Original subtitles

There's never been a day that I have not talked to my mom.

[Man] That's how Toni Sample first knew

something was wrong Monday.

I remember getting the text message

and just like, this is unbelievable.

The circumstances of this case boggle the mind.

[chilling music]

[narrator] In Fort Worth, Texas on December 14th, 2020,

Virginia Lewis's on is worried.

He hasn't heard from his mom all day.

[Toni] I get a phone call.

It was a Fort Worth police officer.

They said that my brother was at the car lot,

@ and he'd been trying toú get a hold of our mom,

@ and he wasn't able to...

he asked me if I knew anybody who had a key.

I said, well, it would be my mom, my cousin,

and Clay, the owner.

And he said, "Well, there's nobody here."

And... we're trying to see if everybody's OK.

So I called my mom, went straight to voicemail.

And I was just like... that's not right.

@ [narrator] Toni's mother Virginia, or Ginny,

@ works at Bill's Auto Sales

alongside her niece Veronica Jones

and the owner of the car lot, Clay Turrentine.

Veronica, Virginia, and Clay.

Virginia had worked at this dealership for quite some time.

Veronica is dating Clay,

and Clay has recently inherited this used car dealership

from his dad.

[Toni] I was like, let me call my cousin, Veronica.

And I called her phone and it went straight to voicemail

and I was like,

what's going on right now?

@[narrator] Veronica's daughter, Caley,

usually speaks to her mother every day.

I'm Caley Jones.

I'm the daughter of Veronica Jones.

My schedule was very similar to my mom's at that time.

And so that morning we were actually,

we actually got dressed for work together.

I would say not even an hour later, I actually texted her.

The text did not go through,

meaning like her phone is off or something's wrong.

My cousins were looking for Virginia.

So at that point, I'm panicking

because now there's two people in my family

that we can't get a hold of

when I just saw one of them this morning.

[narrator] Concerned about her mom and her great aunt,

Caley drives to Bill's Auto Sales,

where she meets her cousins and several police officers.

They wouldn't allow us to kind of see each other

or speak together, we were separated on purpose.

I feel like we were out there for a couple of hours

before detectives finally came on site

and entered the premises.

@When I arrived on scene, thereú was a safe next to the desk,

@ and that safe was open.

And it appeared to have been rummaged through.

I observed what appeared to be blood drops on the ground.

There was a women's purse sitting on the desk

and some keys on the ground.

And behind that desk, it looked like somebody had been shot

and had been executed.

One of the investigators came out

and he goes, "I'm going to tell y'all

we're treating this as a burglary homicide."

And I apologized for my words,

but I said, what the [bleep] do you mean by homicide?

And we are both looking deep at each other.

And I'm looking at him like, do some explaining.

And he said, we have a reason to believe

that there is a deceased body.

And at that point, I lost it.

I walked away.

And I said, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

Definitely came out

borderline casual,

saying that they did find a woman's body

in the car lot office,

and they couldn't tell us who it was.

It hadn't been identified yet,

but it was likely an older woman.

[narrator] A woman's body found slumped behind a desk

inside the car lot office.

Family members are asked to leave the area

and meet with police at a separate location.

At that point, Toni and I are kind of like, what...

because it's either your mom or mine at this point.

I think we were all shocked,

because regardless if it was her mom or mine,

it was our... That's our family.

It's family, and we're close to them.

So it was very... it was just... it was hard.

After that's a blur,

I... I don't even remember who took me home.

I don't remember how I got home.

I don't remember if I drove or not.

I don't remember that night.

[narrator] It's not until the evening of December 14, 2020,

that the family learns the truth about who was found dead

inside the car lot office.

I work at a hospital,

so I'm very familiar with the medical examiner's office.

And so I got their phone number

and... called them when I left work

and had asked them if they had identified the body

that was found at Bill's Auto Sales.

He said, "I know who you're talking about."

And he said, "Based on the photo that was given to us

at the crime scene and identifying the body,

we do believe that it's your mom, Virginia Lewis."

@ [news] Police discoveredú her 65-year-old mother,

Virginia Lewis, had been shot and killed.

I lost it.

I started punching my car,

and I said, "You gotta be kidding me."

I said, "This..." I was just in shock.

