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Homicide Hunter American Detective S06E02 The Desert City Murders H 264
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00:05When you're a homeless person,
00:09you are putting yourself at enormous risk.
00:15You stuck yourself in the middle of a murder investigation.
00:18I don't kill anybody.
00:20You have no protection and no warning.
00:24You're an easy target.
00:26You're full of shit.
00:27I'm telling you that you're lying to me and I'm calling you on it.
00:31There is a predator in our midst
00:34who enjoys the sport of killing.
00:38It's kind of like a shock circling as a cop.
00:41I get chills thinking about it.
00:43The biggest fear we have is more people are going to end up dead.
00:50I spent my career closing murder cases.
00:55But I'm not the only one who answered the call.
01:00It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable.
01:04To catch a ruthless killer.
01:07To find justice for the dead.
01:11That's what it takes to be an American detective.
01:21I'm Detective Dan Long with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department homicide section.
01:28I love investigations.
01:30I really like doing interviews and interrogations.
01:34I believe that's my forte.
01:36But it's all of it.
01:37You get to take a case from the very beginning and you do not surrender that case ever.
01:49It was just after midnight.
01:53And I was home in bed asleep.
01:55I get the phone call from my sergeant.
01:57And he says we're rolling.
02:17They arrive at Ogden Avenue and City Parkway on the report of a discovered body.
02:23Ogden runs right through the center of Las Vegas downtown.
02:27It's actually Union Pacific Railroad property.
02:31This is a part of the town that is, after five, very quiet.
02:36The victim was found by a Union Pacific policeman clearing the area around the tracks.
02:45Detectives are briefed that it's a male victim.
02:52He was covered with a sheet.
02:59And he was bleeding profusely from his head.
03:02His left eye is swollen shut.
03:05And his skull has been crushed.
03:10Someone has struck him with a blunt instrument which could be anything.
03:14Somebody is swinging for the right field wall in Yankee Stadium.
03:18It was pretty clear this victim was one of our less fortunate citizens who happened to be homeless.
03:27Multiple layers of clothing, multiple jackets.
03:31It is January.
03:32And even though it's the desert, it goes down to 30 degrees at night quite commonly.
03:39When the corner investigator got there, we found that he had a wallet.
03:46He's 46 years old and his name is Daniel Aldape.
03:52Okay, a major step forward.
03:55We found he had $234 in cash besides a whole bunch of change on him.
04:04That's important as to motive.
04:06It isn't robbery.
04:08They didn't take the money.
04:09Looking at the scene itself and looking at the body and its position supine.
04:15No disturbance in the dirt, no evidence of a struggle.
04:19And forensic testing failed despite the effort.
04:22It's an ambush attack.
04:24He was killed so quickly that he had no defensive wounds.
04:28The obvious motive here is to kill, not to injure them, to kill them.
04:35I can't think of a more dangerous way to live than being homeless and on the streets.
04:44The dangers of sleeping outdoors is anything you can imagine.
04:47You're vulnerable.
04:47You're out in the open.
04:49You're an easy target.
04:50You have no protection and no warning.
04:56We started expanding the area of investigation.
05:00The captain of downtown area command, Andy Walsh, becomes involved.
05:04My responsibilities are to manage the crime and our day-to-day operations.
05:11We had great detectives.
05:13But Dan was kind of a personal favorite for me.
05:16He was good at what he did.
05:20Just looking at the lay of the land, kind of an isolated area.
05:24But this is a major city.
05:25There are probably cameras everywhere.
05:27The exception being, there aren't any.
05:33They happen to be in a dead zone.
05:36So we don't have any witnesses.
05:37We don't have any video.
05:39This particular crime scene has left many unanswered questions.
05:54Detectives go to the autopsy to determine any other facts that can be learned.
06:01The coroner's opinion is this individual was struck with a very heavy, blunt instrument.
06:09The object that was used had a linear edge to it.
06:15It appeared to be a hammer.
06:18Further, the coroner points out, there are hinge fractures, which are extremely rare.
06:25A hinge fracture is a portion of the skull that breaks the opposite direction of force, like the hinge on
06:32a door.
06:34His head was resting on cement when somebody used a hammer with excessive force at least four times to crush
06:43his skull.
06:45A very brutal death, but in the coroner's opinion, instantaneous.
