Dateline Season 2021 Family Business Aug 21, 2021

[Music] i'm kate snow and this is dateline secrets uncovered he's almost like a marvel comic book arch villain he's bright he's clever evil as can be on a beautiful sprawling farm scenes of danger we hear this big explosion he's just laying on the ground this loving father of three the farm's heart and soul killed in a ball of fire they were saying it was an accident our assumption was it was a pipe bomb someone claimed the dead man had reaped what he'd sown the letter implied that roberto had messed with a drug cartel but maybe the truth lay with the farm's owners a wealthy clan known for harvesting rice and resentment i wish that there weren't so much hate and anger in our family one family member seemingly held a grudge against the victim he was always the one that had something mean to say he was always the one that hated him another came gunning for investigators who chases the police but who was hiding the darkest of secrets got chills going back my neck i'm like this is not happening right now a blank sheet of paper hiding a diabolical clue i fell to my knees and just started screaming hello and welcome to dateline secrets uncovered at first it seemed like a horrendous accident a farm manager killed in a freak explosion but the more detectives dug the more they thought this was no mishap the investigation uncovered dark family secrets and to solve this crime police would have to unravel a deep-seated family feud here's keith morrison with family business there is an eden in the american west a wide flat earthen cornucopia whose bounty daily fills the bellies of millions whose great farms employ legions of workers and enrich with their profits families that pass the land down father to son generation after generation they live modestly here in california's central valley multi-millionaires in crop dusters and battered pickup trucks deeply conservative self-reliant tough enough to thrive in a dangerous business that takes guts and brains too often lives here among the churning slashing machinery the high voltage power that helps grow the food of life death can take a man unawares even on a sleepy summer day we just looked up and there he was like today a little boy burst from the field of sunflowers next to brandy haven's place he was beat red sweaty he just covered in mud head to toe um he had his tennis shoes in his hands i mean he'd been running barefoot he said he took him off i think that he got stuck in the mud in the sunflowers brandy and her kids live in a rambling house next to one of those big farms in colusa county idyllic life out here quiet predictable until the saturday afternoon that little boy appeared like magic from the sunflower field could have been more than seven years old or so so what'd he say he said that his dad was on fire and he needed to call for help on fire how could that be he was serious he was serious he was very serious once he started to talk was he making sense yes he was able to talk you know the whole time answer whatever questions i had there was no hesitation randy called 9-1-1 passed along details as related to her by the little boy what is dad [Music] as they waited for the fire department to arrive brandy began attending to the boy fabian ayala gave him some water to drink and then i took the water and rinsed all the mud off and checked under his shirt to see if there was any major injuries or not were you hurt no not at all this is fabian three years later his family by his side he told us about the last day he spent with his dad he would take me out when he had something to do fabian's dad roberto was a farm manager a demanding son up to sundown job so to squeeze in quality time with his family he'd often take one of his three kids with him a proud man always pictured with his chest out his chin up on july 16 2011 that saturday roberto needed to flood a rice field by turning on a series of high-voltage irrigation pumps fabian by his side in his pickup truck roberto drove the quarter-mile distance from one thumb to the next and then he stopped got out walked to the big electrical box he was just going to the right field when we hear this big explosion i go out and see what happens he's just laying on the ground so what did you do [Music] i i yelled his name out and he wasn't answering so i want to go and try it and get get help so what did you do you rap yeah through what the fields to flower fields yeah they're big tall you're running through them yeah how far did they have to go i don't know pretty far far indeed more than two miles running running running blindly through the field of golden flowers that closed in about him and i saw the house and i just went towards it do you remember what you said something happened to my dad and he he was down that way and can you help me and they said yes they called the police department and they came as quick as they can when firefighters reach the irrigation canal from which little fabian had run for help it was obvious there was no life left to save roberto ayala's body must indeed have been on fire just as fabian said it was why became clear when they found burn holes about an inch wide near the bottom of his feet an obvious sign of electrocution a locker-sized electrical box used to turn on a high-voltage irrigation pump and apparently shorted out and exploded with such intensity metal fragments blew out the windows and peppered the passenger side of roberto's new ford f-250 miracle little fabian wasn't killed too we received a phone call that something had happened roberto's wife fabiola it was when we received a call from the police department and they said they had fabian and that fabian was okay but they couldn't tell us what happened to roberto we thought he was in the hospital and you didn't know what happened to him we didn't know what had happened we called the hospital and the hospital didn't know anything about what had happened about an hour an hour and a half later they arrived with fabian my mom asked my brother that where was my dad my brother just started screaming that he was dead what was it like to see fabian in that situation i think someone being older wouldn't be able to handle it as well as my brother did it was pretty amazing to run all that way i wouldn't have been able to to run that much i wouldn't have known what to do or to stay strong the way he did i just i wasn't there and i couldn't control myself i don't know how he did it farm accidents are as old as the wheel bad things just happen sometimes still sheriff's investigators scoured the area taking photos and collecting every bit of debris they could find whether it looked like it was from an electrical box or not one of our jobs for the jurisdiction is to investigate all industrial accidents because so then sheriff's detective dave song in colusa county the sheriff does double duty as the county coroner osha eventually will take over that investigation if it's determined to be that type of thing it was an autopsy too routine of course told us that the victim had been electrocuted he had been burned and he had been near an explosion pacific gas and electric sent a team over which confirmed it looked like an accident and sadly not unique he said well we've seen stuff similar to this what might happen is the operator will get into the panel with the tool for some reason and cross the leads with that tool and cause a plasma type of explosion and that could have been what happened here the other thing he did say is we've never seen anything this big this is what the electrical box would have looked like before the explosion about the size of a high school locker and after the explosion that box was nowhere to be found all