Sunday School Ambush

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Speaker 7 There was a shooting in an upscale neighborhood in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 12 Ballistics identified the use of two different guns, which meant at least two shooters.

Speaker 13 These small marks on a shotgun shell, some singed fibers, and a crime reconstruction revealed a plot more twisted than anyone could have imagined.

Speaker 7 To outsiders, it looked as if Rob Andrew had everything anyone could want.

Speaker 9 He had a high-paying job with an advertising agency, lots of friends, and a growing family whom he described as his source of strength.

Speaker 20 Rob Andrew was salt of the earth. I mean, this is a Christian man, attended church all the time, a loving father, just a great guy, very successful businessman as well.

Speaker 19 Two days before Thanksgiving, Rob Andrew left work to pick up his children.

Speaker 10 They planned to spend the holiday weekend with his parents.

Speaker 19 On the way, Rob called his best friend.

Speaker 22 Rob had called my house around 5.30, telling me how hurried he'd been all day and that he was looking forward to picking the kids up and spending a long weekend with them for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 12 Rob didn't plan to stay long, so he parked his car in the driveway.

Speaker 22 I heard the the overhead garage door start up, and then Rob paused and said, Hey, I'm gonna have to let you go.

Speaker 12 As he walked into the garage, his wife Brenda asked him to relight the furnace because it had gone out earlier in the day.

Speaker 13 Then there was a commotion.

Speaker 12 Brenda said two masked men with guns appeared out of nowhere.

Speaker 15 And then they fled.

Speaker 26 I've been shot. My husband's been shot.

Speaker 26 Okay,

Speaker 26 you and your husband have both been shot? Yes, yes.

Speaker 27 Who shot you?

Speaker 26 I don't know. She doesn't.

Speaker 26 I don't know. They had on black masks.
I don't know.

Speaker 17 43-year-old Robert Andrew was pronounced dead at the scene.

Speaker 16 Mr.

Speaker 29 Andrew was shot two times, once to the right side of the body, once to the left side of the body. And they actually occurred from two different locations.

Speaker 29 So that also tells us that two shooters, it's a possibility.

Speaker 2 Brenda Andrews suffered a gunshot wound and was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 31 Her wound is in a fatty portion of her left upper arm.

Speaker 11 The bullet that hit Brenda went through her arm and lodged in the wall of the garage.

Speaker 2 It was from a.22 caliber pistol.

Speaker 12 Police found a spent 16 gauge shotgun shell on the roof of Brenda's van, an indication there were two different weapons used in the attack.

Speaker 12 The empty cans on the garage floor indicated Rob saw the gunman and grabbed the bag of empty cans as a shield.

Speaker 29 As the second gunshot wound is about to be inflicted on him, he is looking up and looking at the face of his killer.

Speaker 19 The motive apparently wasn't robbery.

Speaker 29 His wallet was not taken. In fact, some of the pellets from the shotgun went through his wallet.

Speaker 25 The Andrews' two children were upstairs in their rooms unharmed.

Speaker 13 The attack had all the earmarks of an execution.

Speaker 2 Yet, no one could think of a reason why Robert Andrew would be targeted for murder.

Speaker 12 With no motive, no leads, and no description of the killers, investigators hoped the autopsy would provide the clues they needed.

Speaker 12 News of Rob Andrews' execution-style murder was a shock to the residents of Oklahoma City since crimes like this were extremely uncommon.

Speaker 20 Rob and Brenda were a loving couple, they appeared to be. The picture showed the perfect family, the smiling, happy, loving couple with these two great little kids.

Speaker 18 The couple were active members of their church.

Speaker 12 Brenda taught Sunday school, and Rob performed missionary work in South America. Early in the investigation, police learned there had been a prior attempt on Rob's life.

Speaker 18 Just one month earlier, Rob called police to report someone had tampered with his car.

Speaker 35 Oklahoma City Police Department.

Speaker 27 Hi there, I'd like to report a client.

Speaker 27 My brake lines have been cut.