06:49The coroner did rule it a homicide.
06:52Also, Daniel had a contusion to his eye that was old.
06:58Right away, he started thinking, okay, we might have a lead here.
07:00We thought maybe he'd been in a fist fight and he'd gotten punched.
07:05So let's beat the bushes to see who knows him.
07:08And more importantly, perhaps we can learn who hates him.
07:19They tracked down his sister.
07:24They need to notify her of the death, of course, but they're also hopeful that she can provide background information.
07:30Danny was four years older than I was.
07:34We grew up just outside of Chicago.
07:36He was like a true Chicago sports fanatic.
07:39He was a kind soul, truthfully, and really just loved his family and loved music.
07:45Music was his entire being.
07:48He loved obscure heavy metal music that no one's ever heard of, and he became a DJ.
07:54And he's known as Metal Dan.
07:57That was his dream work.
07:59He finally achieves it.
08:01Things are going along swimmingly for several years.
08:06But then he develops mental health issues.
08:09We started seeing small changes in his personality.
08:13He would come home from work and he would have a story that just didn't quite make sense.
08:17You know, he thought that potentially people were following him,
08:21or people were trying to intentionally do things to him.
08:24It was hard for all of us to deal with because, obviously, he's our family and we want him to
08:29feel safe.
08:30And he didn't feel safe.
08:33And it was, it was very, very sad.
08:38Sorry.
08:43He was self-medicating with alcohol.
08:48When he was drinking hard alcohol, he could become aggressive.
08:52And he had been in fights.
08:54It's so hard to think about what he was dealing with in his head and what he was feeling.
09:00What happened to us was terrible, but what happened to him was catastrophic.
09:09And he winds up losing his job, losing his identity, losing everything.
09:17My mom said you have to either get on some sort of medicine or you have to leave.
09:23And he chose to leave.
09:26He was staying in a homeless shelter at that point.
09:29Eventually, he came up with a plan.
09:31I want to try to go someplace warmer, a little bit nicer, like a getaway from the winters.
09:37The expression in the homeless world is to follow the sun.
09:41It's the only way they've got to stay warm.
09:45He said, I'm going to try Vegas.
09:48He'll panhandle and be able to make a ton of money.
09:50He's a nice, likable guy.
09:53But unfortunately, he didn't make it in Vegas very long.
09:58So she provides interesting information, but that's all she truly knows.
10:03Once you get past the victimology and you don't have any suspects, it's very hard to have any leads.
10:08These are the kinds of crimes that go unsolved.
10:11We had the original thought that he was possibly attacked by another homeless person.
10:17So my partner and I decided we're just going to have to talk to people in the homeless communities
10:23to find anybody that knew Daniel and if he had had a problem with anybody.
10:29It is a daunting task.
10:31The city of Las Vegas has a population of about 6,000 homeless people.
10:37That's a lot of people.
10:38This is not going to be easy.
10:42Captain Walsh gave us some officers, talked to every single homeless person in that area, which is impossible.
10:53I had the air unit, the helicopter, you know, fly around the area and look for homeless camps that you
10:57can't see from the street.
11:01There's a specific tip line that's going to be established.
11:06You are getting a lot of probably highly irrelevant information, but you're looking for sort of that needle in the
11:14haystack.
11:19And then there was a glimmer of hope.
11:25A tip comes in that there's a guy on the street whose name is Ron Smith.
11:33And he always wears a white cowboy hat.
11:37He was known as cowboy.
11:41Daniel had stated to this homeless guy that the cowboy is crazy.
11:51Now there you go.
11:59Did you threaten Mr. Aldoppi and he didn't respond appropriately?
12:09So you decided to bash his head in with a hammer?
12:12Well, let's go find out.
12:20Detectives finally have a specific suspect.
12:24Mr. Ron Smith.
12:29They go to those places where he's known to hang out.
12:34It took us several days.
12:39But we did find cowboy.
12:43They asked him about Daniel Aldappe.
12:48And he's not cooperative.
12:50He's confrontive.
12:52He had a lot of anger issues.
12:55To the point where he screamed at a street sign for several minutes.
12:59So they changed the tone.
13:02And they say, well, let me tell you the problem, chief.
13:05Daniel Aldappe is dead.