that was left was a splintered post where it once stood hard to know what to make of that coming up along with the crops growing resentments at the farm robert told paul that he was going to get my share of what my dad was going to leave me on the ranch your intention was to fight him oh yeah it settles things the investigation continues as explosives experts try to determine what exactly happened to roberto he came across a piece of metal that piece of metal said to him that there was something more going on [Music] but people hear the words fortunes california in the same sentence their minds generally go to some internet sensation like google or apple but just 50 miles from silicon valley is the sacramento san joaquin valley the valley where fortunes were made long before the arrival of microchips and semi-conductors the farmer alberto yala ran worth tens of millions of dollars all going to just one extended family the moors they were very very private this is mary part of the greater moore clan her family like many of the big farming families around here keeps its wealth private too i knew that there was money there but they didn't flaunt it in any way and you weren't told about it you just knew that it was there and she learned early she said that the family fortune was also a tool to keep the descendants in line my dad would say like when i was in high school if you ever get into drugs or do anything i'm kicking you out of my will though she could never have inherited the land that birthright was passed from father's son not daughter the custom started with the moore family patriarch who handed the farm down to his two sons roger and gus now in their 70s each of them had a son born just a year apart paul and peter who were in line to one day run the farms as partners cousins but ray is more like brothers here they are in 1978 planted cut-offs fishing bare-handed latter-day hawk and tom in 1980 they were on the same high school football team roger's son paul was smart and handsome bit of a playboy well gus's boy peter just two rows down was tough and blunt hot-headed really pete has a reputation i think over in colusa county his mouth basically has given him a reputation because of the things that he has said i'm a little different than the rest of them oh boy so he is calls him as he sees him even when it comes to his own family there's too much money involved and everybody's afraid of what they might lose if they say something and even if it's right there was one family member pete did have a deep connection with his grandfather the family patriarch he he was special he taught peter about farming about tending the orchard he had immaculate generation so i was his eyes but when his grandfather his patron died pete's life changed quite certainly after we buried my grandpa in short order i was pretty much told about my dad and uncle that they didn't need my help anymore and i don't know whether it was animosity because i had gotten so close to their dad or what it was and after a particularly ugly fight with his dad pete was exiled from the land to plenty move north of this eden into town and started a landscaping business my wife and i had nothing i mean and when i say nothing i mean nothing to do with the moors and paul remained the family golden boy his daughting grandmother made sure he never went without paul married a local beauty this is his wedding video and he waited for the day when he'd reign over the land but he was never involved in the big questions when and what to sew when to reap those multi-million dollar decisions were left up to roberto ayala who had once been a lowly field hand but anyone could see roberto was a natural farmer and gradually trust and responsibility and the owner's affection came to rest with him paul and i were the boys in the family we should have been the next in line it wasn't fair it was um it was a flap in the face and to make matters worse roberto brought his brother eduardo in as his assistant the cousins their birthright withheld fumed paul would come over and tell me horrible stuff about um ed and robert that robert was saying about me like he said that robert was robert told paul that he was going to get my share of what my dad was going to leave me at the ranch fair to say though that your nerves were a little bit raw about ed and robert oh no i was i was mad i'm going to be honest with you there was a lot of animosity so much so that one day pete jumped into his truck and drove down to the farm and called roberto out and i told him let's go your intention was to fight it oh yeah it settles things but roberto politely declined he had a farm to run and the next time he heard anything more about roberto it was that he was dead what did you think when you heard that he was dead well i was told it was a accident which is certainly what it was at least according to the experts from fiji and e but just to be sure detective psalm called explosives experts from a neighboring county just to to ask them hey have you ever heard of an electrical panel like this blown up and they hadn't and their own insistence came out to look at what we had and formed the opinion that it was possibly an explosive device they in turn called atf and fbi dasam that felt like jumping the gun last thing he wanted was the big city feds treating him like a country cop crying wolf and now i've got atf and fbi showing up i was a little overwhelmed uh uh i was a little concerned that maybe you know we're calling these big agencies for help and really what we have is an accident we had bomb guys saying it was a bomb but they're bomb guys right you know we're not 100 convinced it's a bomb yet and then three days after the explosion we got a visit from paul moore paul pete's beloved cousin the handsome golden boy the pair told detective psalm he found something out of the scene of the accident something that shouldn't have been there he came across a piece of metal that he found looked like galvanized iron or some kind of galvanized metal and that piece of metal said to him that there was something more going on did he have any other ideas about what may have happened he did he had told us that his cousin pete had made some threats towards the victim and the time leading up to the incident and there was more paul showed detective psalms texts he received from peter sent from the very rice field where roberto was killed and that text was dated in time the day before the focus shifts from the nuts and bolts of electrical explosions to an explosive personality coming up he was always the one that hated him i didn't that was the only person i could think of why did you hate him he was arrogant um he flaunted stuff in my face he had a reputation for being a real hothead without hardly an effort pete can piss you off with dateline secrets uncovered continues district attorney john poynter since retired as one of calusa's most popular raccoon tours by the way it changed at 8 45 he was in office more than 30 years knows where the skeletons are buried and knows just about every prominent family in the county including the moors if i said they were odd that'd be a pretty good way of summarizing it odd yes odd how you don't hear a lot about a lot of families but you care about the moore family because they complain publicly about other wings of the family or at least complain in such a way that people complain in a way that other people found out about it now the two cousins pete i've known for years almost since i've been here had a reputation for being a real hothead um a lot of mouth he couldn't back it up but he had a lot of mouth without hardly an effort he could piss you off so when paul came to the authorities and said i think pete is