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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's episode is a fan favorite. It's called Dead Man Walking. The audio and the story has been remastered for today's episode.
In 2004, a woman living in Nashville, Tennessee, was sitting up in her bed one night doing some homework for a Bible study class. As she sat there, she started to feel tired, so she decided to call it a night. She bookmarked the page and then leaned over to put her Bible on the bedside table when she suddenly froze. Because she was supposed to be alone that night, her family was all gone. But now, standing at the foot of her bed was a person staring right back at her. And not just any person, it was a dead person.
But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please ask if you can borrow the Amazon Music Follow Button's phone to make a quick call, and when they say yes, take their phone, but don't make a call. Instead, log on to their Facebook and change their relationship status from Married to It's Complicated.
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On the night of October 12th, 1984, 20-year-old Angela Samota eagerly picked up her telephone and dialed her boyfriend's number. But after he picked up and they spoke for just a few minutes, Angela's smile on her face faded quickly, and while she didn't exactly slam the phone receiver back onto its cradle, she did put it down with more force than she needed to.
Angela actually really liked her boyfriend, and even now, after 10 months of dating, her heart beat faster whenever she thought of him. Handsome Ben McCall, already a few years out of college and already a construction project supervisor. But still, Angela couldn't help feeling really disappointed that he had just said no to her invitation to go out with her that night.
Angela knew Ben had to be at work very early the next morning, but it wasn't exactly a common occurrence for her to ask him to do things like this. Because most Friday nights, and Saturday and Sunday nights, Angela was cooped up in her off-campus condo studying. Angela was a third-year student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and she was enrolled as a double major in the school's highly competitive electrical engineering and computer science programs.
Her goal was to use her degree to break into the heavily male-dominated world of engineering. And to ensure her dream became a reality, she had decided early on in her collegiate career to always put academics ahead of her social life. However, this did not mean Angela lacked a social life or that she was an antisocial person. Quite the opposite, in fact. Even though she lived off campus,
Angela was the social chairperson of her college sorority. A sorority is a women's organization on a college campus whose purpose is to create a sense of community and friendship. And she was known among her big circle of friends not only for her intelligence and academic achievements, but also for her cheerful attitude and great sense of humor. Within her sorority, Angela was also known for always taking the time to regularly check in with her sorority sisters.
chatting, asking how things were going, whether there was anything she could do to help people out. Angela was also strikingly beautiful. She was about 5 feet 4 inches tall with a slender build. She had dark blonde, thick hair, blue eyes, a radiant smile, and she always looked fit and athletic. Angela was actually so attractive that not long ago it had created a very uncomfortable situation for her.
One of her admirers, a fellow college student, had begun just shamelessly following her around campus and leaving notes on her car windshield saying that he wanted to be part of her life. But in truth, that situation had actually worried Angela's sorority sisters much more than it worried Angela, because Angela just had a lot of faith in her own ability to take care of herself.
Now, as Angela stood in her kitchen and wrapped her fingers on the counter next to the telephone, she suddenly decided she would just give her boyfriend one more call. Maybe she could change his mind about going out that night. After all, this was not just any Friday night.
This was the day before one of the biggest sporting events in Texas. It was the annual rivalry game between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma. And it was being played right there in Dallas at the world-famous Cotton Bowl Stadium at the world-famous Texas State Fair.
That night in Dallas, thousands of people, college students, alumni, residents, and tourists would be out in force enjoying the state fair, packing the local bars and nightclubs and restaurants, and gearing up for the next day's big game. But as Angela went to reach for the phone to call Ben back, she stopped herself and sighed. She knew Ben was not about to change his mind. During their call, Angela had told him that
that her friend, Anita Kadala, was going to be going out with them that night. Meaning, Ben knew he could turn down Angela's offer, and Angela would not be left stranded for the night. She would have Anita to still go out with. Also on their call, Angela had even pulled out the big guns and tried to make Ben a little jealous to see if maybe that would convince him to go. She had told him that if he was going to stay in...
then maybe she would just give Russell a call to see if he wanted to tag along with her and Anita for the night. Russell was really just a friend, but he was a male friend. However, Ben had not been phased and had just said, "Okay, sounds good, have fun." After sitting there for a moment, feeling totally annoyed and dejected,
Angela suddenly sat up and thought, "You know what? I will call Russell and see if he wants to go." So she went to her bedroom desk and rummaged around for the notebook where she kept her phone numbers. Once she found it, she turned to the "B"s page, and there it was: Russell Buchanan. Russell, who was 23 years old, had graduated a year earlier from Texas A&M's School of Architecture, but Angela hoped that he still liked going to college parties and sporting events.
