All language subtitles for I.Went.Undercover.S01E05.No.Turning.Back.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor

[Narrator] A love
triangle turns sinister

when the talk turns to murder...

and a former police
chief gets in on the action.

Bill pagano always scared me.

Everybody knew that he
had a really quick temper

and could be furious
at the drop of a hat.

[Narrator] But when he
secretly puts it all on tape...

[Narrator] ...And the
other woman is identified...

Who messes with
the boss’ daughter?

[Narrator] No one can anticipate

where the bodies will fall.

I was so shocked.

Wow, that’s crazy.

It’s unbelievable.

[Mcgorskey] Detective sergeant
mcgorskey reporting for murder case.

[Narrator] Undercover work is some
of the riskiest in law enforcement.

- [Radio beeps]
- [Man] She’s out of the car.

Okay, video, video, video.

[Narrator] One wrong move...

- [Sirens wailing]
- [Helicopter hovering]

[Narrator] ...Can cost a life.

[Shouting over megaphone]
Police! Get down!

[Narrator] In rare situations,

every day people go undercover

in search of the truth.

They’re willing to risk it all,

even taking down
friends and family.

This isn’t the movies. I
had to actually do this.

[Narrator] Doing the right thing
has never been so dangerous.

[Morley swingle] In 1990, festus,
Missouri was a town of about 8,500 people.

The whole area was about
30 minutes south of St. Louis.

It was predominantly
a blue-collar town,

right along the
Mississippi river.

Festus was the biggest
city in Jefferson county.

But still, it’s kind of an
old-fashioned river town.

[Children cheering]

[Swingle] Friday nights
were high school football.

We rode up and down main
street in our muscle cars.

I worked at the dairy queen,

and I could tell who it
was by the engine sound

from they came around the curb.

I’m like, "that’s so-and-so."

[Narrator] Despite its quaint
appearance, festus has a wild past.

Festus was originally
called tanglefoot.

Back in the day, all the men,
women, would come to festus to drink.

[Denise] They built a
boardwalk across the mud road

that would get the
workers to festus.

And coming back, drunk, they would
get their feet tangled up in the boardwalk

and that’s how festus
got its name tanglefoot.

It was the wild west, and there was
just a lot that went on down there.

You hear the story?

How they got the name of festus?

The mayor opened up a Bible,

put their finger on the
first thing they came to,

and that just
happened to be "festus."

[Both chuckle]

Honest to god’s truth, his wife
flipped open the Bible and...

Put her hand in the book, and
the word it landed on was "festus."

[Laughs] Yeah.

[Narrator] With a new name
comes a new reputation,

and as the century turns,

festus cleans up its
rough and tumble ways.

[Peggy] I really do think it’s kind
of a quintessential small town.

I don’t ever remember
feeling frightened in festus.

[Denise] You felt
safe in a small town

because if somebody
was screaming for help,

somebody’d go outside and
find out what was going on.

It was very safe.

I guess there were things
going behind the scenes

that it didn’t come
out until the shooting.

[Camera shutter clicking]

[Camera shutter clicking]

- It was horrible.
- I couldn’t believe it.

Yeah, it was an atomic blast.

[Denise] I was in shock.

The more I read about it,

the more curious I got.

[Thom] I know that
the telephone lines

were just burning for days.

Wild theories trying to connect
it to all kind of other things.

The primary thing you have
to remember in this case

is you never know
who’s telling the truth.

[Narrator] It all starts with
a man named Tim Todd.

[Camille Anderson] He looks like the
all-American quarterback of an NFL team.

Everybody knew
him, very handsome,

but he’s a big guy,
6’7", 230-240...

[Thom] Everybody always
described him in terms of his size.

And, you know,
he was intimidating,

or he was a gentle giant.

[Narrator] To the outside observer,
Tim Todd leads a charmed life.

But there is
tragedy in his past.

He was really traumatized
by the death of his father

when he was a teenager.

And that is a tough
time for any young man.

I think it can send them looking

for another father
figure in their life.

[Narrator] Tim Todd
went to high school

in the next town
over, in herculaneum.

And there he falls in
love for the first time.

[Camille] He married his
high school sweetheart,

who was adorable.

Cute little blonde.

They just made
the perfect couple.

[Thom] Tim and Patti were
both very good-looking.