responsible for this did his suspicion seem plausible yes yeah it did because we knew that pete didn't get along with his family we knew that pete had a hot head we knew that pete had access to the property and for paul to denounce peter who was like his brother sad perhaps but made sense to the da's office which signed off on the warrant to have pete's house searched it was just a few blocks away we went out to grab a bite to eat and when we came home we saw them all at the house searching the house mary ellen is peter moore's wife i couldn't believe it did you think it had something to do with what happened we didn't well i didn't think that first i just what are we doing at our house i'd go to the car and say what is going on here and two cops came over and grabbed me and escorted me to the front of my house mary ellen and peter asked investigators what was going on they were handed the search warrant stating investigators were looking for anything connected to bomb making i said how you know that it was a bomb we don't even know it was a bomb that was the first you heard of such a thing because we thought it was an accident do they seem to be accusing the two of you yes both of you just yes were you frightened no yes what were you afraid of that they thought we did it [Music] around calusa the raid on peter's house just days after roberto's death was big news a neighbor began sending out real-time updates on facebook there was a parade of cars driving around in the whole neighborhood as these detectives were asking the questions and as they were ripping my house going through my house and when they left uh they took our our computers and our cell phones we had a business nobody could call us but meanwhile the whole neighborhood was watching this yes but the search says detective song didn't yield a thing we didn't find anything as far as bomb making materials instructions on bombs even anything and remotely close to that like gunpowder sure or anything like that so if pete was doing something he wasn't doing it at his house not that we could find any evidence of he did not he had anything to do with it yes he did though pete couldn't and didn't try to deny his hatred for roberto ella why did you hate him he was arrogant um he flaunted stuff in my face felt the man had as if this were some biblical epic stolen his birthright lots of people around town knew about that especially the ialas so when they heard that peter moore's house was being searched i thought it was pete all along why he was always the one that had something mean to say he was always the one that hated him i didn't that was the only person i could think of there was a lot of town talk going on a lot of gossip rumors about a week after his house was searched pete got a visit from a friend who had heard some things i was working one day and he saw me a highway patrol friend of mine and he backs up into his highway patrol car and he goes what the hell are you doing and i'm working because no you're not because you go get in your car you get to the city go to sacramento get an attorney p they're coming after you you're their number one suspect coming up i didn't know what to think i'd never seen anything like that before in my career except on something similar on tv though pete's in the crosshairs investigators are about to learn that their victim may have made a very different and deadly enemy the letter implied that roberto had messed with a drug cartel when dateline secrets uncovered continues [Music] the bureau of alcohol tobacco and has become something of a legend at solving puzzles these little bits and pieces fragments of this and that were about all that was left around roberto ayela's body the day of the explosion story in there somewhere about the atf legend brian parker was assigned to find out what it was what does this tell you overall well what it tells us is that there was an incredible amount of force in the explosion most of these pieces were once part of the electrical box you have washers different types of hardware in here screws nuts wire other pieces just trash but a few fragments just a handful looked like they were pieces from a different puzzle odd cells from a 9-volt battery galvanized steel that's been ripped apart parker sent off these misfit bits and pieces to the ats west coast crime lab for analysis to determine whether or not there was explosive residue present on some of the fragments that were collected at the scene like gunpowder gasoline or nitroglycerin correct then there was this discovered on the fifth day of the investigation the panel box door found 160 feet from the site of the explosion about four feet tall about two feet wide probably weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 pounds this where the large hole is would be the bottom of the panel the forensic scientists of the atf continued their battery of tests hunting for bomb residue fingerprints dna all the while detective david some was on peter moore's tail waiting for him to make a mistake did he go to ground did he leave what'd they do they didn't leave what were people saying around town that you were hearing we were hearing that people were saying that they thought pete did it they're following us everywhere didn't make a secret of it either said mary ellen from them or the neighbors how did they start to look at you we were guilty after they raided my house i spent days crying days and days you know i'd be at work and just just crying because you don't know what's going on you don't know you don't know who to trust how much were you watched i'd wake up in the morning to people outside my house they watched me get up every day go put a shirt on and go out and be in the public side when everybody thinks you're a murderer even some of pete's own relatives seem convinced of that though his sister mary stuck by him i'm amazed at how much talking goes on there with not no actual evidence of you know it's a lot of gossip and people in your business mary placed a call to one of the investigators told him they were going after the wrong guy he was extremely rude and said you and your family just need to accept it your brother did this i just broke down in tears because i thought they just didn't like him as a person and i think they just to me my opinion was they wanted it to be him four weeks into the investigation peter moore was not just the top suspect he was the only suspect they had no physical evidence though that a murder had even occurred but they continued to watch and wait when the weeks stood by and then a month after the explosion there was news from the atf crime lab they had found something there was the presence of explosive residue on the metal fragments that we submitted so it was a bomb a murder then the very next day i'm sitting in my office we're talking about what we're going to do next and the civil deputy walks in with a big vanilla envelope and he says i think this is for you guys it says colusa county sheriff's office colusa california no street address and in the upper left-hand corner it says ayala case and then there's eight stamps on it which and it was pretty light so it's way too much postage because inside was just a single sheet of paper an open letter to the cops what did that letter say basically it was claiming responsibility for the bombing the letter full of misspellings and bad grammar had been written on a label maker then photocopied its author claimed to be a military trained contract killer who had been hired to kill roberto over a mexico deal gone wrong and then it was ms-13 behind it what tech is ms-13 mara salvatrucha it's a violent el salvadorian criminal street gang and that roberto was supposed to be a target of this group he