Searching for Allen

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Speaker 9 You guys can camera, I check the serial numbers. It's Alan.
You know how I know it's Alan? There's a card inside that says Alan Ross.

Speaker 11 You're listening to two men finding something they dreaded.

Speaker 11 A scene from an edgy film. A true story conceived, written, and directed in desperation.

Speaker 11 The director, German filmmaker Christian Bauer.

Speaker 13 It was like a vortex I didn't want to get pulled into.

Speaker 15 This is his friend, cameraman Alan Ross of Chicago.

Speaker 16 We're driving along Route 5 here,

Speaker 16 off in the boondocks.

Speaker 17 Alan and Christian worked on seven films together, exploring their shared fascination with life on the fringe.

Speaker 20 But in this production, Alan would not be the cameraman.

Speaker 24 This time, the man behind the camera would be the subject, because Alan had suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.

Speaker 2 Why make a film about your missing friend?

Speaker 13 Because I wanted to find out on a gut level. I had been afraid of approaching this project for a long time and I think this kind of fear accompanied us through the whole project.

Speaker 15 Fear because 42 year old Alan Ross had vanished in late 1995 and the last years of his life, while seemingly filled with romance, spiritual growth, and an American Gothic style existence, had more truthfully been cloaked in mystery, intrigue, and danger, in the grasp of a shadowy group few could even begin to understand.

Speaker 17 His friends from the film world, helpless, decided to try to find their friend by making a film called Missing Alan.

Speaker 34 It could have been like simply a couple weeks' worth of work. Who knew? I mean, I had no idea where this all was going to go.

Speaker 23 Joining Christian was Gaylon Amerzian.

Speaker 17 She'd also known Alan as a colleague, beloved by many in Chicago's hard-scrabbled but tightly knit film community.

Speaker 34 Alan was witty and charming, and he did all of us favors. He'd be there with his camera, working long hours, working hard.

Speaker 26 Christian, almost in the sense of a Rorschach test, if I say the name Alan Ross to you, what are the images, the emotions, the ideas that come to mind?

Speaker 13 Oh, there's this quirky guy. He looks like a college student, horn-rimmed glasses,

Speaker 13 his own style of clothing from second-hand stores, and he has this specific laughter which is so unique to him. He chuckles.

Speaker 13 I think we inspired each other and he was one of those cameramen where you know you're always getting something better than what you would have thought of yourself.

Speaker 13 That was on the technical side. On the human side,

Speaker 13 Alan was a hard worker. He worked long hours.
He never got tired. He carried around his own equipment.

Speaker 15 Alan was an artist.

Speaker 31 He'd first picked up a film camera as a teenager in the suburbs of Chicago and soon made his mark with the acclaimed Grandfather Trilogy, chronicling the last few months of his grandfather's life.

Speaker 11 We got that, boys.

Speaker 38 As an adult, he'd moved into a loft downtown and lived the bohemian life, barely scraping by, driving a cab when he needed cash.

Speaker 33 Pursuing his art, Alan met Christian, and their collaboration began, working on films that touched on their mutual interest in the odd and unexplained, from a Wall Street broker turned monk to UFO abductees.

Speaker 35 Only one thing, it seemed, could compare with Alan's love for film.

Speaker 11 It was his love for the city, for Chicago, its people, its action.

Speaker 35 But in 1993, Alan, the artist, the seeker, found a love that seemed to match his love of film and his city.

Speaker 15 Her name was Linda.

Speaker 13 Alan told me that she was a nurse, that she now was writing books, one of those books he had illustrated, and he told me that he was very happy.

Speaker 18 What surprised everyone was not that Alan was in love, but that he was leaving Chicago.

Speaker 45 He says, Brad, I've never been happier. And what do you say to your brother then after he said, I've never been happier in my life.

Speaker 17 Alan's twin brother Brad was as shocked as anyone to hear Alan was leaving the town he loved and for rural Oklahoma.

Speaker 45 I just said, you know, I'm happy for you. If you're that happy Al, then go for it.

Speaker 26 If it's Oklahoma, so be it.

Speaker 45 Right, if it's Alaska, I don't care. If you're that happy, Al, then that's all I care about.

Speaker 15 So Alan and Linda left for Oklahoma, settling in Guthrie, a small town about 30 miles outside Oklahoma City.

Speaker 22 As was his custom, Alan kept in touch with family and friends by postcard.

Speaker 15 Trouble was, this time the postcards that started arriving from Oklahoma were a little odd, even for Alan.