Angela had met Russell during his senior year at a happy hour one night with a group of mutual friends. Russell had immediately been attracted to Angela and had asked for her phone number. They exchanged information and a few days later Russell had called Angela and invited her out to lunch. Angela had said yes, but later wound up canceling on Russell and so they never actually went out on a date. With her phone book in hand, Angela walked back to her kitchen, picked up the telephone,
and dialed Russell's number. Even if he wound up not wanting to go, at least this way, Angela could apologize for canceling on him on that one date. But when Russell picked up, he was all in on the idea of going out with Angela and Anita, and so he agreed to meet the girls later that evening. Not long after speaking to Russell, Anita arrived at Angela's condo, and after doing a little bit of studying and taking a quick nap, the girls began getting ready for the night. Before she and Anita left the condo, Angela
Angela took one last look at herself in the mirror. She was wearing one of her favorite outfits. It was a black silk jumpsuit with an open back and a pair of black high heels. She knew she looked her very best, but once again, she found herself wishing that it was Ben she was going out with. Turning away from her reflection, Angela picked up her black purse, she grabbed her car keys, and then she and Anita left the second floor corner condo at 4944 Amesbury Drive.
They headed down to the parking lot and hopped into Angela's Toyota Supra car. Angela was not a big drinker and had volunteered to drive them around that night. Angela turned on the car, she put it in drive, and then the two women drove the short distance to Russell's nearby apartment.
After Russell climbed in the car around 9:30 p.m., the trio headed 10 miles south to their first stop of the evening, Bennigan's, a local bar known for its steak and ale. But Bennigan's was just a warm-up. By 11:30 p.m., Angela, Anita, and Russell had made their way first to the Boardwalk Beach Club, a singles bar that was popular for its 1950s and 60s style music,
and then on to a nightclub in downtown Dallas called Nostromo's. Shortly after they arrived there, Angela, who now missed her boyfriend even more than she had before she left, decided she would just give him another call and see if maybe now he would want to join them. But after being awakened from his sleep, Ben was not any more inclined to come out and meet Angela. However, since Ben was a member of the club where they were at, Nostromo's,
He called the front desk and got Angela and her friends access to their exclusive Rio room, which was the back room of the club. Angela still wished she could just have been, but the Rio room was a pretty good consolation prize. And so Angela spent the next hour or so dancing inside of this VIP area with Russell and Anita, and then when she wasn't dancing, she was walking from table to table saying hello to all the folks who were in there.
According to Anita, it seemed like Angela knew literally everyone at the club that night. By 12:30 a.m., Angela was feeling tired, so she flagged down Anita and Russell and signaled that she wanted to leave. Angela had plans to get up early the next day and actually leave Dallas before the big crowds descended on the Cotton Bowl Stadium. She wasn't going to stick around for the big Texas vs. Oklahoma game.
Instead, she and some of her sorority sisters had decided to drive 100 miles south to Waco, Texas to watch the football game between their own school, Southern Methodist University, and Baylor University. When Angela, Anita, and Russell left Nostromo's and stepped back out onto the street, the crowd outside, and really all around Dallas, was just as thick and rowdy as it had been earlier in the evening.
The three friends made their way through the crowd to Angela's car that was parked in the outdoor lot across the street, and then about 15 minutes later, Angela pulled up in front of Russell's apartment. Before he went inside, he walked around and gave Angela a long hug,
and then when Angela climbed back inside of the car with Anita, Anita looked at her and just rolled her eyes. Anita had had a great time that evening, but more than once when Russell was dancing with Angela in the Rio room, Anita had definitely felt like she was just a third wheel.
Angela just laughed it off and said Russell was a friend, and then they pulled away from the curb and kept on driving. By 1:15 a.m., Angela had arrived outside of Anita's dorm room. Angela had asked Anita to stay with her at her condo, but Anita had politely declined. The women hugged and said they'd talk tomorrow, then Anita went inside of her building, and Angela hopped back inside of her car and then pulled away from the curb and began driving back home.
But as Angela drove, she made a sudden decision to swing by Ben's apartment, which happened to be right on the way. Maybe if she just appeared on his doorstep, he might invite her to stay. But that did not happen. When Ben finally opened his front door, looking totally groggy and disheveled, he was not pleased to see Angela standing there.
After a brief chat, he told her that as nice as it was to see her, he really just needed to sleep, so could she please just head home and they could talk tomorrow. Angela would eventually accept defeat and would turn around and head back down the steps towards the street below. After Ben watched his girlfriend climb back into her car and drive off, he turned around and went back inside and climbed back into his bed.
But, just 15 minutes later at about 1:45 AM, right as Ben was finally dozing off again, he heard his phone ring.
