Original subtitles

- Harlan, over here!

- Ladies and gentlemen, Harlan Coben.

[plucky string music]

- He's the greatest thriller writer.

- Oh.

- Coben's written over 30 New York Times Best Sellers.

- With over a dozen hit TV shows and movies.

♪ ♪

- In all our stories, the same question:

What made the killer cross that line?

♪ ♪

[tense music]

[dog barking in distance]

[distant siren wailing]

- I'm Harlan Coben.

It's that fringe of human behavior

that makes for a great crime story.

I'm always looking for inspiration,

but it takes a really special story to get my attention.

Like, one day I got a message about the murder

of a woman who owned a beloved ice cream shop.

This was not an idea for a novel however.

This was a true crime.

But from the moment I started looking into it,

from the moment I saw the strange list of suspects,

something seemed off--

very off.

I needed to figure it out.

And that's where our mystery begins.

♪ ♪

- People believe what they want to believe.

They don't like to know the truth.

- Every day I miss Anna Mae.

She was unforgettable.

No one deserved to die like she did.

[thunder rumbling]

- What kind of darkness could do this?

♪ ♪

It's just so evil.

[sirens blaring]

- We could see claw marks on the white freezer.

Anna Mae was still fighting to the end.

Her skull was busted over. There was brain matter.

- She let the wolf into the sheep den.

- She felt comfortable enough with him

that she turned her back on him.

Somebody within the inner circle,

so to speak.

- Everybody had to be called in.

- Everyone was a suspect.

- Who would want her dead?

- We're gonna find your killer, Anna Mae.

We're gonna get him.

♪ ♪

- A crime happened here.

The past isn't what it seemed.

The story told turns out to be deception.

And just when you're sure have the answer...

- 911, what is the address of your emergency?

Hello? Anyone there?

- There's one final twist.

♪ ♪

[gentle acoustic music]

♪ ♪

- Anna Mae was a leader in the community.

When she walked into a room, she lit up that room,

and she was the center of everything.

Back in the day, she owned the ice cream shop.

And it's amazing that that one little shop

could become a multi-million-dollar business,

but that's what happened.

- I started working there when I turned 16.

We looked up to Ms. Ann

because she dressed impeccably.

Her hair was always perfect.

Her makeup was always perfect. [laughs]

And she could do a catwalk any day.

She was the queen of the queen.

- She didn't have any children,

so I suppose she found joy in getting close to her nephews.

Maybe she saw us as, you know, her children.

- Anna Mae embraced her nieces and nephews.

Everyone was very loving and very tight-knit.

She was the rock,

the center foundation for our family.

[bright orchestral music]

- We'd get together at her house very often

and have these wonderful meals together, a lot of laughter.

She was someone that everyone in the family

admired and looked up to.

- Everybody in the police department loved Ms. Ann.

She was a widow and lived by herself,

so we would go by once a day and check on her

because she would set her home alarm off.

But that day was different.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Her jacket was draped over a chair in her dining room

and her purse was on the back of the chair.

No broken windows.

There was nothing disturbed in the house.

- Coming down to the basement at the bottom of the steps,

I saw her body.

- It's like the world stopped.

Disbelief.

The back of her skull had, uh, significant damage.

- The immediate impression I had was overkill.

She had been stabbed approximately 97 times--

to her head to her forearms

to the back of her neck,

defense wounds to the side of the face,

and what ended up being seven

blunt force traumas to the head.

- To know that Ms. Branson was very particular

about her appearance, it was disturbing

to see her in that condition.

- We could see claw marks on the white freezer.

Anna Mae was still fighting to the end.

- She had a three-carat diamond

that was still on her finger.

We found jewelry upstairs.

- It didn't appear to be just a robbery.

- There was no sign of forced entry.

I thought this had to be a crime of passion,

someone that knew her very well

that she would allow to be that far

into the sanctity of her home.

[indistinct radio chatter]

- Fox 7 spoke with the victim's family.

They say Branson was a well-known, caring,

and trusting person, something they feel

most likely led to her death.

[indistinct radio chatter]

- I was in shock.

I just couldn't understand why anybody would want to harm her.

- What kind of human being

could do that to an 85-year-old,

5'3", probably 115-pound lady?

- It was horrific.

And we had no idea what the motive was.

- Everybody knew Ms. Ann.

She had over 40 rental properties

at the time of her passing.

And I spoke to all of her renters,

but her cleaning lady, Judy Harvey,

had a lot to say.

- A few weeks before she was killed,

Anna Mae said, my crazy renter Robert Prince,

he calls me, wakes me up in the middle of the night

to come over and chase the ghost out of his attic.

She was unsettled by him.

- We're looking around at each other,

going, you know, prior homicide?

