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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.
Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. A lot of times we don't get to know the why. Because you have to speak for that person. You have to try and figure out what happened to them. Because you want everything you can to bring the family justice. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph. We often say that falling victim to a violent crime can be random, that tragedy can happen to anyone. And that's true. However, violent crime, assault, and even homicide disproportionately victimizes those most vulnerable.
The disadvantaged, the unhoused, and those suffering from addiction or disabling mental health issues, these are the people that consistently face a much higher risk of being the victim of a violent crime. And too often, their deaths, like their lives, go unseen.
In today's episode, we're going to West Palm Beach, Florida, where we're highlighting a horrific crime on one such vulnerable victim, 45-year-old Tim Bell, whose generosity and kindness was repaid with cruelty and violence. They got rid of him, dog. They choked his ass out.
That statement is nothing like what most people picture when they think of Palm Beach. Most people think of the billionaires, beachfront mansions, maybe even the opulent estate of a certain ex-president.
For more than a century, this small South Florida town has been known as the playground for the rich and the very rich. But just across the bridge that spans the intercoastal waterway, there's a whole other world. West Palm Beach is a city of 120,000 people with a median income far below the national average and crime far above.
We're right across from the town of Palm Beach where all the money is. You know, back in the day, that's where the wealthy people were staying. And then West Palm was where the servants stayed. That is the voice of Detective Aaron Sam, who has been with the West Palm Beach Police Department for over 25 years. Now, I'm lucky enough to call Aaron a friend and a colleague. He's a dogged investigator with a passion for clearing cases.
Started out in property, violent crimes, and then on to homicide. It's an assignment that, despite being just a few minutes from a stretch of the wealthiest real estate in the world, has kept Aaron very busy. As far as dealing with crime and stuff like that, at one time we were ranked number ninth in the nation. We have our fair share of what's going on, of shootings, homicides, so forth, in the city of West Palm.
And in his 25-year career, there is one particular case that has stuck with him. The disappearance of Tim Bell began as a missing persons case, but his investigation would reveal the truth behind his fate turned out to be something much, much worse. Timothy Bell was well-liked, happy, jovial, good-looking. He was 6'5", 260 pounds. He was a big dude.
Matter of fact, his nickname was Big Bear. Tim was 45 years old and living in his own apartment, despite being diagnosed with a neurodivergence that kept him from being able to work. And he had some mental issues, but he was still taking classes at the library. He was friends with neighbors.
And from what we learned about him, he was also incredibly generous. In the spring of 2011, when Tim learned that his teenage nephew Matt needed a place to live, he invited him to come stay with him in his small apartment. But as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. And in a matter of weeks, Matt had invited two of his friends to also stay at Tim's home.
So, when I say, you know, we did learn that Tim was well aware of his nephew's struggles and knowing that he would probably be on the street and not really taking care of himself. Tim was willing to share even with that small space he was living in. He had the mindset to be helpful.
And while his cousin Matt definitely was having struggles of his own that included not only not having a place to live, but also struggling with addiction issues. And one of these other friends also had a criminal past. Again, you have to think about, Scott, is this...
generosity that is being thought of in kind and being appreciated or is it somehow being taken advantage of I mean again just on its face like he lets his nephew stay with him who's having issues of his own but now he has another two friends that also have similar issues of theirs and I don't know just on its face I'm not liking what I'm hearing yeah needless to say these living arrangements were not ideal the apartment was small as I mentioned before and
And Tim was living on a modest disability payment while his new roommates had no real source of income. So they weren't even able to help him with the rent. So at this point, they're just kind of like hanging out and living on his couch.
And, you know, I think the fact that Tim had been diagnosed with a neurodivergence, which basically means that he was mentally impaired in various ways, well, unfortunately, that makes him somewhat proclivity.
prey to certain people. And what I mean by that is that whether it is because of his mental capacity or maybe because of that mental capacity, he is a little bit more on his own. So maybe loneliness factors in, but in various ways, this can make someone like Tim more vulnerable and to some an easy mark.
We first came aware with the issue with Timothy Bell was one of his friends, Daniel Rowe, actually came to the department and wanted to report that his friend that he hadn't seen in a couple weeks was missing. But it was Daniel Rowe's recent visit to Tim's apartment that had him really concerned. When he goes to Tim's apartment, he finds Matthew Henley, Pedro Roman, Andre Banks, and he doesn't find Tim anywhere.
