True Crime Vault: Murder in the Mansion

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Meet Candice, mother of two, nurse, CEO, and founder of multi-million dollar companies.

Candice went from being a stay-at-home mom to making millions, traveling the world, and saving lives.

There was just one problem.

Was it all a lie, or was it all true?

It turns out the truth might be even harder to believe.

From the creator of Scamanda, this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills.

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Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

A burning mansion.

In the flames, a terrible secret.

The fire appears to be intentionally set.

It shook that community to the courts, especially when those horrific details started to come out about what happened inside that house.

A mother, father, 10-year-old son, and the family housekeeper all held hostage for almost 20 terrifying hours.

Finally, a ransom in cash.

But it doesn't save the helpless captives.

Only the smoke escaping out a window.

This in a wealthy Washington enclave, the vice president's neighborhood.

This could happen there?

What about the rest of us ordinary Joes?

What chance do we have?

Tonight, 2020 takes you inside the court case that just wrapped new details, new voices.

My guess is they used the 10-year-old to get whatever they wanted out of the adults.

I can't stop thinking about that day.

We'll hear from the surviving housekeeper about life at the mansion.

Was there anything in the Savopoulos' life that suggested they had enemies?

Room by room, clue by clue.

The burning porch, the shadowy figure caught on surveillance cameras, the bizarre late-night pizza delivery.

Tries to burn the house down, but guess what doesn't burn?

The pizza with his saliva on it.

Boom, they get a hit.

We've got a name.

We've got a face.

Police have their target.

Thus begins an intense 48-hour nationwide manhunt.

We really had a lot of motivation to catch this guy.

The high-stakes capture of suspect Darren Went through the eyes of the U.S.

Marshal who stalked him up and down the East Coast.

So this is where it happened.

At the red light, that's where we made our move.

So you had to block him in from all four sides in some way.

That's right.

Tonight, the long-awaited verdict in the case that outraged the country.

You can't take your eyes off of this case because it's just that horribly incredible.

This is 2020.

Reporting tonight, Ryan Smith, with the breaking verdict in the story he's been covering now since it began some three years ago.

18911, what is your emergency?

I drink the house fire at 3201 Woodland Drive.

And we begin with that breaking news right now out of DC.

Four people confirmed dead.

A house fire.

When firefighters arrived, it was engulfed in flames.

Investigation continues as we speak.

We have firefighters, we have D.C.

police.

Police say the call came in Thursday at 1.30 in the afternoon.

It's coming from, it looks like it initially from a bedroom, but it's going sweeping across the whole overhang on the front of the house.

Nobody's answering the door, and there's an alarm going off inside.

Dive trum quick.

We're out on a story, something else.

They said, hey, there's a fire on Woodland Drive.

Get over there right away.

Got there?

Whoa, big fire.

And then moments later, the realization, something's going on here.

Something really bad is going on.

A $3.5 million mansion engulfed in flames.

The second floor is completely burnt.

Where there is now an unusual intensity.

Firefighters and police combing through the scene.

On the street, sheer panic, says WJLA reporter Stephen Sheetah.

Investigators do believe this fire was deliberately set.

Arson.

Oh dear.

Nothing like this ever happened, so it's really kind of just rattling.

This woman comes up and she's distraught and she's like,

I'm so afraid, you know, I was supposed to be there.

They texted me, they told me not to come and I work here, I know this family, and she's frantic and hysterical.

That woman is Nellie Gutierrez.

For the past two decades, she's worked for the homeowners, Amy and Savaz Savopoulos.

What were they like?

together.

The love we tell.

She says the Savopouloses were the picture-perfect couple.

And my 19 years, 20 years working for the family, they never fight.

They were so good together.

He really loved Amy very, very deeply.

And the same way, you know,

she was the same way.

When firefighters arrived at this house, they thought it was just a fire where they were crawling around on their hands because this is their training.

He's feeling around the room and he feels a chair and he feels the chair is weighted.