later implied that roberto had messed with a drug cartel and that ms-13 had been contracted the author of the letter taunted the detectives writing that lab results would find military-grade powder but no dna which was true so far but the point of the letter wrote its author was a warning roberto's brother eduardo was next on the hit list the writer said he had turned down the job to kill eduardo but a second assassin would soon be on his way do you think it was a hoax do you think was real one i didn't know what to think i'd never seen anything like that before in my career except on something similar on tv the one thing about that strange letter was all too obvious whoever wrote it had inside knowledge because nobody besides the cops knew what the atf had discovered we hadn't told anybody it was a bomb so for somebody to just write a letter um claiming responsibility for a bombing that lended some credence to the fact that the author of that letter um was the real thing weird all too weird detective some of the others went home for the weekend to digest what they had just read and seen and then monday morning zom's phone rang 7am he says hey get in here we got another one of those letters i came to work there's a second letter sitting on my desk this one was a slightly smaller manila envelope or half-sized vanilla envelope but configured the same way label maker address ayala case and way too much postage again what was inside that one it was a diagram of a bomb coming up an invitation from a killer the letter said if you have any questions place an ad in the sacramento bee make sure it's the last ad and another victim in the crosshairs keeping that stuff confidential was important to the integrity that domestic life might be in jeopardy we gave him as strong a warning as we could when dateline secrets uncovered continues [Music] on august 15 2011 30 days after roberto ayala's death investigators received in the mail this hand-drawn picture of a bomb what did you think when you saw that diagram shock we were amazed absolutely amazed i had never seen anything like that before the device as shown in the diagram was a two inch pipe bomb placed next to a one liter soda bottle full of gasoline spray vented black a large bolt tied off with a fishing line and acting as a drop weight would fall on a rat trap causing it to strike a firing pin kind of like the rube goldberg device the author also said there was a second secret triggering device as backup either way the bomb was designed to go off when roberto ayala opened the door of the electrical box it could have been almost anything though right now suddenly agent parker saw how they all fit those confusing bits and pieces he'd been pouring over for the past month it was almost like someone had sent us the cover of the puzzle box so now they match the bits to the diagram the first thing i looked for was this bolt and there it was the thing that made it exceptionally clear was the fact that the bolt still had some fishing string attached just underneath the head of the bolt which is how it was depicted in the diagram so it would have been hanging from that straight as a weight right and so that was very clear that that bolt was in fact part of our device that was described in letters and there were fragments of a plastic soda bottle black paint still clinging to them again just like the diagram there was a spring that was similar to a rat drop spring there was gasoline on the victim's clothing and then we recovered pieces of a 9-volt battery that we were able to determine that had no business being in that panel so if you found the writer of those letters you had found your killer that was our opinion yes along with the diagram was a second letter in which the bomber repeated his earlier claim that he was a reluctant assassin after a career of killing he wrote i want to save a life before i take my life the bomber repeated his warning roberto's brother eduardo was next in fact the whole ayala family was in mortal danger he said i wanted to make sure you get this letter and have time to help these guys so it was said as if i've been assigned to do something i don't want it to happen i want you guys to prevent it that was basically the gist of the letter did you warn not exactly there are things in the investigation that we could not release there was information about the letters that we could not release keeping that stuff confidential was important to the integrity of the domestic life might be in jeopardy we did talk to ed we gave him as strong a warning as we could without going into specific detail one of those details was that the killer had been given a deadline and the letter said that i was given eight weeks to do this job and it will be reassigned in five weeks i wanted to give you guys time to help these guys and do something about it so you at least had some time maybe maybe dave tells me that they had received a letter and the letter had mentioned me roberto's brother eduardo and he says be careful watch yourself but it wasn't just eduardo in the crosshairs the letter writer claimed whoever was now driving roberto's now repaired pickup truck that white f-250 the bomber wrote is in great danger and who was that person roberto ayala's son jesus the threat against the ayalas was looking very real it was real it didn't just look real it was real a lot of sleepless nights because this sex marine not only had a farm to run but as he saw it a murdered soul and now two families to protect going through my mind and just look out take care of them take care of my brother's family primarily take care of my brother's family take care of my family look out for myself look over your shoulder the first thing eduardo did was hide the pickup truck but now with the truck out of sight with the killer or killers just find a different or better place for a bomb once everybody's asleep all i could do was just think and think and run things through my mind it's somebody sneaky and violent enough to plant a bomb to kill somebody and he did it to one person there's nothing to stop them from doing it to somebody else in this second letter the bomber left open one possible line of communication the letter said if you have any questions place an ad in the sacramento b august 21st issue help wanted make sure it's the last ad and so they placed this classified ad and waited for a killer to call coming up a son's all too close call with death argument that morning so i didn't get to write it tag along with the writer that day i don't know you might otherwise have been there i would have probably been the one to get off to go check that book and another member of the moore dynasty comes forward with a fresh piece of evidence would an answering machine message finally solve the question about a motive for murder when dateline secrets uncover continues welcome back the ayala family was on edge after investigators received mysterious letters claiming that roberto ayala may have just been the first victim of an elaborate scheme by a drug cartel police wanted help so following directions from the letter's author they placed an ad in the help wanted section of the paper to detectives their task was clear find the letter writer and secrets would be revealed hopefully before the killer could strike again returning with family business here's keith morris who ever heard of such a thing letters from a purported killer plus a diagram of what certainly looked like the actual bomb that killed roberto ayala was it real a ruse a lucky guess if it was for real who sent it was it from the lead suspect peter moore or hitman as the letter claimed or was it from somebody who wasn't even on detective psalms radar wherever it was five weeks