Suspicion

Transcript

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Speaker 16 I said, have you ever contemplated committing the perfect perfect murder?

Speaker 18 And he said, yes.

Speaker 20 The key element to that is making sure that someone is caught.

Speaker 18 Once they have somebody, they'll stop looking and that's how you can get away.

Speaker 23 A cold-blooded killing.

Speaker 24 A victim worth millions and all kinds of conflicting clues.

Speaker 26 I've never had a case this complicated before.

Speaker 24 Police following multiple leads until...

Speaker 27 We asked, who is that?

Speaker 28 And he says he's my neighbor. He lives two floors below.

Speaker 24 A suspect under arrest.

Speaker 7 Having someone up just

Speaker 29 taken away.

Speaker 29 Sorry.

Speaker 24 Case closed. Or was it? Could there be something else or someone else they'd missed?

Speaker 30 There were so many parts of the puzzle that were not adding up.

Speaker 24 Someone had pulled the trigger, but had someone else pulled the strings?

Speaker 30 He was the type of guy guy that could take bad luck and turn it into a fortune.

Speaker 23 Thanks for joining us. I'm Lester Holt.
A lot of us complain about our neighbors, but the residents of the building in this story often hung out, partied, and did business together.

Speaker 23 They seemed to see one another as friends until the terrible day when some began to wonder whether one neighbor was actually a mastermind who saw the rest of them as pawns. Here's Keith Morrison.

Speaker 33 7 a.m.

Speaker 34 November 15, 2007.

Speaker 33 Dawn in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Speaker 31 He pulled into the restaurant parking lot, turned off his engine.

Speaker 34 Sky beginning to brighten, sun not quite up.

Speaker 35 And then there they were.

Speaker 11 The voices, the terror, The nightmare beginning.

Speaker 36 Immediately ducked down in my car after the first shot was fired. I laid there and thinking, okay, well, this is how it's going to end for me.

Speaker 9 You're going to be dead.

Speaker 9 911, what is your emergency?

Speaker 38 Somebody just shot the man who's lunging it dead in front of the village inn.

Speaker 40 It stands in stark contrast to the rest of Salt Lake City.

Speaker 35 An old chocolate factory, the grand stage for our story.

Speaker 43 It was converted to loft apartments in those boom years before the bust, and the style of living and location drew a distinct crowd.

Speaker 9 Outliers of a sort, iconoclasts in this famously Mormon city.

Speaker 29 I loved this building. It was fabulous.

Speaker 1 Bianca Perman Brooks, for example, born into privilege in England, raised in Ireland and Africa.

Speaker 47 She came here in August 2006 to visit a friend.

Speaker 29 I came on holiday and I met Christopher and we just hit it off.

Speaker 48 Christopher Wright, a real estate developer, lived in the same loft building as Bianca's friend. There was a party in the building.
Bianca was invited.

Speaker 37 In one night, you knew.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 51 To anyone watching, it was an obvious perfect match.

Speaker 52 Friends and loft neighbors Dave and Lisa McCammon.

Speaker 30 Bea is so lovely and she's kind of quirky and I think she brought that

Speaker 30 playfulness out in Chris.

Speaker 22 He was a positive guy before, he was ecstatic

Speaker 48 So it was true, blind, passionate love that drove Bianca to give up everything she had known her whole life back in England and move to Utah to be with Chris.

Speaker 55 Where six months after that first moment they laid eyes on each other, they were married.

Speaker 29 He made me feel very safe.

Speaker 1 Her protector and incurable romantic.

Speaker 29 This is a man who cries all the way through romantic movies like the notebook.

Speaker 46 It didn't take long for Bianca to become firmly entrenched in loft living.

Speaker 29 So the lofts were full of incredibly creative people.

Speaker 57 Academics, airline pilots, physicians, documentary filmmaker, Olympic speed skater, mortgage broker, socialites.

Speaker 55 John Fife, an advertising copywriter, was one of the first to buy the building.

Speaker 18 This building is a fantastic collection of just interesting people.

Speaker 54 None more so than perhaps the building's most gregarious and outsized personality, David Novak.

Speaker 29 He was so

Speaker 29 nice and entertaining and funny and charming.

Speaker 30 It's impossible not to be charmed by David.

Speaker 30 I adore the man.

Speaker 22 We were, I would say, basically best friends here in Utah.

Speaker 52 David's huge personality fit his apparently oversized professional accomplishments.

Speaker 59 Investor, restaurateur, owner of an extremely unusual consulting firm, whose sole specialty was preparing wealthy clients for, of all things, prison.

Speaker 22 He was hired to help put their affairs in order before they went to prison, help educate the family what was going to happen, try to get the best sentencing possible for him.

Speaker 51 That business, as David confessed to his lost friends, grew out of personal experience.

Speaker 8 He himself was a felon, served a year in federal prison for mail fraud.

Speaker 30 But he was the type of guy that could take bad luck and turn it into a fortune.

