The College Drug Ring Murder
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Transcript
He's scared.
He's 20 years old and he's facing the death penalty.
They were college students in a quiet town.
Suburbia.
It's rich kids.
Then, one of them, the son of a retired Secret Service agent, was shot dead.
This was really an execution.
It opened a window to a dark world.
None of these parents, they never would have known.
And a secret network unraveled.
I sold drugs for five years and didn't get any kind of trouble whatsoever.
Kids from the best of families.
Everybody had a future.
They were all real smart.
Peter Van Sant investigates, dealing drugs worth millions.
It was the most amount of cash you ever had.
Over 100, some.
Over $100,000?
Yeah.
It makes you a movie star in a small town.
Did life in the fast lane drive Justin to murder?
And that's what drives these kids.
It's the money and it's the lifestyle that comes along with it.
I can't even believe what's happened to me.
A special 48 hours mystery.
Isn't it time you confessed to this crime?
The Millionaire Boys Club.
I'm Leslie Stahl.
Tonight we bring you a morality tale about the appearance of good and the reality of evil.
We take you to a place where young people grow up with the best of everything and parents believe they can trust their children.
Imagine their shock finding out that their kids in college were selling millions of dollars in drugs right under their noses.
As Peter Van Sant reports, these kids had everyone fooled until one of them ended up dead.
It was a really nice neighborhood.
Quiet, everybody knows everybody.
Just a nice neighborhood.
Growing up in the suburbs around Manassas, Virginia.
All of these kids come from good homes, good families.
Life.
They live in huge houses.
Parents have nice cars, great jobs.
Was easy.
And all the kids here have money.
And in these quiet, affluent communities,
street crimes seemed a world away.
I mean, nothing like this ever happened before.
Until late one night in the spring of 2001,
when 21-year-old Danny Petrolli, the son of a retired Secret Service agent, was brutally gunned down.
This was really an execution.
It was a bloody scene.
It was a gruesome scene.
The scene stunned even veteran prosecutors Paul Ebert.
I mean, that gun was fired time and time again into that young man's body
and Rick Conway.
This is a semi-automatic pistol.
The bullet only comes out when you squeeze the trigger.
Danny was shot nine times as he sat in his car just outside his townhouse.
You didn't hear about shootings and people get shot in our neighborhoods.
Justin Wolfe was 19 at the time, a college student like Danny.
He's a good guy.
Everybody liked Danny.
I don't think he had any enemies.
I didn't know anybody that didn't like him.
I was shocked.
It was sad.
I couldn't believe it.
Jennifer Pascarello.
This is where Regina lived.
And Regina Zuner.
Everyone's lives have changed changed so dramatically.
Both went to high school with Justin and to middle school with Danny.
Danny was an extraordinary person.
He was a magnet.
People were drawn to him.
Within days of Danny's shooting, police traced the murder weapon to a suspect.
We were pretty sure that we had our man with Owen Barber.
Owen Barber, a 21-year-old who, like Danny, grew up in a comfortable neighborhood near Manassas.
It's sad because I can picture like everything the way it used to be.
Jennifer Pascarello was Owen's girlfriend.
This is the very first day we met.
They'd been dating since Jennifer was 14.
He came to pick me up.
I'd never even been on a date before, so he was my first ever.
Tell me about the home that Owen grew up in.
His parents were real close.
They were like a normal family, I guess.
The mom and the dad, he's the only child, and he did the chores around the house for them whenever, and came home for dinner every night.
That's Owen's house right there.
I felt sorry for the kid.
Justin became friends with Owen in high school.
Owen didn't do anything because most of us, a lot of us played basketball and stuff like that, but he was just, I don't know.
He just was one of those guys that hung around, I guess.
He doesn't look like a person who could be a killer in any of these pictures.
I never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams would have imagined that he was capable of something like this.
But nearly a year after Danny's murder,
Owen Barber is in court
to confess he pulled the trigger.
And what did you do then?
I jumped out, went around the front of my car, and as I went towards his car, he reached across and then I shot him through the
passenger window.
You see any sign of life after you shot him?
No.