Speaker 27 Dangerous. That sounds like attempted murder, don't you think?

Speaker 33 A few hours later, Rob was getting his brakes fixed when he received a call from the hospital.

Speaker 12 The caller said his wife Brenda was critically injured in a car accident and suggested that he come to the hospital right away.

Speaker 29 You're a man's voice saying that his wife is in the hospital about 30 miles away, that she needs him and he needs to get down there just as fast as he can.

Speaker 5 Now suspicious, Rob called the hospital back and learned the previous call was a hoax.

Speaker 7 Apparently, the same person who cut Rob's brake line wanted him to race to the hospital.

Speaker 29 He took it as an attempt on his life. He realized that in fact he was being set up to drive down there and at a high rate of speed and hopefully get into an accident.

Speaker 28 I mean, that's the obvious conclusion.

Speaker 15 Several days after Rob's murder, his next-door neighbors returned home from vacation and realized someone had broken into their home.

Speaker 34 We unpacked our suitcases and started putting things away. When I opened my closet door, I discovered that a little shoe rag that I'd had was no longer there.

Speaker 34 Then we decided to look around the other bedrooms. That's when we discovered the spent shotgun shell in one of the bedrooms.

Speaker 24 The shell was from a 16-gauge shotgun.

Speaker 12 It was immediately sent to the forensics lab for testing.

Speaker 24 An analyst placed it under a microscope to compare it to the 16-gauge shotgun shell found in the Andrews garage.

Speaker 6 He looked specifically at the brass casings at the base of the shells.

Speaker 12 When casings are ejected, each gun creates a unique mark on the brass.

Speaker 37 And depending on the amount of correspondence and the preponderance of these matching striations, an examiner can come to the conclusion as to whether these were fired by the same firearm or not.

Speaker 28 There was no doubt both shells were fired from the same gun.

Speaker 33 Also in the neighbor's attic, police found several unused.22 caliber bullets, the same as those used in the second gun in the murder.

Speaker 29 So as if they were just basically accidentally dropped along the way.

Speaker 29 They didn't appear to be placed in any type of a pattern, but just like they were in a pocket and they fell out as someone crawled through.

Speaker 18 This suggested that the killers hid in the neighbor's home after the murder so they could make a clean getaway later.

Speaker 29 Apparently someone went up in that attic and they were either trying to climb up in the master closet access, or they came down and landed on that shoe rack and broke it to pieces.

Speaker 29 It wasn't sturdy enough to hold them, and so then they tried to hide evidence of that in a rather feeble attempt by putting it under the bed.

Speaker 12 And since the neighbor's home had no signs of forced entry, it meant one of two things: either the killers were professionals or they had a key.

Speaker 33 With no solid leads, police asked themselves who would benefit most from Rob Andrew's murder.

Speaker 24 Rob's friends told police that his wife Brenda had the most to gain.

Speaker 31 And we found that the marriage was rocky, off and on. They had a few periods of separation.
And we also found that Brenda Andrew was involved in several extramarital affairs.

Speaker 29 Mr. Andrew was convinced at this point that his insurance salesman, Mr.
Pravat, and his wife were having an affair.

Speaker 24 48-year-old James Pavat taught Sunday school with Brenda.

Speaker 12 And they flaunted their relationship even in front of Rob's children.

Speaker 20 James and Brenda had a very interesting relationship. I mean, even prior to Rob's death, the two of them went on a vacation together down to Texas with the children.

Speaker 20 I don't know of any husband who would willingly just say okay

Speaker 20 to his wife going down to Mexico with a complete stranger and taking his kids with him.

Speaker 19 Just a few months before his murder, Rob demanded that Brenda end her affair with Pavat.

Speaker 10 Brenda refused and filed for divorce.

Speaker 12 Rob immediately changed the beneficiary of his $800,000 life insurance policy.

Speaker 29 Mr. Andrew made the beneficiary, I think, his brother,

Speaker 29 for the benefit of the children. Since the children were minors, he had to have an adult as the actual name beneficiary as a trustee of that money.

Speaker 39 But after Rob's death, police were surprised to learn that Brenda was again the sole beneficiary.

Speaker 2 Police were immediately suspicious, and they arranged for a handwriting expert, David Perrott, to authenticate Rob Andrew's signature on the insurance policy.

Speaker 40 A signature is produced with style and speed. It's the thing that you probably write the most in your entire life.

Speaker 40 In my analysis, I looked at 13 years of Rob Andrews' handwriting in writing his signatures, 136 signatures.

Speaker 33 Not surprisingly, it was clear that Rob Andrews' signatures changed over the years.

Speaker 40 Over time, Rob Andrews' signature had become more ornate, more artistic.

Speaker 33 And two and a half years before his death, Rob added an extra element to his signature.

Speaker 40 That was in the bottom right-hand corner of his signature. I then began looking at signature after signature after signature,

Speaker 40 and that fish was there.

Speaker 17 This was a Christian symbol, the ichthys.

Speaker 33 Rob added it to his signature as a sign of his faith.

Speaker 12 But it wasn't on the change of beneficiary form.

Speaker 40 I know that symbol is. Very significant because he repeatedly used it in the more formalized signatures that he wrote, such as in business documents.

Speaker 40 And that symbol was not in the question document.

Speaker 17 And there was another discrepancy in the life insurance policy signature.

Speaker 40 Rob Andrew had a characteristic of connecting the N and the D in the last name Andrew.

Speaker 17 But it wasn't signed that way on the insurance form.

Speaker 24 So Parrott concluded it was a forgery, but he was unable to determine the identity of the forger.

Speaker 12 Police knew that Brenda Andrew had the motive to make sure she was the beneficiary of her husband's $800,000 life insurance policy.

Speaker 6 And her lover, James Pavat,

Speaker 13 had the opportunity.

Speaker 39 He was the life insurance agent who sold the policy.

Speaker 21 Police now suspected Brenda may have been involved in her husband's murder.

Speaker 2 So ballistic experts took a much closer look at the photographs of her wound and the bullet hole in her sweater.

Speaker 12 They found black rings, gunshot residue, around both.

Speaker 37 It is actually the unburned and partially burned powder and soot and hot gases that exit the barrel right behind the projectile.

Speaker 19 Using an identical gun, investigators ran tests to recreate the gunshot residue patterns.

Speaker 37 And my observations of those patterns and of the sweater and of her wound allowed me to conclude that she was shot at somewhere between actual contact and approximately two inches away from her arm.

Speaker 17 This contradicted Brenda's statement that she was shot by someone 15 to 20 feet away.

Speaker 25 Police now knew that Brenda Andrew was involved in Rob's murder, but was she the killer?

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Speaker 12 To find out what role, if any, Brenda Andrew played in her husband's murder, investigators sent her bloodstained clothing to Tom Bevel, an expert on blood spatter analysis.

Speaker 24 Beville noticed that many of the bloodstains on her jeans had an elongated shape consistent with blood dripping from her arm onto her pants.

Speaker 30 We have some low velocity blood drips. That would be blood that is breaking away primarily due to gravity dripping down onto the jeans.

Speaker 9 DNA tests confirmed this blood was Brenda's.

Speaker 33 But Bevel also found mist-like blood spatter on Brenda's jeans below the knee.

Speaker 24 which had penetrated deep into the fabric.

Speaker 30 That it is from a high velocity occurrence, such as a gunshot, in this case, multiple gunshot pellets, that has spattered the blood traveling back from him, referred to as back spatter, and then subsequently landing on her clothing.

Speaker 17 DNA tests confirmed that this was Rob's blood.

Speaker 19 This proved that Brenda was standing only a few feet away from Rob when he was killed.

Speaker 29 The backspatter on the pants, I think that gave us that one bit of evidence we needed in order to put that gun in Miss Andrews' hand.

Speaker 12 Prosecutors believe Brenda planned her husband's murder for months.

Speaker 10 She may have forged Rob's signature on the life insurance policy, making her the beneficiary.

Speaker 2 Her first attempt on Rob's life involved cutting Rob's brake lines.

Speaker 28 Police believe it was James Pavat who called Rob with the fake story that Brenda was in critical condition at the hospital.

Speaker 9 When that didn't work, the couple devised an elaborate shooting scenario.

Speaker 12 They planned to kill Rob when he came to pick up the children for the holiday weekend.

Speaker 2 On the night of the murder, Pavat hid behind the van in the garage. When they heard Rob's car, they set the plan in motion.

Speaker 8 Rob walked into the garage expecting to see the children. Instead, Brenda asked him to fix the furnace while she got them ready.

Speaker 28 Pivot fired the first shot from behind the van.

Speaker 2 Then handed the rifle to Brenda.

Speaker 17 The blood spatter on Brenda's pants proved she was less than two feet away.

Speaker 19 Pivot used a.22-caliber pistol to shoot Brenda's arm, but he fired it from a couple inches away, leaving the burn marks.

Speaker 26 I've been shot. My husband's in shot.

Speaker 9 Brenda called police with the fake story of the two masked men.

Speaker 6 Pivot hid in the empty house next door.

Speaker 12 The homeowners had given Brenda the key for safekeeping.

Speaker 12 Pivot stayed there for at least a day until police were finished at the scene.

Speaker 6 He ejected the spent shotgun shell when he heard the homeowner's son walk into the house to pick up his parents' mail.

Speaker 10 Fortunately, the man didn't go upstairs or he might have been killed too.

Speaker 7 Investigators never found the murder weapon, but they did find some important information.

Speaker 31 During our investigation, we also found that Mr.

Speaker 2 Pavat had purchased a.22 caliber pistol at a local gun store with the use of a credit card about a month before the homicide.

Speaker 20 Everything was a piece of a puzzle. All of those little things out there by themselves meant nothing.
But when you started laying it all out, clicking the pieces together, making the matches,

Speaker 20 it just started pointing. There's no way this woman couldn't have been involved.

Speaker 28 Brenda Andrew and James Pavat were both charged with first-degree murder and were tried separately.

Speaker 8 Pavat's trial was first.

Speaker 46 We, the jury, having heretofore found the defendant James Dwight Pavat guilty of murder in the first degree, fix his punishment at death.

Speaker 24 In Brenda's trial, prosecutors portrayed her as a heartless sociopath.

Speaker 8 The jury saw photos of her vacationing with Pavat and the children while she was married to Rob.

Speaker 14 They also heard the messages Brenda left on Rob's telephone answering machine, in which she belittled Rob for his parenting skills and other perceived slights.

Speaker 35 Hey, it's Brenda. You half-late dad who can't even return calls about your children.
You ought to call me if you even care one little ounce. Oh, that's right, you don't.

Speaker 35 We've been able to figure that out.

Speaker 2 And the jury also heard this call between Rob and Brenda's mother before the murder.

Speaker 27 She does not like me. That makes it really hard to live there.
I mean, I look at her, I just want to break out and cry because I love the girl so much, and I have loved her for a long, long time.

Speaker 31 And the one thing that I knew that Brenda liked was money.

Speaker 2 Brenda Andrew was also convicted of first-degree murder. The forensic evidence was impossible to overcome.

Speaker 46 We, the jury, impaneled and sworn in the above entitled Clause, do upon our oaths, having hereto found the defendant, Brenda Evers Andrew, guilty of murder in the first degree, fix her punishment at death.

Speaker 11 She is now the only woman on Oklahoma's death row.

Speaker 23 Prosecutors describe it as one of the most cold-blooded murders they've ever seen.

Speaker 29 The complexity of the case was a problem. It's a hard case to talk about in a short amount of time.
There's so many different different pieces of evidence.

Speaker 29 But in what we believe any juror wants to hear is what happened at the key moment.

Speaker 31 The physical evidence will tell a story.

Speaker 30 And it's just simply up to the person that is trying to put this together to understand what the physical evidence is saying.