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The Killer Among Us - Season 1 - Episode 03: Death in the Dorms
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00:10The world's only college that is bilingual in American Sign Language and English for Deaf and
00:16Hard of Hearing students is Gallaudet University in Washington DC. It's a place of solidarity and
00:23belonging, a community like few others. At Gallaudet University, I am completely myself, 100%. But when 19-year-old freshman
00:34Eric Plunkett is mysteriously found dead, the campus community is thrust into terror. I couldn't believe it. It was a
00:43bloody scene. Is this serious? Is this real? Everybody was shocked. I remember seeing my mom absolutely crumble. Detectives uncover
00:52evidence that leads them
00:53into the heart of the student body. The killer was familiar with the surroundings. It was someone from within Gallaudet
01:00University campus. Within months, as the shattered sanctuary begins to recover, they're plunged back into darkness when murder strikes the
01:09campus again.
01:12Oh no, it can't be. There's a killer on the loose. There's a good chance it could happen again. No
01:19college course can prepare you for the dread.
01:23From looking at your classmates and wondering if you are next.
01:47Gaided University, Gaided University is a really unique university because everyone who goes there is deaf and there's a lot
01:54of ASL access.
01:55It's like a small island where deaf people can be like a family, like a huge family there.
02:02Deaf people meet each other, and we have that shared experience, frustrations.
02:09We live on earth that doesn't understand us.
02:13But at Gallaudet University, I am completely myself, 100%.
02:18Everyone signs on that campus, and we're a big family automatically.
02:23Nobody closes and locks their door, because there's nothing to worry about.
02:34In 2000, I was an RA in Cogswell Hall.
02:39So I'm working in the RA office, doing some errands, until Joseph Mesa had stopped by.
02:49Joseph was a freshman student, and I didn't know him very well.
02:54His face really showed me that he was concerned.
02:56And he's waving at me, saying, hey, I'm supposed to meet Eric Plunkett.
03:00And I asked, why are you worried?
03:03And he says, the room smells funny.
03:06You know, he lived right across from Eric Plunkett.
03:10And he wants me to check the room.
03:14I knew I wasn't able to check his room by myself.
03:17So I had to wait for another male RA to come and help me.
03:21So I stopped by Thomas' room.
03:25I was in my room with my door open on the first floor at Cogswell.
03:31And it was late.
03:33Deaf people flashed lights to let you know what's going on.
03:37Lauren popped up at the door, flashed the lights, and said, somebody's asking about Eric.
03:46Eric lived at the very end of the hallway.
03:49Very social person.
03:51He loves people.
03:52Very friendly.
03:53Easy going.
03:54Loved to talk.
03:55From Minnesota.
03:57I got the key, walked down to Eric's room.
04:01Eric was the only one that had a room by himself.
04:04He was lucky.
04:07And I pushed the button a few times.
04:11Did it once, no answer.
04:14Twice, no answer.
04:17Third time, no answer.
04:20So then I'd open the door.
04:22Wow.
04:23Definitely did not expect what I saw.
04:31I just couldn't believe how much blood was out of him.
04:36I went straight to his body in an instant to check for a pulse.
04:40And then ran out of the room.
04:48I'm in the office typing reports.
04:51And the call came in around 10 p.m.
04:53The body was found in a dorm at Gallaudet University.
04:59Gallaudet was like a city within a city.
05:02The last thing I thought was homicide.
05:04Because there had never been a homicide at Gallaudet University.
05:07We responded to Cogswell Hall.
05:10When we walked into the dorm, the room was in disarray.
05:15Right away we see the body of Eric Plunkett.
05:21And it's blood all over the scene.
05:25He had blood around him, so it was hard to see where the wounds were.
05:28You have to wait for the medical examiner.
05:33But there's a chair that's knocked over.
05:36There's blood on the chair next to him.
05:39Initially, we believed that the chair may have been used to strike Eric.
05:44There was obviously some type of fight.
05:47There was a struggle.
05:49It was an up-close murder.
05:52The more that we looked at the crime scene, there was no wallet found and no credit cards or debit
05:58cards.
06:00There was no signs of forced entry.
06:02But it seems like the person is trying to cover their tracks because they closed the door.
06:09And they lock it as well, to keep Eric from being found very quickly.