Groaning, he rolled over and picked up the receiver, already knowing that it had to be Angela. And it was. But this time, something was very different. She was not playfully trying to convince him to come see her. Instead, her voice sounded strained. Something was wrong. She was calling from inside of her condo, and her first words to Ben were both strange and distracted.
Ben, Angela said, talk to me. And when Ben heard a sudden noise in the background and the sound of a voice calling out a question, Ben's anxiety flared. Angie, he said, are you okay? Angela hesitated for a second and then, still speaking in that sort of distracted and disjointed voice, she said, I let a man into my condo.
Before Ben could respond to this, he heard the sound of utensils clattering on the kitchen counter very close to the telephone, and Angela suddenly telling him in a rushed voice that she would call him back in just a few minutes before she suddenly hung up the receiver without even saying goodbye.
By now, Ben was wide awake, and when a few minutes went by and Angela did not call him back, Ben dialed her number and got no answer. As he jumped out of bed and started pulling on his clothes, he called a second time, and again there was no answer. Now, Ben felt a flash of panic, and still pulling on his jacket, he ran outside and he jumped into his truck.
Although portable cell phones wouldn't be a thing until the 1990s, as a construction supervisor, Ben's truck was equipped with a satellite phone. And as he made the 8-10 minute drive to Angela's condo, Ben used that satellite phone to call Angela's number again and again, but still there was no answer.
Once Ben pulled into the parking lot of Angela's condo building, Ben saw Angela's car in its usual space. He parked his truck not far from her vehicle, and then he leapt out of his truck and ran to the stairs to Angela's front door, where he began to press her doorbell while also banging on the door and calling out her name.
When no one answered or came to the door, Ben turned and ran back down the stairs and around the building to another flight of stairs that led up to Angela's balcony and where her back door was. When he got up to that door, he began banging on it and calling out Angela's name again. But again, there was no answer. Ben would eventually leave the back door and run back to his truck out front, where he would use his satellite phone to call 911.
At 2:17 a.m., the emergency dispatcher who received Ben's 911 call sent a couple of officers out to do a welfare check at 4944 Amesbury Drive. The dispatcher told the police officers that a young man named Ben McCall was worried something bad had happened to his girlfriend, Angela Samoda, who lived at that address.
When the two police officers arrived at the scene 23 minutes later, they found Ben sitting quietly on the back steps leading up to Angela's condo.
To that point, the two responding officers had spent that whole night and the early morning hours answering lots of complaints of noise and drunkenness and disturbance as all of Dallas seemed to be out on the streets partying. And so, tired and at the end of their shift, they were confident that this call would be no more serious than all the others they had been to so far.
After directing Ben to go get the master key from the on-site building manager, the police officers walked around to the front of the property to knock on the door and to double check that the condo really was locked. It was locked and after they knocked, no one answered. But a few minutes later, Ben arrived with the master key.
With Ben waiting outside on the sidewalk, the police officers used the master key to open Angela's front door and then they stepped inside. And almost immediately, the officers knew that this call was not like the others they'd responded to that night.
On the carpeted floor of the living room just ahead of them, they could see there was a single black high-heeled shoe tipped over on its side. And near it was what looked like the track of another spike heel that had been dragged through the soft pile of the rug, like someone was still wearing that second high heel when they were dragged across the living room.
After seeing this, both officers reflexively put their shooting hands down on their gun holsters. One of them, a rookie officer named Janice Crowther, who had just joined the Dallas Police Force one year earlier, immediately felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when she saw those two shoes.
Turning around and looking out the front door, motioning Ben to stay where he was, Janice turned back and stepped into the living room for a closer look, while her partner turned left and headed for what looked like a bedroom door. A minute later, as Janice was looking around the living room and not really seeing anything, she heard her partner calling out, "I think I found her."
In the 31 years that Officer Crowther would go on to serve in the Dallas Police Force, she would never see a crime scene any more brutal than the one that met her eyes when she stepped into Angela's bedroom. Inside, Angela Samota was lying on her back. While the upper part of her body was still on the mattress, her long, tanned legs dangled off the edge of the bed, not quite touching the floor.
Her naked body was covered in blood, and it was clear right away that she had been the victim of an incredibly violent attack. The officers immediately rushed over to her and checked for a pulse, but Angela was deceased.
After making sure the attacker was no longer in the condo, police radioed for an ambulance, crime technicians, and a team of homicide detectives. Within minutes, the street outside of Angela's condo, as well as her building's inside parking lot, became the scene of police cars and flashing lights as officers quickly cordoned off Angela's unit with yellow crime scene tape.