into the case it was about the only lead investigators had so they played along with the guy placed an ad as requested in the sacramento bee and sure enough somebody responded cops rushed to see him perhaps arrest him he was pretty surprised when he got a visit false alarm it was just an unlucky guy looking for a job the killer though the killer never called so this whole ms-13 thing this mexico deal gone wrong was just some sort of game the real bomber was playing trouble was nobody knew the rules or the purpose or where the game might end but more than one way to find a guy brazen enough to send that material to the cops we had the letters that we wanted to get analyzed we wanted fingerprints we wanted dna the letters and envelopes came back clean just as the bombers said they would what was going on to investigators one theory seemed the least likely that roberto was mixed up with the drug gang ms-13 the ayalas are a classic bootstrap story roberto a very religious man who worked his way up from fieldhead to farm manager oversaw the day-to-day operations of a multi-million dollar spread he knew the land he knew the machines that worked at he was utterly committed to that work what did working that farm mean to your dad that was everything that was our whole even our lives and his life our whole life revolved around it we were always there we was growing up first jobs as kids right yeah learn how to drive on the farm pretty much do everything on the farm tell me about your dad what what kind of guy was he he's a hard worker someone to look up to we admired him and it did not go unnoticed on the moore farm over the years owners roger and gus came to rely a great deal on roberto they treated roberto more like a favorite son than just an employee how important was family to roberto probably the most important thing it just it all revolved around us we didn't have much but every everywhere he went we went to so we were always together whatever went wrong he was he was the one to go to he was the one to keep everybody together latino cultures celebrate a coming-of-age ritual called the king sanyara when a girl turns 15. so when roberto's daughter paola turned 15. he went out i was his only i was the only girl so he did everything he could to make that day the best so what kinds of things do you do you have to have your father daughter dance [Music] you just feel like you're the only person that exists at that moment like you just feel important you really do feel like the princess probably won't ever forget that but of course for teenagers there is another rite of passage butting heads with parents which that last morning may have pure chance save jesus life we always went to work together and for some reason we had a argument that morning so i didn't get to write it tag along with the writer that day i don't know you might otherwise have been there i would have probably been the one to get off to go check that book why would anybody want to hurt him i can't find a reason to why somebody would want to do it to want to kill him and this bomber whoever it might be came very close to also murdering fabian if you want my button pushed bring it bring a child into it d.a john poynter

found fabian's flight to be particularly heartbreaking i couldn't imagine seven years old and seen my dad blowing up and running all that way people don't understand it was like maybe a couple miles of crow flies but to run through what we call calusa mud which is the rice fields and it's just i mean he had to take his shoes off he's literally covered with you can hardly walk through it and for him to run all that way it was amazing i remember asking if he knew what 9-1-1 was and he told me and he was right and i asked for you how to use a cell phone and he said yeah and i asked if your dad had a cell phone and he said yes he did i said why didn't you use your dead cell phone why didn't you call for help and he's reaching out like this and he said i can't it's in his pocket he's on fire yeah that stays with you and now these taunting letters from roberto's killer almost taking prideful delight in how he killed the man and almost murdered the boy who could it be who would do such a thing and why then four days after the diagram showed up one of the alpha males of the moore clan walked in the front door roger moore paul's dad and like his son wanted to help catch the killer and told the detectives he had important evidence to share it was an audio tape answering machine messages his nephew pete left on his phone coming up investigators discover a brand new suspect we may have somebody else to look at but who are the hunters and who are the hunted and all of a sudden the tire went flat as police go after more evidence someone comes after them leaving a taunting message out in the fields here i am i'm doing this to you now come find me with dateline secrets uncovered continues welcome back to dateline secrets uncovered i'm kade snow the rice crop at the moore farm in northern california was nearly ripe for the picking but the investigation into who killed farm manager roberto ayala had not yielded results just yet there was the relative with a potential axe to grind or investigators wondered was roberto somehow mixed up with a vicious drug cartel detectives were about to get a new tip someone else in the family had secrets once again here's keith morrison with family business roberto ayala manager of a multi-million dollar california farm owned by the powerful moore family had been killed by a complicated homemade bomb the prime suspect pete moore famously hot-headed angry because he believed his father might have given his inheritance to ayala pete's uncle roger moore believed an audio tape from his answering machine could help detectives who still didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest the voice on the tape none other than roger's nephew peter i've worked for 21 years doing what i'm doing so that i could eventually one day the phone messages contain nothing directly incriminating but after being diverted by those strange letters about assassins and a drug gang the investigation was now back to where it started that peter moore was the prime suspect [Music] but just as all eyes were focused in one particular direction the very next day the phone rang six weeks into the investigation detective psalm and agent parker had an audio take texts letters a diagram fragments of leads pointing in wildly different directions to pete moore or a drug cartel or a crazy assassin and now they had another lead to work on somebody made an anonymous call to the sheriff's department he said the caller basically stated you need to be looking at paul moore and paul not peter paul not peter for all the produce that comes rolling out of colusa county california its population of humans is small just 22 000 everybody seems to know just about everybody here so with a would-be anonymous tipster called the sheriff's office turned out he wasn't anonymous at all the detective who took the call recognized the voice and phoned him right back says hey you need to come in and talk to us the caller as it turns out was this man dave moore cousin of roger and gus with a multi-million dollar spread of his own and a passion for warbirds dave's stepdaughter had once been married to paul this is a video from their wedding day a messy divorce followed a few years later so david and susan moore came into our office susan moore is dave's wife what did they say when they got into the office the first thing they told us was a wiretapping incident wiretapping yes david sue claimed paul tapped his wife's phone to spy on her during divorce negotiations and sure enough here are the court documents in 