A Perfect Spot

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Speaker 8 This is the entrance to the part where Richard was killed. The gunman lay in wait in this secluded dark place at night.

Speaker 9 One way or another, that's an execution.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 They were a busy married couple meeting up for a romantic Valentine's night rendezvous.

Speaker 13 They always gave each other kisses, hugs.

Speaker 12 But that night, someone had other plans.

Speaker 14 And what?

Speaker 12 Before she she even arrived, her husband was dead.

Speaker 15 You could see him laying on the ground.

Speaker 17 I couldn't think of a soul that would want to hurt the man.

Speaker 12 Then, someone let a secret slip. Soon, police were questioning a suspect with a motive who had suddenly changed his looks.

Speaker 18 And in fact, when he showed up at work that morning, he was beardless.

Speaker 12 There was only one problem. He had a rock-solid alibi.

Speaker 19 Where did that leave you?

Speaker 8 Worried about my case.

Speaker 12 That's when the phone rang.

Speaker 13 He had no voice, and I did.

Speaker 12 A tip, a tire track, and a case one detective will never forget.

Speaker 8 It was a shot in the dark, but I took it.

Speaker 12 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with a perfect spot.

Speaker 22 A winter's night in a southern forest.

Speaker 23 The ink-black darkness parted briefly to their headlights,

Speaker 25 then closed around them like a shroud as they made their way in separate separate cars through the foggy overcast.

Speaker 25 And then, here it was: the ragged clearing, the muddy patch of sand and dirt, here away from the whole world.

Speaker 19 What a place for their Valentine's tryst.

Speaker 23 As if they could see without the artificial light so much as a hand in front of their faces.

Speaker 4 Or the fate lurking out there in the dark, waiting.

Speaker 28 But what a way to begin a love story.

Speaker 14 Better, probably, the hot air balloons the man so loved.

Speaker 22 And the motorcycles on which, together, in daylight, they discovered their own special place, the remote forest clearing at a place called Belton Bridge Park.

Speaker 9 Though park is much too grand a word for their little pull-out beside the Chattahoochee River, north of Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 24 I knew them both very well.

Speaker 29 They were Richard and Stacey Scheck, and it was another love, their love of scouting, that won the admiration of Greg Gogler.

Speaker 32 How'd you meet him?

Speaker 24 Both of our sons were Cub Scouts.

Speaker 5 With kids, boys especially, they were naturals.

Speaker 34 Stacy was a ball of energy, full of ideas, would literally drag us to do things.

Speaker 17 The go-getter.

Speaker 24 The go-getter, and we also jokingly called her mom a spreadsheet

Speaker 34 because

Speaker 24 everything that she did had to be laid out in a spreadsheet.

Speaker 9 What a planner, huh?

Speaker 14 She was.

Speaker 19 Scouting is how Bill Fanning got to know them too.

Speaker 17 Richard was a good motivator and I saw how much fun he was having and so I kind of asked if I could tag along and got involved with scouts myself.

Speaker 28 Stacy was a den leader for the Cub Scout pack.

Speaker 23 She pretty good with the kids too?

Speaker 17 She was pretty good with the kids too. Yeah.
She was. She and Richard, they worked well together.

Speaker 14 As they did with her three sons.

Speaker 39 Greg was surprised, he said, when they told him that biologically the kids were Stacy's.

Speaker 24 I just naively thought that they were his children.

Speaker 7 Because it looked like that.

Speaker 35 It looked like that.

Speaker 10 And the way he treated them and they treated him.

Speaker 40 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 41 So when Richard officially adopted the younger two of the three boys, cousin Connie was thrilled.

Speaker 13 My heart melted. Like, I was just, I was like, that is like the best thing.

Speaker 17 He wanted to adopt those kids because he loved those children and those children loved him.

Speaker 14 Richard himself marched to the beat of his own drum.

Speaker 42 My brother was always a big kid.

Speaker 22 As said his sister, most certainly not a suit and tie sort of person.

Speaker 43 Could not sit down behind a desk.

Speaker 42 He had to be out and about. He was a very good athlete.

Speaker 44 Kind of like a pied piper to his niece.

Speaker 45 He would roller skate with us or throw a ball with us or color with us.

Speaker 47 He was our cool uncle.

Speaker 14 No wonder.

Speaker 50 How many uncles take their five-year-old niece and seven-year-old nephew for a ride in a hot air balloon?

Speaker 45 I could barely see over the edge. So it was just cool seeing just skies and clouds all around you.

Speaker 27 Pam Martin was one of his balloon buddies.

Speaker 47 People would fight over him and say, you know, can I have Richard today? And he was just the best crew person. And we just liked being around him because he's just very eccentric and very funny.

Speaker 51 And Stacey?

Speaker 47 I liked her. She was friendly.
She was nice.

Speaker 52 A happily blended family, as far as anybody could see.

Speaker 30 Stacy was primary breadwinner.

Speaker 5 She administered a sizable medical practice.

Speaker 48 Richard was a maintenance manager, but remained the main caregiver for the kids.

Speaker 14 And together, the two of them were, well, people noticed.

