Palm Saturday

I am so excited for this spa day.

Candles lit.

Music on.

Hot tub warm and ready.

And then my chronic hives come back.

Again, in the middle of my spa day.

What a wet blanket.

Looks like another spell of itchy red skin.

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Up next,

an execution-style murder and a sophisticated cover-up.

It was obvious right from the start that this crime scene had been altered.

An eyewitness sees two men leaving the scene, but how much did he really see?

We were scratching our heads for a little bit.

Someone held a grudge against the family.

Maybe he was angry enough to come back and hurt Beth and Brian.

She was definitely scared of this guy.

But was that enough to lead to murder?

Eight months after getting married, Brian and Beverly Maug moved into their dream home in rural Washington state.

She loved him so much.

He loved her so much, too.

I mean, it showed in their eyes.

30-year-old Brian worked for an air conditioning company.

Beverly, 28, was a secretary at a car dealership.

A mutual love of sports brought the two together.

He had been in the same sports that she had been in, and they loved showing their scars off, each of them.

You know, and where they got this and where they got that, and they were a wonderful match.

At 5 a.m.

on a November Saturday morning, A friend arrived at Brian Mauck's home to pick him up for a day of hunting.

He said that the house was dark, and so he didn't bother knocking on the door to see if Brian wanted to go.

He just went hunting by himself.

The friend called later that morning, but no one answered.

So he drove back over to Brian's house.

The front door was locked.

He could see the television was on and what looked like a body lying on the floor.

That's when he called police.

I just remember it was just very, very bloody.

Blood everywhere.

They found both Beverly and Brian Maul had been murdered.

I broke down and

was screaming, and I was like, I have to get out there.

I have to get out there.

I have to see for myself.

Each of them had been shot three times at close range with a.22-caliber pistol.

There was definitely an execution-style element to it.

It looked like they had been shot and then shot again to make sure they were dead.

From the location of the shell casings, it appeared that Brian was shot in the living room.

Beverly most likely heard the shots from the bedroom

and ran out to see what was going on.

She made a run for the front door and our suspect caught her at the front door and that's where he shot her.

The evidence shows that the killer dragged Beverly's body next to her husband's and covered them both with a sheet from the bedroom.

This was essentially a swath of blood two or three feet across and 10 to 15 feet long that leads right to the victim's bodies.

There were unusual striations in the blood trail.

We just could not figure out what caused that particular blood pattern.

The answer was found in the kitchen.

Someone had swept the broom through the blood and spattered it up onto the wall.

The killer might have used the broom to remove his shoe impressions.

He also used a rag to remove other evidence.

They're trying to eliminate fingerprints and what they used to do that with had blood on it because there was blood smears on the light switches and there was blood smears on the doorknobs.

The fact the television was on told investigators even more.

There was no fast, I gotta get out of here.

There was very deliberate cleaning up, covering up, trying to hide what had happened.

The motive didn't appear to be robbery.

Brian had a considerable amount of cash on his person.

There were guns in the home that were not taken.

They were a number of valuable items were undisturbed.

And the evidence suggested Brian

opened the door, then turned his back to walk towards the living room when he was shot.

A clear indication he knew his killer.

Brian and Beverly Maul were murdered in their home in the middle of the night.

Their family said the couple had no known enemies.

It breaks my heart.

She can never be a mother.

She wanted that so bad.

And I know Brian wanted to be a father so bad, and they had so much to offer.

They just

were two of the nicest, trustworthy people, their kids would have been perfect.

The killer spent several hours cleaning the crime scene.

It's a risky thing to do, of course.

The longer a criminal stays at the scene, the greater the risk that they're going to leave evidence behind or leave a telltale clue.

And that's precisely what happened.

The killer inadvertently left clues while cleaning up.

After he covered the bodies with a sheet, he stepped on it.

The bottoms of his shoes were clean, but he created a shoe impression in the blood on the floor underneath the sheet.

Was a zigzag pattern or a very distinct shoe mark that you could see left in the blood?

The fact that the killer spent so much time at the scene aided in the discovery.

She had been dried for a while.

It's probably helped things, at least preserve the print in the floor anyway.

A computer search of the shoe patterns indicated this was a Madsen brand work shoe.

The killer also left evidence in the couple's bedroom.

Looked like a fingerprint could have been on a door jam in the southeast bedroom.

But the ridge characteristics were in a U-shape, meaning the finger would have been upside down.

That would make sense, except this print was five feet from the floor.

Someone would have to be standing on a ladder to leave a print like this.

But there was another possibility.

The ridge detail of palm prints runs in the opposite direction of ridge detail on fingerprints.

The fingerprint that we had from the house wasn't actually a fingerprint, but it was a palm print.

I'm thinking that he left the bloody palm print on the door jamb when he was using it to balance himself when he was cleaning something else up.

Perhaps with a paper towel, not realizing that his hand's got blood on it and it's resting on the door jamb.

Law enforcement has a separate database for palm prints called Morpho.

Unfortunately, this one didn't match any in the database.

In a search for suspects, police questioned everyone in the sparsely populated neighborhood.

A couple across the street, Daniel and Jennifer Tavares, said they heard gunshots around 7 a.m.

They thought the shots were from hunters.

Daniel got up and looked out the bedroom window, which faced the Max house.

He saw a red pickup truck leaving the Max driveway.

He said there was a passenger whom he didn't get a good look at.

He described a driver, however, in great detail.

A white male, roughly roughly 6'2 in height, perhaps 230, 240 pounds, with long hair and a ponytail.

The truck turned around in the cul-de-sac and sped away.

Neither family nor neighbors knew anyone matching the driver's description.

Police began checking the hundreds of red pickup trucks in Pierce County.

Meanwhile, Beverly's mother pointed to another suspect.

I know she was afraid of somebody that he brought brought into their home, and

I think she shared that with O'Brien.

He was 21-year-old Jeremy Flynn, who lived just a few houses away.

He had a juvenile arrest.

He was a suspect in a burglary and a suspect in a theft.

Witnesses said Jeremy attended a party at the Mock's home about six weeks before the murders.

Flynn was so drunk and belligerent that Brian asked him to leave.

The two argued and almost came to blows.

Whatever took place at that party or afterwards definitely left an impression on Beverly and she was definitely scared of this guy.

And she was nervous about this young fellow, didn't like to be alone at the residence when her husband would be away.

The morning after the party, The mocks discovered items missing from their home, and they confronted Jeremy about it.

A handgun that belonged to Brian was stolen, and I believe Beverly's or one of their cell phones had been taken.

And so I figured maybe he was angry enough to come back and hurt Brian.

But the handgun wasn't a.22 caliber like the one used in the murders.

Jeremy didn't own a red pickup truck.

And three people provided alibis for Jeremy for the time of the murders.

He had almost been completely eliminated as having anything to do with this whatsoever.

So police went back to their only eyewitness.

Except this time,

his story began to change.

In the search for Beverly and Brian Mark's killer, police went back to the Mock's neighbor, Daniel Tavares.

who described seeing a red pickup truck outside the crime scene around the time of the murders.

His description of the two men inside was detailed.

The more detailed that a witness can give you, an eyewitness to someone who might well be associated with a crime scene,

the better it is.

But for the detectives, it was too detailed.

Tavares lived 200 yards away from the Mock's house, and it was still dark outside.

He gave descriptions of these men, from hairstyle to how many days it had been since one of them had shaved, the color of their shirt, the types of shoes they were wearing.

He even went so far as to describe this person as having a pock-marked face.

When detectives did a background check on Daniel Tavares,

they were shocked by what they found.

Tavares had served 16 years in prison for manslaughter, and he'd just been released four months earlier.

Daniel Tavares, by all accounts, was the worst type of prisoner.

Argumentative, combative,

assaulting jail guards, and somehow gets out with credit for good time.

Before he was released from prison, Tavares met his wife, Jennifer Freitas, through a computer dating service where convicts post personal ads hoping to find pen pals.

They communicated through email, but never met in person until Tavares was released.

As soon as he gets out, there he is on a plane leaving Massachusetts and coming out to Washington State.

That was shocking enough, I think, when we learned that.

Tavares married Jennifer in Washington State and had violated the terms of his parole by leaving Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, local police in Washington had no jurisdiction to arrest him.

The warrant was limited to, I believe, states that adjoin Massachusetts or New England area.

So while there there was a warrant for his arrest, it was limited to that small geographical area.

Police in Washington state could get Tavares' fingerprints from Massachusetts, but what they really needed were his palm prints.

So investigators wanted to get him into police headquarters and somehow find a way to get him to provide his finger and palm prints voluntarily.

Fortunately, Tavares didn't know he was a suspect.

He was cooperating.

He was bending over backwards.

He was thinking that we were buying his stories.

Their idea was to ask Tavares for help in preparing a composite sketch of the Mox killers.

I just thought that it would be easier and safer to get him down here thinking he was coming down here voluntarily on his own to talk to a sketch artist.

As Daniel Tavares walked into police headquarters, Detective Jason Tate arrived at about the same time and followed him into the building.

It had just rained, and Tavares was tracking wet shoe prints onto the floor of the entranceway.

Detective Tate thought they looked familiar.

I needed to get inside and get somebody out there before things started to dry and disappear.

Mary Lou Hanson O'Brien rushed out with her camera.

Because the print was in water on a rough surface, it was impossible to compare fine detail.

But the treads on the shoe were clear and distinctive.

And it was a unique pattern.

There was not a lot of detail to the pattern.

Was this the same shoe that left the single bloody shoe impression at the crime scene?

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My very last words to her were, I love you.

And not a lot of parents ever get to say that, you know.

In 2010, Aubrey Sacco vanished while hiking in the Himalayas.

Now, after 15 years of searching, her parents share what they've uncovered in a three-episode special of Status Untraced.

Dads are supposed to find their daughters when they're in trouble.

Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Daniel Tavares was the prime suspect in the murders of his neighbors, Brian and Beverly Mauck.

But investigators had no idea about a possible motive.

I interviewed a bar manager who had served Tavares that night of the murders, and he described him as cocky and arrogant and somebody who was looking for a fight.

Daniel Tavares walked into police headquarters, not realizing he was a suspect.

He thought he was there to provide a description of the killers.

He had no clue.

He thought that he was down here to talk to a sketch artist, and he had no clue that we were on to him at that point.

Tavares admitted he'd been inside the Mock's home several times for social visits.

So police asked if he'd mind providing his fingerprints so they could eliminate his prints from all the other unknown prints they found inside the Mock's home.

So that's how I presented it to him.

I just said we need to be able to eliminate the prints that aren't important to us.

Tavares was happy to oblige, and police took not only his fingerprints but also his palm prints.

Then investigators asked Tavares some more pointed questions about his past.

I'm sure you must know what I was in prison for.

I just heard it was manslaughter.

How'd you kill him?

Stab him.

It was a her.

Oh, it was?

Yeah, it was.

Family member.

What kind of family member?

Love.

You killed your mother?

Yeah, I did.

No kidding.

Within minutes, latent print examiners matched Tavaris's palm print to the bloody palm print on the door jamb at the crime scene.

At this point in time, we've got evidence to arrest you for the murder of Brian and Beverly.

What?

I was in bed.

That's impossible.

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to show you something.

This

is your print in blood that we recovered inside that house.

These are the patterns on your shoes that you have on your feet right now.

We were just baffled that, again, Tavares was

stupid enough to have those shoes on his feet right now.

Faced with the forensic evidence, Daniel Tavares confessed.

He said he had given Brian Mawk a tattoo and that Brian owed him $50.

So he went over early Saturday morning to get it.

He said it was early.

Brian was asleep and was angry Tavares had awakened him.

They argued.

Tavares snapped and shot Brian three times in the head.

Beverly heard the shots and tried to escape.

Tavares shot her three times,

then dragged her body next to her husband's.

When he went to the bedroom to grab a sheet to cover the bodies, he may have left some blood on the light switch in the bedroom.

When he wiped it off, he left a partial palm print on the door.

He must have been steadying himself as he cleaned the plate.

Over the next several hours, Tavares used a broom to get rid of his shoe prints.

But when he stepped onto the sheet covering the bodies, his weight created a shoe impression in the drying blood on the floor under the sheet.

A shoe impression he wouldn't see simply by looking at the top side of the sheet.

Jennifer Tavares later admitted she was at the crime scene after the murders.

Jennifer also admitted she and her husband later threw the murder weapon into nearby Puget Sound.

In February of 2008, Daniel Tavares was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Jennifer Tavares, who claimed she only helped her husband with the cover-up because she feared for her life, got one year.

I can't even explain why I did it because I wasn't able to think straight at the time and I'm scared, worried about my family.

Tavares is so stupid that he wore his same shoe into his interview at the police station.

with a detective.

You don't want to rely on just one little bit of evidence and discount everything else.

Everything matters.

This is the first case for me that the rain actually helped out a little bit.

We don't have a clear motive as to why a murder happened, and I don't think we're ever going to know in this case.