Beyond Reasonable Doubt (2017–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Lady in the Barrel - full transcript

This was a very violent and pure evil crime.

Brutally murdered

and shoved under a house for 30 years.

The body is mummified.

The skin is like rubber.

[Dennis Ryan] We realized that we would have to use

the Video Spectral Comparator.

That kind of changed the course of the investigation.

[Parpan] He says, "I'm afraid of what you might find out."

I said, "You know what we'll find out..."

[gunshot]



"And I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life.

You understand that?"

But it never crossed my mind how this would wind up.

[Bob Edwards] I couldn't believe it.

It was like she was waiting 30 years

to tell somebody what had happened.

[man] Oh God!

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[♪♪♪]



[Brian Parpan] The year 1999,

I'd been a homicide detective for about 11 years

in Nassau County in Homicide Squad, New York.

It was a very pleasant community.

[phone ringing]

The afternoon of September 2nd,

I received a phone call from

detectives in the 2nd precinct,

and they indicated that they thought they had a dead body.

My first thought was,

"What do you mean you think you have a dead body?"

We have a dead body or we don't have a dead body.

It turns out this was going to be

one of the most interesting cases

I had ever dealt with.

The entire case actually took less than ten days.

[police sirens]

[indecipherable police radio chatter]

[indecipherable police radio chatter]

When we arrived there,

in front of the house was a big black barrel,

55 gallon drum.

I spoke to the gentleman who had found it.

Turned out that he was selling his house.

He told me that on the previous day,

the buyer of the house came by

and decided he wanted to do one last walk-through.

He crawled under an extension to the house...

...all the way to the back corner.

And he said, "You have a barrel

stuffed all the way in that back corner behind the steps."

"I don't know what's in that barrel.

I want it outta here!"

So they rolled it all the way out, stood it up...

And the owner said, "Yeah, we'll open it and empty it,

so the garbage will take it."

And that's what started the case.

I went over to the barrel with my partner

and there's a seal that goes around the top of the barrel.

He unbolted the strap...

And we opened the barrel.

[man] Oh God! What the...?

The odor,

the stench, was overpowering.

The smell of a decomposing body is something that

anyone who smells it will never forget it.

It's a very, very pungent,

sweet, sickening smell.

Inside a barrel there is what appears to be

a human hand,

in a...

curled position...

...buried in a very viscous, greenish fluid.

I had no idea if we were just going to have

a barrel full of limbs,

or if it was gonna be a full body.

So an autopsy is gonna be performed.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

This was gonna be the day that's going to really tell us

what we're dealing with.

[static]

[Edwards] I've been to many autopsies

where the body is decomposed.

This body,

having been closed in there for all these years,

and when the air got to it,

it began to decompose very, very rapidly.

It was very, very tough for people who were there.

[♪♪♪]

The first thing that comes out of the barrel when it's tipped

is a green fluid.

[Edwards] We knew that this wasn't body fluids.

This was something chemical.

This was something that came

probably with the barrel, originally.

It seemed to be a dye of some type.

[Parpan] And there was a lot of this

black and white viscous material.

It appeared to be plastic pellets,

black and white.

The body was bent in half...

Hands to feet...

Head to knee.

The body, it mummified.

The skin is like rubber.

This was like something I'd never, ever experienced before.

[Roger Mitchell] A body found in an airtight drum

is going to be relatively preserved from the elements.

So that will take time

for the body to decompose.

The tissue is not being moved,

it's not being sloughed off.

There are no flies laying their maggots

that are eating holes into the tissue.

So essentially that body

is allowed to mummify in that environment.

[Parpan] The clothing is the hint of...

We're dealing with something quite a while ago.

[Edwards] It looked like the clothing

that would be from the 60s,

and that's what we felt.

Now we're really looking back in time, y'know,

we're looking back possibly 30 years at this time.

[Parpan] We have no idea who this person is,

but we're dealing with a very small, white,

possibly Hispanic,

obvious female

with long black hair.

She has a unusual

gold-rimmed bridge in her mouth.