13:08Somebody murdered him and beat his brains in.
13:10And that might be you from what we hear.
13:15And it worked somewhat with cowboy.
13:18And he was able to talk to us.
13:19So he goes into a long explanation.
13:22I threaten everybody.
13:24It's my scheme to protect myself.
13:27They all play the bravado game.
13:30He said he had nothing to do with Daniel's death.
13:34And he was actually in the shelter at the time that Daniel had been killed.
13:40So we didn't believe cowboy had anything to do with the actual death.
13:51So now the case begins to grow cold.
13:56The operative method they've been using is this was a personal attack designed to do in Mr. Aldappe.
14:04What if it's just an attack by somebody who likes to kill people?
14:10Who knows?
14:15It's one month after the murder of Daniel Aldappe.
14:20And Steve Thompson is waking up for the morning.
14:24He sees his friend David Dunn sleeping nearby.
14:27He walks over.
14:30And says, hey Dave.
14:36And nothing.
14:43He sees blood.
14:45A lot of blood.
14:50I was at work when we got the call.
14:52Detectives are notified there has been another murder.
14:56But then they hear the location.
15:00Ogden Avenue and City Parkway.
15:05Right away I was like, oh boy.
15:09We have two homeless guys sleeping diagonally across an intersection from each other.
15:13Murdered about a month apart.
15:15Coincidence?
15:16No such thing.
15:20And when they arrive.
15:24They're briefed that the victim is 60 year old David Dunn.
15:29We're looking at the victim.
15:33And he has multiple blows to the head with what appeared to be a hammer.
15:39It appears as if he was sleeping when he was attacked.
15:44His possessions are all around him, including cash.
15:47His clothing and his belongings were not rifled through.
15:50This is not a robbery.
15:51It's almost as if it's the same murder with a different body.
15:57So when you look at this intersection here, you can see this is right where Daniel Aldape was when he
16:02was sleeping.
16:03You could see how close we are to that area there.
16:05And that's where Dave Dunn was killed.
16:07I mean, for crying out loud, there's no way that these things are not connected.
16:10Clear as day it was the same person that did it.
16:12Police are concerned someone in our valley may be targeting homeless people for murder.
16:17It's been at this same intersection essentially that about one month apart, two different homeless men were killed in the
16:24same manner.
16:24The reasons they're not here is simply because they slept on the ground outside in our community.
16:29We are now looking at somebody that is killing multiple people.
16:33They are not robbing these people.
16:35So why in this same intersection?
16:38It doesn't make sense.
16:40These are going to be extremely difficult to solve.
16:45For now, the focus by the detectives is on this individual.
16:49David Dunn, what can they learn about any enemies he may have?
16:53We are able to identify his patterns very, very quickly.
17:01He commonly goes to the Reformation Lutheran Church where they serve a free lunch to homeless people every day.
17:11When they arrive at the church, they meet with Pastor Jason Adams.
17:15We heard the story on the news and it's just so gruesome and awful to imagine that happening to somebody.
17:22Pastor Adams refers to David Dunn as a friendly, pleasant man who's never had an enemy.
17:28Dave was one of the guys who came in every day, right on time, and with a smile on his
17:33face.
17:34He was jovial, never starting trouble.
17:38Dave would come in at times with a coupon that somebody gave him and he would want to share it
17:43with his friends,
17:44even though he didn't have a lot himself.
17:45It was really telling about who he was.
17:49The detectives asked Pastor Adams, where does he normally stay?
17:53Well, he always sleeps in a shelter, but if he couldn't get a bed that night, then he would be
17:57outside.
17:59He just happened to be there that night when he was discovered and killed.
18:08This suggests that the killer of David Dunn killed him at random.
18:12That sends red flags up that we now have an individual who is hunting homeless people in this particular area
18:20of town.
18:21This has all the appearances of a serial killer.
18:26Metro hoping someone saw something.
18:29Their big fear is that this person may strike again.
18:32With two murders already having happened,
18:34the possibility of a serial killer on the loose increases the pressure to resolve these cases.
18:42The biggest fear we have is more people are going to end up dead.
18:48The information travels through the homeless community like a plague.
18:52Whoever this is, is killing homeless people.
18:55A lot of the individuals, they were scared for themselves to know that they could be next.
19:00They believe that night time is the time this killer is active.