06:16Police think some clues point to robbery as the motive, while others clearly suggest the murder was more personal.
06:23Then they move outside Eric Plunkett's room to look for anything that might have captured digital traces of the killer.
06:31Unfortunately, there are no video cameras or surveillance cameras inside the dorms themselves.
06:39All the students used key cards to gain access to the buildings.
06:43But we were told that everyone didn't swipe.
06:46Just out of courtesy, the student would hold the door for the next person.
06:50And there were no records that were kept for people entering and exiting the campus itself.
06:57While police continue processing the crime scene,
07:00around 11pm, news unfurls across the tight-knit campus that one of their own has been bartered.
07:07Everybody went their own way to go spread the word fast.
07:11So Gallaudet University pretty much knew within five minutes.
07:15It was kind of a mob, a crowd of people there standing outside the dorm signing furiously.
07:23No one knew what was going on.
07:30Hours later, in the middle of the night, over a thousand miles away in Burnsville, Minnesota,
07:36Eric Plunkett's family awakes to horrible news.
07:41We were all upstairs, fast asleep.
07:44And all of a sudden, there was a loud knock at the door at two o'clock in the morning.
07:51Opened the door and there's two officers with a pastor.
07:55And they asked the question, is this the home of Eric Franklin Plunkett?
08:00And it's in that moment, it's like, this isn't good.
08:06They said there's been an incident at Eric's dorm and that Eric had died.
08:18I do remember going downstairs and seeing the police officers and then seeing my mom absolutely crumble to the floor.
08:35As DC Metro detectives seek the identity of Eric's killer, they ask his family for any information about him and
08:43his personal life.
08:46Eric was born with challenges.
08:49He had cerebral palsy which made him unsteady on his feet.
08:52He also had profound hearing loss and was completely deaf.
08:56But you would never know it.
08:58He was so confident all the time.
09:01And it was just his personality.
09:03He had a ton of friends.
09:04He was inquisitive.
09:07You know, he liked to take things apart just to see how they were made and put them back together
09:11again.
09:14He decided he wanted to go to Gallaudet.
09:17He got an acceptance letter and he was so excited.
09:22Running around, he was like, I've been accepted.
09:25And, you know, he was really celebrating.
09:30We moved him into the first floor of Cogswell Hall there on campus.
09:35Bittersweet and sad to leave him there, but we knew it was time to go.
09:39And what did Eric tell you?
09:41Don't worry about my mom.
09:44I'll be okay.
09:45I'll be okay.
09:50Before he passed away, Eric had just come out as gay at school.
09:57It didn't surprise any of us.
09:59He was having a lot of fun.
10:01We've heard that he made so many great relationships on campus.
10:05We didn't know who could possibly have killed him.
10:11DC detectives are puzzled as to why someone would want to murder a friendly and popular person like Eric.
10:19Hours later at daybreak, with little to go on from his family, investigators set about the enormous task of interviewing
10:27Gallaudet's student body.
10:29We do want to interview everyone, so we need to get interpreters who are able to sign for us.
10:38So in an interview, you're trained to look at different cues.
10:43Sometime when a person gets nervous, you can see their heart beating fast.
10:48But when the interpreter is signing it, the person that you're speaking to isn't looking at you.
10:54They're facing the interpreter the whole time.
10:59We're talking to people, asking when the last time anybody had any communication with Eric.
11:04They took myself and Thomas Cook for questioning.
11:08It is possible for the police to misunderstand the interpreters and our signing.
11:13It definitely added additional frustration and challenges.
11:17But they were very gentle.
11:20They were really good to us.
11:23We were both thinking, who would want to murder an innocent person?
11:27We didn't notice any strangers.
11:29If an outside person wanted to walk in, we would probably stop and easily identify them.
11:36We interviewed Joseph Mesa, who's the one who alerted the RAs in the first place.
11:41He was a friend of Eric's.
11:43And basically there was no information given that was helpful by Joseph Mesa.
11:48Although the person who was interpreting for me felt that he was holding something back.
11:54But they couldn't put their finger on it and there's nobody else that saw anything that was of any use
12:00to us at that point in time.
12:03But investigators gain some direction when they receive a surprising tip from the head of the campus LGBT group.
12:11Eric had joined this group called the Lambda Organization.
