File M For Murder

Speaker 1 Hi 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 3 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene.

Speaker 4 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 5 The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 3 A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 3 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 7 A larger-than-life businessman gunned down in his office.

Speaker 8 But will the discovery of his secret double life lead to the killer? And all new 2020 starts right now.

Speaker 10 So, in broad daylight, a man is shot dead in his place of business on a busy street.

Speaker 12 I knew.

Speaker 13 As soon as I saw it, I knew he was gone.

Speaker 14 Just two blocks behind me, Bob Eidman was found robbed and murdered.

Speaker 17 Bob Eidman was shot three times

Speaker 17 by that third shot as being an execution.

Speaker 18 I just all the way there saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 13 There were just floods and floods of police cars coming in and just total chaos.

Speaker 20 Where with the major case squad?

Speaker 6 They only have five days, so the clock is ticking.

Speaker 14 Diane found out on the site that her husband had been murdered.

Speaker 21 Yes, she did.

Speaker 23 She makes the statement, something like this has happened before.

Speaker 17 There were numerous individuals who could have done something such as this.

Speaker 2 He asked me a question that just kind of floored me. He said, we're trying to find out about your brother's lifestyle.

Speaker 24 What is it like to all of a sudden learn that there's this whole other secret part of his life?

Speaker 26 People are going to find out some stuff they're probably not going to like.

Speaker 28 June 8th, 2007 was a typical day in St. Charles.

Speaker 28 It was a sunny day when I was proceeding southwest here on First Capital Drive.

Speaker 31 So it was about to break 80 degrees on this Friday morning around 11 a.m.

Speaker 37 And as Officer Dean Meyer's patrol car is making its way toward Interstate 70 a mail carrier was on her rounds too this security video showing her dropping off mail at a strip mall grocery store then driving her truck a few doors down to enter the office where Bob Eidman sold car insurance nobody heard her first scream

Speaker 13 Our mail carrier was running up the street and she was flailing her arms and she was yelling for the police.

Speaker 41 Deborah Kennedy was the first person to hear those desperate cries and tried to catch up with her as the mail carrier ran into traffic on the busy road before Officer Meyer spotted her.

Speaker 28 I saw the mail carrier running up the hill with the phoner in her hand.

Speaker 13 I asked what's going on and she said Bob was laying on the floor and he had blood on his face.

Speaker 42 And she tries to investigate what's going on. She goes into Bob's office and gets the shock of her life.

Speaker 13 I went inside to see if I could help him.

Speaker 13 And when I walked in, there was plenty of blood. I watched his chest.
His chest didn't move. I knew as soon as I saw it, I knew he was gone.

Speaker 45 Let me breathe for a second.

Speaker 15 It was was St.

Speaker 32 Charles's first murder of 2007.

Speaker 15 And right from the start, it was the kind of thing that just isn't supposed to happen here.

Speaker 42 That's because St. Charles, Missouri is an idyllic bedroom community.
It's just over the bridge from St. Louis with a historic downtown and historic values as well.

Speaker 42 I guess the idea is that you're supposed to shed the stress of the big city as you come across the wide Missouri River and land here.

Speaker 36 But as we know, money woes,

Speaker 20 lies and rage and desperation, the grip of fear,

Speaker 49 they do not stop at the river's edge.

Speaker 6 Now we've got a whole team of officers from the St. Charles Police Department.
They've conversed on the scene of Bob Eidman's murder.

Speaker 13 There were just, I mean, floods and floods of police cars coming in and just total chaos.

Speaker 29 Immediately I responded to the area, to the scene. Bob is laying on the floor between the two desks.
He's laying on his back and there's a pool of blood around his head.

Speaker 17 Bob Eidman was shot three times. The first shot was superficial.
It was a grazing wound to his chin. The second shot was to his neck, shoulder area.
which knocked him down.

Speaker 15 According to St.

Speaker 33 Charles homicide detective Don Stepp, the third and fatal shot shot had been fired through Bob Eidman's left eye as the assailant stood over his prone body.

Speaker 17 I would definitely classify that third shot as being an execution.

Speaker 50 This was an insurance office and it was a fairly open area. We collected bullet casings, bullets, bullet fragments.
We would mark the position, set up little yellow tents called photomarkers.

Speaker 29 We would photograph it.

Speaker 52 We dusted for fingerprints. You're hoping that maybe you will find one fingerprint that may lead to a particular suspect.

Speaker 31 Police are seeking out anyone who might have spotted something that morning in Bob's office.

Speaker 55 With her office directly below Bob's, Deborah Kennedy didn't see anyone, but she might have heard something.

Speaker 13 I think it was probably around 10.30 or 11 o'clock. A friend of mine had come in.
You know, I heard a couple noises and we both kind of looked at each other and then I heard a big thud on my ceiling

Speaker 19 and

Speaker 13 we're kind of like what the heck you know is Bob doing up there and so being the way I am I yelled up through the rafters you know hey Bob keep it down I'm trying to work down here

Speaker 6 we came to a conclusion that those loud bangs that she heard was the gunshots in Bob's office police quickly worked to gather information about the victim. His name is Bob Eidman.
He's 48 years old.

Speaker 6 He was married for a very long time, had no children, and worked in the insurance industry.

Speaker 11 But just recently, like the past two years, had just started this new company. He'd got like a franchise.
He just started that on his own.

Speaker 15 As news begins to spread that something bad has happened at Bob's office, concerned friends and associates in the insurance business, they rush to the site.

Speaker 31 like the longtime colleague who asked that we call her Dana.

Speaker 57 What made you want to go over there?

Speaker 18 That's my friend. I wanted to make sure he was okay.

Speaker 58 I remember locking up my office.

Speaker 18 I had a client in there and she saw how distraught I was.

Speaker 53 And I'm just in the car, just all the way there saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Bob, no, Bob.

Speaker 2 What happened when you got there?

Speaker 18 Of course, there's spectators, so someone said that someone got shot.

Speaker 18 Didn't see Bob, didn't see him waving in the window, didn't see any sign of him at all.

Speaker 18 And then when

Speaker 18 They took his body out of the office, we knew it was Bob's body because he was a big guy.

Speaker 12 What's What's that moment like?

Speaker 38 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 13 It was the worst.

Speaker 6 Local reporters have arrived on the scene as well. Those reporters notice that a woman pulls up and it turns out that she is the now widow of Robert Eidman.
Her name is Diane.

Speaker 6 And Diane approaches the reporters, asking them if they know what's happening.

Speaker 6 And the reporters are saying that they feel uncomfortable telling her about her husband, so they direct her to the police.

Speaker 21 But Diane said that she hadn't heard from Bob all day, which was odd. And she kept trying to call him and he never answered the office phone.

Speaker 21 So when she shows up and seen all the police cars, she knew something had happened and she identified herself.

Speaker 32 Diane found out on the site, didn't she, that her husband had been murdered?

Speaker 21 Yes, she did.

Speaker 47 As investigators combed the area looking for video of any potential suspects, they happen upon this grocery store just a few doors down from Bob Eidman's office.

Speaker 40 Inside, they take note of the security camera that captured the mail carrier earlier that morning.

Speaker 47 It was right about there, pointed directly towards the front door. Once they get a look at the video it recorded, it's the first big break in the case.

Speaker 60 Police believe Eidman was working alone when someone walked inside his business, fatally shot him, then took off.

Speaker 42 Insurance agent Bob Eidman is dead, shot to death in his office along a busy thoroughfare near the interstate in St.

Speaker 34 Charles, Missouri.

Speaker 10 We are west of the city of St.

Speaker 11 Louis, which most people kind of relate that to the arch.

Speaker 18 They are just separated by a river, so just hop on the bridge and you're in St. Charles.

Speaker 32 And like this town's famous Christmas tradition celebration and their lively October fest, murder comes but once a year.

Speaker 17 St. Charles averages about one and a half homicides a year.

Speaker 13 It's a pretty peaceful community and people look out for each other.

Speaker 6 A cold-blooded murder is not something St. Charles is known for, and the local cops will probably need some help with what looks like a big investigation.
So they appeal to a special group for help.

Speaker 29 A request was made to notify the major case squad.

Speaker 41 And they contact other departments that are in our area and they send detectives to assist us.

Speaker 60 More than 30 detectives with the major case squad are now looking for his killer.

Speaker 6 This elite major case squad has a very high rate of success. 80% of their cases are solved.

Speaker 6 But with all this manpower, there's one catch. They only have five days to get the job done.
So the clock is ticking.