Speaker 13 They always gave each other kisses, hugs,

Speaker 13 so

Speaker 13 they seemed wonderful together.

Speaker 32 All of which may explain why, on Valentine's Night 2010, Richard and Stacy decided to meet, maybe even make out a little, at their special place here in the woods.

Speaker 26 To say that what happened next was shocking was, of course, an understatement.

Speaker 26 Oh my God, please, I need help right now.

Speaker 37 The voice in the 911 call was Stacy's.

Speaker 1 The victim of whatever happened here.

Speaker 19 was her husband, Richard.

Speaker 48 He had arrived at their rendezvous first, and when she got there later, he was lying on his back on the ground beside his truck.

Speaker 48 He's been shot. He's been hard.
He's been what?

Speaker 48 He's been shot. He's been dead.

Speaker 20 Dan Franklin of the Hall County Sheriff's Department got the call.

Speaker 27 And so there he was Valentine's night, all but groping as he drove a dark and winding road in search of that muddy clearing by the river.

Speaker 8 It's in the middle of nowhere and so that creates a special kind of dark that you just can't appreciate until you're in the middle of it.

Speaker 10 Detective Franklin is an experienced man and this

Speaker 8 was one of the very few cases in where the more I dug,

Speaker 8 the less sense that it made.

Speaker 14 No,

Speaker 53 nothing made sense about this.

Speaker 12 A murder so sudden and so brutal was it a robbery gone bad. The investigation was just beginning.
When we come back, tire tracks in the mud that belonged to neither Richard nor Stacey.

Speaker 8 You could see Richard's impressions pass over those, and then you could see those pass back over Richard's.

Speaker 8 That let us know that that vehicle was here before Richard got here and then likely left after he was dead.

Speaker 12 It had to be the killer.

Speaker 27 If there is such a thing as a perfect spot for murder, then this just might be it.

Speaker 14 Wow, this is remote. Oh my god.

Speaker 34 It's pretty secluded.

Speaker 9 If you didn't know what to look for, you'd miss that secret.

Speaker 14 You wouldn't miss it.

Speaker 8 There's just a void on the side of the road. It's just a dark void.

Speaker 23 It was going on 11 p.m., February 14th, 2010, when Detective Franklin found the place.

Speaker 8 And so this is the entrance to the park where

Speaker 8 Richard was killed.

Speaker 37 That night, the cops lit up the crime scene surrounded by a clearing of bare soil, sand, and muddy dirt.

Speaker 7 We got this place lit up like it's Christmas time, but

Speaker 10 if these lights weren't on, you can't see your hand in front of your face.

Speaker 25 And it was like that that night. Yes, sir, it was.

Speaker 5 We will spare you the gruesome images of Richard Scheck lying dead beside his truck. Suffice to say, he had been shot five times, three times through his body, twice in the face.

Speaker 19 He lay on his back near the open door of his truck.

Speaker 11 Sounds like it probably was pretty ugly crime scene, right? I mean, in terms of what happened to him.

Speaker 8 It was, yeah, it was particularly gruesome.

Speaker 7 What did it say to you right away?

Speaker 8 That's overkill, especially with the placement of the shots.

Speaker 40 Also, it was pretty clear from the get-go that this was not a robbery.

Speaker 8 The fact that Richard had his jewelry, he had his wedding ring on, he had a fairly expensive watch that he still had on. There was cash on the center console of the truck that was undisturbed.

Speaker 8 The truck itself was still here. I mean, it was ripe for the take-in.
It was running and on, and the door was open.

Speaker 27 Something else the detective could infer from the track of the bullets that went through Richard's body.

Speaker 54 He must have gotten out of his truck and approached whoever shot him.

Speaker 8 When Stacey found Richard, his truck was running. The driver's door was open.
The headlights were on.

Speaker 8 So it appeared that he had just simply pulled up and got out of his truck to approach the person that shot him, which was a compelling thing for us. That was something that really got our attention.

Speaker 14 Who was it?

Speaker 33 Who did Richard approach?

Speaker 49 Whoever it was was long gone by the time Stacy arrived.

Speaker 50 So, not much to go on.

Speaker 5 Except, when a police technician trained his lights on the clearing from the side, just so,

Speaker 14 a whole new picture suddenly emerged.

Speaker 5 A story entire tracks, including a set of tracks that belonged to neither Richard's truck nor Stacy's SUV.

Speaker 8 You could see Richard's impressions pass pass over those, and then you could see those pass back over Richard's.

Speaker 8 And so that let us know that that vehicle was here before Richard got here, but and then likely left after he was dead.

Speaker 14 Had to be the killer.

Speaker 10 But how could common tire tracks help them find whoever did this?

Speaker 5 Having seen what he could, Detective Franklin headed back to the sheriff's station to meet Stacey and record her statement.

Speaker 19 It was after midnight by then.

Speaker 15 This feels unreal.

Speaker 27 Stacy explained it was her weekend to care for her grandparents and Richard planned to come by on Sunday, Valentine's Day, to cook dinner.

Speaker 20 He arrived about 5.30.

Speaker 15 And I had my Valentine stuff for him sitting on the desk.