You can't listen to Owen Barber talk about committing this murder without just being overwhelmed by his callousness.
But the defendant on trial isn't Owen Barber.
Would you identify him for the record?
He's not saying
it's Justin Wolfe.
And Owen is here to testify against his former friend.
He's like, we've got to shoot him.
Owen Barber would never have killed Danny Petrolli unless Justin Wolfe wanted him to.
Prosecutors set out to prove that Justin Wolf is a killer.
Justin Wolfe hired Owen Barber to murder Danny Petrolli, who deserves the death penalty.
I think Wolfe is so much more dangerous than Barber.
Barber was no more than a tool.
Crazy.
I don't know.
It's crazy.
Did you hire Owen Barber to kill Danny Petrolli?
No, I did not.
I never hurt anybody a day in my life.
No.
I feel like a little kid in there.
He's frightened.
He's scared.
He's 20 years old and he's facing the death penalty.
Justin's mother, Terry Steinberg, insists her son is incapable of any violence.
Justin did not do anything to hurt Danny Petrolli.
And I will go to my grave with that.
This was a horrific crime, a heinous crime.
It was cruel.
It was evil.
But that was what Owen did.
That's not what Justin did.
That's Christmas Eve.
For Danny Petrolli's parents.
Danny was the fun, joy person in our life.
He always was funny.
He was always laughing.
The trial is a reminder of their loss.
There wasn't a conversation that didn't end with, you know, love you, dad, love you too, buddy.
Danny's father worked on the presidential detail of the Secret Service.
Do you look at the patrollis in court?
Sometimes.
Is there anything you'd want to say to them?
I didn't have anything to do with their son's death.
He was my friend.
They weren't friends per se.
They met with the sole purpose of dealing drugs.
Each bag is approximately a pound.
Sergeant Greg Pass started work on the Petroli case the morning after Danny's murder.
Inside of Danny's garage, she found 47 pounds of high-grade marijuana.
And it wasn't long before police discovered...
Justin was one of Danny's customers.
That Danny Danny Petrolli and Justin Wolf were drug dealers unfortunately justin decided he wanted to get greedy and end up having Danny killed I made some mistakes with the drugs you know
that involvement in the drugs but
not the murderer they say I am
but the investigation that brought Justin to trial this was a case that involved more than just one drug dealer killing another
uncovered a secret life of drugs, sex, and greed.
And that's what drives these kids.
It's the money.
That even the most sheltered teenagers fell victim to.
You got to get to the root of every problem.
The root of the problem was the drugs with all of us.
That's his letter for football.
This was his security thing from the time he was a baby.
And this was what he wore with his tucks.
According to his mother, Terry Steinberg, he's a good, loving brother and a good, loving son.
20-year-old Justin Wolf grew up a typical suburban teenager in Northern Virginia.
He was your all-American kid.
Very good basketball player, very good football player.
He was always making friends.
Everybody loved him.
When I was in high school, I knew more than half the school.
And Justin claims, for many high school students here, smoking marijuana was no big deal.
It's not viewed as the other drugs are.
It's like drugs and marijuana.
How old were you when you smoked your first joint?
Eighth grade.
The first time I ever smoked marijuana, I was 15.
Both Regina Zuner
and Jennifer Pascarello.
Smoking weed, that's a lot of people make friends in high school that way.
Became friends with Justin in high school.
Want to be like everybody else?
Or haven't done it and want to try it.
You know.
You get sucked in, peer pressure.
From your smartest jock to everyday average student, everyone smoked.
But they weren't smoking the kind of pot their parents' generation did.
There's two different types of marijuana.
You have low-grade and high-grade.
Chronic's high-grade marijuana.
They were smoking chronic.
Well, you can see you have a lot of buds.
There's not too many stems.
Schwag marijuana, there's a lot of stems and seeds sometimes.
Sergeant Greg Pass worked in narcotics.
Schwag is low-grade marijuana.
That's pretty much what everybody's used to seeing on the streets.
But the marijuana of choice for many kids today is chronic.
Chronic tastes better.
You get higher.
You're just smellow, relaxed.
And it has a higher THC content.
THC is the active ingredient in marijuana, so it's more potent.
