Original subtitles

Who killed Byron?

Who killed Byron griffy?

Not knowing why somebody would have murdered him

was the biggest thing.

We didn't have a murder weapon.

We didn't have any real DNA at the scene.

Byron was laid out almost like one would be laid in a casket.

He was staged.

Tommy tomlin and Cory higgs were obviously on

the suspect list.

But Byron's friends, Charles and Anthony,

might be hiding something.

We'd known Charles and Anthony for years.

Anthony was so kind and patient.

Well...

Yeah.

Charles and Tony are not brothers.

They're together. They're lovers.

It was all just crazy. It was, like, wait, what?

Charles and Tony are gay and have been for 24 years.

Now Tony's leaving Charles for my mother,

who's leaving my stepfather, who raised us.

What the is happening?

I'm furious.

I am so upset...

That I would introduce Tony into our family

and that the two of them would just blow it all up

for their own selfish needs.

Not only did that rock of your family get

just completely destroyed,

you know, Charles and Tony...

Boom! That's blown up too.

We brought Laura in to interview her to see if Anthony

had disclosed anything to her

about the murder of Byron griffy.

We did start off calling ourselves brothers.

Initially, figured that would help us get

broke in to the town.

Yes, Charles and I were together for a long time,

but we weren't really close physically

for the last... 10 or 15 years.

There was no romantic inclination between us.

That had already faded by the time I was starting to have

feelings for Laura.

A few hours prior to this happening, I just told Charles,

"bottom line is, I'm not gonna stay with you."

Charles's personality was controlling,

and I was okay with giving up

businesses and personal belongings

to just try and be happy.

Laura told me that she was moving out.

She had a place to go.

So I packed a bunch of clothes into a garbage bag

and threw them in my car and went.

I knew that Charles was very vindictive.

I knew there would be problems in the future.

But I was hoping to work through that.

Always an optimist, I guess.

Before I had even gotten to Laura,

Charles had called her and let her in on everything.

So she was freaking out pretty bad.

I told her, yeah, it was true,

but we weren't together for years physically.

It was just basically a convenience

because we were working the same businesses.

I told her I was gonna go talk to Charles again,

and I was hoping I could just reason with him

to be human about it.

Drove all the way home. When I got there,

Charles was gone somewhere, so I left him a note.

I had business credit cards and the business phone,

so I just set it on the table, and I just walked out.

I was a police officer in Florence in 2012.

I believe it was a Sunday night.

When I got called into the police department,

they said, "hey, Anthony's missing."

There's a suicide note.

911, what's the emergency?

Charles was thinking Anthony was going to kill himself.

He starts crying. You know, he's really upset.

He was telling me, you know, he really loved Anthony.

He was hoping he was all right.

And he told us to check where the horses were.

My mom was so distraught.

She's like, "Charles told me Anthony's gonna kill himself...

we have to find him."

So my friends and I started driving around town.

There's cop cars everywhere.

All of 'em, going to the church, the main street grill,

all the places, you know.

So we're like, "man, where would he go?"

Like, "what would he do?"

Where is he gonna kill himself?

I didn't know any of this was happening.

I was hanging out with my horses.

Yes, I had a firearm with me, but at the time, I always had

a firearm with me.

A couple officers from the Florence police department showed up.

So I just came wandering up, "hey, what's going on, guys?

And "how are you doing, buddy?"

And they're like, "fine, how are you doing?"

They were doing an evaluation to see if I was suicidal.

If I wanted to commit suicide, I'd have done it.

There was no reason not to.

But I didn't, because I wasn't gonna commit suicide.

The officers took me to Florence police department.

Law enforcement did receive the note

that Anthony had authored.

Some believed it to be an admission of guilt

with the murder of Byron griffy.

It says, "I hold no one responsible"

"for my actions but myself.

"Please don't hold anyone else responsible

"for anything that I have done." And then I signed it,

"Anthony s. Wright."

I don't know... it was a personal note

to Charles about Laura, and that's all it was.

If I'd have known CBI was gonna read it,

I probably would have worded it differently.

We brought Charles in so that they both could be questioned.

We had realized there were inconsistencies

in their story.

We were hoping at some point,

one would turn on the other,

and say something that hadn't been said before.

When I learned that Charles and Anthony weren't brothers,

wow, it was a sense of betrayal.

I think a lot of people in Florence felt that way.

It was almost like the whole town got duped.

As an investigator for the fremont county coroner's office,

I would have to call funeral homes at strange hours

of the night.

There'd be a call to Charles giebler

for him to come pick up somebody that just passed away,

and he'd just say, "hold on, talk to Anthony,"

and then roll over and give the phone to Anthony.

So, you know, at that point, it's like, well, I don't...

Sleep with my brother.

