Original subtitles

First thing I remember seeing is a large amount of blood.

We have someone that is ahead

of US that is committing these homicides...

...and we haven't been able to catch up to them yet.

Never in my wildest dreams

did I imagine something happening at my office.

We're dealing with a suspect with a very generic description.

You're talking about a needle in a stack of needles.

Everyone was just on edge, because there was

no way to guess how this was gonna play out.

Right then and there it was like, okay, here we go.

We have no idea what is going to happen.

What is the link?

What is the relationship between all these people?

He just had unreconcilable rage.

Scottsdale police officers race to the scene,

an office complex in the heart of the city.

The information coming to the call for patrol officers

that were responding was that the female was covered in

blood, bleeding really bad from her kind of head, face area.

Going to something like that,

you don't know exactly what you're coming into.

Did she fall, was she hit, but somebody bleeding from

the head, that's never gonna be anything good.

So you kind of just gotta expect anything and everything.

The first thing I remember seeing is

a large amount of blood on the sidewalk.

I see a female that's lying face-down.

Immediately, I can kind of tell something is

a little bit different about this call.

So it's policy and good practice to activate

your body cam.

The big reason for that is preservation of the scene.

You're almost creating a snapshot of

what you're seeing at the time.

She's basically laying in a deep pool of blood,

and she's not moving.

I can see that the pool is getting bigger, and she had some

type of wound, kind of like in her jaw area.

That's when I started to figure out that

I think I've got a gunshot victim here.

Seeing somebody in that condition never gets easy.

I just felt like I had a feeling of helplessness.

I think naturally we're problem solvers,

and not being able to solve

a problem creates just this frustration.

Officers at the scene soon learn

the name of the woman... Veleria sharp.

Veleria was my paralegal and assistant.

She had just moved from Portland,

and so I only knew her for a year.

So I was just getting to know her, her family.

She loved talking about her kids and her husband.

She was smart. She was careful.

She had the world's best temperament.

She was calm, and no matter what.

In divorce law, there's a lot of emotion,

so she was the perfect person to deal

with all the things that she dealt with.

Back at the scene,

officer haas continues his investigation

while medics tend to veleria.

At this point, I'm still by myself,

and I'm taking a 50-yard walk from a gunshot victim

to an open door to an office building.

As I approached the door,

a million scenarios going through your head.

Do we have more victims inside?

Is our suspect inside?

That's obviously our big concern, as well.

I get to that open door...

...on the inside door handle,

there is blood from what appeared to be like

a handprint.

I could see blood on the floor leading into the office.

Obviously, something bad happened in here.

We learned that it was a law office,

middle of the day.

In your mind, you're running through scenarios,

thinking of possible connections.

You know, why this law office?

Officers move to the front of

the office and encounter a man exiting the building.

The officer that went around ends up

detaining the man,

checking him for weapons, and doing a public safety interview

of him to find out he's there, what he's doing there.

Ultimately, he was a hired painter by the law firm,

what I would call the definition of

the wrong place, wrong time.

The department's high enforcement arrest team,

also known as heat,

arrives and enters the law office.

Responding to a call like this,

your anxiety is high, it's through the roof.

Also, we still don't know if there's a suspect in there.

Are there more victims?

I mean, what's going on?

You know, where's the end?

Our heat unit, they find a second victim in

a basically similar scene to what I encountered outside.

She's laying in a pool of blood.

The second woman is soon identified

as Laura Anderson, a paralegal at the office.

Laura had been in our office for

the better part of over 10 years.

We all knew Laura really well.

Any lawyer will understand this.

We've all had a paralegal or an assistant that was smarter

than we were, did more of

the work than we did, and should have been the lawyer.

That was Laura.

Laura was whip smart,

so capable, um, and good

at anything she wanted to be good at.

Back inside the law office,

members of the scottsdale fire department tend to Laura.

Despite our fire department's

lifesaving efforts, the victim was pronounced deceased

there on scene.

Later, we learned that the other victim

died at the hospital.

So now we have two confirmed

homicide victims from gunshot wounds...

...and we have a killer on the loose.

30 minutes after arriving on scene,

detectives in scottsdale,

Arizona, are investigating the double homicide of

veleria sharp and Laura Anderson.

It was unfortunate,

sad, tragic, horrific.

Um, you know, nobody should have to be murdered,

and I remember this overwhelming sense of guilt.

I still have it... Never in my wildest dreams

did I imagine something happening at my office.

