Original subtitles

My sister, Danielle, was very a beautiful soul.

He was definitely smitten.

He was odd, he was acting strange.

That's as tense as it gets.

This one will stand out in my mind

as being more gruesome.

It's like a cat and mouse game. He's trying to get away.

My job is to catch him.

I was having a hard time believing

somebody would actually do this.

Clinton township police dispatch officers

to the scene of the call,

a neighborhood within a mile of the police department.

You're showing up first. Nothing is secure.

You don't know who you're dealing with,

you don't know if --

if there is a body in a bag,

if a murder suspect's still on scene.

It's not a call you receive a lot, if any, in your lifetime.

So I wasn't prepared for what I was going to see.

Officers learn the missing couple's names

are Danielle marzejka and seren Bryan.

They then prepare to enter the shed.

I walked up, then...

I observed a garbage bag on the ground

directly in front of me, ripped open.

And immediately could see a person

wearing a black t-shirt.

And then I observed the left thigh,

skin exposed, of a person.

Immediately confirmed that, yes, we have a body.

What's not immediately apparent is that

there might be another victim

or possible assailant inside the house.

So officers prepare to enter.

We were immediately clearing that home,

making it safe so there's not a possible suspect

hiding in there.

I peeled off to the left, and we started searching,

and just started going room by room checking everything.

That's as tense as it gets, is clearing a house.

We're going through each room,

we're opening each closet door immediately drawing

and getting our light in there, making sure nobody is in there

hiding that could possibly do harm to US.

Back outside, the homicide investigation begins.

Seren didn't have any enemies.

He was pretty even-tempered.

Wasn't anyone that you'd see flying off the handle.

He had his limits, like everyone.

Seren didn't know anyone out in Clinton township

besides Danielle and her family and her group.

He was actually pretty quiet about that relationship.

They met at a bonfire,

and he did tell me, you know, "I met someone new,"

but he didn't tell me a lot about her.

He was definitely smitten.

Seren was inexperienced in relationships,

and, you know, he was very much, you know,

19-year-old kids' all-encompassing love with her.

My sister, she was very unique,

very creative and open, and she definitely stood

for what she believed in, whether it upset people or not.

She had no enemies that I knew of.

And I could only think that maybe someone mad at something

she was standing up for.

But I couldn't imagine anything being serious enough

to lead to hurting her or anything like that.

Copy.

My god.

Back at the scene,

investigators examine the remains.

I watched as both bodies were removed

from the bags, and I saw

that both bodies had been duct taped.

Their hands were bound together, their feet were bound together.

Investigators also observed signs of asphyxiation.

They also had duct tape around their mouths,

over their nose,

and they also had bags put over their head

and then duct taped around those bags around their neck.

I opened up a bag and found multiple items

inside of it covered in blood,

one of which was a small mallet.

Immediately thought that,

hey, we could possibly have a murder weapon here.

We continued on. Duct tape with blood on it.

There was bedsheets with blood on it.

I've been employed with Clinton township police

for 18 years.

This one will stand out in my mind as being more gruesome,

if not that any one I've ever seen.

Outside, investigators speak

with friends and family members.

They start by speaking

with a work friend of Danielle and seren's.

The friend then explains

she came over to the house that morning

to help look for the couple,

Danielle's work friend was trying to help find her,

and she had been home with Danielle's father, Robert,

looking around.

They started talking about the shed.

Said Robert couldn't find his key or couldn't produce a key.

It wasn't then until they had to call Robert's son, Kevin,

to bring a key over to the house.

Later that night, investigators speak

with Danielle's father, Robert sr.

When I was talking to Robert, he was odd.

He was acting strange. I just kind of let him talk.

I positioned myself so my camera would be on him and let him go.

I didn't know how involved he was with this.

I didn't know why there was body parts in a shed.

He said he lived there, but he didn't know anything

about that person being inside of the shed.

So at this point in the investigation,

we had a shed that was not broken into.

Someone used a key to get into that shed.

We had what appeared to be two bodies

stuffed in bags in that shed.

We had a couple different stories on whose key was used.

And at that point, we were trying to figure out

whose story was true,

who we could believe and who we couldn't.

Detectives have asked Danielle marzejka's father,

Robert sr., and brother, Kevin,

to come to the station for questioning.

Kevin was cooperative in coming to our police station

where we could conduct an interview with him.

I was a little bit surprised to hear about another brother,

because that was the first I'd heard of it.

I didn't know who Robert Jr. even was.

I don't know if Robert Jr. is a suspect.

I don't know if Robert Jr.

Just wasn't around and nobody brought him up.

But at that point, I was very curious on why

he was not mentioned in the beginning of the story.