At first, Tim's roommates denied knowing where he was. But there were already a few red flags that made Tim's friend Daniel immediately suspicious. He finds out they got his phone. They also have his wallet. The suspicious thing was that Timothy Bell had a scooter. And the scooter was gone, too, when Daniel Rowe went to the house. So that was more suspicious to him because that's how Timothy Bell got around.
You know, Scott, right there, obviously it makes sense why Daniel was suspicious. Here is his friend who's always there. And now not only is he not there with really no good explanation, but his phone and his wallet are there too. Yeah. And I think a lot has to do with what their attitude was. They didn't really seem concerned at all or gave him an indication that maybe something was wrong.
Daniel shows up, does not see his friend, sees three people he does not recognize, and they seem not to have a care in the world. So they weren't even able to provide him with any information of where Tim may be. I think that really raised the suspicions for him at a Sega. What was going on and why were they there?
And again, it's not that he necessarily thinks there's anything particularly sinister at that point. It just could be that these guys are, you know, for lack of better phraseology, mooching off his friend. Because again, these are random guys in his friend Tim's apartment, and they seem all too comfortable not only being there, not really having much concern from Daniel's perspective about where Tim the occupant is.
Daniel, who when he came to the station said that he never went anywhere without his wallet, just like most people, or their cell phone. So for him to be missing for at least a couple days at that point and not contact anybody was a big concern. So this is where the case takes a turn because Daniel decides that from what he's seen and a lack of communication from his friend Timothy Bell...
he's going to go to police and he's going to report him missing because he knows especially because tim was neurodivergent and he could be considered even of course by law enforcement to be vulnerable and again like let's just be frank where someone has any sort of mental impairment it gets tricky you know what is normal what is not normal
All that really matters is that it is clear to those that knew him that there was something going on. And again, because of this mental impairment, that does cause for sometimes different and an elevated concern for their well-being. Well, like any missing person case and you have an adult, it's always, you know, they have their choice whether they want to leave or not.
So it started out as missing person, but due to his mental state, it was kind of like in danger. You know what I'm saying? Because he didn't have all of his faculties. So that was the concern, which happens a lot with persons who have some mental issues where they wander, get lost, either get hit, get hit by the train. We had no report to that or anything or, you know, drowning.
or just wandering off to where they're not located. Which means he was a higher risk of being lost, confused, or injured. So police knew that there was some extra urgency in trying to locate him. And we've talked about how these in different missing persons investigations, the vulnerable fall into categories, including children, elderly, and endangered. Those investigations are definitely higher priority for investigators from the start.
Tim Bell's dad eventually made an official missing persons report and it was handled by SUV detectives. Basically what you're trying to do is to find out if anybody at all has had any contact with Timothy Bell at this time and we couldn't find anybody from canvassing the street to
to the apartment complex. Once we started talking to, I mentioned the neighbors, they were saying, well, I haven't seen him in such and such a day, which turned out possibly to be like almost maybe five days. They haven't seen him in five days. As you keep going on and nobody's seen him, turns out to be a longer time.
You know, his dad hasn't heard from him. Daniel hasn't heard from him. Nobody's seen him. And then you start going to your medical facilities, every hospital, St. Mary's Hospital, Good Sam Hospital. You start checking Columbia Hospital. You start going through hospitals
all the possible places that if he's wandering, maybe he's in jail. Maybe he's, you know, he got picked up trying to be homeless and he's not aware of his surroundings and he's sitting somewhere in a jail. They just haven't identified him because he has no ID on him. We're trying to do everything just to make sure we covered all our bases with jails, hospitals, arrests, and so forth.
As is so often the case today, a person's cell phone can provide invaluable and incredibly specific information about that person's movements and their location. But in this case, remember, police knew that Tim's phone was actually left back at his apartment, so they didn't have any of that at their disposal. But investigators did have ways to help try to pinpoint Tim's last known location.
His dad said he had an account at the Wachovia Wells Fargo. On the May 9th, 2011, there was a snapshot of Timothy Bell at the Wells Fargo ATM. And then we have another one of him on May 10th. So we know he's alive at that point. Detectives are building the timeline of Tim's last known whereabouts, which not only could help them find him, but could also help narrow the window of when something may have gone wrong.