19:06So they would just not sleep.
19:08Others would ride the bus all night.
19:10Others might sneak into a casino and sleep for an hour or two in a restroom.
19:13You cannot stay awake for the rest of your days.
19:16You have to sleep.
19:18This is an extremely real threat to the homeless people of Las Vegas.
19:26You can expect that there will be another killing at some point.
19:34We were having meetings and Captain Walsh was like,
19:38what are you doing to stop these?
19:40God forbid I have, you know, another victim in the same intersection.
19:43I mean, it just really would have been painful to live with that we didn't do something.
19:49There's a lot of discussion.
19:51During one of the meetings, Captain Andy Walsh advises us that he is going to try something completely different.
19:58That's when the light bulb went off, really.
20:03I remember that having gone through some CPR training that we had life-size CPR dummies.
20:09And so I called the friend of mine over search and rescue.
20:13He goes, what, do you want a CPR class?
20:15I said, no, I'm going to put one out and dress it up as a homeless person.
20:18And I believe what I said is, are you crazy?
20:23Best case scenario was you had the mannequin getting attacked in the same manner that you envisioned the murders occurring.
20:30Seemed like a Hail Mary.
20:33This is...
20:34I mean, you're not going to say very much.
20:36You're talking with the captain.
20:37After he got done laughing, he said, good luck.
20:40It's the boss's idea.
20:41And as usual, boss wins.
20:46So they took the pictures of the prior victims and studied their outfits.
20:58They matched it as close as they could without being identical with the first two victims.
21:05They really got creative.
21:07We named the mannequin Charlie McCarthy.
21:09Charlie McCarthy was a dummy in the 50s and 60s, performed by a ventriloquist on The Sullivan Show.
21:16Perfect name for what we were doing.
21:17Still, I didn't see how this was going to work.
21:20But this is a captain.
21:21He's sinking way outside the box.
21:24And God bless him.
21:26When they get it all done with, he looks pretty good.
21:29He could be easily mistaken for a human being, even in the daylight.
21:34But I never really thought, like, you know, what are the legalities of someone hitting the mannequin or the dummy
21:39in the head with a hammer?
21:40I mean, it was going to generate a suspect for us, right?
21:43You can not charge him with anything for attacking a dummy, but you can identify him, interrogate him, whatever.
21:52What's the alternative?
21:52He continues to kill or we try to grab him by the throat.
21:57I always vote for grabbing him by the throat.
22:01I reached out to counter-terrorism and said, hey, I want to put a couple cameras up in this intersection.
22:07Well, first off, that's a lot of money that Homicide would never be able to do.
22:13But he's a captain.
22:14He can rearrange his troops.
22:16And by then, I pretty much knew I had a blank check because I had two murders in the same
22:20intersection, so nobody really wanted to say no.
22:23You want to help him because, you know, he's always trying to do the right thing.
22:27They borrow it.
22:30And they install it using an undercover technician.
22:35We had the mannequin deployed right here in the same general area.
22:39You had the eye in the sky kind of watching. You had the human surveillance up there watching.
22:42The trees provided a little concealment.
22:44Over here in this area further is where we conceal the cars.
22:48So they have a two-prong approach.
22:52Live policemen and a high-quality camera image have any potential attack on their decoy.
23:03So it has a high possibility of success, assuming our shark shows up.
23:10Everything is in place.
23:12Undercover officers are present, acting as hangarounds and sleepers.
23:16And everyone's on high alert.
23:18I couldn't sleep.
23:19I was listening to the radio and monitoring.
23:21Anything happening, no, no movement.
23:23They're so convinced this is going to happen immediately, which it never does.
23:28Now it's daylight.
23:30Well, how's our dummy going to wake up?
23:35And they did a good job of making sure there was nobody in the area watching.
23:38And they would pick Charlie up and put him in the car and drive him back to the station.
23:42So the pattern is established that Charlie McCarthy sleeps there at night, is secretly removed in the early morning light,
23:48sits in headquarters and waits to go to work when it gets dark.
23:53We had Charlie on the back patio, smoke cigars at the substation every once in a while with him sitting
23:58there with us.
23:59So they started driving Charlie around like he was a member of the team.
24:05Being a homicide detective is always a strange job.