The problem is it's going to cost them a lot more for it.
Chronic costs up to five times more than Shui.
It runs $350 an ounce.
That's normally how it's sold on the street.
But for the teenagers here.
That was basically all anybody was getting.
Cost was never a problem.
And this is suburbia,
scratch kids.
And for Justin, you start off kind of supporting your habit.
The high street value was a reason to start dealing chronic.
So you can smoke for free and then you're like, eh, I can make money doing this.
If you're selling it by the pound, then you're looking at anywhere between $3,300, the lowest, you can get it up to $5,000.
How old were you when you first dealt it, when you first sold marijuana?
My ninth grade.
He started out selling a few ounces of swag, but by graduation...
The more
Justin was dealing multiple pounds of chronic.
That was kind of like a work thing, like a business thing for me.
A business that boomed when he met 21-year-old Danny Petrolli.
Danny controlled all the chronic coming in the area.
And Justin became one of his distributors.
Tell me about the money you made selling drugs.
I don't know.
Made a lot of money.
Only 19 and a part-time college student, Justin made up to $15,000 a month selling the chronic Danny supplied him.
Makes you a superstar.
It
makes you a movie star in a small town.
28-year-old Jason Coleman hung out with Justin for years and managed this bar where all of Justin's friends party.
You're nobody and then in the blink of an eye, you can have whatever you want.
And that's what drives these kids.
It's the money.
It's the lifestyle that comes along with it.
It was a never-ending party.
Everybody wanted to be Justin's friend.
Because he had everything.
He always knew what was going on.
All the girls liked him.
Oh, the girls.
There's lots of women around.
We always had girls around us, yeah.
Part of the lifestyle.
Yes.
One of the benefits.
Yes, definitely one of the benefits.
The benefits of having lots of cash.
I blew money, basically.
I run through money like there's nothing.
How much money would be dropped on a typical weekend?
A couple thousand dollars.
A couple thousand dollars?
Yeah.
We partied lavishly.
Only the best vodka, only the best
anything.
That's champagne, bottles of Moette and Crystal and just the most expensive everything.
The bartenders know you guys?
Everywhere.
And did they know you were underage?
Yes.
If you have money, you can do whatever you want to.
You gotta get at the root of every problem.
The root of the problem was the drugs with all of us.
As much as I tried, I didn't...
I didn't know that he was doing that.
Terry, a nurse, raised Justin as a single mother.
And I feel...
somewhat responsible for not having caught on to that as his mom.
She really didn't see like all the partying and all the money he was spending.
What's the most amount of cash you ever had?
I don't know.
Over 100, something.
Over $100,000?
Yeah.
Where did you put it?
Not in my room.
I wouldn't keep anything in my room.
I checked his room on a regular basis.
I would go through his things.
I would smell his clothes.
But there was never any drugs.
I suspected my mother would look through there, but I mean, I had spots.
He was too careful to let her find out.
None of these parents, they never would have imagined.
They never would have known.
And neither would police.
I sold drugs for five years and didn't get any kind of trouble whatsoever.
Until Danny Petrolli was murdered.
We had to figure out who was Danny Petrolli.
And the investigation that followed
uncovered a drug ring worth millions and millions of dollars.
Amazing.
An enterprise created and controlled by
suburban college students.
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I think Owen's a good guy.
He never really got into a fight with anybody.
Danny was a really nice guy.
He was a lot of fun.
Justin he'll go out of his way to help someone that he barely knows.
Everybody had a future.
They were all real, real smart.
We were not the typical drug dealers.
We were selling weed between friends, you know.
No one here in Manassas, Virginia ever expected that dealing pot
would end in murder.
And then I shot him through the
passenger window.
Until Danny Petroli was gunned down in the spring of 2001.
On the day Danny Petroli was murdered, Justin Wolfe had set up a drug deal with Danny Petroli.
And now, Justin Wolfe is on trial for capital murder.
You know I sold marijuana which was wrong but I had nothing to do with this murder.
Key to the prosecution's case against Justin is his one-time friend Owen Barber.
He asked me if I wanted to get his chronic man.