Speaker 11 They're coming from all other agencies.

Speaker 58 At some point, they need to get back to theirs.

Speaker 13 The police canvassed First Capital right there in front of the shop.

Speaker 50 How you doing? Hi, what's up?

Speaker 29 We're with the major case squad, and we're investigating a homicide that happened here Friday afternoon.

Speaker 13 Asking, did you notice something on June 7th?

Speaker 15 And then you can see in the distance those apartment houses. You talked to all the people who lived in those apartment houses too, didn't you?

Speaker 21 Every door was knocked on multiple times until we got contact.

Speaker 34 And could one part of Bob Eidman's line of work have put him in jeopardy?

Speaker 17 Robert Eidman's specialty in the insurance company was dealing with high-risk drivers, individuals that could not get insurance through...

Speaker 8 traditional places, people that had prior traffic violations.

Speaker 11 He wasn't taking checks because apparently those had been bounced and this is back in the day when checks were a thing.

Speaker 42 But But his good friend and insurance colleague Dana, she felt Bob was taking too great a risk with the form of payment he did take.

Speaker 18 So he would accept cash against a lot of people who'd advised him not to take cash.

Speaker 30 Though he was known for accepting cash, he doesn't have a safe.

Speaker 32 Instead, police learned Bob would put the cash he received from clients into a far less secure place.

Speaker 17 There was a drawer in Bob's desk that was locked and you'd have to use a screwdriver to manipulate the lock to be able to open it.

Speaker 30 When police managed to open the drawer and they checked the cash box, oh, there's money inside, about $200.

Speaker 11 There was no forced entry, but it could have absolutely been a robbery. I know one of the things they were looking for was Bob's wallet missing.

Speaker 15 And you're looking for anywhere that somebody might have thrown something, like Bob Eidman's wallet.

Speaker 21 From the top of the roof, all through the grass, ditches, sewers, everywhere.

Speaker 17 We could not find the wallet. The wallet's going to be 90% of the time in a man's back pocket.

Speaker 63 And to get that wallet out, you would have had to struggle between the wallet and the inside of the pants, which caused some friction.

Speaker 63 Bob recommended that we cut the pants pockets out and send them to the crime lab. We just thought maybe a sample of skin cells could be found inside Bob's pocket.

Speaker 17 When we touch something, or brush up against something, some of our DNA is transferred to the other object. If they're located, those skin cells can be broken down into DNA.

Speaker 42 So you were checking for DNA everywhere else, but this was just kind of out of the blue.

Speaker 59 You just thought, well, you know, I might as well give this a try.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir. It was the first time that I'd ever heard of anybody's pants pockets getting cut out.

Speaker 6 While one team is feverishly working to gather physical evidence, another team is talking to anyone they can find, talking to family, friends, anything that will help them glean information about Bob Eidman.

Speaker 18 Bob was a big teddy bear. He was friendly.
He was bubbly. He called me

Speaker 18 wild woman. I think it has something to do with my hair.
It grew on me.

Speaker 38 Bob

Speaker 13 was a funny little guy. And I say little meaning that I think he was probably about 5'4 ⁇ , 5'6.

Speaker 25 If we were going to say what size personality he had, like small to large, where would you put him on the scale there, baby?

Speaker 67 I'd say extra large.

Speaker 18 His persona was just so, hey,

Speaker 47 you guys see me?

Speaker 68 I'm here.

Speaker 25 How would you describe his relationship to authority growing up?

Speaker 2 Not good.

Speaker 2 He defied authority with regularity. He had to go to summer school every summer.

Speaker 2 In fact, my parents tried to bribe him and said, hey, if you can graduate from high school in four years, we'll give you a car. He's like, show me the car first.

Speaker 69 We were in high school together. Bob was pretty forward.
He liked to talk to the ladies and hang out and visit. Then he met Diane and he fell in love with her.

Speaker 2 They were real close.

Speaker 70 I believe Diane and Bobby made a fantastic couple.

Speaker 62 I really liked Diane.

Speaker 70 She'd put Bobby in his place. Bobby says something smart.
She'd say something smart right back at him.

Speaker 38 She was taller than him.

Speaker 69 I don't think it really mattered to him at all.

Speaker 70 He ended up getting some lifts, so he felt like he was as tall as his wife.

Speaker 11 Bob and Diane had been married for 20 plus years. They did not have any children.

Speaker 9 So instead, his office featured photos of the muscle cars that he loved.

Speaker 37 While under his desk, he kept a copy of the Dream Girl C D.

Speaker 31 He finally got to be his own boss.

Speaker 25 But there were great challenges, weren't there?

Speaker 67 Yeah, he started talking like, well, the business isn't doing so good. I haven't had that many people come in.

Speaker 2 He kept saying, you know, if I don't make this in the next couple months, I'm not sure.

Speaker 53 I might go under.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make it.

Speaker 6 Think about all that financial stress. At least one person thinks it was taking a terrible toll.

Speaker 18 I thought he committed suicide.

Speaker 31 You thought he was so despondent that he might have taken his own life.

Speaker 56 I did.

Speaker 42 Remember that video camera in the grocery store next to Bob's pointing toward the street in front? Police have been poring over the footage, and now they may have found something of interest.

Speaker 72 There, that white car.

Speaker 29 At 10.50 a.m.

Speaker 29 you see the vehicle drive past the front doors and four minutes later you see it drive past the front doors I believe a little slower and almost like creeping along looking for something.

Speaker 35 Was this driver making sure the coast was clear?

Speaker 29 It wasn't the greatest picture. I remember that.
It's always frustrating when you can't identify the people inside the vehicle.

Speaker 17 One thing we can tell is a white four-door vehicle.

Speaker 42 Luckily. I'm impressed you can tell it's a four-door vehicle.

Speaker 66 It looks like a white car.

Speaker 61 But it turned out the small St. Charles Police Department had a car maven.

Speaker 17 We have an individual at the time that could almost identify almost any type of vehicle. He was a big car guy.
He said it was a Ford focus.

Speaker 72 Like, I like cars, but honestly, wow.

Speaker 17 We're kind of looking at this several different ways. Is he having problems with a customer with a white Ford focus?

Speaker 6 The bad news is that in St. Charles County, there are 1,300 Ford focuses.
In the state of Missouri, there are 5,000.

Speaker 17 5,000 is a big number to have to deal with.

Speaker 42 But they're not finding anything suspicious until a gift-wrapped lead suddenly falls into their lap. A white car is crashed and abandoned nearby.

Speaker 42 And get this about the driver: he had bloody clothing on.

Speaker 17 Why has he got Bob's business card?

Speaker 29 I hope this is it.

Speaker 73 A mail carrier found Eidman's body shot several times inside his Brook auto insurance agency at about 12.30 Friday afternoon.

Speaker 11 So in broad daylight, a man is shot dead in his place of business on a busy street. I'm sure it did strike fear.

Speaker 67 I don't understand why somebody would kill somebody right here.

Speaker 69 It was such a senseless killing that nobody really understood what was going on.

Speaker 13 I didn't want to go back to work the next morning.

Speaker 13 I wanted to get the heck out of Dodge. I wanted to get out of town.

Speaker 61 Police here in St. Charles, Missouri still had no motive, no witnesses, and no way to quell the rising fear of the St.

Speaker 15 Charles community.

Speaker 71 Fear and anxiety that grew even more after three men broke into a bowling alley, took $700, and tied up the janitor in the process.

Speaker 68 Two men wearing masks and carrying guns rob a St. Charles bowling alley.

Speaker 74 Well, here is proof they had a gun. A bullet hole left in the office windows.
They busted in through the back door, shot up the office, tried to shoot open a safe.

Speaker 11 Geographically, it was just down the street from Brooks Insurance.

Speaker 13 And it was a bowling alley that we all bowled at. So at first, we all thought it was tied together.

Speaker 47 So people wondered if there was a connection between the two robberies.

Speaker 21 And we looked at that, seeing that they were connected. And in the course of that investigation, we were able to eliminate it from being a part of this case.

Speaker 6 Police are knee-deep in Bob Eidman's murder investigation, and they come upon a really interesting scene. It's an abandoned, crashed white car.

Speaker 6 And when they track down the owner, well, there's a couple of really eye-popping pieces of information.

Speaker 17 He had bloody clothing on,

Speaker 63 and he also had one of Robert Eidman's business cards.

Speaker 17 Why does he have bloody clothing? Is it his blood? Is it Bob's blood?