May 20th, there's another digital video snapshot of Timothy Bell inside the Wachovia. On May 24th is when Daniel Rowe responds to the house and finds Heinle, Wilson, and Banks at the residence without Timothy present. The actual last time we have him alive or a snapshot of him alive is May 20th. The 24th, he's not around.
So the photos from the bank where Tim can be seen depositing and then withdrawing money proved that Tim had not been missing as long as his friend Daniel feared. But the question remained, what happened in those four days that would cause Tim to fall off the map?
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$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. In June of 2011, in West Palm Beach, Florida, detectives had been searching for 45-year-old Tim Bell, who, due to a mental disability, was considered missing and endangered.
Police were especially keen to question three men who were in the best position to know his whereabouts. That was Tim's nephew, Matt, and three others who also didn't have a place to live and had been staying at Tim's apartment. They knew they had to talk to all these people that were in the house. One of these men was Pedro Roman, and shortly after the missing persons report was filed, he decided to come forward with some startling information.
The report was made June 13th, 2011. Right after the report, Pedro Roman came into the station providing additional information in regards to the Timothy Bell. Pedro had described escalating tension between Tim and his freeloading nephew, Matt. Tension that recently had boiled over into a fight.
He basically just said, I think something's wrong. He didn't go into any detail. He pointed the finger at Matthew Heint. He overheard Matthew Heintly state he could really hurt Tim if he wanted to. I'm keying in on he could hurt him if he wanted to. Not a confession, but in a missing persons case, it sounds like a potential motive to do harm.
He didn't really say anything much, but it was, again, enough to pique the interest of detectives where you say, oh, I think he can hurt somebody. And that's somebody being Matthew hurting Tim. It kind of goes a little more interest from missing to foul play, because why would you even say that? Why would you even come to the department and say that if everything's fine?
So despite not knowing exactly what had happened to Tim, clearly Tim's nephew was now a person of interest in the case. So let's learn a bit more about him, Matthew. Now, honestly, Matthew had moved out of his dad's house and was living in the streets of Orlando before making his way down to Palm Beach and reconnecting with his uncle Tim. Now, whether his motivation for reconnecting with Tim was to get a place to live or
I guess the investigation will have to really determine if there's a connection between that. Either way, Tim opened his doors to him. And it was only a matter of weeks before Matthew had now extended that offer to several other men that he knew also from the streets. He was letting Matt stay there because he was family, you know, a small apartment.
Matt convinced Timothy to let Sean, Pedro, and Andre stay there. They weren't Tim's friends, and he allowed them to stay here. But they were taken advantage of. Apparently, Tim's disability checks were his only source of income. So you can imagine that it would eventually strain even the most generous of hosts.
So when you have four people extra in there and a small studio apartment, yeah, I guess you get tired of it after a while. And that's what they were fighting over. From what I could gather from what Pedro was saying, and they would argue about it in front of him. So we know that Matthew had at least some anger towards Tim. And there was also now some potential financial motive to have him out of the picture. But what did police know about these other so-called roommates?
Well, they were brought into the police station to be interviewed. And one thing police Anasiga did know is that they were already familiar to more than one of the officers of the West Palm Beach Police Department.
A lot of the familiarity with these guys came from them hanging out downtown and at the local food distributors places. Because sometimes you would have churches come down to Clematis and give out food and stuff like that. We have an officer detail down there. So some of the officers, especially when these guys were arrested, they came up to me and said, "Oh, I remember him from being downtown." They were known downtown for hanging out and just being homeless.
One by one, detectives invited the young men into the interview room. First move, obviously, I want to try and figure out what they're going to say in regards to where Tim is and lock them into whatever they're going to say.
Now remember, Pedro had already voluntarily stepped forward to make a statement to police, saying that he simply didn't know where Tim was, but that he and his nephew Matt had been fighting, and Matt had made some vague threats about being capable of hurting Tim. This is the very first moment that Detective Aaron Sam obtained a credible piece of evidence pointing to the fact that Tim's disappearance may in fact be a crime.
