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00:00:00.
00:00:09Tonight on Dateline.
00:00:11An investigator called me to say that we had found Duane's car.
00:00:16It was on fire and we're looking for Duane.
00:00:19I started panicking. I was crying.
00:00:23There was so much luminous from the amount of blood in the car
00:00:27that you could pretty much see it from space.
00:00:30Probably something very bad had happened to Duane.
00:00:35She commented that she would not be surprised if her
00:00:39ex-boyfriend might have something to do with this.
00:00:42He said, you're spending time with him and not with me.
00:00:45We can't track him down. Nobody has been to his home.
00:00:48They don't know where he lives. He's a ghost, this guy.
00:00:51I reached out to his grandmother. I send her his
00:00:55driver's license. She immediately says,
00:00:57that's not my grandson. I've never seen him before.
00:01:00This guy had taken her grandson's identity.
00:01:04He only asked one question.
00:01:05How far will this jet ski go on a full tank of gas?
00:01:09I almost feel like we're chasing James Bond here.
00:01:12I lived in terror, sleeping with one eye open.
00:01:16He will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
00:01:19A murder suspect armed with a stolen ID and a jet ski
00:01:23makes for a manhunt like no other.
00:01:26I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.
00:01:37Here's Keith Morrison with the case of the man with no name.
00:01:49He was a ghost.
00:01:52A grainy image on the bit of security video.
00:01:55The whatever it was that lurked in a midnight dumpster.
00:02:00The mystery man rushing into the street with something under his arm.
00:02:04That he was up to something devious here in this big northern city seemed obvious.
00:02:10If only someone could make sense of him and his deeds
00:02:14as he slipped in and out of you like some prairie poltergeist.
00:02:19Just who was he?
00:02:21This man with no name.
00:02:25What did he do?
00:02:28And where did he go?
00:02:31No one could believe it.
00:02:33If you'd scripted this for a movie, they would say this is far-fetched.
00:02:44And here is how it began.
00:02:46It was a bright Sunday morning going on noon.
00:02:49May 31, 2015, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
00:02:54A pedestrian walking past a parking garage heard a loud explosion
00:02:58and, quick as a wink, pulled out a smartphone.
00:03:00And caught this video of a man running away from the garage
00:03:05and the smoldering hunk of an Acura sedan inside the garage.
00:03:11Firefighters and police, to their relief, could find no victim inside the car.
00:03:15But why did someone set it on fire?
00:03:19Had to be a reason.
00:03:22The registered owner was a guy who lived a three-hour drive away in the city of Edmonton.
00:03:2842-year-old Dwayne Demke.
00:03:32This is Dwayne's brother, Darren.
00:03:35I received a call from the Calgary Police Arson Investigator.
00:03:43Called me to say that we had found Dwayne's car and it was on fire and we're looking for Dwayne.
00:03:48Kind of insinuating maybe that he had something to do with it.
00:03:52And I knew right away that, no, Dwayne didn't have anything to do with that.
00:03:57His friends had just seen Dwayne the night before.
00:04:00At a birthday party for one of his best friends.
00:04:03Calya Palihuanopoulos.
00:04:05But he left early to pull a shift at his limo service job.
00:04:10Here's Calya.
00:04:12Dwayne said that he'd come back after he was done his limo shift.
00:04:16But he did not.
00:04:18I didn't really think anything of the time.
00:04:20I just thought maybe he went home to bed or something.
00:04:24He was tired.
00:04:25So nobody was very worried about it at the time.
00:04:27No.
00:04:28And then I got a phone call.
00:04:30From a friend.
00:04:31Asking.
00:04:32Had you heard from Dwayne since the party and I said no.
00:04:35And he said that Dwayne's father had called to say that the police had called him to let him know
00:04:40that the car was on fire in Calgary.
00:04:42And then of course you just start panicking and phoning Dwayne like crazy and just trying to call anybody that
00:04:48I could think of that he might have gone to spend the night at their house or anything.
00:04:52You're hoping that somebody just stole the car or something right.
00:04:55Dwayne's friend Darren Bavare got the news from one of Dwayne's cousins.
00:05:00She'd said apparently Dwayne hadn't come home after his shift the previous night working as a chauffeur.
00:05:08And then I knew Dwayne had worked for a company at that time called Revolution Limousine.
00:05:14Shortly after that conversation I'd Googled the address and just out of curiosity to see where it was located and
00:05:21it turned out to be not too terribly far from my home address.
00:05:23This Darren, by the way, is a rodeo rider.
00:05:28Laconic, slow talking.
00:05:30His friends call him the cowboy.
00:05:32But now, in that moment, the cowboy adopted a new role.
00:05:38Amateur detective.
00:05:40And when I was young, teenage boy, I'd read a lot of these Encyclopedia Brown books, which is basically a
00:05:48boy detective that kind of solves crimes in his neighborhood.
00:05:53And now hearing about a possible crime in his neighborhood, maybe involving his friend, cowboy was on the case and
00:06:02on his own drove out to Revolution Limousine in search of clues.
00:06:07And I surveyed the whole area, taking it all in, had taken quite a few pictures of the parking lot,
00:06:15the vehicles in the parking lot, license plate numbers, and came around behind this planter here.
00:06:23And I didn't notice it at first.
00:06:24I'd passed by because I was looking at the ground and I happened to look to the side and notice
00:06:29sitting in the corner here was a black ball cap.
00:06:34And a sheath of some sort.
00:06:39And the cowboy wondered, what would Encyclopedia Brown do?
00:06:44Well, if this was a crime scene, if that is, then this hat, this sheath, should be handled as evidence,
00:06:53which is what he did.
00:06:56Took some pictures from quite a few different angles, close up, didn't touch anything, disturb anything.
00:07:02And then, after donning a pair of gloves, Darren Beauvais took the hat and sheath to his truck and put
00:07:08them in separate plastic bags, having no idea.
00:07:13He had just collected evidence that would eventually help explain the mysterious disappearance of his friend, Dwayne Demkew.
00:07:36With a nickname like the cowboy and a childhood hero like Encyclopedia Brown, it hardly needs saying, Darren Beauvais was
00:07:44a determined man.
00:07:46Unable to find his missing friend, Dwayne Demkew, anywhere in or around the Revolution Limo Company, Darren drove over to
00:07:54the FedEx office, where Dwayne was scheduled to go to work on his second job that very night at 8
00:08:01o'clock.
00:08:01And kind of staked out that workplace and waited around and 8 o'clock came and went and still no
00:08:09sign of Dwayne.
00:08:10Now the cowboy was really worried. This wasn't like Dwayne at all.
00:08:15So the next morning, he handed off his evidence, the knife sheath and the hat, to the police.
00:08:22And that same morning, Dwayne's friend Collier got a call from a detective with a request.
00:08:29They asked my boyfriend and I to come down to the police station to be interviewed.
00:08:35And they wanted to know more about what kind of person Dwayne was and what sort of relationship he had
00:08:42with Collier.
00:08:43Dwayne would come over a lot to my house. I'd make dinner for him once or twice a week. He
00:08:48got along really well with my boyfriend.
00:08:51Dwayne was a popular guy?
00:08:52He was very popular, yes.
00:08:54Yeah. What was it about him?
00:08:56He was just a really fun-loving guy. He was jovial. He laughed at everything. He was very kind-hearted
00:09:03and thoughtful. He was a hard worker.
00:09:06And he really went out of his way for people that he cared about.
00:09:11He worked really hard so that he could take a few months off a year because he was a PADI
00:09:15instructor.
00:09:16So he liked to go to tropical destinations and teach scuba diving.
00:09:21So he worked as hard as he could to save up and then take a few months off.
00:09:26That sounds like kind of an ideal life for some people I know.
00:09:29Yeah, it was for him.
00:09:32He, I hear, had quite a crush on you.
00:09:36He did.
00:09:38But he wasn't ever forward or awkward about it. He always was respectful of my relationships, but he did have
00:09:44a crush on me.
00:09:47And so Collier, like the cowboy, decided to pitch in to help.
00:09:51But rather than working alone, she pulled together a team of friends.
00:09:57And then we start trying to do our own detective work to put the pieces together.
00:10:03Sure. So what kinds of things did you do?
00:10:06We got flyers. We also had a friend who put up a billboard.
00:10:11We called all his friends. We were trying to lay all the puzzle pieces together to try to figure out
00:10:17what happened.
00:10:19It did quite a lot of work.
00:10:20It was, but you feel like you have to do something.
00:10:23Did you go over to the location of the limo company and look around there?
00:10:29We sure did, yes.
00:10:30What did you find there?
00:10:31Nothing. We were just looking to see if there was cameras, if we could see maybe there was a different
00:10:36angle, maybe just trying to find anything.
00:10:38Like I said, you're trying to be a detective.
00:10:39By using Dwayne's iPad, they found the spot where Dwayne's phone last pinged.
00:10:46About five miles from Revolution Limousine, along this highway that leads to Calgary.
00:10:51As if the phone had been tossed from a car.
00:10:54Of course, we're trying to drive to see if we can see maybe something. Maybe he's in like a drainage
00:10:59pipe or anything.
00:11:01We're just trying to look, you know. I mean, we don't really know what we're looking for. We're just trying
00:11:06to find anything.