Speaker 17 We have some questions we need answered. This could be it.

Speaker 38 It blew my mind like, whoa.

Speaker 48 Travis Wade Ensley.

Speaker 34 is about to blow a lot of minds at police headquarters where leads in Bob Eidman's murder have been hard to come by.

Speaker 49 The car that I wrecked wrecked was a white four-door Saturn, which might have looked like the car that was captured on the street.

Speaker 76 And the next thing I know, I'm at

Speaker 76 St. Charles Police Station getting questioned for murder.

Speaker 47 Police now feel that he has a lot of explaining to do.

Speaker 42 So as Travis recalls, his story goes kind of something like this.

Speaker 76 I needed new insurance on my car. My buddy's like, check this guy out and call him up,

Speaker 2 gave me good rates.

Speaker 76 And then like a week later, I had been out, had a couple drinks.

Speaker 76 I wound up wrecking my car right by my apartment.

Speaker 76 My airbags deployed in it knocked the sense out of me and I like staggered down the hill, like right to my apartment, didn't remember nothing. Okay.
Next day, I woke up. I walk out my door.

Speaker 76 My car's not there.

Speaker 42 So Travis calls police to report his car as stolen, but then is stunned to suddenly find himself a potential person of interest in a murder.

Speaker 39 I was scared to death.

Speaker 48 They were coming at you.

Speaker 76 Yeah, they were coming at me pretty good.

Speaker 6 Travis has what seems like a likely story about why there's blood on a shirt.

Speaker 6 He said that when he crashed his car, he got a bloody nose. Cops will check out his story, so they're not quite ready to clear him.

Speaker 76 And they went and looked into certain, you know, my alibi and this and that. They're like, okay, yeah, he's not the guy.

Speaker 6 Now, police turn their attention closer to home, to Bob Eidman's widow, Diane.

Speaker 6 It is quite routine for police to look at the spouse of someone who's been murdered.

Speaker 29 When Bob's wife, Diane, was advised that Bob had been murdered in his office, she didn't have a great reaction.

Speaker 42 While Diane does appear to be upset in this photo, some detectives at the scene felt she was not overly emotional.

Speaker 17 I don't want to say it didn't seem like a surprise to her, but she wasn't reacting in a manner that I thought a wife would react when they found out their husband was shot.

Speaker 29 That struck me, and I'm sure several detectives as unusual.

Speaker 17 Is she in shock? Is she in denial?

Speaker 17 Is she involved in this?

Speaker 42 Then there's Detective Stephanie Kaiser,

Speaker 9 already a veteran sex crimes investigator.

Speaker 30 Kaiser was respected for her sensitivity and understanding with victims.

Speaker 11 That would be completely normal in a shock situation like that. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all when you're talking about trauma because to be able to process that would take some time.

Speaker 11 They're moving slow. They can't think.
So I make nothing of that behavior.

Speaker 9 Now Detective Kaiser is about to become the St.

Speaker 32 Charles Police Department's Diane Whisperer.

Speaker 64 Diane Eidman became my lead.

Speaker 23 We were assigned to take her from, sadly, the scene.

Speaker 6 Diane wants to go to Bob's parents' home so that she can break the terrible news to them. And during that ride, Diane talks about how she is the manager of the kitchen at the local hospital.

Speaker 6 And she also offers more information about her beloved husband.

Speaker 11 She says that there was financial problems.

Speaker 40 When you say financial problems, what do you mean?

Speaker 64 I mean, they were having a tough time paying bills. According to Diane, there wasn't much cash coming in.

Speaker 10 The business itself

Speaker 64 was struggling.

Speaker 6 Detective Kaiser continues talking with Diane, and she makes a note that Diane seems incredibly forgetful. She can't remember her own social security number.

Speaker 6 And then the detective asks her about any existing insurance policies.

Speaker 11 She was upfront that, yes, I have a life insurance policy through work.

Speaker 17 Diane initially gave us an answer that she thought they had a couple of small policies, approximately $5,000.

Speaker 45 Not much, right?

Speaker 43 Not much.

Speaker 11 So Diane was pretty direct with me. I think she'd had a lot of questions asked of her and then just kind of tells me boldly, I did not do this.

Speaker 32 These conversations with Diane will shape and reshape the police investigation into Bob Eidman's murder.

Speaker 74 At the end of that first day, Diane sounds like every other resident of St.

Speaker 31 Charles.

Speaker 46 She is terribly afraid.

Speaker 11 It's just dawning on her, wait.

Speaker 10 I'm not safe either.

Speaker 19 I have to act and get her extra patrol, and I I did.

Speaker 10 But you have to still go where the evidence leads.

Speaker 31 And no one knows yet where that evidence will lead, especially in the wake of the very first astonishing story that Diane Eidman tells Detective Kaiser with words that will be ringing in lots of heads at police headquarters.

Speaker 11 One of the first things she says is, don't take this as a confession or anything, but this happened to my dad, too.

Speaker 11 Has her father been murdered and her husband murdered as well?

Speaker 10 Has lightning struck this woman twice?

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Speaker 81 I can't.

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Speaker 42 At the time of his death, Bob Eidman had been married to his wife Diane for more than two decades. And yet, even those closest to him could find Diane to be something of an enigma to them.

Speaker 2 Not very outgoing.

Speaker 67 No, not very outgoing. She's just kind of shy and quiet.
I mean, she just didn't really have a lot to say to anyone, really.

Speaker 77 When you would ask Bob about Diane, what kinds of things would he say about her?

Speaker 2 You know, his famous saying was, she's not the person you think she is. And I never knew what that meant.

Speaker 30 Now, Detective Kaiser was reeling.

Speaker 48 from the incredible story that Diane had just told her.

Speaker 22 She makes this statement, don't take this as a confession, but something like this has happened before.

Speaker 64 And I'm not quoting Diane at this point, but somebody broke into the house and shot my dad.

Speaker 22 So when I asked, did they catch the person?

Speaker 82 How did she answer that question?

Speaker 22 She said, they thought my mom shot my dad.

Speaker 17 And we're wondering if lightning had struck twice in the same place.

Speaker 42 Diane Bowling Eidman, seen here on her wedding day in 1978 with her father Jerome, was just 26 years old when he was murdered inside the home he shared with his wife Lenore, Diane's mother.

Speaker 31 The murder case that made headlines in this region all began when a call came through in the wee hours on the morning of April 6, 1984. Gordon Adams was an officer with the St.
Louis County PD.

Speaker 49 What went out over the radio when you heard the call?

Speaker 21 As I recall, like I say, it came out as a home invasion with someone shot. And so that's what we would consider a hot call.

Speaker 84 Well, when I arrived, it's 2.30 in the morning, maybe 2.35,

Speaker 84 so it's dark as it can be.

Speaker 84 I immediately went to the door,

Speaker 84 knocked on the door, and Menorah answered.

Speaker 84 And the hair is pristine, and she's standing there in a kind of sheer nightgown.

Speaker 84 And she says, my husband needs help.

Speaker 84 He's in the bedroom. He's been shot.

Speaker 56 What are you thinking when you're hearing this story for the first time?

Speaker 84 I mean, she didn't strike you as a woman who woke up in the middle of the night to find her husband murdered.

Speaker 84 No tears. The hair was all done.

Speaker 84 And I'm trying to get information for my report.

Speaker 50 She actually lit up a cigarette.

Speaker 84 I'm thinking,

Speaker 84 this is your husband. He's just been murdered.
She didn't have any emotion at all, almost.

Speaker 32 David Barron was a detective with the St.

Speaker 30 Louis County Police assigned to the case.

Speaker 30 So Lenore Bowling was asserting that an intruder had come into the house, somehow found her husband's service revolver, used that service revolver to kill him, and then left.

Speaker 17 That's what she was saying.

Speaker 49 How did that strike you as a plausible plausible story, given your years of experience in law enforcement?

Speaker 50 It was an improbable set of circumstances. And

Speaker 50 to throw into

Speaker 50 that, the garage door was open about a foot.

Speaker 54 Okay, that garage door over there was open a foot.

Speaker 50 And the inside garage door, leading it from the garage into the house, is the only door in the house that did not have a deadbolt.

Speaker 35 Diane's mother had told police she believed she was being stalked in the days prior to the shooting by a black male driving a black car who had been leaving notes at their home.

Speaker 40 And there was a note found at the crime scene.

Speaker 50 Well, the last note that was found at the scene said, this is for you, Pic, for what you did to me.