30 minutes later, lead detective Virgil Sparks and his partner Russell Graves were standing in Angela's bedroom looking at the ruined remains of a young woman who just hours before had had a vibrant life and a promising future. Their first impression was that this murder had been a crime of intense passion. In violent cases like this, where there was no sign of robbery, police
Police knew from their experience that the motives were often rage, jealousy, love, revenge, or some combination of those. Detectives would need to wait for confirmation from the crime scene techs and the results of Angela's autopsy, but it certainly looked to them like Angela had been the victim of a violent sexual assault. And since there was no sign of forced entry, it also looked like Angela herself had opened the door to her attacker.
From the defensive wounds on Angela's hands and arms, and the single high-heeled shoe that was still lying in the middle of the living room, detectives also surmised that
that there must have been a struggle and that Angela had likely tried to fight off her attacker. And from the smears of blood on the bedroom light switch and the bloody residue around the drain in the bathtub and on the bottom of the shower curtain, it also appeared that after killing Angela, her attacker had used her bathroom to try to clean themselves off before leaving the condo and taking the murder weapon with them.
Feeling sure that the killer had to be someone who knew Angela, the first people that the police wanted to talk to were the men in Angela's life, starting with Ben.
If it was true that Angela had called Ben at 1:45 a.m., when, according to Ben, she sounded distracted and in trouble, which had prompted him to go check on her at her condo, and given that Ben called 911 at 2:17 a.m., then the murder had to have occurred during those intervening 32 minutes. If the killer wasn't Ben, then that meant Ben had just magically arrived at the condo within minutes of the killer making their getaway.
It just seemed too convenient for Ben. So the detectives believed Ben had to be involved, or at least know something about what happened. His proximity to the crime and connection to the victim was just impossible to ignore.
30 minutes later, Ben was sitting across from the detectives in the interrogation room at the Dallas police station. And the thing detectives noticed about Ben right away was his very unemotional response to what had just happened to his girlfriend. Ben just kind of sat there quietly as if nothing had happened. So when Ben again brought up the phone conversation he'd had with Angela at 1:45 AM when
when she sounded scared and she said that she let a man into her condo, the investigators were just not necessarily buying it. They felt like maybe Ben was making this call up. So the detectives focused their follow-up questions not so much on this call at 1:45 a.m., but on whether Ben had been jealous that Angela had gone out that night with Russell and not him, and whether maybe Ben was just angry because maybe he suspected that
that Angela had other men she was seeing romantically besides him. But Ben swore he had nothing to do with the murder, and even though he would refuse to take a lie detector test, he would agree to get blood and saliva samples as well as scrapings from underneath his fingernails. He also agreed to let officers search his truck and condo and access his phone records. By later that same morning, police had three more names of possible suspects:
Angela's sorority sisters had told them about a former boyfriend named Lance Johnson from Angela's hometown of Amarillo, Texas, who had once threatened Angela with a knife and who still called Angela wanting to get back together. The police also had the name of Joseph Patrick Barlow, the Southern Methodist University student who had been known to follow Angela around campus and leave notes on her car windshield along with writing love poems to her.
And then there was Russell, the young architect who had spent the evening with Angela and Anita, and who had asked Angela out on at least one date and had been stood up by her at least one time. But that afternoon, on October 13th, as police were getting ready to follow up with each of these men, they received a critical piece of new information that would change everything. Mr. Ballin Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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The preliminary results from Angela's autopsy had come back, and she had indeed been sexually assaulted. And her attacker had left behind plenty of bodily fluids, including semen, which meant her attacker was a male.
But a test of those bodily fluids showed something unique. It would turn out the man who attacked Angela was what's known as a non-secreter. A non-secreter is an individual, man or woman, whose blood type antigens do not show up in bodily fluid other than blood. In other words, their saliva or semen or other fluid secretions do not contain any markers of their blood type.
Approximately 50-80% of all people are secretors, while 20-50% are non-secretors. And so, this information immediately allowed police to start ruling suspects out. Today, police use DNA testing to track bodily fluids back to an exact individual. But back in 1984, when Angela was murdered, this kind of rough sorting of suspects using information like whether they were a secreter or not
was about as good as police were going to get. So, with the non-secreter news coupled with bulletproof alibis, the list of suspects suddenly dropped from four names down to just one.
Not only was Angela's potentially violent and jealous former boyfriend, Lance, a secreter rather than a non-secreter, he was also asleep in his parents' house in Amarillo, Texas on the night of Angela's murder. And although the student who had followed Angela around campus would turn out to fit the bill as a non-secreter, he too had a rock-solid alibi that ruled him out. That left two suspects—
Angela's boyfriend Ben and Russell Buchanan. And while Ben had seemed very much like the number one suspect, the search of his truck and apartment had turned up nothing, and phone records placed him far enough from the scene at the suspected time of Angela's death that police doubted he had the time to commit the murder. He also was eventually proven to be a secretor.