12:15He was elected as the secretary.
12:18So the president of the Lambda Society comes to police and is concerned because there have been slurs that were
12:26found on campus.
12:29The anti-gay slurs were posted on message boards in dormitory hallways.
12:34There was this fear that someone was targeting gay and lesbian students and threatening to hurt them.
12:43DC Metro detectives take interest in the lead and head for their campus counterparts to see if any other students
12:50lodged complaints about the slurs.
12:52So we go to the campus police and they advised there was only one complaint made about the anti-gay
12:59slurs and that was by Eric Plunkett.
13:02That makes it significant.
13:05And they were thinking that it may be a hate crime.
13:10Coming up, the shoe print is definitely a solid clue.
13:13Like Cinderella, who had the magic slipper.
13:16I asked him, are you okay?
13:17He says, no, there's another one.
13:20The second murder, now people were angry.
13:38As detectives search for clues in the murder of Eric Plunkett, they receive a curious tip.
13:45Days ago, someone scrawled anti-gay slurs on campus note boards and just before his death, Plunkett lodged a complaint
13:52about the slurs.
13:55Did the vandal behind this hateful act also kill Eric?
14:02That would raise suspicion with you.
14:04You're thinking, could have been a hate crime.
14:07This potentially gives us a motive as to why Eric may have been killed.
14:14As police ponder the possibility of a hate crime, they also receive the autopsy report.
14:22At the autopsy, we learned that Eric had been strangled.
14:27He was, you know, beaten, he was kicked.
14:30There was some evidence that indicated he was hit with a chair.
14:37There was overkill involved.
14:39I mean, there was blood everywhere.
14:42An overkill is usually someone who knows the person.
14:46With no reports of any strangers and no forced entry to Eric's room,
14:51most clues point to a killer who knew Eric intimately.
14:55Though the missing wallet is an outlier.
14:59Investigators take stock and marry this evidence with the homophobic slurs found earlier.
15:04It leads them to form a finer theory.
15:07The murderer could have been a former lover's violent revenge.
15:13Maybe the killer is someone who he's intimately involved with.
15:18Maybe they were intimately involved in some way and things went south.
15:23We then start trying to dig into who he may have been dating.
15:32As police consider their revenge theory and Gallaudet's campus remains on edge,
15:38one of Eric's fellow students comes forward with an intriguing tip.
15:43A student comes to police with information that they believe is very important to our case.
15:49The student tells us that Eric Plunkett and a fellow student by the name of Thomas Minch
15:56may be involved in some type of relationship.
15:59Whether it be a close or an intimate relationship, we don't know at this point in time.
16:05Thomas Minch is a freshman just like Eric.
16:07He's 18 years old.
16:09He was a skinny young man from the northeast somewhere.
16:14He wasn't involved in sports. He wasn't involved in clubs.
16:18He just kind of wandered around, liked to meet new people, new friends.
16:24But it's not just the observation of a close relationship that brings this student forward.
16:29It's that they witnessed something troubling on September the 27th,
16:33the day before Eric's body was found.
16:36So, the student sees Thomas Minch shove Eric Plunkett,
16:41which causes Eric to fall to the ground.
16:46So, we're wondering if there's more than just this shove that happened.
16:50We had to find Thomas Minch and interview him.
16:54Detectives make Minch their top priority.
16:57They find him in the campus cafeteria and bring him back to their station for an interview.
17:03They start questioning him about his relationship with Eric Plunkett.
17:10He seems somewhat nervous.
17:11One of the other lead detectives on the case was asking how well he knows them,
17:16whether they have an intimate relationship of any kind.
17:19And he said they were strictly friends.
17:22But he does not tell detectives anything about any type of assault on Eric Plunkett.
17:30They wonder why he's being invasive.
17:34There's a lot of suspicion and then everything is changing.
17:39Thomas did admit to going to Eric's room.
17:43That's the crime scene.
17:46And Eric apparently made a pass at him.
17:50And this upset Thomas and he admitted to pushing him at that point in time.
17:56A detective at this point believes that more than just the shove took place.
18:02And maybe it did escalate into murder.
18:06The interview was stopped and no further questions were asked.
18:11And Thomas was placed under arrest.
18:16This was a priority case.
18:18The detective felt good about the arrest that he had made.