Speaker 58 So, most everyone in the building seemed to be living large in those good old pre-meltdown days, when into the mix was introduced a new ingredient, a businessman with real money.

Speaker 67 It was Novak Serbianko who did the introductions.

Speaker 29 Christopher had an office about two or three blocks from here, and there was a Starbucks that he always went to. And he went over there, and Novak was there with Ken Dalazar, and he introduced them.

Speaker 8 Ken Dalazar lived in a wealthy enclave just south of Salt Lake City.

Speaker 52 A very nice guy, by all accounts, with a big extended family and money to invest.

Speaker 68 Truckloads of money.

Speaker 50 He'd already loaned Novak $1.85 million to make a movie about his prison consulting business.

Speaker 4 And soon Ken and Chris began working on a real estate deal.

Speaker 29 They spoke sometimes and they had contracts back and forth, but I really, I'm a girl.

Speaker 70 And you weren't interested.

Speaker 6 No, it was so dull.

Speaker 71 Fall came to Salt Lake City.

Speaker 50 Leaves yellowed and fell.

Speaker 4 The economic crisis scudded toward them like a low black cloud as the businessmen Ken Dolazar, Chris Wright, and David Novak continued their interconnected hustle and flow.

Speaker 58 But the roiling storm bearing down on them was loaded not with economic ruin, but something else entirely.

Speaker 29 I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 68 And no one...

Speaker 13 There was...

Speaker 29 Everyone was there, all of our friends, and we just sat there.

Speaker 63 We couldn't move.

Speaker 29 It was like...

Speaker 63 It it was just unbelievable.

Speaker 32 When dateline continues.

Speaker 37 So now it was that morning, 7 a.m.

Speaker 51 November 15th, 2007.

Speaker 72 911, what is the address of your emergency?

Speaker 52 Dean Kerrager, then a detective with the Sandy Police Department, was on the freeway when his radio came to life.

Speaker 28 It wasn't for a few minutes that I heard there was an actual shooting, at which time

Speaker 16 that's where I need to come get busy.

Speaker 12 You got the address, the parking lot of the Village Inn restaurant just south of Salt Lake City in a town called Sandy, his town.

Speaker 5 It was a very violent scene.

Speaker 28 The victim was shot five times. The fifth shot was done while the shooter was standing over top of him and shot him.
in the face. Yeah, who?

Speaker 28 The shooter was making sure he was dead before he left.

Speaker 69 Cold, methodical, like a professional hit.

Speaker 67 And yet, amazingly, somebody was sitting in a car, maybe six feet away, watch the whole thing.

Speaker 37 Ordinary guy minding his own business.

Speaker 51 Now, eyewitness to a brutal slaying.

Speaker 50 Man's name was Lee Carlson.

Speaker 36 Right hand came up, reached inside of his pocket. Out came a gun

Speaker 36 and pointed at...

Speaker 36 The other man right in the face and pulled the trigger.

Speaker 56 At the police station, Lee told how he ducked out of sight after that first shot, but not before he got a glimpse of the shooter.

Speaker 73 As far as I can remember, he had a longer nose.

Speaker 73 I can't tell eye color, but his eyes seemed to be more bulgy.

Speaker 73 Yeah, I know we're kind of asking a lot.

Speaker 58 But what stood out most was his hair.

Speaker 44 Long, tied in a ponytail.

Speaker 52 Looked almost out of place, like a wig.

Speaker 36 And I looked at that more in his face.

Speaker 52 Before the shooting, said Lee, he heard the men's voices sounded Eastern European, maybe Slavic.

Speaker 51 Police believe both men came here in the victim's car, which the shooter then used to flee the scene.

Speaker 53 And as for the victim, well, you've heard the name by now.

Speaker 48 Ken Doleazar, the extremely wealthy local investor.

Speaker 75 My daughter called me just bawling, and she told me Ken's been shot, and he's dead.

Speaker 21 Wow.

Speaker 55 Matt Baudry considered Ken Dolazar to be one of his closest friends.

Speaker 46 They founded and coached a college hockey team together. The Ken Matt knew wasn't just a wealthy businessman.

Speaker 52 He was deeply concerned for the boys on the team.

Speaker 75 I watched him pull out his wallet, slip money into kids' pockets because he heard the kids needed tuition money, couldn't buy their books.

Speaker 4 And now his friend, their friend, was dead.

Speaker 10 And some of those kids just broke down and balled.

Speaker 52 At the loft building in downtown Salt Lake, the news rocketed from floor to floor.

Speaker 46 After all, a couple of residents, including Bianca's husband, were doing business with Dolazar.

Speaker 29 I know it sounds like rubbernecking a car crash, but it's kind of like, wow, you know, some people know he's been murdered.

Speaker 13 Who could possibly want a man as nice and generous as Ken Dolazar, dead?

Speaker 77 But then it's almost a truism of police work that where money goes, trouble often follows. More money, the bigger the trouble.