00:11:07Did it seem to you that the police were doing that same kind of work or not?
00:11:11No, they were. They definitely were. But you just can't sit still.
00:11:16Understand, the cops were treating this seriously, but as a missing persons case.
00:11:20After all, Dwayne could resurface any time.
00:11:25Sure, it looked bad, but people do turn up. Often.
00:11:30But by June 4th, 2015, four days in, the missing persons cops knew it was time to make a phone
00:11:38call.
00:11:40And they began to realize that probably something very bad had happened to Dwayne.
00:11:47Which is why they called in Lead Edmonton Homicide Detective Brian Robertson and Detective Rob Billoway.
00:11:54Based on the lack of signs of life with Dwayne Demkiew, it was obvious that harm had come to him.
00:12:02Mind you, there was still no forensic evidence that Dwayne was dead.
00:12:07Still, the detectives took it on the way they would a murder investigation and started from scratch.
00:12:14They looked at that cell phone video shot by the bystander who saw the man running away from the parking
00:12:20garage after Dwayne's car exploded.
00:12:22And as he was recording, he saw a guy running from the parking garage and he was looking back over
00:12:29his shoulder at the car that was on fire.
00:12:31Afraid of being detected, the passerby put his phone down by his side, but told detectives he saw the man.
00:12:38And he was carrying a license plate and he kind of tucked around behind a garbage bin and he took
00:12:44off his shirt.
00:12:44He wrapped up the license plate in the shirt he was wearing and he started to walk away and he
00:12:50essentially walked out of sight of where he was.
00:12:52Not suspicious behavior at all.
00:12:55Just a little bit, yeah.
00:12:56What made it even more strange is the timing of the day, his actions in plain view, it certainly didn't
00:13:04make any sense at all.
00:13:06So who was that guy?
00:13:08The video was just too fuzzy to tell.
00:13:11Now, they brought the car in for forensic analysis.
00:13:15And right away they could see that guy, if he was the one who started the fire, was an amateur.
00:13:22Whoever started the fire really didn't know much about fires because they started the fire in the trunk of the
00:13:30car.
00:13:30But when they started the fire, they closed the trunk.
00:13:32And when they close the trunk, they eliminate all the oxygen and the fire goes out.
00:13:35So it really didn't get going sufficiently enough to do much damage to the car.
00:13:42Leaving most of the car and its contents intact.
00:13:45There were some documents with different individuals' names on them.
00:13:49Keys were in the ignition.
00:13:50The vehicle was running.
00:13:52And one more thing.
00:13:55Quite probably, the very thing the arsonist wanted most of all to destroy.
00:14:00On the back seat, there was blood.
00:14:20Blood.
00:14:21Never a good sign when it turns up in the back seat of a missing man's car.
00:14:26If it was Dwayne Demkiew's blood, that is.
00:14:30Also, it was unclear how much blood was in there, without some more testing.
00:14:34Was it blood that said you had a nasty cut?
00:14:38Or blood that said you were dead?
00:14:41Anyway, Detectives Billoway and Robertson spent their time combing through all the stuff the missing persons investigators had found inside
00:14:48Dwayne's car.
00:14:49They needed to sort out what was evidence and what was just junk.
00:14:55It was quite a mess.
00:14:56There were some documents with different individuals' names on them.
00:15:00One of the names on a piece of paper in there was Angel Chalifu.
00:15:04So they gave Angel a call to see what information they could glean from her.
00:15:11Angel? Who is she?
00:15:15Well, as it turned out, Angel had already been questioned by the missing persons cops just the day before Robertson
00:15:21and Billoway were assigned the case.
00:15:23So they pulled up the video of her interview to see what she had to say.
00:15:29Angel and Dwayne used to live common-law. They were living together for about eight years.
00:15:33They ended their relationship, but they still maintained a very strong friendship.
00:15:38They spoke every day. They saw each other probably four to five times a week.
00:15:43They were just very good friends.
00:15:45In fact, said Angel, she saw so much of Dwayne, another guy in her life got jealous.
00:15:52She commented that she would not be surprised if her recent ex-boyfriend, a fellow by the name of Robert
00:16:01Aubrey Maxwell, might have something to do with this.
00:16:04He did not like Dwayne very much, and he was not really comfortable that his then-girlfriend Angel had such
00:16:11a close friendship with Dwayne, who was an ex-boyfriend.
00:16:14Well, that's a classic motivation, all right?
00:16:18Absolutely.
00:16:19And according to Angel, Dwayne told her this Robert Aubrey Maxwell fellow was bad news and wanted her to dump
00:16:26him.
00:16:26Dwayne said, Angel, get rid of him. I'm worried every time you're with him.
00:16:30Even my sisters were like, no, no, don't hang out with him. Get rid of him.
00:16:36Is there anyone else you think that would have a problem with Dwayne?
00:16:41Um, no. I, we can't think of anybody.
00:16:45Can you describe Robert to me?
00:16:47Describe him? How so?
00:16:49Yeah, tell me what he looks like.
00:16:51This is the point of the interview where Billoway and Robertson sat up in their seats.
00:16:55Because Angel went one better than a simple description of Robert. She pulled out her smartphone, showed them a video.
00:17:03He looks big. He looks like a big guy.
00:17:05Yeah, yeah.
00:17:06And then just dressed like that, like jeans. Is that a North Face coat? Is that his winter coat?
00:17:13Yes.
00:17:14Then Angel said this.
00:17:16His hat is a North Face.
00:17:18His hat is a North Face, she said.
00:17:22Just like the one the cowboy found outside Revolution Limousine where Dwayne worked.
00:17:27Well, if that hat was Robert's, then perhaps it could tie him directly to Dwayne's disappearance.
00:17:33Big if, of course.
00:17:34Lots of those caps ride around on the heads of Edmontonians on any given day.
00:17:40Still, that one hat was what they had.
00:17:42So they sent it out for DNA testing.
00:17:45And waited.
00:17:47Don't hold your breath, said the lab.
00:17:49There just happened to be a backlog.
00:17:52Lots of cases vying for DNA attention.
00:17:54So don't expect to see results for weeks, at least.
00:17:59So we just have to sort of forge ahead with our investigation.
00:18:03Which meant bringing Angel back in for another round of questions.
00:18:08So I know the police have already spoke to you.
00:18:11This time, Detective Billoway wanted to ask Angel, did she recognize that guy in the cell phone video?
00:18:18The one walking away from Dwayne Demkiew's burning car?
00:18:22It's a really short fit.
00:18:24I've probably looked at it a couple of times.
00:18:27And I just want you to be clear on, if you recognize him, anyone as being anyone, you do.
00:18:31If you don't, that's just as important.
00:18:34Yeah.
00:18:34Okay.
00:18:42Oh, wow.
00:18:44God, I hope not.
00:18:45But would I pin that as him if I was walking down the street and thinking, hey, Robert?
00:18:52Yeah, I would probably do that.
00:18:54Yeah.
00:18:54Okay.
00:18:55Yeah.
00:18:56On a scale of 1 to 10, how?
00:18:58How confident?
00:19:00Well, I'm...
00:19:00An 8.
00:19:01You're an 8?
00:19:01Yeah.
00:19:04Now the hunt was on for Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:19:07The problem was, Aubrey Maxwell, like Dwayne Demkiew, was missing too.
00:19:15Without much to tell what happened.
00:19:18Except, this dark security video recorded just hours before Dwayne's car exploded.
00:19:44Six days after Dwayne Demkiew vanished from his happy life in Edmonton, Detectives Billaway
00:19:51and Robertson were now searching for two missing persons.
00:19:54One, a possible victim.
00:19:57The other, Robert Aubrey Maxwell, a possible suspect.
00:20:01We were looking for him solved.
00:20:03Like, he was...
00:20:04He became the only guy that we were looking for.
00:20:06They didn't expect it to be easy.
00:20:09They had no idea.
00:20:11They started their Aubrey Maxwell phase of the investigation in the very same place where
00:20:16Cowboy started his, Revolution Limousine.
00:20:20That's the spot where, in a planter outside the front door, Cowboy found the knife sheath
00:20:24in the North Face hat.
00:20:26If there was a sheath, there had to be a knife.
00:20:30So was that around here somewhere nearby too?
00:20:34We looked everywhere.
00:20:36There was absolutely nothing.
00:20:37We're behind the ball a bit because we're six days into the investigation.
00:20:41So it makes sense that we wouldn't find anything, but I guess you have to try.
00:20:49Then they went looking for video.
00:20:52Surveillance video.
00:20:53Aren't those cameras everywhere now?
00:20:56Well, no.
00:20:59Outside, there was a grand total of one security camera attached to an adjoining building peering
00:21:05out over the parking lot.
00:21:07But there were hitches.
00:21:09For one thing, it wasn't recording all the time.
00:21:12It was motion activated on the roof at the back of the industrial building.
00:21:18It's a black and white and it's a really grainy video.
00:21:22Still, they went through it, squinting at every frame.
00:21:25And maybe they had something here.
00:21:29Maybe.
00:21:30At about 11.10 in the evening, the video turns on because what looks like a male figure walks
00:21:39through the screen and then off the screen out of camera range.