What follows is an audio of a taped interview with Pedro Roman. Okay, so what happens when you meet Tim the first time? First time he asked me if I had anywhere to go, I said no. Okay. And he says, if I let you stay here, you gotta get up and try to get to work every day. I said, that's fine. Never since then, I was living in the house with him. So it sounds like Tim was actually open to helping him get back on his feet. You can hear it in Pedro's voice that he was grateful to Tim for offering him a place to stay.
Yeah, you can just hear by Pedro's description right there. It gives you a sense of the fabric of who Timothy Bell really was, who didn't have much, but was willing to share his space. However, how small it was just to help out. And it sounds like all that Tim asked for in return was that Pedro and the others would look for work. But then later, he started to talk about the tension in the home rising between Tim and his nephew, Matthew, who also regularly used Matt.
You said that something happened four weeks ago. So what changed four weeks ago from it being Matt, Tim, Pedro and Andre living in the house? What started to happen was that Matthew and Tim started fighting a lot because he always wanted to use his phone to call his girlfriend who's underage. And Tim kept saying, "If the cops find out that you're dating a young girl, you go to jail for that." He just said, "No, I could hurt you." And he kept jumping up and down. I told him, "Matt, calm down."
And in our conversation with Detective Sam, we learned that this was the moment that police fully made the turn from missing person to potential foul play to perhaps murder.
And the SVU detectives on the missing persons case decided it was time to bring in homicide. And just a side note for a minute, the reason that it was SVU or special victims detectives that were handling the missing persons case, well, again, it goes to that vulnerability that as far as a category Tim fit into because of his mental impairment.
Well, we're all pretty close on the same floor at that time. I believe it was Detective Favors that kind of came up to me, notified me and said, there may be something going on with this because of what Pedro just had told him. So we knew that we had to talk to the other three.
Next in the box for an interview with Detective Sam was Andre Banks, who also recounted a fight between Tim and Matt. But Andre goes a step further, saying he witnessed much more than just arguing and vague threats. He claims to have witnessed a violent assault. Banks told detectives that when he got to the apartment that Hiley was beating Timothy Bell in the chest with his fist and Sean Wilson was choking Timothy with a black metal pipe.
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Shortly after Banks made his statement, Pedro Roman had a sudden change of heart and corroborated his story.
Pedro changed his story again to the murder of Timothy Bell and stated that Hiley and Wilson are the persons responsible for his death. Again, here's Pedro Roman. The lights were off, air conditioner was on, I smelled gas, and when I put my shirt up, I saw Matt punching him, and I saw this other kid showing with a pipe on his neck.
Pushing down and pulling up. Where is Tim while they're doing this? Where is his head? He was laying down. Okay, on what? On the floor, on the bed? On the bed. They tied his hands and legs together. What did they tie him with? They had shoelaces and they took a belt and put it around his mouth so he wouldn't say anything. And I saw Matt on this side telling him to shut up and he kept punching him in the ribs. And you're standing here at the front door. You're telling them to stop.
So at this point what happens. He was already there when I got everything off and his body was ice cold. I couldn't feel a pulse. So now 2 of Tim's so-called roommates had pointed the finger at the other 2 roommates blaming them for beating and strangling Tim Bell to death a chilling account of what may have been Tim Bell's last few moments of life.
When I'm sitting there watching the cases starting to unfold right in front of me in regards to a missing endangered person, as you were talking about, to foul play.
The account of Tim's murder is, well, it's gut-wrenching. But from investigators' perspective, this was obviously a huge break in the case. It was an eyewitness account of the murder. They had names, they had the cause of death, but was it the truth? That jolt of adrenaline that every investigator gets when they think they may have cracked a case must be tempered by the understanding that whatever story you're hearing
might not be true. Maybe it's only a half-truth, or maybe the witnesses are actually suspects trying to shift the blame to somebody else. And the only way to really find out is to continue to dig. The strategy was, we need to speak now with Sean Wilson and Matthew Hiley. Remember, Hanley is Tim's 19-year-old nephew, and Wilson is another of the young men that had been staying in Tim's apartment.
Luckily for police, their two prime suspects in Tim's murder were really not hard to find. They were arrested for a burglary and were at the Publix County Jail when we tracked them down. And to keep in mind, Roman and Banks had already made statements, so detectives knew that those two were likely going to be on the defensive, and that does affect the interview strategy.