Speaker 50 No, I made a canvas later on of the neighborhood. No one saw a black male in a black car dressed in all black.

Speaker 6 Lenore Bowling was charged with the murder of her husband. She pled not guilty.
And while she was awaiting trial, she moved in with Bob and Diane.

Speaker 56 How did Bob feel about living with someone who was accused of shooting her husband to death?

Speaker 2 Bob was not happy about that.

Speaker 67 He was scared. He would go to bed every night and say, he would bolt his door, lock it closed.
He did not, he was afraid. He didn't want to be in the house with her.

Speaker 49 After that fateful night, this saga ending here in the fall of 1985.

Speaker 20 Diane Eidman's mother, Lenore Bowling, on trial for capital murder in the death of her husband, Diane's father, Jerome Bowling.

Speaker 35 Lenore Bowling found not guilty of her husband's murder.

Speaker 17 They did not believe that she did it.

Speaker 50 They believed her story.

Speaker 48 The irony not lost on investigators as Diane Eidman, more than 20 years later, now a person of interest

Speaker 42 in a different killing.

Speaker 11 Says her father been murdered and her husband murdered as well.

Speaker 10 What a weird set of circumstances.

Speaker 72 But it was something else Diane Eidman told investigators about her own husband that they said gave them puns.

Speaker 17 During Diane's initial interview, she was asked if there was any insurance policies. Diane said that she thought there was one policy and she thought it was just a small policy, approximately $5,000.

Speaker 11 She describes that she has a life insurance policy through work. She's not sure about the details on that.

Speaker 17 I was contacted by an insurance company and told that there were additional policies for Robert Eidman that we were not made aware of that were quite substantial in size.

Speaker 47 Now with Bob's death, police say she was suddenly in line to receive more than $300,000 in life insurance.

Speaker 17 We did not know if Diane had forgotten to tell us about those policies. Did Diane know about those policies?

Speaker 6 And as they start looking deeper into Bob Eidman, they make a mind-blowing discovery. This man was leading a double life.

Speaker 2 And then the commander of the major case squad asked me a question that just kind of floored me.

Speaker 2 I had no idea.

Speaker 69 I went to Bob's funeral, and it was sad to see him there.

Speaker 69 I didn't expect to go see my friend in a casket

Speaker 69 and I felt horrible for his wife and his family.

Speaker 32 Bob's older brother by 21 months.

Speaker 35 Glenn Eidman grew up as a straight-A student, and he was a frequent target of Bob's verbal barbs.

Speaker 31 How did he feel about you being a policeman?

Speaker 2 He made fun of me a lot. He did not like that.
Wasn't big on police. He got in trouble growing up.

Speaker 32 Glenn always believed that Bob was his mother's favorite.

Speaker 40 Even so, he said he was not prepared for what he says she asked him to do as they attended Bob's funeral.

Speaker 2 At his funeral, my mom, she was confined to a wheelchair. She was in very poor health.
So she goes, how could somebody do this to my boy? I said, mom, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't know why. She goes, well, I want you to find those people.
I want you to kill them.

Speaker 47 And I said, that's not how this works.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm a police officer. I can't do something like that.
But she was very devastated. And literally three months after his death, she died.

Speaker 67 She has lost her will to to live.

Speaker 2 It was kind of a rough year, for sure.

Speaker 69 I went up to the funeral and seen Diane, and she was broken up, but I didn't ask a lot of questions.

Speaker 2 She never really said a whole lot. She really didn't say a lot about anything.
She was pretty quiet.

Speaker 18 I was just watching Diane and just just grieving with her and

Speaker 18 I noticed there was a large police presence and I just thought that was odd for a funeral. But if they suspect the murderers to be there, then they were there for a reason.

Speaker 17 At the time of Robert Eidman's funeral, we set up surveillance and we recorded video of the attendees at the funeral as well as obtaining the guest book for the services.

Speaker 6 Police check out every name on the funeral registry. It takes them nowhere.

Speaker 6 Meanwhile, it's day four of the Major Crimes Task Force investigation. The clock is ticking, but still no good leads on who killed Bob Eidman.

Speaker 17 We were striking out. There was no one that could really come up and say Bob's having a problem with anyone.

Speaker 9 But then the major case squad does a deep dive into Bob's email, his phone, and computer records.

Speaker 35 They're searching for any hidden clues. They make a discovery they're eager to know a lot more about, just as Glenn comes in for his interview.

Speaker 2 You know, they put me in an interview room to ask me some questions.

Speaker 2 I said, you know, I have nothing to hide. You don't have to play these games.
You know, ask me whatever you want. And he asked me a question that just kind of floored me.

Speaker 2 he said we're trying to find out about your brother's alternative lifestyle I said what alternative he goes his affairs you know I go you think he's out picking up women I mean he you know he's he that just ain't happening and he's like your brother was gay I had no idea we had no idea I really we did not know that

Speaker 31 turns out this long-married insurance agent was leading a secret double life.

Speaker 29 While we were analyzing Bob's computers and it was discovered that he was visiting mail-on-mail websites were sexual in nature and he was making contact with some of these places.

Speaker 29 Sometimes in these murder investigations, as we dig into them, you find a lot about a person's life, their lifestyle.

Speaker 65 When you have a secret, what vulnerability does that give someone like Bob Iden?

Speaker 17 Anytime somebody has a secret and somebody knows it and you're keeping it a secret for a reason, people can use that as leverage to get their way if they want to blackmail you or extort you.

Speaker 32 As investigators continue searching through Bob's phone records, they find something else noteworthy.

Speaker 48 One phone number keeps popping up, belonging to a man from out of town.

Speaker 29 They had an intimate relationship. They would rent a hotel room somewhere and visit each other.

Speaker 29 Automatically a flag gets raised.

Speaker 24 What is it like to all of a sudden learn that there's this whole other secret part of his life that you knew nothing about?

Speaker 2 It was upsetting. You know, I guess I felt he should have been able to talk to somebody about that.
He shouldn't have had to hide that life. He shouldn't have had to lie.

Speaker 2 Having a relationship and being gay is that's just part of life and I wish he would have been able to share that with us

Speaker 6 police bring in this secret lover for questioning they can't help but wonder would this man have a reason to murder Bob

Speaker 6 and what about Diane could his existence have set her into a murderous rage we've altered the man's voice I think we're gonna find out some stuff they're probably not gonna lie.

Speaker 17 Feelings can run wild with someone. If I can't have you, nobody's gonna have you.
It gives people motives.

Speaker 47 And as a young, untested detective is taking on his very first big murder case, a totally unexpected assist from the cutting edge of forensic science, it's gonna take this investigation into surprising territory

Speaker 55 and bring answers at last to the key question: Why was Bob Eidman killed?

Speaker 17 It blew my mind when the results came back. It was the golden ticket.
This is what we were looking for.

Speaker 30 Two blocks behind me, Bob Eidman was found robbed and murdered.

Speaker 14 Diane found out on the site that her husband had been murdered.

Speaker 21 Yes, she did.

Speaker 23 She makes the statement, something like this has happened before.

Speaker 64 Somebody broke into the house and shot my dad.

Speaker 29 It absolutely crossed everybody's mind that this was kind of a copycat murder.

Speaker 11 I've told her, hey, your husband's been killed.

Speaker 58 Your marriage is about to be put under a spotlight.

Speaker 17 We discovered that Bob was having an affair.

Speaker 2 She had found out that he was having an affair with another man and that she was very angry about that.

Speaker 56 They'd had an argument about that.

Speaker 11 Diane was asking, are you telling me my husband's gay?

Speaker 6 This is one of those bizarre cases where all the evidence seems to be pointing in one direction, then suddenly the rug is pulled out from under you, stunning everyone.

Speaker 17 I was very shocked.

Speaker 82 We cut open the pocket, swabbed the edges, hoping to get possible DNA. And the next day, state gave me the name.

Speaker 2 I was sitting in the same room with the person that shot and killed my brother.

Speaker 34 Friends and family are mourning the loss of Bob Eidman, gunned down in his office in a small strip mall in St. Charles, Missouri.

Speaker 2 A man that loved life.

Speaker 2 Always wanted to have fun, always wanted to enjoy himself. He had a great personality.
Very funny, you know, very intelligent.

Speaker 70 You know, he seemed like a nice guy,

Speaker 70 but after you got to know him a bit, that's when the Bobby came out. I mean, it was extremely comical.
He'd make me laugh so hard. I mean, it would hurt.

Speaker 18 He liked to have fun.