00:21:44Three or four minutes later, what's likely the same male returns on screen and walks past
00:21:52through again.
00:21:53And he goes to a dumpster, large industrial dumpster that's at the rear of a revolution
00:21:58limousine.
00:21:59He opens the lid to the dumpster and he crawls inside and he closes the lid.
00:22:05What?
00:22:06And then on two occasions after that, the camera activated because the lid of the dumpster
00:22:12raised up about six inches and then closed again.
00:22:17And then a little while later, raised up like someone was looking.
00:22:20You couldn't see the person, but like someone was peering out and then closed again.
00:22:25My, my, my.
00:22:27So, one grainy camera outside where somebody seemed intent on some sort of weird surveillance
00:22:34and two cameras inside Revolution Limo's garage.
00:22:38Quality a bit better.
00:22:40So, we were able to determine that at 2.50 a.m. Dwayne was able to drive the limousine into
00:22:49the loading bay.
00:22:51We could see the loading bay.
00:22:52We could see him walking around.
00:22:54He cleaned up the limousine as he did every night.
00:22:58And we were able to tell that at four in the morning, he punches in the code to set the
00:23:05security system.
00:23:07And he walks out the door.
00:23:09After Dwayne walked out that door, Billoway and Robertson expected to see some sort of
00:23:14assault take place on that grainy motion sensitive camera overlooking the parking lot.
00:23:20But for some reason, it didn't activate.
00:23:24And that's the gut punch.
00:23:26Our only thought was that that night, shortly before four o'clock in the morning, a significant
00:23:33thunderstorm rolled through that area.
00:23:35Probably knocked the power out in that area for a short period of time.
00:23:39And the camera went offline.
00:23:41So, detectives were left with just this one final shot of Dwayne Demke walking out the
00:23:48door.
00:23:49And that is the last time that Dwayne is ever seen.
00:23:53Mind you, soon thereafter, the same could be said of the number one suspect, Robert Aubrey
00:23:59Maxwell.
00:24:00Not that he ever made it easy to be seen, even to his friends.
00:24:06It was a bit of an enigma.
00:24:08We knew nothing really about him recently.
00:24:11No one knew where he lived.
00:24:12He would never talk about where he grew up.
00:24:14No one knew what kind of family he had, if he had any brothers or sisters.
00:24:18No one knew anything about him.
00:24:19He's self-employed.
00:24:21He has a glass business.
00:24:23We go to the business address.
00:24:27And that turns out to be a storage facility.
00:24:30It's really unusual, isn't it?
00:24:33Very unusual, especially for Angel, who had known him for a long time.
00:24:38For about a year and a half at that point, maybe two years, to know nothing about him.
00:24:43But nobody did.
00:24:44He has no online social media presence.
00:24:47He has no Facebook.
00:24:49We talked to some acquaintances of his.
00:24:52Nobody has been to his home.
00:24:53They don't know where he lives.
00:24:55He's a ghost, this guy.
00:24:56He certainly is a ghost.
00:24:58But he really did exist.
00:25:01They found all sorts of public records proving that.
00:25:05We were finding pieces of evidence all along the way.
00:25:08Video evidence, cell phone evidence.
00:25:10Everything that continued to tell us that we're going in the right direction and we're looking at the right person.
00:25:15And we've got pictures of Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:25:18He's got a legitimate legal driver's license with a photo.
00:25:21He's got a Canadian passport with a photo.
00:25:24He's got a social insurance number.
00:25:26We know who this guy is.
00:25:28And he was discovered on security camera video recorded around Calgary shortly after the car fire.
00:25:34His picture keeps showing up on this escape route basically everywhere he goes.
00:25:40We've got him on hotel cameras.
00:25:42We've got him all these places.
00:25:43And then the trail ran out.
00:25:46No idea where he went.
00:25:49So, back to the other question.
00:25:51What kind of person was he?
00:25:52In a word, creepy.
00:25:55He just gave me the heebie-jeebies.
00:25:58There was just something off about him.
00:25:59Calya knew Aubrey Maxwell.
00:26:01He, along with Angel and Cowboy, were all part of a bigger circle of friends.
00:26:08And the first birthday dinner that we went to where he attended, we were in a private room.
00:26:14It was a nice birthday dinner and he's on his phone watching videos.
00:26:17And I'm like, put your phone away.
00:26:19It's really rude.
00:26:20And he's watching videos of people getting into car accidents and die.
00:26:25Yeah.
00:26:26He was an odd guy is how he was described.
00:26:30He, um, had previously lived with a couple people.
00:26:33They never got along whatsoever.
00:26:36Um, the people that he lived with were even somewhat fearful of him.
00:26:41Maybe for good reason.
00:26:42Here's what the roommates found when they searched his old bedroom after he moved out.
00:26:47They found a large knife sheath and knife.
00:26:51And the similarity is, the knife sheath that was found behind Revolution Limo was called a Gerber Junior.
00:26:59And the knife that was found in his apartment suite was called a Gerber Senior.
00:27:05So it was the same knife, but just quite a bit larger.
00:27:10It wasn't a knife, actually, but a machete.
00:27:14This is the junior version of it.
00:27:17Twelve inches long with a fine edge on one side of the blade and saw teeth on the other.
00:27:23A very lethal weapon.
00:27:25Which is made clear to the detectives once lab tech sprayed a chemical that illuminated the blood inside Dwayne Demke's
00:27:33car.
00:27:34There was so much luminol or luminesse from the amount of blood in the car that you could pretty much
00:27:40see it from space.
00:27:41It just glowed.
00:27:43Wow.
00:27:43Enough blood that we were able to make a determination that whose ever blood that was likely did not survive.
00:27:51Which made this very much a murder case.
00:27:54But the killer, if killer he was, seemed several steps ahead of them.
00:28:00There one minute, gone the next, without a trace left behind.
00:28:05The forensic members had never seen a vehicle like that, that had been wiped that clean.
00:28:30There was no longer any question.
00:28:32The amount of blood found in Dwayne Demke's car came from wounds that were clearly fatal.
00:28:37Was it Dwayne's blood?
00:28:39Almost certainly.
00:28:40But, like the detectives, Dwayne's family and friends could only wait for the DNA to confirm it.
00:28:48An awful, grief-colored limbo.
00:28:51Did you think that there was any chance he was still alive?
00:28:56We hoped.
00:28:58But there was so much blood in the back of the car.
00:29:01What did that feel like, to lose Dwayne?
00:29:03Devastating.
00:29:05Devastating.
00:29:05I was heartbroken.
00:29:08It was just tough.
00:29:11I've never lost anybody like that before.
00:29:14Yeah.
00:29:15I mean, I hope I never will, and I hope nobody else has to go through that, but, I mean,
00:29:20and you never think it's going to be the last time you see somebody.
00:29:24The detectives, meanwhile, were concentrating on the elusive Robert Aubrey Maxwell, and found, through a records search, he'd once been
00:29:32arrested on an assault charge.
00:29:34An offense serious enough to have his DNA entered into the National Criminal Registry.
00:29:40A surprise, perhaps?
00:29:43But also a lucky break.
00:29:45Because now all the detectives had to do was wait on the DNA test results for the North Face hat
00:29:50to tie Aubrey Maxwell to Revolution Limousine and whatever happened to Dwayne Demkew.
00:29:56So we were looking forward to lab results telling us whether we, in fact, found DNA on the hat, because
00:30:03there's no guarantee it's there.
00:30:05And if we do find DNA on the hat, we were certainly hopeful that it couldn't come back to Robert
00:30:11Aubrey Maxwell.
00:30:12As for finding him, records showed he owned a white GMC pickup truck, which vanished at the very same time
00:30:20he did.
00:30:21So we put a flag on that vehicle.
00:30:24So if any law enforcement agency were to run that plate, I would get notified immediately if that vehicle was
00:30:31ever stopped or located or observed.
00:30:34And two weeks later, Detective Billoway got an alert.
00:30:39From a Vancouver Police Department member saying that he had located this vehicle.
00:30:45It was in the Kitsilano Beach parking lot.
00:30:48Aubrey Maxwell, it appeared, had driven as far west as possible before he simply ran out of road.
00:30:55Based on the parking ticket stacked up on the windshield, police figured the truck had been there for three days.
00:31:01And it might as well have had an embossed invitation along with those parking tickets.
00:31:06Steal me, please.
00:31:09The passenger window was partially down.
00:31:12The keys were in the ignition.
00:31:14There was a brand new cell phone in a drink container.
00:31:16All of us, including the Vancouver Police members, couldn't believe that it didn't get stolen on the very first day.
00:31:22Maybe because, to a potential thief, the truck looked staged.
00:31:27Almost like a setup.
00:31:29It was so obvious that someone wanted that truck stolen, that the suspects would have thought it would have been
00:31:35a bait truck and they wouldn't have taken it.
00:31:38Obviously, that was the intent.
00:31:39Clearly.
00:31:40Robert didn't want to be found.
00:31:41He wanted somebody else to take that truck.
00:31:43Take the heat off.
00:31:44100%.
00:31:45He wanted someone to take that truck, drive it, contaminate it, get it full of any kind of other evidence
00:31:52or whatever whoever steals a truck brings into it.
00:31:56And now the detectives had what surely must be a truckload of evidence to examine.