Speaker 15 When he walked in the back door, he was like, oh, well,

Speaker 15 mine are out in the truck, but I thought we would do that at the park.

Speaker 40 Because they'd already planned a brief romantic rendezvous at Belton Ridge Park on the way home to see their kids.

Speaker 15 He was like, come meet me at the park. You know, it's all secluded.

Speaker 15 You know, it'll be, I mean, we'll exchange our Valentines.

Speaker 15 And when he gave me a kiss, he was like, and maybe even make out a, you know, I mean.

Speaker 39 Day or dark night, she said. They both knew the way.

Speaker 38 Intimately.

Speaker 11 We've ridden by that park

Speaker 15 gazillions of times. I don't know, lots and lots of times.
Even when we were dating, we would go and

Speaker 15 find little obscure places and make out like teenagers.

Speaker 14 So after dinner Richard left for the park first she said and she followed a bit later when a night nurse arrived to look after the grandparents.

Speaker 15 I think I probably pulled out of the driveway at about 920

Speaker 15 or so. I called Richard and went to voicemail and I didn't know why and I didn't leave a message

Speaker 15 and I left.

Speaker 15 And when she got there, I knew something was wrong. I could see, I saw his truck immediately because the lights were on.
And so I pulled down and I headed right towards his truck. But as soon as

Speaker 15 I could see him,

Speaker 15 I could see him laying on the ground.

Speaker 14 Ah, but.

Speaker 28 Life is a complicated business, as everybody knows.

Speaker 4 Even lovers aren't always straight with each other.

Speaker 23 These, however, were investigators Stacy was talking to.

Speaker 14 She knew they'd ferret out her secret sooner or later.

Speaker 9 So right away, she came clean.

Speaker 15 It was been having an affair for several, you know, six, seven months.

Speaker 14 An affair.

Speaker 36 His name was Juan Reyes.

Speaker 5 He worked in Stacy's office in a job she had gotten for him.

Speaker 15 You know, I'm in deep with Juan. I know that.

Speaker 15 I'm telling you.

Speaker 19 Oh, yes, she certainly was.

Speaker 38 Stacy and Richard owned the house Reyes lived in with his family.

Speaker 22 She met Juan for sex at an apartment Stacy rented for the purpose.

Speaker 29 She paid for the truck he drove, paid his cell phone bills, and, she admitted, she had just taken him to Vegas and disguised it as a work trip.

Speaker 15 Did Juan know that you were supposed to meet Richard at the park up here? He didn't. How did he know that? I mean,

Speaker 15 I had told him

Speaker 15 probably Tuesday night.

Speaker 15 It was either Tuesday or Thursday.

Speaker 50 Was Stacey saying

Speaker 19 Juan may have been the killer?

Speaker 15 No, I just

Speaker 15 I can't imagine I mean

Speaker 15 I guess I've seen enough TV to know that

Speaker 15 strange thing, you know, things happen,

Speaker 15 but

Speaker 15 I can't imagine him doing that.

Speaker 31 But the detectives certainly could.

Speaker 8 And so we start getting some direction, and we have this unknown set of impressions, so we have a third party at the scene, so now we have to ask ourselves, is it Juan?

Speaker 8 Because he was looking really good at that point.

Speaker 41 Time to go and have a little chat with Mr.

Speaker 14 Juan Reyes.

Speaker 14 Even if it was 4 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 12 Coming up.

Speaker 8 We knocked for a while. We knocked on windows, we walked around the house, and never could get anybody to the door.

Speaker 12 Where would someone be at 4 a.m. if not in bed? When dateline continues.

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Speaker 25 Richard Scheck, 46 years old, had been escorted suddenly from this life as he waited for his wife in a secluded Georgia Park on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 5 There was an outside chance, of course, that it would turn out to be a simple case of murder by mistaken identity.

Speaker 48 Maybe Richard showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 27 Or maybe he witnessed something he wasn't supposed to see.

Speaker 9 But when Stacey told the story of her affair with this guy named Juan Reyes, the cops knew they were listening to a motive as old as time.

Speaker 37 Jealous boyfriend gets rid of competition.

Speaker 9 The cops showed up at Juan's house that very night.

Speaker 8 We knocked for a while. We knocked on windows, we walked around the house, and never could get anybody to the door.

Speaker 7 Well, you say you knocked to the door, door just what politely or no no no

Speaker 8 law enforcement banging on the door and banging on the side of the house and that kind of thing had he fled run away

Speaker 5 later that morning the detectives went to his workplace to see if he'd show there

Speaker 18 he did all right but his appearance had changed from the information that we had gathered uh from uh different sources that showed that he had a beard woodrow tripp was chief of detectives at the time and worked the case with franklin and in in fact, when he showed up at work that morning, he was beardless.

Speaker 5 Or at least, he'd removed his formerly full beard and shrunk it to an appearance-altering goatee.

Speaker 37 So now Juan found himself at the sheriff's station.

Speaker 14 He agreed to talk without a lawyer.

Speaker 54 He sat in the interrogation room for more than four hours, with several detectives having a go at him, including Franklin and Tripp.