18:21But then everything started to change and things started to unravel.
18:42Washington DC police have just arrested student Thomas Minch for the murder of Eric Plunkett.
18:49The department exults in solving this heinous crime.
18:52Will they be able to win a conviction?
18:56I walk into the office, everyone celebrating, high-fiving and commending the detective in reference to the Eric Plunkett case.
19:04It was good results, but we still weren't there yet.
19:12The detective told us they had arrested a student, Thomas Minch.
19:18We were happy to know that there had been an arrest.
19:23I couldn't believe that anybody would do this, let alone another deaf student.
19:29Because they know what it's like to be bullied or picked on.
19:35It's just unbelievable.
19:41One day later, Gallaudet students pack a D.C. courtroom for Minch's arraignment.
19:47The case was presented to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
19:52And the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute the case.
19:59The case was dismissed because there was no probable cause.
20:02Probable cause means that more likely than not, the person committed a crime.
20:07There isn't sufficient evidence.
20:10The arrest of Thomas Minch is way too premature.
20:14So, Minch was released.
20:16It was embarrassing for the Metropolitan Police Department.
20:23We got a call from U.S. Attorney's Office.
20:27And the prosecutor said that they were releasing Thomas Minch because they didn't have enough evidence.
20:37But he's still a suspect.
20:40And, I mean, it just was unbelievable.
20:45So what do you mean there's not enough evidence?
20:48How do you release them?
20:52With the case dismissed due to lack of evidence, law enforcement pursues a decisive test to rule on their theory
20:59that Minch is the perpetrator.
21:02Thomas Minch was still a person of interest at that point in time.
21:06We finally get the DNA results back for Thomas Minch.
21:12There was no DNA of Thomas Minch found on Eric Blunke's body.
21:18Thomas Minch is clear to the suspects.
21:22Though clear now to everyone that the interrogation team jumped the gun on the arrest,
21:28Minch retreats from campus to his native New Hampshire.
21:32Back in Washington, the rapid turn of the vents leaves detectives stunned.
21:37The celebration was very short-lived.
21:39Then it was back to work.
21:40Because we had still had a killer on the loose.
21:47There was a lot of commotion on campus.
21:50We were all just thinking, if it's not him, then who?
21:54Was it somebody outside?
21:56And is the killer still at Gallaudet University?
21:59Is he one of us?
22:01The students can't focus on learning the material.
22:05I can't focus on teaching the material.
22:08There's a lot of upheaval.
22:11We noticed that students' parents were taking them out of school.
22:16They said that DC couldn't do their job, they couldn't find the killer, and their kids were not safe there.
22:24As fear hangs over the campus, detectives receive an intriguing tip from the victim's family.
22:29We got his bank statement forward, and I opened it up, and I saw debit charges.
22:37It had to have been after Eric had been killed.
22:43I knew that they were trying to figure out the timeline, and we sent them a copy of the statement.
22:51At least one of the transactions was conducted after his body was found.
22:57There were two transactions at two different stores at Union Station here in Washington, D.C.
23:03And then Union Station security keeps a record of the tapes from the surveillance cameras.
23:10This could be very helpful when finding a suspect.
23:13We went to security, and they had just taped it over.
23:19They record over them every 28 or 30 days.
23:22It was showing us who the killer was, absolutely.
23:25I was so f***ing mad.
23:26But the theft, it could be a motive towards what transpired.
23:32However, there was no further activity on Eric's account.
23:37And then, time's going on.
23:41Months pass, and investigators struggle to make progress on the Plunkett case.
23:47Then, at the start of the spring semester, Gallaudet's student body awakens to another nightmare.
23:57On February 3rd, I was in Cogswell Hall.
24:00And I was on call.
24:02And, unfortunately, the fire alarm goes off.
24:07So, I get out of bed.
24:10And I go up to the fourth floor.
24:12And I see another RA.
24:17And he looked really, really pale.
24:20So, I asked him, are you okay?
24:22He says, no.
24:24There's another one.
24:26It was another murder.
24:45Just over four months after the murder of Eric Plunkett, shockingly, another body has turned up in Gallaudet's Cogswell Hall.
24:52Has Eric's killer stuck again?
24:58I'm at home getting ready for work.
25:01Then, I get a phone call.