Russell, on the other hand, was a non-secreter, and he had been with Angela right before she was killed, and his apartment was only a five-minute walk from her condo. But what really snagged the police's interest in Russell was the fact that when investigators went to his apartment to interview him on October 13th, just hours after Angela's body had been discovered, Russell was nowhere to be found.
In fact, it wasn't until Monday, October 15th, more than 48 hours after Angela's murder, that police finally found Russell at his home. And when Russell answered their knock on his door, he found a shotgun pointed directly at his chest. It wasn't exactly a raid, but it was clear to Russell that he was in some serious trouble. With the shotgun still aimed at his chest, detectives ordered Russell to go with them to the police station to answer questions about the murder of Angela Samota.
Once they were in the interrogation room, Russell told the detectives that he had nothing to do with Angela's murder. He said he didn't even know she had been killed until the police were at his door that morning with a shotgun pointed at him. He said the last time he saw Angela was when she and her friend Anita had dropped him off at 1am after the three of them had left the club. He told police that he was never involved romantically with Angela and that he knew she had a boyfriend and he was not jealous.
When asked why he wasn't around on the 13th and 14th, Russell said he'd been at a wedding in Dallas before flying to Houston, Texas to visit his parents, and he had only just gotten back late on the 14th.
Russell's story seemed plausible, but he didn't really have an alibi, and he was a non-secreter, so investigators could not rule him out as a suspect. However, without any other hard evidence that actually linked Russell to the crime scene or to Angela's death, Detective Sparks and Graves had to let Russell go.
Over the next few weeks, six investigators who were all assigned full-time to Angela's case chased down every lead they possibly could. They interviewed everyone from friends and family to the mechanics who worked on Angela's car to the workers who had installed the carpeting in Angela's condo. But no one had any useful information.
Crime Stoppers, a community program that encourages people to provide anonymous tips about crimes, featured Angela's case in a televised program and even offered a reward of $1,000 for any useful information. Also, Angela's own family offered a reward of $10,000 for information that would lead to her killer.
But still, nothing came in. And as every lead seemed to go cold, Detective Virgil Sparks couldn't help but keep coming back to one name on his suspect list, Russell Buchanan.
Russell had not been ruled out yet, and in Detective Sparks' eyes, Russell just seemed like the guy. And soon, one of Angela's friends, Sheila Gibbons, would become Detective Sparks' unlikely ally in his effort to uncover incriminating evidence against Russell.
22-year-old Sheila Gibbons was especially traumatized by Angela's death. Not only were the women both members of the same sorority, but also, Sheila had been Angela's roommate during Angela's first year at Southern Methodist University. When they first met, it had seemed like the two girls did not have much in common. Sheila struggled with dyslexia, a learning disability that made it hard for her to correctly interpret words.
And so while Sheila struggled with her studies and preferred socializing to books, Angela was the opposite. But over time, these differences actually seemed to draw the girls closer together. Sheila made sure that Angela didn't just study, and Angela helped Sheila focus on schoolwork. Even after Angela had moved into her own condo off campus,
the women had remained very close. And just one week before Angela's murder, the two of them had had one of their regular get-togethers to catch up and chat about what was going on in their lives. On the weekend that Angela was killed, Sheila had been away from the university visiting her mother in North Texas,
And that was where she was when she got a call from one of her sorority sisters who broke the terrible news. Sheila was completely devastated, and as soon as she got back to the campus, she went straight to the Dallas police station to see if there was anything she could do or tell them that would help in their investigation into Angela's death. And it was there at the station that Sheila happened to look over and see some of the crime scene photos of Angela right after she had been raped and murdered.
and it was a sight Sheila could just never forget. After speaking with Detective Sparks and getting the impression that he was especially suspicious of Russell, Sheila offered to arrange and record conversations between herself and Russell in
in hopes that Russell might tell her something incriminating. And on top of Sheila spying on Russell, police also set up 24-hour-a-day surveillance on Russell, and they also pulled him in for questioning on dozens of occasions, picking him up at his work or at his apartment or anywhere in between. But all of that came to a screeching halt in April of 1984 when Russell hired a well-known defense attorney who told police they had to either charge Russell with a crime or
or leave him alone. And because at that point police still had not unearthed any hard evidence against Russell, they were forced to just leave him alone. And so Russell became yet another dead end. And by the late spring of 1985, the Angela Samoda murder investigation had basically gone ice cold.