Speaker 13 He's sending me little notes like

Speaker 13 I seized the opportunity to seek answers for questions I had not been able to ask.

Speaker 14 Sound like Alan?

Speaker 13 Very much.

Speaker 26 Not surprising, huh?

Speaker 13 That's why I liked him, you know, because he could be so unusual and quirky.

Speaker 26 There are some other cards, though, some of the postcards that made you wonder what was going on with your friend, huh?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Like,

Speaker 13 the masters will shut you up in a pen with others. Then it will be up to you to find find a house to enter.

Speaker 11 By 1995, two years after moving to Oklahoma, it seemed all but certain that this time Alan was not coming back. In fact, Alan and Linda had found a new home in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Speaker 11 Yet Alan continued working with Christian, making films, and in the fall of 1995, just as filming on a documentary on the Mississippi River was wrapping up in New Orleans, guess who showed up unannounced?

Speaker 11 It was the mystery woman, Linda, who had whisked Alan out of town before his family and friends had even met her.

Speaker 13 She was not what I had expected her to be.

Speaker 26 What was her demeanor at that appearance?

Speaker 13 She was very demanding. She was very controlling.
She was not the caring kind of woman I had imagined her to be when I saw her on the picture the first time.

Speaker 24 In fact, Alan seemed embarrassed by her presence.

Speaker 21 When she mugged for his camera, Alan panned away.

Speaker 13 He's telling her, stay away from us. But she follows the camera and then she dances.
He wants to get away from it and he continues his pan and she just disappears out of the frame.

Speaker 23 Two years into their partnership, was the bloom coming off the romance between Alan and Linda.

Speaker 17 Christian would never get the chance to ask his friend about it.

Speaker 31 He would never see Alan again.

Speaker 20 For Alan's brother, too, after the shoot in New Orleans, something suddenly changed.

Speaker 22 Alan had stopped sending postcards or returning Brad's phone calls.

Speaker 45 He would never miss a holiday, never miss a birthday. So when Thanksgiving came and we didn't hear from him,

Speaker 45 that was just like unbelievable.

Speaker 26 Weeks later, Christmas.

Speaker 45 Yeah, then Christmas was the real turning point because we knew Al wouldn't miss Christmas.

Speaker 15 What had happened to Alan?

Speaker 19 His family and film world friends were about to discover that Alan's life had in fact taken a far more sinister turn than any a scriptwriter could imagine.

Speaker 17 By early 1996, it had been weeks since filmmaker Alan Ross had spoken to his friends or family or been seen in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Speaker 33 His friends in the film world, Christian Bauer and Galon Amersian, tried tried unsuccessfully to reach him.

Speaker 22 But they also remembered Alan chit-chatting once about how easy it would be to simply vanish and establish a new life and identity.

Speaker 23 Maybe that's what this was all about.

Speaker 34 I was hoping that by some bizarre chance, I might get a phone call and he'd say, you know, I don't want you to find me. Just lay off.

Speaker 40 Alan's twin brother Brad in Chicago had also attempted to reach Alan.

Speaker 41 He'd also called the Cheyenne police, looking for some reasonable explanation why his brother had seemingly disappeared from the home that Alan had shared with the mysterious Linda, the nurse and author who was his common-law wife.

Speaker 26 Did you ask the police to go over to the house and ask some questions? Yes. What did they say to that?

Speaker 45 Well, you know, they didn't really take me too seriously.

Speaker 19 But Cheyenne police finally did make a move three months after Alan's disappearance.

Speaker 31 They'd received a call out of the blue from a man who said he was Linda's ex-husband, a man named Dennis Green.

Speaker 31 He made the stunning claim that Alan wasn't missing, but dead, murdered by Linda, and buried, he told police, in the basement of the couple's home.

Speaker 26 Linda's ex-husband said, look in the basement and what happened.

Speaker 45 They looked around and they found nothing.

Speaker 11 Alan's friends and family breathed a sigh of relief. They couldn't bring themselves to believe that he was truly dead, and they couldn't find his common-law wife, Linda.

Speaker 11 So they asked themselves, had they somehow missed a message in those cryptic postcards that Alan used to send? Maybe he vanished on purpose, gone undercover perhaps to shoot a film.

Speaker 11 The family hired a private detective, even psychics, but still no answers.

Speaker 11 In hindsight, there's almost universal regret that they didn't do more, didn't go out to Wyoming to look for him, but they didn't.

