Jane's Journey

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48 hours.

We take you there.

This 77-year-old grandmother is hot on the trail of a killer.

Let's put it this way.

No one intimidates me.

Jane was leading a wonderful life with a man she loved.

He was like the man on the white horse that came charging down the road.

Mom was probably happier than I've ever seen her.

Then he stole it all away, Bill Lagatuta reports.

So he cleaned her out.

Yes.

Cleaned her absolutely out.

I lost my children's inheritance.

I lost my home.

But that's not all she lost.

Jane was devastated.

When she suspected Tom of murder, she set out to make him pay.

She wanted this guy hung out to dry.

With or without the police.

She's mad and everybody better get out of her way.

She'll track him to the ends of the earth if she has to catch him.

Betraying Jane was his first mistake.

Tom, old man, got you.

A 48 Hours Mystery.

Citizen Jane.

What can one person possibly do?

One regular citizen, when justice seems to be out of reach and you can't help but feel like a victim.

She was an average citizen, a little old lady, if you'll pardon the expression.

Citizen Jane, we'll call her.

But as you're about to see, Hurricane Jane might be more like it.

A trusting woman with a good heart who ran into some bad luck and a bad man, and who soon destined to be a victim forever.

But don't be fooled, because when this woman finally turns the tables, there is no stopping her.

Bill Lagatuter reports tonight on one ordinary woman with extraordinary determination and perseverance, rewriting the rules on how to get things done and teaching all of us some valuable lessons.

She simply wanted justice in her own case.

But soon enough, Citizen Jane would be on everybody's case.

Are they going to hear the bill in committee today?

It's in.

If we get a reward from the governor, it'll probably be $40,000, $50,000.

The day we get the guy that killed your mother, that's the day we'll celebrate.

Jane Alexander is a couple of years shy of 80.

An inspiration to all of us.

I'll have to call the detective next week and see.

How are you?

I'm Jane Alexander.

But don't bother telling her that.

You're doing a great job, Jane.

Thank you.

How long ago was the homicide?

She's too busy being an amateur detective as head of a group that helps families of murder victims solve their cases.

We'll nail that SOB yesterday.

Oh, I know you will.

It's not exactly how Jane imagined spending her golden years.

I figured I'd just enjoy my grandchildren, of which I have 12.

But something happened to Jane Alexander that completely changed her life.

Let's put it this way.

No one intimidates me anymore.

I can't quit.

You know, it took me 13 years.

You just have to stand up for what you believe in.

And it was that unforeseen event nearly 20 years ago that made Jane Alexander the unstoppable force she is today.

Back in the early 80s, here in Marin County, California.

Jane's house at the very top up there.

Life was good for Jane Alexander and her circle of friends.

Jane's house was sort of like a gathering place.

I mean, you go to Jane's house, I mean, there may be two or three other couples just drop in.

It was a really gardener-like a clubhouse at Jane's.

And I went many times and just popped in and said, I need a glass of wine.

Lots of fun times.

That house where Jane, a widow, lived with her boyfriend, Tom O'Donnell was the place to be.

Tom introduced me to Jack Daniels and that's my

claim to fame with him is I really like Jack Daniels.

I train on Jack Daniels now.

They were moving and shaking big time and my mom was probably happier than I've ever seen her.

It was a wonderful life.

Tom had traveled the world and so he had all kinds of friends that would come in.

We always had somebody around.

People were always there.

It was a lovely existence.

And Tom loved to entertain those friends with stories of a truly swashbuckling past as an international businessman.

It was never a really

dull moment.

And

he was a great host.

He was known as the silver fox, he used to say, from Cape Town to Algiers.

One of Tom's more interesting ventures was helping people smuggle their personal assets out of unstable countries countries in Africa.

So he'd take diamonds, some of them raw diamonds, and take them to Europe, sell them, take a commission, and put the money in a Swiss account.

Smuggle diamonds out and oh, I tell you, it was better than going to a movie to listen to him.

And he'd tell them for hours.

He sounds like a very interesting guy.

He's always fascinating.

Plenty of stories about travel and exotic places.

He's been everywhere.

And

yes, he could entertain anyone.

And served great drinks.

I'll say that for him.