00:32:02We want to search for fingerprints.
00:32:03We want to go through it with a fine tooth comb, if you will, and just see what evidence we
00:32:10can glean from it.
00:32:11What did you find?
00:32:12Well, we found that whoever had used it last had completely wiped it down.
00:32:19The forensic members had never seen a vehicle like that, that had been wiped that clean.
00:32:23Even in between the door panels, everywhere you could think of was wiped down.
00:32:28As was the cell phone found inside the cab.
00:32:32Who was this guy?
00:32:33Who would think of prepping a vehicle to be both stolen by thieves and discovered by the police?
00:32:42Besides the cell phone, the CSI team found only three items of note, all in the truck bed.
00:32:48A small boat trailer, a plastic fork, and a chewed piece of gum.
00:32:54Almost like the driver of the vehicle threw a gum out the window and the wind blew it back into
00:32:59the box of the truck.
00:33:00And it came back in.
00:33:01Right. Now, what's not lost on us is this is a very common pedestrian area in that parking lot.
00:33:06And someone could have walked past that truck and thrown a piece of gum in themselves.
00:33:10Like someone apparently did with the plastic fork.
00:33:13Still, the detectives dutifully sent the fork and the gum out for DNA testing.
00:33:18Just in case.
00:33:20Weren't sure what was going to come of it, but the truck was so clean and there was a lack
00:33:24of evidence that at this point we were looking for anything.
00:33:28Well, they waited for the lab analysis to come in.
00:33:31The detectives ran the registration on that small boat trailer found in the truck bed, expecting it would come back
00:33:38in Aubrey Maxwell's name.
00:33:40But it did not.
00:33:42It was registered to someone else altogether.
00:33:46Someone who lived in a Vancouver suburb.
00:33:49And we reached out to that registered owner and interviewed them.
00:33:53What'd they tell you?
00:33:54They said that a fellow with a white truck with Alberta license plates answered their ad for a jet ski
00:34:01for sale.
00:34:02The mail that they described matched the description of Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:34:07He tried to include a cell phone in the purchase.
00:34:12They said they just wanted cash.
00:34:14So ultimately he just paid them cash for the boat.
00:34:17And he only asked one question.
00:34:19And the question he asked was, how far will this jet ski go on a full tank of gas?
00:34:39Where was he?
00:34:41Did Robert Aubrey Maxwell actually escape on that jet ski?
00:34:45I thought he was on an island in BC.
00:34:47With something like a sinking feeling, Detective Rob Billoway contemplated all those rain forests that rise up from the ocean
00:34:55off the British Columbia mainland.
00:34:57Islands studded with thousands of often empty cottages.
00:35:02Many within easy range of a jet ski full of gas.
00:35:05I think you can live quite a while undetected on one of those islands.
00:35:09So we got ahold of Canada Coast Guard.
00:35:10And the inquiries we made were, is there any abandoned or lost jet ski that's been found anywhere that has
00:35:19come to their attention?
00:35:20And they had no reports of any of that stuff.
00:35:23But then, lead detective Brian Robertson never did think their suspect was hiding out on some island out there.
00:35:30The first thing I thought of was that he put that jet ski in the water and he drove it
00:35:36around the coastline to Point Roberts, Washington.
00:35:39Point Roberts, Washington is a tiny peninsula just south of Vancouver.
00:35:44But as a result of a long ago border treaty, this sliver of land is part of the United States,
00:35:51not Canada.
00:35:52From here on Point Roberts, it seems pretty clear what he might have done with a jet ski.
00:35:57You see that slip of land out there, that's the ferry terminal, the southernmost piece of Canada heading out into
00:36:03the strait.
00:36:04A jet ski could go around that ferry terminal, come back into the land, just behind those pillars there,
00:36:12and be in America without anybody being any the wiser.
00:36:15You can totally get to the mainland U.S. undetected and not have to go through U.S. customs again.
00:36:23Wow, that was an interesting route. What else would that tell you about this guy?
00:36:27Well, that told us that I don't think he's going to go somewhere that he's not familiar with.
00:36:32He's going to go somewhere where he's comfortable.
00:36:35A reasonable idea, except detectives Billoway and Robertson could find nothing connecting Robert Aubrey Maxwell to the United States.
00:36:43No U.S. relatives or friends or girlfriends. Nobody, as far as they could determine.
00:36:50It sounds like that hit a dead end.
00:36:52A dead end for sure. There was absolutely nothing to indicate that Robert Aubrey Maxwell had any history with the
00:37:00United States whatsoever.
00:37:02Still, just to be sure, they searched the entire shoreline of Little Point Roberts.
00:37:06No sign of an errant jet ski there.
00:37:10So, the detectives moved their search back north along the Canadian shoreline.
00:37:16And ran the jet ski's registration number through a national database for stolen cars and boats.
00:37:23And...
00:37:24It identified that that jet ski had been seized a few days earlier by the Delta Police Department.
00:37:30Delta Police Department? In Canada?
00:37:33In Canada.
00:37:34In Canada.
00:37:34It had been found washed up against the Tawassan Causeway to the ferry terminal.
00:37:41And that causeway is basically the last piece of land that butts out into the ocean before you get to
00:37:49Point Roberts.
00:37:51So, maybe he dumped the jet ski just short of the border and swam the rest of the way?
00:37:57Or maybe the current pulled it back into Canada. Whatever.
00:38:03But they did know this. He was in the U.S. and they were on the right trail after all.
00:38:09We know that he rode this jet ski at least 13 nautical miles.
00:38:14I don't know who comes up with an idea like that, but somebody who desperately wants to escape, I guess.
00:38:19We kind of laughed at each other, Rob and I, and said,
00:38:22I almost feel like we're chasing James Bond here. This doesn't even make sense.
00:38:25But if Aubrey Maxwell had really sneaked into the United States illegally, he could be anywhere.
00:38:31Once again, his trail had gone cold.
00:38:34And then, two and a half months after the car fire, six weeks after that jet ski was found,
00:38:40the first DNA results came in. Oddly, they were the last ones submitted and the least likely to be helpful.
00:38:48The ones for the plastic fork and the chewing gum somebody had thrown into the bed of the white pickup
00:38:53truck in Kitsilano.
00:38:55The fork came back clean. Nothing there.
00:38:58But the lab techs were able to extract a usable DNA sample from the gum.
00:39:03We weren't really holding our breath on what that DNA might come back as, but it was certainly of interest
00:39:10to us.
00:39:11Well, the DNA came back and it was identified as unknown male one in our file.
00:39:18Meaning it did not match Robert Aubrey Maxwell's DNA on file from that earlier assault charge,
00:39:24nor did it match anyone else in the national DNA database.
00:39:30So the gum must have been tossed into the bed of the truck by an innocent passerby, just like they
00:39:36suspected.
00:39:37The North Face cap, though, that was the big one. That DNA could lock up the case.
00:39:43I think collectively our whole investigative team was waiting for this DNA to come back.
00:39:48And the lab results for that sample came in four days later.
00:39:53It was certain to be a match to Aubrey Maxwell. Just had to be.
00:39:58But it was not.
00:40:02It was the unknown guy who chucked the chewing gum into the truck.
00:40:06We recognized when we got the second matching unknown male DNA that we had a problem.
00:40:13And it was a big problem.
00:40:15Big problem, yeah.
00:40:16We need to understand this DNA before we continue pursuing Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:40:23And suddenly, nothing made sense at all.
00:40:28We were going down a path where we believed Robert Aubrey Maxwell was our suspect.
00:40:32And getting that hit on that DNA, we're back at square one.
00:40:36Either Robert Aubrey Maxwell wasn't our guy, Robert Aubrey Maxwell had an accomplice,
00:40:43Robert Aubrey Maxwell was our guy, and we've got to figure out how is he our guy.
00:40:48Because if the unknown chewing gum guy was also the North Face hat guy,
00:40:53then he was almost certainly the guy who killed Dwayne Demkew.
00:40:58But who was he?
00:41:17Who was he?
00:41:20Who was Dwayne Demkew's killer?
00:41:23Who was this unknown male one?
00:41:25It was confusing.
00:41:27We were really on a linear path towards Aubrey Maxwell.
00:41:31And we were finding pieces of evidence all along the way.
00:41:34Video evidence, cell phone evidence.
00:41:37Everything that continued to tell us that we're going in the right direction
00:41:41and we're looking at the right person.
00:41:42And now we have this fly in the ointment, this unknown male one DNA that we can't establish.
00:41:47The logical conclusion was that Aubrey Maxwell had an accomplice.
00:41:52And that this is this guy's DNA, so we're still driving towards Aubrey Maxwell
00:41:57because the first question we want to ask him is, who was with you?
00:42:00Yeah, so maybe there were two guys on that jet ski leaving the country.
00:42:03Entirely possible, right?
00:42:05Except, all the surveillance photos of Aubrey Maxwell taken in Calgary shortly after the car fire showed him alone.
00:42:14So, when in doubt, call all about.
00:42:18Robertson and Billoway gathered the rest of the homicide unit together to get their take on it.
00:42:24Maybe fresh eyes would see something.
00:42:27What were they missing?
00:42:29In this particular case, Brian was doing what Brian typically does, which is tell stories.
