar Allan Poe type persona.
22:25Never been more excited to be in there and to get out of there at the same time.
22:30It didn't feel right.
22:36The second floor, there was a storeroom that had three big green metal cabinets that Alan had had in his
22:46loft, which I recognized.
22:49As a filmmaker, I knew I was looking at tons of production equipment.
22:53It's like five grand worth of lighting.
22:56He wouldn't have left this behind.
23:01In the basement, there was a new strip of fresh concrete, which made us suspicious that Alan could be buried
23:09in the basement.
23:11So Galen called Brad, his twin brother.
23:15And the next day, Brad showed up.
23:18We're examining the spots that are likely places where he might be.
23:23I dug about a four-foot hole that day.
23:28After six hours of digging, we were filthy jackhammers and digging all day.
23:36Unfortunately, there was no Alan.
23:38There's a need for closure.
23:40There's other places that we need to look now, but we wanted to just rule this one out.
23:49Although we didn't find him in Guthrie, the search continued.
23:54I was running down all these leads, and one of the Samaritan group members said to me,
23:59you need to stop digging because somebody's going to get hurt.
24:03It struck me that I must be getting close to something.
24:08I knew that Alan and the Samaritans had lived in the house in Cheyenne.
24:12So Christian and the crew and I drove there.
24:18I sent Devin out to look for a house the Samaritans had lived at in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
24:28When I got there and looked through a window, I saw Alan's name on everything.
24:35So I broke in.
24:37I didn't care.
24:39And this neighbor comes up to me and says, what are you doing?
24:43And I just smiled at her and I said, do you know who Alan Ross is?
24:49She turned into a ghost.
24:53And I knew right then and there she knew something.
24:56She said, I have Alan's camera.
24:58Is he dead?
25:03Linda came to New Orleans.
25:06Her mission was to reestablish her control.
25:11She was absolutely unfazed by the news that his penis was missing
25:16and he's buried in her own crawl space covered in cement.
25:45In March of 2000, Alan Ross has been missing for almost five years.
25:51His filmmaker friends are determined to find out what happened to him.
25:56When they find Alan's prized camera with a neighbor, they fear he's dead.
26:03And I get the camera.
26:05Immediately called Christian and Galen.
26:08You know how I know it's Alan?
26:09There's a card inside that says Alan Ross.
26:12Seeing that camera just sent a chill through me.
26:17I knew how attached Alan was to that camera.
26:22The neighbor goes, this woman named Linda, she gave it to me and told me to do what I want
26:29with it, get rid of it.
26:34We took the camera to the Cheyenne, Wyoming police department and we showed it to the investigators and we told
26:44them that camera was the tool for Alan's livelihood and he would not have been separated from it unless something
26:53bad had happened.
26:56A person not having their belongings wouldn't probably be enough to open up an older case, but it seemed particularly
27:05odd that it was worth taking a look at.
27:08We found out that Alan's passport had not been renewed in 1998.
27:14Okay, something's going on right now.
27:17Something's wrong.
27:18He's actually not working.
27:20We're going to go back to the last place Alan was seen in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
27:27We got a search warrant and on July 17th of 2000, detectives went back to the address on East 17th
27:37Street in Cheyenne where Alan Ross, who lived with the Samaritan Group, retraced everything that I had done four years
27:46prior.
27:49The detectives began searching the home, which is now at this point abandoned.
27:56Upon entering the basement, it was dirty, there was trash.
28:02At that point, they went to what's called a boiler room, which is nothing more than a 10 by 10
28:09room with a boiler to get to the crawl space.
28:13Four years prior, when I did the other search, I didn't see anything in that crawl space.
28:20It was so short that you couldn't stand up straight in, difficult to get in, difficult to work in.
28:35Investigators found a section of dirt off to the right was some concrete that appeared to be disturbed.
28:42There was a crack in the cement, and that is when they saw something.
28:56A high top tennis shoe peeked through a crack in the cement.
29:01That tennis shoe was attached to a body that had been essentially mummified.
29:12In the time the concrete that they had laid over the top of the body had settled, it caused the
29:19foot to come out of the ground.
29:23We immediately sealed the building off.
29:26The lieutenant, at that point, called in the Wyoming State Crime Lab, and they started very meticulously removing the cement
29:37and the dirt that was over the body.
29:41Upon further search of the crawl space, they find a bullet casing from a 9mm handgun.
29:51It was pretty clear at this point that this was a homicide.
29:58The body was removed and sent to the crime lab for the autopsy.
30:08Law enforcement obtained DNA from Alan Ross's twin brother.
30:14They were able to match that DNA with the bones found in the crawl space.
30:20And positively identify Alan Ross.
30:27Alan's death was just devastating for the Chicago filmmakers.
30:31He was robbed from us.
30:37From our lives.
30:39Alan met this tragic end.
30:47The autopsy report confirmed that Alan Ross was shot execution style to the back of his head.
30:54And that was the ultimate cause of death.
30:57What they discovered next was he had been castrated.
31:05To do something that grotesque to a body that's just kind of the face of evil.
31:11Why was the damage so bad?
31:14Who did this?
31:15The rupees is rendered exemplifies.
31:16Alright, Chris.