Speaker 23 In fact, it wasn't until 1999.

Speaker 17 four years after Alan's disappearance, that the filmmaker's friends and family formed a partnership to try to find Alan.

Speaker 20 With the family doing the research, the filmmakers the legwork.

Speaker 15 And the project would take a form that Alan would have loved. A film that would be part mystery, part ode to the man they all missed.

Speaker 26 So you're using your documentary and camera almost as a searchlight to show it into some dark places, huh?

Speaker 13 I had been missing him for four years.

Speaker 13 And there was no way that there was going to be an official investigation. The case was closed, more or less.

Speaker 13 The only way to find out something about him, about his disappearance, about his fate, was to mount this documentary and to start looking for him with the camera.

Speaker 13 This is Linda's handwriting.

Speaker 23 And almost as soon as their work began, their fax machine was jammed with documents, including a letter, it seemed, written by Linda herself.

Speaker 13 After Ellen was shot, he was dragged perhaps downstairs. I saw Dennis carried two sacks of concrete, which were by the back door downstairs.

Speaker 31 The mysterious Linda, it appeared, was now confirming that Alan was dead.

Speaker 49 But in her version, she turned the tables on the man who'd accused her of murdering Alan.

Speaker 51 Linda said the real killer was, in fact, her ex-husband, Dennis Green.

Speaker 46 Information, it turns out, Cheyenne police had received by fax from Linda as well.

Speaker 15 The filmmakers knew now that they not only had to reach her, they had to learn as much as they could about this perplexing woman Alan loved.

Speaker 42 They discovered her legal name was Linda Green.

Speaker 23 In the 1980s, she was a registered nurse, featured in a 1980s news story about an innovative Oklahoma hospice where she worked.

Speaker 24 Linda had also been married, not just twice, but five times.

Speaker 46 And she wasn't just writing books, sometime actress and poet.

Speaker 36 When she met Alan, she was leading an esoteric group that Alan had only dropped hints about, a group known as the Samaritan Foundation.

Speaker 26 When did you first hear the name Samaritans?

Speaker 45 You know, we heard it when he left.

Speaker 26 Did you have a sense of what they were about?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 45 You know, we always knew Al would do different things, but he always would go and come back.

Speaker 35 Linda's Samaritan Foundation had perhaps 50 to 60 followers from all walks of life.

Speaker 51 What held them together was the belief that Linda could answer the great mysteries of life by dowsing, using swaying pendulums to give them answers.

Speaker 27 This was more than the dowsing that might come to mind, say a person using a forked twig to locate water.

Speaker 31 This kind of dowsing involved moving a pendulum over objects and the pendulum gave the Samaritans guidance in making the biggest and smallest of decisions.

Speaker 17 They used a pendulum to decide to relocate from Oklahoma to Wyoming.

Speaker 43 They dowsed a roadmap and packed up.

Speaker 48 But Linda was more than a simple believer. She was writing books the Samaritans were sure would revolutionize the world to their way of thinking.

Speaker 26 Can you see your friend Alan drawn into this insane obsessiveness?

Speaker 34 At one point, Alan sat me down and showed me a pendulum, and I just didn't get it. I didn't see what the reaction was for him.

Speaker 26 This wasn't just a parlor game, the way he was treating it.

Speaker 34 He definitely gave me the impression that he was... he thought that this meant something.

Speaker 24 And the bits and pieces that filmmakers learned about linda's group were becoming more troubling it turned out that dowsing was just one element of their beliefs there was also an obsessive fear of telephones and government agents obscure teachings about zombies far-out stuff

Speaker 11 linda the nurse the wife posing by their little house was a leader of a cult i had absolutely no clue

Speaker 13 And I wondered why did my friend not tell me about it.

Speaker 26 Having beer some nights, I heard this interesting thing has come into my life.

Speaker 2 What do you make of it?

Speaker 13 He never told me anything.

Speaker 26 You never talked that candidly, certainly, about the subjects with the UFOs and other offbeat interests, huh?

Speaker 13 So it would have been quite normal to mention that

Speaker 13 to me, but he did not.

Speaker 13 And I later learned that Elen had doused the question, should I tell Christian about it? And the dowsing rod or the pendulum told him, don't tell him.

Speaker 26 So doors were closing in your relationship and you weren't aware of it?

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 13 And you know, when I learned about when Elm disappeared and there was no sign of life from him, it was like I had to find out what's behind this wall, which he didn't allow me to cross.