And despite their
very young age,

people saw them as
a cute, ideal couple

who really loved each other.

They were married before
they graduated from high school.

You know, he was
hometown-boy-made-good.

[Morley] He had two
children, a son and a daughter.

It seemed like he was the
quintessential American success story.

Tim Todd joined the
festus police department,

21 years old, his first
job in law enforcement,

and that’s how
he met bill pagano.

Bill pagano was
the chief of police.

[Thom] When Tim Todd joined
the festus police department,

he instantly became a
favorite of bill pagano.

[Camille] They were very tight.

Mentor-mentee
kind of relationship,

father figure, son figure.

Bill pagano even
referred to Tim as his son.

[Morley] Bill pagano
himself told many people

that Tim Todd was like
a second son to him.

Many people that
worked with them

even asked them,
"are you related?"

It was clear that they really did
have a very close relationship.

[Camille] Bill pagano was pretty
much the opposite of Tim Todd.

He was short, kind
of... Rotund, if you will.

You know how Tim Todd
was popular in high school

and a good-looking kid,

this was almost the kid I would
think that wanted to be that.

When I think of bill pagano,

I think of that fictional
character, boss hog.

The person in the
community that pulls strings

and is a mover and shaker.

Everybody looked at him like
he was... Almost like a Superman.

He was glad to meet
people on the street

and a big back slapper,

well known beyond festus.

As police chief, bill pagano
did feel larger than life.

And everybody knew him.

He would walk
around town, owning it.

Bill pagano was
a good police chief

in the sense that he built
that police department

into a very effective
law enforcement agency.

He was a family man,

with a wife he was
married to for 25 years.

They had five children.

Unquestionably, he had
helped a lot of people.

[Thom] He showed up
at all the political dinners

and the campaign
rallies and things like that.

[Camille] You pat me on the
back and i’ll pat you on the back.

Little quid pro quo.

Small town politics.

[Narrator] Not everyone comes
out on the right side of bill’s largesse.

Bill pagano was our neighbor

and we played with their kids.

But bill pagano
always scared me.

[Thom] Everybody knew that
he had a really quick temper

and could be furious
at the drop of a hat.

[Morley] He was a person who
craved recognition and power.

But he could use that
power to help his friends

and he could also use that power

to crush his enemies.

[Narrator] Many in town
balked at the police chief’s style.

[Ann] My dad was a pharmacist

at Jefferson memorial hospital

in the late seventies,

there was a quantity of cocaine that
was stolen from the hospital pharmacy.

It was locked in a safe,

and that’s probably why

bill pagano assumed
my father did it.

[Phone ringing]

- He hounded my father.
- [Phone ringing]

He would call him at night

and tell him things like,

"we know you did it,
you just need to confess."

You know, in a small town,

if you get accused of something,

the next thing you know,

everybody knows
you’re accused of it.

[Phone ringing]

This went on for quite a while

and my dad just
started spiraling down.

And finally, they found out...

That...

No, it wasn’t my dad.

Pagano never apologized
for harassing my father.

And my father, he
was never the same.

This was not just his
professional reputation

but it was also his
personal reputation.

He had a nervous breakdown

and the whole thing basically just
ripped my family apart [Voice shaking].

For all of the glamorous
success he had had

as the chief of police,

there was an undercurrent

of a feeling that, "I
am above the law."

[Narrator] That feeling
will soon explode

in a most unexpected way.

[Narrator] Love him or hate him,

bill pagano is a
powerful presence

as festus’ chief of police.

But bill has loftier goals, too.

Bill pagano was
festus’ chief of police.

He started a private
security company,

known as ssi global
security company.

So, by adding the name global,

he was announcing his
ambitions for the company.

[Narrator] Bill runs his growing
security business out of his house.

And that business
is growing fast.

He had started that company
when he was chief of police

as a little side business

and built it into this
multi-million dollar company.

[Thom] It wasn’t long before
he was telling everybody

that he was making more
money from the security company

than he was as police chief

but the job as police chief
was taking more of his time.

Eventually, that was his reason
for leaving the police department.

[Narrator] When bill leaves
the festus police force,

he takes Tim Todd with him.

[Denise] He took Timmy
Todd under his wing

and was training him,

made him his second in command.

Bill began relying a
lot on Timmy Todd,

and Timmy learned
a lot from bill pagano.