We knew that Pedro Roman and Audrey Banks were pointing the main finger at Heinle. That he was the one behind it. And at the time when we decided like he was the mastermind or the one that organized things, he's the one that basically got his uncle to let these people in. He's the one that argued with his uncle about letting them stay there and stuff like that. He seemed to be in control of it. So
We wanted to do him last. And we decided to go with Sean Wilson first. And that's who we interviewed.
Remember, the goal here is not just a confession. A detective is also trying to establish a suspect's credibility. Is there evidence backed up by those statements, whether forensic or potentially other witnesses? And the real reason is there's a concern is they're not backed up and the information can't be confirmed. Those accounts could easily be picked apart. He said he said situation if this would ever go to trial.
And we told him. We were straight up from him. We said, look, we're going to ask you things that we already know. And a lot of it is just going to be about your credibility in regards to this case and if you're going to tell us the truth. So a lot of times you just let them talk, let them have their story because you actually know based on other sworn statements or other facts that you're just going to hang themselves.
At first, somewhat predictably, Wilson denied having any knowledge of Tim's disappearance or anything else that may have happened to him. So detectives instead focus on Wilson's whereabouts for the days leading up to Tim's alleged assault. For the first hour of it, it was, I saw him on such and such a date. I saw him on this and such a date.
So as I was sitting there, I'm thinking, I know when he was reported missing. And I know when we actually have like digital video shots of him. So we were saying that somewhere between that time, May 20th, May 25th of 2011, he was missing. So in the interview with Sean, I had a little calendar, put it out in front of him. And we just went through the whole thing in regards to when he saw him.
He goes, well, I saw him on Friday and then I saw him on Sunday at the library, blah, blah, blah, which didn't add up at all. Because based on our interviews with our canvas and our neighbor canvas and the other interviews, Sean was actually seeing Timothy Bell when nobody else was. I brought that to his attention. And once I brought that to his attention, he started changing his story.
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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.
Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. West Palm Beach detective Aaron Sam has plenty of experience in the interview room. And in 2011, he was questioning several suspects in the disappearance and possible murder of 45-year-old Tim Bell.
You know, a lot of times think they're going to be able to talk themselves out of it. And when they don't, you know, it all comes crashing down on them. So my posture was like, okay, Sean, if that's your story, that's where we're going to go. But this is what I have in front of me. And this is what I know. And once we showed him that and confronted him with that, he actually said, can I start over?
So it's basically an admission that his first story was a lie. And so he's about to whip up another one, or maybe he's going to tell the truth, which just might be a confession. You know, that's a real aha moment, the kind when a person of interest realizes that they've run out of road in front of them. Their story's not working, and now they want to hit the reset button.
But it doesn't work that way. In fact, it's the real opportunity for Aaron Sam to turn up the heat. And in my conversation with Aaron, we talked about that look. When your person of interest knows, as Anastasia says, the jig is up.
What I remember in that interview is it's that typical thing where they're either looking down, breathing, and you have that uncomfortable silence where you can't be the first one to talk, basically. And once they reached that point, I mean, his whole body language slumped over. I mean, I remember him sobbing and crying. His whole demeanor changed.
Now, these dramatic moments happen a lot in movies and television shows. It doesn't happen very often in real life because, you know, you're putting in all this hard work to get to the point where you're getting your person of interest in a room and, you know, you have a feeling that you have the opportunity to make a big turn in a case. But it's not happenstance. It's really hard work and it's really gathering the evidence.
What you can find out walking into that interview with your person of interest that helps you get that turn in that case. And remember, the objective in all of this is to get to the truth. And here, that just might be finding out who or how many are accountable for murder.
So with these various interviews already now finished, everything is basically teed up to speak to the last one who was really the prime person of interest at this point, who, according to the others, is this alleged mastermind and principal aggressor in the murder of Tim Bell. We knew we had made the right decision in our strategy in regards to speaking to them and lining up and making sure everything was ready and set for when we went in to speak to Matthew.
It started off, again, just like all the other ones. He didn't know where his uncle was. He was taken away. He tried to kill himself. He was at the hospital. All these things, again, at this point, we had already checked out and verified that were not true.