And then he feels for a head and he feels the head and he tries to pick the person up and they slip right through his grasp.

He's radioing in.

We've now got a crime scene here.

The room is a crime scene.

These photos giving us a look inside the house, inside the carnage.

You could see the blood covering the floor.

You could see one of the chairs that they had been restrained in.

You could see it was just covered in blood.

It's tossed over on the side.

Then the room where Philip was just charred.

His bed charred.

I mean it had it had sunken, it had collapsed, it had burned all the way through to the floor below.

It's just, it was awful.

Fire is definitely suspicious in nature.

We have three adults and what appears to be possibly a child that were deceased inside of the home.

Amy and Savasavopoulos, their posh home now boarded up.

Newly surrounded by a locked chain-link fence.

starkly out of place in this quiet, leafy DC neighborhood.

An abrupt ending to a love story that seemed destined to play out as happily ever after.

They both attend the University of Maryland.

Tavas had a crush on her for all four years and pursued her and pursued her and pursued her, and she would never say yes until the very end.

She finally agreed to go on a date and they seemed like a perfect match for each other.

After college, college, the couple has a large Greek Orthodox wedding, pictured here on an Instagram tribute page.

Sava, known for a strong work ethic and gentle manner, succeeds his father as CEO of American Ironworks.

As a young, wealthy Washington couple, they settle in this red-bricked home with its own library and music room, surrounded by manicured lawns, hedges, and gates.

Helping maintain the inside of the home, Veda Figueroa, a mother of two supporting her family back in El Salvador.

She wouldn't make it out alive.

So tell me about Vera.

What was she like?

Vera likes...

First of all, she liked to work hard and she was a very happy lady.

The couple have three children, Abigail, Katerina, and Philip.

The two girls away at boarding school during the fire, Philip unfortunately losing his life in the flames.

What about Philip though?

He's 10.

He was very very mature.

Like he was

very funny.

You know like when I always talk to him in Spanish he gets so excited but then when I talk to him a little bit more he's like no no no no no I don't understand.

10 year old Philip known as Flip is a fan of Harry Potter and has an atypical hobby.

go-kart racing.

This is not the thing your normal 10-year-old gets to do.

Philip had a coach and he had a top-of-the-line go-kart and Amy made her son do his homework between races.

And it's at one of these go-kart tracks that Sabah Savopoulos meets this man.

Fellow racing enthusiast 28-year-old Jordan Wallace.

Wallace creating his own website with videos of the extreme sport.

My life is awesome.

Like, I have nothing to complain about.

Their friendship would lead to a job as Sabah's personal assistant.

Wallace will later end up playing a pivotal role in those final hours.

That assistant says he got a call from Savah Savopoulos to bring $40,000 cash to the house.

Was it an armed robbery gone wrong or a calculated murder for hire?

Questions that would confound police and this once peaceful neighborhood.

I talked with several neighbors who said that they saw Philip playing in the driveway.

They would see Amy walking around the neighborhood exercising.

Now passing by that house is an eerie feeling for these neighbors, one that will never go away.

So, this had to shake them to their core.

It shook that community to the core.

It shook the city to the core.

Next, a family held hostage for nearly 20 desperate hours.

The calls they were forced to make during those hours.

Hey, Jordan, it's Abba.

Um, slight change of plans tomorrow.

I've got a package that I'm going to need you to bring down to me.

Stay with us.

This show is supported by Unicorn Girl, an Apple Original podcast.

Meet Candace, mother of two, nurse, CEO, and founder of multi-million dollar companies.

Candice went from being a stay-at-home mom to making millions traveling the world and saving lives.

There was just one problem.

Was it all a lie or was it all true?

It turns out the truth might be even harder to believe.

From the creator of Scamanda, this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by 7 Hills.

Apple TV Plus subscribers get special early access to the entire season.

Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

So, when I ask, what is Odoo?

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It's Wednesday, May 13th, around 6 p.m.