00:42:33This is Detective Curt Martin.
00:42:36Basically, I'm listening to their story and I'm thinking about what they're actually telling me.
00:42:40They talked about the DNA evidence.
00:42:42I said, Curt, is there any other way this DNA can happen?
00:42:47They should be getting it from Aubrey Maxwell because he's a real person.
00:42:50He's got real ID, everything else, we know who he is.
00:42:54Curt looks up from his desk and he says,
00:42:57How do we actually know that Robert Aubrey Maxwell is actually Robert Aubrey Maxwell?
00:43:00As soon as he said that, it's like, of course.
00:43:05You're right.
00:43:06You know, it's one of those, you're so busy in the investigation that sometimes you can't see the forest for
00:43:11the trees and you need someone on the outside who really is not wrapped up in it.
00:43:16And just like that, the whole investigation turned on a dime.
00:43:21What if they'd been chasing the wrong guy all along?
00:43:25Or maybe the right guy, but the wrong name?
00:43:29Up to now, detectives had held off contacting Aubrey Maxwell's family for good reason.
00:43:36We didn't want to alert the family that the police were looking for him until we got to the point
00:43:41where, holy cow, is this even Robert Aubrey Maxwell that we're dealing with?
00:43:46So Brian was able to speak to Robert Aubrey Maxwell's family.
00:43:51I reached out to a woman that I had found in Ontario and it turns out she's Aubrey Maxwell's grandmother
00:43:59and raised him as a kid.
00:44:02And so she says, I haven't talked to him since 2012.
00:44:05He left Ontario and he went to Vancouver and he was living on the street in Vancouver.
00:44:10He's got a drug problem. He wasn't doing all that well in Vancouver.
00:44:16So the detectives went back to their counterparts in Vancouver to see if they had any contact with Aubrey Maxwell.
00:44:23Not as a criminal per se, but as a drug user.
00:44:28And they certainly did.
00:44:31Enclosed within this rich and extraordinarily beautiful city are a dozen square blocks of misery called the Downtown Eastside.
00:44:40Here in this land of lost souls, Aubrey Maxwell became known as a frequent flyer.
00:44:48An addict and street dweller who dumped into the law all the time.
00:44:53Robert Aubrey Maxwell was well known to police. Every city he goes to, he's well known to police.
00:44:58He's always dealt with in Ontario. He was always dealt with in BC.
00:45:02Everywhere he went and very frequently.
00:45:04For what reasons?
00:45:05He was a drug user. He was homeless. When he moved from Ontario to BC, he was living on the
00:45:13street.
00:45:13He was dealt with by police at least every week.
00:45:18So you can almost follow his movements that way.
00:45:23Here in this sad place, he bounced from street to street, shelter to shelter, surviving, if only just.
00:45:32And in September of 2012, all of that ended.
00:45:37He was no longer staying in shelters in Vancouver.
00:45:42We were able to track down where he had stayed last.
00:45:45We have the last date he was there.
00:45:47We were able to determine the last time he was ever dealt with by police.
00:45:50We were able to determine the last time his grandma spoke to him on the phone.
00:45:53So our timeline of when Robert Aubrey Maxwell was last seen alive was pretty tight.
00:46:00And he was seen alive by a lot of people.
00:46:02And all of that ends.
00:46:04He's never dealt with by police again.
00:46:06And his family never hears from him again.
00:46:08And he never shows up at another shelter in Vancouver.
00:46:12In February 2013, more than two years before Dwayne Demke was murdered, Aubrey Maxwell's grandmother reported him missing to the
00:46:22Vancouver Police Department.
00:46:24So the police found the rooming house that he'd been staying in.
00:46:28In fact, in that rooming house, they said he's no longer here.
00:46:31He hasn't been here for a while.
00:46:33But when he was here last, he cashed a check from a company in Edmonton called Architectural Glass.
00:46:39Well, well, well.
00:46:40And that's the last time we saw him.
00:46:42So Vancouver police missing persons investigators contacted Architectural Glass.
00:46:49And said, her grandmother's reported you missing.
00:46:51She hasn't heard from you in a few weeks.
00:46:52She wants to know how are you doing, that kind of thing.
00:46:55He says, I'm fine.
00:46:58I'm living and working in Edmonton.
00:47:00I don't want anything to do with anybody in my family.
00:47:03That's why I'm here.
00:47:04I've cut ties with them.
00:47:06I don't want to be considered missing.
00:47:07So don't consider me missing.
00:47:10I'm just not contacting my family.
00:47:12They cancelled their missing persons file.
00:47:15They contacted the grandmother.
00:47:17And they said, we found him.
00:47:18He's in Edmonton.
00:47:19He's fine.
00:47:20He says he doesn't want anything to do with his family.
00:47:23And that's it.
00:47:24And so she accepted that.
00:47:26And that's where it ended.
00:47:27The search stops.
00:47:29And unfortunately, he's not listed as missing any longer.
00:47:33Now, more than two years after he was reported missing, the detectives hoping to sort out who's who, sent Aubrey
00:47:41Maxwell's grandmother his most recent driver's license photo.
00:47:45She looks at it and she immediately says, that's not my grandson.
00:47:49I've never seen him before.
00:47:51To be double sure, Robertson checked with police in Aubrey Maxwell's boyhood hometown to see if they had an old
00:47:58booking photo by chance from one of his drug arrests.
00:48:01And they did.
00:48:03And they did.
00:48:03This one.
00:48:05This guy was clearly not the Robert Aubrey Maxwell Edmonton detectives had been chasing all these months.
00:48:13We know why unknown male one DNA is not coming back to Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:48:20Because it's not Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
00:48:22No.
00:48:23And we're also immediately of a strong opinion that this person, when he took Robert Aubrey Maxwell's identity, likely killed
00:48:34him.
00:48:35Because Aubrey Maxwell comes to the attention of police far too often to not come to the attention of the
00:48:42police for three years on the Lower East Side in Vancouver.
00:48:46So, now we believe that we have two homicides that we're investigating.
00:48:51Two murders.
00:48:53One unknown killer.
00:48:56One unknown killer.
00:49:11They were just about stymied.
00:49:14Why would anyone decide to kill sweet, fun-loving Dwayne Demke, friend to everyone?
00:49:20It was puzzle enough.
00:49:22And then dump his body God knows where?
00:49:25But this unknown puzzle within a puzzle.
00:49:29Who was unknown male one, if not Aubrey Maxwell?
00:49:34The next phone call to Dwayne's family was not an easy one to make.
00:49:39Dwayne's brother, Darren.
00:49:41They called and said, we have a problem.
00:49:43The DNA came back.
00:49:44Oh, okay.
00:49:45Great.
00:49:46Uh, it's not him.
00:49:48What?
00:49:50What do you mean it's not him?
00:49:51It's not his DNA.
00:49:53It's somebody else's.
00:49:54We don't know who, but it's somebody else's.
00:49:57What'd that do to you?
00:49:58It deflates you.
00:49:59It deflated everybody, I think, at that point.
00:50:01Dwayne's friend, Collier.
00:50:03It was like a movie.
00:50:05It was crazy.
00:50:06It was like a movie.
00:50:07Not only was there finding out that he had murdered our friend, but then finding out that
00:50:11he wasn't even the same person that you thought that he was.
00:50:14And then you kind of wonder what life he was leading before.
00:50:18Is there other people that he's done this to?
00:50:20Though now the detectives were pretty sure they had two murders to solve and no suspects.
00:50:26The only evidence of any use?
00:50:29Just a couple of DNA samples from someone they knew only as unknown male one.
00:50:34How do you look for a person when you don't know who they are?
00:50:38Nothing to do but go back to square one.
00:50:42We pored back over Angel's previous interviews that she had done.
00:50:47And on one of the interviews, we typically would ask her any sort of backstory that her boyfriend, Robert, had
00:50:56given her about his previous life.
00:50:58And she remembered that he had made mention that he had been in Washington State for a short period of
00:51:05time before coming to Vancouver.
00:51:07And that resonated with us, obviously, because we believed that he took the jet ski to Point Roberts.
00:51:13And that's a direct route to Washington State.
00:51:16So I contacted a friend of mine who now works for our motor vehicle branch.
00:51:19And so I requested that he send a photograph of Aubrey Maxwell, the driver's license photo, to Washington State DMV
00:51:28and have them run it through their facial recognition software.
00:51:32The photo recognition request was really just a giant fishing expedition.
00:51:37What Detective Robinson really wanted to do was run that mystery DNA profile through the U.S. database known as
00:51:45CODIS, which the FBI agreed to do.
00:51:48But there was a catch, a true Catch-22.
00:51:53The FBI said we have to have a name. We just can't sort of put an unnamed DNA to them
00:51:57that doesn't meet their criteria.
00:51:59But a name, of course, was what Robertson was hoping the FBI could give him.
00:52:04So now it seemed the entire investigation was riding on the Washington State DMV facial recognition search.
00:52:13Maybe they would come up with a name.
00:52:16And surprise, surprise.
00:52:19Three months into the investigation, on September 3rd, 2015, the homicide unit finally caught a break.
00:52:28Maybe.
00:52:28The Washington DMV representative called him back and said, we have a possible recognition on our computer for your driver's
00:52:40license photo.
