Original subtitles

When you see a Mennonite woman, like 27-year-old Sasha Krause,

you might be tempted to judge a book by its cover.

A rural lifestyle is very much

what you think of when you think of Mennonite culture.

In a culture that's closed to many 21st century influences,

Sasha is fearlessly open,

always reading, writing,

and feeding her curious mind.

Sasha was very brilliant. Her education was beyond.

She was a teacher. She was a poet.

But one cold, dark night in January 2020,

Sasha just disappears.

We didn't know if we had somebody from the outside

that was just preying on our citizens.

You don't hear of things happening to Mennonites terribly often.

But remember, there's more to Sasha than meets the eye.

And it's what makes Sasha unique.

Her curious mind that leads investigators

to shocking discoveries...

We had a small breadcrumb, if you will.

...and ultimately helps catch her killer.

She solved her own murder from beyond the grave.

The fitness app on the phone, it was overwhelming evidence.

♪ I've been haunted by the visions ♪

♪ That I've seen with my own eyes ♪

♪ And the only way to find you ♪

♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪

She did help catch this killer.

♪ You just need to hold on, you just need to hang on ♪

The Lamp and Light Mennonite Community

is a quiet and peaceful place.

It's a place 27-year-old Sasha Krause calls home.

It's also a place bound by strict religious rules.

No kissing before marriage,

no access to the internet,

and a dress code.

What's really obvious in our culture

and what people see is, like, the way

a Conservative Mennonite dresses.

Like a woman wearing a covering on her head.

And women are gonna wear dresses

because that is considered more modest and more feminine.

Sasha may dress modestly,

but she isn't afraid to take a bite out of life.

That's why she loves the Lamp and Light.

She's living on her own for the first time,

working at a religious publishing house,

learning new things every day,

and she's thriving.

But one night after dinner,

Sasha goes out for just a minute

and never comes back.

This isn't like her. She doesn't have a pattern of disappearing.

So for her to not come home means something is wrong.

- Take one.

I'm Bree Burkitt.

I covered the disappearance of Sasha Krause

for The Arizona Republic as well as The Arizona Daily Sun.

It was a Saturday.

Sasha was planning to teach Sunday school the next day,

so she left her apartment

where she lived with her roommates, got in her car,

and drove down to the church.

Wasn't that far. Very close.

She had to retrieve some materials.

As per the rules, Sasha knows never to miss her 9:00 p.m. curfew.

So when her roommates discover that she's still not home at 1:00 a.m.,

they wake up the rest of the community, grab their flashlights,

and start searching everywhere for her.

I just woke up, and I said,

"Where is Sasha? I'm scared."

♪ There's a stranger in the dark ♪

Sasha! Sasha?

Sasha!

I imagine that was probably terrifying.

Here's this girl you live with,

you think is just going down the street,

and then she doesn't come home.

Sasha!

We just headed down to the church house,

just as quick as we could.

Sasha! Sasha!

Things like this don't happen here, until now.

After four hours of searching, the community breaks down

and contacts the San Juan Sheriff's Office.

My name is Steven Strang.

At the time of the Sasha Krause case,

I was in the detective's division,

and I was assigned to this case

as a lead investigator.

Detective Strang is a five-year veteran of the force,

but this call is different.

For him, this is new territory.

I had never been there.

Not one time, not one call.

For us to be contacted,

that is not something that they would normally do.

Mennonites prefer to handle their own matters

and avoid involving mainstream authorities.

And because this situation is so unusual,

the county sheriff is overseeing the case.

My name is Shane Ferrari,

I'm Sheriff of San Juan County, New Mexico,

and we were the agency that took the initial report

on Sasha Krause being missing.

When we have somebody that's missing, the first question is

did they voluntarily leave,

or did they leave because, uh, maybe somebody abducted them?

Sasha's roommates tell the detectives

that the last time they saw her was after dinner.

She told them she was driving down to the church,

literally just a few hundred feet from her living quarters.

Her vehicle was still there at that church.