[Edwards] She was wearing

a gold colored ring with a green stone.

[♪♪♪]

[Parpan] The cause of death is readily apparent.

Her skull is crushed by blunt force trauma.

The Medical Examiner determined it was

seven to ten blows with a hammer.

Even worse...

The deceased is pregnant.

It was probably in the very latter stages,

eight to possibly nine months,

in the pregnancy.

[Edwards] She had been brutally murdered,

killing her child also,

and jammed into a barrel

and shoved under a house

for possibly 25 or 30 years.

So we looked at this as

a very violent and pure evil crime.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[Static]

[Bob Edwards] During the course of the autopsy,

several other items were located on or about the body.

One of the things that comes out

is about a four-inch green plastic stem.

No thought as to what it is at this point,

but it is removed and put aside

as possible evidence.

And at the very bottom of the barrel

is a pocketbook.

[camera click]

[Edwards] Inside the pocket book,

there was a small address book,

about three by five,

that had been soaked in this fluid

and it couldn't be opened.

We were afraid to open it,

that we would destroy whatever was in there.

[Brian Parpan] So we asked for

our document section people to come down,

and we turned these items over to them.

[Dennis Ryan] When we initially saw the book,

the real test was separating the pages without damaging 'em.

One of the objectives was to see

if we could decipher any of the entries in the book

that would be important in identifying the victim.

So the primary goal was to get the book dry.

Normally, this is something that would've taken weeks to dry out.

But time was of the essence.

So the book was put within

a forensic drying cabinet for a few days.

[Parpan] It was going to be a painstakingly slow process.

They would inform me as soon as they would get anything,

but they were a lot more optimistic than I was.

[♪♪♪]

[phones ringing, busy police station noise]

Early the next day,

I had all the records of every homeowner.

My first thought was, if you were gonna kill somebody,

generally you want it as far away

from you and your house as possible.

So I wanted to find out about this extension...

...Thinking that the construction people,

who have barrels,

could've very easily left that there during the building.

My main interest,

from the get go,

was the second home owner

who according to the paperwork

had the extension done.

So I asked him about the extension

that he built on the home.

[phone dialling]

He tells me that,

when he purchased the house in 1972,

that extension was there.

[camera click]

He actually went under the crawlspace,

and he saw the barrel...

But the barrel was so big and heavy and cumbersome,

he couldn't move it.

He just left it there,

thinking that it was probably just construction waste.

Now...

certainly I'm not taking what he says

as a hundred percent truthful.

But then he informed me that he purchased the house

from a man called Howard Elkins.

And I asked him what he knew about Mr. Elkins.

He told me that he was aware that Howard Elkins

owned a plastic flowers company.

It immediately came to mind that we found

a plastic green plastic stem and leaf in the barrel.

[♪♪♪]

[Edwards] This was very, very important.

This seemingly-insignificant little piece of plastic

now puts it into a person who owns a plastic factory...

And he had owned the house.

So now we really have a hot lead.

[♪♪♪]

We had Howard Elkins' name,

we ran it through the DMV system,

come up with a hit in Florida.

Now we had his name and his address in Florida.

Howard Elkins now becomes our main interest...

But I can't just go down and accuse somebody

and not have the answers.

There's the old saying,

"You don't ask a question you don't have the answer to."

So I wanted to know everything I possibly could about his work

before we went to see him.

[♪♪♪]

Early the next day...

[phone ring]

Parpan.

I hear from our documents people

that they have made some progress with that address book

that we had recovered from the barrel.

The book was drying a little bit more

and becoming a little more stable.

But the entries in the address book

were generally not visible

for decipherment by the naked eye.

They were faded because

the paper fibers

absorbed the bodily fluids.

We realized that this was a case

that we would have to use the Video Spectral Comparator.

The instrument is used to detect

counterfeit monies and fraudulent documents.

It detects changes in the inks

beyond what we can see with our naked eye.

With the address book,

we knew that there may be components of the ink

that still remain,

that we may be able to visualize in the infrared range.