I was like, this is not happening to me.

This is not happening.

I'm like, what in the world is going on?

She was the sweetest, kindest, and if she could help you,

she would help you.

She just revolved around her family.

She was my best friend.

She was my only parent that I had, erm.

She was my person.

[narrator] Virginia Lewis joins Bill's Auto Sales

some years earlier to work as a secretary.

My mom was a very hardworking person,

and she raised me and my brother pretty much by herself.

Um, she struggled like any single parent would.

She waitressed for many, many years

before she got this job at Bill's Auto Sales.

It was hard for her because of her scoliosis.

She had a really bad back.

And so she finally got a job where she can

pretty much sit down most of the time

and not be up and taking a risk of injuring herself.

[Caley] It was just a very like mom and pop shop.

They were able to help people get vehicles

that didn't have the credit or didn't have the job

to be able to.

It's in a rougher part of town in the Fort Worth area.

@ [Toni] My mom was scared to be by herself there.

And she had expressed that a couple of times.

I'd been in homicide for less than a month.

When I received this case,

I had no clue what I was walking into,

the extent of what was going on.

It looked like somebody had been shot and had sat in that chair

and the blood had soaked through the back of the chair.

We had one victim, Virginia, and that we had two missing persons

being Veronica Jones and Clayton Turrentine,

because their vehicles were also still parked out front,

along with Virginia's.

We're not sure if these missing people are actually suspects

or the additional victims.

This was an all hands on deck situation.

[chilling music]

[narrator] Caley's mom,

the missing sales associate Veronica Del Jones,

starts working at Bill's Auto Sales in 2018.

@ Clay, he was a kind man,

@ and I think that he wasú just really struggling

to kind of find hisú footing in the business

that he had inherited.

I think the reason why they actually hired my mom

is because when the dad passed away,

Jenny and Clay realised that they needed help.

[narrator] Caley Jones is devastated

by the death of her great aunt Virginia

and increasingly worried about her missing mother.

[reporter] Clay and Veronica are nowhere to be seen.

Where are they?

@ What has happened inside this used car lot?

[narrator] Until detectives locate Clay and Veronica,

they can't eliminate the possibility

that they're connected to what happened at the car lot.

For homicide detective Leah Dickerson,

the questions don't end when she leaves the scene,

they follow her home.

@I get home and I can't sleep,

so I went toú Bill's Auto Sales website

and looked at all of the vehicles.

I was trying to, you know, like see if I could determine

if any vehicles were missing from the location.

[narrator] When detectives returned to the scene

on December 15th,

they spot something.

There was a camera in the lobby of the car lot

and that camera was turned around towards the wall

where if it was operational,

it was not going to be capturing anything.

[narrator] Police obtained surveillance footage

from the business opposite Bill's Auto Sales.

[police] So the detective who pulled the video surveillance

noticed that there was a vehicle that pulls up in the morning.

Later on, we identify, "Okay, that's Clay."

We see Virginia show up.

We see Veronica show up.

And then there's another individual who shows up,

and it's a large Black male who goes into the business.

You later see another individual show up,

@ a white male who shows upú in a different vehicle.

The male that had arrived in the gold four-door sedan

walk up to the front of the business.

And you see someone hand him something

at the front door of the business.

He then turns and walks and gets into

a two-tone Ford F-150.

[Thomas] And then you kind of get an idea

that something's not right

because there's weird movement.

Somebody's taken a truck, an F-150,

and pulls it into the bay inside.

The doors close, and then it leaves.

Clearly, nobody comes and goes from that spot,

so we know they must have been taken from...

out of this area in that F-150.

I remembered seeing a Ford two-tone,

Ford F-150 on Bill's Auto Sales' website.

I had that information easily accessible,

which had the VIN number.

Clay had GPS trackers on all his vehicles.

And so with that VIN number,

they were able to contact the GPS company

that provided services for Bill's Auto Sales

and track that Ford F-150 very quickly.

The Ford F-150 was currently pinging in Arlington, Texas.

[narrator] Detectives follow the signal

to another car lot in Arlington.

That's where the Ford F-150 is pinging.

And waiting for them there is a man called Lamont Cousins.

The family has mentioned his name to detectives before.