But the hunt for the shooter

is slow to produce suspects.

As the investigation started,

we didn't know what the reason for their deaths was.

Was it a robbery?

Was it some personal grudge to do with

the law firm, to do with them personally?

We really came in with a blank slate that afternoon,

knowing that what

we have here are two deceased individuals and a lot of

questions to answer.

At the onset of this investigation,

we had no identified leads.

We had no suspects,

so we have to cast a very wide net,

and talking to witnesses becomes crucial at

that point to establish a little timeframe.

It's incredibly crucial that we speak to as

many people as possible

so we can start to develop where our investigation is

going to take US.

We were hoping that a witness would come forward

that would have seen something.

In this case, that didn't happen.

The frustration with this situation was

the fact that we didn't have an obvious motive.

When we don't have a motive in front of US,

we really don't know who this person is, and we don't know

what their motivation is.

But then, detectives on the scene

receive an unexpected visit.

So as this is going on, we get a couple detectives

from Phoenix that walk up,

and they immediately start inquiring as to what we have

in our investigation.

Phoenix police had responded to a call for service

where a subject had been shot the day before.

One day earlier, renowned forensic psychiatrist

Dr. Steven pitt had

been gunned down in broad daylight 12 miles away

in Phoenix.

Mr. Pitt was pronounced deceased

from the gunshot wounds, and what we come to learn is

that the type of ammunition that was used at both

crime scenes was the same make of ammunition.

The killer in the Steven pitt case was more than likely

the same suspect in the veleria sharp

and Laura Anderson murders.

So right then and there, I was like, okay, here we go.

Scottsdale investigators also learn

Phoenix police have a description of the shooter.

Witnesses described a possible

white male with a hat that approached

Mr. Pitt, shot him.

So initially, Phoenix police was tracking down a lot

of potential leads

based on the sketch that they were provided

by the witness.

I will admit, there was a little bit of stress.

We're dealing with a suspect with a very generic description

of a white male, which could be about anyone.

I mean, you're talking about a needle in a stack of needles.

A short time later, Elizabeth feldman

arrives at her office,

the scene of the two latest murders.

The first text message I got was from my law partner

about Steve pitt,

because we both had used him and knew him, and then all of

a sudden, she also texted me that

something was going on in the office.

Detectives question Elizabeth about

her firm's connection to Steven pitt.

Where we started again in trying to combine

these two scenes, we didn't have any real obvious,

initial people that we were looking at between

the Steven pitt murder and these murders.

This wasn't something where there was

one particular person that stood out.

So to look at that

and to say, what overlap is now going to exist

with this family law office was a very daunting task.

When I heard the 911 call and officers being dispatched,

I knew in my gut that these were all related.

10 hours into the veleria sharp

and Laura Anderson murder investigations,

and one day after Steven pitt was found shot to death,

detectives in scottsdale, Arizona,

have just received word of another shooting.

The reporting party called.

She had found her fiance deceased, in his office.

And initially, she didn't know,

was this a suicide, what this was, but I knew in

my gut that these were all related.

We have someone that is ahead of US that is committing

these homicides,

and we haven't been able to catch up to them yet.

Officers arrive at the scene

and discover the victim is Marshall levine,

a psychologist.

At this point, you know, our hairs are

standing up on our neck.

We're really starting to be concerned as to okay,

who's doing this? What is the link?

We have a law firm,

the well-known forensic psychiatrist,

a psychologist now murdered.

You know, you're just adding in more of those needles

into that haystack

and trying to figure out what is the relationship

between all these people?

Marshall levine was a counselor

based here in Phoenix.

He had recently relocated to the valley a few years

before and was living with his fiancee at the time.

He had worked for a local private

college here as a counselor to nursing students.

They had grown to love him

and how much of a wonderful counselor he was.

He was so dedicated to his patients and his clients.

They lost someone who was gonna

be a tremendous individual within that community.

Outside the office,

officers speak with Marshall levine's fiancee,

the 911 caller.

She ended up not being able to provide US with any

details or any... Any information that would

help identify the suspect.

Although detectives aren't able

to identify a suspect,

they do learn that the shell casings recovered from

this latest crime scene match those from the earlier murders.

So we had three crime scenes that were linked forensically.

This changes everything.

We've got our victims identified.

We found a commonality with how they're being killed,

but we haven't linked up

why they were killed... At this point,

we really don't know who could be the next victim.

So we're back to square one now.