And around the same time that investigators set Angela's files aside and changed the status of her case from active to suspended pending new information, Angela's friend and Detective Sparks' unofficial spy, Sheila, really started to struggle. Angela's unsolved killing had shattered Sheila's sense of safety and security along with her belief in the justice system.
Convinced that Russell had just gotten away with murder, and still feeling totally traumatized by the brutality of her friend's murder, Sheila would drop out of Southern Methodist University in the middle of her senior year.
For a while, after she left school, Sheila just sort of drifted through her life, overwhelmed by the sense of numbness that Angela's murder had caused. Eventually, in 1986, Sheila would meet a man named Charles Wasaki. They would get married, they would buy a house together, and they would have kids together. And for the most part, Sheila was able to just kind of focus on her family and move on with her life and not let Angela's murder dominate every aspect of it.
But all of that would change one evening in 2004.
By then, Sheila was 43 years old and was living comfortably with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. And while she did still periodically think about her friend Angela, the thought of what happened to her was still so traumatic that often whenever Sheila thought of Angela, she tried to bury those feelings and not talk about them. But one night that year, as Sheila was sitting up in her bed alone trying to complete some homework for a Bible study class,
She happened to look up from her Bible, and what she saw at the foot of her bed shocked her. Standing there was her dead friend, Angela Samota.
According to Sheila, Angela looked exactly as Sheila remembered her. From the clear blue eyes to the huge smile that used to light up the room, her friend was dressed in the same brown sweater and matching brown skirt that she had been wearing the last time she and Sheila had gotten together at Southern Methodist University to catch up on each other's lives. Even though Angela would vanish just a moment later, Sheila described that experience of seeing Angela standing there as a, quote, God nod.
A message, not from Angela, but directly from God, that it was time for Sheila to get out there and make sure Angela's murder case finally got solved.
As Sheila lay there in bed stunned by what had just happened, she thought back over all the advances in DNA testing that had been made over the last 20 years and how every day it seemed like more criminals were being identified through the genetic traces they left behind, from their fingerprints to a stray hair or a drop of blood or saliva or semen.
And so as she sat there, her sense of shock quickly gave way to a clear sense of purpose. She put her Bible down next to her, and then she reached over to the table and she grabbed the phone off the nightstand. A moment later, she was talking to an officer at the Dallas Police Department, asking to speak with the detective in charge of investigating Angela Samota's murder. And even though that call didn't net her any new information about the murderer,
That didn't stop Sheila from pursuing this God-given mission to solve her friend's murder.
Over the next 12 months, Sheila would call the Dallas police station 781 times to request they do DNA testing in her friend's case to try to figure out who her killer was. But each time the request was denied because the case was still cold, there were no new leads, and at this point they didn't even think they had the original crime scene evidence anymore to test. And even if they did, DNA testing was very expensive and for a case this old it
it didn't seem worth it. Finally, after those 781 calls didn't work, Sheila decided to just get a private investigator's license. This way, she would have the professional credentials that would force the police to take her and her requests for DNA testing seriously. And in 2006, two years after Sheila had seen the vision of Angela in her bedroom, she finally started seeing real progress on Angela's case.
That year, the Dallas police finally established a cold case department, and largely because of Sheila's rabid insistence over the years that they look into Angela's case, the first case this new department pulled for reexamination was Angela's.
That year, working directly with Sheila, the detective handling Angela's case was able to track down the original physical evidence that had been collected at the crime scene and they sent it off for DNA testing. Once the DNA analysis was finally completed, the results were entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's database of known and suspected criminals, but there was not an immediate match. However, investigators would continue to search that database
And finally, two years later in 2008, Sheila got a call from the Dallas police saying they had found a match. Meaning, they had finally discovered who killed Angela. And when they told Sheila who the killer was, she could not believe it. Based on the DNA analysis, along with other pieces of evidence and testimony, here is a reconstruction of what really happened to Angela Simota.
Back on the night of October 12th, 1984, when Angela and her friends Anita and Russell were going from restaurant to restaurant and bar to bar having a good time, it didn't take long before Angela was drawing lots of admiring glances from men who were also at all of these establishments they were going to, especially when she and her friends stepped out onto the dance floor. Unlike a lot of the people who were out celebrating that night, Angela was drinking very little alcohol. As a result, her
Her smile was genuine, her eyes were clear, and her movements were graceful and coordinated. The man who was sitting at one of the bars that night could hardly take his eyes off of this beautiful young woman in the black jumpsuit. And when Angela accidentally brushed up against him on her way to a table in the corner of that bar, this man felt a sudden thrill at the silky touch and warm scent of Angela's bare skin. It was then that he decided to follow her.