So you'll start with the low end

of the visible spectrum,

and then as you move up closer to the infrared,

you'll start to see different changes

in the characteristics of the ink.

Most of the time we'll find a sweet spot,

a particular wavelength

that's most productive for us

to decipher these entries.

With the address book,

one particular entry caught our interest

because it was a number

preceded by the letter "A."

[♪♪♪]

We didn't know what we were dealing with,

but I thought right away

it was a resident alien number

because the victim looks Hispanic.

So my partner started checking with INS immigration bureau...

But this is over 30 years ago.

So they let us know, in no uncertain terms,

it's going to take some time to identify the victim.

So, you investigate what you can investigate.

Everything we're doing now is with the thought of

getting information on Mr. Elkins.

I certainly don't think it's an accident

that this green plastic stem

was found inside a barrel.

On the barrel...

...there was a large green sticker

with the initials "G.A.F."

We found out that this was a chemical company

located in New Jersey.

So this now becomes our focal point

for the next day.

[♪♪♪]

[Brian Parpan] Early the next day,

I made an appointment in New Jersey

with the chemical company.

I wanna show them the green fluid,

I wanna show them the plastic pellets...

[♪♪♪]

[Dr. Irwin Silverstein] When the detective arrived,

I knew right away that

the plastic was a polyethylene pellet,

and it's fed into the machine that's used to

injection-mold various types of products...

...including plastic flowers.

[Parpan] This is after I learned that Howard Elkins

owned a plastic flower company.

Now I'm being told that

this type of pellet is used in that.

[Silverstein] The detective produced

the stack of photographs of the drum.

We knew all about it.

The dye that was in the drum was called "heliogen green..."

...At one time,

that was produced back in the '60s.

There was only one customer who bought product in that drum...

A single company that manufactured plastic flowers.

[♪♪♪]

So all these items...

The dye,

the pellets,

the barrel,

and the green plastic stem,

they're all reflecting back to Howard Elkins...

...to the plastic flower company.

So now let's find out about the plastics factory.

[telephone ring]

When the records came back,

we found out that the name of the corporation

was Melrose Plastics.

Howard Elkins was a principal in this corporation,

it was now closed,

and he had moved on to Florida with his children and his wife.

[Parpan] We found out that he was a partner

with another gentleman at Melrose Plastics,

back in the '60s,

and his name was Melvin Gantman.

[Edwards] It turned out that Gantman lived near by Elkins

on the east coast of Florida.

[Parpan] At that point,

there's no doubt in my mind

we're going to Florida the next day.

[♪♪♪]

The next day we got a flight.

The plan was to speak to Howard Elkins.

[Edwards] We're really on a chase now,

at this point in time, to find him.

But we decided to speak to Melvin Gantman first

because we wanted to get as much

insight into Elkins as we could get.

We didn't know what his attitude was gonna be,

but we were hopeful that he would be on our side.

[Edwards] Gantman, we're here because...

[Parpan] We asked him if he had

a relationship with Howard Elkins.

He indicated that he hadn't seen him in years.

So he was willing to talk to us.

[Edwards] We showed him a picture of the 55 gallon drum

that our deceased had been found in.

He immediately identified it.

[Parpan] Immediately says,

"Absolutely, that's the barrel we used in my company.

"There's a bung on the bottom of the barrel,

and there was a heliogen green dye in the barrel."

"We used it for the base of our plastic flowers."

He's right on the money with everything, absolutely.

[Edwards] And shortly after that,

he had a very interesting

piece of information that he gave us.

He told us it was in the 1960s.

[telephone ringing]

Mr. Gantman was working at the plastic flower company.

He recalled receiving a phone call from a landlord.

He was trying to find Howard Elkins.

[Edwards] Howard wasn't there that day,

so the landlord said,

"Well, will you tell him

"that I want him to get his girlfriend's furniture

and clothing and stuff out of the apartment."

"The girl is not living here anymore.

"Please come and empty the apartment

so I can re-rent it."