Gay relationships have been in this world from the beginning

of time... it's nothing new.

It's who you are, and some people can't accept that.

Lying about who you are and not wanting to tell everyone

is self-preservation.

It's really hard for me to wrap my head around

how long of a relationship they had.

This was a full-fledged life that these guys built together.

And so it's really hard that Tony's never really

addressed it or talked about it.

And then, being gay myself, it's like, you couldn't spot

two other gay guys?

I do understand why it wouldn't be public information,

but they were like family to us.

They could have trusted at least us

to know their secret.

During the interviews with Charles and Anthony,

they stated that they left Fowler about one o'clock.

They drove to pueblo, they ate lunch at a buffet restaurant,

which they had a receipt for.

We contacted the buffet restaurant to see if we could

get some surveillance footage from the cameras.

Unfortunately, the cameras had already erased themselves.

As we're putting the timeline together, if they would have

left Fowler a little before one o'clock,

it's about a 35-minute drive from Fowler to the buffet.

Receipts showed that they were stamped in at 2:26,

which, you pay before you eat.

So there was almost an entire hour that was unaccounted for.

They say that they're driving their Mercedes,

they decide to go to lunch,

then go by the home depot to buy the deck box

that they're gonna place out at the Marina

for their boat.

We got surveillance footage that shows where they had

bought the deck box,

and the investigator was able to identify that they were

in a white astro Van.

That is totally inconsistent with them being in a Mercedes.

To the best of my knowledge,

the car that we drove down there was a black Mercedes.

That was honestly, primary mode of transportation for me.

And my brain told me that that's what I was driving

that day because it made sense.

Both Charles and Anthony seemed to forget

that they were in the astro Van.

There was no other seating in the Van,

other than the two front seats.

Charles and Anthony had no intent on

picking Byron up and taking him anywhere that day

because there was nowhere for an 80-year-old man

to sit in that Van.

Charles and Anthony were not there to take their friend for

a birthday lunch.

They were there to murder Byron.

Charles and Anthony denied everything.

So we start going through and looking closer.

We learned they had some very deep, dark secrets

that made me think,

"how can this case get any crazier?"

The CBI had told me that

Charles and Anthony were suspects.

They had a motive to kill my dad.

I mean, it's all about money.

The police were really focused on Charles and Anthony.

So it made me kind of second-guess Cory.

Charles and Anthony's the only ones that knew

that he was going to the farm.

The farm itself is isolated.

There would be no way that

a neighbor would have heard a gunshot.

Charles and Anthony's story was falling apart.

And during the investigation, we uncovered some

less than savory details about them.

I think most funeral directors want to generally help people.

And there's some that want to take advantage

of people at their lowest point.

The funeral home I worked for

had a great reputation in this community.

They've been in this community for generations.

And then these guys come in and just snowball everybody.

The people that hated Charles and Anthony were kind of

the other business people in town

because Charles did not play very well with them.

A funeral director, it's all about being professional.

You know, you go out to somebody's house

and take one of their loved ones out the door

that has just passed away... You shouldn't be in a t-shirt.

These guys just kind of did whatever they wanted.

Charles would show up in cargo shorts, flip-flops.

I just couldn't believe it.

I thought it was so unprofessional.

Charles and Tony, they always put you in that

situation where you were like,

"that's kind of sketchy or like morally cloudy."

They asked us to do a few shaky things here or there.

Felt like you were kind of like in the little mini town mob.

And Charles was the mob boss. Then we were the henchmen.

These people were doing things that they shouldn't be doing.

I mean, it felt like they were definitely out to get us.

A smoke grenade was thrown through the window

of the mortuary.

And it's not like everybody in Florence

just has smoke grenades,

but Charles giebler was heavily into weapons.

Can't prove it was them...

but nobody else is going to do that.

And then, years back, right around pioneer day,

before the big parade, I had brought over

the '39 packard and the '38 Cadillac limo.

It was very important to bill holt, the owner of

the mortuary, that those vehicles be in that parade.

We drove them over there the night before.

The next day...

All the ignition wires had been cut.

Car wouldn't start.

Somebody didn't want us in that parade and went in and snipped

the wires behind the dash.

It was obviously Charles and Anthony.

Who else would do that?

Charles always likes to talk about how he would get one over,

especially on the IRS or the government

or any kind of authority figure.

Charles started that church so that he could become tax exempt

and kind of funnel some funds through there.

That was definitely not the first, like, tax scheme.

Charles told me that you would not believe the tax breaks.

That's why they did it.

One of the obligations that law enforcement has is to

investigate the background of any potential suspect.

We became aware that Charles had been found cat fishing.

He was setting up these online relationships,

clearly sexual in nature, and representing himself

as a younger individual.