24:08You'll get frustrated, but you'll never be bored.
24:11We said, we'll give it at least a month and see what happens.
24:26Andy was taking a lot of flack from pretty much all of us.
24:31I think secretly some wanted it to work.
24:35One particular night in the third week, the guys in the police department are watching the cameras.
24:42Live action.
24:53They see a guy walk by Charlie.
25:03He's passing by casually, making certain this guy is asleep.
25:09You can tell from his footsteps and the way he's moving how he's stepping quietly in the rocks.
25:15Like it's real stalking of the victim.
25:19It's kind of like a shark circling.
25:24He's carrying a bag.
25:28He's working himself up.
25:30He can taste the violence.
25:34This is our guy.
25:42Las Vegas Metro PD.
25:44See a guy walk by Charlie.
25:48He's carrying a bag.
25:50Now everyone's on the edge of their seat.
25:57And then the hammer comes out of the bag.
26:01Raises it over his head.
26:08And swings it as hard as he can.
26:18As a cop, like I get chills today just even thinking about watching it because now I know how Daniel
26:25Aldape and Dave Dunn died.
26:34In a matter of seconds, he's surrounded.
26:41He's surrounded.
26:46They get him into custody without any kind of incident.
26:53And cover the hammer.
26:56They immediately submitted to the crime lab to search it for blood trace or brain tissue.
27:01And I remember thinking, oh my God, I cannot believe this may result in us actually solving this crime.
27:06When we got that phone call in the middle of the night, I might have said a few expletives when
27:11they said it to me.
27:14The person is Shane Schindler.
27:16He's 30 years old.
27:18He has an outstanding jaywalking ticket.
27:21Other than that, he has no record.
27:23But Charlie caught a shark and now the detectives are looking at him.
27:29We sit down and we are very, very soft.
27:32We want him to tell us as much as he can.
27:35Their objective is to get a statement of some kind, which you can pick apart later.
27:41How long have you been here in Vegas?
27:43Eight months.
27:44Okay.
27:45And you don't have any belongings?
27:47You're not staying anywhere?
27:49Nothing, just whatever I got in.
27:51Okay.
27:52In the last while, where have you been sleeping?
27:54Just around Las Vegas parking lots.
27:58I do find out he's from Bay City, Michigan.
28:01He does have a phone on him.
28:03He had money on him.
28:05His belongings are, I wouldn't say clean, but they're cleaner.
28:09But he doesn't tell us very much.
28:12You know why you're in handcuffs today?
28:15Something to do with gummy land here.
28:20Okay.
28:22What happened tonight?
28:24Oh, I was passing through and seeing a dummy land on the ground and, uh, I don't know if you
28:29guys showed up.
28:31So is it normal for you to attack a dummy with a sledgehammer at 3 o'clock in the morning?
28:38Okay.
28:38What'd you do with the dummy?
28:40I don't know.
28:41Maybe I kicked it or something, but that was it.
28:44Did you ever hit it with a hammer?
28:46No.
28:47Never hit it with a hammer?
28:48No, I did not.
28:50Okay, because I'm going to tell you that you did.
28:52Okay.
28:53Reading Shane is difficult.
28:55If you caught him in an out-and-out lie, he just rolled away from it.
29:00I'll be right back.
29:01At this point, they're still forensically testing the hammer for any blood of the victims.
29:06They have some.
29:07This is the third time he's used it.
29:09So they examined it very carefully, chemical trace, so on and so on.
29:13Nothing.
29:13Clean as a pen.
29:14It's not the same hammer.
29:33When you're interrogating someone, and you see in his face he's calming down a little bit, you seem to have
29:40lost the rattle effect.
29:42So you change.
29:43Change tactics.
29:44Okay.
29:45Um, you stuck yourself in the middle of a murder investigation.
29:50That's what we do for a living.
29:52We're investigating two men that died by getting struck in the head.
29:57Wow.
29:59The look of rattled his back.
30:01Good.
30:01We're in the right area now.
30:03I've never killed anybody.
30:05What kind of feeling does it give you?
30:07Don't give me any feeling.
30:09It was a dummy.
30:10I hit the dummy in the head.
30:12Today?
30:12Well, yeah.
30:14Last month it wasn't a dummy.
30:16Well, I didn't do it, nothing.