So we asked him if he knew

if Howard ever had a girlfriend.

[Edwards] Gantman told us that he saw this woman

that worked there together with Elkins.

And he said, "She was a young Spanish girl, very pretty.

She had long black hair.

She had strange gold teeth.

She worked with us probably in 1966 to 1967,

then she left,

never to be seen again."

I looked over at Bob, and our eyes kind of met,

like, "Can you believe what he remembers?

And can you believe how important

what he's telling us is?"

Now we knew that Howard Elkins, who was a married man with kids,

was having an affair,

probably with the victim.

We were high-fiving one another when we left the house.

We said, "We've got it. This is it, a done deal.

Let's go get him," y'know?

This case is coming together. It's six days old.

Y'know, 30 years in a barrel, six days,

we're gonna put this away, right now, today.

That's how we felt at that point in time.

[♪♪♪]

[Brian Parpan] We're heading over to Howard Elkins' house,

and we're as happy as can be...

Absolutely convinced we know who did the killing.

[Bob Edwards] Brian and I were both very electrified

by the information that we just got from Gantman.

The whole thing is coming into form.

It's gelling right now.

[Parpan] This was it.

This was gonna be the most important interview

in the entire case.

[Edwards] We walked up to the house,

knocked on the door.

Mr. Elkins...

[Parpan] When he answers the door,

I have my shield out.

I told him we're from Nassau County Homicide Squad,

and we are investigating a homicide

that involved his home.

Okay, come in.

[Edwards] He invited us in, we had a seat,

we started to talk to him.

[inaudible speech]

So we started off, as we always do,

just in conversation.

There were no accusations.

Started talking to him about Melrose Plastics.

At this point we showed him a photo of the barrel

and asked him if he recognized the barrel.

He said, "No, absolutely not."

I asked him, "Is this the type of barrel

that you would have used in your company?"

And he said...

[Edwards] "No, never saw anything like that."

We ran through the whole litany,

that he had a plastics business,

he said, "I never saw anything like that in my business."

So we knew he was lying at that time.

[Elkins] And the company name...

[Parpan] I indicated that we knew

that there was a dye in the barrel,

and that the dye was called "heliogen green..."

Told us he never heard of it.

No.

When he denied that, it was like...

"This is gonna be tough. He's not gonna go for anything."

But then he surprised us,

'cause we asked him about if

he ever had a affair with anybody...

Yeah.

...And he said he did.

[Parpan] He indicated that it was a very, very short affair,

and she left work,

she stopped working there, so it was the end of it,

and that was it.

We asked him point blank,

"Was she pregnant when she left?"

-No. -[Parpan] "Absolutely not."

It was so insignificant

that he didn't remember her name,

he couldn't describe her.

It was just like smoke, y'know?

[quiet clock ticking]

Now we got to the point where we literally told him,

"Look, we're not here by accident.

"We've been doing this case for five or six days now.

"Everything points to you.

"Lemme tell you right now,

that barrel comes from your business."

"No it doesn't."

Now comes the moment of truth.

I said to him, "Okay,

"there was a dead girl found in that barrel,

"and she was pregnant.

"I wanna take a swab from the inside of your cheek,

"and I'm gonna match up the DNA to that fetus.

"If you don't match...

you walk."

No.

He says, "I watch too much television."

He said, "I know you guys

could do all kinds of stuff with that."

He says, "I'm not gonna do that."

♪ [tense music]

[Parpan] And then lo and behold...

[loud phone ringing]

...The phone rang.

[phone ring]

It was his wife calling, and she was on her way home.

At that point I knew...

There was not a doubt in my mind

that he was the murderer,

and I knew he knew we knew.

When he got off the phone, he said,

"Look, that was my wife. She's on her way home.

"I don't want you here when she gets here.

"We have a lot to discuss.

I want you to leave."

Now we have no choice.

I didn't have a warrant,

and I have no arrest powers there.

I stood up right next to him. I stood right in front of him.

I said, "I'm gonna tell you something, Mr. Elkins.