He told himself that he just wanted to watch her, enjoy how good she looked, maybe just see where she lived and whether the boy she was with was also her boyfriend.
So, when Angela and Anita and Russell left the Nostromo's club at about 12:30 a.m., this man was waiting for them. He was standing just outside the exit to the club, maybe a few feet off to the side, so as not to be too conspicuous. Although, this man was over 6 feet tall and weighed nearly 260 pounds, so he was enormous,
and so trying to remain anonymous had always been a big challenge for him. But luckily, that night, the street was so crowded with drunk people that he hoped this beautiful girl and her two friends would not notice him. And when Angela and her friends emerged from the club, they didn't. They just walked right past him without a second look. The big man waited a few seconds to let them walk a little bit farther into the crowd,
And then he put his hands in his pockets, he put his head down, and he began secretly walking behind the three friends.
The trio would push past the big crowd out into the street, they would cross over to the other side, and they would make their way to the parking lot where they climbed into Angela's Toyota Supra. By the time Angela had turned her car on and began backing out of her parking spot, the big man who had followed them was now sitting only a few spots away in his idling vehicle. As Angela put her car into gear and began driving out of the parking lot, the big man put his car into drive and then eased his foot off the brake,
and slowly hit the gas. It wasn't long before the big man felt another thrill. At the first stop Angie made, that was the name he'd overheard her friends call her, the young man who had been with them got out. He hugged Angie and then made his way into the nearby condo building. Meaning, even if that young man was Angie's boyfriend, he wasn't going to be spending the night with her.
A few minutes later, the big man could hardly contain his excitement when Angie stopped again, this time at a college dormitory where she said goodbye to her other friend, the girl. Angie was now all alone. But the big man's smile faded when Angie's third stop took her to an apartment where she knocked on the front door. This couldn't be her own place or she would have just used a key and walked in.
A minute later, an outside light switched on and the big man saw another young man open the door and a moment later, Angie had stepped inside and the door had shut behind them. So that was it, the big man thought, at least for tonight. That young man who had just opened the door must be Angie's real boyfriend and she is going to spend the night with him.
The big man suddenly realized how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel, and he took a few minutes to force himself to just breathe and relax. But even as he was getting ready to turn his car back on and drive home, the door to this apartment opened again, and he saw Angie step back outside, her blonde hair shining like a halo in the porch light.
Watching intently from his car, the big man held his breath, then let out a sigh of relief when the young man inside the apartment stepped back inside and closed the door. Angie was alone again. Breathing a little faster now, the big man in the car watched as Angie walked back to her Toyota, she unlocked the door, slipped once more behind the steering wheel, turned on the engine, and pulled back out onto the road. She never noticed the car that pulled out behind her and followed her the rest of the way home.
Ten minutes later, Angie was climbing the steps to her condo on Amesbury Drive. The big man had parked his car on the other side of the street and made a mental note of which unit was hers. He had made up his mind. He was going to go inside.
But it was important that he got to her right now before she was settled in her bed. So after taking a deep breath, the big man looked around him to make sure no one was watching. Then he climbed out of his car, he shut the door quietly, and began walking across the street toward Angela's building.
Once she was inside of her condo, Angela put down her purse and hung up her car keys. But just as Angela was about to slip out of her black high heels and head for the bathroom, she heard a sudden but quiet knock on the door just a few feet away from where she was standing.
Then she heard a man's voice, and more knocking, still quiet, but insistent. Whoever was out there sounded apologetic and kind of embarrassed, and so Angela stepped closer to the door and just listened. The man outside began talking again. He said he just needed to find out where the nearest payphone was. He'd just take a second or two of her time. "Please, could you just open up the door?"
Reassured by the tone of his voice, Angela reached out and she unlocked the door. But then, before she could even turn the door handle, the man outside had pushed the door open himself and was now stepping into her condo. Forced backward, Angela felt a sudden rush of fear. The man in front of her was enormous, and he had these small, flat, green eyes and a thin mouth. And as soon as he was inside of her condo,
He just started repeating his question about the payphone while also simultaneously turning around, shutting her door behind them, and locking both of them inside of her condo.
Then, with the door locked, he turned back around and faced her and began slowly walking toward her while asking if he could use her bathroom. For just a second, Angela squeezed her eyes shut, trying to gather her thoughts and find a way to make him leave her condo. And then she thought of Ben. What she needed to do was call Ben. This huge man would never hurt her.
if he knew that she'd told her boyfriend that he was here in the condo with her. So, as Angela forced herself to open her eyes and face the big man who was bearing down on her, she also reached out for the phone on the kitchen counter and quickly punched in Ben's number. The man didn't try to stop her from using the phone. He just continued walking closer and closer to her while asking, "Where's your bathroom? Where's your bathroom?" With the phone up to her ear, Angela quickly gestured to the intruder
with her other hand toward a tiny hallway on the other side of the living room where the bathroom was located. As the big man suddenly turned away from her and began striding toward that hallway, Ben answered Angela's call. Right away, Angela began speaking, doing her best to stay calm, but her voice sounded strange and disjointed. Ben, she said, talk to me, please. And in the seconds that followed...