Speaker 2 And in this case, an extra dollop.

Speaker 74 The dead man's vast fortune, hundreds of millions, wasn't really his, strictly speaking.

Speaker 77 He'd married into the bulk of it.

Speaker 80 The fortune came from a company his wife founded with her former husband.

Speaker 77 The divorce had been nasty, family loyalties bitterly divided, and some family members weren't the least bit happy that Ken was making investment decisions.

Speaker 69 Detective Kerrager contacted Ken's brother and broke the news.

Speaker 28 Dropped down to his knees, and he said it's that f ⁇ ing Derek.

Speaker 4 A moment of unguarded grief and rage.

Speaker 14 Thus a possible suspect.

Speaker 58 Derek Maurer, Ken's adult stepson.

Speaker 28 It was apparent that there was difficulties between those two.

Speaker 52 But trouble in the family didn't stop with Derek.

Speaker 28 There seemed to be a riff.

Speaker 45 But not between Dee and Ken.

Speaker 12 There seemed to be a genuine love story.

Speaker 51 But now, a grieving Dee told detectives she was as baffled about the murder as they were.

Speaker 28 She was not able to provide us any information as to who he was meeting that day or

Speaker 28 anything about his day.

Speaker 69 And despite all that friction, the infighting over money and control, Dee's family produced not a single viable suspect, not even Ken's stepson.

Speaker 81 Derek had an alibi at the time of the murder.

Speaker 54 But those initial interviews were not entirely in vain. A clue emerged from Ken's assistant.

Speaker 48 Night before the murder, she said, Ken got a call on his cell.

Speaker 28 She knew that he had set up a meeting to meet with whoever he was talking to at 7 a.m. on the 15th.

Speaker 68 The day and time at which Ken Dolazar was shot to death, was the caller also the killer?

Speaker 1 If so, they now had his voice because earlier that caller left this phone message.

Speaker 72 Hey, Ken, this is Robert, talking to you.

Speaker 72 He said, would you get to

Speaker 72 the other person here?

Speaker 51 Detectives traced the prepaid cell from which the call came and went to the store where someone bought it.

Speaker 28 This phone was purchased with cash with no identifying information provided to the carrier.

Speaker 46 But the family did have a suggestion for the detective, something they actually agreed on.

Speaker 4 He should look carefully at a man named David Novak.

Speaker 37 Yes, that David Novak.

Speaker 55 Remember Novak's consulting business for prison-bound executives?

Speaker 6 Guess what?

Speaker 28 Dee Maurer was incarcerated in federal prison.

Speaker 64 Tax fraud.

Speaker 3 Ken's wealthy wife, Dee, was David Novak's client.

Speaker 54 That's why Ken Dolazar knew David Novak.

Speaker 52 And something about that consultant and wannabe movie producer made Ken's relatives suspicious.

Speaker 6 So detectives drove over to the loft where they spoke with Mr.

Speaker 19 Novak.

Speaker 42 He was soft-spoken and a bright man.

Speaker 28 He came across as very intelligent, yes.

Speaker 52 Answered all of their questions, but didn't seem to be of much help.

Speaker 69 And then, as Detective Kerrager was preparing to leave, he tried one more question.

Speaker 77 That prepaid cell phone, the one someone used to invite Ken to the fatal meeting.

Speaker 2 The store had surveillance video of a man buying that very phone.

Speaker 50 Ken's family said they didn't recognize him, but would Novak?

Speaker 33 Kerrager showed him the photo.

Speaker 27 We asked, who is that?

Speaker 28 He says he's my neighbor. He lives two floors below.

Speaker 71 And just like that, a big piece of the puzzle popped into place.

Speaker 52 But fair warning, as you'll hear, puzzle pieces and some residents of the downtown loft might not be quite what they seem.

Speaker 33 Coming up.

Speaker 29 There's a massive sense of disbelief.

Speaker 24 While the investigation takes as many turns as one of the building's hallways.

Speaker 32 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 37 It was almost a month after the murder of Ken Dolazar, his friends still coming to terms with it.

Speaker 75 And I just think, what if and all the fun we could have had if he hadn't been taken.

Speaker 52 Until now, the investigation seemed to be going nowhere.

Speaker 4 And then, as Detective Kerrager was about to leave David Novak's apartment in the downtown loft building, he showed Novak the surveillance photo from that cell phone store.

Speaker 28 He looked at it and said, that's Chris Wright. He's my neighbor.
He lives two floors below.

Speaker 4 Chris Wright, his good friend and husband of the irrepressible Bianca.

Speaker 28 This is definitely somebody we want to talk to.

Speaker 84 Kerrager arrived unannounced at Chris Wright's office not far from the loft building, and almost before he could ask a question, he said, Chris launched into a story about Ken Dolazar.

Speaker 64 Claimed the man was so paranoid he wanted Chris to buy a prepaid cell phone so they could communicate in complete privacy.