1997 paul was arrested on four counts related to tapping both his wives and in-laws phones he pleaded guilty to one count of electronic eavesdropping a felony the other charges were dropped and paul served no jail time but the wiretapping story was just a prologue to what they were really there to talk about who do you think is capable of responsible for actually setting up an explosive device i think like probably 90 paul but david susan couldn't really give a reason why paul would want to kill roberto other than they felt paul just had the kind of personality to do something like that well pete didn't so you don't think peter's capable of actually developing a pretty sophisticated device to create explosion i i'm doubtful of it i don't know him that well that well but i i i really wouldn't think he could and i and i i also think he doesn't have the moxie to do something what do you mean the just the meanness and the meanness yeah but peter had actually threatened roberto wanted to fight him and as far as anybody knew paul had never done anything like that nevertheless based on this new information from david and susan moore detectives asked paul to come in for another meeting which he did quite willingly took time off on a sunday afternoon and detective song asked paul directly yeah yes i asked [Music] committed felonies in fact then he said he just grew up and now wanted to help in any way he could even if it meant informing on his beloved cousin peter i think he was a little of robert i think he felt his dad treated robert better than he got treated when he worked there he said something about his dad [Music] taking him out of the will one thing though paul like his second cousin dave didn't think that pete was capable of making that bomb somebody must have helped him i just don't think he has the technical ability to do it unless i seriously have some help okay so this type of thing was done by somebody who's pretty intelligent maybe got some know-how well that's kind of what you guys said i think that's right who do you think is capable of but remember paul's ex-in-laws told detective sam that paul was more likely the guilty party so now the detective turned the tables a little suggested maybe it was he paul who is jealous of roberto but i didn't hate robert did you not like him [Music] i didn't like the fact that he would comment attitude [Music] you've been involved in some bad stuff all right okay you've cut phone work i've tried to help you guys out through this whole thing you're gonna start calling an attitude and i'm not trying to drive an attitude with you but i'm having trouble with some of the stuff you're saying i know my word didn't mean i'm a felon i was a drug addict living closest sucks with this everybody knows about it so this must have put a whole different complexion on paul it did having thought for some time that maybe peter was your guy what was that like it's possible we may have somebody else to look at and indeed they did attached gps trackers to both peter and paul's vehicles which produced precisely nothing more weeks slipped by eduardo ayala aware he and his family could be the killer's next target play awake at night thinking i would imagine peter trying to build this this bomb had to do it on a workbench obviously but he's got the shakes so i think about that did he or did he have somebody else do it for him boy and then i think the same thing about paul by working side side with guy i i could see that he was a smart super smart guy by the time the rice crop came in first couple weeks of october the whole case had gone into a kind of stall atf agent brian parker was particularly frustrated while the door of the electrical panel had been recovered the box itself where the bomb had been placed was still missing the most logical place where that remains of that panel was was in the river that was directly behind where the explosion occurred so they called in an fbi dive team which spent days mucking through the bottom of the canal next to where the bomb had gone off and agent parker who had been monitoring the search had a strange incident as he was leaving one day and uh all of a sudden the tire went flat this is what flattened the tire a homemade spike the spike was constructed of a harvester sickle that was welded to a two inch washer further inspection in the area we found another one of these spikes almost like a challenge to us here i am i'm doing this to you now come find me basically they're coming they're coming after the cops investigators are about to get some new ammunition a bit of forensic evidence that it turns out was sent directly to them coming up there was a dna profile on the back of one of the stamps that was affixed to the envelope when dateline secrets uncovered continues [Music] three months after the bombing the fbi dive team found the electrical box in which the bomb had been placed but after months of sitting in water and mud there was no trace of dna or fingerprints the only story this peeled metal told was this case is going nowhere now with little hope of finding that key piece of evidence that would put the case away the detectives tried that good old-fashioned tool of policing shoe leather and tire tread round the clock surveillance of peter and paul moore aided by tracking devices with a particularly helpful app they're called geofences i put a geofence pretty big geofence around where i live i put a geofence around the sheriff's department protection he felt he needed after someone targeted law enforcement with those spikes on the road if the vehicle or the gps monitor travels into those locations you get an alert in addition detective sam would routinely log in to check on the whereabouts of peter and paul's trucks and on the morning of thanksgiving day more than four months after the bombing saum turned on his computer to find the gps tracker on paul moore's truck it had gone dead we had no signal whatsoever and this was also the type of gps that you could call you know it's like calling on the cell phone and uh wake it up because they go to sleep when they're not moving and and where are you well we couldn't get a response from it device may have just died or been found so zom got into his car with his partner drove to paul's house to see if the truck was there we got to his house and i look at the kitchen window and he's staring at me okay poopy paul hadn't recognized him detective song hit the road as we're leaving town i look in the rearview mirror and there he is following us in his truck he pulls in behind us i speed up he speeds up i'm up to about 85 and he's still gaining on me he pulls in the opposing lane i slam on the brakes and he keeps going we pace him i lose pace of him at 95. i called him in and uh chp was actually able to get a stop on him what was that all about i have no idea who chases the police that's the first time that's ever happened to me in my career so by now your suspicions were ratcheted up quite a bit i would think yes they were we worry about your own safety and parts during the investigation there were concerns for our own safety you know we're dealing with a person who is violent enough to plant a bomb but was that person paul born paul had a criminal history to be sure but was he a killer there were certain things about paul's past detective psalm was unable to share with us for reasons we'll explain later but we discovered in old court records a saga of smart expensive lawyering dealing with misdeeds that go way beyond tapping an ex-wife's telephone in 1997 paul was arrested after an incident in san francisco one night ugly accusation rape falls in prison assault with a deadly weapon trying to run his alleged victim over with his pickup truck