While detectives search for answers

at the crime scene, officers canvass the area.

So once we've established

yet now a third crime scene,

the formula stays the same.

We start over with a neighborhood canvass,

looking for witnesses, looking for surveillance video.

And to that end, the officers did a great job in discovering

there was a mobile home

in the business park immediately adjacent to

the business where we were at.

They were able to contact a person,

a male, actually living in the camper.

This is not a residential area.

This is a small business park,

and it's also not something that I would have expected

to find a small camper

parked in, let alone a person living out of.

So is this person related?

We didn't know what to think.

He is a white male.

He generally matches the description of the sketch

that we had, so he becomes

a person of interest immediately to determine

is this somebody we need to investigate further.

He didn't answer questions immediately

or as quickly as we thought.

He wasn't giving US,

that immediate answers we were looking for and made it

a little bit more pressing to

identify this person as soon as possible.

In just 30 hours, detectives in Arizona are

investigating the murders of

Steven pitt, veleria sharp, Laura Anderson,

and now a fourth victim, Marshall levine, and are

questioning a man near the scene of the latest murder.

Through speaking with him a little bit more,

we realized he was

a business owner in the neighborhood, that he was

working out of his office, and he was just using that

as a... as a place to stay.

So he was ruled out relatively quickly.

But we now have a spree murderer,

and we have no suggestion as to

where this person is going to go next.

We don't know what the total is going to be.

I was very confident that more homicides were

going to occur unless we stopped this person.

Local media pick up on the story,

also looking to connect all four victims

and identify a suspect.

That weekend was constant coverage from the time

Steven pitt's murder,

the news broke on Friday,

we were all working around the clock.

We were trying to figure out how this is affecting

the legal community,

what actions they're taking, how they're going to

protect themselves.

We were receiving tips about everything.

The sketch is very generic.

Everyone seemed to recognize someone in that sketch.

So on sunday, it felt like

there had to have been something else.

It felt like we were missing something.

Every single gunshot wound that came in, we're thinking,

is that it? Is this another one?

Is this starting again?

So everyone was just on edge, because there was

no way to guess how this was gonna play out.

So at this point, we did have a task force

established where we were investigating

all these crime scenes.

We were getting hundreds of tips and phone calls

from people trying

to identify someone or giving US names to look at

as potential suspects.

But nothing had given US anything

that put all three crime scenes together.

Then a tip comes in following the news reports

that changes the course of the investigation.

I heard of a message that came from a female who had

information to believe it was her ex-husband

and that he had dealings with all three

of these crime scenes.

The ex-husband's name is Dwight Jones.

She did explain that they were divorced in 2009,

that the attorney that she had used was Elizabeth feldman.

My client was a true victim of domestic violence.

They were married for 20 years.

Um, it went on for years and years and years.

But this is not the white male

depicted in the sketch.

The first glaring issue was that

he is a black male,

and he does not match the description that was given

in that first crime scene.

But her statements about Dwight Jones were just so

compelling in the process of

their divorce that Steven pitt was used as a psychologist

to interview Dwight at the time,

to determine his mental stability.

In addition, she had identified Marshall levine's

suite mate was actually

a therapist that their son had seen.

So this was the first tip that

actually came in that listed all three locations,

as somebody there's one person that we have that

has in combination with all these three.

There were additional things that she was able to tell me

that was not out in the media,

such as a vehicle description that where she said he drove

a gold Mercedes.

In reviewing some of the surveillance video from

the Phoenix scene of Steven pitt's murder,

a gold Mercedes was seen leaving that parking lot.

Dwight Jones, at that point, was a suspect.

Detective heinzelman sets out to locate Dwight Jones.

I do have some surveillance teams

that are out there looking for him.

We were also analyzing some of Dwight Jones'

cellphone records,

and we determined that he had made a call to a residence in

fountain hills on Saturday afternoon, and cell tower data

had placed him in that proximity.

The home belongs to bryon Thomas and Mary Simmons,

two individuals with whom detectives find no connection

to Dwight's divorce case.

The maricopa county sheriff's office is contacted to do

a welfare check.

As the sheriff's deputies get out there,

they start looking around, and they're looking through

the window of this fairly nice, fairly large home.

We're listening to their radio traffic, and we hear them

say yes, we've got...

We've got a confirmed person deceased,

we have a second person deceased.

So we tell them on the radio,

"hey, make entry," so they go inside.

They locate bryon Thomas

with multiple gunshot wounds.

They identified Mary Simmons, multiple gunshot wounds,

deceased.

Bryon Thomas and Mary Simmons were out

of the m.O. Of the victimology

when it comes to the other victims involved in this case.

They weren't tied to the forensic community,

they were not tied to the law firm community.

So why Dwight had them killed, you know,

really had US scratching our heads.

He was very unpredictable, and we could not

guess his next move.

Investigators in scottsdale, Arizona,

have identified their serial shooter

as Dwight Jones and have discovered two more victims of

his deadly rampage,

bryon Thomas and Mary Simmons.

Now, investigators are tracking his whereabouts.

Dwight's ex-wife did say that

he was staying between two different hotels in scottsdale,

and we could probably still find him,

at this one in particular.

So now we have established at least where he's been living,

and it's a month-to-month hotel.

We need to do something.

We need to do something fast to get him off the street,

to prevent further loss of life.

In the early morning hours,

scottsdale and Phoenix police race to the hotel.

Arriving at the hotel,

we want to make sure that everybody is safe,

including the people who are staying at that hotel.

And so we have to safely evacuate those citizens.

We have no idea of what is going to happen,

if he will walk out peacefully,

if he will engage US in a shooting,

possibly hurt one of our officers or an innocent citizen

walking by the hotel room... We don't know.

Moments later, officers hear shooting

coming from inside a room.

Officers are on scene.

It's chaotic.

There's gunfire that rings out,

about four shots, at least.

And it's unknown

were those gunshots fired at somebody,

were they fired out the window, out the door?

We... we had no information.

We were just kind of dealing with information that

we had at hand that was constantly changing

by the seconds.

Many thoughts were going

through my mind at that moment.

The biggest thought was that I hope

that we can get Dwight Jones alive.

And so the decision was made to deploy cs gas

into the hotel room where Dwight Jones was staying.

It's impossible to sit in a room without any protective

gear and have the room

covered in with cs gas and not move

or breathe or cough.

A negotiator was brought in, because we have a violent

person who just committed several murders,

and we want to bring this to a resolution as peacefully

as possible.

While we're waiting to find out what

is going on inside of the room,

there's a lot of thoughts that are going through your head.

You know, you don't know if he just

fired out of his room for no reason,

destruction of evidence.

So there was nothing to do besides wait,

and we had a lot of concerns that he would engage US in

a shootout or possibly harm somebody else.

We didn't know what was inside that hotel room at that moment.

But there's a sense of restlessness

that we all had at that point.

Many days and many lives

lost and taken by Dwight Jones leading up to that point.

So after everything that we have done up until that point,

there was no response from Dwight Jones.

Police decide to breach the door,

not knowing what to expect.

We were able to see that he did have

a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

He didn't respond to anything because

he had taken his own life.

Dwight Jones was lying partially on the bed, partially

lying over the night stand, and eventually,

after we had the medical examiner there and were able to

move him for evidentiary purposes,

that's when we discovered the handgun that he had used,

and that was the same handgun that was used

in all of the other murders that he had committed.

Inside the room,

investigators also discover evidence that could explain

why he was initially thought to be a white male.

We discovered boxes and bags

full of disguises of different colored masks,

different shapes, wigs.

It's always a possibility that he could have been wearing

those disguises,

which is why the witness statements were off

when we discovered that we were looking for Dwight Jones.

It's very frustrating when a case

ends like this, because I wanna be able

to talk to this person and find out from him,

from Dwight Jones, why he did what he did.

I want the victims' families to be able to,

to see him prosecuted and to see him get what...

What he deserves, and, ending the way he did,

we'll never know what his motivation was.

We can speculate,

and I think we're pretty confident in why he did what

he did.

Dwight Jones was a very angry person.

He felt wronged by society, by the court system,

and nothing was going to placate his feelings.

So he just had unreconcilable rage that

was going to end the way it did, unfortunately.

The world lost a brilliant individual

in Steve pitt... he was engaged in the community.

He was a good citizen, a good parent.

A good human.

There will always be a lot that I miss about veleria

and Laura.

There's always that sense of loss,

the camaraderie that we all, you know, had at certain times.

His victims weren't limited to

the six people who were murdered.

His victims were everybody that he touched,

including his family.

Obviously, this whole case is tremendously tragic,

and I have to imagine, for those families,

his suicide has to be so painful,

knowing that he got out of this.

They lost their loved one forever,

and he just got to walk away.

That has to be very painful,

and you're not gonna get over that.