Speaker 46 To Detective Kerrager, the story seemed a little too ready or rehearsed.

Speaker 28 Almost as if he was covering, trying to account for things that we knew.

Speaker 13 I see.

Speaker 14 Odd.

Speaker 4 Then, as the interview went on, he said, Chris's voice began to sound familiar.

Speaker 31 A voicemail that police believe helped lure Ken to his death. Hey, Ken, this is Robert.

Speaker 28 To me, that was Chris's voice on that phone.

Speaker 46 The detectives pulled out a search warrant.

Speaker 76 Bianca was home when the police arrived.

Speaker 29 It's surreal.

Speaker 29 You have... They're like roving gangs of toddlers who are ripping everything apart.
They turn their sofas upside down and like take out the line. They took apart my toaster.

Speaker 29 I mean, it's they take everything apart.

Speaker 59 A ballistics report told police the murder weapon was a 9mm handgun.

Speaker 37 Chris was an avid collector of guns, and among them, police found an empty case for a Springfield Armory 9mm handgun.

Speaker 45 And what do you know?

Speaker 4 The gun that went with it was missing.

Speaker 48 Chris Wright was arrested and charged with the murder of Ken Dolazar.

Speaker 29 There's a massive sense of disbelief. He was being completely taken

Speaker 29 out of the blue and for no reason.

Speaker 1 The loving husband who cried his way through romantic comedies, a cold-blooded assassin?

Speaker 19 Impossible.

Speaker 69 It quite literally wasn't possible, said Bianca, for Chris to have killed Ken Dolazar that morning.

Speaker 5 He had an alibi.

Speaker 29 He was in the loft. I was there.

Speaker 31 He was home, in bed, with her.

Speaker 29 He was a foot from me.

Speaker 29 There's no room for doubt.

Speaker 33 This surely had to be a colossal misunderstanding.

Speaker 4 Bianca sought support from her neighbors, including David Novak, her only friend with intimate knowledge of the legal system.

Speaker 63 He comforted you.

Speaker 29 He was brilliant, yeah. He would ask me how everything was going and

Speaker 29 what was happening with Christopher and whether our attorneys were doing the job they were supposed to.

Speaker 44 She told him everything, she said, and he assured her the mistake would soon be rectified.

Speaker 29 She believed him. I don't want to be married to a murderer.
I would not fool myself. If there was a second's doubt in my mind, he did not do this.

Speaker 31 But some of their friends in the loft weren't so sure.

Speaker 30 I started to feel sorry for her, thinking, oh my gosh, you poor naive girl. You know, you're going to be crushed by this.

Speaker 52 At the Sandy, Utah Justice Center, the case that police turned over to Josh Player, then the assistant district attorney, seemed very clear.

Speaker 26 The evidence was exceptionally strong in this case.

Speaker 25 It all kept pointing in the direction of Mr. Wright.

Speaker 43 There was the surveillance photo, the voice message, which was placed from a spot near the loft, according to Celltar tracking, and the eyewitness.

Speaker 37 He'd been shown a photo lineup with Chris in it, and now he remembered some details a little differently than he had that first traumatic day.

Speaker 58 Like Chris's blue eyes in the photo, he said, jarred something in his mind.

Speaker 36 I was, you know, 80 to 90% certain that this was the man that I saw.

Speaker 31 Then he found a picture of Chris on the web and tried photoshopping in a few details, like a wig.

Speaker 36 I looked at that and said, yeah, that looks almost exactly like what I saw.

Speaker 4 Reinforcing a memory.

Speaker 58 But was the memory accurate?

Speaker 64 As for the rest of the case, the investigation wasn't over yet.

Speaker 61 The story just begun.

Speaker 62 The first puzzle pieces placed where they seemed to fit, but...

Speaker 52 Oh, even more than complicated, as those friends in the loft began to believe.

Speaker 58 Something darker than that.

Speaker 32 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 52 Strange times around the loft building in downtown Salt Lake.

Speaker 37 So shocking that one of their own, Chris Wright, had been arrested and charged with killing wealthy businessman Ken Dolezar.

Speaker 26 All of the evidence we obtained led up to Chris Wright being the trigger man.

Speaker 8 In the SUV, Ken drove to his fatal morning meeting, for example.

Speaker 2 The killer used that vehicle to flee the scene.

Speaker 65 And when the cops found it and scoured the interior, they got a hit.

Speaker 8 Chris's DNA.

Speaker 25 We had a DNA result from the inside door handle of the SUV.

Speaker 42 It was a tiny sample, not a perfect one, but it seemed to put Chris in Ken Doleazar's car, driver's side, which certainly helped the case.

Speaker 66 But it wasn't quite airtight, not yet.

Speaker 6 The murder weapon had not been found.

Speaker 69 Yes, they found an empty gun case in Chris and Bianca's apartment, but nothing to connect the case to the murder.

Speaker 31 And just about then.

Speaker 28 A sergeant for the district attorney's office just happened to call me and ask, hey, did you ever look in that gun case?

