Original subtitles

Jim had posted a diamond ring for sale on Craigslist.

He opens the door...

And that's when the trouble began.

He said, "Tell me the combination

or I'm gonna kill you."

And she hears three gunshots.

We needed to know who pulled that trigger.

We have four suspects, two gunmen,

and they're quickly turning on each other.

These people are like Satan's spawn.

They went in, guns drawn, loaded.

It wasn't an accident that Jim was shot.

They were just selling an item on Craigslist.

They opened the door and then suddenly...

...their lives are shattered.

Edgewood, Washington is a small town.

It's located south of King County

where Seattle is.

It's a very rural community.

It's a sleepy community.

It's a place where the neighbours know each other.

Everybody knows each other's kids.

They have nice homes, good schools.

It's a very family-friendly place.

It's a place that I would have raised my family.

It's just a very nice, comfortable area.

On the evening of April 28th, 2010,

the Sanders family is at home watching television upstairs.

On the couch is James Sanders, otherwise known as Jim,

and his wife Charlene.

Both Jim and Charlene had sons when they married.

And with them in the house are Jim Jr and Chandler.

Jim is a tremendous family man.

He works for a construction company,

very active in his family and kids' lives.

They're the most important thing to him.

Charlene is a hairdresser.

They're good churchgoing people.

They're very active in their community.

She and Jim are madly in love.

At 9:18 the doorbell rings.

Even though it was late, James and Charlene were expecting somebody

that had responded to a Craigslist advertisement.

Jim had posted a diamond ring for sale.

He and Charlene were planning to use the money

for an upcoming family vacation.

He had made an appointment for a woman to come look at the ring.

Jim opens the door...

..and he's greeted by a male and female

who said that they were there to look at the ring.

The male is an Asian male, probably in his early twenties,

and with him is a Caucasian female,

and she's also in her early twenties and has dark brown hair.

They ask a question about the ring that Jim can't answer.

So, Jim calls up to Charlene, who's upstairs.

Charlene comes downstairs...

and for some reason, she knows something's wrong.

It just doesn't seem right.

The male flashes a wad of cash,

asks if this is enough,

and that's when the trouble began.

Suddenly, he pulls out a .380 calibre handgun.

The female yells, "Get down, get down!"

ordering Charlene and Jim to the floor.

As this occurs, two more men then enter the home.

They are both twentyish black males.

One's thin, one's heavy.

They were both wearing bandanas,

covering the lower portions of their face.

One of them is armed with a .22-calibre Colt revolver.

The first male zip-ties Jim and Charlene's hands

behind their back.

Meanwhile,

the two African-American men went upstairs...

...and dragged the two children down into the kitchen.

The kids were forced at gunpoint to lay down on the floor.

I can't imagine having the parents witness their kids go through this,

or the kids seeing their parents like that

and not know what's going on.

Then the male with the revolver,

and the female, started ransacking the house.

They went through drawers in every bedroom,

drawers through the kitchen,

taking anything that looked like it had any value.

They found Charlene and Jimmy's cell phones and they took those.

They physically take the rings off of Charlene and Jim's hands.

Jim and Charlene are saying,

"Just take whatever you want and get out. Just leave us alone."

What happened was

they started ratcheting up the violence and threats.

The Asian male and the heavyset African-American male

were shouting at him, demanding to know, "Where are your valuables?

Where is your safe?"

They didn't have a safe.

Jim had a gun vault in the garage.

He was offering them the combination...

...but they couldn't get it open.

The chubby black male... kicked Charlene several times.

He put the gun to the back of her head and said,

"Tell me the combination or I'm gonna kill you."

He was counting down...

..."Three...

two...

one."

She was sure she was gonna be killed

in front of her husband and her children.

Jim said, "I'll open the safe for you.

I'll do it myself."

They picked him up by his zip-tied hands,

and when they picked him up...

...one of the zip ties broke.

Jim's now struggling with

the initial male that came in the home.

The fight was so violent that the kitchen island -

it was a built-in island - was knocked out of alignment.

Jimmy Jr was not secured in any way,

so he jumps up to help his father.

Jim Jr jumps on the Asian male's back

and the male throws him off and hits him several times

and pistol whips Jim Jr.