But what everyone loved most about about Tom was what he had done for Jane.

I was alone and depressed after my husband died, and he was like the, you know, the man on the white horse that came charging down the road.

In 1977, Jane's husband of 34 years and the father of her six children had died of a heart attack.

Jane was devastated by Al's death.

I mean, she went into very, very, very deep depression.

And it wasn't until Tom O'Donnell showed up in 1980 that Jane was finally able to snap out of her depression.

He came for a visit and that was it.

And her whole attitude changed.

She came out of her show.

She woke up again.

She woke up again and she's right back at it.

After dating only a few months, Tom moved in with Jane.

I don't truly think I ever saw her as joyful.

I think

she was really in love with him.

Life for Jane and Tom seemed as good as it gets.

That is, until October of 1983, when Jane received news that would change things forever.

Many of my friends said, thank God you have Tom there, because Tom was a great source of comfort.

Jane's aunt Gert, Gertrude McCabe, had been brutally murdered in her home.

I don't know if I could, I just can't tell you.

I was so angry, and I'm still angry.

when I think that she was a very sweet general.

Jane's friends, Erin and Jim Rohde, remember that day.

Jane was devastated.

She really was.

She didn't have a lot of family, so her aunt Gertrude was very important to her.

She was just a very kind, lovely person.

If you'd known Gert,

you'd think, how could this happen?

Who in the world would possibly do anything like this to Gert?

Adding to the mystery were the violent details of her death.

Jeff Wiemay was a detective on the case.

She was bludgeoned with some kind of blunt instrument.

She was stabbed and she was strangled and then smothered with a pillow.

Then he put a bicycle chain around her neck and twisted it like an eternity.

Why go to all that effort if you're the killer?

Probably because you're not really

a killer per se.

You're very unsophisticated at doing something like that.

88 years old.

88 years old.

She put up a fight.

She was a little Irish lady.

She didn't go down easy.

A search of Gertrude McCabe's home in San Jose, where she lived alone, raised even more questions.

Well, the way some of the drawers were pulled out, it's like somebody just pulled them out and some clothes around to make it look like a burglary.

The lieutenant said that it looked like a simulated robbery.

Number one, there was some jewelry, not really expensive jewelry, but there was jewelry that was visible that wasn't taken.

There was some cash in the house that wasn't taken.

Anything of value basically was not taken.

In fact, the only thing noticeable police found missing was the register for Gertrude McCabe's checkbook.

Gertrude McCabe's checkbook was found in her purse, but the register where you list all of your checks and all your deposits and have your balance and everything was not in there.

So by the end of 1983, police still had no motive.

Did you feel at that time that it was incumbent upon you to keep knocking on the door of the police department and saying, what are you doing?

Well, if I didn't do it, who was going to do it?

I mean, I was the only one out there doing it.

My children kept saying, Mom, you've got to get over this.

You've got to move on with your life.

And I kept saying, I hope somebody murders me.

You won't have that attitude.

But unbeknownst to Jane, police were narrowing in.

It was discovered that Tom O'Donnell and Jane Alexander were basically broke.

And at the time of the murder, they had a large house payment due and they basically had no money in their checking account to pay for it.

Jane Alexander was one of the main benefactors of Gertrude McCabe's inheritance.

So that's when the investigation started focusing in their direction.

But while Jane was technically a suspect, the detectives did have suspicions about someone else.

Suspicions that were about to be borne out when, without warning, Tom O'Donnell vanished.

She called me on the phone and was hysterical.

Jane was about to learn the dark truth about the love of her life.

That's next.

I just think there was panic for mom.

She was just panicked.

She was totally hysterical and crying.

She wasn't coherent.

Oh, she was just in tears.

It was the one thing Jane Alexander never expected when she arrived home the evening of August 7th, 1984.

She just didn't understand this.

The man Jane had planned to spend the rest of her life with was suddenly out of her life forever.

She said the love of her life was gone.

Without any warning, Tom O'Donnell had simply vanished.

Gone.

Gone.

He'd He'd left behind a letter.

My dearest love, you are without a doubt the most beautiful person in the world.

And I love you so much, so very much, that have to write this letter is killing me inside.

It was page after page after page, 12 pages.

He had to leave.

Because?

Because of his past was catching up to him.

You know most but not all of my past activities in Africa.

According to his letter, Tom had to leave because his and Jane's lives were in danger.

They have been watching us for some time.

He said partners of his in a shady diamond transaction had been caught and thrown in some foreign prison.

These people spent five or six years in jail that got blamed for this thing.

And they believed Tom had been the informant.

Now they're out of jail and now they found him.

And they have to.

He's got to go.

Yes, or they're going to kill me.

First they're going to kill the dog and then they're going to kill me.

That evening.

Jane met us at the door.

Jane's friends rushed to her side.

We tried to to make sense of it.

Everybody is yelling and talking, and I'm crying.

And in the confusion, they got some more upsetting news.

Tom had disappeared, leaving Jane nearly broke.

So he cleaned her out.

Yes, cleaned her absolutely out.

Tom had been handling Jane's finances for years.

I left it all to him.

You have to remember, I was married to a banker for 34 years, and money is really not my thing.

So it was easy for Tom to persuade Jane to take out a second mortgage on her home in Marin County for $200,000.

Jane had no means of ever repaying that loan.

Jane's friend and attorney, Jim Rohde, was outraged.

I said, why in the hell didn't you discuss it with me, Jane?

Especially when he heard that Jane had handed most of that loan over to Tom, who then spent it.

He'd used a lot of it on commodities trading and lost it.

But Jane still thought there was nothing to worry about.

Of course, he would repay it.

There was no problem.

Because, Tom told her, he was coming into money of his own.

Because we're looking at the 1.2 million.

The trust fund.

The trust.

Tom had convinced her that there indeed was this trust.

As soon as his trust fund in Switzerland matured.

Oh, yeah, he said, oh, yeah, millions in Switzerland.

He'd be a rich man.

The bottom line on the trust was what?

There wasn't.

There was no trust.

There was nothing.

Tom O'Donnell's stories didn't end there.

In fact, Tom was conning Jane right up until the day he left.

That afternoon, he convinced her to withdraw $10,000 from this bank, $5,000 in cash, which she gave to Tom to pay some of their bills.

The other $5,000 was in a cashier's check, and Tom knew a place he'd have no trouble cashing that.

Another bank where Jane's friend, Sandy Sullivan, was working as the manager.

I said, you're going to cash the whole thing?

And he said, yes, and I'd like it all in hundreds.

And I said, you want the whole 5,000 in hundreds?

And he said, yes, sweets.

And in case that money ran out, Tom made sure he would have access to even more.

He had all my dad's credit cards that my mother had never canceled.

Something like eight or nine Visa cards, everything, and they were all maxed out.

Despite what some of her friends thought.

The letter sounded totally unreal.

It was just a con.

Jane's faith was unshaken.

Did I believe it?

Of course I believed it.

In her diary that week, she spoke of her worries for Tom.

Why, how can Tom put me through this agony?

He must be in such trouble.

She truly loved this man and was buying into everything that he had written.

The police, according to Detective Jeff Weime, weren't buying any of it.

The San Jose police and the FBI checked into his story and in fact there was nothing to it.

It was all made up.

Tom's disappearance only confirmed what they had already suspected.

That six months earlier, Tom O'Donnell had murdered Jane's aunt, Gertrude McCabe.

His motive was money.

He thought that she was worth several hundred thousand dollars.

If Gert was no longer alive, that Jane would inherit from Gert.

Police now thought they had their motive for murder, but Tom O'Donnell had an alibi.

It was all in Jane's diary.

This is Thursday the 20th.

Tom to L.A.

at 2 o'clock.

Harry to pick him up, and he will spend the night with him.

Thursday, the day before the murder, Tom told Jane he was flying to Burbank near Los Angeles to stay with a friend.

Saturday the 22nd.

On Saturday morning, the day after the murder, Tom returned home to Jane's.

Tom home at 10.30 a.m., tired.

He's got to have an alibi.

His alibi is to fly to his friend's house in Burbank and be in Burbank during the time of the murder.

That's his alibi.

But when police checked it out, they discovered Tom had logged 669 miles on his rental car in just one day.

What he didn't realize is that the police were going to find out that he rented a car and that the mileage on the rental car was dead on from Burbank to the murder scene and back.

To me and the other investigators, it shows that he was the perpetrator.

Despite their big break, police still needed more than that to charge him with murder.

But in the meantime, Marin County's Josh Thomas was more than willing to prosecute Tom O'Donnell on charges of fraud.

To me, it was really a no-brainer as far as the evidence was concerned.

But first, they had to convince a very stubborn Jane Alexander to file charges.

Even with all the evidence staring her in the face, she was unable to believe that this guy had betrayed her the way that he had.

She didn't listen to anybody.

Nobody could get through to her.

I was hysterical at that point.

So you can't cry and think.

And then they got just what they needed to get Jane Alexander on board from none other than Tom himself.

And then I got this letter and I did apply a little logic to it.

Five months after he vanished, Tom sent Jane a second letter.

I just had a gut feeling.

You see, he was running away from these people supposedly.

Now he's going to go back and work for them.

And this time...

It was not logical.

Jane didn't fall for it.

I just knew when I read the letter that the whole thing was ridiculous.

And for Jane Alexander.

Then I was upset.

That was the turning point.

It's something I've never felt before in my life.

I was so angry.

He planned it down to the last detail.

And

obviously have been planning it for weeks or maybe months.

And

all the time I'm living with him, I mean, how would you like this horror to face?

I'm sleeping with this man.

And he's so comforting and so kind and so solicitous.

How could I be so dumb?

Finally, about six months after Tom disappeared with her money, Jane Alexander filed felony fraud charges against him.

Anything they want, they get, any cooperation.

But her real mission?

I was going to nail him for the murder.

That's what I was doing.

And she'll track him to the ends of the earth if she asked me to catch him.

So, where on earth was this globetrotting con man to be found?

If anyone was going to catch him, it was going to be Jane herself.

I turned around and looked at him and he saw me

and he'd been hat.

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I could have killed him.

That's how I felt.

I could have killed him.

If I weren't a law-abiding citizen, I could have killed him.

Now that Jane was convinced Tom O'Donnell had killed her aunt Gertrude.

It was very difficult to accept.

And now that there was a warrant out for his arrest on fraud charges, I couldn't believe I had been such a fool.

Jane was determined to find him.

She's mad, and everybody better get out of her way.

Jane started thinking of all the places Tom could be.

And then she remembered he had a good friend in Las Vegas.

She was hot to try.

And she wanted this guy hung out to dry.

But when she called around looking for that friend's phone number, she got the runaround.

And you put two and two together and you figure that Tom is hiding out with them in Vegas?

I knew it.

I knew it.

Don't ask me now, but I just knew it.

And sure enough, when police went to arrest Tom, he was right where Jane predicted.

Sitting there watching television with no shoes on.

Six months after vanishing from Jane Alexander's life, Tom O'Donnell was finally brought to court, about to face charges of fraud.

I turned around and looked at him and he saw me

and he knew he'd been had.

The good news was Jane Alexander had Tom O'Donnell right where she wanted him, behind bars.

The bad news was he had her in debt.

At this point, are you broke?

Oh, I'm totally broke.

I filed bankruptcy to wipe out Tom's debt, and they foreclosed on the house.

What was it like to lose the house?

Next to Gert's death, it was probably the most traumatic thing in my life.

I moved out on Mother's Day.

She went from a huge house to a little room in somebody's home.

She doesn't have any heat.

Jane's children worried about her.

It got to be 30 degrees in the winter.

There are no rugs on the floor.

I went to the Goodwill and bought rugs.

It was a little lifestyle change.

At the age, most of her friends were enjoying their golden years.

I have to go to work for the first time in my life to support myself.

That was kind of a cultural shock.

Jane got her first job.

Good afternoon, may I help you?

Ironically, she had a retirement home.

All I had to learn to do was run a switchboard and be nice and yada, yada, yada.

For Jane, it was more than just a lifestyle change.

When he left me and took everything I possessed, that involved my ego because I never really thought I was stupid and I learned that yes I was.

I lost my children's inheritance.

I lost my home.

How could I be so dumb?

And then about a year and a half after he disappeared from her life, Jane finally had the chance to hear from Tom himself when he took the stand during his fraud trial.

He took off like a deer and he started launching into this incomprehensible, absurd story.

So I just stood there and let him go.

And he went and he went and went.

Josh Thomas was the Marin County prosecutor on the case.

Josh Thomas did a marvelous job.

He threw the book at him and the judge did the same.

Tom O'Donnell was found guilty on four counts of fraud.

I think the jury picked up on the fact that this guy was a ball-faced liar

and sentenced to just under four years in prison.

And I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew if that guy walked

out of the court and we'd never see him again.

Tom O'Donnell was finally behind bars for stealing Jane's money.

Now, she wanted to put him in prison for murder, but to do that would be a race against the clock.

She and detectives had to come up with the evidence before Tom could finish serving his sentence for fraud and be free to disappear again.

We've got him in jail.

Now, let's put the noose around his neck.

He's in jail for fraud.

Let's nail him for the murder.

Right.

Once she believed it, that was it.

Then, you know, full speed ahead, she's going to get him.

First of all, I saved everything.

I have files and files and files.

I made a flyer once.

I ran all the phone numbers for a year.

This was the new Jane, amateur detective.

I called the paper, tried to get publicity.

Relentless.

I called Homicide on a weekly basis.

There's a picture of Tom and Duke.

Once she's on board, Ben, back off.

She's going.

He's beautiful.

The dog.

The dog.

After months of digging, Jane finally hit pay dirt.

She found two important clues.

Both of them, in fact, were mistakes made by Tom O'Donnell himself.

He was great at con, but not at murder.

Amateur.

Tom's first mistake was a phone call he made the day after the murder.

It was a Saturday morning, about 10 o'clock.

Tom had called his relatives in Montana to tell them he would finally be able to repay the $10,000 he owed them.

The reason was that Jane's aunt had passed away, and she was going to inherit a lot of money and he was going to be able to take care of that debt now.

The problem was, according to detective Jeff Weimay, Gertrude McCabe's body wasn't even found until the next day.

Nobody in the world, except for the killer, knew that Gertrude McCabe was dead.

Well, that's a pretty important piece of evidence.

That was a very important piece of evidence.

After reporting her findings to detectives, Jane Alexander kept on digging.

Her next break came from her daughter-in-law, Rocky Alexander.

Jane is a fantastic detective.

Tom had called Rocky on Monday, the day after Gert's body had been found.

He said she'd been stabbed numerous times and that she'd been bludgeoned and there was blood all over and that she had been garretted.

He says she was garretted to death.

Not strangled, but garretted.

That word stuck out.

Yes, because I didn't know what it meant.

So she wrote that down on a notepad and had to look it up later.

She didn't know what the word garrett meant.

A method of capital punishment in which an iron collar is tightened around a condemned man's neck.

That's what happened in this case.

A bicycle cable was put around her neck and twisted until it got so tight that it killed her.

Now, isn't that information that the police might have told him?

No, that information was not released.

The only thing that was released was that she was strangled.

And mentioning that gruesome detail was Tom O'Donnell's second mistake.

That was withheld specifically because we did not want anybody to know the means of strangulation.

In fact, nobody did know but the killer.

These two phone calls were just what detectives were looking for.

But were they too little, too too late?

Tom is out.

I couldn't believe it.

After serving just 18 months in prison.

Because he got off on good behavior, which naturally he would be good.

Tom was free to disappear again.

I just couldn't stop crying.

It was such a shock.

But it wasn't long before Jane was right back to being her pesky self.

She'd call me daily and then weekly and then daily again, pointing out what's going on with the case and what else can we do.

Finally, all of their hard work paid off when Detective Weime found the final clue and Tom O'Donnell's third mistake.

And he said, tell me again about the check register.

So I went through the whole thing with him.

Remember, the first day police searched Aunt Gert's house, the only thing they couldn't find was her checkbook register.

So the thinking was that the killer might want to check the balance and find out how much money was there.

Basically, that's correct.

At some point, that check register, what?

suddenly appears?

What happened is when Jane Alexander and Tom O'Donnell were given custody of the house, they went through various items and O'Donnell told Jane Alexander that he had found the checkbook register and he showed her exactly where he had found it, which was in a bedroom drawer.

Detective Weime found that suspicious, so he went back and reviewed the crime scene photos.

And there was a picture of the drawer and there was no checkbook register in there.

Somebody had to put it there after the police left the house.

So how did the checkbook register get in the drawer?

Tom O'Donnell put it there.

Why would he put the check registry back?

Well, he knew they were looking for it.

You know, he was an inexperienced murderer, too, so obviously he made a few mistakes.

He would have been better off just to burn it.

With that final clue.

Just one more nail in the coffin to prosecute him.

Jane's nearly nine-year quest was about to pay off.

Tom O'Donnell was finally charged with killing Gertrude McCabe.

Jane, I have a $1 million warrant in my hand for Thomas D.

O'Donnell.

Just be careful who you tell.

We don't want him to run.

Coming up, police move in to arrest Tom O'Donnell, and you won't believe believe where they find him.

Here we go again.

Here we go again.

For 77-year-old Jane Alexander, it has been an all-consuming effort to get back at the man she once trusted more than anyone else, Tom O'Donnell.

She took the lead, hounding the police until her ex-boyfriend was finally arrested and convicted for embezzling her every last cent.

He did a year and a half in prison for that.

But she's not done, not by a long shot.

After nearly a decade, she uncovered critical clues that now find the police closing in on O'Donnell for the murder of Jane's aunt.

an alleged plot to get the inheritance.

You'll see how that pursuit plays out.

But first, along the way, Citizen Jane's personal crusade for justice was becoming a career.

Here again is Bill Lagatuta.

And the only thing I can say is that if you've got a homicide in your family, don't give up.

And

the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

In years of dogging the system to get justice for her murdered aunt.

This is Jane Alexander.

Jane Alexander met a lot of people just as frustrated as her.

One One of them was Lee Sansom.

And Jane was another source of hope because,

well, you can't really become too depressed when you work with Jane.

She won't let you.

Lee Sansom's younger sister, Abigail Niebauer, this is the last picture we have of her.

Had been killed.

It was 1985, Palo Alto, California.

Abby's husband of 26 years, James Niebauer, said he was cleaning an old shotgun in their kitchen when it accidentally went off.

The shotgun had been held by Jim,

and I instantly felt that she'd been murdered.

Why did you think that?

I knew that there was some marital trouble, but I also knew that the estates of my parents had just been settled about two weeks before.

Palo Alto police didn't see it that way.

This is how I found out that my sister's death was declared an accident by the police.

Husband may have accidentally shot Palo Alto woman.

After months of investigating and finding no evidence to the contrary, they closed the case, labeling it an accidental shooting.

It was infuriating because I didn't believe a word of it and I couldn't believe that the police were going to walk away from the case.

I knew exactly how he felt.

Lee Sansom heard about Jane through a victim support group and he wrote her a letter.

After all these years of struggle, it finally appears that I have found someone who knows the ins and outs of the system.

Jane's answer was just what he wanted to hear.

I went to the police department and I found a detective and he had really never heard of the case.

She was able to convince me to take a look at the case.

Homicide detective Mike Yore saw the case as dead.

There's nothing that certainly that I could do with this case.

His own department, the DA's office, and even the state's attorney general agreed.

Okay, thank you.

And that's where Jane Alexander came in and said, you know, not willing to accept that.

And I called him the next day.

He said, you're here here again.

That's right, Mike, and forever until we get whatever we need.

And so finally he found it was easier just to talk to me and just do whatever we had to do.

He's a great cop.

You warmed down.

Well, I guess, yeah.

Mike Yore surrendered and began reviewing James Niebauer's story.

His version of events is he's pointing the gun pretty much directly at her.

Right.

He says she reaches for it to take a look at the gun and it goes off.

Right.

But Mike Yore, an expert on firearms, thought there was an important clue in the powder burns left on Abigail Niebauer's clothes.

Is there a light bulb kind of moment where you look at it and say, absolutely.

What was that?

There was no powder on the on the cuff.

There's no powder above it.

It was specifically printed here.

Same with the left hand.

You just prop it back a parole.

Which means Abigail Niebauer couldn't have been reaching for the gun when it went off.

Today we're going to be duplicating a shooting incident that occurred in 1985.

To prove his theory, Detective Yore set up a ballistics test.

This is a weapon that was used during the homicide.

You're the firing range here, and what we've got is roughly the exact same measurements for a woman that Abigail was at the time of the shooting.

The height of the victim is five foot six.

So you're trying it from different distances and different arm positions.

What we're trying to arrive at is an exact replication of the powder stipling on the sleeves, size, diameter, and such.

You could not get that powder stippling on those sleeves with the arms in any other position.

Other than the defensive position.

Correct.

So she's not holding her hands out like this to look at the gun.

She's holding her hands in front of her face because he's about to shoot her.

She's in this position here when she's shot.

Mike Yord's tests proved James Niebauer murdered his wife.

But he still needed something he could take to court.

You want to present this material to a renowned forensic expert

so that he can corroborate your theory.

Correct.

And the department

says this is kind of an old case, and you certainly have enough things going, and it looks rather expensive.

What does Jane say when you tell her the department doesn't have the money to send you down to Florida?

I finally called the captain and I said, we'll send him.

You'll pay for the trip to Florida.

Absolutely.

How much does it cost?

Who will we make the checkout to?

And he talked to the expert.

He spent three days there with him, and he absolutely collaborated everything Mike said.

Finally, 13 years after the death of Abigail Niebauer, James Niebauer was arrested, tried, and found guilty of his wife's murder.

Mike Yore proved his case, and Lee Sansom

could finally move on.

And they brought back a guilty verdict, it was just

incredible.

Lee Sansom knows one thing: it wouldn't have happened without Jane.

Getting justice for Abby was just as much a goal as it was for getting justice for Aunt Kurt.

And coming up, Jane Alexander is just about to close in on Tom O'Donnell.

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Tuesday, March 17th.

Happy St.

Patrick's Day.

Hard to believe such a special day to arrest Tom.

I'm still in shock.

Finally, nearly a decade after the brutal slaying of Jane Alexander's beloved Aunt Gertrude, police were ready to arrest Tom O'Donnell for first-degree murder.

I always felt that eventually I would get him.

So just where did they find him?

When Tom was arrested for the murder, he was living with a wealthy woman in a very nice area of L.A.

County.

Jeff Weime was a key detective in the investigation.

He'd found a woman.

a widowed woman.

She is 60 years old and lives in a million-dollar home.

And it was the same old thing.

He was going to take her for everything she had and then move on to the next one.

But then, just as Jane Alexander had hoped.

Tom, old man, got you.

Gotcha.

See, I cry for nothing.

Tom O'Donnell was taken into police custody as he stood in his new girlfriend's front yard.

They arrested him and all the way to the station he was talking about Jane Alexander.

He was really pissed off about this woman from Marine County.

At his murder trial, O'Donnell never took the stand in his own defense, but Jane Alexander was the prosecution's lead witness and had a lot to tell the jury.

What was your impression of Jane when you first saw her in the middle of the initially?

Yes.

I thought, how could the woman be so stupid?

And with no physical evidence directly linking Tom O'Donnell to the murder, the case against him was anything but open and shut.

The case against Tom was based on circumstantial evidence.

Complete circumstantial evidence.

Did that worry you?

You take 100 facts and

you just, you know, pile up everything you can.

And the jury say they can throw away 95.

Those five left, they still stick.

And as it turns out, that's how the jury saw it.

The mileage

was a big thing.

Didn't match.

Running out of money, borrowing from everybody, you didn't believe his defense.

What defense?

To me, he had no defense.

After three days of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict.

And the diary says, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Exclamation point, point, point, point.

When he was convicted finally, what was your reaction?

It's just, it's so hard to describe.

I mean, 13 years it took me.

I can hardly,

you know, I can really not even talk about it.

It was

very emotional.

I couldn't really believe those twelve people really saw it the way it was, you know.

And

it was just

I can't even I can't even tell you the satisfaction.

I mean, I just sort of sat there and said, you know,

I did it.

Preya Kirk.

I admire her that she had the courage of her convictions to stick with San Jose Police Department and DA's office to get a conviction.

As I went out into the hall, there stood the whole jury.

They hugged me, were crying, so damn emotional.

It was hard to believe.

I think as far as the jurors were concerned, I think it was a sense of relief that finally we made closure on this for all of us.

What was the sentence?

25 to life.

But as long as I'm alive, you'll never get out.

73-year-old Tom O'Donnell won't be eligible for parole until 2007.

I still feel wonderful every time.

I think about him rotting in jail.

With Tom locked away, you'd think Jane would take a break.

I've got a stack of files there that I'm working on.

Tell that to Jane.

The day we get the guy that killed your mother, that's the day we'll celebrate.

That's next.

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Jane, I dearly love you and thousands of others.

Thank you.

Jane Alexander is finally enjoying the golden years of her life.

No, she's not retired.

The day we get the guy that killed your mother, that's the day we'll celebrate.

In fact, at the age of 77, she got herself a new job.

You're doing a great job, Jane.

Helping families who are struggling with their own unsolved murders.

We'll nail that SOB yet.

She founded Citizens Against Homicide, and today they're rallying for victims' rights.

She started the group with her friend Jan Miller, whose own daughter was murdered.

I'm Jan Miller.

I'm the president of Citizens Against Homicide.

Thank you all for coming.

The purpose of this group is to help families get through the quagmire of the criminal justice system when they get involved in a homicide like I did.

My best friend was murdered in Richmond in April 1997.

You need two elements to solve a crime.

You need a dedicated police officer detective, but you also have to be persistent yourself.

Jane says it's like teaching basic government.

Civics 101.

I've had victims that didn't want to contact the district attorney's office because they were afraid they'd get a bill.

Most people just don't know what to do.

They don't understand the role the DA has.

They don't understand the role the homicide detective has.

These are all foreign concepts to the average American unless it touches them personally.

I always tell them to go down and meet the detective face to face.

Just be a presence in that office.

If you give up and you quit, then no one else is really going to care.

I always say, you know, get in their face and stay there.

Good morning, Detective.

This is Jane Alexander.

Jane and her group are currently working about 40 cases.

Here's two days' phone calls.

We return them all, you know, eventually.

I can't listen to that.

Every one of these is a homicide case.

Number one on the list.

Ronnie Parati.

This is Jan Miller's daughter.

Murdered 16 years ago.

I think the sad thing about Ronnie's case is the fact that we are two witnesses that have never come forth.

So they appealed to the public by putting up billboards offering rewards.

Laura, this is Jane Alexander in California.

Where are my billboards?

This case here, Ivan Goebel, we've just put this billboard up.

This is up right now.

This was a home invasion case.

He was 81 years old.

His wife was 75.

They grabbed her.

bludgeoned her, walked into the house, shot him, and hopefully that'll bring in some reward.

And it did.

Police made an arrest in this four-year-old case.

It's very satisfying to be able to help people.

This one is solved.

This one is a very tragic case, not solved.

Don't be hysterical.

Get mad.

Just get mad.

Besides putting murderers behind bars, Jane and her crew work to keep them from getting out.

We ask our readers to please write to the different parole boards.

No one that we've ever featured in our newsletter has ever been allowed out of jail.

You do the crime, you do the time.

And there's no parole hearing Jane cares about more than Tom O'Donnell's.

I'm just not going to sit around and do nothing.

I mean, I have to be at that parole hearing and make damn sure he doesn't,

yeah, in any way get out.

Hello.

Jane's children say their mother has found a new purpose in life.

She does work on this tirelessly every single day.

She's dedicated to helping people.

She'll go on as long as she's alive.

She won't stop.

She won't stop.

I don't see any end to it.

For now, Citizen Jane will never rest.

Tom O'Donnell was denied parole in 2007 and died in prison in 2010.

September 4th on Paramount Plus.

Someone is trying to frame us.

Until our names are cleared.

We're fugitives from Intrigue.

Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

NCIS Tony and Ziva streaming September 4th on Paramount Plus.

September 4th on Paramount Plus.

Someone is trying to frame us.

Until our names are cleared.

We're fugitives from Intrigue.

Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.

Espionage?

You still as good a shot as you used to be?

Better.

Is their love language?

We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller

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We make up our own rules.

NCIS Tony and Ziva, streaming September 4th on Paramount Plus.