Speaker 81 Was there shell casing or anything in that gun case?

Speaker 65 Turns out the gun's manufacturer includes a test-fired shell casing with each gun it sells.

Speaker 78 So the detective went to the evidence locker, he said, retrieved the gun case.

Speaker 28 Looked inside and there was a casing.

Speaker 37 Big moment. Big moment.

Speaker 12 Big moment because when ballistics tested that shell casing, it was a match.

Speaker 28 That shell casing was fired from the same gun as the shell casings recovered at the scene where Kendall Lazar was killed.

Speaker 52 Chris Wright's missing gun must have been the murder weapon.

Speaker 64 Now the case looked very strong indeed.

Speaker 58 Though Chris's wife Bianca certainly didn't think so.

Speaker 29 I know for certain, categorically, that Christopher didn't do it.

Speaker 66 In fact, the police and prosecutor had it all wrong, she insisted.

Speaker 52 And it wasn't just that Chris had an alibi for the morning of the murder.

Speaker 12 No, she said it was the whole case.

Speaker 68 It was all wrong.

Speaker 37 Chris's DNA in the car, for example, of course it was there, she said. Chris admitted he'd been in the car, but weeks before the murder.

Speaker 5 But get this, the steering wheel especially, and all of the car, was covered with DNA and fingerprints that did not match Chris.

Speaker 69 Nor did Bianca buy Lee Carlson's story.

Speaker 63 He

Speaker 29 said that the guy had an Eastern European accent.

Speaker 29 Christopher is American born and bred. He also said that he had only seen a glimpse of his face.

Speaker 1 In fact, said Bianca, the eyewitness account more properly eliminated Chris as a suspect.

Speaker 69 All agreed, remember, that Ken and his killer arrived at the crime scene together in the same car.

Speaker 51 Think about it, said Bianca. It's going to go on.

Speaker 73 Some dude wear a wig, wouldn't he?

Speaker 45 Would Chris wear a wig to a meeting with someone who already knew him, had met him?

Speaker 47 Particularly someone as cautious as Ken?

Speaker 29 You have a deeply paranoid man, Ken Delazar, who is doing doing business with Christopher and has met him.

Speaker 29 You don't think that if Christopher got into the car all wigged up, that he would think that that was slightly strange?

Speaker 31 And if the eyewitness was right, the killer shot with his right hand.

Speaker 29 Christopher is staggeringly left-handed.

Speaker 8 Staggeringly left-handed.

Speaker 33 Then there was the business of eye color.

Speaker 4 Now, long after the event, the eyewitness was saying the killer had brilliant blue eyes.

Speaker 9 But right after the murder, when the...

Speaker 29 Yeah, I can't tell eye color but his eyes seemed to be more bulgy he just got more and more refined in each interview with the police brilliant blue eyes brilliant yes which of course you can see brilliant Nordic blue eyes from the side

Speaker 37 what about Chris's suspiciously missing handgun the one linked to the crime Bianca says she is certain Chris did not use it to kill Ken Dolezar that morning.

Speaker 35 Impossible, she said, because

Speaker 1 he no longer had it.

Speaker 29 That gun

Speaker 29 I lost back in the summer.

Speaker 42 I lost?

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 43 You just lost the gun?

Speaker 29 I have a horrible habit of losing stuff.

Speaker 33 Before Chris ever met Candoleazar, she took some visiting British friends on a shooting excursion to the Great Salt Lake.

Speaker 51 They finished at sunset.

Speaker 29 And I put down

Speaker 29 this little gun, the Springfield, on the ground, right next to the bag. And I went to help somebody with something else.

Speaker 52 And then she got distracted, she said.

Speaker 10 Packed up the rest of the gear, went home, and neither she nor Chris ever saw that gun again.

Speaker 2 Bianca's proof the gun was missing?

Speaker 62 A video made just over a day later by her British visitors who wanted to document their uniquely American experience.

Speaker 60 In their video, there is no sign of a Springfield Armory 9mm.

Speaker 29 I lost stuff constantly and it was a bone of contention between Christopher and I.

Speaker 63 And while the prosecution scoffed at Bianca's lost gun story, her lost friends did not.

Speaker 30 If you knew sweet Bianca,

Speaker 30 she accidentally threw her gorgeous wedding ring away. We had to dig it out of the garbage.
I was standing there. She can be an absent-minded ding bat.

Speaker 64 But remember the day police searched the loft?

Speaker 29 They took apart my toaster.

Speaker 79 She was focused like a laser that day, said Bianca, watching intently, she said, as an officer looked in the empty 9mm gun case.

Speaker 29 I was sitting beside her.

Speaker 64 No test-fired shell casing, she said.

Speaker 29 I don't mean to sound cynical, but I know it wasn't there.

Speaker 34 Only possible conclusion, said Bianca.

Speaker 6 It was her accusation.