Detectives then ask Kevin about his father,

Robert sr.

He explained that, when dad got drunk,

he would sometimes get angry and yell.

If they're an alcoholic, they can be two different people

at two different -- at different times.

And that got me a little suspicious at that point.

So my next task was to interview Robert sr.

To try and gather more information.

At that point, I'm trying to figure out if this guy

is just a strange guy,

or if he's actually trying to hide something from the police.

We had a shed that was not broken into.

Someone used a key to get into that shed.

And during our questioning with Robert sr.,

we finally got out of him that, actually, the key

that was used to get in the shed was not his.

It was Kevin's key.

Listen -- well...

And he couldn't explain why he originally told me

it was his key.

Whether he was just intoxicated or he was lying to me,

I was still trying to figure that out at that time.

Detectives then shift their focus to Robert Jr.

Okay.

The strange thing was, is that Robert sr.

Was kind of shielding me away from Robert Jr.,

so I was suspicious about that.

The following day, investigators receive

the results of the autopsies,

and family identify the victims as Danielle marzejka

and seren Bryan.

The medical examiner gave a cause of death

for both victims as asphyxiation and blunt force trauma.

So it was just way overboard overkill on this one.

I did not hear he was missing.

I was at work Monday,

and I had a call from a number I didn't know,

so of course I didn't pick it up,

but I googled it, and it was a news reporter.

I called her back, and she asked if this was Diane Bryan,

and I said, "yes."

And then she asked some questions,

and then she decided that she had the wrong Diane Bryan.

Um...

Then I guess she reached seren's dad,

and I think she told him that something had happened.

He called me back, and I ran back up to my office and...

Googled seren and Danielle

and saw what had happened.

So that's -- that's how I found out.

Seren was a very kind person.

He was sensitive to how others felt

and wanted people to be comfortable and happy.

He liked to draw and create art.

He had sketch journals.

Sometimes he shared them.

In asking questions about them,

I found out more about his day and how things were going.

When he shared things from the sketchbook,

it, um...

Um...

His drawings sometimes were how he worked out

how he felt about situations by himself.

My sister, Danielle, was a very beautiful soul.

I mean, she was very unique and very creative.

She loved the odd things in life.

She didn't go for your basic, you know,

girly things that they all love,

whether it's, you know, flowers and whatnot.

I mean, she loved spiders and bees and odd things like that,

you know, things that didn't get the normal attention.

In a lot of her pictures,

she would kind of put her head up

and just her arms open and kind of embrace the world.

She just loved the world, and she's seen the good in a lot,

in a lot of things that not many people would.

I mean, it's definitely her most unique trait

is how optimist she was about everything.

Now investigators need to find their killer.

They return to the marzejka home to search for clues.

I looked around in the shed.

It didn't appear like you wouldn't see any blood spatter.

So once I saw that, I thought, this was not the actual scene

where these people were killed.

Investigators move inside the house,

starting in Danielle's room.

Looking around, to your naked eye,

it would look just like a bedroom.

We use this stuff called bluestar,

so it reacts to where blood was.

The reason why we use that is because, at this crime scene,

someone had cleaned up.

Someone at staged this bedroom

to look like nothing happened in that room.

Investigators continue their search of the house.

They move to Robert Jr's room,

where they uncover several blood-spattered items

hidden in a closet.

The evidence tech located a bunch of evidence.

Black duct tape that had blood on it

and hair on it, sheets that had blood on it,

towels that had blood on it.

A lot of different things that looked like were used

to clean up maybe a crime scene.

With a substantial amount

of evidence now implicating Robert Jr.,

investigators now have a manhunt on their hands

if Robert Jr. is on the run,

he could be pretty far away by now.

We also discovered that their family Van was now missing

and no one knew where it was.

So we're starting to realize that Robert Jr.,

if he is our suspect, could have fled in that Van.

At that point. Things started to move

a little bit quicker for US, and we had to move fast.

Detectives are searching

for Robert marzejka Jr.

After finding evidence connecting him

to the murders of his sister, Danielle,

and her boyfriend, seren Bryan.

We got a search warrant

for his cell phone records.

I was looking at the 23rd,

which was the last day that seren

and Danielle's coworker saw them.

Well, later that morning, early afternoon,

I see Robert Jr. was calling a local cab company.

And I followed up with that cab company to find out

if they did show up to give him a ride.

Detectives learn the name of the cab driver

and bring him in for questioning.

Detectives head to the Wendy's

to recover surveillance video

from the morning of the murders.

They discover Robert Jr. on multiple cameras.

Pretty much in all the videos

that I watched of Robert Jr., he appeared very calm.