Speaker 11 He loved muscle cars.

Speaker 18 And as far as in the office, You heard him. He was a loud guy.
He was one of those guys that when he got on the phone, you kind of put your earplugs in because he was pretty loud.

Speaker 18 Larger than life, he was.

Speaker 82 I could depend on him when I was not in a great place.

Speaker 17 He would talk and he made sense.

Speaker 34 Now, Bob Eidman was dead, and nothing made sense.

Speaker 41 It was a little before 11 a.m.

Speaker 34 on June 8th when a mail carrier discovered Bob's lifeless body on the floor of his office.

Speaker 17 Bob Ivan was shot three times.

Speaker 11 There was no forced entry or anything.

Speaker 10 He was a business that was open for business, but it could have absolutely been a robbery.

Speaker 17 Robert Ivan's specialty in the insurance company was dealing with high-risk drivers, individuals that could not get insurance through traditional places.

Speaker 18 So he would accept cash. against a lot of people who didn't take cash and advise them not to take cash.

Speaker 6 This is a huge murder case in a very small town and with more questions than answers, St. Charles P.D.
needs help and boy do they get it.

Speaker 6 Enter the elite major case squad.

Speaker 17 20 to 30 detectives will respond and the only thing they will work on for the next five days is that situation they've been called out on.

Speaker 32 The investigation into Bob Eidman's murder is all hands on deck.

Speaker 17 One of the things that we were not able to recover or locate was Robert Eidman's wallet.

Speaker 32 Bob's wife, Diane, said he always carried his wallet in his back pocket.

Speaker 35 Police are desperate for leads, so they're going to try something unconventional.

Speaker 48 They cut the back pockets out of Eidman's pants to send for something they call touch DNA testing.

Speaker 63 We just thought maybe a sample of skin cells could be found inside Bob's pocket.

Speaker 32 It's a newer technology and it's a long shot.

Speaker 31 Police meanwhile canvass the neighborhood where the crime occurred.

Speaker 41 They're knocking on doors, they're looking for every clue they can find.

Speaker 11 During the area canvas, there's a Mexican grocery store that's just a couple of doors down.

Speaker 11 I think it was on the end of this particular strip mall and they were able to locate some surveillance video.

Speaker 12 A white car passing by twice.

Speaker 31 but the video is grainy.

Speaker 17 In that video footage, we saw a Ford focus. We were not able to get a license plate due to the angle of the camera, and we were not able to see who was in the vehicle.

Speaker 9 With lead after lead coming up empty and the clock ticking on that major case squad, Diane Eidman.

Speaker 41 She remains a subject of, well, we'll call it curiosity.

Speaker 55 She was, after all, the person closest to Bob.

Speaker 6 It is quite routine for police to look at the spouse of someone who's been murdered.

Speaker 9 Tough questions need to be asked about the state of the Eidmans marriage.

Speaker 11 I took that a step further. Has there been any time that you two argued? Has there been any time that you were unfaithful to him or he was unfaithful to you?

Speaker 32 Diane insisted the marriage was fine.

Speaker 9 But when investigators seize Bob's computers to be analyzed, they make a shocking discovery. Bob's been visiting gay websites online.

Speaker 30 He's looking for massages and sexual relations.

Speaker 6 Bob Eidman had been leading a secret life and a search of phone records reveals so much more.

Speaker 17 We found several calls that were coming in and coming out pretty much the same time each day. We discovered that Bob was having an affair.

Speaker 57 A secret relationship with a man who lived more than three hours away.

Speaker 40 Police take a drive to interview him.

Speaker 11 He was very forthcoming in the fact that the relationship between him and Bob was an intimate relationship, but very much

Speaker 11 affectionate and loving.

Speaker 10 They'd hoped to be together at some point.

Speaker 2 It wasn't like a quick fling kind of out the door kind of thing.

Speaker 1 I think that's what it was going to be.

Speaker 26 We just became good friends and really just kept talking from then on.

Speaker 65 He says he never visited Bob in St.

Speaker 31 Charles, but said the two spoke every day and that he loved Bob.

Speaker 41 The two would stay in motels closer to his hometown when they got together.

Speaker 31 During the interview with investigators, he rolled up his right sleeve to reveal a tattoo that he said was for Bob.

Speaker 17 While doing the search of his home, we located a box the size of a shoebox, and it had cards from Bob. It had receipts from when they'd go to dinner or go to a hotel.
He was saving it.

Speaker 51 With such tender and strong feelings for Bob, a handful of scenarios leaped to the mind of law enforcement.

Speaker 36 Could it have been a jilted lover who murdered Bob Eidman?

Speaker 17 Feelings can run wild with someone. If I can't have you, nobody's going to have you.

Speaker 17 It gives people motive.

Speaker 32 In theory, a jilted lover made potential sense to investigators, but the man had an alibi.

Speaker 31 On the date of the murder, he was at work hours away from St.

Speaker 40 Charles.

Speaker 17 He was on video and there were numerous people who said, yes, he was here this day. This is the time he clocked in.

Speaker 15 After passing a polygraph, Bob's secret lover is cleared, but it's something he tells investigators about Diane that raises red flags.

Speaker 27 He called me. He goes, I got some bad news.
And I said, what?

Speaker 1 He said, she read one of my emails.

Speaker 27 He said that Friday night, he said it was a pretty bad night.

Speaker 34 Investigators are now zeroing in on Diane.

Speaker 42 How angry was she when she discovered Bob's secret life?

Speaker 62 Angry enough to commit murder?

Speaker 27 He never met her before.

Speaker 26 No.

Speaker 26 Let's see her picture.

Speaker 73 Would she be angry enough to go in and do that?

Speaker 83 I hope not.

Speaker 9 Days after Bob Eidman is murdered in his office, police discover the long-married insurance agent had a secret male lover, a man whom he met up with for motel room trysts and who he spoke to every day, day.

Speaker 71 A man who was devoted to Bob.

Speaker 26 Did you guys love each other or was it just a very close personal relationship?

Speaker 1 I loved it, but I mean,

Speaker 1 I never said it to him.

Speaker 32 The secret lover is alibied out for Bob's killing, but in a frank session with police, he says Bob told him that Diane had discovered their relationship.

Speaker 31 And he says that Bob had told him Diane's reaction had led to a full-blown argument between the two.

Speaker 1 He said that, you know, she said who's

Speaker 1 f ⁇ ing penny, you know, so this is, I think he said this is just, you know, fantasy deal or what have you.

Speaker 27 It's what Bob said.

Speaker 1 She asked him if we were sleeping together, and he said no. He said it was pretty rough that night, but Friday night.

Speaker 42 It was up to Detective Stephanie Kaiser, the Diane whisperer, to broach the delicate subject with Bob's widow while interviewing her at the Eidmans home.

Speaker 42 Kaiser said Diane told her that she'd learned of her husband's relationship with the man after discovering an email between the two, that Bob denied having an affair, but it was the tone of that email which had deeply hurt her feelings.

Speaker 10 She describes it as, he's telling him intimate things that he hasn't told me.

Speaker 64 She's telling me I felt hurt because he wasn't speaking to me that way.

Speaker 10 So they're married.

Speaker 25 What do you think she meant when she said that? What kinds of things were they saying to each other?

Speaker 64 I didn't ask the specifics, but I'm just talking to her about it, did this happen? You know, could potentially, could this be a motive?

Speaker 31 In Detective Kaiser's account, Diane seemed to be struggling a little bit with the nature of her husband's relationship to the man or what they did during their time together.

Speaker 11 When I'm interviewing Diane, one of the things I asked was, I asked a lot of different things, to the point where Diane was asking me questions like, are you telling me my husband's gay?

Speaker 43 I asked her,

Speaker 10 what did Bob tell you?

Speaker 11 What are your impressions? Her response back was, he told me no.

Speaker 10 He was going there to meet with him. They worked together and he needed the stress relief.

Speaker 9 Kaiser said Diane told her that when she learned of the relationship after discovering that email, she and Bob discussed it, but they never argued.

Speaker 64 I'm telling Diane, Detective Steppe and Detective Grove are talking to him now. He's saying, you guys had a loud, angry argument.
She said, I don't know that it was loud and angry.

Speaker 64 Well, that's what he's saying. You know, Diane, what say you? She said, I told him it was over.

Speaker 10 I told him he was going to end that friendship.

Speaker 64 But she said, I don't know if Bob was yelling and screaming.

Speaker 19 I go, that's what he's saying.

Speaker 64 I'm just asking.