Speaker 15 Now, it's my understanding that you and Stacy are romantically involved. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 14 He spilled all of that.

Speaker 28 The affair, the love nest, the extra goodies Stacy showered on him.

Speaker 29 And then they caught him on something.

Speaker 33 Stacy had already told the detectives that she informed Juan on Tuesday or possibly Thursday about the plans to meet Richard that Sunday night of Valentine's Day.

Speaker 15 When did she tell you that? She told me Friday, Friday after work. Would you find it odd if I told you that she's made a statement that she told you earlier than Friday?

Speaker 15 Um

Speaker 15 no I wouldn't f I mean I remember the conversation on Friday. If she mentioned it before that I wouldn't

Speaker 15 I wasn't thinking about it or didn't pay attention to it.

Speaker 15 So there's I'm just

Speaker 15 forgetful sometimes.

Speaker 49 Was he forgetful?

Speaker 43 Or was he hiding something?

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 15 Well, let me ask you this. Did you have anything to do with what's happened to Richard? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Do you know

Speaker 15 who did?

Speaker 49 Okay. And so they asked him.

Speaker 39 Where was he

Speaker 40 before and after dinner on Valentine's Day?

Speaker 15 Me and my son went up to Blockbuster. We ate dinner about, I want to say about 7.30.
And by 10.30, I was in bed.

Speaker 15 I don't sleep much, so three, four hours later, I'm up tossing and turning.

Speaker 14 Wait a minute.

Speaker 29 If he was up tossing and turning, how did he not hear the cops banging on his door?

Speaker 15 I was to tell you, man, I was in my bed. We were there.

Speaker 15 We rang the doorbell like eight ten times.

Speaker 15 We went off for two nights.

Speaker 15 We do sleep with fans on, as I said, fire box fans.

Speaker 15 I did take time on PM, as I stated to you.

Speaker 15 But then you also said that you're light sleeper, you toss and turn last night, and maybe get three, four hours, and

Speaker 15 that's it. Right, I was up about four four o'clock, tossing the turning.
I looked at the clock again at five. We were there.

Speaker 15 I didn't hear you. I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 14 Juan Reyes was like a brick wall about the murder.

Speaker 56 Didn't do it. Didn't know who did.

Speaker 14 Really?

Speaker 10 The polygraph said former chief of detectives Tripp told a different story.

Speaker 18 The polygraph results indicated that he was not telling the truth or he was not being truthful to those relevant questions posed to him about the the homicide.

Speaker 5 Questions such as, did you shoot Richard Sheck? Do you know for sure of anyone who shot Richard Sheck? Were you present when Richard Scheck was shot?

Speaker 18 You know he knows where Richard's going to be. He's in an affair with Stacey.
He's not at home at 3-4 in the morning the night of the murder.

Speaker 17 He shows up the next morning, altered his appearance.

Speaker 16 So when you put all of that together,

Speaker 18 there's a lot of ringing bells there.

Speaker 12 Coming up, will Juan's wife back up his alibi when she finds out he was cheating on her?

Speaker 52 If she wanted to throw him onto the bus, that was the time to do it.

Speaker 8 She had a great opportunity.

Speaker 5 There can be few things in life as shocking, as disorienting, as the sudden death of a loved one.

Speaker 53 Especially one so affectionate, so endearing, so apparently happy.

Speaker 17 And when the dreadful news came with the word murder attached, I couldn't think of a soul that would want to hurt the man. I couldn't think of anyone.

Speaker 9 Richard and his scouting buddy Bill Fanning spent the evening together the night before Richard was killed.

Speaker 40 And so Bill heard him get the phone call from Stacy about their plans for Valentine's Day.

Speaker 17 And he said, we're making plans to get together up near her grandma's.

Speaker 10 Because she was staying up there for the weekend or something.

Speaker 11 I was looking after her.

Speaker 17 She was looking after her grandmother. So was he happy about that?

Speaker 16 He thought, that's great.

Speaker 43 A week later, he was at Richard's Memorial.

Speaker 14 Stacy asked Bill to give the eulogy.

Speaker 17 It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, was to get up and talk about him.

Speaker 17 I remember looking down at the honorary pallbearers, and they were all scouts. There was not a dry eye there.

Speaker 5 At the end of the service, everybody wrote messages to Richard on balloons and released them into the air.

Speaker 48 All fond memories, said his nephew, Brian.

Speaker 21 Everybody had their own personal little story. Richard helped me tie, you know, my first knots in my tent.
Richard helped me build my first fire.

Speaker 21 You could tell the Cub Scouts he was working with that he touched their lives like he had

Speaker 21 me and my sisters.

Speaker 33 Meanwhile, the Hall County Sheriff's Department was working on their only lead.

Speaker 8 We were focusing pretty hard on Juan in the very beginning.

Speaker 57 Juan Reyes, the boyfriend.

Speaker 18 Though we thought that he was the shooter, at the same time,

Speaker 59 he deserved for us to

Speaker 8 verify his story.

Speaker 28 Remember, here's where Juan said he was late in the day, February 14th.