Speaker 13 And that's why I had to start my investigation, too.

Speaker 14 What was the lure of the cult to the followers?

Speaker 13 What is the lure of any cult? Might be a good question. I think we have people who are looking for a meaning in life and they don't have any answers.
I think that was what was happening with Alan too.

Speaker 26 And Linda had answers and texts and the path to go.

Speaker 13 And she choose him as her mate.

Speaker 24 Could Alan's mate have murdered him?

Speaker 21 The filmmakers didn't know where Linda had gone and the Samaritan she'd led from Oklahoma to Wyoming had scattered to the wind.

Speaker 42 And the filmmakers weren't learning much from the followers they had been able to find.

Speaker 26 How sensitive a task was it to try and find out who the Samaritans were and what they knew?

Speaker 34 Well, sensitive isn't the word. It was difficult because people just didn't want to talk.

Speaker 20 But the filmmakers soon found evidence that raised more questions.

Speaker 23 The Cult Awareness Network told them if Alan was with the Samaritans, he was in serious danger.

Speaker 33 And the friends learned that just months after Alan vanished, another member of the group had thrown herself in front of a train in Oklahoma.

Speaker 28 Linda, they were told, had declared the woman to be evil.

Speaker 13 There was this

Speaker 13 feeling that something

Speaker 13 evil

Speaker 13 was surrounding us.

Speaker 18 Did you have reason to be afraid as you went along in this?

Speaker 13 Sometimes you don't need a real reason to

Speaker 13 be afraid.

Speaker 17 Despite their fears, the filmmakers pressed on.

Speaker 31 To find out what had happened to Alan, they'd have to return to the places where Alan and Linda had lived as man and wife.

Speaker 13 Nobody has looked for Alan in Oklahoma, the home state of the Samaritans.

Speaker 19 And Oklahoma would quickly bring a major discovery.

Speaker 9 You got the camera, I checked the serial numbers. It's Alan.
You know how I know it's Alan? For the card inside that says Alan Ross.

Speaker 33 The filmmakers found the first tangible trace of Alan in the spring of 2000.

Speaker 15 His film camera and other belongings found in a garage near a home in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 17 The people next door, strangers, had simply dropped it off without explanations.

Speaker 52 They just gave it to me and told me to get rid of it or sell it or whatever I want to do with it.

Speaker 47 The woman who had the camera also had an important detail.

Speaker 52 And who gave it to you? Some blonde lady. I don't know who she was.

Speaker 13 About this tall.

Speaker 53 She was short, yeah.

Speaker 13 Is this the woman who lives next door?

Speaker 52 Yeah, that's the lady next door.

Speaker 23 The woman in the photos was Linda.

Speaker 29 She'd lived next door for a short time after Alan's disappearance.

Speaker 15 But the discovery of Alan's camera was troubling.

Speaker 31 His friends said he'd never be willingly separated from it.

Speaker 21 And it was just the first ominous sign they found in Oklahoma.

Speaker 41 In an old building that was once the Samaritan's headquarters, the filmmakers found more indications that Alan was almost certainly dead.

Speaker 31 including his abandoned car.

Speaker 13 We called Brad, Ellen's twin brother, and told him what we found.

Speaker 19 Within days, Brad arrived, hoping to finally find his brother's body.

Speaker 11 Holding his breath, he searched the car.

Speaker 52 Thank God for that.

Speaker 13 I appreciate you doing it.

Speaker 15 Then inside the headquarters, Brad and Christian searched the basement, where one of the rooms had been suspiciously covered with fresh concrete.

Speaker 4 What were you expecting?

Speaker 10 I want to find him and bring him home. That's what I want to do.

Speaker 10 You know, he's my only brother that way.

Speaker 50 And I have one other, but

Speaker 10 I wanted to get him and bring him home. That's what people need to do.

Speaker 11 But Brad would not find his brother there. The filmmakers then followed Brad as he scoured the town for any sign of Alan.

Speaker 54 Like I said, he was even sick and he still got word to me. And I mean, we have not gotten one Christmas card, one

Speaker 54 birthday card, nothing.

Speaker 2 But the emotional search had been fruitless.

Speaker 15 All the evidence seemed to indicate not only that Alan was dead, but that Linda had to know what happened.

Speaker 17 They simply had to find her.

Speaker 15 And when they did, this story of missing Alan would take another bizarre turn.

Speaker 15 Well, you'll be looking a long time for him.