The parking lot was gravel,

so we didn't find any disturbance in the ground,

looks as if somebody was maybe drug from the vehicle.

I opened the vehicle up to look at it.

Between the rocker panel and the seat,

we find the keys for the vehicle.

So, that was the very first indicator to me

that something is wrong.

The detectives now start looking for signs

that Sasha was taken against her will.

I go into the church, trying to find

you know, are there any signs of-of struggle?

Any signs of foul play?

There was no blood, no nothing.

No pulled hair on the ground, no anything.

It made it appear as though she went willingly.

What Detective Strang doesn't yet know

is that if Sasha was attacked, she might never have fought back.

Mennonite practices vary from community to community,

but one thing is constant.

Their strong belief in non-resistance,

which means they live a violence-free life

close to the land, and are kind to each other.

That's partly what attracted Sasha's family

to this way of life in the first place.

Sasha isn't born a Mennonite.

Her family converts when she is 12 years old.

Chester Weaver knew Sasha's family then.

Chester Weaver, take one. Marker.

My name is Chester C. Weaver Junior.

Most people who come just for culture are here with us for a while,

and then they leave.

But people who come for the deeper matters

are the ones, like Krauses, who stay.

We're not Roman Catholic. We're not Protestant.

We're a third way.

It has to do with humility

and quietness of heart, and forgiveness.

Sasha comes to the Lamp and Light in 2018

from Texas to work at their in-house publishing company,

writing and editing Bible pamphlets.

And in her spare time, she writes poems and songs.

Sasha had her own personality,

and she knew what she was doing.

She had such depth in her creative writing,

and you could tell that she was writing out of something within her.

The first thing you hear is "Mennonite," but quickly digging into it,

there was a lot more to her than just that label.

She spoke three languages. She was very artistic.

She lived with roommates. She had a job.

She was driving. She was very independent.

I mean, if you ignore the dress,

she's just like any other woman in her late 20s.

As the hours pass, and there's still no sign of Sasha,

investigators wonder if this worldly young woman

decided she wanted to return

to a less restrictive way of life.

The thought process came to me that maybe she just wanted to leave this lifestyle.

Maybe Sasha was curious about what it would be like working in the city,

going for drinks, swiping right.

So, some of the questions that we had for ourselves were

was she contacting somebody, uh, via the internet?

Maybe she was possibly involved in a relationship

or communication with somebody else.

But the detectives soon learn from her roommates

that in keeping with Mennonite practices,

the girls aren't on the internet.

We've become accustomed to looking for a digital footprint.

People's social media, people's internet history,

people's cell phones. Who do they call? Who do they text?

And that is something that wasn't at our disposal at that time.

The detectives search Sasha's room

and find her purse and her bank card.

If she was planning on leaving,

she would have at least taken her bank card, right?

And why sneak off in the middle of the night?

We could not find it. We-We couldn't find a letter

that said, "Meet me in Seattle." You know?

We couldn't find anything that led us down the road to say

that she was planning this.

The more we learned, it was evident

that something foul had happened.

Eight hours after Sasha goes missing,

the investigators call Sasha's parents to let them know what's going on.

They're understandably upset and confused,

but the police have no answers for them.

They don't know where to start.

Her roommates say there's no lover in her life,

and there's no digital footprint to track.

But then, while re-interviewing one of Sasha's roommates,

a surprise revelation.

It turns out Sasha isn't totally disconnected.

We learned that Sasha had a phone, a cell phone,

but it was not accounted for.

We had a-a small breadcrumb, if you will.

We immediately started tracking that phone.

The detectives learned that while it's unusual for Mennonites

to interact with outsiders,

cell phones aren't forbidden.

Lucinda Kinsinger views her phone as an essential tool,

just like Sasha does.

I would call myself a Conservative Mennonite

or a Plain Mennonite.

My husband and I have a small farm.

My husband and I, we both have smartphones.

We use them all the time.

You know, I have recipes, I have pictures, I do emails,

whatever on my phone. It's a tool.

Some Conservative Mennonites would draw the line there.