charges that could put fall in prison for a decade or more instead paul spent nearly three years driving back and forth between his place here in calusa and san francisco engaged in a series of court maneuvers the result paul simply got probation after pleading no contest to assault with intent to commit rape not denying blame for the offense the other charges were dropped but the conviction football on california's sex offenders liz searchable by county out of fear that someone in colusa was bound to find out his secret ball went into exile near santa cruz however as part of the original plea deal paul's intent to commit rape conviction was dropped vacated in 2007 seven years later in exchange paul pleaded no contest to the assault with a deadly weapon charge which meant paul was no longer a registered sex offender and the prodigal son was welcomed home that part of his past a carefully guarded secret from most of the folks here in colusa county but pete's past was not a secret everybody knew he didn't like roberto ayala and everybody knew he was a suspect around town could you hear what people were whispering but not paul not paul then five months into the investigation there was news of a sort from one of the crime labs a male leg hair was found under a label of one of the envelopes and the dna came back matching nobody no one in the moore family or anyone in the cotus database anyway odd had it been planted there to throw off investigators then one of these envelopes finally gave up what appeared to be a real clue there was a dna profile from fingerprint ridge detail on the back of one of the stamps that was affixed to the envelope that one of the letters was was sent in so what came back from these dna tests the contributor of the dna from the fingerprint material was similar to palmore case closed right not this time this time there was a bot similar to palmore but it wasn't a match the dna sample was so minute that forensic scientists were unable to build a full genetic sequence meaning the dna may have come from paul moore but the scientist couldn't say it was a 100 match and while the dna didn't match anyone else in the war family including peter the fact that paul couldn't be excluded was nothing that would hold up in court it was beyond frustrating to hear that we have an almost match but we can't say for sure still it did give them an idea to get one shot at it might work coming up most amazing thing in the world this is the smoking gun a killer seemingly revealed by a blank sheet of paper got chills going back my neck i'm like this is not happening right now when dateline secrets uncovered continues the dna evidence that came back as a partial match to paul moore was not enough to get him charged with roberto royale's murder far from it but it was enough to get some people in town whispering rumors run rumors are like bad smell they move fast eduardo heard those rumors heard that maybe paul had something to do with roberto's murder which placed eduardo in the hitchcockian situation of working side by side with the man who may have murdered his brother i look at him just like i'm looking at you i talk to him just like i'm talking to you uh and in the back of my mind i'm thinking you're the one that did it and while that dna result from the stamp wasn't strong enough to hold up in court it was significant enough to get a warrant to search paul's home whatever that was worth five long months after the bombing he had done some kind of major cleaning of his house so we'd actually had conversation about this and like what's the point conversation um that was one of the things that was talked about and uh the decision was made and i didn't want to leave it untouched sure but your expectations were not that hard no they weren't with just this one crack at ball's house detective psalm wanted to make sure they did a thorough search so he cobbled together a team of investigators from various law enforcement agencies before we served the search warrant we had a briefing one of the cops helping them was a detective from a neighboring town jose chewie ruiz they actually uh showed us the diagram of the bomb and that's uh pretty much what we're instructed to look for anything related to that yes exactly anything related to bomb-making they arrived on mass right after daybreak unannounced of course paul waited outside while each investigator took a piece of the house and then they went i found some vanilla envelopes a copier and also a printer the problem though was that paul's home owned by the moore family doubled as the farm office there were printers and copiers envelopes expected to be there too as you're going around you found those things what were you thinking we really want that one really really good piece of physical evidence what you found so far wasn't it no okay so specifically what did you find a probative value anything i didn't find anything we took his cell phones uh there were two cell phones in the car but basically nothing no detective ruiz was assigned to the dining room which clearly doubled as an office what did you see i saw a lot of paperwork there was lots of papers files everywhere on that table room was full of paper yes the sun was just breaking over the horizon long rays of morning light angled through the blinds detective ruiz was poking through all those papers and office supplies when a curious thing caught his eye it was the way that almost horizontal beam of light glanced off a blank sheet of paper i noticed that the white sheet of paper had several impressions on it impressions yes some writing on it yeah it's like when you draw something on the top sheet of paper and it goes through to the next sheet down yes and uh that got my attention right away i picked it up and it was one of those moments where i was like i turned the different angles the paper boat in half and it was one of those i was like got chills going on the back of my neck and just the hairs are standing up i'm like no way this this is not happening right now and one of the officers that was helping us looked at me he goes what are you looking at because it was just a blank sheet of paper and i was like you're not going to believe this and i said you need to go get detected from like now he's holding this white piece of paper in his hands and he's kind of got it bent a little bit and he's like look at this and i immediately i looked at this and i'm going oh my god what he's holding in his hand is an indented writing copy of the diagram that we received in the mail [Music] this is the sheet of paper detectable was found you can see the indentations of the both threads in the middle of the page about a third of the way down and here's that same sheet of paper enhanced by the atf crime lab and here is the original bomb diagram mailed to investigators back in august most amazing thing in the world this is the smoking gun unbelievable couldn't believe it exciting doesn't begin to describe elated maybe then what happened i went out and arrested paul moore coming up pete moore seems to be in the clear but he's got yet another shock in store there's no scale for this this changes you forever with dateline secrets uncovered continues [Music] little colusa california was dumbstruck paul moore arrested for the killing of roberto ayala few even knew he was a suspect mary paul's cousin and pete's sister got a barrage of texts at work it was bittersweet there was a part of me that was relieved that it was over for pete or that he wasn't you know mixed in with it and at the same time i was sad because it was my cousin that we grew up with you know and it was part of my family my youngest sister mary called me on the phone and she said they just arrested paul for