Charles had a rock-and-roll mortician persona

that he was trying to keep up,

that he was, you know, younger, in a band,

worked as a mortician.

Charles... the things that he did in his life,

like the cat fishing and going into politics and the church,

being a bishop, that played into his narcissism.

He liked to show off,

be the man that people were talking about.

Charles definitely thought of himself as above the law.

Maybe he thought of himself as the law is more accurate

because he had his own sense of justice and he also had god

on his side. Charles also liked to boast.

He would say, "if I was ever going to kill someone",

I would use a .22 to the back of the head.

They were very much a threat, I believe, to the community.

Everything that Charles and Anthony did was all a scam.

And you've got to just wonder...

What happened to Irene witty?

Irene witty and her husband frank had lived in Florence

almost all their lives.

They operated the funeral home next door.

When frank witty died, we took care of his wife

because her family kind of just left her high and dry.

I'd heard bad stories from Charles and Tony about

how awful Irene's family was.

And they're the ones that took care of her.

They took her soup,

they fed her, they took her to the doctor.

Charles took over the financial situation,

and a week before she passed away, she had changed her will

and left everything to them.

The number was 700 to a million dollars.

100% believe Charles was part of Irene's death.

Charles and Anthony always spent money.

They liked to flash it around.

But after Byron died, they took it up a notch.

They bought boats, jet skis.

They started spending money like crazy.

At this time, business was slow.

Charles and Tony weren't making much money at all.

The Colorado department of revenue was

attempting to shut down some of the businesses

that Charles and Anthony owned for failure to pay taxes.

So they were in financial trouble.

It made us believe that that would have been a large motive

as to why Byron was murdered.

The next step was to get a search warrant for

the white astro Van.

Knowing that they had bought the deck box and that they were

at the north shore Marina, we thought that they might have

discarded the murder weapon.

Divers were sent to look for a weapon.

Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain

the weapon from the Marina.

The evidence from the astro Van came up empty.

There was no DNA.

There was no blood in the astro Van.

So again, we were pretty much at square one.

At the same time,

we had not been able to rule out other suspects,

Tommy tomlin and Cory higgs.

Tommy tomlin did take a polygraph, which he failed.

We couldn't pinpoint where Cory's whereabouts were

and Cory's alibi did have some holes in it.

As we began to dig deeper, we found that Cory

had a very good motive to hurt Byron.

Cory is extremely intelligent.

He can take control of any situation that you put him in.

About today, ok.

Alright.

So...

Cory higgs was Byron's step-grandson.

About a year before the murder, Cory had said that

Byron would give him cash for sexual favors

and that Byron would take care of him that way.

And...

I think Cory accused Byron because...

None of us were bowing down to him anymore

to get him out of foster care.

Accusing my dad just seemed like...

That would have been something he'd have done...

Just to hurt us.

So, Byron is arrested.

When we had the conversation with Byron,

after he had posted bail, he said,

"I did not do anything."

I did believe Byron.

A case was opened,

and Byron was charged with sexual assault on a child

by one in position of trust.

Byron was found guilty.

After that, my dad couldn't see his grandkids.

He went from...

The most loving, caring person...

To the most depressed, withdrawn person.

He was embarrassed and ashamed that people believed

what Cory had said.

He was scared that Cory was gonna sue him.

I've known Byron for years... we were friends.

Several weeks before he actually died,

Byron had said, "I have a letter to give to you."

It was a letter in a sealed envelope.

And he said,

"if something happens to me, be sure you do an autopsy

and look at this letter."

And he said, it's just concerning

because of the situation surrounding him and Cory.

Did he feel a threat against his life?

Was something going on that was a major concern to him

that was gonna happen?

What would have led Cory to actually murder Byron

was my big thing.

Time had passed.

The court case with him was over.

Cory didn't gain anything out of any of it,

other than being able to hold Byron accountable.

Cory lost everybody that was family to him.

After Cory had taken his polygraph, results came in,

and it was found that he passed it.

At that point in time, Cory was ruled out

as a suspect.

We had no evidence that Cory was there,

that he was involved.

There's nothing that attaches him to this crime,

other than the fact that he had been molested

by Byron griffy.

So that ruled him out in our eyes.

I truly feel that if Cory would have walked up to

the farm, Byron would have been on the phone calling 911.

I don't think Byron would have willingly opened the door

for Cory prior to the murder.

During the investigation, we begin to realize that

there's another side to Byron that people didn't know.

Everybody knew, the young males,

if you needed money for something,

you'd just go see Byron.

He had ways of letting them earn money.

Never got any specifics.

Byron, I think, was embarrassed.

You have to remember that men of his age, who were gay,

they didn't talk about it.

Byron got a divorce, long ago, from linette's mom.

I personally never spoke to Byron about sexuality,

but I think that Byron was extremely lonely

as far as... A partner-type relationship.