They would be like, you know, "Cell phones are fine,

but we don't wanna go to the smartphones. We don't wanna allow the internet."

It's something that Mennonite churches are dealing with right now,

and maybe how to keep their values

when there's this inundation of information

and influence from, from the world wide web.

Sasha uses a simple flip phone.

It's all she needs to maintain her connection to the wider world.

It will take time to access Sasha's phone records.

In the meantime, the detectives start knocking on doors.

This is a very small community. Everyone recognizes everyone,

and someone had recognized Sasha's boss.

They recognized his car parked outside of the church

in about the same timeframe Sasha was believed to have been in there.

Sasha's boss at Lamp and Light is quite a bit older than she is.

His name is Sam Coon.

He was said to have been there at 7:50.

His van was seen there.

His van was also seen there with the rear hatch open.

Her roommates told detectives

that Mr. Coon favored Sasha above the rest of them.

So, when I'm hearing this, I'm thinking to myself,

"Okay, this sounds interesting."

Sam admits he was at the church

where Sasha went missing at the exact same time.

I found it very odd that that timeframe was so close,

yet there was no interaction.

Hm...

He is very, very intelligent,

very direct,

and at the same token,

very closed off.

When the investigators leave the room,

they notice something odd.

He starts to cry.

Are these tears of sympathy or the tears of a guilty man?

Or maybe, it's because he just got caught.

The Lamp and Light Mennonite community

is devastated when Sasha Krause doesn't return

from a quick trip to pick up Bible materials.

The detectives think that Sasha may know her abductor

and are suspicious when Sasha's boss, Sam Coon,

breaks down in tears.

Detectives remain suspicious of Coon,

but without further evidence, they can't hold him.

And with every passing hour,

the odds of finding Sasha alive

gets smaller and smaller.

We're, at this time, still nonstop,

and when I say "nonstop," I mean little to no sleep,

exhaustive effort.

Time is critical, and I'm like,

"Okay, there has to be something."

Four days after Sasha goes missing,

her parents arrive from Texas,

and they're desperate for answers.

So, I had several conversations with-with Bob Krause,

Sasha's father.

He's trying to process it in his own mind,

his own way of what, what's going on?

Why is this happening?

If you were a parent, you'd pray for your daughter's grace,

that she would have the strength,

that she would have the protection.

Bob told me himself, "We just prayed."

The Mennonite people are very respected in our community,

so I think everybody in San Juan County was very concerned

that we had a predator at large in our community.

Although the community is respected in San Juan,

Mennonites have suffered persecution for centuries

because their beliefs don't fit into mainstream culture.

But this is different. This feels personal.

Yeah, I remember praying for Sasha

in our prayer circle at church.

I felt like this happened to her,

you know, this could happen to me or someone like me, too.

The only lead investigators have

is Sasha's missing phone,

and they're hoping it will help them locate her.

Eight days after Sasha goes missing,

her phone records are finally released.

You'll hear people refer to as a "ping."

People will tell you, "Oh, they're gonna ping my phone."

Well, basically what that means is, in some circumstances,

we can utilize a location service on a phone

to show an approximate area at least of where it may be.

And so, I get down to the last pages of the report,

and I find a set of numbers that are completely off,

and I'm like, "Okay, well, what is this?"

These numbers are coordinates which show

Sasha's phone traveling 50 miles west of Lamp and Light

into a remote area of Arizona.

How did she end up there?

Even for a young woman as curious about the world as Sasha,

it just doesn't make sense.

You are, what people would say, in the middle of nowhere.

It is at least 100 square miles of reasonable search area.

I don't have anything else in that area to indicate to me

possibly where she may be.

And I'm thinking to myself, "Where do you start?"

♪ Are you trying to kill? ♪

♪ Are you trying to kill me? ♪

At this point in time in the investigation,

the reality has surfaced that

we're likely not gonna find Sasha alive. A-And...

as much as you wanna hold out hope, you know.

You know that this is likely not gonna have a good outcome.