Speaker 15 Me and my son went up to Blockbuster. We ate dinner about, I want to say about 7.30.
And by 10.30, I was in bed.

Speaker 14 There were ways to check, of course.

Speaker 48 They talked to Juan Reyes' wife, ex-wife, actually.

Speaker 53 She was living with him in an effort to reconcile.

Speaker 8 The first thing that I told her was that Juan had been having an affair with Stacy for quite some time.

Speaker 16 She wasn't happy about that.

Speaker 33 No, she wasn't.

Speaker 14 But listen to this.

Speaker 41 The woman scorned still confirmed his alibi.

Speaker 15 He'd gone to Blockbuster while I was cooking, so between six and seven, he had taken six and seven:30. Then he came home, he ate dinner in the room.
I lay down, we went to bed. What time was that?

Speaker 15 I know we were watching the 10:30 news. The 10: I think it was 10 o'clock.
Last time I looked at the time, it was like 10:37.

Speaker 52 If she wanted to throw him onto the bus, that was the time to do it.

Speaker 8 She had a great opportunity.

Speaker 28 Yeah. She didn't take it.

Speaker 40 So maybe Juan was not your guy after that.

Speaker 25 Even though he failed to answer the door, even though the polygraph result was not in his favor, Juan Reyes was innocent.

Speaker 14 He didn't do it. Well, where did that leave you?

Speaker 8 Worried about my case.

Speaker 48 A case that had become personal for Detective Franklin.

Speaker 5 He felt like he knew Richard, like he was mourning him somehow.

Speaker 8 I would sit at the scene, stand at the scene, reflect, and just kind of sit there and try to go over things in my head.

Speaker 8 and try to figure out what direction to take.

Speaker 38 What could he do?

Speaker 33 About all Franklin had to go on was this picture of tire tracks left in the soft soil of the clearing.

Speaker 32 Could he use this to find his killer?

Speaker 35 Not so easy.

Speaker 48 Didn't even know the make of the tire.

Speaker 8 We looked on the internet, and

Speaker 8 we're coming up empty. We went to car dealerships.
We went to retail tire establishments. We would pull up next to cars at traffic lights and look what kind of tires they had on them.

Speaker 51 And you wouldn't see them.

Speaker 8 No, and anybody that we talked to, we looked at their tires, just to be sure.

Speaker 20 Then one day in yet another tire store, a colleague called into a stock area out back.

Speaker 8 He pointed at this tire, and I looked at it, and immediately I said, that's it. And I said, okay, so we pulled it, and it was a Goodyear Integrity.

Speaker 14 Well, that whittled it down.

Speaker 28 Couldn't be more than what?

Speaker 31 Millions of cars with Goodyear Integrity tires.

Speaker 57 But just about the time Franklin was contemplating that little problem.

Speaker 8 Got a phone call from an IT technician at the DeKalb Medical Center.

Speaker 8 Just

Speaker 44 out of the blue?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 32 That's where the office was that Stacy managed.

Speaker 52 The guy's job there was in part clearing the junk from employee email accounts.

Speaker 8 And he noticed that Stacy's inbox for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday had been completely cleaned out.

Speaker 33 Curious.

Speaker 30 That was the very weekend of the murder.

Speaker 8 So he thought enough to give us a call.

Speaker 49 Was Stacy, Mama's spreadsheet, the Cub Scout den leader, actually hiding something?

Speaker 40 Or did she just accidentally hit delete too many times?

Speaker 41 Of course, all those deleted files had been backed up.

Speaker 10 So they got a warrant, collected all of Stacy's emails, not just from that weekend, 4,000 emails in all.

Speaker 8 It was quite a task.

Speaker 14 And a lot of it was spam.

Speaker 14 Except, two emails seemed, well, they stood out.

Speaker 48 Requests from Stacy to her bank to transfer money out of something called a real estate account.

Speaker 8 So a few weeks before the murder was the first transfer, $8,902.

Speaker 8 The second transfer was the Friday before the murder on February the 12th of 2010, and that was for $1,100.

Speaker 57 Both times the money went into the account of somebody named Lynitra Ross, who turned out to be Stacy's friend and work colleague and tenant.

Speaker 38 She was renting a house from Stacy.

Speaker 39 So they went to have a talk with Lynitra.

Speaker 8 How did she react?

Speaker 16 Very calm, very cool.

Speaker 10 Didn't seem to be hiding anything?

Speaker 8 Not based on what I was looking at. She just seemed very, very collected.
And so I asked her about the money transfer.

Speaker 27 He made an audio recording of the interview.

Speaker 60 So how much money did you get overall?

Speaker 60 It's been about, it was $89 at first and then

Speaker 60 $8,900.

Speaker 51 Why did Stacey give her $8,900?

Speaker 60 She transferred some money to me for the repairs and stuff.

Speaker 8 She said that they had redone the roof,

Speaker 8 the interior of the house, carpet flooring, and that kind of thing.

Speaker 50 And the $1,100,

Speaker 33 still more repairs.

Speaker 60 And then we got another leak, Maine Waterval leak.

Speaker 38 But the story made sense.