It's not like he had blood all over his clothing.

He's just acting like the normal guy

that you might be standing behind in line at the counter.

So when I watched the video, I saw Robert Jr. at the Wendy's,

which I know is a bus stop, getting onto the bus.

Investigators obtained security footage

from inside the bus.

And I saw him riding that bus

till the end of the line.

And you start to wonder, where is he going?

Who is he meeting?

Initially, speaking to Robert sr.,

he had told me that Robert Jr.,

on the 23rd, was with him on a job across town,

that they had rode together in this white Van to this job.

And now I'm watching this video of Robert Jr.

Taking cabs, getting on a bus.

It was obviously not a true story,

that Robert Jr. was never with Robert sr. That morning.

What I then found out is he was in route to meet his father,

who was doing a construction job about 45 minutes away.

So, at this point, we knew, if Robert Jr.

Was on the run, it was likely that he was

in that Van on the run.

Clinton township police track down

the vehicle's previous owner and explain

that the Van may be involved in a double homicide.

The previous owner, when he had it put up for sale,

had taken a bunch of pictures of the Van.

So I created a crime bulletin.

We distributed that to other law enforcement agencies

and to the media to get it out to the public.

The search continues for a 24-year-old man

following the discovery of a double murder scene

in Clinton township.

Meanwhile, family gather to remember

Danielle and seren.

I managed to put together a memorial service

for my sister when she passed.

She was cremated and we had a memorial service

to where her family could pay their respects.

I think that, as far as what she said

and what I heard that she said,

it didn't go outside of what she would have wanted.

There were two memorials, where Danielle's family

and a lot of seren's friends drove out to that,

which was very touching.

His school had a memorial also.

One of his friends and classmates

brought a blank canvas to both memorials,

and then she laid out different enamel paints,

and people put fingerprints or thumbprints on the canvas.

I have that. Um...

It was more than enough, and it's what...

Was right for him.

The following day, investigators receive a call

from officer Anthony Duncan from Toledo, Ohio.

Word on the street is that Robert Jr. may be there.

My thought process,

I'm trying to think like Mr. Marzejka.

He's trying to blend in within the community.

I used the homeless to help me.

I needed them to pound the pavement for me.

Officer Duncan learns Robert Jr's Van

was seen in the parking lot of a local grocery store,

but when investigators arrive to check it out,

Robert Jr. is nowhere to be found.

I wasn't certain if Robert Jr.

Was going to come back to the Van

or if Robert Jr. had just abandoned the Van.

Toledo police canvass local businesses in the area

where Robert Jr's Van was found

and comb through hours of security camera footage

before making a chance discovery.

You know, he's wearing a disguise.

With the blond wig and sunglasses

and the tan baseball cap, it looked so foolish.

But he just stood out.

He thought he was trying to blend in,

but he actually stood out.

He went in and he purchased a cell phone.

Presumably, he was making a phone call to someone.

And then, shortly thereafter, he brought that phone back in,

packaged back up, and returned it for the cash.

Robert Jr. is next spotted

purchasing food at a nearby gas station.

He went there and purchased cigarettes

and beverages and everything,

but he was denied cigarettes

because he didn't have identification.

It's a challenge to me, it's like a cat and mouse game.

He's trying to get away. My job is to catch him.

Investigators fear Robert marzejka Jr.

May have slipped through their fingers.

My thinking is he doesn't have any friends.

He's trying to get away. He's trying to get distance.

My thought process is, one, he needs identification.

And the security is going to ask

for that soon as you get into the airport.

So that checks that off.

The next two things is going to be the train station...

Or the bus, which is all in one.

Investigators review the bus station

security camera footage from their ticket counter.

Mr. Marzejka is trying to purchase a ticket.

They pulled up the ticket information.

They had the ticket printed,

which said his alias, Josh Bianca.

The ticket also said

the location where he was going to,

what time he left, which was 11-- 11:55

on the 28th,

and he arrived in Cincinnati at 3:45 am on the 29th.

At that point, we knew his next destination,

so we had to contact the u.S. Marshals

down in the area of Cincinnati

to start combing the area for Robert Jr.

In the area of that bus stop or in the immediate area of that.

We have many core missions,

but one of them is fugitive apprehension.

And we pretty much pride ourselves

in working with local police departments.

It's best to have u.S. Marshals

'cause there's not anywhere we can go.

If we need to, in some cases,

we can go outside the country, as well.

He had about a six-hour head start on US,

and we knew that he had definitely came to Cincinnati.

So that was our bread crumb at the time.

So, at that point in time, we started heading toward

the the greyhound station there in Cincinnati.