"We're gonna leave.

"But I'm gonna get a warrant for your DNA.

"I'm gonna get your DNA,

"and I'm gonna match it up to that

"dead baby in that dead woman,

"and I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life.

D'ya understand that?"

And he just, imperceptibly... A nod.

And that was it.

Now we knew he was the guy that ended her life...

...and let her spend 30 years in a barrel under a house.

[Parpan] I was absolutely sure

I would have enough to get an arrest warrant,

but it never crossed my mind how this would wind up.

[busy city traffic noise]

[phone ringing]

[Brian Parpan] We spent the entire next day

on the phone with our district attorney

because I don't have arrest powers

out of state without a warrant.

But the next day was the Jewish holidays,

and a lot of the people are gonna be off

because of the holiday.

So he says, "You may have to wait until Monday."

We'd done everything we could do.

We weren't gonna get a court order that day.

So we basically had

free time for Friday night,

Saturday, and Sunday,

which we were planning to go fishing. [laugh]

Nothin' else to do.

[Edwards] It looks to us like a done deal

at this point in time,

and we're really, really happy about it.

So I said to Brian, "Y'know, we oughtta call the office,

let 'em know what's goin' on."

Meaning our office in New York.

So he went to the phone and he called the office.

The detective there who he was speaking to says,

"Do you guys have Howard Elkin?"

"What do you mean, we have Elkins?"

No, of course we don't have him."

He says, "Well, Palm Beach Sheriff's Department

just called here looking for you guys

to see if you had Howard Elkin."

What?

It turns out Mrs. Elkins was reporting her husband missing.

[sirens]

So we went to the Sheriff's office.

As we were arriving,

a deputy came outside and said, "Are you guys from Nassau?"

He said, "Look, they found him."

[siren]

[police radio chatter]

Earlier that afternoon,

Howard Elkins went to the local Walmart,

purchased a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun...

[radio chatter]

And he went to a neighbor's house...

[Parpan] He went into the garage...

And he went into the back seat of the neighbor's car...

[shotgun loading]

And took his own life with the shotgun.

[gunshot]

[♪♪♪]

[camera snap]

[Edwards] I couldn't believe it.

We went from the high of thinking

we're gonna make the arrest,

and all of a sudden, he's dead.

I was disappointed, because I wanted him to go to jail.

I was disappointed because

I wanted to arrest him and put him on trial.

[camera snap]

[Edwards] He pulled the rug out from under us

by committing suicide.

We were deflated that night.

[camera snap]

The only bonus that we had in the whole case at that time

was the fact that we now had Howard Elkins' blood

that we could do a DNA test on.

[♪♪♪]

[Jenifer Smith] If we're trying to establish

if an individual is the father of a child,

what we're looking for are these..

We call them alleles.

These are the different choices of DNA

that we can find.

If the father, or the person we believe to be the father,

doesn't have that particular allele

that's present in the child,

then they cannot be a contributor.

If they do have the allele

at all the locations we're looking at,

we can calculate the likelihood of that profile

coming from an unrelated individual.

And it's that calculation that gives us

something we call the paternity index.

[Parpan] I was certainly hopeful

that they were going to match up the DNA

with the fetus in the deceased.

They would inform me as soon as they would get anything...

But it's going to take some time.

[jet engine roaring]

We flew back to New York.

So I returned to work on Monday...

And the package from the immigration services came.

And now we know who our victim is.

[♪♪♪]

Reyna Angélica Marroquín.

She emigrated in 1966 from El Salvador.

[Edwards] She was a beautiful young woman,

and just days before during the autopsy

and we looked at her,

it was a shriveled-up, mummified thing

that you would never think

was this beautiful vibrant young woman.

[Parpan] So we have now reached a point in this investigation

where we have a million questions still about,

"How did this happen? When did it happen?"

So finding someone who could answer

90 percent of our questions was an absolute cherry on top.

[phone ring]

Earlier that afternoon the document team told me

that they'd come up with quite a few numbers

in the phone book of the deceased.