Speaker 31 But she laid her foot down. She gave him an ultimatum.
You are not to see this guy anymore.

Speaker 35 Yes. As far as you know, did Bob adhere to that ultimatum?

Speaker 53 No, he did not.

Speaker 15 Diane Eidman finds herself sitting in a polygraph room at the St.

Speaker 25 Charles Police Department.

Speaker 10 So Diane was pretty direct with me.

Speaker 11 I think she'd had a lot of questions asked of her and then just kind of tells me boldly, I did not do this. I didn't, Diane is just direct.

Speaker 17 Diane Eidman voluntarily submitted to a polygraph

Speaker 17 and the results came back being inconclusive.

Speaker 11 She doesn't pass, but it's inconclusive. So it's just still kind of puts her in that iffy category, if you will.

Speaker 32 Adding to investigators' frustration, a day after Diane takes that polygraph test, the clock expires.

Speaker 9 The major case squad is out of there.

Speaker 32 37 officers, 15 different departments had spent more than 2,500 man hours investigating with no arrests. A frustrating end to a furious search for answers.

Speaker 29 When it goes back to our police department at the time, it is frustrating knowing that you didn't solve this case and it just goes on to an active case case file to be looked at as further investigative leads come in.

Speaker 17 At that point, I'm assigned the investigation.

Speaker 40 The task of solving the murder of Bob Eidman now falls to a junior detective in the department, Don Stepp.

Speaker 17 When my sergeant came up and asked if I would like to be assigned this investigation, I was overwhelmed. It's one of those things, am I ready to do this?

Speaker 17 You don't want to say no, it's an opportunity. I wanted to see this investigation to the end.

Speaker 2 Don had contacted me and said, I'm starting from scratch. I'm going to take this entire investigation.
I'm going to do everything over again.

Speaker 66 What did that feel like to hear?

Speaker 2 Well, it was refreshing. You know, I just felt like there wasn't a lot there.

Speaker 17 In 2007, I had only been a detective for four years. I was the young guy in the squad.

Speaker 2 I had got promoted and I was a police chief at the time, and I didn't didn't want him to feel like there was pressure on him.

Speaker 2 But he met with me a couple times and you know the one time that really struck home is he said, hey, you're like family and I am going to solve this.

Speaker 17 What motivates me to keep going on this investigation is that there's someone or someone who had killed Bob Eidman. Bob Eidman needs someone to stand in his corner.

Speaker 42 Detective Stepp continues to immerse himself in the details of the case. It had been over a year since Bob Eidman was murdered when Step is at the airport in St.

Speaker 59 Louis and he spots Diane.

Speaker 17 I was off duty and then I was picking up a family member at the airport

Speaker 17 and Diane was walking my direction.

Speaker 33 Despite the time that had passed, Diane had never fallen off of Step's radar.

Speaker 25 Diane Eidman knows that you're keeping a close eye on her, doesn't she?

Speaker 17 Yes, sir, she does.

Speaker 41 How would you characterize the look on her face when she saw you?

Speaker 17 Shock.

Speaker 17 I believe at that point she thought she was going to be arrested.

Speaker 6 But the surprise of a chance encounter pales in comparison to the shock investigators get when they receive a call from the crime lab.

Speaker 6 Remember that pocket police cut out of Bob Eidman's pants to send for DNA analysis?

Speaker 17 It blew my mind when the results came back. It was the golden ticket.
This is what we were looking for.

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Speaker 42 It is 2009.

Speaker 42 And Diane Eidman is spotted at the airport in St. Louis by Detective Don Stepp.

Speaker 66 How would you characterize the look on her face when she saw you?

Speaker 17 Shock.

Speaker 31 Stepp documents the incident, later learns that Diane took a trip to Las Vegas.

Speaker 42 But nothing comes of it.

Speaker 17 If you don't have a suspect right away, then there's things that take time.

Speaker 50 So

Speaker 17 things slowed down, but things did not stop.

Speaker 31 Face it, there are few, if any, solid leads to pursue, including the identity of that mystery driver whose car was seen on the day of the murder.

Speaker 2 They had this famous lead about this car that went around the block, and they had it on video, but there were 22 detectives for five days, and they didn't find it.

Speaker 6 And there's another lingering piece of evidence still out there:

Speaker 6 that touch DNA taken from Eidman's back pocket. It was sent to the St.
Louis Major Crimes Lab.

Speaker 29 Anytime you submitted any kind of DNA information, DNA samples, it was going to be a year or more before you got an answer to it.

Speaker 32 Nearly two agonizing years after Bob's murder, it's as if this case is frozen in time.

Speaker 67 I felt that they were never going to solve the case. I mean, we pray every day.
Just, we need peace. We need the answers.
We need to find out what happened.

Speaker 45 It seemed like there were no answers.

Speaker 67 No.

Speaker 32 Then in March of 2009, that touch DNA from Bob's pocket is forwarded to Brian Cry.

Speaker 42 He's a forensic scientist with the St. Charles County Police Department.

Speaker 82 We were contacted by investigators and asked if we could do the DNA on the case.

Speaker 42 With almost every angle of the case having been explored and explored again, it all comes down to what Cry could uncover with the DNA analysis.

Speaker 82 If we were going to swab the back pocket of a pair of pants, we would cut open the pocket, swab the edges, hoping to get possible DNA.

Speaker 82 Once I get a swab, I process it and cut the tip off and put it in an extraction tube, and then we load it onto a...

Speaker 82 genetic analyzer that ultimately produces a DNA profile.

Speaker 6 But given the cold case backlog, it takes several more months for the DNA to be processed. And when the results come back, investigators get a major break that heats up this cold case.

Speaker 82 I developed an unknown male profile.

Speaker 82 It was a mixture of two people. One of those persons was the victim, Robert Eidman, and the other one was an unknown male.

Speaker 17 I knew once we obtained the DNA profile, the identity of the individual in Bob Eidman's pocket, I knew that was the golden ticket. I knew that was when we were going to be able to close this case.

Speaker 42 That unknown DNA could lead investigators to Bob's killer. So Cry enters the profile in Dakotas.

Speaker 31 That's a law enforcement database.

Speaker 55 Hours later, there's a hit.

Speaker 82 It hit that same day and the next day, state gave me the name.

Speaker 6 The DNA doesn't match Bob's wife or his secret lover or anyone else the police had been looking into.

Speaker 6 Instead, it comes back to someone who was never on the investigator's radar.

Speaker 24 What did you learn that person's name was?

Speaker 12 Paul White.

Speaker 30 When the name's first discovered, Detective Stepp is otherwise engaged.

Speaker 17 I was on a traffic detail directing traffic.

Speaker 59 Do you just want to run up and down the street and tell people we've got our guy?

Speaker 17 I was very shocked. My mind was not on directing traffic at that time.

Speaker 54 What did you do then?

Speaker 17 I started researching Paul White.

Speaker 42 Turns out Paul White was no stranger to law enforcement, having served 15 years in prison for robbery.

Speaker 2 When they got the DNA match, Don had contacted me and said, I'm going to solve this. And I truly believed him.
I got to give him a lot of credit. You know, he did a lot of old-fashioned work.

Speaker 9 This new lead poses even more questions for investigators.

Speaker 37 Could Diane have hired Paul White to kill Bob?

Speaker 12 Or had White acted alone?

Speaker 31 When the DNA came in, that didn't seem to exclude her either. The idea being maybe she had hired somebody.

Speaker 64 Yes, I mean, it was worked all the way through.

Speaker 59 You now have...

Speaker 31 Paul White's DNA

Speaker 26 on

Speaker 31 Robert Eidman's pocket at the time of his murder, right?

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 45 So I assume you want to talk to Paul White?

Speaker 17 Yes, sir, I do.

Speaker 34 And Paul White was not hard to find.

Speaker 29 Paul White was incarcerated at the time when the DNA came back.

Speaker 71 I do.

Speaker 32 And so in September 2010, Detective Stepp pays a visit to Paul White at a maximum security prison in Fulton, Missouri, where he's serving time for forgery.

Speaker 12 Do you have any idea why we're here?

Speaker 17 I wanted him to know right off the bat that we knew he was there.

Speaker 17 This guy was funny.

Speaker 85 Never seen him before.

Speaker 17 I wanted the truth. I wanted to get a confession from Paul.

Speaker 85 I've got your DNA in his back pocket.

Speaker 31 And will that touch DNA evidence be enough?

Speaker 40 to get that confession.