Speaker 8 It made sense, and she was always cooperative.

Speaker 53 A simple business transaction.

Speaker 25 Detective Franklin was right back where he started.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 8 It gets to a point where you're still looking for

Speaker 8 ways to move forward.

Speaker 40 It was March by then, close to a month since the murder, and they seem to be going nowhere.

Speaker 32 What to do now?

Speaker 19 How about grasp at straws?

Speaker 8 That's called a tower dump.

Speaker 39 A tower dump?

Speaker 8 Yeah, it was a shot in the dark, but I took it.

Speaker 12 Coming up.

Speaker 12 A killer with a gun and a cell phone, about to make a big mistake.

Speaker 8 My way of thinking was if he's sitting there waiting in this secluded dark place at night, is he going to sit there and twiddle his thumbs or maybe he'll make a phone call? Had no idea.

Speaker 12 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 10 One month into his investigation of the murder of Richard Scheck, Detective Franklin was stuck in the weeds.

Speaker 8 I would sit down with my supervisor and I said, look, I'm worried about this case.

Speaker 8 And he would tell me, just hang in there, that all it'll take is a very small piece of information to break this thing loose.

Speaker 14 And sure enough, what do you know? The detective got a phone call.

Speaker 15 During the crime, when it happened, the car was missing.

Speaker 35 The caller was Stacy's cousin, Connie.

Speaker 9 She'd been troubled by something, she told the detective.

Speaker 13 It took me a good three weeks contemplating, you know, should I call? Should I not?

Speaker 35 After all, Stacy was like a big sister, said Connie.

Speaker 33 But there was just something wrong.

Speaker 53 Like the strange business about her grandparents' 2009 Impala.

Speaker 13 Stacy was supposed to sell it for them because they were having problems and they needed money for medical bills.

Speaker 32 But after Stacy took the car.

Speaker 13 A couple weeks later, it'd be back at her house. And then a couple weeks later, it wasn't.
Then it got to the point where she said that she sold it for $16,000.

Speaker 5 And yet Stacy never produced the money.

Speaker 8 The family was persistent about this car. And so finally we're like, you know, it's likely that it was used.
We don't know where it's at. Let's find this thing.

Speaker 39 So they ran the VIN number, found the car.

Speaker 32 Stacy had sold it by then.

Speaker 8 And lo and behold, it's got Goodyear Integrities on it. So at that point, I was confident that I'd found the car that Richard was killed from.

Speaker 14 Which was great, except who was in it?

Speaker 39 No idea.

Speaker 54 Detective Franklin was still stuck.

Speaker 54 So he took a long shot.

Speaker 10 He asked for something called a tower dump, information dump, that is, from this cell tower on a farm near the crime scene.

Speaker 8 I'd subpoenaed all calls that generated from the tower that services Belton Bridge Park for the night of the murder from about 7 p.m. till about 9.30.

Speaker 30 Till 9.30, because that's when Stacy arrived and found Richard.

Speaker 5 Why start looking at 7 p.m.?

Speaker 8 It was apparent to me that the gunman lay in wait for Richard.

Speaker 8 And so my way of thinking was if he's sitting there waiting in this secluded dark place at night, is he going to sit there and twigdle his thumbs or maybe he'll make a phone call had no idea

Speaker 50 if the killer called anybody it should show up on the tower's record of outgoing cell calls four major carriers on that tower thousands of calls but what numbers should he look for

Speaker 8 why not play a hunch he'd had all along stacy's involved somehow you have this third vehicle at the scene you have overkill with the with the way richard died so based on all those things a murder for hire starts crossing your mind Franklin's idea was to compare the numbers from the tower dump to the phone numbers on Stacy's personal contact list.

Speaker 8 The best source of information I felt I had was Stacy's contact list. It was 258 contacts, I think.

Speaker 9 So if you could find any phone call coming from the crime scene that happened to be on her contact list, that would give you a big

Speaker 43 numbers to compare.

Speaker 14 But then he got lucky. Really lucky.

Speaker 30 Maybe 150 numbers into into his search.

Speaker 14 There it was.

Speaker 39 A match.

Speaker 8 It said Reggie.

Speaker 5 The call was placed at 8.40 p.m.

Speaker 8 And it was a 28-second call. So Richard left the grandparents' house at about 8.15.
It's about a 15-minute drive from the grandparents' house to the park.

Speaker 10 Would have got there around 8.30.

Speaker 8 He would have got there at 8.30, and we felt he was killed as soon as he stepped out of his truck. So you're looking at him dying sometime right around 8.30 to 8.45.

Speaker 8 So here's a call from Reggie in Stacey's contact list at 8.40 p.m. on the night of the murder.

Speaker 33 But who was Reggie?

Speaker 8 And under Reggie's company name, it said Mr. Results.

Speaker 37 So Franklin's next step, naturally.

Speaker 8 And I simply Googled Mr. Results.
The first link was Mr. Results' personal training.

Speaker 49 His name was Reginald Coleman, personal trainer and former semi-professional boxer.

Speaker 32 And he held workout sessions at Stacy's office.

Speaker 37 Then Detective Franklin looked at the number Reggie called.