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Speaker 2 By the spring of 2000, it had been more than four years since cameraman Alan Ross had last been seen in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Speaker 15 Had he been killed, as the evidence seemed to indicate, by his common-law wife, Linda, or her followers in the cult-like Samaritan Foundation?

Speaker 15 To the filmmakers, Alan's friends who had set out to find him, it seemed that Linda was on the run.

Speaker 17 They tried unsuccessfully for months to reach her until one day she found them.

Speaker 13 Hi, Christian speaking. Okay, Genevieve, I'm doing fine.
How are you?

Speaker 15 Linda, it turned out, the former nurse, amateur actress, and author, had reinvented herself again.

Speaker 23 Calling from an unknown location, she now called herself Genevieve.

Speaker 23 And although she'd sent out faxes claiming that Alan was murdered by her ex-husband, in a series of conversations with the filmmakers, Linda changed her story again.

Speaker 13 I read a fax by you saying that Dennis, your ex-husband, had killed Eln.

Speaker 11 No, he buried him. He buried him?

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 44 So who killed him then? The specialists.

Speaker 39 Once they go too far and the mind control shit, they terminate him. That's all I'm allowed to say.
It's top secret.

Speaker 13 The whole thing doesn't make much sense.

Speaker 13 Do you hear the story? Elne is subject of a mind control experiment and that the mind control experiment went out of hand and that the specialists had

Speaker 13 to kill Alan because he was not longer under control.

Speaker 11 The news story she told was odd but maybe not so odd for her. It turned out Linda's family had had her committed to a mental health facility for a few weeks shortly after Alan disappeared.

Speaker 13 She warned us to stay away from the whole story because

Speaker 13 who was involved, the government, the CIA, and this conspiracy theory. And after that point,

Speaker 13 we are not able to get hold of Linda anymore.

Speaker 23 The filmmakers were devastated.

Speaker 15 After months of work, they hadn't found Alan at all.

Speaker 31 Only his camera, his abandoned car, and a few possessions.

Speaker 15 With little hard evidence in hand, the filmmakers returned to the last place Alan was seen, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and met with the police.

Speaker 52 You know, my fear is that, you know, I

Speaker 52 dismembered Alan

Speaker 52 either in the bathtub in

Speaker 52 the Cheyenne house.

Speaker 13 We tried to give them everything we found, all the information we have.

Speaker 11 Found his camera.

Speaker 26 Undisturbed bank account.

Speaker 26 Relationship with this woman, the odd group that she's shepherding.

Speaker 13 They listened to us intently, but they also told us that what we had brought to them would not be enough to take any further steps.

Speaker 13 to a prosecutor to a jury and for us it was important to get them back to the house we wanted them to take the house apart to look for evidence but cheyenne police had already searched the house where alan linda and the samaritans lived four years before

Speaker 58 so the filmmakers left wyoming and headed back to begin to put their documentary together hope once again fading that the mystery of missing alan might be solved until alan's brother brad stepped in and made one last desperate plea to a Cheyenne detective.

Speaker 45 He said, well, I'll go in the house one more time. He told us later, he said, Brad, basically,

Speaker 45 that was it.

Speaker 45 If we would have gone in the second time and found nothing, the case was going to be pretty much closed.

Speaker 26 What did the detective see in the house?

Speaker 45 He said he saw like something just sticking out of the ground in the crawl space. You know, he said, by the...
grace of God, it was just, it was just by luck.

Speaker 33 Unbelievably, it was a black sneaker, a converse high top, footwear of choice for Mavericks and nonconformists like Alan Ross.

Speaker 31 When police chipped away a thin layer of concrete, they found the body.

Speaker 33 Alan was no longer missing.

Speaker 16 You really do want to find part of your family.

Speaker 45 You know, you really want them back.

Speaker 14 You know, I really feel for the soldiers that are missing in action, that they can't go get them.

Speaker 28 and bring them back.

Speaker 14 There's a real sense about that.

Speaker 10 Being able to bury your family.

Speaker 11 Brad Ross would finally be able to lay his twin brother to rest.

Speaker 11 An autopsy showed that Alan had died from a single gunshot wound to the head and that his body had apparently never left the house, found where it had been concealed more than four years before in a crawl space.

Speaker 50 Police who had searched the house earlier had inexplicably missed it.

Speaker 26 What do you think about the professionalism or the intensity? of the Wyoming investigation.

Speaker 13 I think about all the evidence we might have been able to find if the police had found the body in 1996.