00:52:41As soon as that happened, they electronically sent us a series of photographs that the computer kicks out of their
00:52:48system and says, somewhere in here is the closest recognition to the photograph that you sent us.
00:52:55There were 25 photos in all, each given a probability rating on a scale of zero to one.
00:53:02And one of them, this one, which looked a lot like the guy in their surveillance videos.
00:53:07On the computer, it scored a perfect one.
00:53:09And that person was identified in their system as Jason Stedman.
00:53:16Jason Stedman?
00:53:18Well, might be the right name, might not be the right name, but this was the important thing.
00:53:23I can now have our forensic investigators send the DNA results to the FBI.
00:53:31And within a few days, it comes back as Jason Stedman.
00:53:36So now we know who the picture in the driver's license is.
00:53:39He's Jason Stedman.
00:53:40We know whose DNA is in the hat.
00:53:43It's Jason Stedman.
00:53:44And we know whose DNA is on the gum in Aubrey Maxwell's truck.
00:53:49It's Jason Stedman.
00:53:51Except, maybe he wasn't really Jason Stedman either.
00:54:10Three months into their pursuit of Dwayne Demkiew's killer.
00:54:14Detectives Robertson and Billoway learned the man they were chasing was wanted in two countries.
00:54:20Had at least three identities and different looks from one photo to the next.
00:54:25They learned their prey under another name altogether.
00:54:29Did time in Florida during the 90s for burglary, grand theft and arson.
00:54:34We learned that Jason Stedman has a family in Washington State.
00:54:39He has an ex-wife named Jennifer and a young daughter.
00:54:42When we met, his legal name was Jason and that was it.
00:54:46He got his legal name changed.
00:54:48Why? Why?
00:54:49So his driver's license said Jason and his last name was blank.
00:54:55And I asked him about it and he said he didn't have a relationship with his parents or his family
00:55:02and he didn't want anything to do with them.
00:55:04So he legally changed his name to get rid of his birth name.
00:55:08At least that's the story he told Jennifer Stedman, who Jason met in February 2008 through a single social club.
00:55:18And we hit it off and that's where it started.
00:55:20What were your first impressions of the guy?
00:55:23First impressions when he was good looking.
00:55:25He was a charmer.
00:55:27Very polite, very chivalrous opening doors.
00:55:31Offering to like just wane on me hand and foot.
00:55:34You know what every woman's dream is.
00:55:37Jennifer of course had no idea her dream man was a convicted felon.
00:55:42All she knew is that when Jason started talking about settling down and getting married and having a family, she
00:55:49was all in.
00:55:51He was always like, okay, when do you want to start planning having kids?
00:55:55You know, we should start buying all the baby stuff now so we don't have a big expense in the
00:56:00end.
00:56:00So he'd randomly start picking up things like a stroller, a car seat, a crib.
00:56:05Before I even got pregnant, he started buying all these little things here and there.
00:56:10And I thought he was the guy that I'd spend the rest of my life with, so.
00:56:15You were happy about that.
00:56:16Yeah, it was all good. It was like he wanted to give me the world and treat me like a
00:56:20queen.
00:56:22Jennifer was three months pregnant when she and Jason married in Las Vegas on New Year's Day 2009.
00:56:31And that's when Jason took Jennifer's last name, becoming Jason Stedman.
00:56:37Six months later, they had a baby girl.
00:56:39And as if by sleight of hand, the once convicted arsonist morphed into a middle-class dad.
00:56:46He had a wife, a baby, a nice apartment.
00:56:50He was making good money as a union delivery driver.
00:56:55But for some reason, he was no longer treating Jennifer like royalty.
00:57:00And he would go off and hang out with his friends and his girlfriend, come back like at the end
00:57:03of the day.
00:57:04If I questioned him, he would start slapping me and getting physical.
00:57:08I think when my daughter was about two months old, we were fighting.
00:57:11And I remember he put his hands around my neck and choked me and said,
00:57:15if you ever take my daughter away from me, I will kill you.
00:57:19Jennifer was desperate to be out of the marriage, but was afraid to leave Jason.
00:57:25Afraid of what he might do to her and their daughter.
00:57:29And then on the day before Thanksgiving 2009, just as they sat down for dinner.
00:57:35That's when all hell break loose.
00:57:39It started with a pounding on the apartment's front door.
00:57:45I looked out the peephole and all I could see was a bright light.
00:57:48So I was thinking, oh, it was the fire department.
00:57:50Someone set off a smoke alarm.
00:57:52Opened the door to find 20 plus FBI agents, guns in my face, battering rams at the door ready to
00:58:00be used.
00:58:01Ripping my house apart, interrogating him in different rooms, me in different rooms.
00:58:06It made the news.
00:58:07Eight black SUVs pull into our street and then park.
00:58:12And then two police cars block off both sides of the street.
00:58:14And they were all wearing FBI shirts with their badges and bulletproof vests.
00:58:18And they were carrying a battering ram.
00:58:21Jason, much heavier at the time, was arrested.
00:58:25And that's when Jennifer learned, to her considerable surprise,
00:58:29that he had been fired from his delivery job two months earlier.
00:58:33And he didn't take it well.
00:58:35And then that's when he decided to, for lack of a better term, teach his boss a lesson.
00:58:43It started with simple things of flooding the bathrooms.
00:58:46And then it turned into mailing threatening death threats with white powder in them to his employer's headquarters with the
00:58:58Seattle Times.
00:58:59And I guess he had also been making pipe bombs and planting them in newspaper boxes.
00:59:03Did you have any idea any of this stuff was going on?
00:59:06I had no idea.
00:59:08And then they ended up arresting him and charging him with homeland terrorism.
00:59:13The pipe bombs were dummies, and the white powder nothing more than cornstarch.
00:59:19Still, in September 2010, Jason pleaded guilty to one count of sending threatening hoax letters,
00:59:25and one count of committing a pipe bomb hoax.
00:59:29And as part of the deal was given a two-year sentence.
00:59:32And I was able to divorce him while he was in jail and get away from him and start over.
00:59:38So that's kind of the blessing because he was removed from my life before it got worse.
00:59:42And it did get worse.
00:59:45Because Stedman was released on probation after serving less than a year.
00:59:49And what did he do then?
00:59:51He started phoning Jennifer about wanting to see their daughter.
00:59:57And demanding unsupervised visits with her whenever he wanted.
01:00:01So I started getting that red flag pit in your gut feeling again.
01:00:07So I went down to the court and filed a restraining order against him.
01:00:10He evaded it.
01:00:12Every time they came to serve him, he evaded it.
01:00:14They'd leave business cards, he would evade it.
01:00:16He was taking some college classes at the time.
01:00:18They'd go to the college, he'd evade them.
01:00:20And then finally, we had worked out a plan with the sheriff's office
01:00:25to meet him at his next meeting with his parole officer.
01:00:31Everything was set.
01:00:32He didn't show for his meeting.
01:00:34They went to his apartment, found out he had completely moved out.
01:00:37He was gone.
01:00:40The U.S. Marshals Service started hunting for Jason.
01:00:43And learned pretty quickly, he'd been looking into buying one-way bus tickets.
01:00:49For him and a child.
01:00:51And a child?
01:00:52Mm-hmm.
01:00:53Which, once they told me that, I was like, okay, well, this goes back to his threat of if I
01:00:58ever tried to take her, he was going to kill me and take my daughter.
01:01:01So this was serious.
01:01:03Yeah.
01:01:03It's the serious you can get.
01:01:04I'd have a detective meet me in the parking lot when I got to work, walk me inside my job,
01:01:10one of the company's security guards with me the entire eight-hour shift.
01:01:14While I'm at work, even walking with me to the restroom.
01:01:17My lord.
01:01:18And then when I clocked out, they would walk me to the front door where the detective would meet me
01:01:22and walk me to my car.
01:01:23So you had to be pretty darn sure that he actually was out of the territory.
01:01:27Yeah.
01:01:28I lived my life in terror.
01:01:30I was constantly looking over my shoulders, sleeping with one eye open, extra locks on the front door.
01:01:38I put little motion sensor alarms on all the windows in case he tried to break in.
01:01:42I was living in terror.
01:01:46And then, Jason just disappeared.
01:01:51And very gradually, bit by bit, Jennifer let down her guard.
01:01:57Even though no one, it seemed, had any idea where he was or what he might try to do next.
01:02:21It was August 2012 when Jason Steadman vanished from his ex-wife Jennifer's life.
01:02:27Neither she nor the police nor the marshal service had any idea where he was.
01:02:32They did issue an arrest warrant, declaring he was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
01:02:38As far as Jennifer was concerned, it was good riddance. Hope he stays gone.
01:02:42But what none of them knew was that by the time the arrest warrant was issued, Jason was already in
01:02:49Canada.
01:02:51And at some point came here, to the downtown east side of Vancouver,
01:02:56where the real Robert Aubrey Maxwell was living in a shelter,
01:03:00and from there phoned his grandmother for the final time on September 6, 2012.
01:03:06Six days later, Jason, using Robert's birth certificate, applied for a government photo ID card.
01:03:13And just like that, both the real Aubrey Maxwell and the real Jason Steadman ceased to exist.