[Narrator] Bill isn’t the
only one with dreams

of opening his own business.

Tim Todd takes his money
he makes working with bill

and opens his own
fitness studio in festus.

[Upbeat dance music playing]

[Camille] Now, this was
the early 80s, Jane Fonda,

everybody’s working out,
everybody’s getting in shape.

It was a huge boom,
being a gym rat,

so he wanted to
open his own gym.

And he did need a little
help getting that loan

and again, that’s where
bill pagano comes in.

He made some phone calls to
make sure he could get that loan.

People from all over
the county, I think,

went there because Tim had
built himself into this muscle man,

and I think everybody thought,

"well, it works for him,
it could work for me."

So he did pretty
good business there.

They had a lot of clients.

Women would come for gymnastics
or dance lessons and things.

He felt like he had
gotten married too soon

and hadn’t sowed
all his wild oats.

He just was a man who
seemed to have it all.

He was clearly a man who
was not suited to monogamy.

He and I would go out
and we’d travel a long way

and we’d stay in motels.

He did have an issue with
being a one-woman man.

[Morley] Married his
high school sweetheart,

but apparently felt
he’d missed out on a lot,

so he had affairs
with all these women.

[Tom] I don’t know
if he got lonely

or if he just felt like he
had to have somebody,

but of course, being
the way he looked,

he was always being approached

or always being, you
know, propositioned.

[Narrator] There’s one girlfriend
that gets the festus rumor mill buzzing.

Bill pagano’s teenage
daughter, Stephanie.

Tim Todd was seeing
Stephanie pagano, bill’s daughter.

Who messes with
the boss’ daughter?

Stephanie was 17, that’s
all you need to know, right?

She’s in high school.

Cute little thing, she was
an aerobics instructor,

she was very in shape.

They immediately hit it off,

even though that’s
his boss’ daughter.

They strike up an affair.

And you know, all the ladies

are working out in the gym, too,

and the gentlemen,

and they’re seeing
these two flirting.

He’s 6’7", you can’t
miss him, he’s a big guy.

And they’re not shy about their
touchy-feely, smoochy-woochy stuff.

It was public knowledge
that this affair was going on.

Rumors fly, you
know how that is.

Small town especially.

[Narrator] It doesn’t take long for
word to get back to Tim todd’s boss

and stephanie’s
father, bill pagano.

[Morley] It was
secret for some time

until finally bill
pagano figured it out.

[Thom] Of course, bill pagano
was hearing about the affair, too.

And he wasted no time
in talking to Tim about it.

[Narrator] Surprisingly,
bill’s reaction to the affair

with his 17-year-old daughter
is anything but typical.

The shocking part
was bill pagano,

from all accounts,
was okay with it.

His approach to Tim Todd
was more or less to encourage it.

"I don’t want you to
get rid of my daughter

because she will be
coming home and crying

and that’s not
gonna work for me."

[Narrator] Instead,
bill has another idea.

He made it clear
that he wanted Tim

to leave his wife Patti

and marry Stephanie.

It’s... unbelievable.

It’s crazy.

It’s weird.

[Narrator] Tim Todd
sees things a bit differently.

He could have divorced her,

but he decided instead that
he had an ultimate answer,

a permanent answer,

and that was to kill her.

[Narrator] Tim and
Patti todd’s marriage

has been strained for years.

[Thom] While Tim
was seeing Stephanie

over a period of
about three years,

Tim and Patti
separated at least twice.

On the other hand,

Tim was known to be very
involved with his children.

He loved his children,

and seemed to be a good father.

And him and Patti would
reconcile each time they separated.

[Tom] He loved his wife Patti

and I know he loved his kids,

but Stephanie had given
him, like, an ultimatum,

or made it clear that she was
wanting him to leave his wife

and settle down with her.

[Narrator] As the
pressure builds,

Tim Todd looks for someone to
deal with his wife... Permanently.

Once he decided he
wanted Patti Todd dead,

he first went to a
couple of people

that might be called amateurs.

A 21-year-old weightlifter
at his fitness center,

worked out with him frequently.

He began having
conversations with him,

"would you be interested
in murdering my wife?"

The weightlifter first
thought he was joking,

but then realized
he was serious,

and he was talking
about 10,000 dollars.