30:18The month before it wasn't a dummy.
30:20Well, it wasn't me, so...
30:23First he said he didn't hit the dummy.
30:25Now he says he did.
30:27So what does that mean?
30:28Were you lying then?
30:30Are you lying now?
30:31Or maybe you're just a liar?
30:34And why would you want to destroy the dummy?
30:37Eh, that was kind of funny.
30:39You know, dummies in there, you know?
30:41Or did you think it was a person?
30:43No, I thought it was a dummy.
30:45I know a real person from a dummy, you know?
30:47Wrapped up in a sleeping bag.
30:49It's hard to tell.
30:51Well, I thought his head was sticking out.
30:54Well, his head was covered, actually.
30:57When he's making your admissions while I knew it was a mannequin,
30:59no, you didn't.
31:00You're full of shit.
31:03I'm telling you that you're lying to me and I'm calling you on it.
31:05Let's move past that.
31:06I'm calling you on it.
31:07You're lying about it.
31:08Calling me on what?
31:09You hit that dummy in the head with a hammer with an intent to kill it.
31:13You did not know that it was a dummy.
31:16Yes, I did.
31:17You tell the blankets moved when you were hitting it?
31:19No.
31:20I knew it was a dummy beforehand.
31:23Probably.
31:24Okay.
31:25Well, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
31:28Schindler tells a completely unbelievable story.
31:32We tried numerous different techniques and we never got anywhere.
31:36We certainly didn't get a confession, but everything pointed towards this was the guy.
31:40How do you charge him with the two murders?
31:45Being out and about in the dark with her sledgehammer and hitting dummies is not criminal.
31:51All they have on him to hold him is an unpaid jaywalking ticket.
31:55We actually discussed arresting him.
31:57But I said, we have to bring in a surveillance team that is going to follow him to what I'm
32:03thinking is going to be a campsite.
32:06There is a possibility that he might have hidden two murder weapons.
32:10If we could find the blood of either victim, that would be excellent.
32:15We have to think outside the box and sometimes you have to create the box.
32:20Okay.
32:23So they've got to do the unthinkable.
32:24They got to let him go.
32:28There were some people that looked at me like I had three heads because we probably have a murderer that
32:35I'm going to put back on the streets.
32:36They know they have to keep a very tight watch on him because he could disappear forever.
32:46There is nowhere to go legally with Shane Schindler.
32:51So they have no option but to release him.
32:57So we had surveillance set up.
32:59We weren't going to lose sight of him is really what it boiled down to.
33:02You just keep going until you find something.
33:04I'm not going to quit.
33:08Schindler gets on a bus and rides the bus some 20 miles outside of Las Vegas.
33:14He gets off that bus.
33:16And he goes into a one room apartment.
33:21Well, Schindler, you lying little bastard.
33:24Do you have an apartment?
33:28They prepare an affidavit for a search warrant.
33:36He looks at us.
33:41He doesn't argue with nothing.
33:50The place is a pigsty.
33:52Half-eaten pizzas, empty cans, filthy clothing, enough to make you throw up.
33:59We're going through it all.
34:01We cannot find a hammer, but we do find receipts.
34:06For a four-pound engineer hammer,
34:10and the return of the hammer, and another purchase of another hammer.
34:15The hammers were purchased in and around the timeframe of the previous murders.
34:20We figure what he's doing is he'll commit a murder with a hammer,
34:24clean it, return it to the hardware store, turn it in, get another hammer.
34:33So they immediately go to the hardware store with their receipts.
34:37Nobody recognized the picture of Shane Schindler,
34:40but they had a display rack for the hammers.
34:43There's four of them there, but we learned that they had sold nine.
34:47We had a crime scene analyst with us.
34:50They did some testing, and we had none on the shelf that had blood.
34:54So it was probably sold to another customer.
34:58And whoever bought those hammers might be in possession of somebody's blood and brain matter,
35:03and not even know it.
35:06So the detectives knew they were on the right track,
35:09but now you gotta figure out how to charge them with the two murders.
35:13There is no sufficient evidence to support he's killed anybody.
35:18Circumstantial evidence? Yes.
35:19Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Nope.
35:24We do have conversations with the district attorney, Mark DiGiacomo.
35:28I decided to go right to the top and pick the smart guy,
35:32because I was in serious trouble here.