Get the chronic man?
Yeah.
He was like we gotta shoot him.
Owen claims Justin hired him to kill Danny.
Did the defendant tell you why
he wanted to shoot him?
So he wouldn't have to pay that money back.
A drug debt that prosecutors Paul Ebert and Rick Conway argue gave Justin motive.
He just did not like to pay his debts.
He liked to have money coming in, not going out.
Justin owed Danny almost $70,000 for the high-grade marijuana called chronic that Danny was supplying him.
This is all the high-grade marijuana that was found the morning after he was killed.
Sergeant Greg Pass led the drug investigation after Danny's shooting.
These people aren't killing you because you're selling dope.
They're killing you because you have something they want, and that's money.
Investigators discovered that Danny, the son of a retired Secret Service agent, had at 21 become the head of one of the largest known drug rings in Northern Virginia.
We're able to pin him down to about $4.5 million worth of drugs that he had sold.
In what period of time?
In the last couple years.
About the time of his death, where did the drugs come from?
Seattle, maybe?
What's that?
Seattle.
Paul Gunning was Danny's roommate at the time of the murder.
He introduced Danny to a chronic supplier in Seattle, Washington nearly two years ago.
And how much did he purchase on that occasion?
100 pounds.
100 pounds?
Yes, sir.
And what was the price for that?
Like $360,000.
Would it be fair to say that once a month he paid $360,000?
Yes, sir.
$360,000 worth of chronic that Danny distributed each month to the dealers on this list.
This is an O sheet.
O-O-W-E as an IOU money.
This is Danny's O-Sheet.
What if anything on the O-sheet was significant in relation to this case?
The initials J-W.
Okay.
And how did you connect that?
The suspect, Justin Wolfe.
Justin was one of Danny's customers.
At a minimum, Justin Wolfe owed him $66,325.
That O-Sheet was the most important piece of evidence to actually connect Justin Wolfe to Danny Petrolli.
It was Justin Wolfe who owed that money, not Owen Barber.
But Owen had a drug debt of his own, $3,000 to Justin.
Your final understanding between the two of you before you killed Danny Petrolli again was what?
A $3,000 old debt I didn't have to pay for.
Half pound of chronic, the four pounds of regular swag, and then $10,000 more.
So for a total of about $20,000, the deal was struck, Owen says, to kill Danny Patrol.
On March 15th, 2001, after a Danny to Justin drug buy, I followed him out of the neighborhood.
Owen began tailing Danny.
I followed him on to 66 and he eventually got off.
So then down 54 second at the Fairfax exit.
I followed him on 66 going west and then he got off at the Gainesville exit.
At trial, prosecutors introduced these cell phone records from the night of the murder.
And you made a phone call at that area?
Yeah.
Owen Barber testifies that he followed Danny for more than an hour.
I called Justin and said that he went into some house in Fairfax City.
Calling Justin to give him updates throughout the pursuit.
At 10:23, I thought I lost him.
The next one was that I found him.
The last call that you made to Justin Wolfe, you highlight the time of that shoot, 11-12.
Just minutes after Owen had shot Danny nine times.
You've got just a flurry of telephone activity between the two of them, and particularly at the crucial moments immediately before and after the murder.
Justin was the last person Owen called before he killed Danny and the first after the shooting.
And then you do not see any more phone calls from Justin Wolfe's phone to Owen Barber's phone.
Within days of the murder, I was like, all right, you know, I was like, I'm getting out of here.
Owen left town, ending up in San Diego.
He never called me back and he didn't keep a pistol into the bargain.
Justin, he says, never paid him for shooting death.
I love him.
I love him and I'm sad for him.
Jennifer Pascarello, Owen's girlfriend, drove to San Diego to be with him.
And I was just at a little hotel on the beach and like my money was going lower and lower.
I only had $700 left because he didn't have any money.
Jennifer wrote a desperate letter to a friend of Justin's.
Is this the beginning of the actual letter?
Yeah.
PSS, JW knows how important this money is.
He'll know, I promise.
Justin knows that Owen wants his money, basically, or else we aren't going to make it.
We aren't going to survive.