Angela kind of awkwardly explained that she had just allowed a man into her apartment and he's using the bathroom and he's asking about a payphone and did Ben know if there was a payphone near her condo? Maybe if the intruder knew where the payphone was, he'd just leave. But before Angela could explain anything else, the big man emerged from that hallway near the bathroom and strode right back over to Angela and again began asking her over and over again, where's your bathroom? Where's your bathroom?
The big man was now so close to Angela that the only way to put distance between her and him was to hang up the phone and back up. And so Angela quickly told Ben she'd call him back in a few minutes, and then she dropped the receiver onto its cradle. But before Angela could step away, the big man had taken one of the knives out of her butcher block on the kitchen counter, and even as Angela tried to turn and run toward the front door to escape,
The big man lunged and he grabbed her with one arm around the waist and began pulling her away from the door. Angela did her best to fight back, but her attacker was way bigger and stronger than she was, and so a moment later she was being forcibly dragged across her living room towards her bedroom. After throwing her onto her bed, the big man climbed on top of her and then pressed down hard with his left hand over her mouth and face to stifle her screams. Then he violently raped her.
After he was done, with his hands still pressed down over her mouth, he straddled her torso with one knee on either side of her, making sure she couldn't move. Then, with his free right hand, he reached over and he grabbed the knife he had taken from the kitchen that was sitting on the bedside table. Then, while staring straight down at Angela's wide eyes, the man raised the knife in his right hand over his head, and then he brought it straight down with all of his strength into the center of Angela's chest.
Angela tried to buck him off, but seconds later he had pulled the knife out of her and then drove it back down again into a new spot in her chest. And he would do this over and over and over again, 18 total times. The force of these blows were so great that they broke Angela's breastbone. And even though the knife may have been as short as two inches long, it would go straight through Angela's heart and then come out of her back.
And every time this huge man who was crouched over her like a monster raised the knife again to strike, a spray of blood left a thickening trail on the headboard and wall behind Angela and coated her face and body with droplets, except where the killer's left hand covered her mouth and where his enormous body covered her bruised and naked skin.
Janice Crowther, one of the police officers who first discovered Angela's body early in the morning of October 13th, 1984, would later testify at the killer's trial that when she first walked into Angela's bedroom, it looked like Angela's heart had been cut out and was laying on top of her chest.
It would turn out Angela's killer was a 36-year-old convicted serial rapist named Donald Bess, who had targeted Angela simply because he liked the way it felt when she accidentally bumped into him at the bar. That was all it took. Angela didn't know him, and he didn't know her. Angela was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Donald was already an experienced predator when he first came in contact with Angela. He'd gotten out of prison on parole just six months earlier in March of 1984 after serving only six years of a 25-year-long sentence for rape, kidnapping, and aggravated assault. Although he was living and working in Houston, Donald had made the 240-mile drive north to Dallas several times that summer and fall to visit friends and to meet women at local bars.
Nine months after getting away with the rape and murder of Angela Samota, Donald would go on to rape, but not kill, yet another Texas woman. However, this time he was caught, and in 1985 he was sentenced to 999 years in prison, however, again with the possibility of parole. But in April of 2008, the DNA testing that Sheila had wanted the Dallas police force to do for so many years
finally paid off when the DNA at Angela's crime scene matched Donald Bess's DNA. On June 18, 2010, Donald Bess was convicted of capital murder in the rape and stabbing death of Angela Samoda, and he would be sentenced to death. Now 74 years old, Donald is still on death row at Polunsky Prison in Livingston, Texas. While there is no execution date as of now, Donald will never be eligible for parole.
As for Sheila, when she finally heard the name of Angela's real killer back in 2008, she was shocked. For more than 20 years, she had completely believed that Angela's killer was Russell Buchanan. In February of 2012, Sheila met with Russell in Dallas to apologize for her attempt back in 1984 to connect him to Angela's murder and her belief in the years that followed that he was the guilty party.
Now a well-known and successful architect in Dallas, Russell was quick to forgive. In the end, Sheila's persistence had not only led to the discovery of Angela's real killer, but it had also finally lifted the cloud of suspicion Russell had been living under for more than two decades. Sheila is still a practicing private investigator. Her specialty is cracking cold cases.
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