[Caley] The night before my mom died,

she was like, "One of our guys, Lamont,

we bought that Challenger from."

The Challenger my mom had actually purchased from the lot.

She wanted it, but then it was repossessed

'cause the title belonged to somebody else

and they wanted the car back.

And so Lamont had promised Clay

that he was going to be coming back to the lot

to return that money to him.

Like, "Hey, I got it, I'll run you the money,

I'll be there on Monday."

[narrator] Lamont Cousins owes Clay Turrentine $10,000,

and now he's placed near a vehicle

last seen leaving Bill's Auto Sales

around the time Veronica and Clay disappear,

and Virginia is murdered.

And so I asked Lamont if he'd speak to me in my car.

When he started talking about Clay in the past tense,

that was very odd to me.

As a detective, you would wonder why are...

why are they speaking about this person in past tense?

Has something happened to them?

Because by then, they've already found Virginia's body.

And Veronica and Clay are missing.

So it's circumstantial.

But it's interesting.

[narrator] Detectives turn to Lamont Cousins' driver,

Andrew Vandermeer.

In interview, Vandermeer admits

he was atBill's Auto Sales with Cousins.

[narrator] Asked for a formal interview,

Lamont maintains his version of events.

When he left the car lot that morning,

he says everyone was still alive.

The relationship between Clay and Lamont

was that Clay would buy used cars from Lamont.

Lamont worked for some major companies

that would have cars from auctions

and he would come and present them to Clay

and Clay would purchase them.

He would give them cash

and Lamont's job was to relay that cash

back to the companies that actually own the vehicles.

Lamont was doing shady things and had been for a long time.

I think that he had been in quite the financial hole.

He was trying to start his own business.

[narrator] Vandermeer confirms

he and Lamont saw nothing unusual.

[narrator] Nothing in Vandermeer or Cousins' testimony

placed a weapon in their hands.

And with no evidence linking them to the killing,

investigators looked elsewhere for answers.

Could this have been the work of a disgruntled customer?

You're talking about a company

that is providing cars to people who need them

and then taking them

whenever they might need them still

and can't afford to keep them.

So people are not going to be polite

if their cars repossessed and they want it back

or their cars... they get a car off the lot

and it's broke down and they have to bring it back.

People are not going to be kind about that.

[narrator] The car lot also sits in a rough part of town.

[Caley] There's a high homeless area over there

so you have people walking in and out

or walking off of the street.

Sometimes they're coming in like, "You got any water?

"You got any food?" And you don't know these people.

You don't know what they're capable of.

You don't-you just don't know.

And they had every reason to feel insecure with safety

at that-at that location.

They had every reason to.

Clay had left a-a pistol there

in case if she needed to use it, she could use it.

And me and my mom even had that conversation.

She said, "I probably would shoot all over the place

and miss the target."

And I said, "Well, we can go to the gun range."

And that's one of the things we were gonna do

and never got to happen.

[narrator] Detectives also look for anyone

who may have held a grudge.

I learned from family

that Clay was currently going through a divorce

and that there was some speculation

that Veronica and Clay were in a relationship.

And I believe there had been an altercation

a couple of weeks prior

involving Clay's current wife

at the dealership.

So I had that information to go off of.

[narrator] Police turn to Clay's wife

to get a sense of how she feels towards him

amid their pending divorce.

But there's nothing to suggest she was involved.

Without further evidence, police can't rule out

that Clay and Veronica

are somehow connected to the crime.

But there are also growing fears

that they may have come to harm.

They suspected that, you know, something had happened to them.

But the longer... the more time had gone on,

and these people had not come back home

or weren't turning up.

You know, they certainly suspected foul play.

[narrator] Then on December 15th,

further analysis of the car lot footage

sharpens police focus.

They're now certain the only other people

seen entering that day

are Andrew Vandermeer and Lamont Cousins.

Cousins arrives at 10:46 AM.

Vandermeer follows at 12:24 PM.

And at 1:06 PM, the Ford F-150 pulls away.

So you see Lamont Cousins pull up in a gold sedan

that is registered to him.

You see Clayton Turrentine arrive.

You see Virginia Lewis arrive.

You see Veronica Jones arrive.