We were able to continue to work on the address book

while Brian was out in the field

conducting his investigation.

We were deciphering the pages

and perfecting our methodologies.

We found a lot of names and phone numbers.

Once we provided them with that information,

that kind of changed the course of the investigation.

[dialling phone]

So we started calling the numbers...

But all these numbers come from the '60s.

[message] We're sorry, the number you have dialed...

[Parpan] So they all came back.

It's been disconnected, or you've dialed incorrectly...

But my partner takes one number and dials it,

and a person answers.

That is shocking in itself.

He said, "Where does this number go to?"

She said, "It goes to the garment district

in New York City."

"How long have you been there?" "I've been here for 40 years."

She identifies herself as Kathy Andrade.

So without saying anything further on the phone,

we make an appointment to see her the following day.

[Edwards] That next day,

when I heard Kathy's story,

I couldn't believe it.

It was too good to be true.

It was like she was waiting 30 years

to tell somebody what had happened.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[Brian Parpan] We went into the city the following day

with the full intention of speaking with Kathy Andrade

at the garment center.

We showed her the picture of Reyna Marroquín

and she went completely, immediately to tears.

[Kathy gasps]

[Parpan] She was a friend.

Kathy she referred to as "my angel."

Her middle name was Angélica.

She then recited the story to us

that literally answered...

90 percent of the questions we had.

It was November, 1968.

She and Angélica would talk almost every day.

At one point,

Angélica tells her that she's pregnant,

and she's pregnant by her boss

at the plastic flowers company.

[Edwards] He was gonna take care of her,

they were gonna get married,

and he put her in an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey,

which is just across the river.

[Parpan] She informed us that a period of time goes by

and she gets a panic call.

Kathy says, "I get a call late one day from Angélica,

and she's crying on the phone."

"I ask her what the problem is,

and she says she did something very foolish."

So Kathy says to Angélica, "What did you do?"

"I did a terrible thing.

"I called my boyfriend's wife

"and I told her that I was pregnant with his baby,

and now he's gonna kill me."

So Angélica said, "Will you please come and help?"

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

When Kathy arrived,

the apartment door opened slightly.

She wasn't there...

But the table was set for two.

The food was still warm.

Nothing was amiss.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

And she waits for several hours,

and she doesn't come back.

So she left and went back to New York,

and then she called every day...

[phone ringing]

...hoping that the victim

would be there and answer the phone,

and then after a week, she just...

gave up.

[Parpan] She said, "I never heard from her again."

She was genuinely, genuinely upset

at knowing that,

probably that day,

Angélica was killed..

and I know, without her having to say it,

wondering if there was

something more she could have done.

[Edwards] It was amazing.

The case was backwards, y'know?

We were looking for all this evidence in the beginning

and we didn't have anything,

so the whole thing came together at the end,

and then the DNA was the...

That was the icing on the cake.

[♪♪♪]

[Parpan] At the end of the case,

I got a report from the lab corps

on the DNA match-up.

[Edwards] The results came back

with 99.93 percentage

that Howard Elkin was the father of the fetus.

And that was basically case really closed,

nailed shut at that time.

[♪♪♪]

So in less than ten days,

we solved the case

that in actuality was more than 30 years old.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]

I'm proud of the work that we all did on this case.

I'm proud that we solved it.

But it does leave a slight empty feeling.

[Edwards] I think there was certainly,

through our investigation,

there was justice brought for Reyna.

Although we didn't arrest him, and try him,

and put him in jail,

Howard Elkins went to his grave

knowing that he was caught.

[Parpan] He'd led his life.

He watched his family grow up.

He had 30 years with his wife and his kids...

[ghostly children's laughter]

And she was buried

in a barrel under a house for 30 years,

and no one, with the exception of Kathy Andrade, missed her.

There was one final piece that my documents team

was able to recover from Reyna's address book,

and that was a small, square piece of paper

that had been folded.

It was in the very back page,

and it said, "Please don't be mad I told the truth."

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪]