Original subtitles

Deep down, I feel like if I didn't get in a fight

with him that day, she would still be alive.

Okay.

There is smeared blood all over her.

She usually didn't go to that bar.

Why she went to that bar that night, we don't know.

She had a good heart,

and people out there would take advantage of that and use her.

We knew through the surveillance footage

that she was with somebody.

They had sex.

Within minutes,

dubuque, Iowa, police officers are dispatched to the scene,

a house in the north end of town.

Whenever there's a hot call, which is a call

where you're going lights and sirens to that,

you need to get to immediately,

your body camera needs to be on.

I turned on my body camera right away.

It's certainly a strange call to come out

for a female that's covered in blood.

You know, it seemed like, you know,

something's definitely wrong here.

When officer crabill arrives,

the 911 caller is waiting for him on the street.

I was definitely a little nervous going into it,

especially after speaking to the man outside,

with him saying that she's upstairs covered in blood.

At that point, obviously your mind is thinking,

"okay, is she dead? Is this a homicide, suicide?"

You're not really sure.

Officer crabill draws his gun,

unsure of what he might encounter inside.

There's a flight of stairs going straight up,

and I had my sidearm out,

and I slowly made my way up the stairs.

You really couldn't hear anything moving.

You know, we don't know if someone is still inside

wanting to come after police.

I could hear my backup coming,

knowing that they were pretty close.

That time between when you show up first and your backup officer

gets there can be really nerve-racking...

...which is why I made sure that I got there quickly

to assist the first responding officer.

It was immediately apparent that the subject was deceased.

We needed to make sure that the dog was contained.

Luckily, I didn't have to shoot the dog.

Officers assess the crime scene.

She was completely naked.

She had smeared blood all over her,

pools of blood, blood spatter on the walls.

It was certainly a gruesome scene,

one that, you know, you don't ever forget.

First responders find a photo I.D.

And identify the victim as 42-year-old Beverly puccio.

Bev has always been close to me.

She was very loving, kindhearted and easy-going.

We'd talk about two or three times a day,

what she had to do that day

and sometimes just a lot of nonsense stuff.

It was just kind of hard to believe

that somebody would want to hurt her

because she is so kindhearted.

Bev had a good heart.

She would give her shirt off her back for anybody.

She loved her music.

She wanted to be a singer.

And I told her all the time, I was like,

"you can be whatever you want to be."

Back inside the house,

detectives carefully examine the body.

When we got to the body lying there naked in the bed

in the pool of blood,

we're thinking probably sex abuse, homicide.

We weren't really sure what happened.

I mean, we thought it was a homicide,

but you got to be careful as an officer you just don't

get tunnel vision and think "okay, this is what happened."

And maybe it was some freak accident or whatnot.

As we're searching around the house,

we're just looking for anything that might have blood on it

or any instruments or anything that could be suspicious.

Obviously weapons, if we find any weapons,

we're gonna grab those.

I remember seeing a pocket knife

right by the doorway.

At that point, we didn't know if that could've been the weapon

that was used or not.

Investigators hoped the killer

left DNA behind at the scene,

but it will be weeks before they get the results

back from the lab.

Detectives expand their investigation

to the rest of the house.

There was just stuff all over the floor.

You almost couldn't walk without stepping on something,

you know, papers or food.

So we weren't really sure what was part of the crime

and what wasn't at that point.

Meaning Beverly had no way of securing herself

inside her own home.

Investigators wonder,

did the killer know the door was open?

Officer crabill goes back outside to speak with the man

who found Beverly dead,

the 911 caller, Jay scovel.

Okay.

There was nothing on him,

and so I had him sit in the back of my squad car,

where I had video going,

and just got a little more detail.

He was oddly calm throughout the whole interview

and calm explaining that,

you know, he had found his girlfriend dead

and didn't really seem bothered by it.

But it's what Jay says next

that catches officer crabill by surprise.

Police in dubuque, Iowa,

have just found the body of 42-year-old Beverly puccio...

She was deceased, smeared blood all over her.

...leaving her family devastated.

We'd lived there, bev and US,

for 20-some years in that house on high bluff.

Bev has always been my one that I depended on,

and all the other girls, of course, you know,

were jealous because bev has always been close to me.

Me and bev,

our relationship was up and down a lot.

We were working on our relationship.

We were getting that sisterly bond back.

And no matter what happened between US,

there was always love.

Now investigators are questioning the man

who found her body, her ex-boyfriend, Jay scovel.

Jay's odd behavior at the scene

has piqued investigators' interest.

Corporal Justin stair questions him.

We got a guy that knew her and then finds her.

We're thinking, "could he be a suspect?"

My task with Jay is to get

as much fact-find information that I could.

Still didn't know what the relationship is

between the two of them.

When we got to the body lying there naked in the bed

in the pool of blood, we're thinking,

"probably sex abuse."

And so Jay actually had some intimate relationship with her,

and that kind of raises our suspicions.

Like, "okay, they were intimate at one time,

and what's going on here?"

Corporal stair then shifts his questions

to the last time Jay spoke with Beverly.

At this point, other than Jay pointing US

to the direction of the body,

we have no clue what happened other than him saying

he wasn't involved with it.

Police photograph

and collect forensic evidence from Jay...

...before letting him go.

The next day, corporal stair

receives the results of the autopsy.

When they did the autopsy, they found marks and damage

to her neck area.

She had trauma to her face, and she had a cut above her eyes

and a lot of blood from her nose, mouth,

and then that was the determination is

that she was strangled to death.

The medical examiner also notes

the presence of alcohol in her blood when she died,

supporting Jay's story that Beverly had been out

drinking the night she was killed,

but detectives aren't convinced Jay is not involved.

Corporal stair arranges to speak with Beverly's parents

to learn more about their relationship.

Corporal stair starts by asking them

about Beverly's living arrangements.

Rose and Gary, Beverly's parents,

they were really nice older couple.

They did say she kind of was off on her own.

She didn't really hang out with much of the other family

or anything of that nature.

Beverly's parents indicate

that Beverly spent much of her time with Jay,

raising the possibility that he may know the most

about what was going on with her when she died.

Corporal stair arranges to meet Jay again to find out.

Jay continues to assert

that he had nothing to do with Beverly's murder.

We know Jay was with Beverly earlier,

but then he split ways, and he went home.

It's vital that we get as much information as we can

and to get looking at stuff as quick as you can to see

if he's being honest with US.

Jay claims he was at home with his parents

when Beverly was killed,

so corporal stair decides to pay them a visit.

I went and talked to the parents just to see

if they had anything else they could add about him and Beverly

and to see if they could corroborate

that he was there that night.

When I talked to Jay's parents, they were home,

and they don't recall Jay leaving at all that night.

But corporal stair knows that parents

aren't the most reliable alibis when it comes to their children.

Though detectives have nothing solid

connecting Jay to Beverly's murder,

one thing he said at the crime scene continues to stand out.

It was one of our good leads

because Jay said that she went there.

She usually didn't go to that bar.

Detectives head to the bar

to recover surveillance video

from the night Beverly was killed.

We watched video footage throughout that whole night.

Just what we saw, I was kind of caught off guard.

Detectives hunting Beverly puccio's killer

have obtained surveillance footage from a local bar

where her ex-boyfriend, Jay scovel,

claims she spent time before she was killed.

She usually didn't go to that bar.

Why she went to that bar that night, we don't know.

Corporal Justin stair

painstakingly reviews the footage.

Lots of times, when we see video surveillance,

we get excited because, like,

"good, they got it on camera."

But then it's not working,

or it's just there as a dummy camera just to make,

you know, kind of as a deterrence to people

as if to make them think they're being video recorded.

Fortunately, there is footage of that day

from multiple cameras.

And eventually, detectives strike gold.

Beverly walks through the front door of the bar.

Through the video, we see Beverly at the bar.

Then nearly an hour later,

she's seen on another camera,

and she's not alone.

She was with somebody that she had been drinking

with that person.

Later, they were being intimate with each other.

They were touching each other.

Detectives continue tracking Beverly

and the mystery man across multiple cameras.

When we looked at the video cameras,

they leave the walnut tap.

There was a cab outside that picked them up.

At this point, we don't know who this person is.

We also had the traffic camera footage to show

where they went in the cab.

We're starting to be able to fill in the parts

of what happened, you know, between the time

that scovel talked to her on the phone

and she was found dead in her house.

Detectives now want to know what,

if anything, transpired inside the cab

after the man and Beverly left the bar.

We wanted to make contact with the taxi company

and then the driver himself.

They bring in cab driver Dan ellerman

to tell them about the ride.

Dan tells detectives he vividly remembers picking up Beverly

and this mystery man.

Dan claims he never heard either of their actual names.

This mystery guy was calling Beverly "babe."

We're thinking, "did he not know her name

or that was a nickname for her?"

At this point, we still didn't know

what the relationship was with her and this mystery guy.

The cab driver tells police

that the man paid him cash

when he dropped them off at Beverly's house,

so there's no way of tracking his identity.

If Beverly just met the man that night,

detectives fear finding him

will be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Out of leads, detectives go back to Beverly's neighborhood

and continue to canvas the area.

They discover a nursing home with exterior cameras

that face Beverly's street and house.

We had somebody go over there right away to start checking

their video system to see if they can see anything

right by Beverly's place the night she was murdered.

Investigators collect the video

and back at the station,

detectives Randall and stair scrutinize each frame

of the footage,

an arduous task made more difficult

by the video's poor quality.

It's a motion-sensor camera,

so it only records if there's motion.

So sometimes it might stop,

and it might not pick it up perfectly.

But the cameras confirm one thing.

The home-surveillance footage showed the cab

actually stopping out in front of bev's house.

However, the glitching motion sensor

fails to pick up Beverly

and the mystery man getting out of the cab.

After hours of scanning,

detectives are ready to abandon the video

when they notice something

that keeps popping up again and again.

A truck -- the same truck pulling up

and driving away from the house

multiple times on the night of the murder.

We see this truck we don't know.

Then we actually see it again that next morning.

Maybe they've seen something, or maybe they know something,

or maybe they're involved. We don't know.

This truck could be an important lead,

but the grainy video makes it impossible

for the detectives to read the license plate.

We got to figure out who that truck belongs to

so we can catch this person that did this,

so that way don't have this happen to somebody else.

Detectives in dubuque, Iowa,

are zeroing in on the identity of a man

who may have been the last person to see

Beverly puccio alive.

Their latest lead is security footage

of a suspicious truck in the area.

Surveillance did show a truck come back to

where bev was found on two occasions

that night after bev was killed.

The truck pulls up at 10:03 P.M.

And then again at 10:14,

stopping for 3 minutes each time.

On-again-off-again boyfriend Jay scovel doesn't own a truck,

so detectives review traffic-camera footage

around dubuque.

At 10:02 P.M. on loras boulevard,

1 1/2 miles from the scene,

they spot it,

this time in high definition.

We saw that truck,

and we were able to get a license plate from it.

It was registered to a male subject.

After talking with the owner of the truck,

he said that his daughters used the vehicle.

Detectives bring the driver of the truck that night,

justine, in for questioning.

Detectives ask justine about what she was doing

on the night of Beverly's murder.

Michael piantieri, justine's boyfriend.

Justine tells investigators he texted her that night

that he was heading to a bar,

but she didn't hear from him after that.

Piantieri realized he didn't have his wallet,

so he asked justine,

"hey, can you take me back down to where I was?"

And so she ends up taking him back down

to where Beverly lived.

It's a curious statement

that leaves detectives wondering,

"could justine's boyfriend somehow be involved

in Beverly's murder?"

At that point,

we had enough information to approach Michael.

Several investigators went to the area

where he was going to come out when he got off work.

Michael seemed a little surprised at US approaching him

and talking to him.

You could definitely tell he was anxious.

We didn't want to take any chances,

and we went through the procedure

of patting him down like we would anyone

before we place them in the back of the squad car.

All right.

Our game plan was to start off and get a time line,

get him to tell US what he did and get him locked into a story.

Piantieri said that he did start out at walnut tap.

He met this female that he ended up getting intimate with.

Michael's story seems to fall in sync

with the security footage

detectives retrieved from the bar.

Detectives suspect Michael might be spinning a story

to distance himself from Beverly

before she was killed until he reveals something else.

The same Jay scovel who found Beverly's body.

The search for Beverly puccio's killer

has come full circle

and landed right back where it started,

with Jay scovel, the man who discovered Beverly's body.

Now detectives have learned from another man,

Michael piantieri, that he left Beverly with Jay

just hours before she was killed.

While Michael waits in the interrogation room,

detectives go back and review the traffic-camera footage

around Beverly's house.

We don't see this truck.

We don't see anything like that pulling up or anything.

We don't see anybody standing outside.

Jay was not there.

We had our traffic camera that focused on Jay's house,

and we watched video footage throughout that whole night

and didn't see him leave at all.

And so we are able to show that, piantieri,

he's not being truthful at that point.

It's clear to detectives

that Michael is trying to misdirect the investigation.

So they bring his girlfriend, justine, back to the station.

She immediately breaks down.

Justine shares more details about what happened

the day following Beverly's murder.

Dubuque police obtain a warrant to search

justine and Michael's home.

What they find is unsettling.

There are shoes with blood spatter on them,

and in the backyard, there's a firepit with signs

that Michael attempted to destroy evidence.

He said, "let's go clean the backyard,"

so I went and helped him clean the backyard.

He started a bonfire.

That bag, he got that out.

He burned that in the fire.

Armed with this new information,

detectives return to Michael,

waiting inside the interrogation room.

Four hours of questioning and detectives feel

they're tantalizingly close to getting a confession.

When we go in to an interview,

especially to something this big,

our ultimate goal is to get a confession,

but we know that one of the hardest thing to do

is tell somebody that

you did probably the worst thing you've ever done in your life.

And with that,

Michael piantieri shuts down the interview.

Even if we don't get a confession,

if we get provable lies,

those are just as good as a confession.

Michael admits to everything

about meeting Beverly at the bar,

doing stuff with her at the bar,

leaving with her from the bar in the cab.

To her place,

but denies going anywhere up in her apartment

for any reason whatsoever,

when everything that we had pointed right to him.

I believe that Michael is the type of person that,

he's got to have power, control, and that, for whatever reason,

he thought that was being challenged by Beverly.

Something set him off to start beating her up,

punching her in the face.

There was just so much blood,

it looked like she was beaten to death

when he actually strangled her to death.

With the evidence, the forensic evidence,

the video evidence, Michael was there,

and he was responsible for the death of Beverly puccio.

With all the evidence that we had,

I believe that Michael piantieri knew that he had no chance.

Pled guilty to second-degree murder

and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

By watching the traffic cameras,

I was tracking Beverly's whereabouts up

and to the time she went to the walnut tap.

We had other investigators that were looking

at video surveillance at other businesses

that came into play.

I think piantieri thought that he could say whatever

and we wouldn't know any different or know any better,

when actually we did.

There's a lot of bad things about homicides.

Obviously somebody's losing a daughter.

Somebody's losing a mom, brother, sister,

whatever it might be.

Our goal is to find the truth.

We do our job for those people that can't speak for themselves,

and Beverly can't speak for herself anymore.

Deep down, I feel like if I didn't get in a fight

with him that day, if I would've just stayed home

and hung out with him instead of my sister,

that he would've never gone to the bar,

that he would've never met her, and she would still be alive.

I do believe Michael preyed on bev.

She was a lover, not a fighter.

He...

He took a daughter, a sister, a cousin, an aunt...

...and...he had no right.

She didn't deserve this.

It just leaves an empty feeling in your life, you know.

You know she was there, and now she's not.

Bev and I could, probably, we'd do some more real talking

that we didn't do when she was her,

get out some more of our feelings for each other.

If she was sitting across from me now,

I'd tell her how much I love her.