You subsequently see Andrew Vandermeer,

who we later identified as Andrew Vandermeer, arrived.

But you don't see anyone leave.

[narrator] Police turn up the pressure on Vandermeer.

So Andrew Vandermeer voluntarily went

to the Fort Worth PD Homicide Office

and he met with detectives.

At first, Andrew Vandermeer denied any type of involvement,

but he changed that pretty quickly and said,

you know, I'm going to go and tell you what happened.

Andrew Vandermeer figured

that they were going to do something else, maybe a trade.

He did what Lamont Cousins told him to.

He arrived at Bill's Auto Sales,

and he said he went to the front door,

and it was locked.

He said that Lamont Cousins answered the door,

handed him the keys to an F-150,

and told him to pull it around to the side garage,

which he did,

which was all corroborated by the video from the tire shop.

[narrator] According to Vandermeer,

Lamont Cousins is calling the shots.

@He said he saw Lamont Cousins

standing there with a handgun.

And at that point, he knew something was very, very wrong.

That both Clayton Turrentine and Veronica Jones

were pleading for their lives,

saying you don't have to do this.

If this is about money, we have money.

And according to Andrew Vandermeer,

Lamont Cousins never responded.

[narrator] Andrew Vandermeer claims

after tying up Clay Turrentine and Veronica Jones,

Cousins orders them out to a waiting truck.

So we were actuallyú receiving this information

@ by text messages whileú we're in our interview.

I remember getting the text message and just like,

this is unbelievable.

Just completely floored on the turn of events.

Well, ultimately, Andrew Vandermeer,

@ when he was interviewed,

@ he broke and told themú everything that he knew

and what happened.

@ He said that Lamont Cousinsú took him and showed him

Veronica Jonesú and Clayton Turrentine,

@ who had been held in aú small closet in the office.

Clayton Turrentine was holding tissues or paper towels

to his face, looked like he had been bleeding,

and Veronica Jones was bleeding from the chest.

And Andrew Vandermeer figured that Lamont Cousins

had already shot them both.

Once they're tied up, Lamont has Andrew Vandermeer

take them one at a time to the F-150 in the garage,

and he places them back in the backseat of the F-150.

Lamont Cousins tells Andrew Vandermeer that he's driving,

and to pull the pickup truck out of the garage

and come pick up Lamont Cousins in the front of the shop.

[narrator] Vandermeer says he and Cousins

drive Clay and Veronica out of town.

[Lloyd] The bait and tackle shop

is just off the road where they were.

It's about 40 yards off the road.

And so Lamont sees this, hey, stop, let's go there.

The victims are in the back seat,

you know, basically begging Andrew,

"Hey, you don't have to do this, drive away."

You can save us, basically.

[Caley] She begged for her life.

And she told him that she has grandchildren counting on her

and people waiting for her.

And she begged him, begged him to stop,

@ begged him to let her go.

And he didn't care.

[narrator] As detectives prepare to search

for the abandoned bait shop on the outskirts of town,

Vandermeer reveals what happens

when Cousins forces Clay Turrentine inside.

Veronica Jones became even more upset,

she had just heard Lamont Cousins say,

"This is the end of the road."

Lamont Cousins came back for her,

and he opened the door, and he took her out,

and he took her into that abandoned building,

and Andrew Vandermeer said he heard a second pop

at that point.

And when Lamont Cousins came back to that pickup truck,

he was alone.

We had to complete

@ our interview with Lamont.

And by the time we were done,

Andrew was taking Detectives Sullivan

@ and Detective Anderson out to West Texas

to try to locate these bodies.

He had volunteered to get in a car with officers

to try and find where Lamont Cousins

had directed him to go.

And while in the car with officers,

he remembered that he had a receipt

from the gas station he stopped at

on the way out of town.

And so he called his mother while with detectives

and asked his mother to look on the nightstand.

And she found the receipt,

which was for a gas station in Peaster,

which is northwest of Fort Worth,

heading out towards Palo Pinto County.

And so that gave detectives a great idea of what direction

they needed to be heading in.

As they arrived, the building was just

how Andrew had described.

And it was an old rundown bait shop.

As they approached,

there was... like a little closet

attached to the building and walked up to that

and immediately observed Clay and Veronica

both deceased on the floor at that area.