25:03Letting me know, hey, it's been another murder.
25:06Got your debt.
25:09It's the same dorm where Eric Plunkett was found.
25:12I was like, oh, my goodness.
25:17His name is Benjamin Varner.
25:20When we arrived to the scene, first thing I notice is feet coming from under a mattress.
25:28When the evidence technicians removed the mattress, what I'm looking at is a male with stab wounds all over his
25:37head, his neck, his stomach area.
25:41There was blood on the wall, blood on the floor.
25:45It was a gruesome scene.
25:54Detective Richmond takes in the details of the scene and spies numerous similarities to the Plunkett case.
26:01His wallet is missing.
26:03We're talking about less than six months.
26:06It definitely was a repeat killer.
26:09If he's not caught, there's a good chance it could happen again.
26:13As investigators continue cataloging the scene, Gallaudet's community is once again thrown into turmoil.
26:22When I got there, I could see police up there on the fourth floor and was able to look up
26:29and see.
26:30And I asked, who?
26:32And then they spelled back Ben.
26:36And I thought, oh, no, no way.
26:40I felt numb and I feel horrible.
26:44I feel horrible for Ben.
26:46He was a nice, kind person.
26:49He was interested in making friends, but he was sort of an introvert.
26:57There is a despondency, a sadness, a hopelessness, a fear that we'll never know who the killer is.
27:10Then police on the scene are approached by a witness from the Plunkett case, Joseph Mesa.
27:17He gives an account of one of the last things Benjamin told him.
27:21Joseph Mesa said he told him, yeah, I'm gay and I have a boyfriend, but don't tell anybody.
27:28It seemed like Joseph wanted to help us, but Joseph wasn't part of the LGBTQ and he didn't have anything
27:35additional to help us.
27:38While Joseph's tip is noted, detectives have a more pressing responsibility to Benjamin's family.
27:45We notified Benjamin Varner's family members of his death.
27:50They broke down crying.
27:53I didn't think that there would be another family.
27:57Our hearse were going out to them because we'd been through it.
28:01I remember getting a phone call saying it happened again.
28:05And nobody needed to explain to me what it happened again meant.
28:12How is it possible that this could happen again?
28:18At Gallaudet University, the fear had passed after the first murder.
28:22The second murder, now people were angry.
28:25There was a lot of finger pointing going on.
28:28As Gallaudet's student body comes to grips with a killer tearing through its campus, detectives at Cogswell Hall feel the
28:35pressure on them intensify as they move outside Ben's room.
28:42We walk into the hallway and we can see footprints leading to the stairwell.
28:48They led down the stairs and out the side entrance door.
28:53There were cameras at the bottom of the elevators and not at the bottom of the stairs.
28:58The blood in the staircase, he just told me that the perpetrator was trying to evade being seen on camera.
29:05It says that the killer was familiar with his surroundings.
29:09So it's a student.
29:11There was a small alleyway and there was a dumpster back there.
29:17And in that search, we found a bloody jacket.
29:22We also recovered a knife.
29:26Like a paring knife.
29:28We think that it may be the knife that was used, but there wasn't blood on it.
29:34And the paring knife, we were able to match up to a box that was found inside of Ben Varner's
29:40room.
29:42So we at this point believe we have the murder weapon.
29:46Investigators take stock of their new abundance of evidence and quickly begin making moves.
29:52We took photos of the jacket.
29:55The students that we were interviewing, we were also showing them, do you recognize his jacket?
30:01Also, the shoe print is definitely a solid clue.
30:04It's like Cinderella, who had the magic slip.
30:09There were photographs taken.
30:12The FBI has on file a huge catalog of different types of shoes.
30:18They gave us the make model of that shoe.
30:22We were searching for Nike Air shoes.
30:24We assumed the motive may have been robbery, but we didn't know what belonged there.
30:28So we had to interview the family to find out.
30:32And they confirmed that he should have had credit cards, and he also had a checking account.
30:38But the checkbook is missing, and his wallet and his credit cards were missing.
30:45It looks like the motive is robbery for both victims.
30:48These murders didn't have anything to do with being gay.
30:52In light of what happened in the Eric Plunkett case, which we found out that there was credit card activity,
30:58we asked Benjamin Varner's family to monitor his account and see if any transaction had been done.