As Washington, D.C.

is closing for the night and people are sitting in traffic, the Savopoulos family, with the teenage girls away at boarding school, are trying to survive the most desperate night of their lives.

It begins with a terrifying home invasion.

Also inside the mansion, the family's housekeeper, Vera Figueroa.

She had been with the Savopouloses since her friend and the family's other housekeeper, Nelly Gutierrez, got her the job.

You helped her work with the Savopoulos family, right?

Yes, and I took her over there.

And it was like almost five years ago.

Authorities now believe that housekeeper is the first person to encounter the intruder.

She actually tried to fight him off, and he used the bat because her DNA was found on the handle of one of the baseball bats.

Longtime crime reporter Jennifer Donnellin covered the story.

This started out as a story about a fire, right?

Right.

We're trying to figure out did something more sinister happen before the fire.

That evening, one of the captives, Savasavopoulos, leaves a voicemail telling Gutierrez not to come in the next day.

So she's going to stay the night here.

But Gutierrez doesn't get the message until the next day.

when i got that message on thursday i was thinking and i start calling them so i call her and i say hi vera what's going on

no answer

vera's husband bernardo alfaro telling reporter john gonzalez from abc washington station wjla he begins to worry at five o'clock wednesday afternoon he goes home starts calling her non-stop on her cell phone until the cell phone really stops ringing.

But at about 9 p.m., the strangest call by far.

A call for a food delivery.

We can confirm that we made a delivery to the house.

Police say it's Amy Sabopoulos calling Domino's pizza.

She orders two pies, gives a credit card number, and special instructions.

Don't ring the doorbell.

I'm caring for a sick child.

Just leave it on the front door.

The Domino's driver leaves the pizza, rings the bell, and drives away.

taking with him an opportunity to end the ordeal for the terrified people just inside.

There were things that happened that of course now we can look back on and say,

what if?

This domino's pizza box later found inside the burned home.

Seemingly innocuous evidence of a horrifying night.

And to think that the killer actually ordered and ate a pizza during the middle of all this?

I couldn't even eat after I heard about it.

This guy's eating a pizza in the middle of it.

That night, Savas Savopoulos calls his assistant, Jordan Wallace, the man the family met at that go-kart track.

Hey Jordan, it's Sava.

Savas leaves a voice message, a really upbeat message saying, can you stop by the office and get us a package?

Slight change of plans tomorrow.

Would you please go straight to the Hyatt School office and wait?

I've got a package that I'm going to need you to bring down to me.

Police say that Wallace responded by text.

Got your message.

I'll call once I get the package.

The longest night passes on Woodland Drive.

As Thursday dawns, housekeeper Vera Figueroa's husband, after working an overnight shift, finds his wife still not home.

He goes to the mansion looking for her.

Knocks on the door, rings the doorbell, nothing.

But it's interesting.

He says, it felt to me like someone was inside.

Could he hear them?

He just says he heard like noises, like someone shuffling inside.

Just then, his phone rings.

It's Savas Avopoulos inside the house.

They're just a few feet apart.

He says, Lito, I'm sorry I didn't call you last night.

Vera stayed the night with us.

And he said that he was apologizing profusely.

So the husband, a little more satisfied with that, the fact that he's heard from someone, he goes home.

That morning, the next phase of the plan becomes apparent.

Jordan Wallace meets another employee at a bank near Savopoulos' company, American Ironworks.

A couple hours later, we see surveillance video of Jordan Wallace and another colleague of his taking out $40,000 from a Bank of America.

And Jordan later testifies that, you know, I'd never seen that much money in my entire life.

Savas Savopoulos tells this assistant to bring the cash to his house, come into the garage, the car is unlocked, not to give it to him, but to put it in a car, which you would think would set off alarm bells.

And then you wonder why didn't that person call police?

At 10.26 a.m., Wallace sends this text message to his boss.

Package delivered.

The cash is dropped, but for some reason, that doesn't stop the crime.

Police say the killing begins.