Speaker 8 And I should have already recognized it because I already had it in my notes, because it was Lenitra Ross.

Speaker 30 Lenitra Ross, the woman who claimed she received $10,000 from Stacy for house repairs within three weeks of the murder.

Speaker 14 Now the trail was warm. Very warm.

Speaker 35 He pulled phone records for all three, Reggie, Lenitra, and Stacy, combed through hundreds of calls and texts.

Speaker 8 Until... A very interesting sequence of calls actually emerged from that.

Speaker 33 A sequence.

Speaker 30 On February 14th, it went like this.

Speaker 22 At 6.42 p.m., Reggie called Lenitra.

Speaker 4 At 6.45, Lenitra called Stacy.

Speaker 35 At 6.48,

Speaker 14 Lenitra called Reggie back.

Speaker 8 In my mind, Reggie called Lenitra and said, are we still doing this? Lanitra called Stacey, and Stacy confirming, yes, he's here. I'll have him at the park.

Speaker 8 And then Lenitra calling Reggie back, saying, yes, go up there.

Speaker 50 And after that, no more calls.

Speaker 31 Until 8.40 p.m., when Reggie's call to Lenitra was captured by the tower near the crime scene.

Speaker 17 The call at 8.40 p.m.

Speaker 8 to Lenitra Ross was Reggie Connor saying, it's done.

Speaker 14 And then, get this.

Speaker 31 At 9 p.m., Lenitra sent Stacey a text.

Speaker 40 Happy Valentine's Day, it said.

Speaker 19 Was that a code?

Speaker 8 It was.

Speaker 44 Code for, it's done.

Speaker 31 He's dead.

Speaker 50 Almost there now.

Speaker 28 All he needed was a money trail to prove murder for hire.

Speaker 9 So, bank records this time.

Speaker 17 So, these are the same tedious work as the cell phone records.

Speaker 22 And guess what?

Speaker 49 That $10,000 that Stacy transferred to Lanitra supposedly from a real estate account for home repairs,

Speaker 40 only $1,800 went into that.

Speaker 27 The rest went to Lanitra for cash.

Speaker 28 Lanitra wrote Reggie a check for $700.

Speaker 8 All within three weeks of the murder. That's the whole thing had come together at that point.
Reggie's my trigger man. My middle person is Lenitra Ross.

Speaker 53 And the mastermind, Stacy.

Speaker 53 Three months after the Valentine's Day murder of Richard Scheck.

Speaker 15 You're charged with mouse murder.

Speaker 4 Lenitra Ross.

Speaker 15 I'll read you that. Make you aware of what the charges.
Man, it's mouse murder.

Speaker 28 Reggie Coleman

Speaker 5 and Stacey Sheck were arrested and charged with murder.

Speaker 14 But then?

Speaker 63 I told Stacey,

Speaker 63 we can fight this.

Speaker 37 The surprise was coming.

Speaker 14 Check that. Surprises.

Speaker 54 More than one.

Speaker 4 Stacy had a story to tell.

Speaker 12 Coming up, is there ever an excuse for murder?

Speaker 15 Having lived through that, I was never going to let it happen to my kids.

Speaker 20 Three months after Stacey Sheck found her husband's bullet-perforated body at Belton Bridge Park, she and her alleged confederates were under arrest arrest for murder.

Speaker 4 It was just crazy.

Speaker 22 Didn't make sense.

Speaker 23 A mother of three, Cub Scout leader?

Speaker 54 Surely she'd come up with a defense when she met with her attorney, Max Hirsch.

Speaker 39 But no, that's not what happened.

Speaker 52 Far from it.

Speaker 8 She laid it all out.

Speaker 39 She didn't hesitate.

Speaker 63 She didn't minimize. She told me exactly what the plan was.

Speaker 29 The plan for murder.

Speaker 37 Her lawyer, no surprise, had his own plan.

Speaker 63 I told Stacey, I already know how we would defend this case.

Speaker 63 She looked me straight in the eye, without hesitation, and said, no, the gig is up.

Speaker 63 I did this. What I did was wrong.
No more lies.

Speaker 38 Stacy wanted to confess.

Speaker 40 It took a while to arrange it, but seven months after the murder, with the recorder running, confessed she did.

Speaker 15 I'm not going to keep lying. I'm done.
I'm done, you know.

Speaker 10 It all started over lunch with Lenitra, said Stacey, when she told her friend she wished her husband was dead.

Speaker 22 And Lenitra offered the services of her sometime boyfriend, Reggie.

Speaker 15 And I was like, Reggie, really? And she was like, and she said, yeah, that's what he did. That's what he does.
That's how he supplements his income. You know, he does jobs.

Speaker 44 So, said Stacey, Lenitra arranged for the three of them to meet.

Speaker 14 And Reggie agreed to kill Richard.

Speaker 15 Then I was like, well, how much cash? And he was like, well, you know, I was thinking around $10,000.

Speaker 15 I was like, okay.

Speaker 53 That was the $10,000 Stacy transferred to Lenitra.

Speaker 40 She gave the money to Reggie.