He also talked to
another fellow from Florida

who had recently
moved to the area,

talked to him about, "would you
be interested in killing my wife?"

That discussion ended
up not leading to anything.

Then he talked to pagano.

Instead of just throwing ice
water on the idea from the get-go,

bill pagano went
along with the idea.

[Narrator] The former
police chief has a secret.

He is recording
every conversation

he and Tim Todd have.

Now, bill is in the
security background,

so what’s he gonna do?

He’s gonna tape-record
the conversation.

[Camille] "You’re like
my son, I love you."

And then Tim says,

"I think I wanna
get rid of my wife.

And when I say ’get rid
of, ’ I don’t mean divorce,

or take her to Minneapolis
and drop her off,

I want to get rid of
her permanently."

And so bill pagano stresses,

"I can help you, but
this is permanent."

[Morley] "Are you sure you
just don’t want to get a divorce?"

And Tim Todd would say,

"yes, yes I am sure.
I’ve thought about this.

Yes, I do want this to happen."

[Narrator] So the two
men start discussing

how best to get the job done.

They talked about the
stairs at patti’s home.

Bill pagano and Tim even
discuss rigging a tanning bed

so that it could appear
that an accident happened

and fried Patti to death
in the tanning bed.

"Are you sure? Because
there’s no turning back."

This is the mother
of your two children.

And they’re debating
this as if it’s a fishing trip

and what boat
they’re gonna take out.

[Morley] Tim todd’s life
was spinning out of control.

His love life was a shambles.

Tim todd’s relationship
with Stephanie was volatile.

It was on-again, off-again.

He can’t keep the
wife and the girlfriend,

that’s just not practical.

At the same time
that bill pagano

was encouraging
him to leave Patti

and marry Stephanie,

Tim was telling Patti

that he wanted to end the
relationship with Stephanie.

And he was in the act
of reconciling with Patti.

So that had to be a
difficult plate to juggle.

[Camille] One of the
things that was so sad,

is bill pagano asked about
his kids, "what do you think?"

In his little dream,
he was like,

"it’s gonna be great,
i’m gonna raise the kids."

Listening to those tapes,
they were playing each other.

I mean, they’re moving in
circles around each other.

Pagano then beings
talking about hitmen.

[Narrator] Bill pagano says he
knows just the right people for the job.

They’re laying this plan for how
they’re going to get rid of Patti.

[Narrator] So how would
a small-town police chief

have the wherewithal
to hire a hitman?

[Thom] I’ve said this before

that bill pagano
never did anything

to discourage the rumors

that he was involved
with organized crime.

[Denise] I’d heard as a kid,

since the paganos were
Italian and they had the market,

that there were rumors that
they were involved with the mafia.

And you hear it, you
think, "yeah, okay."

I thought, "just ’cause
their last name’s Italian,

doesn’t mean
they’re in the mob."

[Camille] Now, he says, "I
need a picture of your wife."

And he gives him a nice, cute
little two-shot of him and his wife

so that the hitman knows
what he’s looking for.

[Narrator] Then, the
conversation turns to money.

[Camille] So 6’7"
Tim goes to the bank

and withdraws
5,000 dollars in cash

and goes back to pagano.

[Morley] Pagano said, "we won’t know
exactly how or when it’s gonna be done,

but we’ll give all this
information to the hitman

and the hitman, with his experience,
will decide how to handle it."

On march 26, 1990,

a call comes in to 911

and it is chief bill pagano.

[Woman on phone] 911 emergency.

[Sirens wailing]

[Camille] They rush out there.

And when they get there,
there is somebody shot.

And they’re dead,
they’re on the ground.

But it’s not Patti,
it’s Tim Todd.

Tim Todd was lying on the floor

of bill pagano’s garage

with a massive shotgun
blast wound to his face.

A wooden-handled revolver

was found on the
floor of the garage

near Tim todd’s corpse.

[Narrator] When the officer on
the scene lowers the garage door,

he finds even more
blood evidence.

And then from the
inside of the garage,

you could see a spray of blood

back from behind where
Tim todd’s head had been.

And various bullet
holes in the garage.

[Narrator] One of
the first to the scene

is Jefferson county
sheriff buck buerger,

an old friend of pagano’s

from his days as the chief of
the festus police department.