We were getting source information that there was Blunt Force trauma to the bodies, that there were stab wounds to the bodies, that the bodies also had been tied up.

Authorities will later piece together the family's terrifying final moments alive.

The three adults, Sava, Naimi Savopoulos, and Vera Figueroa, are held in an upstairs bedroom.

The little boy, Philip, separated from the grown-ups in another bedroom.

The sun is where it appears, according to court documents, is where they set that fire.

With the house on fire, the killer flees.

To think that a human would torture and murder a 10-year-old little boy while his mother and father sit in the next room hearing him scream

in order to get money.

It's heinous.

before the fire can spread to where the adults are the fire department gets the alarm it's 1 30 p.m on thursday the story blows up it's the case that is shaking the neighborhood to its core tonight the media descends on the neighborhood crime scene investigators have been here all day long early that afternoon someone notices amy sevopoulos' blue porsche is missing from the house police ask the public for help

but it wasn't hard to find just follow the smoke the porsche torched in a church parking lot in maryland Back at the mansion, authorities are already sifting through the grisly scene.

How much more difficult is it for them to try to figure this out with that house being burned so badly?

The whole reason why you set something on fire in a case like that is to get rid of evidence.

When we come back, a microscopic clue in the strangest place.

And the daring late-night manhunt and takedown.

U.S.

Marshals tell us they're forced to do something they've never tried before.

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Police are on the scene of a deadly house fire.

Four people were found dead inside.

It is the case that is shaking the neighborhood to its core today.

If the fire at 3201 Woodland Drive in Washington, D.C.

had burned faster, if the Washington, D.C.

firefighters had responded a little slower, the key evidence in the case might have been destroyed.

But the location of the crime, the nation's capital, gives authorities a special advantage.

This is Washington, D.C.

We're unique in that sense.

Our Metropolitan Police Department and our D.C.

fire department is backed up by federal agencies.

The arson task force at the mansion includes the ATF, which boasts perhaps the one lab in the country best equipped to extract DNA from fire-damaged evidence.

Greg Zarnopis is the deputy assistant director who runs the lab.

Typically, we're looking at debris from a fire scene.

This is where that strange delivery, the Domino's pizza, and those discarded pieces of crust comes back to bite the mansion home invader.

A slice of pizza crust broke this case wide open.

Crime scene specialists recover the leftover crusts.

Nothing more than household garbage to you and me, but for them, the perfect serving of prime evidence.

They rushed the crust to the ATF lab, working around the clock.

Looking at food, when someone takes a bite of it, we could see if there's any DNA present.

Todd Bill, an ATF analyst, lifted the DNA profile off that pizza crust.

If there's something like in this situation where there's a violent offender, we can call the FBI and they will do an immediate search for that profile.

I have never seen a DNA hit turned around that quick.

Never.

Tuesday, May 19th, only five days after the fire and the murders, a breakthrough.

Boom, they get a hit.

We've got a name.

We've got a face.

Darren Went, 34 years old.

Because of that lengthy criminal record, his DNA was on file.

And now we knew at least one one person who was allegedly inside that house.

Now all they have to do is find him.

Thus begins an intense 48-hour nationwide manhunt.

From what I understand, the cars were right over here.

Robert Fernandez with the U.S.

Marshals Service is part of the task force now hunting for Went.

We try and draw a picture of

relatives, locations where he's lived, friends, patterns of life.

Then, Wednesday night, exactly one week after the family had been taken captive in their mansion, authorities get a line on Went.

We were able to determine that he had fled the DC area.

Two days after he commits these murders, Darren Went takes a road trip and he goes to New York of all places, gets on a bus and goes to his fiancé's apartment.

Took her own shopping spree, paid off her credit card, all the while paying with $100 bills.

Always $100 bills.

So while DC police are looking for the killer of these three adults and child, Darren Went is living it up in New York City.

Police have identified the suspect accused of killing four people and they think he is in our area.

They're sitting in bed together in her New York apartment and see his face come on the news.