Speaker 29 Stacy also agreed to give him her grandparents' 2009 Impala.

Speaker 50 Yes, that Impala.

Speaker 52 And a house Lenitra was renting from her.

Speaker 22 A week later, all three went to scout the crime scene.

Speaker 15 So he was like, yeah, this would be, this is the perfect place.

Speaker 15 And he even made a comment that, you know, I might have to use this place more often.

Speaker 33 But the night of the murder, said Stacy, Reggie botched the plan.

Speaker 15 It was supposed to be a robbery. That's what he had said.
It was supposed to be one shot to the head. I said, I don't want him to suffer.
I don't want him to see anything.

Speaker 22 But why would she possibly want to have Richard killed?

Speaker 20 To that question, Stacey offered this story.

Speaker 15 Things started clicking in my brain of what was happening with my kids and my family and

Speaker 15 I was convinced that my kids were being harmed.

Speaker 5 Stacy said she believed Richard was molesting her sons.

Speaker 54 They were acting out and there was something one of them told her.

Speaker 15 You don't know what happens to he does to me when you're not here.

Speaker 15 That kind of, you know, that stuck in my brain for sure.

Speaker 43 To her, there was just one solution.

Speaker 15 I didn't want police, I didn't want a divorce, I just wanted him dead.

Speaker 1 And so here it was, her

Speaker 30 reason for murder.

Speaker 5 Stacy said she had been molested as a child repeatedly, and she knew what it was like.

Speaker 15 Having lived through that, I was never gonna let it happen to my kids. Did you ask the boys?

Speaker 15 Not not direct, not

Speaker 15 directly enough. Not then.

Speaker 15 I have since.

Speaker 27 It was after her arrests her sons asked her, why?

Speaker 39 What would make you want to hurt him?

Speaker 26 And she explained.

Speaker 15 People touched me in a bad way when I was a kid, and I reacted in certain ways. And sometimes your behaviors made me worry that you were getting touched in a bad way.

Speaker 30 And the son, who made that earlier statement to his mother, responded.

Speaker 35 Devastated.

Speaker 15 He said, no.

Speaker 15 He said, no, he said, I'm sorry I exaggerated. I'm sorry that I said those things.
I blew things out of proportion, Mom.

Speaker 14 Stacy was wrong.

Speaker 5 There was no abuse.

Speaker 15 Now that's a hard thing to deal with, too, because now he has guilt.

Speaker 49 But was the motive she admitted real, or was a more venal truth still withheld?

Speaker 9 There would be an answer, just not quite yet.

Speaker 10 We asked for an interview with Stacy, but prison rules wouldn't allow it.

Speaker 41 So her attorney spoke on her behalf.

Speaker 63 She understands completely what she did. She understands it is her fault.

Speaker 35 Richard Scheck is dead.

Speaker 63 She doesn't have excuses.

Speaker 51 Stacy Sheck pleaded guilty to murder.

Speaker 41 Reggie Coleman did the same.

Speaker 5 Lenitra Ross stood trial and was found guilty.

Speaker 27 And all of them were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 14 The case solved.

Speaker 9 Three convictions for the detective who poured through reams of phone numbers and sniffed out a murder for hire case.

Speaker 8 You know, when your gut tells you something, you should go with it. And if it makes sense, then

Speaker 8 that's probably what it is.

Speaker 7 Pretty obvious if I ask you where this fits in

Speaker 19 your catalog of cases.

Speaker 8 There will never be another one like it, I'm pretty sure. I hope not.

Speaker 14 And now finally, the last admission.

Speaker 35 A few days after Stacy was sent away, Richard's sister Carol went to see her, glared at Stacy through the glass partition.

Speaker 31 She didn't buy Stacy's story about her reason for killing Richard.

Speaker 42 I said

Speaker 42 okay

Speaker 42 Stacey

Speaker 42 this is it. I want to know and I said no bull

Speaker 42 no lies

Speaker 42 I want to know why you had Richard killed.

Speaker 14 There was a long pause and then

Speaker 19 out it came.

Speaker 42 She said because of my actions back then

Speaker 42 and

Speaker 42 because of the way I was living my life

Speaker 42 I knew

Speaker 39 that

Speaker 42 I couldn't divorce Richard because if I divorced Richard

Speaker 14 he would

Speaker 42 have enough of a chance to get custody of my kids which he had adopted legally

Speaker 42 and I couldn't let that happen

Speaker 42 and I just looked at her and I said thank you and I hung hung up the phone.

Speaker 29 But if the answer satisfied some need to know, the pain was and is no different.

Speaker 19 Richard Scheck is dead.

Speaker 53 His quirkiness, adventurous spirit, devotion to those Boy Scouts, all gone.

Speaker 17 We had a thing, it was called a Richard fire. If it wasn't stoked up and burning bright and the flames almost licking the treetops, it wasn't a good fire.

Speaker 17 So if you want a Richard fire, that's the fire you got got to have. And when we're at scouting events and we see the big fire we built and the smoke coming up, we all talk about Richard.

Speaker 12 That's all for now.

Speaker 25 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 12 Thanks for joining us.

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