31:05As the Varners keep watch on their son's accounts and grapple with their loss,
31:10Eric Plunkett's family reaches out to them.
31:15We came out to D.C. and we spent some time with the Varner family.
31:20And we went to Ben's funeral, we went down to San Antonio.
31:24As a parent, I'm devastated.
31:33Then, a week and a half after Ben's murder, the Varner family's vigilance about his finances pays off.
31:42His parents let us know that a check had been cleared for $650 within 48 hours of his death.
31:49It was dated two days before he was discovered.
31:52And now we have something.
31:54This may be the break that we're waiting for.
32:10In the wake of two Gallaudet University murders, police are desperate to catch the killer before they kill again.
32:18The family of the second victim, Ben Varner, have just handed detectives a tip.
32:23Someone cashed one of Ben's checks after he was killed.
32:28Is the person behind the financial mystery also the double murderer?
32:34We get a subpoena.
32:36We go to the bank.
32:38And we get the name.
32:41Joseph Mason.
32:43The name Joseph Mason is familiar to us.
32:50Investigators question if it could really be someone who was hiding in plain sight all along.
32:56Joseph Mason is a sweet guy from Guam.
33:01He was a football player.
33:03He was glued to his girlfriend all the time.
33:07Joseph Mason was the first one who was concerned about Eric Plunkett.
33:10I hadn't really seen them hanging out.
33:16After we get the name, we request the security team to have him come for an interview on campus.
33:24There's one of two things involved in this check cashing.
33:27It's either it's the person who committed the murder or there's a legitimate reason why he had the check in
33:33his hand.
33:36He comes in for an interview.
33:39And we start questioning him about his relationship with Benjamin Varner.
33:44He said he was a friend of Benjamin Varner's.
33:47He and Benjamin lived in the same dorm.
33:49He was a little computer savvy.
33:52And he used to help Benjamin Varner with his computer.
33:55Then we're questioning him about what is his check for.
33:59And he said that he bought some parts for Benjamin Varner's computer.
34:04And he repaired them.
34:05And Benjamin Varner paid him $650 for the part and his labor.
34:10But it didn't seem reasonable because the computer probably was worth about $600.
34:17So to say that you paid $650 to get a computer repaired didn't make any sense.
34:23So the check had been cleared two days after he was discovered.
34:27So it raised a couple of red flags.
34:30Detectives then collect a DNA swab from Mesa and let him depart.
34:35Then, that afternoon, a student walks into the campus security office where DC Metro police have taken up residence.
34:43The young man wants to report a curious crime committed in his dorm room.
34:47I'm sitting at my desk and a freshman walks in the door and sits down and starts telling us about
34:54his roommate had stolen his credit card right before Christmas and bought a computer and various sundries.
35:01I asked this freshman what his roommate's name was.
35:09And he told us Joseph Mesa.
35:14So that kind of piqued my interest.
35:16We had a picture of a jacket that we found at the crime scene.
35:21And I showed that to the roommate.
35:26And the roommate said, yeah, Joseph Mesa had a coat just like that.
35:32And so then I went on to ask him and said, what kind of shoes does he wear?
35:37And he went on to describe a pair of shoes that were the type of shoes we were looking for.
35:42It's extremely significant.
35:46It's by far the strongest lead of the investigation.
35:50Detectives begin speaking with other students about Mesa in hopes of gathering more evidence before they bring him in again.
35:57But then they quickly receive a surprise from their new top suspect.
36:05It was like around 7 o'clock at night.
36:07And the franchise called and said, hey, man, get down here.
36:10That Mesa guy is back.
36:13And he wants to speak to you.
36:15And he came into the office.
36:18And the interpreters come in.
36:21The time is 7 o'clock p.m.
36:23I'm Detective Darrell Richmond, along with Detective Pam Reed.
36:28Also in the room with us is Joseph Mesa.
36:34He was advised of his rights.
36:36And he waved and said he wanted to talk.
36:40And then he starts telling us about Benjamin Varnery.
36:45Two weeks ago, Thursday night, I went over to the fourth floor, asked if I could talk to him for
36:51a short minute.
36:52He invited me in and I asked if he had a checkbook.
36:58And Ben said he did.
37:00He asked me why and I just told him I was curious and that was all.