He saw himself on the news from what we understand and then fled the area.

And you just missed catching him.

That's right.

Eventually he takes a taxi, a $900 taxi from New York City to D.C.

back to his father's house.

And that's where he and his brother concoct a plan.

They're going to get a lawyer and they're going to turn him in.

But Wentz's brother and and a cousin, who say they had nothing to do with the crime, begin plotting to deliver Darren to the police immediately.

At that point, the plan changes, and Darren isn't aware that the plan changes.

Thursday night, a week after the murders, U.S.

Marshals track Went to this Howard Johnson's in the DC suburbs.

You're going in ready for anything.

That's right.

And immediately, a surprise.

The U.S.

Marshals advance team notices Went leaving the hotel, but he isn't alone.

That advanced team radioed to us.

They had had a suspicion that he was in one of two vehicles that were right over here.

In one of those vehicles, Went and three women.

In the other, Went's younger brother Durrell and their cousin.

At that moment, both of those vehicles left and turned northbound.

Didn't see that coming.

Not at all.

But we're ready to roll with it.

Air support is called in from Prince George's County PD.

Authorities tail the group.

Now traveling in a two-vehicle caravan, a box truck with North Carolina tags, followed by a white Chevy Cruz.

How many cars are following him at this point?

Altogether, it could have been 25,

maybe 30 vehicles.

Moments later, authorities spring the trap, employing a daring maneuver to stop the car's cold.

It's called a vehicle pin blocking maneuver.

The Marshals cars surround the white Chevy and the box truck on all sides.

And on the commander's go, the front car reverses, the rear car speeds forward, and four more cars surround the target vehicles on all sides.

Basically, pinning the car at four four points and immobilizing it.

They were looking in their mirrors, they saw the lights and they put their hands on.

Immediately.

Immediately.

I think they were completely and totally startled and surprised.

So this is where it happened.

Yeah, right here.

In the rear passenger seat of the white Chevy, Darren Went, trapped.

He followed commands.

He got out, he crawled, he got on the ground.

He was immediately handcuffed.

and brought over to a police vehicle and he didn't say a word.

It was the end of a painstaking 48-hour manhunt.

No sleep.

The nation has quite frankly watched the search go from DC to New York, now back here to the DC area.

And now he is in custody.

In the car Went was driving in, police report finding clothing, an iPad, two knives, cash, and thousands of dollars in money orders.

What did you see?

In the truck, I saw

in the side compartment of the passenger door, a big wad of cash.

And it was $100 bills.

You could tell it was 100s.

But the strangest find?

in the truck with Wentz brother and cousin a crumpled piece of paper scribbled on it 300 Indiana Avenue which is the address for the headquarters of the DC police that may be another piece of information that would suggest the relatives are working with the marshals and we're going to ultimately drive him up to the front door possibly of the dc police went appears in superior court the next day charged with first-degree murder while armed.

The community wanted to see everybody who was was responsible locked up at once, case closed.

But this case is not closed.

Not by a long shot.

When we come back, a man who came face to face with Darren Went at the wrong end of a knife.

Stay with us.

A vexing criminal case.

Four people murdered.

The house apparently torched to destroy any clues.

But some evidence seems to have survived the blaze.

Hair, DNA, and fingerprints were removed from the scene.

And yet only one suspect in custody, 34-year-old Darren Went,

linked to the case by the DNA evidence found on that domino's pizza crust.

Went's family and friends have ducked the cameras.

But out of the blue, a new player emerges: his former attorney Robin Ficker, who takes the national stage to go out on a limb for Went with outlandish observations.

He never eats pizza.

He doesn't like pizza.

The bombastic Ficker makes sweeping statements about the innocence of a man he defended on a handful of traffic tickets.

I know him to be a kind, gentle, non-aggressive person, someone you wouldn't mind your grandmother going to lunch with.

Mr.

Ficker says that he's really a gentle giant, that you'd want to sit down and have tea with your grandmother.

Well, not my grandmother.

Clearly, Ficker hasn't done his homework.

He's got a fairly impressive number of arrests that involve assault.

There's some, I believe, domestic violence charges.

And And more importantly, there is the use of a knife.

Yet when Went emigrated from the South American country of Guiana to the U.S., his future seemed bright.

12 years before the Manchin murders, he landed a well-paying job as a welder at American Ironworks, the company owned by Savasavopoulos.

But for reasons unknown, Went left the company after only two years, and that's when things went south for him.

While living in suburban Maryland, Wentz's own father, shown here on his Facebook page, feared living with him, getting a protective order after he says Went threatened to shoot him.

A relative who didn't want to be named said Went was known for his hair-trigger temper.

He's very hostile, he's arrogant.

Everywhere he went, he fought with people.

He fights with his father, with his brother, everybody.

By 2006, Went picked up stakes and moved here.

to the quiet upstate New York town of Oswego, living in this apartment building.

It's in this port city nestled along Lake Ontario where Michael Babcock is about to see Went's temper up close.

We brought him back to the scene of his cousin's house where Babcock was trying to get Went to leave after his cousin complained.

After an altercation, Went suddenly attacked.

Darren had come out and was windmilling with the knives and I went up at that and blocked and he's where he stabbed me on the wrist.

Went was arrested and ordered to stay away from Babcock.

But while waiting for trial, he suddenly ambushed ambushed Babcock a second time on this bridge.

Babcock was rushed to the emergency room where he was told he was lucky to be alive.

When Darren stabbed me in the neck, if it would have been Ludwig Lawyers, the doctors told me that I would have died before I made it to the first hospital.

He was convicted and jailed briefly, only to assault again.

Another man in Oswego and a girlfriend back in Maryland.

He has a wrap shape as long as my arm.

And that gives a perfect example to the claim of revolving door justice.

Went dates another woman, but the script is the same.

He's arrested after threatening to kill her, her daughter, and her friends, telling her he's good with a knife and could kill them easily.

But despite that graphic threat, Went is convicted only for smashing the windows of his girlfriend's car.

And as the years pass, Went apparently had not forgotten his former employer.

In 2010, he made a bizarre and menacing return to American Ironworks, the company he had left five years earlier.

He's found outside the American Ironworks with a machete, a BB gun, and a can of beer.

So there's this weird incident that occurred outside of the very place where Sava Savapoul was president and CEO.

Although charged with concealing a deadly weapon, Went was allowed to simply plead guilty to having an open container of alcohol and fined $919.

I wonder what those prosecutors are thinking now.

I let that guy go on a lesser offense.

Wynn was able to avoid the courts for the next five years, but along the way, his own siblings kick him out.

Searching for shelter, he is increasingly desperate.

The suspect in that brutal murder at a Washington, D.C.

mansion arrested, he was on the run.

The next time he surfaced was when he made national news as the prime suspect in the Savopoulos murder case.

For For him to then take that a step further and get involved in potentially killing four people with a knife is really not a stretch based on his background.

Coming up next, a courtroom family feud.

Went points the finger at his brothers.

He couldn't pull this off on his own.

No way.

I don't think he's got it up here.

Stay with us.

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Three years after he walked into this posh mansion, Darren Went finds himself in another unfamiliar house.

A DC courthouse.

Darren's defense strategy, a curious one, pointing the finger at his own brothers.

The defense's argument was just that, that Darren Went was duped by his brothers, Stefan and Darrell Went,

into coming to the house, into loaning his minivan to be part of this whole crime, that Darren Went had nothing to do with it.

It will be an uphill battle for Went as his friends and family come to testify, not for him,

but against.

Darren Wentz's stepmom testified against him, saying that, you know, I don't know where he was.

for the entire day of May 13th and most of the day on May 14th.

Where was this man for that entire time that this crime was taking place?

There was the ex-fiancé who testified under immunity.

That was a very key testimony because, again, she testified that he spent all this money on her.

Obviously, she didn't want to be there.