Speaker 17 White leaned back in his chair. He laughed.

Speaker 88 It's impossible.

Speaker 27 It's not.

Speaker 88 It's impossible.

Speaker 27 There's no way in the world it's impossible.

Speaker 25 What are you thinking when he does that?

Speaker 17 I'm thinking this is going to be a long interview.

Speaker 88 I'm getting taped and stuff and what the

Speaker 30 More than two years after Bob Eidman was robbed and murdered in his own insurance office, test results on trace DNA taken from his back

Speaker 40 are in, and there's a match.

Speaker 17 That individual was in the Department of Corrections in Missouri.

Speaker 31 What did you learn that person's name was?

Speaker 43 Paul White.

Speaker 37 As investigators dig deeper into Paul White's background, they uncover a possible connection to Bob.

Speaker 31 It's been hiding in plain sight.

Speaker 63 There were numerous files on Bob's desk, and there was a file, you know, containing Paul White's name.

Speaker 51 Among those files is an application for auto insurance. Two names are listed: Sherry White and her husband, Paul White.

Speaker 46 Paul White's wife's file was on Bob's desk?

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 55 What was it doing?

Speaker 17 I think when Mr. Eidman had seen the car pull up and saw Paul White exiting the vehicle, he was grabbing Sherry's file to be ready, so when he came in.

Speaker 35 Investigators quickly clear Sherry White as a suspect in Bob Eidman's murder.

Speaker 44 With the trail of evidence now leading directly to Paul White, Detective Stepp decides it's time to meet face to face.

Speaker 17 This is where the magic happens.

Speaker 66 It doesn't look all that magical, does it?

Speaker 17 No, it doesn't.

Speaker 59 What happens to people when they come into a room like this?

Speaker 17 We get to the bottom of facts. This is where people have an opportunity to tell us about what they've done and tell us their story.

Speaker 41 Since Paul White is already serving a prison sentence for an unrelated forgery charge, he's literally a captive odd.

Speaker 54 Let's go back and talk about some of your strategy strategy as you were going to talk to Paul White.

Speaker 17 Paul, I believe, was in a little bit of shock after all these years.

Speaker 17 Two detectives showing up from St. Charles City.
He did not expect that to happen that day. Do you have any idea while we're here?

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 31 Are you thinking the long game at this point, or do you think he's going to start telling you stuff that he knows at that first interview?

Speaker 17 I'm thinking to myself, the DNA itself is probably enough to get an arrest warrant, but I didn't want just an arrest warrant. I wanted the truth.

Speaker 85 Before I ask any questions, you must understand your rights. You don't have to make a statement or answer questions.
You have the right to remain silent, but you understand that?

Speaker 85 Did you put your initials there, Paul Florin?

Speaker 17 I think initially Paul White's attitude was very kicked back, relaxed.

Speaker 85 First of all, do you know a guy named Robert Eidman?

Speaker 85 Never heard of that guy?

Speaker 17 I even put a picture down in front of him and asked me, do you know this individual? Does this guy look familiar?

Speaker 85 Never seen him before.

Speaker 17 Eventually he came back around and said, yeah, he thought that was his wife's insurance man.

Speaker 85 That picture I showed you, that's Robert Iden. Okay, you said kind of works from Idaho? Yeah.
That's the guy we got the insurance from.

Speaker 17 I explained that we were working a homicide investigation and I explained that his DNA was located in his back pocket.

Speaker 17 Do you think there's any chance that your DNA is going to pop up inside that car and see?

Speaker 85 No robbery.

Speaker 26 No robbery?

Speaker 17 None. You come to prison, they take your DNA.

Speaker 17 Your DNA pops up.

Speaker 57 And where it pops up?

Speaker 17 Swabbing the back pocket of my victim.

Speaker 85 Your DNA shows up in this guy's back pocket.

Speaker 27 There ain't no way in the world.

Speaker 85 Why don't you think that?

Speaker 2 You say that he got robbed.

Speaker 88 I'd never robbed the guy. I've been in there one time and they get insured.
So that's

Speaker 88 ain't no way.

Speaker 85 You're telling me you've been in there one time.

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 85 And your DNA shows up in this guy's back pocket a month later?

Speaker 85 That don't even make sense. Exactly.
With your story, it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 54 Again and again during that first interrogation, you tell him, I've got your DNA.

Speaker 25 I mean, you must have told him, what, 10 or 15 times in the course of that conversation, right?

Speaker 17 At least 10 or 15 times. He kept saying, there is no way.

Speaker 12 Repeatedly.

Speaker 17 He did not believe it.

Speaker 88 It's impossible. It's no way in the world.
It's impossible.

Speaker 17 Paul, it's not possible. Okay.

Speaker 27 Well, I'm telling you.

Speaker 88 I know it's impossible. It's no way in the the world

Speaker 17 than how to get there.

Speaker 17 I don't even feel like it was there.

Speaker 88 It's impossible for it to be there.

Speaker 6 After White's adamant and repeated denials about that DNA evidence against him, investigators uncover another critical piece of evidence.

Speaker 17 I ran every kind of data history check on him. The big point.

Speaker 17 with Paul White was I found out that a neighboring law enforcement agency had issued a ticket to Paul White after our homicide in a white Ford focus.

Speaker 6 That's right. A white Ford focus.
And remember, that's the very same vehicle May caught on a surveillance camera the day Bob Eidman was murdered.

Speaker 17 Paul White was a pastor in that vehicle, and the driver was identified via tickets as Cleo Hines.

Speaker 32 Why was the car stopped in the first place?

Speaker 17 Registration on the vehicle.

Speaker 59 The registration on the vehicle was out of date?

Speaker 17 That's correct.

Speaker 41 Who was the driver of the car?

Speaker 56 The driver of the vehicle was Cleo Hines.

Speaker 25 What was significant about that?

Speaker 17 We later learned that Cleo Hines was living with Paul White and his girlfriend was best friends with Paul White's wife.

Speaker 25 So they had a long-standing relationship?

Speaker 17 Yes, sir.

Speaker 9 What would be indication that you had that Cleo Hines might have been involved in the murder of Robert Iden?

Speaker 17 It was Cleo Hines' vehicle.

Speaker 41 You were sure of that?

Speaker 17 I was sure of that.

Speaker 17 I had a couple other officers contact Cleo Hine

Speaker 17 and they arrested Cleo Hein and brought him to the St. Charles City Police Department.

Speaker 34 Does Cleo Hines know a secret that could solve Bob Eidman's murder?

Speaker 17 You know a man died, right?

Speaker 38 You know that.

Speaker 38 Somebody pulled that trigger.

Speaker 59 After several years of lead after lead turning cold, the investigation into Bob Eidman's murder is now heating up as lead detective Don Stepp zeroes in on a new suspect, a man named Cleo Hines.

Speaker 17 I was going to take the same approach with Cleo Hines as I did with Paul White. Are you the hardened criminal? Are you a guy that made a mistake? Let's talk about the robbery.

Speaker 17 I know all about it. I told him we had a positive idea of his vehicle.
We had a positive idea of a focus, a white four-door focus. You know your vehicle is on video.
Do you know that?

Speaker 27 You know that Mexican grocery store, there's a video camera inside, so I've seen you pull in.

Speaker 89 Now you didn't just pull around once, did you?

Speaker 27 No, like twice. You pulled around twice.
No, that's on camera.

Speaker 27 Then he pulled up.

Speaker 17 He knew he owned a white four-door focus.

Speaker 17 He knew he was involved in this. There was no way.
that he could fight that.

Speaker 31 Unlike Paul White, Hines immediately starts talking, saying White approached him the day of the murder.

Speaker 27 Okay.

Speaker 89 And how he was acting.

Speaker 17 It took a very short time, and Cleo just started talking and talking and talking. What kind of handgun do you think it was?

Speaker 6 A nine millimeter Glock, the same type of handgun investigators determined was used to murder Bob Eidman. But the question is, who pulled the trigger?

Speaker 6 Somebody pulled that trigger.

Speaker 17 And Cleo wanted to give his side of the story to defend himself against whatever Paul might say he did. I told him to meet the chance to chop him up.

Speaker 17 I'm upset, but

Speaker 17 he goes and about five minutes later, he comes back out.

Speaker 17 Deal gloves on

Speaker 17 Paul,

Speaker 17 yep.

Speaker 17 White gloves, white gloves. They were like cotton-like gloves.

Speaker 10 Paul White had been wearing gloves, so Paul White absolutely wasn't going to say anything because he believed his DNA couldn't have been located because he was wearing gloves.