01:03:23Through the course of the investigation, we came to believe that he had in fact killed Robert Aubrey Maxwell
01:03:31so he could assume his identity. And that way he was able to get photo ID in BC,
01:03:37which he then used to get photo ID in Alberta. He was able to get a social insurance number.
01:03:42He was able to get a passport. He was able to get a job where he could get paid under
01:03:47the name Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
01:03:48And in his mind, he could do this. And the only way he could do it is he knew the
01:03:54real Robert Aubrey Maxwell was dead.
01:03:58By posing as Robert Aubrey Maxwell, Jason Steadman built a kind of life in Edmonton, as a one-man glass
01:04:06business.
01:04:07He dated Angel Chalifu, maybe murdered Dwayne Demkew and torched his car,
01:04:14and then quite possibly shed his Aubrey Maxwell identity like an old coat.
01:04:19But who was Jason now? And where was Jason now? Was he back in Washington?
01:04:27Jason's Canadian girlfriend, Angel, told the detective she thought Jason had gone anywhere but the United States.
01:04:34He was always saying how worried are the States. He wouldn't go back to the States.
01:04:38He can speak Spanish. He could easily go to Mexico.
01:04:45Months passed with no sign of Jason anywhere in the United States.
01:04:50It seemed likely he had indeed gone to Mexico or somewhere else.
01:04:55All this time, Jennifer Steadman was totally unaware.
01:04:59She had no idea where Jason went when he fled Washington three years earlier
01:05:03and had no idea that he was once again on the run, that he was wanted in Canada from murder.
01:05:12So, she was not prepared when her mother called her in early November 2015 with terrifying news.
01:05:20She says, guess who was just here?
01:05:23I said, who? She's like, your ex-husband.
01:05:26He was just here at my house.
01:05:28Tell me what that was like to hear.
01:05:30It was petrifying because I knew he had been gone for two, three years.
01:05:37Out of the blue, he shows up.
01:05:39And with the threats he had made to take my daughter, that whole panic terror came back.
01:05:46In full force because Jennifer's daughter, then six years old, was right there at her grandmother's house.
01:05:53And Jason had seen her, talked to her.
01:05:57And he asked, do you know who I am?
01:05:59And she says no.
01:06:00He told her that he was her dad.
01:06:03He showed up at the door.
01:06:04Yeah.
01:06:05And he was there.
01:06:06He was talking to your daughter, who you tried so hard to protect.
01:06:11Yeah.
01:06:11What was that moment like for you?
01:06:13It was like sheer and utter terror.
01:06:16I didn't think I could get home fast enough from work before he took her.
01:06:21In my mind, he was there to take her.
01:06:23And there was no way I was going to get home fast enough to save her.
01:06:27I drove as fast as I can down a windy, narrow road from my work.
01:06:33It was just like the life flashed before my eyes.
01:06:36Like, I need to save her.
01:06:37I need to save her.
01:06:38He's going to take her.
01:06:38He's going to take her.
01:06:39And my mom can't stop him.
01:06:41She's just a little girl.
01:06:42She wouldn't know how to resist.
01:06:44It was terror because I felt like my daughter was slipping through my fingers if I couldn't
01:06:49go home fast enough to save her.
01:06:53Because all I know was he was there to take her from me.
01:06:56I made that eight-minute drive, I think, in under five minutes.
01:07:00By the time Jennifer got to her mother's house, Jason had left alone without her daughter.
01:07:06How did it feel to see her there?
01:07:08It was very relieving.
01:07:10It was like panic meets relief.
01:07:12But I was still panicked at the same time.
01:07:14I couldn't turn the panic off.
01:07:16But I was relieved that she was still there.
01:07:18Yeah.
01:07:18But yeah, I swooped her up, took her to the safest place I could think of in the quickest
01:07:22amount of time.
01:07:24But they were by no means safe.
01:07:26Jason was still out there, somewhere, and had just shown he knew how to find them.
01:07:32I got the U.S. Marshals on speed dial.
01:07:35They're like, no, we will be out there in less than five minutes.
01:07:38We will contact the sheriff.
01:07:39They scoured the town, couldn't find him.
01:07:41In the meantime, I was afraid to go home, and I didn't know where else to go.
01:07:47As he had so many times before, Jason had vanished, only to reappear three days later at the one spot
01:07:56where no one ever expected to find him.
01:08:16Six months they'd been chasing him, chased down his fake ID, to his possible second murder,
01:08:22to his sneaked border crossing, to what and where Robertson and Billoway did not know.
01:08:30Six months, and the trail was colder than ever.
01:08:33Jason Stedman, now south of the border and beyond their jurisdiction, was gone.
01:08:39Probably for good.
01:08:41Quite possibly to Mexico, for all they knew.
01:08:44And then, in mid-November 2015, Brian Robertson got a phone call
01:08:49from a U.S. Marshal in Seattle.
01:08:53And he says, you'll never believe who just walked in our door and turned himself in on his warrant.
01:08:59Jason Stedman.
01:09:02Stedman, who had outsmarted U.S. Marshals, FBI agents, sheriff's deputies,
01:09:06and evaded capture in Canada by fleeing on a jet ski,
01:09:10was now trying to pull off his greatest escape yet, ironically, by going back to prison.
01:09:18When he skipped out on his probation three years earlier,
01:09:21a warrant was issued for his arrest as Jason Stedman.
01:09:26So, if he gave himself up and served the few months remaining on his sentence,
01:09:32he'd be in the clear.
01:09:34Well, the cops ran in circles looking for some guy named Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
01:09:39Did he have any idea that the cops in Canada were well aware of what he had done?
01:09:44He had no idea. Our belief is that the only way to not be Robert Aubrey Maxwell
01:09:52is to be Jason Stedman again.
01:09:55And to be Jason Stedman again, he has to clear up his warrant.
01:10:00Then I can walk out, Jason Stedman, a free man, no one's looking for me,
01:10:04and we're off on a new life again.
01:10:07It wasn't until he was back in court for his resentencing
01:10:11that Jason learned his clever plan wasn't such a good idea after all.
01:10:16Kevin Greer, the U.S. Marshal, stood up in court,
01:10:18and he advised the judge that he was wanted in Canada on first-degree murder warrants.
01:10:27And Kevin Greer said all Jason did was put his head down on the table and shake his head.
01:10:33That was the moment he realized.
01:10:35That is when he knew that the gig was up in Canada, that he was wanted for murder.
01:10:40Interesting case. I mean, here's a guy who clearly thought it out very carefully
01:10:44and probably thought he was being very smart about it, but done in by his own mistakes.
01:10:48And that was what his problem was. He thought he was too smart for himself.
01:10:52He thought by leaving little pieces of evidence behind,
01:10:57such as the North Face ball cap and the knife sheath,
01:11:01he thought that that would solidify everyone thinking that Robert Aubrey Maxwell was the suspect.
01:11:08Bears repeating. Both Billoway and Robertson think Stedman left his knife sheath
01:11:15and North Face cap at Revolution Limousine on purpose to make sure his Aubrey Maxwell persona
01:11:21was connected to Dwayne Demkew's murder.
01:11:25And then Stedman would just go back to being his old self in Washington State with no one the wiser.
01:11:30And his plan probably would have worked, except for one thing.
01:11:35If Aubrey Maxwell's DNA had never been in the data bank,
01:11:39we would have just got an unknown male number one DNA.
01:11:44We'd never be able to find Aubrey Maxwell to get his DNA to confirm it.
01:11:51Sure.
01:11:51Nor would we even think to.
01:11:53No.
01:11:54Because this guy's got a legitimate government ID passport,
01:11:59which is one of the hardest IDs to get.
01:12:00He's got all of that.
01:12:02So we'd probably be sitting here right now with a warrant out for Robert Aubrey Maxwell for murder
01:12:09and not know where he is, if not for the fact that Aubrey Maxwell's DNA was in the data bank.
01:12:17That's what turned the case.
01:12:19At the end, that's what was his undoing.
01:12:24Five months later, just after the long winter thaw somewhere on the vast prairie between Edmonton and Calgary,
01:12:32a farmer was out walking the land with his dog.
01:12:36And his dog came across skeletal remains on the roadside of the ditch.
01:12:42And when the medical examiner examined the skeletal remains,
01:12:47the DNA came back to Dwayne Debke.
01:12:51Hmm.
01:12:51Carefully hidden or just tossed out of the truck?
01:12:54I think just dumped in the ditch.
01:12:57And Dwayne's family finally had to let go of whatever sliver of hope was left.
01:13:03Though, said his brother Darren.
01:13:06Myself, I felt a sense of relief.
01:13:08They found him.
01:13:10But Dwayne's friend, Collier, found no comfort in that.
01:13:14Because now you know he's 100% dead.
01:13:19And there was no hope left.
01:13:22Six months later, in September 2016,
01:13:26Jason Steadman was turned over to Canadian authorities,
01:13:30where he met with a string of detectives.
01:13:33There's some things that you need to explain.
01:13:36You're wearing what appears to be a North Face bald cap, a North Face jacket.
01:13:41But during the hours of questioning, Steadman said only this.
01:13:47I can't discuss anything with you.
01:13:49I want to speak with my attorney.
01:13:51Okay.