Speaker 43 The Sandy police must have planted the shell casing in order to link Chris's missing gun to the crime scene.

Speaker 86 One thing that'll be hard for people to accept is the idea that this detective would do something as unethical as plant evidence.

Speaker 29 It was not there.

Speaker 29 I know that.

Speaker 51 The Sandy Police Department categorically denied the accusation.

Speaker 44 But as those loft friends heard more of Chris Wright's side of the story from Bianca,

Speaker 66 they became convinced he was innocent.

Speaker 30 There were so many parts of the puzzle that were not adding up.

Speaker 37 Unless, they reasoned, unless someone they knew very well wanted Chris to take the fall,

Speaker 41 a dark suspicion wafted through the corridors of that old chocolate factory.

Speaker 6 Perhaps the police, they said, arrested the wrong neighbor.

Speaker 29 He had the perfect Patsy in Christopher.

Speaker 24 Coming up, the focus falls on another resident, as some wonder whether the right neighbor is under suspicion.

Speaker 60 We were astounded.

Speaker 22 And I remember saying to him,

Speaker 60 What?

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Speaker 44 Among residents of the downtown Salt Lake Loft, an idea took root and grew around the story of the murder of Kent Dolazar.

Speaker 52 It was planted just weeks after Chris was arrested.

Speaker 37 Loft residents Dave and Lisa McCammon were having dinner with their best friends, the Novaks.

Speaker 22 He announced, we're moving, and we were astounded. And I remember saying to him,

Speaker 67 what?

Speaker 22 You've put all this money into your loft. You've got all this investment here.
Why are you leaving? He said, it's just time to go.

Speaker 80 He'd claimed to be their great friend, sociable, gregarious, larger than life.

Speaker 10 Then said his neighbors, once Chris was arrested, he seemed nervous.

Speaker 50 And now he was gone.

Speaker 84 And so they wondered, was David Novak running from something?

Speaker 6 The law friends began re-examining all those stories David told them over the years, particularly those about his criminal past.

Speaker 16 We started comparing notes and stories, and it became clear, wow, you know, David told me a different version of that.

Speaker 37 They've been lying, to put it rather bluntly.

Speaker 22 Certainly not full truths.

Speaker 4 The brief prison term for mail fraud Novak told them he'd serve, turned out there was more to that story, a lot more.

Speaker 37 Novak had confessed to a con that played out like a cinematic thriller.

Speaker 43 He'd used a private flying club he owned to run an insurance scam.

Speaker 8 Then, as it caught up to him, he attempted to escape by faking his own death, ditched his airplane in Puget Sound.

Speaker 41 He faked his death in order to avoid an insurance audit.

Speaker 20 That was not a crime of passion, that was a crime of calculation.

Speaker 35 Or so the loft friends believed.

Speaker 2 And if that was true, what might he have done in Salt Lake?

Speaker 9 Their suspicion only grew when the friends found out Novak left town without mentioning it was he who fingered Chris in that surveillance photo.

Speaker 70 Did he ever tell you I identified Christopher as the guy who bought the cell phone?

Speaker 68 No.

Speaker 31 And of course, that prepaid cell phone was the very clue that led police to Chris, a phone which Chris bought, said Bianca, after Novak assured him.

Speaker 29 Novak has said that this guy routinely used these throwaway phones.

Speaker 79 What's more, said Bianca, Chris could not have left that voicemail

Speaker 8 because by the time of the murder, she says he'd given the phone away.

Speaker 29 He gave it to Novak.

Speaker 13 And Novak gave it to Dolaza.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 29 Yes. I mean, as far as we know, but it's Novak, so we don't know anything.

Speaker 84 And now a theory about motive drifted from loft to loft. Hadn't Novak borrowed almost 2 million from Ken?

Speaker 59 Their friends said they watched him spend lavishly on high living and never saw evidence of that movie the loan was supposed to pay for.

Speaker 80 But really, was their old friend capable of orchestrating murder and pinning it on Chris?

Speaker 22 There's one person that bragged about knowing

Speaker 22 Russian mafia.

Speaker 30 But how hard would it be to find somebody that looked like Chris? And he introduced Chris from the very beginning with that in mind, of setting Chris up.

Speaker 29 I mean, I know it sounds like just a really dumb movie, but if you had ever met Novak, the man has a Byzantine mind.

Speaker 33 She recalled all those supportive chats she had with Novak after Chris's arrest.

Speaker 29 It turned out he was probably fishing for information.

Speaker 33 It reminded friend John Fife of a conversation with Novak one night after they dined together.

Speaker 47 John posed a question.

Speaker 58 He said, mostly in jest, of course, just hypothetical.

Speaker 16 I said, David, have you ever contemplated committing the perfect murder?

Speaker 19 And he said, yes.

Speaker 20 The key element to that is making sure that someone is caught and charged with the crime.

Speaker 18 Once they have somebody, they'll stop looking, and that's how you can really get away.

Speaker 1 And now, Novak had taken off.