31:40The BettЫEL
31:414 years after going missing..
31:43going missing.
31:46the body of alan ross was discovered buried in the basement of house in cheyenne wyoming
32:01we started to look at motivation because why did this happen during the investigation speaking with
32:09the filmmakers we found out that alan had been planning on leaving the speriment foundation
32:17we told the police that back in 1995 within just a few months of alan going missing christian
32:26bauer contacted alan to shoot a documentary about the mississippi river and they were going through
32:37the various towns along the mississippi when they got to missouri linda and julia showed up christian
32:48said he had no idea how they knew which hotel they were staying in because alan said he hadn't told
32:56them when the crew came into new orleans there was linda and julia waiting for them alan was very
33:05irritated these two women were there to put their thumbs in the works bourbon street is seen through
33:18alan's eyes the two women on the sidewalk are linda and julia linda steps in front of the camera
33:25alan is embarrassed he pans away
33:32there are some very evocative photos that christian showed me of alan staring off at the mississippi
33:39he seemed broken
33:43we looked at motive one impossibility was he was planning on leaving the foundation and that she
33:49couldn't let it go i think when alan ross went back to what he loved which was documentary making
33:58he was completely outside of her control so linda came to new orleans her mission was to re-establish
34:06her control over alan ross who had the passion to do this to alan when you look at the castration
34:17it
34:17reinforces that this was personal so at that point linda green and julia williams became prime suspects
34:31in july of 2000
34:38investigators interviewed both linda and julia
34:44the first day that they spoke with linda and julia was a seven-hour interview alan came to my room
34:55and he told me that the national security agency informed her that we were all to be killed
35:03she was obviously badly unstable there were a lot of different stories and just trying to make sense of
35:11the facts was extremely challenging linda green was absolutely unfazed by the news that her spiritual
35:20husband was found murdered execution style his penis was missing and he's buried in her own crawl space
35:28covered in cement
35:32but both linda and julia pointed the finger at dennis green saying he was the one who actually committed
35:38the homicide dennis is an evil piece he killed him and then he said he would kill me and my
35:45son if i opened my mouth
35:47they told law enforcement that alan ross had molested linda and dennis green's minor child
35:56and then she said dennis green was so angry that he shot alan ross and just castrated him right there
36:03and that of course could be motive so the question was who killed alan ross
36:33in july of 2000 after detectives found alan ross's body
36:40linda green told law enforcement that alan ross had molested her and dennis green's minor child
36:50and dennis green was so upset and so angry that he shot alan ross and just castrated him right there
37:00law enforcement interviewed dennis green and he adamantly denied that
37:07after fact checking dennis green's statements investigators were able to confirm at that time dennis
37:15green was in fact in colorado
37:20so at this point in the investigation linda and julia are the prime suspects
37:25but we can't charge them at this point because we don't have any hard evidence pointing to them
37:35the passage of time is the worst enemy of prosecutors in law enforcement
37:43in 2002 linda green died of liver failure before charges could be filed
37:58after linda green died julia williams admitted to law enforcement that in 1995
38:06around the end of november she heard a gunshot and she saw alan ross lying on the floor she was
38:15very
38:15evasive regarding the details she would never reveal who pulled the trigger that killed alan ross
38:23because of the confession in march 2003 we were able to charge julia with accessory to murder after the
38:37fact
38:39from the investigation we believed that around thanksgiving of 1995
38:44it was clear alan wanted to escape the wrath of linda green he was planning on leaving the foundation
38:54and she couldn't put her up with that
38:59we believed the time that julia told alan they were going to get rid of all this filmed equipment
39:07this was his life and linda and julia understood that
39:14alan ross wanted to leave
39:16he had lost his sense of loyalty to linda green and i think that led to the death of alan
39:24ross
39:26our theory is that once he arrived at the house in cheyenne wyoming
39:32linda green and julia williams shot alan ross in the head
39:41he was castrated
39:46together they dragged him down the stairs
39:51buried him in the unfinished crawl space and then poured cement over him
40:07during trial julia williams defense was that dennis green had killed alan ross and that she was forced
40:16to go along and participate because she was scared of him
40:24the biggest challenge was that the case was largely circumstantial
40:31we looked intensively and we never found the gun
40:35we didn't know if we could get a conviction with juries you just never know
40:43the jury deliberated for only an hour on november 19th 2004 they found that 51 year old julia williams
40:53was guilty of accessory after the fact to the murder of alan ross
40:59the court sentenced julia williams to 24 to 34 months in prison with 109 days for credit for time served
41:11and we were relieved that she was brought to justice but 34 months for a homicide that seems low
41:20it was a very small sentence which was another shock for me i don't feel like justice was served
41:33i want alan to be remembered as this kind of fun-loving goofy guy
41:40who had a lot of curiosity about life
41:46he was a great cameraman and he did great work
41:54he saw life through his camera what he saw in that camera was unlike what i saw with my two
42:02eyes
42:04that was the beauty of what al could do his spirit was so inviting he was always for me
42:14you know he was always for me how could you not love that
42:21if i can honor him a little bit now it makes makes me feel better too
42:26i
42:29i
42:40i
42:41i
42:41i
42:41i
42:55i
42:56You
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