the murder of robert ayola and i was in the middle of the parking lot and i fell to my knees and just started screaming [Music] but human nature is a funny thing suspicion once embedded is remarkably resistant to actual evidence that might disprove it when paul moore was arrested and charged with the murder of roberto ayala his cousin peter began to experience that particular phenomenon quite personally around town people still seem to believe that pete was the murderer ironic perhaps that for all his bluster pete has never been arrested never been in trouble with the law runs his own business has been a good father and over the years has taken in wayward teens to give them a better start kids like nick hecker you know other foster homes they do it for the money he didn't ask for any money in return he fed me clothed me gave me a car to drive and now i look at pete like a dad and anybody that has anything bad to say about pete's never really took the time to get to know him because he's a good loving person with a huge heart and need more peace in this world so why were the cops so focused on pete to begin with well as pictos of his cousin paul planned the whole thing set out to frame him first by lying to him telling him that roberto or robert as pete calls him was out to steal his birthright paul would come over and tell me horrible stuff about ed and robert like he said robert told paul that he was going to get my share of what my dad was going to leave me on the ranch so paul would come over and say stuff to me and he knew he was going to make me want to go save some or fight with somebody and pete said he was simply blind depaul's manipulation when you're going through your everyday life and someone's set you up for over a year and a half you don't know who to believe and so it kept everybody at odds and my life was so spun out of control and i couldn't figure out what was going on the piece wife mary allen said she could clearly see paul was baiting pete he would talk to him all the time and one piece got home wouldn't be upset oh yeah he'd be angry upset telling us things that we didn't even know if they were true david sue moore told investigators they too thought paul had been setting pete up they talk a lot between themselves too and i think paul has been able to manipulate pete just didn't see it didn't realize he was being played by his cousin that just couldn't be we grew up together we were together every day our parents bought us walkie-talkies when we were seven and eight years old and i'd sit in my back bedroom where my bedroom was and he lived right down on the block the corner down there and we talked to each other until we went to sleep but now peter's cousin paul the princely the golden boy was about to go on trial for the murder of roberto ayala and as for pete the person who was treated in this town like he bore the mark of cain i've had several low points in my life and it's there's no scale for this [Music] this changes you forever the next chapter wasn't a lift from the book of genesis more like the story of job well one thing that's kind of unique maybe or especially about colusa county is every time i've ever had a big case i can go into almost any coffee shop or restaurant in and they're solving it for me and those things get twisted pretty fast they get twisted really fast in this case it was constantly well you know pete moore did it you know pete moore did it and my response was well that's not the direction i'm going in not the direction at all in fact va pointer was about to put pete on the prosecution team as a key witness against paul making pete work with the same people who at one point were hoping to put him in prison and that uncomfortable fact was irresistible catnip for paul's defense attorney pete's first day on the stand she said you're a murderer aren't you mr moore as the trial began the prosecution and the defense agreed on one thing someone with the last name moore committed this murder a family feud plays out in court coming up peter is the one who has indicated i've been in landscaping for 20 years i'm broken down i want to be in the farming operation what better way to take out roberto and to take out palm with dateline secrets uncovered continues in the months following roberto ayala's murder investigators suspected peter moore was the bomber and built a case against him so when peter's cousin paul was arrested his defense asked an obvious question what if the cops first instinct was correct what if pete did it peter has animosity towards roberto peter has made threats to roberto peter is the one that wants in to the farming operation linda parisi paul moore's attorney presented in court a mirror image of the state's case acknowledging that one cousin was out to frame the other only in her version of the story paul was the stooge and peter the mastermind peter is the one who has indicated i've been in landscaping for 20 years i'm tired i'm broken down i want to be in the farming operation what better way to take out roberto and to take out paul to counter that argument the prosecution was forced to call pete as a witness knowing that would make him a punching bag for her pc she told me she told me she said you're a murderer aren't you mr moore i said those are your words not mine she thought that she could by grilling peter uncover the evil the monster then assistant attorney general david drewliner was speech wrangler during the trial i was completely satisfied that there was no monster to uncover and so i for the most part let her go at it a courtroom tactic not appreciated by pete after the first day i said you guys need to get this lady off of me she's like she's on me like a dog on a piece of raw meat and they look me right now i said there's nothing we can do for you this is an open investigation and we have to let her ask anything or the jury will think we're hiding stuff i mean you got to be kidding me one hour his testimony felt like eight i can tell you that it was it was excruciating because i knew what he was going through and i was waiting for him to explode at any minute paul's attorney linda parisi claimed that pete somehow planted the imprint of the bomb diagram in paul's home mr moore who works at that desk daily he never notices it if he's your culprit he never sees an indentation of a diagram he drew and thinks oh my gosh thank god i saw that let me get rid of it i it just raises so many questions it just beggars the imagination to think that peter would know enough about when the police are going to arrive and know that some junior officer is going to happen to notice this very faint little image of a diagram on a white piece of paper which he never would have seen if the light hadn't been just right on that table that afternoon if i'm peter moore and i engage in this and they don't find it all right my plan didn't work but if they do find it it's a home run for me and there's very little risk to me peter to engage in it it's not like i have to break into the police department and tamper with some evidence but paul's fingerprints were all over that piece of paper and peters were not i i would agree that that shows that this had been in the house and that he may have touched it and in fact i leaned on it and the way the prints were situated likely that one would have leaned on it to reach over to open up the window so it was very consistent with that peter of course denied he placed that blank sheet of paper at paul's home said he hadn't been in paul's house in years then at the trial defense attorney parisi played a wild card she confronted pete with this a video found on one of pete's computer sees just

2021-08-25 02:37

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