One of the things I asked Andrew Vandermeer

when we spoke to him the first time was...

Lamont Cousin's still in that tire shop.

You're in this pickup truck with the two people in the back.

They're tied up.

Why didn't you just drive away?

And he said he was just too scared,

and he was almost frozen with fear.

[narrator] As police at thescene seal it for investigation,

detectives prepare to call Veronica and Clay's family.

[Caley] I get a call from one of the detectives.

She believes that she's found my mom

and that she found my mom's body.

We found out that they were not just murdered,

but they were executed.

They were legitimately executed, like, on their knees,

executed with a gun to the... or a bullet to the head.

And that... that was tough.

@ [reporter] Becky Rodriguez is Jones' sister.

He took from us...

a huge part of our hearts.

How can life mean nothing to you?

You know, like to execute three innocent people

and think that you're gonna get away with it.

[narrator] Based on CCTV from Bill's Auto Sales

and Andrew Vandermeer's account,

detectives are confident they know who was responsible.

@ [news] Officers arrestedú 44-year-old Lamont Cousins

and 32-year-old Andrew Vandermeer.

An arrest affidavit says after the shooting,

that pair tied up and then drove

the dealership's owner, Clay Turrentine

and another employee, Veronica Jones

to an abandoned building in Palo Pinto County

where Cousins killed them.

Several weeks later, I received a call

that Grand Prairie Police Department

had been called to an investigation

at a car lot in Grand Prairie

that Lamont kept cars at.

There was another individual that did some work for him,

and he had been working on a Volkswagen Beetle

at that location.

And he discovered a handgun

underneath the driver's side seat.

We searched that vehicle and took possession

of a .40 calibre Smith & Wesson handgun.

We had later obtained that gun,

and ballistics had shown that that gun was actually used

in this triple murder.

[narrator] But the handgun doesn't belong

to Lamont Cousins.

It belongs to his girlfriend.

Police interview her.

She early on had told me she owns two guns.

And so she said there's no reason

why either one of these guns should be missing.

At the time, I knew that the .40 cal,

because of shell casings at the scene,

were going to be involved.

Any missing gun would be-

it would be important to us at that time.

I even asked her to come in the house with me

so that I can confirm,

hey, this is where the gun's supposed to be.

And when she confirmed it, I let her know it wasn't there.

She started breaking down crying.

[Leah] Testing was submitted to see if that gun matched

the fired cartridge casings

that were collected at Bill's Auto Sales,

as well as tab pulls in Palo Pinto County.

And ultimately, they all matched.

Several days later, she ended up

contacting Detective O'Brien,

stating that she had some additional information.

[Thomas] She said, "Well, I do have some other information."

He actually was wearing something different

than he said.

He actually was wearing this large coat."

And it was kind of weird

because when he came in last night,

he actually threw that coat in the wash.

[Thomas] She saw that as being very weird because number one,

he doesn't do laundry.

There would be no real reason for him to do that.

And so she at least gave me that as being a red flag.

She even made mention of the fact

that Lamont was going over there more and more often.

Well, looking back, I think it's more of Lamont

was going over there to get intel on this place,

to see what information he could find out.

[narrator] Lamont's girlfriend is neither arrested

nor charged in connection with the murders.

But Andrew Vandermeer's eyewitness account,

backed by the scene's forensic evidence,

gives prosecutors the confidenceto take Lamont Cousins to trial.

And in April 2025,

they pursue the death penalty.

This case should have been tried in a couple years,

but we were coming out of COVID.

And we had this huge backlog,

and that meant that Lamont Cousins

sat in the Tarrant County Jail for almost five years.

The actual trial itself lasted less than three weeks.

[Caley] Went for day one and I went for the very last day.

I did not go additional days, I couldn't do it.

Day one was really hard.

I had a panic attack on the first day

because I had been looking for this day for a long time.

I've never seen Lamont, only pictures.

I started having a panic attack

and I had to walk out of the courtroom

and try to get myself together.

As far as the prosecution

of proving that he killed these three people,

the surveillance video from the tire shop,

the two gas stations,

and the Lawler were very, very important.

The DNA at the crime scene at Bill's Auto Sales,

the DNA on the F-150,

we had some DNA that proved that

it was the car that this person arrived in that

we later identified as Lamont Cousins' car.