Pagano wastes little
time getting to the point.

Bill comes right out and says,

"I had to shoot his ass."

It’s like, "wow, that’s crazy."

It was disbelief at first,
but then it was like...

Yeah.

I was so shocked.

Bill pagano?

Shot Timmy Todd?

This... just... [stammering]

That’s not right.
Something else is going on.

There’s no question whatsoever

that Tim Todd was
shot by bill pagano.

[Narrator] The only
question is, "why?"

What happened between
these two close friends

bill pagano said it
was self-defense,

that Tim came at him with a gun,

and he had no other
choice but to shoot Tim dead.

Bill pagano tells the
sheriff at the crime scene

that he had summoned Tim
to his office there in the house.

[Morley] What he said was that

"I was trying to make
this arrest of Tim Todd,

I was just doing this
to help Tim Todd.

I was going to take him into custody
and get him mental health treatment."

Pagano says, "oh,
and by the way,

here’s some recordings I made,"

drawing everybody’s attention
to these recordings he’s made

in the two weeks
preceding the killing.

Bill thought once
they hear the tapes,

you know, with everything
he had told them in advance

about Tim wanting
to hire a hitman,

that they would just quickly conclude
that it was a matter of self-defense

and he would never
have to face charges.

[Narrator] Bill says that Tim
was spiraling out of control

and was talking
about killing his wife.

And after trying
to talk Tim out of it,

bill had no choice
but to step in.

[Thom] As Tim
entered the garage,

he came out with a shotgun

and told him that he could agree

to be committed to a
mental health institution

or he was gonna have
to place him under arrest.

Pagano said that at that point

Tim Todd lets out a
screech like a demon

and bends ’round
to dive behind the car

in the garage,

and as he’s turning,

pagano shoots him in the head.

And then, when he’s down,

shoots him another
time in the face.

He told those
arriving at the scene

that he knew that Tim was armed

and he was afraid
that if he spun around

and dove behind the car

that he would be able to get
his gun out and kill pagano.

[Morley] This was
never a "whodunit"

because pagano
admitted right off the bat,

"I shot him."

This all along was the issue of
was this lawful self-defense or not?

The very first news story,

the very next day
after it happened,

the sheriff even announced
it was self-defense.

[Narrator] Things take a
turn when the local prosecutor,

William Johnson,
recuses himself,

saying that he is too close
to pagano to remain impartial.

[Thom] When William
Johnson recused himself,

he ended up appointing a
fresh-faced young prosecutor

from cape girardeau,
morley swingle.

Morley swingle was
pretty much an unknown,

and I know that bill’s attorneys

were telling him
that they thought,

"this is gonna be easy-peasy.

It may not even get to trial."

[Narrator] Morley swingle
has no ties to bill pagano

nor the Jefferson
county political machine,

and opens his own investigation

into what happened
on march 26th.

My first step was to
meet with the sheriff

and his chief detectives.

And the four of us sat
at a table and I said,

"what was he killed with?"

And the sheriff
said, "a shotgun."

And I said, "where was he
hit, the chest or the head?"

Because every true
self-defense case i’d ever seen,

the guy is coming at you and you
have to get off a shot to save yourself.

And he said, "well,
he was shot twice.

Once in the face, once
in the back of the head."

And that’s when I realized,

"oh, man. What
have I gotten into?"

[Morley] There were lots of
inconsistencies with pagano’s story

that this was
lawful self-defense.

Number one are the
wounds themselves.

The shotgun blast to
the back of the head,

which is the first shot.

Then the shotgun
blast to the face,

when the man is
lying on the floor,

that is not consistent
with self-defense.

[Narrator] Swingle
knows he needs more

if he wants to get a jury to
convict a local celebrity of murder.

[Morley] It became clear that
there was this potential plot

about murdering Patti Todd,

so Patti Todd was interviewed

the very day that
Tim Todd was killed.

[Narrator] Investigators
play Patti the tapes

where her husband
discusses killing her,

but shockingly, has
her own story to tell.

Patti said that Tim
had told her that pagano

had threatened to kill him.

To this day, I believe that Patti
Todd really had serious doubts

whether Tim was
really planning to kill her.

Of course she didn’t
want to believe it,

and I personally think she
convinced herself it wasn’t true.