She still obviously very much cares for Darren Went.

But it's also the first time that we saw emotion from Darren Went.

Darren Went began crying when she began crying.

The notion of brotherly love is put to the test as Wentz's own siblings take the stand.

Stéphane and Durrell.

These two individuals are key to this story because Darren Went, on the first day of trial, he implicated both of his brothers as being the actual ones involved in this crime and not himself.

Stéphane Went testifies first.

Stefan,

credible, answered the questions forthright,

has a job, works really hard.

He presented his employment records, which showed he was at work on the 13th, he was at work on the 14th.

What was interesting about Stefan Went is that the defense attorney said he was the one who was in that bedroom, whose hair was found in the bedroom where the three adult bodies were found.

And that's key because siblings who have the same mother

also have the same part of a DNA.

Next up was Darrell Went, the defendant's half-brother, who initially appeared half asleep.

During the lunch break, it was a 75-minute lunch break and he was outside the courtroom taking a nap.

But eventually his testimony heats up.

He said, you know, Darren Went, that's my big brother.

And you put me in this situation.

You're throwing me under the bus.

He really looked at Darren and just said, I can't believe you're doing this to me.

Whether you believe Darren or whether you believe Durrell,

you saw this sort of brotherly fallout playing out in front of everybody.

The defense strategy also includes other alternative suspects.

On the first day of trial, not only did they implicate Winston Brothers, but they also implicated Jordan Wallace.

Jordan Wallace, you'll remember, is the young man who dropped off the $40,000 at the house.

Jordan Wallace, I believe, was simply an innocent person who got roped into this, seen on video getting the $40,000, driving it there the day they were being held hostage, seen on video shopping for Sava, the day they were murdered.

But on the stand, he was credible.

He was emotional.

He was believable.

Prosecutors insist Darren Went acted alone.

But as the alternative suspect strategy begins to implode, the defense throws a Hail Mary.

the defense said we're going to call one witness and then mr.

Went

people like what

what did she just say

it's very rare to see a defendant charged in a murder case unless they're claiming self-defense take the witness stand they're opening themselves up for a lot of potential questioning which could implicate them and he just decided he's sharp enough, he's shrewd enough, he could take on that prosecutor.

For about five hours, Darren Went talked about his role in all of this.

He was very calm, very yes, ma'am, no ma'am.

You know, prosecutors coming at him, drilling, throwing questions at him left to right, throw it left to right.

By most accounts, Darren Went was a cool customer on the stand, perfectly prepped to explain it all away.

His testimony was so precisely crafted to counter every single prosecution piece of evidence.

Oh yeah, that was me.

I walked into the house, but that was because my brother brought me over there and I didn't even know, you know, what was going on in that house.

Try as you might, Darren Went cannot fully explain that slice of pizza.

The slice he could not finish.

The slice that may finish him.

Right now, Darren Wentz's fate in the hands of a jury.

That after impassioned and emotional closing arguments from attorneys on both sides in the mentioned murders case.

The jury deliberating right now, it could continue to deliberate through tomorrow, perhaps for several days.

That prediction was accurate.

Two days later, the verdict was in.

A verdict in the mansion murders trial.

Just moments ago, one word echoed through the courtroom.

That word, guilty, guilty, guilty.

All 20 counts guilty.

And on the first guilty delivery, Sava Savopos' father, his shoulders just start to shake.

And you can tell he's weeping.

And I looked over to Darren Wyndt.

He just drops his head.

And it just stayed there the entire time.

Prosecutors recommending a sentence of life without parole.

We cry and say, well,

now Bera's gonna reason peace.

And the whole family.

Providing some measure of comfort for the woman who still holds on to the house keys to that mansion long after it was demolished.

I worked for them for so many years and

I miss them so much.

And

why?

Why bad things happen to good people?

Because they were such a good family.

At long last, justice for those two surviving daughters in that family.

Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

We hope you'll join join us Friday nights at 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes.

See you then.

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