You wanted the $10,000 that had been promised for the murder.
Yeah.
But before Jennifer could mail that letter, authorities traced the murder weapon to Owen and tracked him down in San Diego.
After his arrest, Owen confessed and implicated Justin.
Is what you told us here today the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir.
I don't see how they can believe Owen Barber.
Why would Owen Barber be lying about you?
Save his own life.
Pointing fingers at me gets him off the death penalty.
But if convicted, Justin faces the death penalty.
I like to call it Justin Wolfe.
And Justin's life.
Yes, I do.
May now be in his own hands.
I mean, I might have to do some time on this drugs, but I had nothing to do with this murder.
Justin's story next.
College kids making millions selling pot.
Keep in mind that we're talking about a marijuana known as chronic.
It's many times more powerful than the drug smoked in the 60s and many times more expensive.
Authorities say all that money led to greed and betrayal and eventually to murder, with one young drug lord ordering a hit on another.
Here again is Peter Van Sand.
I've never hurt anybody in my life.
Not one fight, not one altercation.
I was not a violent man.
For the last nine months.
I can't even believe what's happened to me.
I don't know that.
Justin Wolfe has been locked up in this Manassas, Virginia jail.
I was not a saint, but I was not evil at all.
Waiting to prove that he's not an evil killer.
When are you?
No.
20-year-old.
Justin Wolf is more a punk in godfather's clothing.
Where do you know those people from?
But prosecutors Rick Conway and Paul Ebert are convinced Justin hired 21-year-old Owen Barber to murder Danny Petrolli.
You know, I told him, you know, that I did it and it was done.
To avoid paying a drug debt to Danny of almost $70,000.
That's not what happened.
You didn't send Owen Barber over there to kill him.
No.
Why should I?
I don't know why the man killed him.
Thank you, Your Honor.
I'd like to call it Justin Wolfe.
Despite the risks of going up against tough prosecutors,
Justin insists on taking the stand.
Yes, I do.
To tell his side of the story.
I didn't do this.
I mean, I might have to do some time on his drugs, but I had nothing to do with his murder.
I did make a lot of mistakes in the past, but
I ain't never hurt nobody in my life.
Never.
Why should this jury believe you as opposed to Owen Barber?
I'm the only one that told the truth up there.
He asked me me if i wanted to get his chronic man owen's got a reason owen's got a big reason why he's like we gotta shoot him pointing fingers at me gets him off the death pedal and in fact barber was sentenced to 38 years anybody that could print into the conversation that you're aware of no basically my word versus his who do they believe
you can come closer if you need to when confronted by the prosecution didn't he say hey i'm behind him again i'm behind him i'm right behind you
justin has a hard time explaining the numerous cell phone calls he exchanged with Owen Barber on the night Danny was murdered.
In fact, who is the last person he calls before he kills Danny Petrolli, and who is the first person he calls after he kills Danny Petrolli?
Me, Marky Simpson.
I imagine Owen sat about right here or here
and waited for Danny.
Justin's friend, 28-year-old Jason Coleman, lived with Owen Barber.
There's a lot of
drug deals that went on back here.
And he sold Owen the gun used to shoot Danny Petroli.
Where'd you get the gun from,
Jason Coleman?
A lot of people think Justin's guilty.
A lot of people think he's innocent.
But I just know that it was tragic.
It wouldn't make sense for Justin to have wanted Danny dead.
Regina Zuner is one of Justin's strongest defenders.
He owed Danny $66,000.
He makes more than that off Danny.
If Danny's gone, there's no more chronic in the area.
I have no means of making money.
Owing all of that money to Danny Petrola, doesn't that provide a motive for murder?
I mean, it sounds bad, but the thing is, that's what it always was.
As you see from the O sheets, everybody owed something like that.
The O sheet that investigators found in Danny's wallet.
If you look at that O sheet, there are people that owe more than that to Danny.
Like, they all owed each other money.
You always just make payments get something else make payment get something else.
It would never be very rarely would you have it that a zero.
It's the way it worked and it gets paid back gradually.
As for that letter written by Owen Barber's former girlfriend Jennifer Pascarello JW knows how important this money is.