37:04He put all his attention to the computer.
37:08I walked over and I saw a knife right under the microwave.
37:13We got the brick that we were looking for.
37:30In the Gallaudet University double murders, student Joseph Mesa has approached police to tell them something.
37:37Detectives have brought him into an interrogation room at their precinct.
37:41It seems he's ready to come clean.
37:45Joseph Mesa, he starts talking about Benjamin Varnery.
37:49Then he looked at the computer, put all his attention to the computer.
37:55I walked over and I saw a knife right under the microwave.
38:00And I had the knife and I got ready and I stabbed him.
38:04And he stabbed him and stabbed him until he died.
38:11I couldn't believe it.
38:13He starts giving his confession.
38:16I was like, the hair on your neck stand up.
38:21I looked for the checkbook.
38:23I filled it out for $650.
38:27He said he needed money.
38:30And I asked him, what do you need money for?
38:33My girlfriend loves purple.
38:35So I would buy a purple mouse.
38:38And then a purple mouse pad.
38:41And then I had the TV that would be purple.
38:43And then there was a plastic plate.
38:45Purple.
38:46The cup that was purple.
38:48It just, it didn't make sense to me.
38:51It would be a good idea if you have anything else on your conscience that you tell us about now.
39:01Okay.
39:04Also, Eric Plunkett, I also did that one too.
39:16I looked over and I saw that there was no one in the hall.
39:23And Eric was sitting at the computer.
39:25So I closed the door.
39:29Then I went around and I put my arm around his neck.
39:34Everything that he's saying in my mind, I'm corroborating.
39:38And I used the chair and hit him on his face.
39:44What's going through my mind is, we got him.
39:46He gave everything. He told us everything.
39:48He fully admits the line about Ben Varner.
39:52He wasn't gay.
39:54And he gives a reason why.
39:56He confessed to us that he did it.
39:58I knew I'd made a big mistake.
40:00I started to feel worse and worse when you're interviewing.
40:04You're asking me questions.
40:05I kind of changed my story.
40:07I'm happy that I did tell you everything.
40:18Now, I'm not feeling that guilt.
40:20And I want the whole Gallaudet community to be able to be calm, relaxed, not as worried, not as scared.
40:27I'm scared.
40:30Police immediately arrest Mesa, and he's soon charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
40:38The phone rings.
40:40And it's a detective.
40:43And he says, we've made an arrest.
40:47We have a confession.
40:49I couldn't believe it.
40:51They announced that it was Joseph Mesa.
40:55And I said, no way.
40:57The person who's glued to his girlfriend all day?
41:01How?
41:02The one who reported to me?
41:05About the first murder?
41:07Wow.
41:09I mean, it took me a while to process that.
41:11I'm thinking, really?
41:14I mean, I was shocked.
41:19In April of 2002, the double murder trial of Joseph Mesa begins.
41:25Almost a month later, the jury returns their verdict.
41:30Joseph Mesa is found guilty of the murder of both Ben Varner and Eric Plunkett.
41:37The judge hands Mesa a sentence of two life terms without parole.
41:43Knowing that he's going to be in jail for the rest of his life.
41:46And he deserves it.
41:49I really want people to remember Eric Plunkett and Ben Varner.
41:54Both of them were really wonderful people.
41:56It was heartbreaking.
41:58Ben Varner, he was very gentle.
42:01Wouldn't hurt a fly.
42:03Eric was just a regular kid.
42:06He was an amazing, normal kid.
42:12And that's how he should be remembered.
42:16One of the things that I wish I had a better recollection of was the life before he passed away.
42:24That's...
42:25That's what makes me the saddest, I think.
42:33Joseph Mesa's murder spree was a terrible betrayal of this community.
42:37The close-knit student body was deeply shaken, but ultimately made closer.
42:42But the friends and fellow schoolmates of Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner will never take for granted that fellowship.
42:50For they could never have guessed the greatest threat would be one of their own.
42:56But the rest of the city can be thrown around.
42:56They're just a few to check on the public.
42:56And we don't need to have some impact.
42:56We will be the same for you if you guys want to come back home.
42:58That's a great way to see you.
42:59Their family will be the same.
42:59The family will be the same.
42:59The family will be the same as you and as you.
43:00You
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