Once there, my partner and I went inside.

We made contact with a greyhound employee.

He said, "marzejka came up to me.

He only asked two questions.

He asked me, 'one, where can I buy a cell phone?

And where is the library at?'"

U.s. Marshals send multiple undercover agents

to the Cincinnati public library,

where Robert Jr. is captured on security cameras.

We're closing that gap.

If we show up wearing our tac gear,

he might see US walking up to the library,

and at that point in time, he might book it.

Cincinnati is is a decent-sized city.

And especially when you think

you've got someone locked down,

you know, you don't want to give them the opportunity

to slip out and go somewhere else.

So my partner and I walk in the lobby,

and there's a security guard that was sitting just left

inside the doorway at that point.

And the security guard is facing the elevators.

And we identify ourselves and show him a picture

and say, "we're basically going to be looking around here.

We're looking for this guy.

If you see him, don't approach him 'cause it's very dangerous."

And at that point in time,

I had my back kind of to the elevators,

and I'm pulling up a picture of Robert marzejka.

I hear ding and I see the doors open up.

He goes, "there's your guy right there."

And at that point,

I turn around, and my partner turned around,

and I mean, there he is.

Wearing the same hat,

same long blond hair wig, strolling off that elevator

with not a care in the world, holding a cup of coffee.

And he was pretty shocked. He was pretty shocked by it.

It's almost like you're watching a --

you know, a hit cable TV show.

And, so, at that point in time, we basically jumped him

and actually got out of there pretty quickly.

U.s. Marshals arrest Robert Jr.

In the library's lobby without incident

and escort him from the building and into custody.

So the marshals had their man,

but that was not the end of my job.

I had to continue with the investigation.

Robert Jr. was transported up to the Clinton township

police department.

Once he's up here, I got word that he wanted to talk to me,

which surprised me.

I didn't know that he would talk.

Robert marzejka Jr. is finally in custody.

So during my interview, I was trying to appeal

to his human level and trying to get

some kind of closure for the families.

And so I was trying to appeal to his good-natured side,

if he had one.

'Cause normally...

I remember going through some of the facts that we had

and to try and lay it out to him, the things that I knew.

I thought he would maybe give me some kind of reasoning

of why this happened, and he didn't.

So at that point, Robert Jr.

Asked if he could call his brother.

And, secretly, I had hope that maybe he was going to call

his brother to confess or to tell him why he did it.

All right.

Like...

Robert Jr. just told him he's going to plead not guilty,

and at that point, it gets frustrating

because you know that that good piece of evidence

that we could have right there of his confession,

we weren't going to get it.

Despite not having a confession,

detectives arrest Robert Jr.

For the murder of his sister, Danielle,

and her boyfriend, seren.

I believe what happened is seren and Danielle

returned home at 8:00 in the morning

from working all night and go to bed.

Robert sr. Gets up to go to work.

Robert sr. And Robert Jr. were going to go paint that day.

Robert Jr. was nowhere to be found.

He wasn't in his bedroom. He wasn't there.

So I believe Robert sr. Left to go to work.

And then Robert Jr.

Then returned home at some point that morning.

And something bad happened in seren and Danielle's bedroom.

I don't know if they were awake or if they were asleep.

But I believe that they were bludgeoned to the head

and knocked out right away, and probably right then

is when Robert Jr. taped them up so they couldn't move.

And then put them in bags and drug them out to the shed.

This has been one of the more memorable cases in my career.

The brutality of it was crazy and disturbing.

On November 23, 2019, after a six-day trial,

a jury takes just 40 minutes to find Robert marzejka Jr.

Guilty of two counts of first-degree murder,

sentencing him to life

in prison without the possibility of parole.

As much as my brother's done, I -- I don't hate him.

He just -- he's where he deserves to be,

you know, he's where he belongs.

I don't forgive him, and I don't think I ever will,

but I don't hate him,

and I definitely don't love him either.

I just -- he's just not my brother.

He's just some stranger

that murdered my sister and her boyfriend

and is in prison for the rest of his life.

I have a son and a daughter on the way now,

and that's just all I look forward to

is being a father to them and creating my own family.

Changing who I am because of the offender

is a disservice to seren and to Danielle.

No matter what you go through,

you can choose if it's going to change you

for the worse or the better.

Seren's with me every day.

He's in my heart.

I found the best way to honor seren

and keep his spirit alive

is through seren shining arts.

It's a program that I'm developing

with his school and family

to give kids sketchbooks and create

and think and clear their heads, to have an outlet

that -- to initiate conversations

about how they're feeling.

I think it's important, and I think seren

would be really proud that I'm making that happen.