He'll know I promise.
Justin insists it wasn't a threat but simply a plea for money.
If they say they were so mad about this money I allegedly owed the man, why does the letter say we need money?
Why doesn't it say I want my money?
He was constantly giving people money.
Anybody who wanted anything, they went to Justin.
Justin's mother now believes.
That's why Jen and Owen went to Justin.
Owen Barber turned on her son because the Bank of Justin shut down on Owen when he needed it the most.
Ladies and gentlemen, you've heard all the evidence that should be done.
After three weeks, Justin's trial is about to end.
He's been accused for a long time of murder.
I know he's not capable of that.
And in a surprising move during closing arguments, the defense tries to point the finger of guilt at Justin's friend, Jason Coleman.
It was Jason Coleman's.
And what did Jason do to it?
He gave it to Owen Barber.
He sold it to him.
It seems a desperate move.
There's no evidence that he was actually directly involved in any way with that murder.
But would the jury buy it?
Sure.
What's a verdict?
They have a verdict.
They have a verdict.
After little more than one hour...
Oh, what does this tell you when a jury comes back this quickly?
You're not dead.
The jury is ready with a verdict.
Your stomach's in a knot until you hear the words.
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I host a podcast called The Sea Word with my dearest friend and historian of bad behavior, Alyssa Bennett.
What is up?
It's a chat show about women whose society is called crazy.
We're going to be rediscovering the stories of women society dismissed by calling them mad, sad, or just plain bad.
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All rise, circuit court's back in session.
Gotta be confident.
Expect the worst, hope for the best.
Justin Wolf is bracing himself for a verdict.
Honestly, you're a little scared right now.
Well,
I guess.
A verdict which could mean life or death.
I'm trying to be hopeful.
I'm trying to think positively.
But for Justin's mother, Terry Steinberg, it's not easy.
Members of the jury, have you reached verdict in the cases set before you?
Yes, we have.
After three long weeks of testimony...
I can't tell.
I couldn't read the jury.
The jury deliberates for only
one hour.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Justin Michael Wolfe, guilty of capital murders charged in the indictment.
Guilty as charged.
I didn't think I heard it right.
I still think I need to wake up and go back and do it again.
I just, it's not.
It's not real.
Shocking.
It's not real.
It floored me.
They took one hour.
That's all they gave to decide Justin's life, Justin's fate.
I wanted to see some ray of hope for this kid, but there wasn't any.
Jurors Miles Ganley, Patricia Grisham, and Tim Lukarinan
say they believed Triggerman Owen Barber's testimony over Justin's.
I mean, if it was just Justin against Owen, who could you believe?
They're both thugs, they're both liars, involved with drugs, tied up in greed.
But it was the other circumstantial evidence that just made his story fit.
Evidence that included all those cell phone calls between Justin and Owen Barber on the night of Danny Petroli's murder.
Who is the last person he calls before he kills Danny Petrolli, and who is the first person he calls after he kills Danny Petrolli?
Then there was the letter written by Jennifer Pascarello, Owen Barber's former girlfriend.
It was another attempt of them trying to collect the money he was supposed to have been paid to kill Danny.
For the jurors, the evidence led to one obvious conclusion.
Guilty of sin, Your Honor.
Isn't it time you confessed to this crime?
I did not.
I didn't do this.
You sent Owen Barber over there.
to kill him, didn't you?
No, I did not.
I did not tell that man to kill any human
You sent him over there then to rob him?
No.
And it went wrong, terribly wrong.
No, I did not.
Are you lying to me?
No, sir.
Hang in there.
Justin still insists he's innocent, but it wasn't enough.
We were looking for reasonable doubt.
To convince the jury.
The key witness that was going to turn the tide, but
he never showed up.
One witness Justin believes may have helped prove his innocence.
I think his testimony would have helped me.
His friend Jason Coleman.
Where did you get the gun, sir?
Jason Coleman.
A man often mentioned in court.
Did you ever get cocaine from Jason?
Sometimes.
But never seen.
We were all dying to hear from this guy.
Justin contends Jason Coleman told him the truth.