Jim fighting now, out of the kitchen into the foyer,

away from the family.

At some point, Jim's down on the floor.

And they've stomped his head.

Charlene's still laying on the ground,

and Chandler's in the kitchen also.

They can't see what's happening.

Charlene can hear the confrontation.

She can hear the yelling.

And she hears three gunshots.

After that, they grabbed what they could

and they fled the house.

Charlene is still zip-tied with her hands behind her back,

yelling, "Jim! Jim, are you OK?"

He's not answering at all.

Jimmy Jr used a pair of scissors to cut that zip tie off.

And Jimmy sees Dad laying on the floor...

...and he's not breathing.

But he thinks he still has a pulse.

And then Jimmy tries to give CPR to his father.

Chandler is frantic.

He calls 911.

Pierce County Sheriff's Department

is dispatched to investigate the scene.

Eight patrol deputies responded,

forensics officers, canine officers,

and homicide detectives.

They contact Charlene and her son, Chandler,

at the neighbour's house.

Jimmy Jr had been taken to the hospital.

I enter the home.

To the left of the main entrance...

...Jim is deceased on the floor.

Right away, we found several shell cases on the ground.

There was one in the entryway, one in the living room,

and one right where the kitchen and entryway meet.

They're photographed and recovered as evidence.

Bullet casings can prove to be very important.

Number one, they can tell investigators

something about the calibre used,

but they can also yield both fingerprints as well as DNA.

When a bullet is loaded into a magazine,

it often requires significant force

that will leave epithelials or skin cells on that casing.

Upstairs bedroom had been obviously ransacked,

and don't know what, if anything, is stolen.

We have to talk to Charlene to find out exactly what is missing.

Charlene gives us a briefing of what happened

and explained the listing of the Craigslist ad.

She already had a huge goose egg welt on her forehead.

She's sitting across the table from me...

...and I'm staring at that goose egg.

When I saw Charlene and the family,

all I could think about was my own.

And she asked me, "So, what am I supposed to do now?

How am I supposed to go on with my life?"

As you can tell, this case got to me.

I told my partner that... we need to catch these people.

One of the things that we did know was stolen

was Charlene and Jimmy's cell phones.

And we could use the GPS locators on those phones to track them.

We received a ping on Charlene's telephone.

It was just off one of the highways leading to and from the area.

After a search,

between the highway and the on-ramp, off-ramp,

we found the phone.

They were just discarded,

like it had been thrown from a moving car, likely.

There's lots of pressure involved in this case.

You know, it's a great family.

They're respected and admired and loved in the community.

And we're wanting to do, you know, everything we can

not just for them but everyone in that community.

Their sense of safety has just been shattered.

The autopsy confirmed Jim was shot once in the left knee...

...once in the right thigh...

once in the right shoulder.

That round traversed his chest cavity,

punctured through his left lung and into the heart...

and that was the fatal shot.

From the bullets you could tell what size gun is fired.

These were .380-calibre bullets.

The bullets were unique.

They are red tip.

They were easily identifiable.

While casings can prove to be important forensic clues,

they're not as important as the actual projectile itself,

which contains what's known as rifling,

which is essentially a fingerprint for a bullet

and can be matched to a specific weapon

and provide definitive direct evidence.

On May 1st, we receive a ping on Jimmy Jr's phone

and the address of the ping that we received

comes back to a nearby residence.

The subjects at this residence are well known to police.

They are involved in burglaries and thefts

and actually have warrants for their arrest.

The SWAT team, they made entry...

...secured everybody that was found in the house.

Peter Maddox and Keeley Gibson are detained for questioning.

Once it was secure,

they turned the scene over to us.

A search of the residence begins.

During this search, we called Jimmy's phone number...

...and we found a phone with the SIM card from Jimmy's phone.

When questioned, Peter and Keeley, they claimed they didn't know

where the phone came from or who the phone belonged to.

They simply found a phone,

removed the SIM card and used up

all the remaining minutes on it.

He said, "I found this broken phone

when we were out for a walk."

He described to us his route that he went on the walk.

If a cell phone was broken,

there'd be pieces somewhere either up against the kerb,

in the middle of the lane of travel...

but there was nothing.

So, he's clearly lying to us.