Tommy tomlin was someone who would do just about

anything for money.

As time went on, we started to hear that he was in

a relationship with Byron, that he kind of withheld

from us from the start.

So the next step was to meet with Tommy again.

Alright.

Ok.

There was a relationship between Tommy and Byron that

was more than your everyday handyman.

He would do odd jobs around the house.

Byron would invite him over to have Turkey pot pies

and to watch porn.

And Byron would give him money for sexual favors.

With Tommy tomlin, knowing his drug issues,

if Tommy killed Byron in a heat of passion, it probably

wouldn't have been at the farm,

and it probably wouldn't have been as clean as it was.

So it was at this time that we kind of started shying away

from Tommy as a top suspect.

What motive did he have?

I mean, he could have worked for my dad every day

and got money.

And now he gets nothing, so I didn't see that

Tommy had any motive to do it.

This was a very hard case.

We felt that we were getting very close to making

arrest warrants for Charles and Anthony.

But the moment we thought we had it figured out,

there was a turn, and now we had another

dead body on our hands.

A few months after Byron's murder, we felt that we were

getting very close to being able to make

an arrest of Charles and Anthony.

And we were in the process of drafting the arrest warrant,

and they were aware that they were being investigated

for the murder of Byron.

It was tough.

We're dealing with the family collapse.

My mom had left my stepdad, Dave, for Tony,

and now this murder investigation is

fully happening, and, like,

Charles and Anthony are suspects.

But they were always assuring me that this was nothing,

and it was gonna go away.

Charles was just absolutely wrought.

Anger, fear, stress,

and you could just see it on him.

Charles called, he told me, Anthony had left him,

and that they were gonna be charged with murder,

and picked up the next day.

So he said, "you need to come get your dad's coins."

CBI told me to go then, but I was scared

and I didn't trust Charles.

We knew that Charles and Anthony were accused of

killing Byron, so we took Harry tomlin with us

just to be safe.

So I brought a weapon with me.

Basically, I was their guardian angel.

Charles and Tony lived in a big, beautiful victorian home

that they had restored.

It was the first and only time I had ever been in their house.

We weren't allowed to go to the secret room.

Charles and his friend were bringing everything to

the living room.

When the state quarters came out,

there's 50 states.

My dad had bought four boxes of each.

They gave me back 60 boxes, a couple pennies, whatever.

It was nothing compared to what they took.

But Charles said nothing.

No explanation as to where my dad's money went.

I was told there was a million dollars worth of coins,

but there was a substantial amount missing.

When Charles and Anthony came out to the farm

to get Byron's coins, they used a very heavy-duty Van.

Charles and Anthony loaded that Van until it was squatting.

So you knew that you were getting to capacity.

When we went to pick up the coins,

we had just a regular pickup truck

and it didn't even fill half of the bed.

Like the truck didn't squat at all.

Charles kept saying, "I wanted to show you something."

Like, he kept trying to get me alone...

In, like, a dining room area,

but I was scared of him and I didn't want to be

in a room alone with him.

Harry made sure that that didn't happen.

None of us were ever alone with Charles.

As we were driving back from Florence,

I called CBI and told them

what all had happened, and everything.

And after I hung up, we kept driving.

And when we got about at pueblo west,

the passenger side window just shattered.

Somebody came up and shot out the side window, and then...

Sped off, and then at the next light,

flipped around and went back towards Florence.

I don't know... I think I'm lucky that

I wasn't shot that night.

The next day, I was trying to get ahold of Charles.

I had some questions about the funeral home.

I had chatted with Pam at the restaurant, and Pam was

trying to get ahold of him also.

I got a call from Angela, who was running the mortuary.

She said she hadn't heard from Charles, and she wanted me

to meet her over at the house.

And I told her, "absolutely not, I'm sorry, I can't."

But Tony brought Pam the key to the house, and we drove out

to the house.

We were really, kind of hoping the car wouldn't be there,

and that he'd just be somewhere.

But the car was there, and so we went in,

and we couldn't find him upstairs.

And we went downstairs...

And found him in the downstairs bathroom.

My friends and I were going by...

Charles's house.

And there's ambulances everywhere.

I pull over.

Just enough time to watch them...

Pull him out on the stretcher.

And I was like, "what the?"

There's a lot of unanswered questions about this case.

It would be nice if somebody stepped up and answered

for what they did.

The questions that I still have 12 years later...

Is ridiculous.

It's suspicious that Charles passed away.

Somebody wanted him dead.

I think it was a suicide because he didn't want to have

to go through prison time.

The big unanswered question I have is what really

happened to Charles?

Was he involved with Byron's murder?

And what happened to all of Byron's gold?

Where did it go?

Where did it all go?