So already police had caught Henley in a lie. He claimed that his Uncle Tim was in the hospital, which was easily proven not true. In fact, he had said Tim tried to light himself on fire. Police also had the statements of three other suspects all pointing the finger back at Henley.
Hey, Sean Wilson's here. Andre Banks is here. Pedro Roman is here. Now I'm trying to get your story. What is your story? Even though we already knew foul play had happened, we already knew it was to that point. We just wanted to see if he was going to admit to it. He eventually broke down and he stated that while Wilson was choking Timothy's bell, you know, with the pipe, highly said Roman was controlling the thing. He was switching it up and saying that Wilson was choking Timothy Bell with the pipe. He
He put a pillow over Zalco's face, but he says he didn't smother. But he does say he put it over his face enough to where blood came out.
So Hindley now is basically corroborating much of what the other suspects have described, that Tim had been bound and choked with a metal bar. But he still denied his hand in the homicide. But if you listen to this piece of a recorded phone call, and you can just hear Hindley's portion of it, and he's speaking to another civilian to use police speak, he does reveal one very disturbing detail about the ultimate fate of Tim's body.
It's all Pedro and Dre's doing. They got rid of Tim, dog, and choked his ass out. They tried to put him in a dumpster. That's a couple dumpsters from the house.
One of the difficult things about this investigation for detectives was that they had never recovered Tim's body. And with no body, investigators had no way of proving cause of death. No forensic evidence that could help them ID the killer or killers. And no way to prove that a murder had actually even occurred. But now it was becoming clear what had happened after Tim was killed.
They basically beat this guy up, punched him in the ribs, hog-tied him, all because he was pissed at his uncle over money. After they do all that, choking him, they decide they have to dispose of the body. And what they do is they decide to put him in sheets, wrap him up, put him in trash bags, and they got a metal rolling cart that they put him on. Because remember, Tim Bell was 250, 260 pounds.
And they rolled the dumpster right up to the steps. And with the cart, they rolled him out of the house, the apartment, to the edge of the dumpster and dumped him in. It is a horrible and disturbing story, especially knowing that the instigator was Tim Bell's own nephew.
The just absolute indifference shown in the way that Tim's body was disposed of, you know, you hate to even say it, but just throwing him in a dumpster, it's beyond. But it also leaves us with several questions. Most importantly, was this planned? Exactly. The way they tried to cover it up seems panicked, indicative of something that may have been a spur of the moment assault.
But one of the suspects also said that Hindley had made threats before against him and there was a financial move. And if there was a financial motive, robbery, then perhaps this was not just a fight that went too far, but a premeditated murder.
This was not sporadic or this was not a heat of the moment type thing argument. Hiley basically said that the murder was planned approximately a week prior to the act. And it was discussed several times with Wilson, Roman and Banks. It was something that was conspired between all four of the guys for one reason or another. I think Hiley just wanted the
for himself. He wanted his uncle's Social Security money. You know, when you have people that are desperate, they do desperate things. So Tim had opened his apartment to four young men that were all down on their luck, and they repaid him not with gratitude or with thank yous, rather with a plan to rob him, murder him, and throw his body in a dumpster.
It was the next morning when we reached out to the family and just to let them know, you know, our worst fears were acknowledged. And the fact that Timothy Bell was gone, they were shocked and upset, very surprised and hurt, you know, in regards to a family member taking another family person's life.
From the investigators' point of view, with what they now knew, it was an open and shut case. But both for the sake of the investigation and Tim Bell's dignity, they still needed one thing. They wanted to locate his body. The last time that we known or documented Timothy Bell being alive was May 20th.
The 29th was when we actually went out to the Solid Waste Authority. So we were over a month behind in regards to trying to locate Timothy Bell. So we figured even though it's a month, we may have a shot. And they ultimately found the actual refuge collector who had been working that day, and he remembered something important to the investigation.
Police tracked down the truck that collected the dumpster on the day after Tim's murder and traced its route back to the waste collection warehouse. And we do want to warn listeners that this part of the story is particularly disturbing. If you can imagine a big, big warehouse, okay, one big warehouse where all the trucks dump their trash and it's dumped right on like an open floor, a big open floor, which you have then,
is basically bulldozers pushing the trash towards the grinders, towards the belts that actually take it to the grinders and stuff like that. And then it goes through the processing of one, then goes through the processing of another, maybe another processing until basically all that's left is black ash.