Speaker 13 We might have the person who killed Elen Ross now in jail.

Speaker 15 The search for justice put the filmmakers back on the trail of Alan's common-law wife, Linda.

Speaker 15 And in the spring of 2001, they finally caught up with her in New Orleans, and she agreed to her first on-camera interview.

Speaker 59 It's beyond my framework of reality how somebody

Speaker 59 could

Speaker 59 do something something so terrible.

Speaker 23 No longer the vibrant charismatic leader, the years were now showing on Linda.

Speaker 18 And Linda returned to the story that Alan had been murdered on the day before Thanksgiving 1995 by her ex-husband Dennis during an argument in the house where the body had been found.

Speaker 59 He killed Alan Ross.

Speaker 59 He killed him, and then he said he would kill me and my son if I opened my mouth.

Speaker 42 While Linda's tenuous grasp of reality made it hard to hang a murder charge on her word, some detectives thought her theory of the motive for the murder did make a certain amount of sense.

Speaker 35 People who commit murder usually kill for love, money, or revenge.

Speaker 15 In this case, Linda accused her ex-husband of killing Alan in an argument over money made from selling Linda's books.

Speaker 26 Did you think she was telling you the truth, what she was saying?

Speaker 34 It's hard for me to fathom what the truth is as far as Linda's concerned because she had so many different versions she rattled off during the course of the interview.

Speaker 17 Although authorities in Cheyenne questioned Linda, her statements led to no charges.

Speaker 15 And a year later, in 2002, the actress, author, cult leader, and murder suspect died of liver failure.

Speaker 31 Her family says she died from excessive drinking.

Speaker 29 to quiet the voices in her head.

Speaker 33 Linda's death, it seemed, threatened the investigation.

Speaker 28 With no physical evidence that her ex-husband had killed Alan, would the case die?

Speaker 15 Not yet, because after Linda's death, a new mystery woman came forward.

Speaker 53 Sometimes at night, I lie in bed and I just say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 31 Her name is Julia Williams.

Speaker 15 For years, she was one of Linda's most dedicated friends and a follower.

Speaker 31 In the years after Alan's disappearance, she, like Linda, was repeatedly questioned by police.

Speaker 43 She told odd, often conflicting stories pointing to various suspects, but never to Linda, claiming to have knowledge of where the gun was buried, but no gun was ever located.

Speaker 17 And when Dateline found Julia in Cheyenne, she was ready for the first time to give what she says is an eyewitness account to the events surrounding Alan's killing.

Speaker 36 and to publicly acknowledge her role in the cover-up after.

Speaker 26 Julia, do you know who killed Alan Ross?

Speaker 53 Yes, sir.

Speaker 50 Who was it?

Speaker 53 It was Dennis Green.

Speaker 6 And what happened that day, Julia?

Speaker 53 I was upstairs when I heard the first shot.

Speaker 53 And I came downstairs, and I heard the second shot. And then I went into the room.

Speaker 26 Dennis Green had a gun and shot to death Alan Ross? Yes, sir.

Speaker 53 I went into the room and he was there with the gun and Alan.

Speaker 50 Over the body?

Speaker 53 Yes, sir. He said if I reported the murder, that I would be the one to be accused.

Speaker 26 He made a direct threat to you that you would be implicated. Yes, sir.

Speaker 11 First Linda, then Julia, accusing Dennis Greene of the murder. Julia saying she was willing to take the witness stand against him.

Speaker 11 While Cheyenne Police had publicly identified Greene as a suspect, saying they could put him in the house the day of the murder, and Dateline obtained documents showing that Green had failed a lie detector test, Green denied to Cheyenne police any involvement in the murder.

Speaker 17 Can I talk to you?

Speaker 18 I'm Dennis Murphy with Dateline NBC.

Speaker 18 We're investigating the murder of Alan Ross.

Speaker 20 When we caught up with Dennis Green in May 2004, he was unwilling to speak with us.

Speaker 48 Family just wants to know the story here.

Speaker 15 With the fingers seeming to point to Dennis Green, the family of Alan Ross was hoping for an arrest.

Speaker 15 But in November 2004, almost nine years to the day after Alan's disappearance, authorities in Cheyenne would finally take someone to court in the case.

Speaker 45 Please be seated.

Speaker 2 And it would not be Dennis Greene.

Speaker 45 I was extremely shocked by it.