Speaker 52 And even though their questions didn't amount to hard evidence, of course, Chris's defense attorneys wondered as they prepared for the trial why the police had so readily dismissed Snovak as a suspect.

Speaker 37 Dismissed him and a few other quite puzzling discoveries, like, for example, the one about Ken's widow, Dee.

Speaker 4 Remember, she was in prison at the time of his murder.

Speaker 52 When she first talked to police, she told them she had no idea her husband had a meeting the morning of his murder.

Speaker 80 No clue who he was meeting with.

Speaker 58 Turns out, she was not telling the truth.

Speaker 89 Hello, you have a call from an inmate. Hello.

Speaker 2 Hi, honey.

Speaker 2 It's standard procedure for prisons to record inmates' phone calls.

Speaker 31 This is Ken talking to his wife Dee night before his murder.

Speaker 73 I'm actually meeting with my friend tomorrow at 7 a.m. Go figure that out.
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 20 So tomorrow morning is 7 a.m., so tomorrow night I should know more.

Speaker 31 Police confronted Dee in prison

Speaker 31 recorded the interview.

Speaker 69 In it, she claimed the stress of losing her husband caused her to forget about that phone call.

Speaker 52 And then she dropped a bombshell.

Speaker 64 She said she knew who the friend was Ken was supposed to meet, and it wasn't Chris Wright.

Speaker 11 She'd never heard of him before.

Speaker 30 David Novak.

Speaker 29 That's who I believe he was meeting.

Speaker 85 Chris's defenders wanted to know why.

Speaker 8 The police didn't seem to follow up on that or probe more deeply into all that tension in Dee Mauer's family.

Speaker 14 Awed, all of it.

Speaker 79 The feeling to them that something was missing, that the case against Chris simply didn't hold together.

Speaker 69 So as Chris's trial finally got underway, Bianca felt her husband was as good as home.

Speaker 29 It was just like

Speaker 29 brilliant. You know, we now, you know, they go away, they do their thing, they come back and I get my husband back.

Speaker 33 Coming up.

Speaker 24 Chris Wright makes his case to Dateline.

Speaker 89 The people who are going to watch your show, I urge them to make their own decision.

Speaker 90 Chris Wright's murder trial began in April 2010. It had been more than two years since Ken Dolazar was shot dead in the Village Inn parking lot in Sandy, Utah.

Speaker 90 Chris's defense did more than challenge the evidence.

Speaker 2 It made a provocative claim that Chris Wright was the victim of a conspiracy.

Speaker 90 A conspiracy hatched right there in the loft by former neighbor David Novak to protect the real killer by setting up Chris to take the fall.

Speaker 56 A conspiracy the prosecution brushed off as nonsense.

Speaker 26 You would have to believe for it not to be Chris Wright that it was somebody that looked like Chris Wright, sounded like Chris Wright, had the phone bought by Chris Wright, used the gun bought by Chris Wright, had Chris Wright's DNA, and had a connection to Kendolzar to find that it wasn't Chris Wright.

Speaker 4 But all of that claimed Chris's defense, the clever Novak was quite capable of setting up.

Speaker 29 He could get nailed from start to finish.

Speaker 13 Like a chess game, somehow.

Speaker 63 20 moves ahead.

Speaker 29 Yep.

Speaker 4 But that didn't explain Lee Carlson, the good Samaritan eyewitness who sat in court and pointed his finger at Chris Wright.

Speaker 36 I am very certain and very clear of what I saw, and I may not have told it initially right off the bat bat under the full stress of what

Speaker 36 I saw, but I know what I saw, and I know who I saw.

Speaker 43 Except there is one person who said he is most certainly sure Lee Carlson is mistaken.

Speaker 74 Chris Wright himself.

Speaker 89 I will answer any question you want to ask.

Speaker 31 Chris was jailed right after his arrest.

Speaker 37 He wanted to make his case to Dateline in the flesh, but authorities wouldn't allow it, so we talked to him on the phone.

Speaker 3 So, you say you didn't do it?

Speaker 89 I absolutely did not do it.

Speaker 3 We discussed all the allegations at length.

Speaker 33 He offered detailed refutations and some allegations of his own.

Speaker 37 We're asked to believe that the police were incompetent and definitely crooked, that David Novak is crooked, and the only person who was innocent as the driven snow is you.

Speaker 36 It's not my fingerprints.

Speaker 89 It doesn't match my description. I had an alibi.
I have no motive. And there's clearly a person who's pointing the finger at me who got $2 million.

Speaker 62 This is just too cloak a dagger for a jury.

Speaker 89 I understand how difficult it is to believe, but the alternative is that I just simply got up one day and decided to go shoot some poor person in a disguise.

Speaker 67 Chris wanted to talk about that voicemail.

Speaker 4 The one that helped lure Ken to his death.

Speaker 10 The voicemail Detective Kerrager was sure was left by Chris, though no voice analyst ever studied it.