Days turn into more than a month,

and with no movement on the case,

it seems like no one will ever know

the fate of Sasha Krause.

Then, a chilling discovery.

We received a phone call from Coconino County.

"We may very well have found Sasha."

A hiker has found a body that fits Sasha's description.

But it's 250 miles away

from where she was last seen in a completely different state.

If this is Sasha's body,

then investigators have been looking in the wrong places for weeks.

What else have they been wrong about?

One month after Sasha Krause goes missing

from her Mennonite compound in Farmington, New Mexico,

a body is found on the top of Sunset Crater National Park

just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.

I got a phone call.

The detective on the phone described finding a body.

My name's Ammon Barker.

I'm currently the Chief Deputy County Attorney.

I was one of the senior trial attorneys during the case.

- Marker.

They were not sure who it was at the time.

They described it to me as a young woman

in a prairie dress is what you might call it.

And thought at first it might have been a sexual assault.

Her underwear was missing at the time her body was recovered,

and that's unusual.

As soon as Detective Strang hears about the discovery,

he and his team race to Flagstaff.

I was kinda like, you know, "Is this for real?"

You know, "Is-- This is really happening?" I mean, it's been a month.

When they arrive at the crime scene,

the Coconino County homicide detective

rolls the body over and reveals the woman's face.

An autopsy has confirmed that the body found in Arizona

is that of a local missing Mennonite woman.

San Juan County Sheriff's deputies say

they are now turning this case into a murder investigation.

While the Farmington community

notifies Sasha's parents of the grim discovery,

the investigators parse the evidence.

She had her hands bound together with duct tape

in front of her, um, by the wrists.

Medical examiner performed an autopsy on her body

and found that she suffered blunt force trauma to the back of her head,

as well as a gunshot injury to the back of her head.

Why would anyone want to murder Sasha?

And how did she end up so far from home

near this sleepy mountain town?

The news rocks the whole community.

Murders are very rare in Flagstaff.

And to have a murder happen

I think was both shocking and disturbing

to a lot of people.

My name is Levi Stallings, and I was the videographer

for the murder trial of Sasha Krause.

Somebody who kills somebody like Sasha

I can only see as an extremely evil individual.

Strangely, the medical examiner can't find evidence of sexual assault

despite her missing underwear.

What could be the motive for such a crime?

When we didn't find any evidence of a sexual abuse,

where's the crime of opportunity?

There's not one.

Why would you take someone that far?

Why? Because people don't wanna get caught.

Detective Strang and his team

bring Sam Coon, Sasha's boss, back in for questioning.

Last time they spoke with him, he broke down crying,

raising the obvious question.

Did he have an inappropriate relationship

with his brilliant young protege?

Detectives don't buy his story,

so they check his cell phone records.

They're surprised to learn that...

he's telling the truth.

That data showed that Sam Coon was traveling in a different direction.

It actually corroborated his account about where he was that night

and gave him an alibi, and that was irrefutable.

Now that Coon is no longer a suspect,

the investigators start listening more closely

to his theories.

Coon explains that since Sasha enjoyed writing,

she spent hours each day

reaching out to people in disenfranchised communities,

and some of those people were inmates.

One thing that we learned is

one of Sasha's duties was an outreach program

that was done from the Mennonite community

to the prison system.

We considered the fact that what if this was someone

in that system that wanted to harm her?

The San Juan Detention Center

is less than four miles from Lamp and Light,

and it houses thousands of possible suspects.

Did one of them become obsessed with Sasha,

and, upon release, steal her away in the middle of the night?

And so, we found all of these letters within her room.

We don't find anything in those letters

that sends us down the road that

there has been someone from the prison system

who wished to do harm.

So again, now we're dead-ended again, and we're like, "Okay, where else?

What other possibilities could-could come into play here?"

The detectives go back to the cell phone tower logs,

thinking that maybe they missed something.

They analyze the cell towers all along Sasha's known route

and miraculously discover one other phone pinging in tandem

until her phone goes dead.

I remember getting a phone call from detectives,

and they said, "Sheriff, uh, we got all the tower dumps back.

We've went through all the data, and there's one number that matches."

The matching number is traveling

at the same rate and the same time as Sasha's cell phone.

This means someone was with her.

Investigators track the number to a 21-year-old

Air Force mechanic named Mark Gooch.

Mark Gooch was enlisted in the Air Force.

He was stationed within Phoenix.

Detective Strang's team joins forces with the Flagstaff PD

and travels to the Air Force base to question the airman.

And he at first believes that he's being called in

because he was speeding on his bike, on his motorcycle.

To detectives, Mark just doesn't fit the profile of a predator.

People who enlist in the military take an oath

the same way in law enforcement does,

and Mark had dedicated his life to serving

for the betterment of the community and country.

But then, he tells them something that takes them by surprise.

It seems like a big coincidence

that both Sasha and Mark are Mennonite.

But Mark claims he hasn't traveled out of state in the last six months.

Did he just make an innocent mistake?

Is there a simple explanation

for their overlapping cell phone data?

Or is he lying through his teeth?

21-year-old Mark Gooch

is being questioned in the murder of Sasha Krause,

a brilliant member of the Farmington Mennonite community.

The detectives have just learned that Mark is also a Mennonite

who left the church for reasons unknown.

The Mennonite faith is built on

this foundation of pacifism.

But, when Mark Gooch turned 18,

he opted to leave the faith

and pretty much go to the opposite end of the spectrum

by enlisting in the Air Force.

Initially, he said he wasn't in

the Farmington area the night Sasha went missing.

But the detectives know that's not true

because his cell phone was pinging alongside Sasha's

until her phone went dead.

Law enforcement pulled the surveillance footage from the base.

And they spotted Mark arriving early in the morning

the day after Sasha had been abducted.

This is all investigators need to hear

to believe that Mark killed Sasha.

They arrest him on the spot.

But they won't be able to hold him for long

if they can't figure out why this young man

with a promising military career

would target a Mennonite girl

250 miles away.

Once investigators really zeroed in on Mark Gooch,

they did everything they could to learn about him.

Mark's military commander leads them

to his best friend on the base, Alex Golab.

Alex says that Mark has three brothers,

and even though they don't live in the same area,

they're close. They text all the time.

They did subpoena his cell phone records, including his text messages.

And within those text messages,

they found him having conversations,

particularly with two of his brothers,

that very quickly indicated

a strong hate for people within the Mennonite faith.

One of his brothers was a Virginia State trooper,

and he texted Mark about pulling over a Mennonite family

on their way to a wedding, and this was during the early days

of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mark Gooch seemingly relished in

the suffering of Mennonites, even Mennonites he did not know.

The text messages indicate

that Mark had been surveilling Mennonites in the Phoenix area for months.

He was using terminology like, "I'm on servo,"

which is surveillance. Why would you do that,

and what are you planning?

The investigators are now convinced

that Mark targeted Sasha because of her religion.

But just because they believe that, doesn't mean they can prove it.

Mark has no history of violence,

and there's no obvious reason he's targeting Mennonites.

We did not find any DNA in this case.

We know that Sasha was killed with a .22 caliber gun

because the medical examiner's office found

a .22 caliber round

lodged in her head near her neck.

And it wasn't until later that police found

that Mark Gooch had taken

his .22 caliber rifle to a friend

that lived off base to hold that weapon for him.

When they tracked down his rifle,

they're one step closer to finding the truth of what happened to Sasha.

Tonight, ballistics confirmed that the bullet pulled from Sasha's body

was from Gooch's gun.

Now, the police think they have all the pieces of the puzzle.

For some inexplicable reason,

Mark Gooch had been prowling the Four Corners for months,

searching for a Mennonite person to kill.

I think Mark Gooch was building to this point.

There was a deep burning hatred.

I'm convinced of that.

After months of hunting,

he happens on the perfect opportunity.

A young woman alone in the dark,

outside an empty church.

♪ What came first, the devil or the curse? ♪

He approaches her, asking if there might be

a Saturday night service he could attend.

Just one Mennonite talking to another.

He would know how to speak to someone.

He would know how to dress appropriately, to not come off offensive.

Mark Gooch was laying in wait

and found an opportunity.

He decided to act on it that moment.

Once he's close enough,

Mark overpowers Sasha,

binds her hands,

and throws her into the backseat of the car.

I have to imagine that Sasha's faith

certainly helped her get through what must have been

an extremely frightening moment.

At some point,

he bashed her head so hard, it caused skull fractures.

He drives west, looking for a place to kill her.

But then, from the backseat, a phone rings.

-This isn't part of the plan.

He didn't think Sasha would have a phone,

given Mennonite beliefs about technology.

But it doesn't stop him.

He went to the National Park, in my mind,

because that was what was convenient at the time.

That was a necessity to not get caught.

I can't imagine what she was going through,

what that must have felt like for her,

to be taken by a stranger

and marched to a location

where she was eventually shot in the back of the head.

With the murder weapon in hand

and Sasha's cell phone pings,

investigators hope it's enough to convince a jury.

But Mark is going to fight them to the bitter end.

Mark Gooch has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

No one saw Mark Gooch at the church area.

No one saw Mark Gooch at or near Sasha Krause's car.

Nobody saw Mark Gooch's car at any time.

Could he get away with this?

On September 24, 2021,

Mark Gooch goes on trial for the kidnapping

and first-degree murder of Sasha Krause.

Mennonites from across the country come to witness the trial.

At the time, it was my biggest gig as a videographer.

The courtroom was very calm,

but also there was such a sense of sadness

in a big room that I don't think I've personally seen outside of a funeral.

Without a confession, the prosecution needs to convince

all 12 jurors that Mark is guilty

using only circumstantial evidence.

People want DNA. They watch the TV shows.

But we didn't have that forensic evidence

that people wanna see.

At the surface, he might have thought it was the perfect crime, you know?

The prosecution has one hope at proving Mark's guilt.

The fact that his cell phone and Sasha's phone

were moving at the same rate in the same direction

and at the same time the night she disappeared.

How many devices were hitting off those towers at that time?

There's only one device that hits all three of those locations

and corresponds with those time periods.

And once Sasha's phone goes dead,

Mark Gooch's phone tracks to 1.37 miles

from where her body is found.

It passes Sunset Crater. We see it out there at 1:03.

And then it turns around

and comes back to the east, and we see it.

The last time we see it is at 1:13,

east of Sunset Crater.

The evidence is convincing, but will the jury agree?

Then, after six hours of deliberation,

the jury finds Mark...

guilty.

And it's Sasha's cell phone pings that helped catch her killer.

If Sasha hadn't been so curious about life,

so willing to keep one foot in the mainstream world,

she wouldn't have had that phone at all.

♪ Are you listening? ♪

I can't get inside of Mark Gooch's head, and nobody else can.

In my subjective view, this was a religious hate crime.

He felt by-by targeting somebody as precious as Sasha,

that in some way he was getting revenge

or some type of vindication off of his experiences

with the Mennonite community when he was younger.

In an act of supreme forgiveness,

Sasha's parents ask the judge

to take the death sentence off of the table,

and Gooch is sentenced to life in prison.

That's another aspect of forgiveness, is to realize that justice will be done.

You know, there is not evil

that will be let loose without being rectified

because God, God hates to see people hurt.

And if we, we get angry when we see injustice,

we get that from our Creator, you know?

Um... but

I cannot rectify wrong by choosing wrong.

Certainly, this case wouldn't have been resolved,

uh, the way it did without that cell phone data.

If Sasha didn't have that cell phone with her

at the time she was abducted,

I'm not sure we'd ever find out who did this.

♪ I can feel you, too ♪

♪ I don't know where my head is lately ♪

♪ Have I lost my mind? ♪

♪ But I know that I have a secret ♪

♪ That is only mine ♪

♪ And the only way to find it ♪

♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