We're not buying this story at all.

Just from the criminal history they have, it's too suspicious.

We do arrest Peter Maddox and Keeley Gibson

on their outstanding warrants.

A few days later, we received word

that there was a similar robbery

three days before the Sanders robbery.

This was up in Snohomish County, which is just north of us.

The residents were selling a large-screen TV on Craigslist.

And the buyers, when they showed up,

also zip-tied them and stole the TV,

and jewellery, and things like that.

Many home invasions

have considerable work put into

conning the occupants

to allow the offenders in with minimum resistance.

And this is frequently done by using false pretences,

to either coerce or trick the occupants

to opening the door and letting them in.

And once they're in, their real motive comes into focus.

In the Snohomish County incident, there are two suspects.

One was an Asian male and the other, a Caucasian female,

both in their early twenties.

Both of the residences were fairly affluent.

We think the plan was that they were

looking at an expensive item on Craigslist...

...and they thought, "If they have an expensive item for sale,

they probably have other expensive things that we could steal."

In that particular incident, nobody was injured.

They just stole the items.

There was a clear escalation to Jim and Charlene.

We then turned to the media for assistance.

From the information that Charlene was able to give us,

we provided them with a composite sketch of the suspects.

We received dozens and dozens of tips,

and they're all over the state.

So, there was lots of detectives running around

following up information that, in the end, was not accurate,

but we couldn't just ignore possible good information.

On Sunday, May 2nd, a tip was called in from a supervisor

at the San Mateo County Jail in Redwood City, California.

An officer in Daly City, California,

sees a car from Washington State missing the front plate.

So, he conducts a traffic stop.

During the course of his traffic stop,

he sees a gun in the car.

And he also finds a small amount of marijuana.

He makes the arrest on weapons violations,

misdemeanour drug charges.

So he gets the suspects back to his precinct headquarters.

Meanwhile, the clerk at the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office

finds information that there was a homicide in Washington state...

and she recognised that these three individuals were an identical match

for the suspects from up north near Seattle.

So, she tells the jail supervisor,

"Hey, I think these people that were just arrested

are part of what happened up in the Tacoma area."

Amazing what she did.

She had read what was called a BOLO report.

We'll send information to other law enforcement agencies.

They're called BOLOs - "be on the lookout".

I mean, you probably get dozens of these, you know,

every week at least,

but that one person sees it, remembers something, and acts on it.

It is finally a break in the case.

We discover that the individuals arrested in Daly City

were Kiyoshi Higashi -

who is an Asian male -

Amanda Knight, who had been described as "exotic looking",

and Joshua Reese, who is a African-American male.

Those three matched the descriptions given to us by the family.

This could be the break that we are looking for.

But depending on what the people are in custody for down there,

they could be released.

We've got to get down there as fast as we can.

While we're packing and running around,

the administrative staff in the sheriff's department

is making the flight reservations,

we've already notified our prosecutor

that's working the case as the lead, and we're gone.

My partner and I fly down to California.

Despite the frenzy

that we went through to get down to California,

as quickly as we did...

...when we arrived,

Amanda Knight had already bailed out of jail.

And that was just a gut punch.

So close and now she's in the wind again.

But fortunately,

Joshua Reese and Kiyoshi Higashi

were still there.

We interviewed Kiyoshi Higashi.

He is the one that Charlene

had identified as the male

that came in with the woman at the door.

Higashi is cocky and arrogant.

We were aware that Higashi had quite a criminal background

and it goes all the way back to age 11.

We asked him where he was the night of the murder in Edgewood

and he tells us that he was spending the night with his girlfriend.

Then he said something to the effect of "Edgewood, where's that?

Never heard of Edgewood."

And we're like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure you have

because you lived on the east side of Tacoma,

and Edgewood is just past that.

You've been there."

Due to his body language and just the way he responded,

you knew that he had more information.

He was clearly lying to us.

It wasn't his first go round the block.

He'd been in the system numerous times.

He was gonna play the game and try and weasel out.

The interview, it went for several hours

and Higashi was obviously not giving up anything.

We just decide, "You know what?

We're not gonna get anywhere with him."

We terminated the interview.

But then we interview Joshua Reese.

Joshua Reese was already known to police.

He'd had several contacts with them over the years.

In 2008, he was involved in a robbery

and a subsequent car chase.

Once the car was stopped,

he fled on foot but was found nearby.

He also had four domestic violence incidences with girlfriends

In those he did end up pleading guilty to misdemeanour violations.

Joshua is a very young man.

He's the youngest of the three of them.

And I think he's just overwhelmed, over his head.

We advised him of his Miranda rights...

which he waived.

We told him we were there investigating a homicide

which occurred in Edgewood.

And as soon as he heard that,

he said, "I feel so bad about that.

That man did not need to lose his life like that

in front of those kids."

It was really remarkable.

He just blurted that out,

which tells me that it was weighing on him.

While not a confession,

he somewhat put himself there just by the knowledge he had.

When that happened, my partner and I kept a pretty good poker face.

We didn't both look at each other and go, "What the hell?"

We just rolled right into it.

As we're talking with him,

we noticed that if we asked him a direct question,

like, "Tell me about what life was like

when you were living here in California,"

he'd answer the question,

because he knew that we knew that he was from California.

My partner always carries some Tic-Tac breath mints with him.

And during the interview,

when Reese saw that little container,

he just stared at them like he had a... a habit for them.

So we'd ask him a question.

If he answered correctly, we would give him some.

If he didn't answer,

we would just put it down off to the side.

And then he'd answer the question.

As you gain experience,

you learn to use the things that they give you to your advantage.

So, that's how we broke the interview with Reese.

Reese finally admitted to being a part of the robbery

of the Sanders family in Edgewood.

Him and three others.

He described it as a "house lick", which is a robbery.

Reese said they used Bluetooth earpieces

so they could communicate with each other,

and that when Amanda yelled, "Get down, get down!"

that was his cue to come in.

He said that their plan was to rob the diamond ring

that was posted on Craigslist, and while there,

take any other items of value they possibly could.

There was no intent to harm anybody

but things escalated beyond what they thought.

Reese can see that he's in trouble

and is trying to do anything he can at this point

to stay as far away from the others as possible.

He identifies Kiyoshi Higashi...

...as being the Asian male with them.

He identifies Amanda Knight.

And one other person... but he only knew him as "G".

He didn't know his true name at that time.

Reese also provides us with a phone number

and tells us he thinks that's G's phone number.

Through phone records we can identify who that phone belongs to,

and that helped us identify Clabon Berniard...

...who is identified as the second gunman.

After we get that information,

we're able to obtain an arrest warrant for Berniard.

And Reese admitted the rings were pawned

at a pawn shop in San Francisco.

We share the information with San Francisco detectives

and one of them is sent to the pawn shop.

They go through their records,

they find the transaction for a male gold wedding band.

It was the ring that was taken off Jim's hand.

Right now, we're starting to feel pretty good on this investigation.

We now know the four individuals

that were at the home of Jim Sanders.

We have two gunmen.

We have some of the jewellery that was stolen.

But we need to find Clabon and we need to find Amanda.

We need to talk to them

because we don't have positive knowledge

of who pulled the trigger that shot and killed Jim Sanders.

I showed Charlene Amanda Knight's photograph.

I used what was called a photo line-up.

Her reaction was...

...unlike any reaction I've ever received before or since.

When she saw Amanda's picture,

it just took her right back to that moment in her house.

Charlene was able to identify Amanda Knight.

Amanda and her family could see that her face was all over the news,

so she turned herself in.

Amanda was able to tell us

where the gun was that killed Jim...

...that the gun was used by Higashi,

and the gun was sold to an employee at a nearby store.

And she said that it was Higashi that killed Jim.

This was huge.

It was the first recollection of who did it.

We contact the person identified.

He admits that he purchased a gun from Higashi.

He provides us the gun.

It's a .380-calibre handgun.

It has the same red-tip bullets,

just like those recovered in the autopsy of Jim.

Having the weapon was another huge break in the case.

Reese and Higashi both

waived extradition from California,

which means we get to just

take custody of them,

and they were transported back to Washington.

John escorted Reese back,

and then myself and another detective

flew down to California to escort Higashi.

You know, when I sat next to him on the plane, just made small talk,

I was able to build up a rapport with Higashi.

He started asking me questions like...

..."So, what would happen

if somebody were to go in a house to steal stuff...

...and somebody died?"

Or, "What's the difference between manslaughter and murder?"

In a case like this

where a suspect begins throwing out hypothetical,

what-if scenarios...

they're digging for what the police know,

testing the waters to see, you know, "How much trouble am I in?"

I told him that there's no set answer.

You know, each one is different.

It all depends on what exactly happened.

This tactic by the suspect really opens up

a game of psychological chess.

I just kept talking to him and told him that,

"If you want, when we get back,

I'll be more than happy to listen to you

and you can tell me anything you want."

Investigators are going to be careful.

They don't want to spook the person from providing more information

for these hypotheticals

that may actually be genuine criminal actions.

By the time we got back,

Higashi told me that he would like to talk to me.

And in the case of some individuals,

their curiosity gets the better of them.

They want to know what the police know.

And the only way they're gonna find that out is to finally say,

"OK, let's sit down."

And in this time,

Higashi admits to participating in the robbery.

He gives us the business

where he pawned the rings -

Charlene's wedding ring

and the ring that they were selling on Craigslist.

But Higashi would not admit to stomping on Charlene's head.

He would not admit to shooting Jim.

He blamed that on Clabon Berniard.

He tells us that it was Berniard who ratcheted up the violence,

who kicked and stomped and abused Charlene.

At this point, they're quickly turning on each other.

With everybody pointing the finger at everybody else,

we needed to know who it was

that pulled the trigger and killed Jim Sanders.

What we need now is to talk to Clabon Berniard.

Local detectives had released the name of Clabon Berniard,

the fourth suspect, to the local media,

hoping to get the public's help locating him.

And he, of course, saw that he was on TV...

...and turned himself in to the King County jail.

Berniard has extensive criminal history.

Just here in Pierce County,

more than 20 convictions

of robbery, burglary, assault.

He's a bad guy.

But then he refused to talk to us.

He immediately invoked his right to remain silent.

He wanted a lawyer.

When a suspect or person of interest

invokes their right to remain silent,

really the interview needs to stop.

Police need to be very careful about offering inducements or assurances

that can later be turned around on them

and get the confession,

or any statement for that matter, thrown out.

And some people that have been through the system a whole lot

learn "just don't talk".

They'll just lawyer up and not say anything.

We now had all four in custody.

Three of them had been interviewed

and their story was nailed down on tape.

The only person that invoked his rights

and never gave a statement was Clabon Berniard.

And the questions that still remained

were what each of them did at the incident.

We receive a phone call from a woman

who identified herself as Mia Koelpin.

She said that she had found a purse belonging to Charlene Sanders...

...who she recognised from the media coverage

as being one of the victims in the home invasion robbery.

We drove up there and she hands us the wallet

and a jeweller's appraisal

for the ring that they were selling on Craigslist.

We obtained a search warrant to search the residence of Mia Koelpin,

and we found a cell phone

that belonged to Jimmy Jr.

So now the question is, what is their tie to this?

How did they get this phone that belongs to Jimmy Jr?

Mia tells us that her daughter, Mollie, is Higashi's girlfriend.

We tried to get hold of Mollie,

but unfortunately she had just left

for training with the National Guard.

We managed to locate Mollie Koelpin

at her training programme in Georgia.

She was detained by the US Army,

charged with rendering criminal assistance.

The detectives transported her back here to Washington.

Mollie Koelpin admits

that Higashi spent the night

of April 28th,

the night of the murder, with her,

tells her what happens,

and asked her to help get rid of some of the evidence.

She told Kiyoshi, "You need to get rid of your clothes.

Get rid of the stuff you took so they can't put it on you."

And it was the next day that Kiyoshi Higashi called Amanda Knight

and said, "We got to get rid of this stuff."

Mollie, during the statement said, that night,

while they were laying in bed together,

and they were watching the late-night news

about the murder,

Higashi told her...

...that he shot Jim.

We had developed enough information that...

we knew that Mollie

was just protecting Higashi.

I think she was more scared than anything else.

With Mollie's testimony

and the confessions

from three of these perpetrators,

we can finally piece together what we think happened

the night that Jim Sanders was murdered.

Phone records show that it was a non-traceable TracFone

that Amanda Knight used to set up the appointment with Jim Sanders

to look at the ring that he had posted for sale on Craigslist.

It was Amanda Knight and Kiyoshi Higashi

that ended up going to the front door of Jim and Charlene's home.

It was Jim Sanders that opened that door.

And he had no idea...

...what kind of people were lurking outside.

They identified themselves

as the ones that are looking at the ring.

They started asking about the ring

until Jim called up to Charlene and asked her to come downstairs.

Higashi flashes a wad of cash

and says, "Will this be enough?"

And then he pulls out his gun.

Amanda Knight said, "Get down! Get down!"

Amanda had a Bluetooth she was using

to communicate with Joshua Reese and Clabon Berniard.

When they got the signal from Amanda,

they came rushing into the house.

Clabon was also carrying a handgun...

...a .22-calibre Colt Revolver.

They zip-tie Jim and Charlene's hands behind their back.

Joshua Reese goes upstairs, he finds the kids

and brings them down into the kitchen.

And then Amanda and Joshua began ransacking the home.

Clabon Berniard is the one that's increasing the violence.

Clabon was becoming angry.

He believed that there was more stuff in the house

and he wanted to know where it was at, where was the safe?

He's yelling at Charlene.

He stomped on her head.

And Jim Sanders says, "I'll open the safe for you."

And they picked him up by his wrists that were zip-tied together

and one of the zip ties broke.

Jim is able to attack Kiyoshi.

Jim Jr jumps on Kiyoshi's back.

Kiyoshi, in return, knocks Jimmy Jr off.

Somebody stomps on Jim's head while he's down.

And then, during the fight,

unfortunately, Jim is shot three times...

...and killed.

Once the shots ring out, all four of them just panic.

They all just fled through the front door.

Leaving the family in pieces, not knowing what happened

and Jim bleeding and dying on the floor.

Amanda Knight, Joshua Reese,

Clabon Berniard and Kiyoshi Higashi

were all charged with first-degree murder,

robbery in the first degree,

assault, and burglary.

This is a case where the judge severed all the defendants.

So, this case went to trial four different times

for each of the four suspects.

Amanda Knight struck me as a very clever person,

conniving and manipulative.

She's the one who set up this robbery.

She set up the one in Snohomish County as well.

Joshua Reese is somebody

that could have gone a completely different way.

He's more of a follower. He got caught up with this

and wound up on the short end this time.

He's the guy who opened his mouth

and said, "That man did not need to die."

Clabon Berniard is cool as a cucumber.

He never showed any emotion of any kind that I could see.

Kiyoshi Higashi is like Satan's spawn.

He has no remorse.

In 2011, all four were convicted of these crimes.

Amanda Knight, the mastermind,

was sentenced to 71 years in prison.

Joshua Reese was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Clabon Berniard was sentenced to 97 years in prison.

And Kiyoshi Higashi was sentenced to 123 years in prison.

We didn't need to know exactly who had pulled the trigger.

In our state, once you sign on to commit a robbery

and somebody ends up dead,

you're all on the hook for felony murder.

They went in guns drawn, loaded.

It wasn't an accident that Jim was shot.

I think they drastically underestimated Jim Sanders

and what lengths he would go to to try to protect his family.

Charlene and the boys testified in all four trials.

It was all very emotional.

The emotional impact of this crime

is still carried by the Sanders family.

Getting justice and getting the perpetrators convicted

doesn't ever bring back somebody like Jim Sanders.

He lost his own life. It's a loss for his family.

It's a loss for our community.

My partner and I go to the services.

Said, "Hey, we have something for Charlene.

Can we have a moment with her?"

So, we meet with her and we return...

...Jim's ring.

And she had someone open the clasp on her necklace

and hung the ring on that.

They were just selling an item on Craigslist.

Suddenly they're faced with pure evil.

You don't conduct business at your home

if you're selling something.

Meet them in a police parking lot.

Meet them in a Safeway or a Walmart parking lot.

They have great exterior video camera coverage.

People are just not expecting bad things to happen.

Jim and Charlene were not expecting

that this would be the worst night of their life.

And then suddenly, beyond their wildest beliefs...

...they open the door and their lives are shattered.

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