Speaker 58 By 2004, authorities in Wyoming had come to believe that on the day that cameraman Alan Ross was shot, killed, and buried in the basement of a Cheyenne home, three adults had been in the house: Alan's wife, Samaritan Foundation leader Linda Green, now dead herself, Linda's ex-husband Dennis Green, and Linda's best friend and follower, Julia Williams.

Speaker 11 And in this tangled web of a case, you'll recall Linda and Julia had accused Dennis Greene of the murder, while Dennis Green said he'd believe Linda was the killer.

Speaker 16 District Court is not in session.

Speaker 35 But in November 2004, nearly nine years to the day after Alan Ross's murder, a trial would finally begin in Cheyenne, the first in connection with the killing.

Speaker 15 And in the defendant's chair sat only Julia Williams.

Speaker 17 It turns out that Julia Williams had come forward to police after Linda's death in 2002, telling essentially the same story she told Dateline, but with more detail, not only only naming Dennis Green as the killer, but also admitting that she helped carry Alan Ross's body to the basement for burial and cleaned up blood to conceal the murder.

Speaker 17 Now Julia found herself in the odd position of being charged as an accessory, even though no one had been charged with the murder itself.

Speaker 16 Mr. Fender is charged as an accessory after

Speaker 2 the fact.

Speaker 37 And as Cheyenne's prosecutor began his case, watching from the gallery were the two men still feeling Alan's loss most intensely.

Speaker 42 His filmmaking partner Christian Bauer and Alan's twin brother Brad.

Speaker 31 The two who had waited years for answers were for the first time in the same room with a defendant whom prosecutors claimed was intimately involved with Alan's murder.

Speaker 13 When I'm in the courtroom, I'm only seeing the back of her head.

Speaker 13 And I want... to crawl into that head.
I want to find out what's in there, the images. I'm frightened of the images, but I want to know the truth.
and she knows what happened.

Speaker 13 I want to make her tell us the real story here.

Speaker 28 And the story that prosecutors had settled on was stunning to many who had followed the case, that Julia Williams was still protecting the real killer, who the DA had concluded after years of investigation was not Dennis Green, but in fact his ex-wife, the cult leader, Linda.

Speaker 2 The turn of events caught Allen's brother off guard.

Speaker 45 I was extremely shocked by it. The surprise was just that they had eliminated Dennis completely.

Speaker 15 And the surprises continued when the state called its star witness.

Speaker 16 Would you state your name, please?

Speaker 5 Dennis Green.

Speaker 42 Dennis Green took the stand for the prosecution.

Speaker 31 The man named by both Linda and Julia is the killer, once named as a suspect himself.

Speaker 33 But now prosecutors were asserting that the man on the stand was innocent.

Speaker 15 simply a person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 5 Linda was the writer.

Speaker 24 And Dennis Green began by supplying a possible motive for Alan's murder, testifying that in the weeks before Alan disappeared, Julia had complained that money from a company set up to sell Linda's books was being embezzled.

Speaker 16 Did she identify to you who she thought was doing that?

Speaker 5 Yes, she suspected Alan Ross.

Speaker 31 Green said that when he left the home in mid-afternoon on the day that Alan was killed, November 22nd, 1995, Alan was still alive and well.

Speaker 31 But in the following days and weeks, Green said Linda began making ever more bizarre excuses for Alan's absence, that he'd left town, that he'd run off with a new lover.

Speaker 2 But Green said Linda soon made a new accusation when her family had her committed to a psychiatric ward.

Speaker 5 When she was in the mental hospital, she accused me by a fact and by a phone call of killing Alan.

Speaker 5 Which was horrifying to me, scary.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 at that point, that's when I I began to think well perhaps Alan didn't run away perhaps they killed him and that

Speaker 15 was a horrifying feeling green said Linda also once told him that Alan had been murdered and buried in the basement of their home and he says that's when he contacted Cheyenne police to ask them to look for the body a search as we know now in which the body was simply missed

Speaker 29 state your name please I'm Dan Green then to bolster the state's claim that Linda, not Dennis, was the killer,

Speaker 47 the couple's son took the stand, a boy of nine at the time of the murder, now an adult of 18.

Speaker 43 He testified that Linda always carried a gun in her purse and once used it in front of him.

Speaker 5 She told me to hide behind a rock, and she blew the lock off. It freaked me out, you know, but she got the lock off.

Speaker 2 Do you know what kind of gun it was?

Speaker 5 It was a nine millimeter. I remember that.