The Fort Worth Police Department did an incredible job

of putting together a case

that we felt that a jury would be able to understand.

And even though we didn't have a confession,

Lamont's metaphorical fingerprints

were all over the case.

[suspenseful music]

Photos were coming out and descriptions of the wounds

and the...

I guess, like, the kill shots or whatever.

Those coming out, that was tough to see.

Seeing their bodies and seeing how they were...

left...

now all I can think about is that.

Something like that has now replaced a lot of the good stuff

that I remember.

[narrator] Further evidence presented by Andrew Vandermeer

suggests the murder was pre-planned.

[ Dale] Lawler Motorsports was very cooperative

with Fort Worth Police Department.

And they found a wooden box.

And in that wooden box

were stacks and stacks of car titles,

which Andrew Vandermeer, in his statement,

said that that was the motive,

was to get a hold of these titles,

which would then get him access to these vehicles.

And then I guess he thought

he was going to move them somewhere,

take them to another state.

But that looked to be the ultimate goal,

was obtaining these car titles from Bill's Auto Sales.

Andrew Vandermeer was also charged with capital murder.

But we certainly knew that Lamont Cousins

was the main actor.

He was the shooter involved in this.

So once we make a deal with Vandermeer

to get his testimony to be able to use against Lamont Cousins.

[narrator] Andrew Vandermeer testifies in court

against his boss.

[Lloyd] Listening to Andrew Vandermeer

testify about that drive was certainly a standout moment.

I mean, because I can imagine the horror

those two people felt in the back seat of that truck.

And certainly when the first person's walked out

by Lamont Cousins and is executed

and he's coming back to get the second one.

That certainly stood out as a standout moment.

Andrew, I think in a way he was taken advantage of.

I don't excuse his behavior, but I do,

I understand from a vulnerable point of view,

putting myself in his shoes and feeling in danger

because it was mentioned several times,

people don't know why he's still alive.

They don't know why Lamont left him alive.

The expert witnesses for Lamont's attorneys were a joke

because they tried to argue

that he had fetal alcohol syndrome,

which was not

medically diagnosed.

[ Dale] The defence tried to make a big deal

about his mental acuity,

make Lamont Cousins seem to be, you know,

intellectually deficient.

And then we turned around in rebuttal

and played that video that the jury hadn't seen.

And for two hours, he's talking about

his complicated auto business.

There's no doubt in anyone's mind

that Lamont Cousins is smart.

Lamont Cousins knows how to operate.

He pled not guilty, of course.

[narrator] On May 1, 2025,

the jury rests to consider their verdict.

There's two questions that are going to be

in every death penalty punishment phase.

And that is there... did the state prove,

beyond a reasonable doubt,

that the defendant is going to be a future danger?

Is there something sufficiently mitigating

to warrant a sentence of life without parole

versus a death sentence?

[Lloyd] The jury found Lamont Cousins guilty

[narrator] The jury decides Cousins should receive

life imprisonment without parole,

but not the death penalty.

I'm very disappointed it wasn't the death sentence.

[Caley] I was devastated.

I cried.

I walked out of the courtroom, and I cried.

Two of the people, he had already shot before

he had executed them.

You know, imagine being shot in the jaw, through and through,

being shot in the chest, through and through, bleeding out,

begging for your life, and to sit there at the end

being told this is the end of the road.

That's torture.

[narrator] Andrew Vandermeer issentenced to 45 years in prison

after pleading guilty to murder.

I said, Andrew, what you did that day

helped the murder of two people,

and you're gonna have to be held accountable for that.

[narrator] For Toni and Caley,

life after their mother's murder

isn't measured in years.

There's times that I get this urge,

"Oh, I gotta call my mom and tell her about this,"

and it's just like being punched in the throat.

This took a big impact on us.

Um...

I can't-I don't have my best friend

to call every day like I did at 4 o'clock.

It's a big emptiness in my heart.

Ironically, one of her favourite pastimes

was watching "True Crime."

I think she's up there laughing and just kind of, like,

enjoying watching us.

We're trying to live-I don't know,

live in a way that would make her proud.

We just try to keep everything about them alive.