- Once we heard that, Robert Prince

went right to the top of the list.

- We could tell that he was emotionally

set on a hair trigger.

- [sighs]

- When you hear a whisper, you chase the lead.

But what if the real story, the one that makes

your blood run cold, isn't in the whisper?

It's in the one who does the whispering.

[soft dramatic music]

- Robert Prince, who Anna Mae called her crazy renter,

we got to see his agitation firsthand.

You could tell that he was emotionally

set on a hair trigger.

- He would have had access to Ms. Branson

at the back door, and his physical size

would have made him very capable of committing

that level of violence.

Except for one important detail.

- Did you? - Yes.

- Um--

- He had staples and stitches up his forearm.

And I remember thinking, it would be hard

for Robert Prince to be able to inflict

that much damage without tearing the stitches

or pulling a staple out of his arm.

- We did verify with his doctor that if he had committed

the crime, that those stitches

and the staples would have been ripped out.

- Clearing a suspect doesn't mean starting over.

It means you've been handed a map

written in disappearing ink.

The truth is behind you, hidden in the lie

that brought you to this dead end.

- Judy Harvey was wrong about Robert Prince.

But along with Prince,

Judy also offered us Anna Mae's handyman,

Wayne Shelton, as a potential suspect

in this case.

- My dad had worked for Anna Mae around ten years.

He considered them friends.

He was there at her house multiple times a week.

And he knew that he had no great alibi.

He lived alone. He lived in the country.

- In the past, he had had some run-ins with the law,

bar fights and DUIs.

But he looked them straight in the eye and he said,

it could have been me,

but it wasn't.

- It was determined that Clyde Wayne Shelton

had a heart condition.

- We spoke with his doctor, who said that

if Mr. Shelton had inflicted those wounds upon Ms. Branson,

he would have had a heart attack.

- Ultimately, it was pretty apparent

Judy just did not like Wayne.

The two of them didn't get along.

- I asked him, you know, what is Judy's issue with you

that she would bring you up as the suspect?

- We discovered that the real reason why Wayne Shelton

and Robert Prince were eliminated

as a suspect in this case is because the investigative team

realized that Judy Harvey was giving us false information.

She was creating perpetrators and leads for us to run down

and creating smoke.

We seriously considered bringing charges against

Judy Harvey for interfering with an investigation,

but we couldn't find enough evidence

to follow through with it.

[somber music]

- There's a fine line between helping

and wanting to be seen helping.

When that line is crossed, the truth pays the price.

- There was intentional misdirection

involving my dad,

and I will forever believe

that the reason he died three months later

was because of being cast as a prime suspect

in this investigation.

I feel for Ann's family,

that they lost her in such a tragic way.

But I feel for ours as well,

because I think he had years left.

And I think that the situation

took those years from him,

and it took those years from me.

[sniffles]

- With Judy, something was just not right.

You could tell that she was up to something.

- Judy Harvey was working to derail our investigation.

She was still employed by Anna Mae's family,

and we strongly suspected she was being paid

to divert our attention from the real killer.

- And that was the turning point.

[soft dramatic music]

- Sometimes it's not the town that holds the darkest secrets.

It's the family photo on the mantle,

the loved ones who smiled at us across the holiday table,

the ones who held our hand

through tears and grief.

When the truth finally comes out,

the hardest question isn't what happened.

It's who among us let it happen?

♪ ♪

- The funeral for Anna Mae was just horrible.

You really can't believe this is happening.

It's just not real.

♪ ♪

- I walked over to Earl, Anna Mae's brother,

and his son, Russell Winstead.

We were both pallbearers.

And I said, I can't wait to get the scumbag that did this,

because I want him to be tried and convicted,

and I want to be there for the execution.

- We were all there trying to comfort each other.

But there was always that cloud of doubt and suspicion.

You know, who did it? Who knows what?

Somebody killed her,

and the rumor was it was a family member.

- There was a suspicious vibe in the air.

So you don't get to mourn, because

it was all in the back of our mind.

- Everyone at the funeral was a suspect

as far as we were concerned.

- And then all the siblings were told

that the Madisonville Police Department wanted

to meet with the family.

- OK.

They were suspicious because I had several rental houses,

and they tried to insinuate that

I borrowed money from my aunt to buy these houses.

How much money do you owe her?

You know, stuff like that.

- And they asked questions like,

did you ever borrow money from Ann?

Where were you the last night?

- We knew that we were gonna get some pushback.

We knew that was part of the game.

But everybody was a suspect.

We interviewed everybody in the family.

- OK.

- We offered them all polygraphs.

They all said yes,

and we began with Russell.

- With Russell Winstead,

the temperature in the room went up a little bit.

Scott became a little more direct with his questioning.

It was time to turn the heat up.

- He had registered deception on all the questions

that involved Anna Mae.

I was a detective for 15 years.

That's still the worst polygraph results

I've ever seen.

♪ ♪

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- Polygraphs can be notoriously unreliable.

At best, they test whether you've found a liar,

but they don't test whether you've found a murderer.

One secret writers share with prosecutors,

detectives, prison wardens--

it all depends who's telling the story.

If you look at it through one lens,

you'll never see the whole picture.

♪ ♪

- When Russell failed that polygraph,

we were just sick.

And we were determined to prove that he didn't do it.

We did not believe that Russell Winstead

could have committed a crime.

- The state police and the local investigators

had interviewed Russell, and it was a pretty intense interview.

- Russell loved Anna Mae.

This was his family member that was brutally murdered,

and now he's being questioned over it.

I can't even imagine the headspace

you would be in when you're worried about being a suspect.

- It is true.

If they're emotional, innocent people

fail polygraphs all the time.

And Russell gave us an alibi for the night

that Anna Mae was murdered.

- The medical examiner said she would have

been killed around 7:30.

Russell had dropped his kids off after church,

and then he was at home with his wife

exactly when Ms. Ann's estimated time of death was.

- In the time frame that we believe

Ms. Branson was killed,

there was a call from Russell to his wife, Terri.

[phone rings]

He said that he called her from downstairs

in the lower-level basement,

and she was upstairs.

♪

- [exhales]

- She, word for word, gave the same exact alibi.

- I could see Russell calling her.

He's a jokester.

He'd leave crazy messages and joke around a lot.

- I do it all the time with people in my own house.

Rather than holler or walk up the stairs,

why not pick up your phone and call them?

I have never once heard my uncle say a cuss word.

I've never once heard him raise his voice.

- It was just hard for anybody to believe.

Russell was Ms. Branson's favorite.

He was a family man.

He taught Sunday school.

- Everybody knew him, within the police department,

to be such a great guy.

And Russell Winstead had no criminal history.

But we got a tip from a community member,

and what he told us, it was the pivotal moment.

- You find them in every small town.

You know what I'm talking about--

that model citizen with the shiny, spotless reputation.

But that kind of perfection,

it's too often its own disguise.

♪ ♪

- I got a call, a tip from a male individual

that was very upset.

I said, you've got to come in. We need to get a statement.

- This tipster worked at the coal mines

together with Russell.

He saw two sides to Russell Winstead.

There was the churchgoing family man and hard worker.

But when he had gone to the casinos with him,

he was seeing a different side of his friend.

- We went through casino records

and interviewed management staff at those casinos.

- We learned of Russell's secret life

at the Boat,

the Evansville Casino.

That's what the people call it because

it was the riverboat style,

and Russell had a girlfriend or two

at the Boat.

We were able to learn that Russell had gambled

in numerous different states, and in excess

of a million dollars.

- I did start finding out that Russell owed money,

$10,000 to this guy, $10,000 to this guy.

So I did figure out then the intensity

of his gambling problem.

- Ms. Ann kept a journal of every penny

that someone owes her and that someone pays her.

I started looking through

this red journal, page by page.

I saw the name Russell Winstead,

and then it had the total to date.

It was over $60,000 that he still owed her.

- How would I know?

[tense music]

- At that point in time, we went back to his wife,

who was his alibi.

We started pushing back with her.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- [breathes deeply, sobs]

- [hyperventilating, sobbing]

- [sobbing]

♪ ♪

- And then she wanted her lawyer with her.

They showed back up at the police department

the next week, and she gave us the truth.

- The alibi that she initially gave us was all rehearsed

and quarterbacked by Russell.

- Terri's alibi for Russell cracked.

He was not at home during the time of the murder.

- And then we found out that Judy Harvey,

Anna Mae's housekeeper, was in close conversations

with Earl Winstead, Russell's father.

So we strongly suspected that Earl

was paying her to help Russell.

- I was shocked.

And then Russell fled the country.

- And now he's gone.

- Russell is a wanted felon

and now a fugitive.

- When someone runs, we follow,

because it's natural to assume guilt.

We should also heed the advice of the great Sherlock Holmes--

don't twist facts to suit theories,

twist theories to suit facts.

- If you've seen Russell Winstead,

please call our hotline tonight at 1-800-CRIME-TV.

- Russell got a passport

and got a plane out of the country.

You know, guilty men run.

- We got Russell's picture out there,

and we found out that Russell was using an alias

to avoid detection in Costa Rica.

- What I couldn't figure out was the reason

why Russell selected Costa Rica.

[phone rings]

- He did not have a home in Madisonville anymore,

and it was in the papers constantly.

Small town, everybody knows, everybody talks.

And it was just already decided that he had done it.

And at that point, there was still no arrests to be made.

We were all OK with him leaving.

- It wasn't a secret.

I drove him to the airport, but I knew he was coming back

when I dropped him off.

He was waiting for the DNA evidence to come back.

- Even though the DNA that they had taken

from the crime scene did come back inconclusive...

They still indicted him.

- Costa Rica will not extradite a murder suspect

if the death penalty is an option.

So that had to be waived,

and it took a long time,

but...

[indistinct chatter]

I'll never forget the video footage of him

the night he was arrested at the Horseshoe Casino,

in San José, Costa Rica by U.S. Marshals.

I said, we got him.

We got him.

- We're basically dealing with circumstantial evidence--

no DNA, no fingerprints.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

Everybody was so tense,

and the room was divided.

Russell's family, all the people

who wanted to believe that he was innocent.

- Sir, would you call the roll of the jury, please?

- And then the rest of the family

were sitting on the prosecutor's side.

- We didn't have any forensic evidence,

but that still didn't mean that there weren't enough

puzzle pieces to put together to provide

a picture to the jury to find Russell guilty of this.

- On Sunday evening, I really believe Russell was worried

the check would bounce,

so he tried to ask her

not to cash that $12,000 check.

She told him no, and he just snapped.

And we had an eyewitness.

[dramatic music]

- An eyewitness saw the photograph of Russell

and said, I saw that man leaving Ms. Branson's house

on the night of the homicide.

- The general consensus was he was being framed

because of his lies.

Just because you have a gambling habit,

just 'cause you owe money

and you have one woman's testimony

of seeing him through the headlights at nighttime

doesn't make you a murderer.

- Based on the religious background

that it is in the area,

you don't have affairs.

You don't gamble.

These things are terrible sins.

They just tried to paint this picture of him for the jurors,

that he was just this evil person.

- Maybe if there was some type of evidence

that pointed to him, I would think

that, yeah, maybe he did it.

But it's just a theory. It's not proof.

It was all circumstantial.

- And then

a letter surfaced out of the jail.

Some stranger we never heard of

confessed to the murder of Anna Mae.

[dramatic music]

Let's just start there.

- Everybody was just like,

oh, my God, we got the wrong guy?

- Fred Roulette recently pleaded guilty to the murder

of 72-year-old Billie Cochrane in Dawson Springs, Kentucky.

- That murder was just down the road

from the murder of Anna Mae Branson.

[tense music]

- Fred Roulette was in jail for a similar slaying

of an elderly lady in a neighboring community.

- Fred Roulette said he went to the ice cream shop

and asked Anna Mae if she would rent

one of her houses to him and that she had refused.

So out of anger, he went to her house

and killed her.

♪ ♪

- Fred Roulette gave us a description

of the crime scene, the layout of the home,

and that he had used a modified Brades hammer,

which is a coal-mining tool,

to kill Ms. Branson,

details that only would fit

knowledge of the murderer.

- It's hard to go from such a feeling of

we have the right guy to a complete stranger

providing a full confession.

Something felt off.

♪ ♪

- Fred Roulette was a fellow inmate

to Russell Winstead in the Hopkins County Jail.

- For Russell, we had to waive the death penalty

because of Costa Rica's extradition rules.

But Roulette's not protected from a death penalty case

like Russell is.

I was like, hey, we can use this.

What if we get this guy to flip?

- This was the tipping point for Russell.

Russell made a lot of mistakes.

He made a lot of poor choices,

and his lies

finally caught up to him.

[somber music]

- The moment that the jury said guilty,

it was like a weight lifted.

It was immediate relief.

- I gasped out loud.

We believed with all our hearts

they caught the right person.

But then I looked over,

saw Russell's sister crying.

I saw her-- that family crying.

And no matter what he did,

he was a son.

He was a brother.

He was a family member to them.

- I remember sitting there looking at everyone

and just wondering what they saw

that made them feel that no other person

could have possibly committed this crime.

The justice system failed my Uncle Russell.

- It was difficult to lose my aunt,

as much as I loved her.

It was difficult to lose Rusty.

♪ ♪

For his family, you don't want to see

the worst in somebody that you love.

- It wrecked the family.

And justice was served,

but with a price.

- She'll always be missed,

and she'll never be forgotten.

I'm just glad that her memory is not tarnished

by the way she left this earth.

♪ ♪

- In fiction, the writer controls who lives,

who dies, and who faces justice.

But in the real world justice is slower,

messier, harder to hold on to.

Sometimes there's concrete proof.

Often there's not, and we must choose which story to believe.

Sometimes the killer is a stranger,

but most times, it's someone we know.

And too often,

it's the person we trust most.

I'm Harlan Coben. Good night.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