01:13:52It was almost like a robot springing to life and then shutting down again.
01:13:57It would take nearly three years of pretrial delays
01:14:01before Dwayne Demke's friends and family
01:14:04would finally get a chance to find out why.
01:14:07Why did Jason Steadman kill Dwayne Demke?
01:14:27When Jason Steadman was extradited back to Canada,
01:14:30detectives, of course, had a lot of questions they were hoping you would answer.
01:14:34Questions about the murder of Dwayne Demke.
01:14:37I would like you to provide an explanation
01:14:39why your DNA was recovered from a North Face bald cap
01:14:42found in a planter box in the rear of Revolution limousine,
01:14:46the same location where Dwayne Demke was last seen alive.
01:14:49Do you want to answer that question?
01:14:51He did not.
01:14:53Steadman refused to answer any questions about Dwayne Demke.
01:14:57Do you?
01:14:58So detectives switched course
01:15:00and started a line of questioning about Robert Aubrey Maxwell,
01:15:05the real one, that is.
01:15:07I work for the Vancouver police
01:15:09and I'm here because I'm interested in the Robert Aubrey Maxwell situation.
01:15:16What happened to him?
01:15:18The sergeant wanted to know.
01:15:20And how was it Steadman ended up assuming Aubrey Maxwell's identity?
01:15:25Do you have an explanation for where you thought his ID?
01:15:29But true to form, Steadman sat frozen,
01:15:34again refusing to answer any questions put to him.
01:15:37Mr. Steadman, did you hear what I had to say there?
01:15:40At one point, almost childlike, he closed his eyes
01:15:43as if he could make all this unpleasantness just disappear in a wink.
01:15:49And I don't know if you, when you close your eyes,
01:15:51if you're listening or if you're just meditating or what's going on there.
01:15:57While Steadman sat in jail waiting to go on trial,
01:16:00the detectives kept investigating and discovered
01:16:04the man had spent most of his time while on the run
01:16:07hiding out not in Washington State, but in upstate New York.
01:16:13Can I get you a glass of water before we get started?
01:16:16At his half-brother Chris Preston's apartment,
01:16:19who said he, Steadman, who we hadn't seen in nearly a decade,
01:16:23emailed him out of the blue.
01:16:24And then he's like, you know, I'm coming to town.
01:16:28I'm like, cool, don't tell anybody. I'm like, fine.
01:16:30Though Chris said he had no idea his brother Jason was on the run.
01:16:36Did he ever talk about this homicide?
01:16:39No.
01:16:39I had no doubt, just from, you know, the exchanges that we had,
01:16:44that, you know, he had done and or been involved in and or, you know, been partying to,
01:16:52Okay.
01:16:53You know, some form of leaf alley.
01:16:55What makes you say that?
01:16:57Just the way, you know, we talked about, like, the rage and the seething and the,
01:17:02and just, you know, you don't know, you don't know the things I've done,
01:17:06you don't know where I've been, you don't know the that I've seen.
01:17:09Did he ever get into any specifics?
01:17:11No.
01:17:12No.
01:17:12If he did, I'd tell you.
01:17:14But he said Jason did talk about hiding under a false identity.
01:17:19I'm like, how'd you do that?
01:17:19He's like, well, you know, I got a fake ID from Holland on the dark lab.
01:17:23It was a fairytale version of how Jason took over the identity of Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
01:17:29And when Chris later found out through news reports that Robert was missing,
01:17:34Oh, he knew, he said.
01:17:36He knew what must have happened.
01:17:38I'm like, yeah, that .
01:17:40You know, not to, not to make light.
01:17:43You know, I feel bad.
01:17:44I feel horrible.
01:17:45I mean, I honestly have no doubt as to just exactly probably what,
01:17:48the only way you're gonna, you gotta find a body, guys.
01:17:51Yeah.
01:17:51You gotta find a body.
01:17:52Yeah.
01:17:53Did he ever talk about anything related to that?
01:17:57I'm thinking sewers.
01:17:59I'm sorry?
01:17:59I would think sewers.
01:18:00Okay.
01:18:01Why do you say that?
01:18:01Just because.
01:18:03He likes sewers.
01:18:04He likes sewers?
01:18:05Yeah.
01:18:05Okay.
01:18:08Detective Brian Robertson, though, has his own theories about what happened
01:18:12to the unfortunate Robert Aubrey Maxwell.
01:18:15Thoughts which he shared with us as we walked through the tough downtown
01:18:18east side of Vancouver.
01:18:20The last home Robert ever knew.
01:18:24If home, you can call it.
01:18:27As you're looking around here, what occurred to you about what actually
01:18:30happened to Robert Aubrey Maxwell?
01:18:33Well, because he's never been found, and that's significant.
01:18:37I think that he probably was disposed of in such a way that we're not going to find him.
01:18:42That's the only way that Stedman can get away with this crime.
01:18:44It's a busy place.
01:18:45How would you do that?
01:18:46Well, I mean, look at this alley.
01:18:47We look around, and there are lots of times when there's nobody in the alley.
01:18:50And if there is anybody walking by, they're certainly not paying attention to what's happening
01:18:54up the alley.
01:18:55And it takes nothing.
01:18:57There's dumpsters like this in every alley in the downtown east side.
01:18:59And it would be pretty easy just to put his body in the dumpster, close the lid.
01:19:04Every night they get emptied.
01:19:05So quite possibly he's just in a landfill somewhere.
01:19:07Yeah.
01:19:08Yeah.
01:19:08That's probably our best guess.
01:19:11And we'll never find him.
01:19:14And to this day, investigators have yet to charge Stedman, or anyone else for that matter,
01:19:19for the presumed death of Aubrey Maxwell.
01:19:23But for murdering Dwayne Demkiew?
01:19:26Jason pleaded not guilty, said he didn't do it.
01:19:29But prosecutors had all the DNA and video evidence that said he did.
01:19:34That he hid in a dumpster outside of Revolution Limousine.
01:19:37And with that Gerber knife, stabbed Dwayne to death when he left the building.
01:19:43And then dumped Dwayne's body off this gravel road.
01:19:47And drove his car down to Calgary, where he set it on fire.
01:19:50Later making his way back to Edmonton on the train.
01:19:55Motive though?
01:19:57That was a tougher case.
01:19:59Not that prosecutors needed to prove motive, but...
01:20:02Juries tend to want to know.
01:20:04So, when Stedman went on trial in 2019, prosecutors were stuck trying to explain to the jury the inexplicable.
01:20:13The why of it all.
01:20:15Though Bryan Robertson suspects the motive was, what he thought all along, one of the oldest known to mankind.
01:20:23Why would he do it?
01:20:24What was the motivation for this crime?
01:20:26Well, he won't talk to us about anything.
01:20:29He never talked to us about anything.
01:20:30Our belief is the motivation was Angel had broken up with him.
01:20:38He had always disliked Dwayne because Angel was such close friends with him.
01:20:45He often said to Angel that the reason that we can't become closer is because you're still so close to
01:20:53Dwayne.
01:20:54And so I think that in some narcissistic way, he blames Dwayne for the failure of his relationship with Angel.
01:21:04And when she broke up with him, that was that.
01:21:07And he set his sights on Dwayne Demke.
01:21:12There was so much evidence against Stedman and his alter egos, it took nearly two months for the prosecution to
01:21:19present it all.
01:21:20And all the while, Dwayne Demke's friends and family were there in court, keeping a constant watch on the man
01:21:28who'd taken his life and caused so much pain.
01:21:31He just sat there like it was just any other normal day.
01:21:37He didn't look concerned.
01:21:38He didn't look sad.
01:21:40He didn't look anything.
01:21:42He just was very neutral-faced and he just sat there.
01:21:47He had absolutely no emotion, like none.
01:21:50Like a narcissist, a sociopath, a murderer.
01:21:55And to me, he still had that mindset, I'm still going to get away with this.
01:22:02But that did not happen.
01:22:04It took the jury a little more than three hours to arrive at a verdict.
01:22:09It was a sense of relief when we heard guilty.
01:22:13Oh, what a great feeling to hear that guilty verdict on first-degree murder being read.
01:22:23Guilty of first-degree murder.
01:22:26Guilty of arson for the car fire.
01:22:28Life in prison and no chance of parole for 25 years.
01:22:33The maximum in Canadian law.
01:22:35We contacted Stedman through the prison administration, but he declined our request for an interview.
01:22:45On the side of a gravel road between Edmonton and Calgary, there is a simple but well-tended memorial for
01:22:53the gentle man who was murdered for being nothing more than a caring friend.
01:23:00Does he pop back into your mind sometimes?
01:23:02Of course.
01:23:03As you go on with your life?
01:23:05Of course.
01:23:07Does he come to visit in any particular way in your brain?
01:23:13Oh, sorry.
01:23:14That's okay.
01:23:16I mean, I have pictures of Dwayne in the house of when we were on vacation and other times, so
01:23:21I see his pictures every day, but I mean, I do think about him a lot.
01:23:30He was really kind and supportive and just really a loving guy.
01:23:41That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:23:44We'll see you again Thursday at 10, 9 central.
01:23:47And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:23:51I'm Lester Holt.
01:23:52For all of us at NBC News, good night.
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