Speaker 15 A nine millimeter.

Speaker 23 The same caliber of gun that killed alan prosecutors were claiming that linda had all the elements for murder in her possession means motive and opportunity and that's where i heard the gunshot next the prosecution played a video interview with julia williams in which she admitted carrying alan's body to the basement for burial and cleaning up blood in the house dance tells me to help him move the body

Speaker 47 But how did the murder actually occur?

Speaker 17 In closing, prosecutors presented evidence that suggested Alan was in fact planning to leave the group, to leave Linda and return to Chicago.

Speaker 58 That's why they said Linda made up the story that Alan was embezzling money and convinced Julia it was true.

Speaker 17 And on the day of the murder, the state claimed that after Dennis Green left while Julia was upstairs, Linda confronted Alan and demanded to know the truth.

Speaker 24 Was Alan staying or going?

Speaker 60 She reaches into her purse. Now you stay still.
I'm talking to you. He goes to leave.
She shoots.

Speaker 60 Wounds, but not kills. Julia hears.
What is that?

Speaker 16 She starts down the stairs. And as she gets down to the first floor area, there's a second shot.

Speaker 16 And down the stairs, they drag Alan's body.

Speaker 16 Drag him down to the crawl space.

Speaker 2 Drag him back in there.

Speaker 16 and start scooping out the dirt.

Speaker 23 But if the prosecution's theory of the crime was a surprise to some, so was the case presented by Julia Williams Defense.

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Speaker 21 When prosecutors in Cheyenne, Wyoming rested their case against Julia Williams, all eyes turned to the defense table.

Speaker 41 Would Julia now tell her story from the witness stand?

Speaker 21 What evidence would her attorney offer to clear her client, charged as an accessory in the murder of Alan Ross?

Speaker 17 The answers came quickly, because when Julia Williams' team was called upon, Your Honor, the defense rests also.

Speaker 29 The defense elected to call no witnesses, to present no evidence.

Speaker 31 Instead, her attorney simply claimed that Julia had consistently told police that Dennis Green was the real killer.

Speaker 31 that prosecution theories were not proof, and that in the end, there were still no concrete answers in the case.

Speaker 64 Do you know who killed Alan Ross?

Speaker 64 Could it have been Linda Green?

Speaker 64 Could it have been Dennis Green?

Speaker 64 And if you answer yes to both, it could have been both.

Speaker 64 You cannot convict my client.

Speaker 29 But when the jury returned after just an hour of deliberation,

Speaker 16 ladies and gentlemen, have you reached a verdict?

Speaker 10 Yes, we have your.

Speaker 35 The news for the defense

Speaker 10 was dreadful.

Speaker 36 We find the defendant, Julia Williams, guilty.

Speaker 11 Guilty. Julia Williams had been convicted of helping to cover up a murder for which no one, it appears, will ever be charged.

Speaker 11 Because the person authorities believe killed Alan Ross, his wife Linda, had already died. A relief for Dennis Green, who had lived for years under a cloud of suspicion.

Speaker 11 The defendant was led away to prison, where she served 18 months. After the mistake by the police, the futile years of investigation, the filmmakers were left with little satisfaction.

Speaker 11 Even though, as in a true crime movie, all loose ends had apparently been tied up and the credits were ready to roll. Filmmaker Christian Bauer.

Speaker 13 I'm not happy. It's a sad moment, actually.

Speaker 13 Much sadder than I thought it would be. At the beginning, I missed to have the opportunity to call him up and tell him, Hey, El, I've got this great project.
Do you have time? Can we do it together?

Speaker 13 And he would always say yes, except for one instance.

Speaker 13 And to be able then to go on a journey, it was always an adventure to shoot with him. And he was so involved in the stories that we were making.
It was not like work.

Speaker 13 It was like fun, like exploring something together.

Speaker 11 Our interview with Christian Bauer took place in 2003. Just six years later, the filmmaker himself would be dead.
Heart attack. For Brad Ross, there are still questions.

Speaker 11 And knowing that answers may never come, he desperately yearns for the chance to speak to his twin brother Alan, the man behind the camera whose fascination with life on the fringe cost him his life.

Speaker 14 I miss his love

Speaker 28 because you know what? He let me be who I am,

Speaker 20 and in turn, I have to let him be who he is.

Speaker 26 So he can't roll the movie backwards, he's always going to go to Oklahoma.

Speaker 14 I wish he had.

Speaker 14 I don't know if he ever gets over it.

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