The black ash from the incinerated waste is then spread over what is obviously a large area. And despite performing a grid search of the site, police found none of Tim's remains. And while finding his remains were not essential in solving his murder, veteran investigators know that it can bring much-needed solace to a grieving family.
In this case, not finding the body or when you don't find the body, it's really sad for the family. But you hope that they can rely on the good times and the memories of their loved one. So while the various statements are conflicting, investigators concluded that each one of the suspects definitely had a hand in planning and killing Tim Bell. So all four men, Hindley, Wilson, Roman, and Banks, were charged with his murder.
Well, it goes to trial. What happens is highly comes off as, well, I thought we were just only playing type thing, you know, and this was was by an accident type thing. And based on the statements that we have, nothing is an accident in anything that they did. This was thought out. This was planned. And then I think, honestly, possibly the only thing they didn't really think about is disposing of the body.
And despite not having the victim's body, prosecutors did have in their possession an alleged murder weapon, the pipe that was used to choke Tim to death. Fingerprints of Sean's was on that pipe. Timothy Bell's DNA was obviously on the pipe. So when all that came through and all that went at the time because of the confessions and they admitted to it, it was a great factor to have in the back of our pocket, but it wasn't needed.
And when the jury had finished deliberating, they returned a swift and decisive verdict. Guilty. Sean and Matthew got life.
And actually what I should have said is that when the juries finished deliberating, because these two were actually tried together, but not with one jury, but with two. It's called a double jury trial. And I always get a little excited, admittedly, when I see it, because it was kind of one of the things that I focused on almost primarily for a long time towards the end of being a prosecutor. And, you know, Scott, you know, obviously having...
known them both as an investigator and then having seen quite a few of them in your reporting career, that it definitely takes a lot of organization to kind of keep those juries from hearing the right evidence and make sure that they aren't hearing things they shouldn't have. But it definitely makes for a much bigger proceeding. It does. It takes a heck of a lot of skill in keeping them both focused.
on the evidence that you're presenting. Hats off to any prosecutor who's able to really work within the confines and stay in the lanes in doing a double jury. But, you know, talking about keys to the investigation, clearly in this case, Anasiga, the interviewing skills of Detective Aaron Sand and his team, what makes a big part of doing these interviews to
to be successful is preparation, preparation, and preparation. You know, being able to read the room. And once you determine that, like in this case, someone is rethinking their story, you seize the moment. It was a coordinated team effort between SVU in the beginning of handling the initial interviews as well as they did and swinging it over and involving homicide when I got involved.
And I think that's one of the biggest factors in police work today when you get into these type of investigations, because you're going to have several investigations that cross each other. You're going to have drugs that come into homicide. You're going to have rapes that come into murders. So it was very important in the task and how it was handled in the beginning, the teamwork of bringing it all together and then coordinating with each other and saying, look, this is what we need to do. This is how we need to do it.
and execute that plan and it worked out for us in this case.
And so while Hindley and Wilson received life in prison after their trial, both Roman and Banks ultimately pled guilty. Roman pled guilty and received 40 years incarceration in exchange for his ultimate cooperation. And he did testify at the trials for both Hindley and Wilson. And Banks also pled guilty and received 90 days in jail and five years probation for the charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder.
Detective Aaron Sam has served his community for more than 25 years in a city per capita that has one of the busiest homicide squads in the nation. But each one of his cases carries the same weight and responsibility to be the voice for that victim.
You have to speak for that person. You have to try and figure out what happened to them. And you're also carrying that torch for the family each time that they inquire or want to ask about what's going on with their case. And you try to do everything you can. There's a big responsibility, I think, to do that because you want everything you can to bring the family justice.
These defendants sought him's generosity and his vulnerability, and they took advantage and victimized him for both. And yes, the crime of murder, obviously tragic and terrible, but how they chose their victim in this case is even worse.
Tim Bell's nickname was Big Bear, partly because of his size and mostly for his big heart. He knew his challenges, his limitations, but never, and I mean never, let that dissuade him from lending a hand. For a man who didn't have much, he sure gave a lot. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.
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