Speaker 19 I don't even feel like it was there.

Speaker 88 It's impossible for it to be there.

Speaker 82 So if a perpetrator was wearing a cotton glove when they go into the pocket and digging around, they could leave that DNA that's already on the exterior inside the pocket.

Speaker 82 Also, if the individual is sweating,

Speaker 42 it could actually soak through the glove and leave DNA behind that way.

Speaker 85 What did he do with those gloves after shooting

Speaker 4 in the barbecue bed, John?

Speaker 32 Armed with Cleo Hines' confession, Step hits the road to Fulton Prison once more for another crack at Paul White.

Speaker 26 Now, I'm going to tell tell you right up now, I got a full confession from Cleo Hines.

Speaker 17 He told me everything.

Speaker 9 But even after Detective Stepp reveals Cleo Hines has accused Paul White of being the gunman, Paul White doesn't blink.

Speaker 89 If you got Cleo saying that I did this and that, he's evidently lying to you.

Speaker 27 And I don't know why he would even say that.

Speaker 88 I would put a gun to his head. and force him to do something.

Speaker 17 It's hard to do an interview to get a confession from somebody for a murder. It's really hard to get a confession from somebody for a murder inside prison.

Speaker 6 White is arrested the next day, and he's charged with robbery and murder, and could be facing life in prison. Now, with the pressure turned up so high, will he finally change his story?

Speaker 26 I've asked you three times, drove 87 miles one way to ask you these questions.

Speaker 27 Hypothetically speakers, hypothetical.

Speaker 38 Hypothetically.

Speaker 83 If I say I was there, you know what I mean,

Speaker 27 and

Speaker 27 I saw everything that happened, you know what I mean, and it's like that just

Speaker 89 makes me as guilty. You know what I

Speaker 27 still get a murder charge, but

Speaker 27 I didn't kill him. I didn't pull the trigger.

Speaker 34 Finally, the damn breaks.

Speaker 12 Paul White starts talking.

Speaker 89 I said, I think he got some cash in there. You know what I mean?

Speaker 27 So i said we can just either go in and rob him but i said he probably know who i am so we're gonna have to get some mag

Speaker 83 we already had

Speaker 27 those glovers those cotton glovers that you were talking about and then we went out to waltmart and they got those little type skate masters

Speaker 32 Paul White describes a chilling scene of a panicked Bob Eidman trying to comply with his assailants' demands for money with that notoriously sticky desk drawer, you know, where Bob kept his money instead of in a safe.

Speaker 89 And then he started shaking them

Speaker 89 like to his joy and couldn't get the drawer open. And I was like, man, just give me your wallet.
Because I reached in his pocket and got out the wallet.

Speaker 85 And Cleo was like, man, no, there's more money there.

Speaker 17 There was a lot of finger pointing at each other, trying to point the blame to someone else.

Speaker 15 Cleo Heinz told police he never even got out of the car at Bob Eidman's office.

Speaker 31 But Paul White wants police to believe that it was always Heinz who had fired the bullets that killed Bob Eidman.

Speaker 89 He shot him again.

Speaker 27 I'm like, man, what the f he doing? I said, man, is he dead? He was like, I don't know. Shot him again.

Speaker 89 So I'm like, man,

Speaker 27 I'm like, we gotta get rid of this gun. You know what I'm saying? I took it and threw it off the bridge.

Speaker 6 Paul White offers to help find the murder weapon, riding along in handcuffs in the back seat of a squad car.

Speaker 38 We took Paul White out of St.

Speaker 17 Charles County Jail

Speaker 17 and had him point out the area where he got rid of the gun.

Speaker 86 I would say like

Speaker 19 riding here.

Speaker 17 We searched an extensive area for the gun, was never able to locate it.

Speaker 6 Now we have two suspects and two confessions. And with both men pointing the finger at each other, prosecutors are gearing up to put both of them on trial.

Speaker 2 I was sitting in the same room with the person that shot and killed my brother. And that was pretty hard.

Speaker 72 To be calm, Will Bob Eidman's family finally learned who murdered him.

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Speaker 81 Jonas Brothers, you got it.

Speaker 86 It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 2 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.

Speaker 5 If they can only make it home.

Speaker 80 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 79 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 80 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 81 Hungry.

Speaker 81 You won't be alone this trip.

Speaker 78 You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 81 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

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Speaker 30 At the climax of a more than three-year investigation that at one point involved 37 officers, cops finally learned the details of what was stolen the day of Bob Eidman's murder.

Speaker 85 How much money was in the wallet?

Speaker 89 Well, I didn't open the bag, $300.

Speaker 85 So, how much money? $150 a piece. $150 a piece.

Speaker 17 Paul White and Cleo both advised it went to the casino after the homicide and lost the $300 almost immediately.

Speaker 85 He went to the casino because it just didn't pay for

Speaker 2 It's hard to think about a man's life being taken for $300.

Speaker 13 He didn't deserve what he got. He was running a business trying to make a living, and somebody felt that what he had, they needed too.
And so they took it from him.

Speaker 13 They could have taken his money and left.

Speaker 3 They didn't have to kill him.

Speaker 6 As far as any connection between the two men accused of killing Bob Eidman and Bob's widow Diane, Paul White revealed to investigators that he didn't even know who she was.

Speaker 85 Do you know a woman named Diane? No. You don't know a woman named Diane Eidman? No.

Speaker 35 With Paul White and Cleo Hines now both charged with Bob Eidman's murder, It now falls to Detective Stepp to break the news to Diane Eidman, who had long been in his crosshairs.

Speaker 17 I met Diane at her place of employment and I said, Diane, this is over. We have the individuals and we have the charges on them for killing your husband.

Speaker 12 Was she angry at you?

Speaker 17 I don't believe she was angry at me. There was a lot of stress that just came off Diane.
You could almost see it leaving her body as she was shaking and crying. She was very happy that this was over.

Speaker 20 Here, some five years after Bob Eidman's murder, Paul White and Cleo Hines are set to stand trial in this courthouse.

Speaker 71 Two trials, two defendants with two totally different accounts of the crime.

Speaker 6 First up at trial, Paul White, who pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree robbery.

Speaker 2 Really didn't know what to think when I came into trial because I was sitting in the same room with the person that shot and killed my brother. And that was pretty hard.

Speaker 17 The trial for Paul White lasted three days, which is actually very short for a murder trial in this county.

Speaker 6 The trial was swift and so were the deliberations. The jury needed just two and a half hours before delivering a verdict.
Paul White guilty of murder and robbery in the first degree.

Speaker 31 As for Cleo Hines, he decided not to put his fate in the hands of a jury.

Speaker 57 Before his trial, he entered what's known as an Alfred plea.

Speaker 17 An Alfred plea is a plea in the state of Missouri where an individual will not say, I did it, but there's enough evidence to say I did it.

Speaker 6 With that plea, Hines is convicted of a lesser crime than White, second-degree murder and first-degree robbery.

Speaker 6 He received two life terms, but while Heinz' sentence offers the possibility of parole, Paul White will never again see the light of day outside a prison.

Speaker 17 Paul White was sentenced to life without parole in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Speaker 32 The investigation into Bob Eidman's murder had cast a shadow of suspicion on his widow, Diane.

Speaker 31 Now she stood in court and gave her own account of all she had lost.

Speaker 56 Were you there for Diane's victim impact statement?

Speaker 2 Yes, we were. She said, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.
You took my best friend. You took my husband away from me.

Speaker 6 She told the court this in part.

Speaker 6 I looked over my shoulder for five years afraid, never knowing if the people who killed Bob were coming after me,

Speaker 6 or did the police really believe that I killed my husband?

Speaker 2 I do feel like the system worked, the killers were caught, science prevailed and overwhelmingly provided evidence that got them a conviction.

Speaker 2 Never again can he come to a Christmas dinner.

Speaker 2 Never again can we see him for a birthday party. Never again could he and my son talk and have a conversation or a relationship.

Speaker 67 He just loved life. I mean, he was always happy and

Speaker 67 making jokes, making light of things all the time.

Speaker 53 We talk about him all the time.

Speaker 67 It's not like he's gone. He's still here with us.

Speaker 7 Both Paul White and Cleo Hines have tried appealing their convictions, but both were denied.

Speaker 8 White's life sentence carries no possibility of parole. Heinz' first opportunity of parole will be in March of 2034.
That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching.

Speaker 7 I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 69 Good night.

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