He had given her this
love story song-and-dance

that he was just biding
his time with pagano

and sort of forgot the fact

that just a month or two before

she filed an ex parte order
saying she was afraid for her life

’cause he’d
threatened to kill her.

[Narrator] Swingle’s investigation
dredges up new information, too.

That included a life
insurance policy on Tim Todd.

There was a 1.5 million insurance
policy payable to pagano’s company

on the life of Tim Todd.

There are a lot of people that have
been murdered for less money than that.

One of the questions,
of course, was,

"what the heck is going
on with Tim todd’s love life?"

Days before the killing,

there was another argument
on the same parking lot

between Tim Todd
and Stephanie pagano

that several witnesses reported.

It was angry. I mean,
it was confrontational.

[Narrator] Might this final argument
between Tim and his daughter

be the thing that pushed
bill pagano over the line?

[Morley] The day
before the murder,

a 14-year-old girl saw Tim Todd
and bill pagano in an argument.

And pagano is using
all kinds of profanity,

calling him every
filthy name in the book,

poking Tim Todd in the chest,

saying "this has got to stop."

Tim Todd shrugs and says,

"well, she’s a grown woman."

And pagano says,

"this has got to stop,
i’m gonna get you."

And 24 hours later,
Tim Todd is dead.

[Narrator] Three weeks
after Tim todd’s death,

morley swingle brings
charges of first degree murder

against bill pagano.

[Camille] So this
was like a soap opera.

You gotta remember,
this was before cable TV.

So people were tuning into this
to see how this would play out,

what was happening,

who was going
to be sent to jail,

were they going
to be sent to jail?

[Narrator] Tensions are
so high in Jefferson county

that the trial is moved
to pulaski county,

more than an hour
away from festus.

Back in Jefferson
county, for the trial,

there were
essentially two camps.

Oh, people
absolutely chose sides.

There were the ones who said,

"well, he shot and killed
the man, he’s guilty."

And then there’s ones that said,

"well... Timmy Todd was
trying to have his wife killed.

And he was trying to arrest him

and he did the right thing."

[Camille] I think it was
ironic that the recordings

that bill made that he thought
was going to protect him

and make him, "i’m
the good person,

I didn’t do anything wrong"

were being used against him.

[Morley] Those recordings
are a two-edged sword.

There’s a real negative
side for pagano as well.

Nobody can listen
to those tapes,

hearing this cold-blooded
sound of pagano’s voice,

the arrogance
that comes through,

and his knowledgeable
talk about hiring a hitman.

[Morley] It ended up being
a four-week long jury trial,

which at that time was
the longest criminal jury trial

in modern Missouri history.

The jury deliberated
over six hours

and found William Nick pagano
guilty of second degree murder

and armed criminal action.

So he got a total of 23 years.

It was like, "oh... my... god."

[Narrator] Pagano’s attorneys
immediately filed an appeal,

keeping him out on bail.

[Thom] He was allowed to remain
free during the appeals process

on the 250,000 dollars
he had originally posted.

But he lost.

So, unannounced,

two deputies showed
up to take him in.

Bill answered the door

and he said, "hey, fellas,

i’ll be with you
in just a minute.

Let me get a change of clothes."

And he steps back
into his bedroom

and they follow him back there.

And he’s in his closet,

and he turns and
comes up with a gun

and shoots himself
right behind the ear.

He’s dead on the spot.

Bill pagano never
saw a day in jail.

[Denise] It’s very tragic.

To do it in his own home,

that was unbelievable
to a lot of people,

that he would kill himself
instead of going to prison.

I’m sorry, but I was very
happy that man was gone

because that was the
guy who destroyed my dad.

Bill pagano was a man who wanted
to be in control of everything in his life

and he was having
difficulty controlling Tim Todd

and his relationship
with Stephanie.

Was the motive that pagano
wanted Tim Todd to marry his daughter

and was mad that Tim Todd
was going back to seeing his wife?

Was pagano mad that Tim
Todd was still seeing his daughter?

Was pagano wanting
the 1.5 million dollars

of life insurance
that was payable

to pagano’s company

if he would kill Tim Todd?

[Thom] I’ve covered
a lot of murder trials

for a number of years
for the post-dispatch.

I’ve never seen one that ended

where nobody knew
exactly what went on.

Nobody will ever know
exactly what happened.