35:35Prosecutors will find a way.
35:36When they called me and said, look, there's not enough here to book him on the murders,
35:39I said, okay, well, what did he do?
35:42Well, he took a hammer and hit a mannequin.
35:48But that's not what he thought he did.
35:50He thought he took a hammer to a human being.
35:52Why don't you book him on attempt murder with use of a deadly weapon?
35:54He explains to me that the intent is there and we're gonna go through a grand jury.
36:01You have to make an argument to a judge that any reasonable person
36:05would have believed, because of the disguise on the dummy
36:09and the mind's eye of the perpetrator, he is attacking a human being.
36:13Well, I think the response was, are you kidding?
36:16And I was like, well, okay.
36:18You obviously know the law better than I do.
36:20It's a stretch, but it could work.
36:24We presented the case to the grand jury
36:28that gave a true bill and we had an indictment.
36:32They negotiate with the district attorney that if he pleads guilty,
36:36he will not be charged with the murders of the two individuals killed with hammers.
36:51He accepts the deal.
36:54He pled guilty to attempt murder and agreed to a sentence of eight to 20 years in the Nevada Department
37:00of Corrections.
37:03This is great news.
37:05You don't always get a meal, but let's at least get a sandwich.
37:09Something is better than nothing.
37:11Something that puts him in a jail.
37:15I spoke to Shane numerous times, and he wouldn't admit ever attacking anybody with a hammer.
37:22He does say he had slept in that intersection before, and the white male that beat him up took his
37:30belongings.
37:30So it's possible that Mr. Schindler sought revenge for being assaulted at that intersection.
37:37So it became his hunting ground.
37:39Shane has a very specific image of himself as being very manly, being tough.
37:44And I believe that it was eating at him to the point where he started planning out how to kill
37:49this man.
37:50The detectives firmly believe that Shane Schindler purchased a sledgehammer and went to the intersection in question.
37:59There he sees Daniel Aldape bundled up and asleep.
38:06He looks at him and decides he's the guy that hurt him.
38:22And we believe he then kills Daniel with a hammer, four blows to the head.
38:27And then he looks more carefully and realizes it's not him.
38:32Oh my, a mistake.
38:37We believe he then makes it home, he exchanges the hammer, gets a new hammer.
38:43They also believe a month or so later, he wanted to continue the hunt.
38:49He went to that intersection.
38:55Found David Dunn.
39:01It is a blitzkrieg attack with a hammer to the head.
39:05He kills him in the exact same manner.
39:09Careful review.
39:11Oh no, that's not him either.
39:17About a month later, Shane Schindler has a new hammer.
39:23He goes to the same intersection.
39:26Sees a person bundled up and sleeping.
39:31And attacks it.
39:32And discovers it's not a person at all, it's a dummy.
39:36But he hits it in the head with a sledgehammer.
39:41That's the crime he pleads guilty to.
39:43Which suggested to me he knew that he was the killer of Mr. Adalpe and Mr. Dunn.
39:51We were all able to be in the courtroom, and when they said somebody from his family would like to
39:58speak, he looked like, like as if he was surprised that he had family that was there, that cared.
40:07And you thought you could just murder homeless people and nobody would care.
40:12That's so far from the truth, you know? So many people cared.
40:17The only sense of comfort I get is knowing that we didn't have a third victim.
40:22But that's all you can do is try to reconcile it.
40:24The telling thing about this is that when Shane went into jail, the killings stopped.
40:30Homeless people or panhandling people or going through things in life that we can't begin to understand.
40:37How do you turn this terrible thing that happened into something more positive?
40:42I own a t-shirt shop, so I did the homeless lives matter in a hashtag honoring Danny.
40:48Because, I mean, in all honesty, that's what it was all about.
40:51Danny.
40:54This case certainly informs the public the plight that homeless people face every day.
41:00They're sleeping in the jungle.
41:03They're fully exposed to the dangers the world presents.
41:11On the next American detective.
41:14Robert Wiles disappeared in April of 2008.
41:17The Wiles family received a ransom demand a few days after Robert disappeared.
41:22In homicide, the victim is already deceased.
41:25In a kidnapping, the victim is still alive.
41:28Your mission is to keep that from changing.
41:31To be continued.
41:31To be continued.
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