He said he approached Owen and he said, look, I had nothing to do with this.
And Owen said, I know, I did this on my own.
He told Jason Coleman that he had done this on his own.
Yes, that's what he told them.
But prosecutors say they heard a very different story from Jason.
He was one of the first ones that indicated that Barbara would never have done anything like this if it weren't the wishes of Justin Wolf.
What he has to say, I think, may depend on who's asking and when you ask.
Which is why no one called Jason to the stand.
He's definitely a mystery man.
Justin's friend, Regina Zuner.
Where is Jason Coleman?
I don't know.
And he's disappeared.
After allowing 48 hours to follow him with a home video camera for a day, Jason Coleman also disappeared on us.
Was he gonna help the prosecution?
Hurt the defense?
I guess we'll never know.
He's the mystery man.
And now, the jury that convicted Justin Wolf of murder
must decide his punishment.
It's like I'm fleeing for my life here.
Coming up.
It's horrible.
I know what they're going to do.
I don't even know why we're bothering.
The jury has Justin's life in its hands.
What do you think they're going to do?
I think they're going to give him ultimate.
That's next.
Now a convicted murderer, Justin Wolf, contemplates his fate.
What are your options?
Life or death.
Life in prison without parole.
Or death.
Or death.
Yes.
But even as Justin testifies at his sentencing hearing...
I don't want to die.
I don't want the death.
No, I don't want to...
I don't want to die.
He can't do more than stammer out the obvious.
Never thought I'd be saying that, you know?
It's like I'm pleading for my life here.
I don't know why.
But prosecutor Rick Conway thinks he knows why.
The cowardly, conniving, calculating way that he set in motion a plan to snuff out the life of another human being
as if it were a bug on a windshield.
Danny Petrolli was a drug dealer, but he was also loved.
Oh, he's hugging.
He's just...
It's just a void.
His parents are overwhelmed with pain.
He was such a special part of the family, and he adored his mother and his family.
Now, the jury weighs whether Justin's parents will lose their son.
It's horrible.
I know what they're going to do.
I don't even know why we're bothering with any of this.
What do you think they're going to do?
I think they're going to give him the ultimate.
The death penalty.
I would think so.
Round two for the jury.
First vote, 7-5 for the death penalty.
It was starting to get very emotional in there.
And then 11-1 for a very long time.
Until one juror picks up a bullet.
And I just put it down on the table so that we could all see what the bullet looked like.
And
it was difficult.
We, the jury on the issue, joined, having found the defendant, Justin Michael Wolfe, guilty of killing Daniel Robert Petroli, and having considered all the evidence in mitigation of the offense, unanimously fixed his punishment at death.
Now 21,
Justin Wolf faces death by lethal injection.
I had nothing to do with this murder.
I just can't believe this is happening.
Working toward an appeal.
Are you guys getting
is now a full-time job for Terry.
It's the last time we actually all went out together as a family.
We all went out to dinner to celebrate his birthday.
Sorry.
But if they want to do this to Justin, you know, they're going to have to take us kicking and screaming because he didn't do this.
Justin still insists he's innocent, but he finally understands that his choices are what led to so much grief.
Aren't you responsible for all that pain?
Yes.
I mean, you did that to your mother.
You did that to your family.
Yes.
You caused all that.
Yes.
And what do you see when you look in the mirror?
I don't know what happened.
I don't know what happened.
I just don't know.
Regina Zuner was charged with misdemeanor drug possession.
Jennifer Pascarella was charged as an accessory after the fact to murder.
But the charges against both of them were dropped when they agreed to testify against their friend, Justin Wolfe.
Living life in the fast lane, these kids thought they had it all under control.
But tragically, they learned that everything can be lost in the blink of an eye.
In 2016, Justin Wolfe's sentence was reduced from death to 41 years in prison.
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Tulsa is my home now.
Academy Award nominee Sylvester Stallone stars in the Paramount Plus original series, Tulsa King.
His distillery is a very interesting business.
Do we gotta go the energy?
From Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of Landman.
What are you saying?
I'm alright.
If you think you're gonna take me out,
it's gonna be really
difficult.
Tulsa King, new season now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus.