Pet Rock

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Up next, a young woman's missing and someone has stolen her identity.

No one saw her leave.

No one saw her arrive back at her apartment.

But who wanted to harm her?

She had received some harassing phone calls prior to her being reported missing.

Eventually, the forensic evidence provided those answers.

Everybody in the brother was trying to make a deal with the devil.

Let he who has no sin cast the first stone.

Let me tell you, I'd have no problem casting all the stones.

Life was an adventure for 28-year-old Denise O'Neill.

There was no trip she wouldn't take, virtually no activity she wouldn't try.

She always loved to travel.

Always either swimming or having a game of tennis or scuba diving, going to museums, the arts, of course, anything in the arts she loved.

She just loved life.

She really loved life.

After graduating from college, Denise took a job as a waitress in Palm Beach, Florida while she looked for a job teaching English.

Denise was a punctual employee, but after missing two consecutive days of work without calling in, her manager grew alarmed.

Denise had been employed at this restaurant for two and a half years and had never missed a day of work at all.

Her employer notified the police department and they began a missing persons investigation.

Police went to Denise's apartment.

Her car was missing, but there were no signs of a break-in.

Her apartment was extremely neat, in order.

Nothing seemed to be in disarray.

They also checked the phone answering machine, which provided a clue.

There was an early alert from a credit card company saying there was some unusual spending on one of her cards.

Later that afternoon, police found Denise's car in a parking lot across the street from her apartment.

They immediately felt that someone else must have been in the car because Miss O'Neill was a very, very fastidious person.

And the car was just the opposite.

A pink jacket belonging to Denise was on the back seat.

Two soda bottles were on the floor.

There was a cigarette butt on the floor of the driver's side of the car, and Miss O'Neill didn't smoke.

I noticed that there was white sand on the right rear floor mat.

We had sand on the driver's side and a small amount on the passenger side.

In Florida, sand is quite common, but not this kind of sand.

It wasn't beach sand.

It wasn't black mud.

It wasn't coarse brown sand.

It was unique.

It was consistent with limestone.

Police dusted the entire car inside and out for fingerprints.

We found over 20 prints in total.

They were all over the car.

They were on the inside, they were on the trunk, they were on the outside of the vehicle.

On the day Denise went missing, her credit card revealed she bought a pair of women's sneakers at 2.30 in the afternoon, but failed to show up for work at 5.30.

So somewhere in between that window, something must have happened to her.

This was one of the best pieces of evidence for the police because it gave them a timeframe.

No one at Denise's apartment had seen or heard anything suspicious.

But then a chilling call came in to 911.

Apparently there's a body in the

canal right by our house, by the house where I'm at.

What kind of body?

A human body.

The body was very visible to the neighbor.

It looked like it had been wrapped up in some large pink sheet.

Dental records confirmed the victim was Denise O'Neill.

The body was bound.

Her hands and feet were tied up with several implements, shoestrings, a dog leash, a multicolored dog leash.

We were numb for like days.

And you think you're dreaming, you think you're going to wake up, but you're not waking up at all.

The horror.

The fear that that poor girl went through prior to her death, the total disregard for human life.

It puts a lot of pressure on police to come up with a murderer because, you know, people feel like this could happen again to any one of us.

The medical examiner determined that the cause of Denise O'Neill's death was asphyxiation.

She'd been strangled to death.

They also found evidence of sexual assault.

When the swab from the victim was analyzed in the DNA section, a male profile was developed.

Investigators were puzzled by the two electrical cords used to tie the sheet around Denise's body.

These objects I've never seen before.

I was very suspicious as to what they even were.

I had no idea.

Research identified them as heat rocks.

A heat rock is a pretty simple device.

It's a fake rock that gets heated up by electricity, and people use it to warm cold-blooded animals like a pet snake.

Investigators also found some unusual black hairs on the bed sheet.

Microscopic analysis showed these were dog hairs.

My killer is going to own a black dog.

My killer is also going to own a reptile, whether it be a snake or a lizard.

My killer is also going to have some type of association with a size 36 belt because it's a size belt that we found wrapped around Denise's body.

The sand found in Denise's car was similar to the sand in the area near her body.

Proof.

Denise's car had been used to transport her body.

Investigators knew that Denise had been abducted sometime between 2.30 and 5.30 on the day she disappeared.

Her neighbors said they didn't see or hear anything suspicious.

I do not know if that

happened.

Later that same day,

someone used Denise's ATM card to withdraw $700 from her checking account.

The working assumption at this point for the cops was that whoever used that ATM card probably killed Denise O'Neill.

Unfortunately, the surveillance camera at the ATM wasn't functioning properly, so it was impossible to tell who made the withdrawal.

Then investigators noticed something on the local newscast.

This man, one of Denise's neighbors, kept turning up in various news stories about her disappearance.

This behavior really struck police as odd because he wanted to be in front of the camera and he wanted to be interviewed.

In an interview given before Denise's body was found, he made a surprising reference.

She was very quiet, yeah.

When I tried to say hi to her, sometimes she just doesn't say no, but

we always kept to herself.

What was most interesting was that he referred to Denise in the past tense.

She was very quiet, yeah.

His name was Louis Caballero, and he was Denise's next-door neighbor and was unemployed.

But when police went to interview Capollero, he wasn't home.

I happened to knock on door 737, which was right across the hall from her apartment of 738.

While knocking on the door, I heard a dog bark.

Through a window, investigators saw the dog and its coloring.

Seeing a black chow with my own eyes, the hair on the back of our necks stood up.

Detectives asked another neighbor about Caballero.

The guy said, the only guy I know is the guy, and he pointed up the guy that lives up there.

You know, the guy with the chow and the boa constrictor.

I said, wow.

In the search for Denise O'Neill's killer, Investigators' prime suspect lived just a few feet away from Denise's apartment.

It was her neighbor, Louis Caballero.

When we first walked up on Caballero, he told us.

He didn't say it directly, but he told us he really didn't like Denise.

He described her as being snooty.

Caballero denied any involvement in Denise's murder and said he had no relationship with her other than to say hello.

We discovered that Mr.

Caballero was in serious financial trouble.

He had a phone bill of $6,000 from phone sex lines that he had been calling, that he was behind on his rent and that he could be evicted at any time.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for Caballero's apartment.

What struck me immediately was the large amount of pornography inside the closet.

The type of pornography that was there dealt with a lot of violence.

It was real, real sick stuff.

We did not find Denise O'Neill's fingerprints inside Caballero's apartment.

But they did discover other clues.

I walked into the actual bedroom area, and as I started to turn to the left, I observed what appeared to be and thought was a fish aquarium.

They found impressions at the bottom of the tank, and it looked like they might be where the heat rocks had been.

A pair of heat rocks and the electrical cords were wrapped around Denise's body.

Police also found a pair of black men's sneakers in Caballero's closet.

They didn't have any shoelacings in them.

Miss O'Neill had been bound with black-colored shoelaces.

There was also a reddish-brown stain on the bedroom carpet that might be blood.

To be sure, investigators turned out the lights and sprayed the stain with luminol.

Three very distinct blood stains emerged.

It appeared to be consistent with the outline of the buttocks area of a human being.

Also in Caballero's bedroom, investigators found several other important items.

We found a pair of scissors and trapped within the hinge of the scissors appeared to be blue-colored fibers.

We knew that Miss O'Neill had been wearing a blue-colored garment that had been cut.

Caballero maintained Denise had never been inside his apartment, but under a cardboard box, investigators found a gym membership card.

And when I picked it up and turned it over, and it had Denise O'Neill's name on it, I was ecstatic.

Detectives believe this clue was left at the scene by a desperate Denise O'Neill.

My first question was, have you ever detailed Denise's vehicle?

Louis Caballero's response was, he's never been in her car or never detailed her car.

But analysts found Caballero's prints inside Denise's car.

When faced with this evidence, Caballero changed his story.

He now claimed he was an unwitting accomplice.

He said, The real killer was his friend, 19-year-old Isaac Brown.

Brown, who had no criminal record, also confessed, but said the killer was Caballero, who was broke and desperate for money.

Brown said Caballero had been planning to rob Denise for months.

There was just loose talk from Caballero saying that, man, I need to come up.

I need to hit somebody.

I need some money right now.

And the only person I could think of that's got some money right now is right there.

And he'd always always point across the hallway.

Everybody and their brother was trying to make a deal with the devil.

In other words, every bad guy in this case was wanting to confess and plead out, but get the best deal they could.

Brown's prints were found on a soda bottle in Denise's car, proof he was involved.

Despite Brown and Caballero's conflicting versions of what happened, Their stories were identical on one count.

They had breakfast together together just hours after dumping Denise's body in the canal.

They went to an IHOP restaurant off of Commercial Boulevard in 441 in the city of Tamarack.

Investigators tracked down the receipt for that meal.

When it asked for the waitress to enter how many customers were present, it didn't say two customers, it said three customers.

This explained why the 36-inch belt used to wrap Denise's body didn't fit Caballero or Brown, and why the shoes without the shoelaces in Caballero's apartment also didn't fit either one as well.

That led me to believe very strongly that I had a third killer, that I had a third individual involved with the murder of Denise O'Neill.

But if there were a third perpetrator, Louis Caballero and Isaac Brown weren't talking.

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Investigators now had two men in custody for the abduction and murder of Denise O'Neill, Louis Caballero and Isaac Brown.

Not surprisingly, each man identified the other as the killer.

Complicating things further, investigators discovered that a third man was with Caballero and Brown on the morning they disposed of the body.

It is absolutely shocking.

The defense now can say the real culprit is out there.

The real culprit is the person who you haven't charged.

But who was this third man?

When police did a background check on Luis Caballero, they learned he'd been arrested a month earlier for car theft.

and he had an accomplice.

He was with an acquaintance of his, Robert Messer.

20-year-old Robert Messer's fingerprints were on file.

Voila, going to hold,

there was Mr.

Messer's print on some of the items in the trunk of Denise O'Neill's car.

When police arrested Messer, he too denied any involvement in the murder.

Robert Messer told me, I didn't kill her.

I'll tell you what happened.

I was there.

Messer said he did nothing, nothing, but that Caballero and Brown were both involved.

Messer said he was in Caballero's living room when Caballero and Brown raped and murdered Denise O'Neill in the bedroom.

I sat there with my fingers in my ears and the TV was up loud.

I can barely hear the TV now, but I heard her screams.

I heard her screaming.

All three men were charged with first-degree murder.

But when DNA results came back, only one of the three, Louis Caballero, was tied to the sexual assault.

Based on the forensic evidence and witness interrogations,

investigators believe Caballero planned the attack on an afternoon when Denise was doing her laundry.

When no one was around, he grabbed her

and forced her into his apartment.

And with Isaac Brown's help, gagged and tied her up.

He took her ATM card and forced her to divulge her PIN number.

Caballero then left to get some money.

and on the way back picked up Robert Messer.

Isaac Brown stayed behind.

At some point, Denise was able to remove her gym membership card and hide it underneath a cardboard box, leaving proof that she had been in Caballero's apartment.

When Caballero returned with Messer,

he sexually assaulted her.

Then used electrical cords from the heat rocks to strangle her to death.

The trio wrapped Denise's body in the sheet using the belt, shoelaces, and the electrical cords.

They used Denise's car to drive to the canal where they dumped her body.

They tracked sand into the car and left their fingerprints behind.

Later,

the three went to breakfast.

They were absolute barbarians.

They should have been burned alive, all three of them.

And I make no bones about it.

And they say, don't who let he who has no sin cast the first stone.

Let me tell you, I'd have no problem casting all the stones.

Robert Messer was tried and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years.

Isaac Brown was convicted of five counts, including second-degree murder.

Louis Caballero was convicted of kidnapping and murder, and he now sits on death row.

I thanked God for forensic science and thank God for the men and women who donate their time to study it,

to bring to justice these monsters.

I am very grateful for forensic science.

Denise O'Neill is one of a few

victims that I've encountered through my tenure with this agency that have affected me.

I still think about Denise.

I still think about her family.