Speaker 89 I mean, people who are going to watch your show are going to listen to my voice and are going to listen to that recording. And I urge them to make their own decision.

Speaker 37 Yeah, let's listen to it right now, all right?

Speaker 89 Absolutely. Go right ahead.
Hey, Ken, this is Robert. Talking to you, Dave.
He said, when you get to Gather Chris in here.

Speaker 3 So that isn't you, huh?

Speaker 89 That is absolutely not me.

Speaker 69 The jury got the case April 29th, 2010.

Speaker 51 A jury that certainly heard about, but but never saw, the mysterious David Novak.

Speaker 14 So, would they buy the prosecutor's evidence or Bianca's explanations, her alibi for Chris?

Speaker 29 I was concerned because I've been told that, you know, sometimes it can be a crapshoot, was the phrase that was used.

Speaker 68 The jury deliberated for 11 hours, and the verdict

Speaker 11 guilty.

Speaker 29 I can't even begin to explain.

Speaker 29 It's like bottom-falls out of your world.

Speaker 29 And he wouldn't let me hug him.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 29 Sorry, just give me a sec.

Speaker 86 It's all right.

Speaker 85 Take your time.

Speaker 29 Crying is not acceptable.

Speaker 70 And why is that?

Speaker 29 Because I'm English.

Speaker 21 But for Ken's friends, at least Matt Bodry, the verdict was vindication.

Speaker 75 He looked like a smug killer.

Speaker 75 And then a jury of his peers listened to all the evidence and with that weighty choice, decided that he was.

Speaker 75 I'm satisfied with that.

Speaker 47 Chris Wright was sentenced to 15 years to life.

Speaker 90 And David Novak has not been charged with or accused by the police of anything.

Speaker 19 Though whether or not authorities want to talk to him is less clear.

Speaker 85 You know where he is?

Speaker 25 I don't know where he is now.

Speaker 37 Are your people trying to track him down?

Speaker 26 Well, part of the rules that I'm constrained by is why I don't speak about ongoing investigations or the existence of ongoing investigations.

Speaker 10 But if law enforcement was mum about David Novak, Ken Dolazar's widow was not.

Speaker 78 Dee Maurer filed a lawsuit against Novak on grounds including wrongful death, conspiracy, breach of contract, and fraud.

Speaker 2 Her suit alleged a third theory, that Novak paid Chris Wright $25,000 to kill Ken Dolazar.

Speaker 74 Novak didn't answer the suit nor attend the proceeding.

Speaker 85 So, in November 2011, a judge granted a default judgment on the breach of contract and fraud claims and awarded Maurer $7 million.

Speaker 78 In August 2012, the court granted her a motion to dismiss the wrongful death and conspiracy claims so that a final judgment could be entered in the case.

Speaker 90 Back in the loft, some imagined the worst about their former friend and neighbor.

Speaker 70 What would you advise him to do if you could talk to him?

Speaker 74 Talk to you guys.

Speaker 22 Tell the story.

Speaker 30 If you have nothing to hide.

Speaker 22 Refute me. Tell me why what I'm saying is not correct.
We used to be friends. I'm more than willing to hear what you have to say, David.

Speaker 14 So, where was he?

Speaker 6 Turned out David Novak wasn't so hard to find after all.

Speaker 52 We found him in an upscale neighborhood in a certain northwestern city.

Speaker 65 Didn't look like a man on the run, just a guy getting a coffee with his wife at Starbucks, of course.

Speaker 9 He wasn't answering his calls or emails from his former loft friends, and he didn't want to talk to Dateline.

Speaker 8 Telling us over the phone he was not involved in Ken's murder, has been cleared by the police, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar and liable to be sued.

Speaker 9 Bring it on, he said.

Speaker 35 So, is Chris Wright a liar?

Speaker 19 Bianca an unwitting or perhaps willing accomplice?

Speaker 70 Some people are surprised that you stayed.

Speaker 65 Because you could go?

Speaker 29 I wouldn't leave a dog in Christopher's situation. And I will work until my dying day to make sure he is...

Speaker 29 that his name is cleared isn't

Speaker 29 you

Speaker 85 wait for him as long as you have to yep

Speaker 29 No problem

Speaker 42 and out in suburban Sandy, Utah, the case still resonates around the shiny new courthouse where then-ADA Josh players struggled with his emotions a bit as he told us he is sure he did not send an innocent man to prison, but rather achieved justice for everyone.

Speaker 26 I was glad for the family of the victim.

Speaker 42 You take this stuff to heart, don't you?

Speaker 19 I do.

Speaker 8 I do.

Speaker 33 And while they stand on opposite sides of that chasm between innocence and guilt, there is no dispute about the man whose life was lost.

Speaker 31 Ken Dolazar was a man who loved a woman, just as Chris loved Bianca, who loved hockey, loved helping kids, and tried to do right by all that money, which is mostly still around, though he is not.

Speaker 23 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thank you for joining us.

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