Real Murders of Orange County (2020): Season 1, Episode 6 - Charles - full transcript
Fullerton in the midst
of Orange County is not used
to violent crimes.
One pleasant evening,
an Orange County family's
idyllic dreams
were suddenly destroyed.
I observed a car that had been
fully engulfed in flames.
In the back seat,
there were two dead,
naked bodies.
He was struck multiple times.
I thought it was quite vicious.
I really think this world
is out of control.
A dark secret
cut through the family
and the very fabric
of their community.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum.
This built up over years.
They had problems,
and people get desperate
and do desperate things.
It's one thing
to lose your money,
but now we're talking murder.
Orange County's
a fascinating place.
What's most famous about it
would be
its affluent coastal cities,
places like Newport Beach.
Communities like Emerald Bay.
You find flashy money.
Fullerton, in the center of
the county, a little different.
Fullerton people
are a little more low-key
and maybe...
not so flamboyant
with their wealth.
The people there
more would be old money
rather than new money.
In Fullerton,
roots count for something.
And a family home
would be treasured.
Everything that takes place
in this neighborhood takes plac
behind closed doors.
It's a place
that's steady and calm,
but it's also got
this entrenched affluence to it.
It's not a community
where you would expect
to read headlines like these.
Families in the old money
neighborhoods
of Fullerton enjoy
a privileged O.C. lifestyle.
Successful parents
who pass on trust funds
to aspirational children.
Edward and Dolores Charles
built their perfect family life
ensconced
in this safe
and prestigious suburb.
I lived across the street
from the Charles family
for 15 years.
They seemed like
just normal people.
I knew he was an engineer.
Edward Charles II,
the father,
had that kind of success
that could allow you
to live very well.
That's how he lived.
Dolores, who is Edward's wife,
became one of those glue figure
in the community.
Dolores
ran a secretarial service
that I used all the time.
She was very up on technology.
She could do anything.
I mean, she couldn't have been
more lovely.
I had the impression
that Dolores
was very happily married
to Edward.
Her face would light up
when she would talk
about her husband.
I mean, she just came to life.
Oh, they had a comfortable life
I thought that was nice.
I just thought
it was a lovely family.
I mean, really perfect family.
Dolores and Edward had two sons
Danny, the younger, is 19
and is a, uh, sophomore at USC.
He is an opera singer.
He is a real talent, a prodigy
from a young age, and the futur
looks very, very bright.
His vocal instrument
has become stuff of legend
in the neighborhood.
Periodically, I would hear
Danny from in the house,
believe it or not, singing
with his loud voice.
It was magnificent.
The older brother, Edward,
has a dream himself.
He wants to compete
in the Olympics
as a boxer to try to get
a chance to bring home
a gold medal.
And he has a job.
He's a mechanic
working at a gas station
in Fullerton.
Eddie's a good guy.
At the gas station,
he had a very nice
set of tools,
and they were all engraved
with a yin-yang symbol.
He was very into his martial
arts. Very physically fit.
I bet the guy didn't have
an ounce of fat on his body.
Eddie lives
with his girlfriend,
Tiffany.
She was one of the original
Baywatch girls.
He really was into her.
Um, she was definitely, like,
a California beach girl that
you would assume-- blonde hair.
He seemed to be in love.
Also part of the family
is Bernard Severino.
That's Dolores's father.
And he lives there
with the family
at their home on Terraza Place.
By all appearances,
the Charles were
a happy, wealthy family
living the Orange County dream
with a bright future
on the horizon.
But the O.C. was built
on often unstable fortunes,
and the Charles legacy
was about to go up in flames.
November 6, 1994, less
than a week after Halloween,
all the members
of the Charles family
come together for a calm scene
of domestic tranquility.
Around 8:00 p.m.,
after a meal of pasta,
Eddie and Danny say good night,
turn to leave,
and Danny heads back toward Los
Angeles to go back to campus.
And his mother
begins to get concerned
around 9:00
because Danny should
be back at USC by now
and he always calls,
and he didn't call tonight.
She mentions it to her father.
Around 11:30, he goes to bed,
and she's still worried,
and she's still waiting
for that call.
The next morning,
November 7, 1994,
Bernie Severino wakes up
about 5:30 a.m.
The house is empty.
There's no one else there.
And no sign of his daughter,
no sign of his son-in-law.
The dogs are locked in the
basement, which is unusual.
And what was unusual
was Dolores's car
was still out in the driveway.
He could not understand
why that would be.
He just waited all day,
and never heard from anybody.
Except Eddie did come by.
Eddie arrives back
at Terraza Place
and his grandfather
quickly tries to find out
what's going on.
"Where is everybody?
What is happening?"
These are not people
that just disappear
as part of the normal course
of their life.
This is an unusual circumstance.
And they're very, very concerne
at this point.
Bernie offers the young man
some food. He says no.
He declines, and he heads out.
These unsettling circumstances
had disrupted their
picture-perfect O.C. family,
and the two hoped
for a simple explanation.
Unfortunately,
this was just a mere glimpse
of the more horrifying news
to come.
Late on Monday,
November 7th,
a suspicious fire is reported
near El Camino High School,
which is just over the county
line in Los Angeles County.
Los Angeles County sheriff's
deputy Sergeant Royer,
he is dispatched,
he gets to the scene,
and he makes a grisly discovery.
So, I arrived there
at about 11:00
at night.
I observed a car that had been
fully engulfed in flames.
The car was a gray Honda Civic.
Badly burnt.
There was extensive damage
to it.
The fire department
had put out the fire.
Inside the burning car,
in the back seat,
it appears there are two
dead, naked bodies.
I observed
a male body on top
of a female body.
Very badly burnt.
Both of them were.
In the trunk,
there was another body,
of a young man that was
not so seriously burned.
This one, wearing clothes,
and in the fetal position,
there in the trunk.
And it's a disturbing sight
that will get even
more disturbing.
We finally realized,
upon seeing the scene
that it was triple homicide.
It's a grisly, grisly sight.
The idea of these bodies
stacked like cord wood
in the back seat and then
the fetal victim in the trunk,
it's a nightmare.
It's a horrific sight,
with the smell of charred flesh
It was very clear
that a major crime
had taken place.
Shortly before midnight,
Sergeant Royer
runs the plates of the Honda
and he gets a hit.
It turns out that this car
belongs to the Charles family
of Fullerton,
Dolores and Edward II.
The two burned bodies
in the back seat
were presumed to be Edward
and Dolores Charles,
and the lesser-burned body
in the trunk
their son Danny.
It really struck the strings
of your heart,
to see a whole family
being wiped out.
Very vicious, very cold murders.
You wondered how all three
of them got in a car,
same car, uh, why two
of them were stripped naked.
You don't know.
You know,
could've been kidnapping
or it could've been carjacking.
We didn't know at that point.
I mean, this is a scenario
that's chilling.
And then, the most
sociopathic aspect
of this twisted case:
it's not over yet.
These people were killed in
different ways, and each one
more disturbing than the last.
There had been a call.
The discovery of an affluent
Orange County family
found burnt in one of their own
cars was completely unheard of
in this well-heeled pocket
of Fullerton.
Detectives wondered if this
was a robbery gone wrong
and headed to the Charles house
to search for signs
of a struggle.
We knocked on the door
at 2:30 in the morning.
An elderly gentleman,
Bernard Severino,
opened the door.
The police want to know
what Bernie knows.
They're trying to ascertain,
"Is this a suspect?"
At that point, though,
he's 73 years old,
and he's a guy
that's been dealing
with a lot of major
health issues.
And he was fully dressed,
he was wide awake.
He said he was just
extremely worried
about his family.
We set him down,
told him we were there
because we had found
the Honda Civic
and that everybody was deceased.
It really, uh,
really hit him hard.
We were worried about him.
He took it very hard,
uh, naturally.
Bernard consented to a search,
and investigators looked
through the house
for evidence of a burglary
or any signs
that the Charles had been force
from home to meet their death.
The house was empty.
He didn't notice
anything out of place.
There was no obvious sign
of a struggle
or a break-in or anything.
Detective Royer looks
in the master bedroom
and he's greeted by
an unusual sight.
The bed is made,
but there's
only one pillow on it.
And I remember Severino's
statement to this day.
"My Dolores would never make
a bed with one pillow."
So...
that was the first thing
that started coming
to our mind,
that usually burglars
don't make the beds.
Investigators ruled out
a botched burglary
as cause for the murders,
and prepared to notify
Eddie Charles
as the autopsy of his parents
and brother continued
through the dark of night.
The bodies had been found
in neighboring
Los Angeles County
over the county line.
So, the L.A. County
medical examiner's
investigation would unpack
a peculiar type of horror.
First of all,
they were able to
match the dental charts
of Edward, Dolores and Daniel.
I was able to determine
that all of them
had been killed before
the, uh, car was set on fire,
and that was because
there was no evidence
of smoke inhalation.
And it was obviously brutal.
These people didn't die easily.
Danny's head trauma
was caused by an instrument
that had
a small striking surface.
He was struck multiple times.
I thought it was quite vicious.
Not only did he have
multiple skull fractures.
The bone was actually driven
into the brain.
Our investigation indicated
that this was very personal
because
the beating up of the father
and Danny was very hateful.
When I saw the injuries,
the first thing I thought about
was a hammer.
But any tool that has
a small striking surface
could do it.
The mother, Dolores,
did have two areas in the neck
that showed evidence
of compression or a blow,
and I thought compression
was most likely.
I felt that
the cause of death
was strangulation.
We can still tell a lot
of things from a burned body.
Now, it does obscure
identifying features--
the face, the hair--
but anything internal,
we'll still find them.
As dawn broke,
news of the murders spread
through the Charles'
affluent neighborhood.
And while friends and neighbors
wrestled with feelings
of shock and horror,
they also wondered
who could have brutalized
the Charles like this.
It's always something
that is a scary thought
when you think of the violence
that's going on.
Nice people. Very best.
Were they friendly
with their neighbors?
-Oh, yeah.
Neighbors were also questioning
if a monster was able to slip
onto Terraza Place
and unleash a nightmare
on a family
as friendly and mild-mannered
as the Charles,
who could be next?
Unbelievable.
I really think
this world is out of control.
I-I... It-It's a shock.
I couldn't believe
that something like that
could actually happen
in a neighborhood like this.
I couldn't believe
Dolores was killed.
What a nice, kind human being.
How could anyone kill her?
You can't really fathom
that this happened
to someone you knew.
It wasn't until, I think,
I saw pictures on the news
that I really realized,
"Oh, my God, that's Dolores.
My Dolores."
At first, I thought
it was a total random act,
that somebody
came into the neighborhood
and somehow picked
that house randomly.
I had no idea.
This is a case
about a family
that had the American dream.
It ended in a nightmare.
Investigators now had a lead
on how the Charles were killed,
but they still had no idea why
or even where
they met their dreadful end
when a new detail emerged.
A police officer from Fullerton
advised us
that there had been a call
Sunday night at about 9:30
one house away
from the Charles house.
When the police arrived,
the car was gone.
And, so,
that was kind of the end
of that call.
As we go out
into the investigation
and we find out that Danny
was a potential opera singer,
we felt his voice
would probably carry
and that possibly it was Danny.
Detectives made
the devastating realization
that the neighbor had probably
heard Danny screaming
from inside the trunk
of his own car
in front of the Charles house
after
their Sunday family dinner.
Maybe somebody
could have saved him
if someone had been able
to open that trunk.
It's where my mind goes first,
is the horror of that.
We now wanted to go
search the house again
because we were thinking
that this was now
the crime scene,
due to the car being right ther
outside the Charles house.
We obtained a search warrant,
and we returned to the house
with our criminalist,
Heidi Robbins.
And she brought the light,
and blood showed up
all over the place.
She tore the bed apart,
and on the mattress,
there was a lot of blood.
So,
it definitely was a crime scene.
An investigation
had ramped up overnight
in Orange County
as detectives honed in
on the Charles home
as the crime scene
in their brutal homicide.
Police hoped the Charles'
surviving son, Eddie,
could shine some light
on a confusing chain of events.
Our intent
at that time was, "We got
to clear Eddie of this thing
before we go any farther
after anybody else."
Eddie was staying
at his girlfriend
Tiffany Bowen's house
on Camino Del Sol.
So, we went up there,
and it was about 6:15
in the morning.
And we saw Eddie coming out
the front door of that house,
so we approached him
at the front door.
Eddie was living
with a girlfriend, but Tiffany
was currently going to college
in Maryland,
so she was not at the house.
We had told him who we were,
and we asked him
when it was he last saw
his parents and his brother,
and he told us
about Sunday night,
he was there.
Last saw 'em then.
We wound up telling him
that the car was found and that
there were three bodies in it.
That they were all deceased.
That we believed them to be
his brother, Danny,
his mother and dad.
And he went down
to his knees and said,
"I told them not to go
down to USC at night."
He began sobbing.
Overcome, racked with grief.
We asked him why
all three of them
would be in the same car,
and he said,
"Well, Danny was having
"clutch problems with his car,
so he probably returned home
to get his mother and dad
to go with him to USC."
And we asked him,
"Why would he take a car
with clutch problems
"instead of taking
his mother's car,
who was better operating?"
And he said,
"I don't know.
They never listen to me,
anyway."
And I asked him
where he spent Sunday night.
He said he slept
at the Bowens' house,
at his girlfriend's,
where he was currently living.
And he said
he was also there Monday night.
And we talked to Mrs. Bowen,
who was there,
and because Mrs. Bowen,
Tiffany's mother,
had said he was there
all Monday night
when the fire was
and the bodies
were over at the school,
he had an alibi.
Detectives left Eddie
to grapple with his loss
and continued to knock on doors
when a vigilant neighbor
offered
another startling account.
A detective rapped
on my front door,
and he said, "Can I talk to you
about what happened?"
And that's when I said,
"On the morning of Monday,
November 7, 1994,
"I got up, and it was
about quarter to 6:00.
"As I got my paper,
I just looked around,
"and Eddie was in his driveway.
"I noticed that he was out there
with a rag,
"wiping something
off the pavement
behind the truck."
He did not see
the Honda Civic there,
but the truck that Eddie drives
was there.
He was watching him
wipe up stuff off the driveway
at 6:00 in the morning.
He was wearing
his karate gloves,
and it was just suspicious
to the neighbor.
Then I saw him looking over
at our house.
I don't think he could see me
in the window,
but he looked
for the longest time,
and then he continued
to wipe up something.
When Eddie realizes
that he was seen,
he ducks into the house.
Dr. Kuhn watched from there
and saw him reemerge, but...
The behavior
was very, very suspicious.
Suddenly,
Eddie was looking
a lot less innocent,
and an elusive detail
from his interview
came rushing back
to Sergeant Royer.
He never did ask
how they were killed,
what the circumstances were,
where or nothing.
The torched car
had reeked of a cover-up,
and now the neighbor's story
suggested Eddie may have been
concealing his tracks.
So what did he have to hide?
Detective Royer's
trying to get a beat on Eddie.
A background check
by the detective
turns up enough trouble
in his youth
to raise some red flags.
He was suspect
earlier in his life
in arson--
uh, the neighbor's house--
burglaries
where checks were taken
and he tried to cash a check
and vandalism.
He was never arrested.
Never charged
with any of these things,
but he was a suspect in 'em.
Our home was robbed
on two different occasions.
I'm not certain anything
was traced back to Eddie,
but on the other hand,
we had a suspicion
that Eddie was in our house
because he knew
that we were gone.
Although Eddie had
a checkered past,
why would he have
massacred his family?
The next-door neighbor saw
what the Charles
hadn't wanted others to see.
I felt that there was
a troublesome nature to Eddie.
And I'm not sure
what I can base that on,
other than the fact
that I observed
his interaction with his brother
and with his father,
and he seemed separated
on some degree from the family.
I saw the family's struggles
probably a couple of times
a year.
In my backyard,
I could hear them,
which is quite a ways away.
And typically, it was associated
with Eddie doing something wrong
and his father screaming at him
There was a different way
that the parents treated
both of 'em.
People think,
"Not in Orange County,"
where it's nice, happy,
but it happens anywhere
and everywhere.
Dolores was the last person
on Earth
I would have ever thought
this could happen to.
But the truth of the matter is,
there's no such thing
as a perfect family.
Unfortunately, I never heard he
speak of her son Eddie.
I never knew
she had another son.
For years,
she never mentioned Eddie.
Detective Royer puts together
a portrait of life
among the Charles family
and finds out that the
relationship between the sons
is not an easy one.
It's not a pleasant one.
It's a dark tale.
It's not one that's new,
but it is ugly.
Law enforcement
was looking at Eddie Charles
for the killings
of his brother,
mother, and father
and found a family divided.
The question was,
how had it all begun,
and was there a motive
for murder?
Detective Royer puts together
a portrait of life
among the Charles family.
Eddie and Danny have a long
history of not getting along.
In the Charles household,
the path always led
to academia and college,
the path to success.
Mother, father,
and the youngest son
followed that path.
From what the grandfather said,
they were disappointed that
Eddie did not go to college.
They were disappointed
that he wanted to be a mechanic.
And that alone set him at odds
with the expectation and
the worldview of his parents.
The family spotlight
never went off of Danny.
Danny's talent, his personality
made him center stage
in his own family
in a big way.
You get the feeling
that every single time
that he got another accolade,
his brother took it
as another slight.
Eddie is not looking
for a free ticket.
He has a job,
and he has skills himself.
He just wants some
of the attention
that his little brother
is getting.
He just
didn't get the recognition
I think he wanted
from his parents.
And it's not unusual
for a sibling
in a family to resent
the other siblings,
either for good reason
or bad reasons.
Bernie, the grandfather,
he loved Eddie.
He really did. Because he
and Eddie used to do all kind
of things together,
and they were
a grandfather-grandson duo.
But Eddie didn't have much love
for Danny.
Or his father.
We went down to the gas station
where Eddie was working.
Eddie was not there,
but we went and talked
to the gas station owner.
And he said that Eddie
had been there on Monday
but that he was very tired
and at one point had actually
fallen asleep while at work.
And we asked him
if it was possible
that Eddie was involved.
And he said he did not believe
that Eddie could do anything
like that.
Later, we talked to a coworker,
a Mr. Poor.
The detective is putting
together a timeline,
and the information
that he gets from Brian Poor
is a big part of that timeline.
Sunday night,
November 6, I was working.
I was by myself.
About 9:30-ish,
Eddie had come
into the gas station
driving
a small little gray sedan.
I had asked him when he came in
"Whose car is that?"
'Cause that wasn't
his normal car
that he drove at the time.
He just said, "It was
my girlfriend's mom's car"
and he was testing the brakes
or testing the clutch
or something.
He had parked
in the back corner, the darkest
back corner, of the gas station
that we worked at.
He came in,
he made a phone call.
I just thought it was weird.
Normally speaking, if...
y-you were gonna come in
and call and leave,
you're gonna pull
right up front,
walk right in the door
that we all walk in,
and do your thing and leave.
So I had asked him
at the end of the day, I said,
"Hey, is everything all right?"
He seemed very mellow for
anything else that was going on.
And Mr. Poor said
that Eddie seemed calm.
He didn't notice any blood,
but he wasn't really looking
for any of that.
Eddie was getting mixed reviews
His alibi had seemed solid,
between the Sunday dinner
and the discovery of
his murdered family on Monday.
But suspicious sightings
were eroding his credibility.
Sergeant Royer looped back
to clarify Eddie's alibi
with his girlfriend's family.
Had Eddie stayed with them
on the nights in question,
as he alleged?
Monday night, Eddie went
to the Bowens' house
about 7:00.
And Mrs. Bowen
was inside the house.
He said he was real tired
and he was going to bed.
Well, somehow,
he got out of his bedroom
without her knowing.
About 8:00,
he's on the front yard
and he talks to Ty Bowen,
who was on the roof
of the house,
putting up
Christmas tree lights.
And he asked Ty,
"Give me a ride down
to the gas station."
Ty thought
that was very unusual,
because Tiffany's truck
that he'd always drive
was right there
in the parking lot.
But Ty got down,
drove him down to the gas
station, and dropped him off.
Little bit after 10:00,
the phone rings
at the Bowen residence.
Ty answered the phone
and it's Eddie.
He says, "I'm at the ball field
on Rosecrans.
"I was watching
a softball game.
Would you come
and pick me up?"
Ty picked him up at the
ball field and brought him home
Eddie, however he was getting
out or in,
got back into the bedroom,
came out of the bedroom
little bit after 10:00,
and went and sat with Mrs. Bowe
and watched TV
while the car is burning.
When investigators put together
the stories from Jeanne Bowen
and her son Ty,
it seemed
that Eddie was likely hiding
his whereabouts from Jeanne
to use her as an alibi.
Why did Eddie return
to the shop?
Was he hiding something
in that Honda
while he worked
his whole shift on Monday?
A horrid scenario
was materializing.
Maybe the-the most
sociopathic aspect
of this entire twisted case
is someone driving around
with the naked bodies piled up
in the rear seat.
To park it
and have it go unnoticed
while he goes about his day,
how did this scenario work?
It's-it's just really twisted.
Why didn't they kill Grandpa
also?
Mr. Charles told me
that he returned back
to the house
at approximately 11:00
or 11:30,
and when he came back,
Eddie had found
that his grandfather
had blood all over him.
It was incredibly disturbing.
As detectives honed in on
wayward O.C. son Eddie Charles
for the triple murder
of his brother and parents,
one element was still missing.
Eddie's problems
with his family
had gone years without violence
So why would he have suddenly
snapped on this fated evening?
I interviewed Tiffany,
his current girlfriend,
learned what
her real background was,
and it just starts
to put the case together
as to why it may have happened.
She had been on Baywatch.
Eddie had paid
for a breast enhancement
for her.
She'd told me
that the breast implants
were, like, $5,000.
She said
several thousand dollars
for the aesthetician school.
He spent a lot of money on her.
He maxed out his credit card
that his parents had given him,
something like $50,000.
And he just wanted more money.
He just did not want
to take a chance
on losing Tiffany.
Tiffany got a good eye
on that trust fund
that's waiting for him.
She was a beautiful girl,
and I think he wanted her
to be impressed with his wealth.
It's shocking,
but then Orange County always
has been identified with money.
The financial pressure
that people put themselves under
to create the image they think
they should have of themselves,
people get desperate
and do desperate things.
It's tragic.
It really is very, very sad.
To me, his motive was,
"I'll kill everybody.
I'll get the house.
I'll get the insurance."
To me, it wasn't anything else.
It was money.
Investigators had dissected
Eddie's deceitful alibi
and uncovered a likely motive.
However, they still needed
evidence of probable cause
to make an arrest
for the fiery deed.
Police are contacted by
Eddie's martial arts instructor,
his sensei.
He said that Eddie had called
him and said, "Sensei,
I think I've done
something terrible."
"I killed my family."
"I want to come
and talk to you."
Well, his teacher didn't want
to talk to him right then.
So he hung up
and he called us.
He called his karate instructor
and confessed.
In a very
human way
that you'd kind of understand,
my God, if I'd ever done
something like this,
this is probably
what I would say.
The call to the sensei
is everything the police need.
This house of cards
has collapsed.
Any chance that this guy's
not a suspect is out the window
Three hours after the call
to the sensei,
Eddie Charles III
is in handcuffs.
We advised him of his rights
and told him that we knew
that he had done it.
He denied it.
He said, "I couldn't do that.
That's family."
Once in custody,
what does Eddie say?
Eddie says, "The sensei
is fabricating this."
The lockup was
a world away from his buxom
blonde in cushy Orange County,
and Eddie quickly snapped
to spill a shocking revelation.
I worked for the Orange County
Sheriff's Department
back in 1994, in the
Orange County jail system.
Mr. Charles called me over
and said
he wanted to talk to me
about things and
articulate, you know,
what really happened
according to Eddie.
It's a bit of a bombshell.
Mr. Charles told me that
he returned back to the house
at approximately 11:00 or 11:30,
and when he came back,
Eddie had found
that his grandfather had blood
all over him.
He washed his grandfather off,
changed his clothes,
and put his grandfather to bed,
and then he proceeded to clean
up the evidence in the house.
You know, he took the car
to the school parking lot
and set it on fire
to get rid of the evidence.
His so-called interest
was to protect the grandfather.
Eddie said he hated to admit,
you know, that
it was his grandfather
that actually did it.
Detective Royer
calls Bernie Severino
on the phone,
and the grandfather isn't
completely astonished by this,
because it's not the first
he's heard of it.
After Eddie was arrested,
Eddie had
told Severino,
"I'm a young man.
"You're an old man.
Say you did these murders, and
I-I will have my life to live."
Severino got mad and hung up.
And Grandpa was just furious.
Already, he's brokenhearted
from his whole family is gone.
And the-the person who did this
wants him to take the blame.
As Eddie proclaimed
his innocence from jail,
investigators uncovered
even more evidence.
Next thing that happened--
a homeless lady from Fullerton
brought a 16-inch
Crescent wrench
into Fullerton Police
Department and gave it to them.
This woman has been
essentially dumpster-diving,
picking through trash
to salvage things, and she find
a 16-inch Crescent wrench with
blood on it, with hair on it.
She remembered seeing
in the paper
a mechanic had been arrested
for murdering his family.
We took that wrench down
to our criminalist.
And there was a piece
of skull bone
found in the father's brain,
and the anthropologist
from L.A. County
couldn't figure out
what that indentation
was in the end of it,
and when we presented him
with the wrench, he said, "This
wrench caused that damage."
And the blood
and the hair matched that
of Danny, so that was
the murder weapon.
And what else does
the wrench have
that makes it unique?
It's been engraved
with a ying and yang symbol.
Eddie's ex-girlfriend
told us that
she had helped Eddie
put the same yin-yang
on all his tools.
It's the opposite
of an anonymous weapon.
It is a calling card.
Sitting in jail,
Eddie felt the walls of justice
closing in on him.
In December the following month
I got a call from an inmate
in the Orange County Jail.
That inmate told me
Eddie had written
a large letter
about the murders,
and that he had given
that letter to a inmate
by the name of Cezar Pincock,
and Cezar was going to attempt
to get a hit man
to go back into the house,
kill or beat up Grandpa,
get caught in the house,
and then confess
to killing everybody,
thus freeing Eddie.
Because Eddie was
in jail, he figured
that if somebody
would kill Grandpa,
then they would think
it was not Eddie
that did it.
It was just one more
family member that got murdered
So Eddie meets with a hit man
who came to visit him
in the jailhouse
and presents himself
as having AIDS, and that
he's gonna die anyway, and that
he's going to take this problem
off Eddie's hands.
His master plan is,
"I will give you $150,000
out of my trust fund"
to kill his grandfather.
He's a desperate man,
and his desperation
is only making things worse.
In December of 1994,
Eddie Charles was arrested
for the murder
of his brother and parents.
Desperate for someone else
to take the fall,
Eddie met
with a terminally-ill hit man
who agreed
to kill Eddie's grandfather
and take the rap
for all four murders.
His intent was to make it look
like it wasn't him,
it was somebody else,
there was enemies out there
that were killing
the whole family.
But he's trying to get somebody
else to kill his grandfather,
the only surviving person.
He doesn't know, though,
that the doomed hit man
is actually
an undercover operative.
Uh, it's a sting operation.
And subsequently,
they didn't rearrest him--
he was already in jail--
but they confiscated
a large letter about the murders
that Eddie had written
to get a hit man.
Eddie did basically confess
to that guy
that this is what had went on.
It was through Eddie's
jailhouse letters
that the excruciating details
of the Charles family murders
finally came to light.
Eddie's letter described
basically what happened.
He never said in the letter
that he did it,
but he said exactly
what happened.
What investigators
had put together
is that about 8:00 p.m.,
Danny leaves.
Said he's gonna head back
to USC.
Outside, he's approached
by his brother.
Eddie stabbed his brother
in the back twice,
in the spine, and then
stuffed him into a trunk
of a Honda Civic.
Danny's banging
on the trunk door, and
he's calling out for help.
His elder brother opens
the trunk...
but not to help.
More blows rained down.
He hits him
in the cheek with the wrench,
he hits him in the skull,
he hits him in the neck.
To hit him in the head
with a wrench, there's a lot
of hate involved in it,
'cause Danny had to be
looking at him at the time.
And he kills his brother.
He dies right there
in the trunk.
And those cries for help
that his brother heard
are the same ones
that his neighbor heard.
We surmised
that he came in the back way,
taking a ball-peen hammer
from the garage, and went in
and beat his dad to death
in the bed.
And after his father was dead,
we believe he went into
the living room, where
his mother was still waiting
for Danny to call,
and there, strangled her.
And then he changes the sheets
on the bed
where the father
had been killed,
wraps the body up,
and begins to clean up
the crime scene
in this family home where,
just a few hours earlier,
they had all had dinner,
all while his grandfather's
sleeping there in the home.
I think, since
Grandpa had helped him
on so many things,
Eddie Charles just couldn't
murder his grandfather.
I believe, when he had
all three of them in the car
and left
the Terraza Place house,
he drove the car down
behind a gas station in a big
parking lot.
And it would stay there
with the naked bodies piled up
in the rear seat
of the Honda Civic.
And it went unnoticed
for a full day
while he went to work
at the gas station
in Fullerton.
In the letter, he said,
Monday night,
he got back in the car,
but the bodies smelled
at that time,
so he stopped at the El Camino
High School parking lot.
And there, he gives his parents
a Viking funeral.
He sets the car
on fire and torches it
with his brother in
a fetal position in the trunk.
It's a pretty grisly chore.
It's fratricide, it's patricide.
It's crazy.
All you can do is picture
what she must have been
going through
at the time this happened.
What kind of tragedy was
she hiding all these years?
Dolores had
to have been brokenhearted
time and time and time again
by Eddie.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum.
This built up
over years.
A year after he was arrested,
Eddie Charles went on trial
for the murders
of Danny, Edward
and Dolores Charles.
His picture-perfect family
had been torn apart,
and their hidden secrets
laid bare
in the wake
of his heinous acts.
He, of course, was saying,
"You know, I didn't do it."
We're at the position like,
"Look,
there's all this evidence.
Obviously, you did."
He didn't look very good
at his psych eval.
He would come out sociopathic.
So it was very hard to have
a genuine conversation with him
Eddie Charles was one
of the coldest suspects
we'd ever dealt with.
Tiffany-- she did come
to some of the trial stuff, but
she knew
that he was never coming out.
You guys, just please
leave me alone.
Please? Please?
When Eddie finally
goes to court,
he's represented
by a public defender. Why?
He didn't have access
to the trust fund.
The family has turned the key
on it.
It's locked up.
The money that motivated him
has been denied to him.
And there's
some poetic justice there.
They had all the facts. You got
the blood evidence,
you got the neighbor
watching him wipe down
the driveway,
where the blood's found
in the house.
There was so much
other evidence.
This was
kind of a slam-dunk case
for them.
Eddie was found guilty
of one count
of first-degree murder and two
counts of second-degree murder.
All three counts should have
been first-degree murder.
But a lot of people
had sympathy on this kid.
Bernie was angry with Eddie,
but he got on the stand
and testified
on Eddie's behalf
because he felt
it would just further devastate
a family
that's already been devastated
to give Eddie the death penalty
And so, he begged for his life.
In 1998,
a fourth jury gave Eddie Charle
the death penalty,
but a moratorium on executions
in California leaves him
on death row to this day.
In families with no money,
there's still
sibling rivalry and complicated
family relationships.
This was over money.
This was a money grab.
Just breaks your heart
all over again.
It's awful.
This is a case about a family
that had the American dream--
money and talent
and opportunity.
All these things were laid out
in front of these people.
They were all spread out
on the table.
But one of the members of the
family-- he flipped that table.
It's a case
that's uniquely Orange County
and uniquely tragic.
For more information on
of Orange County is not used
to violent crimes.
One pleasant evening,
an Orange County family's
idyllic dreams
were suddenly destroyed.
I observed a car that had been
fully engulfed in flames.
In the back seat,
there were two dead,
naked bodies.
He was struck multiple times.
I thought it was quite vicious.
I really think this world
is out of control.
A dark secret
cut through the family
and the very fabric
of their community.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum.
This built up over years.
They had problems,
and people get desperate
and do desperate things.
It's one thing
to lose your money,
but now we're talking murder.
Orange County's
a fascinating place.
What's most famous about it
would be
its affluent coastal cities,
places like Newport Beach.
Communities like Emerald Bay.
You find flashy money.
Fullerton, in the center of
the county, a little different.
Fullerton people
are a little more low-key
and maybe...
not so flamboyant
with their wealth.
The people there
more would be old money
rather than new money.
In Fullerton,
roots count for something.
And a family home
would be treasured.
Everything that takes place
in this neighborhood takes plac
behind closed doors.
It's a place
that's steady and calm,
but it's also got
this entrenched affluence to it.
It's not a community
where you would expect
to read headlines like these.
Families in the old money
neighborhoods
of Fullerton enjoy
a privileged O.C. lifestyle.
Successful parents
who pass on trust funds
to aspirational children.
Edward and Dolores Charles
built their perfect family life
ensconced
in this safe
and prestigious suburb.
I lived across the street
from the Charles family
for 15 years.
They seemed like
just normal people.
I knew he was an engineer.
Edward Charles II,
the father,
had that kind of success
that could allow you
to live very well.
That's how he lived.
Dolores, who is Edward's wife,
became one of those glue figure
in the community.
Dolores
ran a secretarial service
that I used all the time.
She was very up on technology.
She could do anything.
I mean, she couldn't have been
more lovely.
I had the impression
that Dolores
was very happily married
to Edward.
Her face would light up
when she would talk
about her husband.
I mean, she just came to life.
Oh, they had a comfortable life
I thought that was nice.
I just thought
it was a lovely family.
I mean, really perfect family.
Dolores and Edward had two sons
Danny, the younger, is 19
and is a, uh, sophomore at USC.
He is an opera singer.
He is a real talent, a prodigy
from a young age, and the futur
looks very, very bright.
His vocal instrument
has become stuff of legend
in the neighborhood.
Periodically, I would hear
Danny from in the house,
believe it or not, singing
with his loud voice.
It was magnificent.
The older brother, Edward,
has a dream himself.
He wants to compete
in the Olympics
as a boxer to try to get
a chance to bring home
a gold medal.
And he has a job.
He's a mechanic
working at a gas station
in Fullerton.
Eddie's a good guy.
At the gas station,
he had a very nice
set of tools,
and they were all engraved
with a yin-yang symbol.
He was very into his martial
arts. Very physically fit.
I bet the guy didn't have
an ounce of fat on his body.
Eddie lives
with his girlfriend,
Tiffany.
She was one of the original
Baywatch girls.
He really was into her.
Um, she was definitely, like,
a California beach girl that
you would assume-- blonde hair.
He seemed to be in love.
Also part of the family
is Bernard Severino.
That's Dolores's father.
And he lives there
with the family
at their home on Terraza Place.
By all appearances,
the Charles were
a happy, wealthy family
living the Orange County dream
with a bright future
on the horizon.
But the O.C. was built
on often unstable fortunes,
and the Charles legacy
was about to go up in flames.
November 6, 1994, less
than a week after Halloween,
all the members
of the Charles family
come together for a calm scene
of domestic tranquility.
Around 8:00 p.m.,
after a meal of pasta,
Eddie and Danny say good night,
turn to leave,
and Danny heads back toward Los
Angeles to go back to campus.
And his mother
begins to get concerned
around 9:00
because Danny should
be back at USC by now
and he always calls,
and he didn't call tonight.
She mentions it to her father.
Around 11:30, he goes to bed,
and she's still worried,
and she's still waiting
for that call.
The next morning,
November 7, 1994,
Bernie Severino wakes up
about 5:30 a.m.
The house is empty.
There's no one else there.
And no sign of his daughter,
no sign of his son-in-law.
The dogs are locked in the
basement, which is unusual.
And what was unusual
was Dolores's car
was still out in the driveway.
He could not understand
why that would be.
He just waited all day,
and never heard from anybody.
Except Eddie did come by.
Eddie arrives back
at Terraza Place
and his grandfather
quickly tries to find out
what's going on.
"Where is everybody?
What is happening?"
These are not people
that just disappear
as part of the normal course
of their life.
This is an unusual circumstance.
And they're very, very concerne
at this point.
Bernie offers the young man
some food. He says no.
He declines, and he heads out.
These unsettling circumstances
had disrupted their
picture-perfect O.C. family,
and the two hoped
for a simple explanation.
Unfortunately,
this was just a mere glimpse
of the more horrifying news
to come.
Late on Monday,
November 7th,
a suspicious fire is reported
near El Camino High School,
which is just over the county
line in Los Angeles County.
Los Angeles County sheriff's
deputy Sergeant Royer,
he is dispatched,
he gets to the scene,
and he makes a grisly discovery.
So, I arrived there
at about 11:00
at night.
I observed a car that had been
fully engulfed in flames.
The car was a gray Honda Civic.
Badly burnt.
There was extensive damage
to it.
The fire department
had put out the fire.
Inside the burning car,
in the back seat,
it appears there are two
dead, naked bodies.
I observed
a male body on top
of a female body.
Very badly burnt.
Both of them were.
In the trunk,
there was another body,
of a young man that was
not so seriously burned.
This one, wearing clothes,
and in the fetal position,
there in the trunk.
And it's a disturbing sight
that will get even
more disturbing.
We finally realized,
upon seeing the scene
that it was triple homicide.
It's a grisly, grisly sight.
The idea of these bodies
stacked like cord wood
in the back seat and then
the fetal victim in the trunk,
it's a nightmare.
It's a horrific sight,
with the smell of charred flesh
It was very clear
that a major crime
had taken place.
Shortly before midnight,
Sergeant Royer
runs the plates of the Honda
and he gets a hit.
It turns out that this car
belongs to the Charles family
of Fullerton,
Dolores and Edward II.
The two burned bodies
in the back seat
were presumed to be Edward
and Dolores Charles,
and the lesser-burned body
in the trunk
their son Danny.
It really struck the strings
of your heart,
to see a whole family
being wiped out.
Very vicious, very cold murders.
You wondered how all three
of them got in a car,
same car, uh, why two
of them were stripped naked.
You don't know.
You know,
could've been kidnapping
or it could've been carjacking.
We didn't know at that point.
I mean, this is a scenario
that's chilling.
And then, the most
sociopathic aspect
of this twisted case:
it's not over yet.
These people were killed in
different ways, and each one
more disturbing than the last.
There had been a call.
The discovery of an affluent
Orange County family
found burnt in one of their own
cars was completely unheard of
in this well-heeled pocket
of Fullerton.
Detectives wondered if this
was a robbery gone wrong
and headed to the Charles house
to search for signs
of a struggle.
We knocked on the door
at 2:30 in the morning.
An elderly gentleman,
Bernard Severino,
opened the door.
The police want to know
what Bernie knows.
They're trying to ascertain,
"Is this a suspect?"
At that point, though,
he's 73 years old,
and he's a guy
that's been dealing
with a lot of major
health issues.
And he was fully dressed,
he was wide awake.
He said he was just
extremely worried
about his family.
We set him down,
told him we were there
because we had found
the Honda Civic
and that everybody was deceased.
It really, uh,
really hit him hard.
We were worried about him.
He took it very hard,
uh, naturally.
Bernard consented to a search,
and investigators looked
through the house
for evidence of a burglary
or any signs
that the Charles had been force
from home to meet their death.
The house was empty.
He didn't notice
anything out of place.
There was no obvious sign
of a struggle
or a break-in or anything.
Detective Royer looks
in the master bedroom
and he's greeted by
an unusual sight.
The bed is made,
but there's
only one pillow on it.
And I remember Severino's
statement to this day.
"My Dolores would never make
a bed with one pillow."
So...
that was the first thing
that started coming
to our mind,
that usually burglars
don't make the beds.
Investigators ruled out
a botched burglary
as cause for the murders,
and prepared to notify
Eddie Charles
as the autopsy of his parents
and brother continued
through the dark of night.
The bodies had been found
in neighboring
Los Angeles County
over the county line.
So, the L.A. County
medical examiner's
investigation would unpack
a peculiar type of horror.
First of all,
they were able to
match the dental charts
of Edward, Dolores and Daniel.
I was able to determine
that all of them
had been killed before
the, uh, car was set on fire,
and that was because
there was no evidence
of smoke inhalation.
And it was obviously brutal.
These people didn't die easily.
Danny's head trauma
was caused by an instrument
that had
a small striking surface.
He was struck multiple times.
I thought it was quite vicious.
Not only did he have
multiple skull fractures.
The bone was actually driven
into the brain.
Our investigation indicated
that this was very personal
because
the beating up of the father
and Danny was very hateful.
When I saw the injuries,
the first thing I thought about
was a hammer.
But any tool that has
a small striking surface
could do it.
The mother, Dolores,
did have two areas in the neck
that showed evidence
of compression or a blow,
and I thought compression
was most likely.
I felt that
the cause of death
was strangulation.
We can still tell a lot
of things from a burned body.
Now, it does obscure
identifying features--
the face, the hair--
but anything internal,
we'll still find them.
As dawn broke,
news of the murders spread
through the Charles'
affluent neighborhood.
And while friends and neighbors
wrestled with feelings
of shock and horror,
they also wondered
who could have brutalized
the Charles like this.
It's always something
that is a scary thought
when you think of the violence
that's going on.
Nice people. Very best.
Were they friendly
with their neighbors?
-Oh, yeah.
Neighbors were also questioning
if a monster was able to slip
onto Terraza Place
and unleash a nightmare
on a family
as friendly and mild-mannered
as the Charles,
who could be next?
Unbelievable.
I really think
this world is out of control.
I-I... It-It's a shock.
I couldn't believe
that something like that
could actually happen
in a neighborhood like this.
I couldn't believe
Dolores was killed.
What a nice, kind human being.
How could anyone kill her?
You can't really fathom
that this happened
to someone you knew.
It wasn't until, I think,
I saw pictures on the news
that I really realized,
"Oh, my God, that's Dolores.
My Dolores."
At first, I thought
it was a total random act,
that somebody
came into the neighborhood
and somehow picked
that house randomly.
I had no idea.
This is a case
about a family
that had the American dream.
It ended in a nightmare.
Investigators now had a lead
on how the Charles were killed,
but they still had no idea why
or even where
they met their dreadful end
when a new detail emerged.
A police officer from Fullerton
advised us
that there had been a call
Sunday night at about 9:30
one house away
from the Charles house.
When the police arrived,
the car was gone.
And, so,
that was kind of the end
of that call.
As we go out
into the investigation
and we find out that Danny
was a potential opera singer,
we felt his voice
would probably carry
and that possibly it was Danny.
Detectives made
the devastating realization
that the neighbor had probably
heard Danny screaming
from inside the trunk
of his own car
in front of the Charles house
after
their Sunday family dinner.
Maybe somebody
could have saved him
if someone had been able
to open that trunk.
It's where my mind goes first,
is the horror of that.
We now wanted to go
search the house again
because we were thinking
that this was now
the crime scene,
due to the car being right ther
outside the Charles house.
We obtained a search warrant,
and we returned to the house
with our criminalist,
Heidi Robbins.
And she brought the light,
and blood showed up
all over the place.
She tore the bed apart,
and on the mattress,
there was a lot of blood.
So,
it definitely was a crime scene.
An investigation
had ramped up overnight
in Orange County
as detectives honed in
on the Charles home
as the crime scene
in their brutal homicide.
Police hoped the Charles'
surviving son, Eddie,
could shine some light
on a confusing chain of events.
Our intent
at that time was, "We got
to clear Eddie of this thing
before we go any farther
after anybody else."
Eddie was staying
at his girlfriend
Tiffany Bowen's house
on Camino Del Sol.
So, we went up there,
and it was about 6:15
in the morning.
And we saw Eddie coming out
the front door of that house,
so we approached him
at the front door.
Eddie was living
with a girlfriend, but Tiffany
was currently going to college
in Maryland,
so she was not at the house.
We had told him who we were,
and we asked him
when it was he last saw
his parents and his brother,
and he told us
about Sunday night,
he was there.
Last saw 'em then.
We wound up telling him
that the car was found and that
there were three bodies in it.
That they were all deceased.
That we believed them to be
his brother, Danny,
his mother and dad.
And he went down
to his knees and said,
"I told them not to go
down to USC at night."
He began sobbing.
Overcome, racked with grief.
We asked him why
all three of them
would be in the same car,
and he said,
"Well, Danny was having
"clutch problems with his car,
so he probably returned home
to get his mother and dad
to go with him to USC."
And we asked him,
"Why would he take a car
with clutch problems
"instead of taking
his mother's car,
who was better operating?"
And he said,
"I don't know.
They never listen to me,
anyway."
And I asked him
where he spent Sunday night.
He said he slept
at the Bowens' house,
at his girlfriend's,
where he was currently living.
And he said
he was also there Monday night.
And we talked to Mrs. Bowen,
who was there,
and because Mrs. Bowen,
Tiffany's mother,
had said he was there
all Monday night
when the fire was
and the bodies
were over at the school,
he had an alibi.
Detectives left Eddie
to grapple with his loss
and continued to knock on doors
when a vigilant neighbor
offered
another startling account.
A detective rapped
on my front door,
and he said, "Can I talk to you
about what happened?"
And that's when I said,
"On the morning of Monday,
November 7, 1994,
"I got up, and it was
about quarter to 6:00.
"As I got my paper,
I just looked around,
"and Eddie was in his driveway.
"I noticed that he was out there
with a rag,
"wiping something
off the pavement
behind the truck."
He did not see
the Honda Civic there,
but the truck that Eddie drives
was there.
He was watching him
wipe up stuff off the driveway
at 6:00 in the morning.
He was wearing
his karate gloves,
and it was just suspicious
to the neighbor.
Then I saw him looking over
at our house.
I don't think he could see me
in the window,
but he looked
for the longest time,
and then he continued
to wipe up something.
When Eddie realizes
that he was seen,
he ducks into the house.
Dr. Kuhn watched from there
and saw him reemerge, but...
The behavior
was very, very suspicious.
Suddenly,
Eddie was looking
a lot less innocent,
and an elusive detail
from his interview
came rushing back
to Sergeant Royer.
He never did ask
how they were killed,
what the circumstances were,
where or nothing.
The torched car
had reeked of a cover-up,
and now the neighbor's story
suggested Eddie may have been
concealing his tracks.
So what did he have to hide?
Detective Royer's
trying to get a beat on Eddie.
A background check
by the detective
turns up enough trouble
in his youth
to raise some red flags.
He was suspect
earlier in his life
in arson--
uh, the neighbor's house--
burglaries
where checks were taken
and he tried to cash a check
and vandalism.
He was never arrested.
Never charged
with any of these things,
but he was a suspect in 'em.
Our home was robbed
on two different occasions.
I'm not certain anything
was traced back to Eddie,
but on the other hand,
we had a suspicion
that Eddie was in our house
because he knew
that we were gone.
Although Eddie had
a checkered past,
why would he have
massacred his family?
The next-door neighbor saw
what the Charles
hadn't wanted others to see.
I felt that there was
a troublesome nature to Eddie.
And I'm not sure
what I can base that on,
other than the fact
that I observed
his interaction with his brother
and with his father,
and he seemed separated
on some degree from the family.
I saw the family's struggles
probably a couple of times
a year.
In my backyard,
I could hear them,
which is quite a ways away.
And typically, it was associated
with Eddie doing something wrong
and his father screaming at him
There was a different way
that the parents treated
both of 'em.
People think,
"Not in Orange County,"
where it's nice, happy,
but it happens anywhere
and everywhere.
Dolores was the last person
on Earth
I would have ever thought
this could happen to.
But the truth of the matter is,
there's no such thing
as a perfect family.
Unfortunately, I never heard he
speak of her son Eddie.
I never knew
she had another son.
For years,
she never mentioned Eddie.
Detective Royer puts together
a portrait of life
among the Charles family
and finds out that the
relationship between the sons
is not an easy one.
It's not a pleasant one.
It's a dark tale.
It's not one that's new,
but it is ugly.
Law enforcement
was looking at Eddie Charles
for the killings
of his brother,
mother, and father
and found a family divided.
The question was,
how had it all begun,
and was there a motive
for murder?
Detective Royer puts together
a portrait of life
among the Charles family.
Eddie and Danny have a long
history of not getting along.
In the Charles household,
the path always led
to academia and college,
the path to success.
Mother, father,
and the youngest son
followed that path.
From what the grandfather said,
they were disappointed that
Eddie did not go to college.
They were disappointed
that he wanted to be a mechanic.
And that alone set him at odds
with the expectation and
the worldview of his parents.
The family spotlight
never went off of Danny.
Danny's talent, his personality
made him center stage
in his own family
in a big way.
You get the feeling
that every single time
that he got another accolade,
his brother took it
as another slight.
Eddie is not looking
for a free ticket.
He has a job,
and he has skills himself.
He just wants some
of the attention
that his little brother
is getting.
He just
didn't get the recognition
I think he wanted
from his parents.
And it's not unusual
for a sibling
in a family to resent
the other siblings,
either for good reason
or bad reasons.
Bernie, the grandfather,
he loved Eddie.
He really did. Because he
and Eddie used to do all kind
of things together,
and they were
a grandfather-grandson duo.
But Eddie didn't have much love
for Danny.
Or his father.
We went down to the gas station
where Eddie was working.
Eddie was not there,
but we went and talked
to the gas station owner.
And he said that Eddie
had been there on Monday
but that he was very tired
and at one point had actually
fallen asleep while at work.
And we asked him
if it was possible
that Eddie was involved.
And he said he did not believe
that Eddie could do anything
like that.
Later, we talked to a coworker,
a Mr. Poor.
The detective is putting
together a timeline,
and the information
that he gets from Brian Poor
is a big part of that timeline.
Sunday night,
November 6, I was working.
I was by myself.
About 9:30-ish,
Eddie had come
into the gas station
driving
a small little gray sedan.
I had asked him when he came in
"Whose car is that?"
'Cause that wasn't
his normal car
that he drove at the time.
He just said, "It was
my girlfriend's mom's car"
and he was testing the brakes
or testing the clutch
or something.
He had parked
in the back corner, the darkest
back corner, of the gas station
that we worked at.
He came in,
he made a phone call.
I just thought it was weird.
Normally speaking, if...
y-you were gonna come in
and call and leave,
you're gonna pull
right up front,
walk right in the door
that we all walk in,
and do your thing and leave.
So I had asked him
at the end of the day, I said,
"Hey, is everything all right?"
He seemed very mellow for
anything else that was going on.
And Mr. Poor said
that Eddie seemed calm.
He didn't notice any blood,
but he wasn't really looking
for any of that.
Eddie was getting mixed reviews
His alibi had seemed solid,
between the Sunday dinner
and the discovery of
his murdered family on Monday.
But suspicious sightings
were eroding his credibility.
Sergeant Royer looped back
to clarify Eddie's alibi
with his girlfriend's family.
Had Eddie stayed with them
on the nights in question,
as he alleged?
Monday night, Eddie went
to the Bowens' house
about 7:00.
And Mrs. Bowen
was inside the house.
He said he was real tired
and he was going to bed.
Well, somehow,
he got out of his bedroom
without her knowing.
About 8:00,
he's on the front yard
and he talks to Ty Bowen,
who was on the roof
of the house,
putting up
Christmas tree lights.
And he asked Ty,
"Give me a ride down
to the gas station."
Ty thought
that was very unusual,
because Tiffany's truck
that he'd always drive
was right there
in the parking lot.
But Ty got down,
drove him down to the gas
station, and dropped him off.
Little bit after 10:00,
the phone rings
at the Bowen residence.
Ty answered the phone
and it's Eddie.
He says, "I'm at the ball field
on Rosecrans.
"I was watching
a softball game.
Would you come
and pick me up?"
Ty picked him up at the
ball field and brought him home
Eddie, however he was getting
out or in,
got back into the bedroom,
came out of the bedroom
little bit after 10:00,
and went and sat with Mrs. Bowe
and watched TV
while the car is burning.
When investigators put together
the stories from Jeanne Bowen
and her son Ty,
it seemed
that Eddie was likely hiding
his whereabouts from Jeanne
to use her as an alibi.
Why did Eddie return
to the shop?
Was he hiding something
in that Honda
while he worked
his whole shift on Monday?
A horrid scenario
was materializing.
Maybe the-the most
sociopathic aspect
of this entire twisted case
is someone driving around
with the naked bodies piled up
in the rear seat.
To park it
and have it go unnoticed
while he goes about his day,
how did this scenario work?
It's-it's just really twisted.
Why didn't they kill Grandpa
also?
Mr. Charles told me
that he returned back
to the house
at approximately 11:00
or 11:30,
and when he came back,
Eddie had found
that his grandfather
had blood all over him.
It was incredibly disturbing.
As detectives honed in on
wayward O.C. son Eddie Charles
for the triple murder
of his brother and parents,
one element was still missing.
Eddie's problems
with his family
had gone years without violence
So why would he have suddenly
snapped on this fated evening?
I interviewed Tiffany,
his current girlfriend,
learned what
her real background was,
and it just starts
to put the case together
as to why it may have happened.
She had been on Baywatch.
Eddie had paid
for a breast enhancement
for her.
She'd told me
that the breast implants
were, like, $5,000.
She said
several thousand dollars
for the aesthetician school.
He spent a lot of money on her.
He maxed out his credit card
that his parents had given him,
something like $50,000.
And he just wanted more money.
He just did not want
to take a chance
on losing Tiffany.
Tiffany got a good eye
on that trust fund
that's waiting for him.
She was a beautiful girl,
and I think he wanted her
to be impressed with his wealth.
It's shocking,
but then Orange County always
has been identified with money.
The financial pressure
that people put themselves under
to create the image they think
they should have of themselves,
people get desperate
and do desperate things.
It's tragic.
It really is very, very sad.
To me, his motive was,
"I'll kill everybody.
I'll get the house.
I'll get the insurance."
To me, it wasn't anything else.
It was money.
Investigators had dissected
Eddie's deceitful alibi
and uncovered a likely motive.
However, they still needed
evidence of probable cause
to make an arrest
for the fiery deed.
Police are contacted by
Eddie's martial arts instructor,
his sensei.
He said that Eddie had called
him and said, "Sensei,
I think I've done
something terrible."
"I killed my family."
"I want to come
and talk to you."
Well, his teacher didn't want
to talk to him right then.
So he hung up
and he called us.
He called his karate instructor
and confessed.
In a very
human way
that you'd kind of understand,
my God, if I'd ever done
something like this,
this is probably
what I would say.
The call to the sensei
is everything the police need.
This house of cards
has collapsed.
Any chance that this guy's
not a suspect is out the window
Three hours after the call
to the sensei,
Eddie Charles III
is in handcuffs.
We advised him of his rights
and told him that we knew
that he had done it.
He denied it.
He said, "I couldn't do that.
That's family."
Once in custody,
what does Eddie say?
Eddie says, "The sensei
is fabricating this."
The lockup was
a world away from his buxom
blonde in cushy Orange County,
and Eddie quickly snapped
to spill a shocking revelation.
I worked for the Orange County
Sheriff's Department
back in 1994, in the
Orange County jail system.
Mr. Charles called me over
and said
he wanted to talk to me
about things and
articulate, you know,
what really happened
according to Eddie.
It's a bit of a bombshell.
Mr. Charles told me that
he returned back to the house
at approximately 11:00 or 11:30,
and when he came back,
Eddie had found
that his grandfather had blood
all over him.
He washed his grandfather off,
changed his clothes,
and put his grandfather to bed,
and then he proceeded to clean
up the evidence in the house.
You know, he took the car
to the school parking lot
and set it on fire
to get rid of the evidence.
His so-called interest
was to protect the grandfather.
Eddie said he hated to admit,
you know, that
it was his grandfather
that actually did it.
Detective Royer
calls Bernie Severino
on the phone,
and the grandfather isn't
completely astonished by this,
because it's not the first
he's heard of it.
After Eddie was arrested,
Eddie had
told Severino,
"I'm a young man.
"You're an old man.
Say you did these murders, and
I-I will have my life to live."
Severino got mad and hung up.
And Grandpa was just furious.
Already, he's brokenhearted
from his whole family is gone.
And the-the person who did this
wants him to take the blame.
As Eddie proclaimed
his innocence from jail,
investigators uncovered
even more evidence.
Next thing that happened--
a homeless lady from Fullerton
brought a 16-inch
Crescent wrench
into Fullerton Police
Department and gave it to them.
This woman has been
essentially dumpster-diving,
picking through trash
to salvage things, and she find
a 16-inch Crescent wrench with
blood on it, with hair on it.
She remembered seeing
in the paper
a mechanic had been arrested
for murdering his family.
We took that wrench down
to our criminalist.
And there was a piece
of skull bone
found in the father's brain,
and the anthropologist
from L.A. County
couldn't figure out
what that indentation
was in the end of it,
and when we presented him
with the wrench, he said, "This
wrench caused that damage."
And the blood
and the hair matched that
of Danny, so that was
the murder weapon.
And what else does
the wrench have
that makes it unique?
It's been engraved
with a ying and yang symbol.
Eddie's ex-girlfriend
told us that
she had helped Eddie
put the same yin-yang
on all his tools.
It's the opposite
of an anonymous weapon.
It is a calling card.
Sitting in jail,
Eddie felt the walls of justice
closing in on him.
In December the following month
I got a call from an inmate
in the Orange County Jail.
That inmate told me
Eddie had written
a large letter
about the murders,
and that he had given
that letter to a inmate
by the name of Cezar Pincock,
and Cezar was going to attempt
to get a hit man
to go back into the house,
kill or beat up Grandpa,
get caught in the house,
and then confess
to killing everybody,
thus freeing Eddie.
Because Eddie was
in jail, he figured
that if somebody
would kill Grandpa,
then they would think
it was not Eddie
that did it.
It was just one more
family member that got murdered
So Eddie meets with a hit man
who came to visit him
in the jailhouse
and presents himself
as having AIDS, and that
he's gonna die anyway, and that
he's going to take this problem
off Eddie's hands.
His master plan is,
"I will give you $150,000
out of my trust fund"
to kill his grandfather.
He's a desperate man,
and his desperation
is only making things worse.
In December of 1994,
Eddie Charles was arrested
for the murder
of his brother and parents.
Desperate for someone else
to take the fall,
Eddie met
with a terminally-ill hit man
who agreed
to kill Eddie's grandfather
and take the rap
for all four murders.
His intent was to make it look
like it wasn't him,
it was somebody else,
there was enemies out there
that were killing
the whole family.
But he's trying to get somebody
else to kill his grandfather,
the only surviving person.
He doesn't know, though,
that the doomed hit man
is actually
an undercover operative.
Uh, it's a sting operation.
And subsequently,
they didn't rearrest him--
he was already in jail--
but they confiscated
a large letter about the murders
that Eddie had written
to get a hit man.
Eddie did basically confess
to that guy
that this is what had went on.
It was through Eddie's
jailhouse letters
that the excruciating details
of the Charles family murders
finally came to light.
Eddie's letter described
basically what happened.
He never said in the letter
that he did it,
but he said exactly
what happened.
What investigators
had put together
is that about 8:00 p.m.,
Danny leaves.
Said he's gonna head back
to USC.
Outside, he's approached
by his brother.
Eddie stabbed his brother
in the back twice,
in the spine, and then
stuffed him into a trunk
of a Honda Civic.
Danny's banging
on the trunk door, and
he's calling out for help.
His elder brother opens
the trunk...
but not to help.
More blows rained down.
He hits him
in the cheek with the wrench,
he hits him in the skull,
he hits him in the neck.
To hit him in the head
with a wrench, there's a lot
of hate involved in it,
'cause Danny had to be
looking at him at the time.
And he kills his brother.
He dies right there
in the trunk.
And those cries for help
that his brother heard
are the same ones
that his neighbor heard.
We surmised
that he came in the back way,
taking a ball-peen hammer
from the garage, and went in
and beat his dad to death
in the bed.
And after his father was dead,
we believe he went into
the living room, where
his mother was still waiting
for Danny to call,
and there, strangled her.
And then he changes the sheets
on the bed
where the father
had been killed,
wraps the body up,
and begins to clean up
the crime scene
in this family home where,
just a few hours earlier,
they had all had dinner,
all while his grandfather's
sleeping there in the home.
I think, since
Grandpa had helped him
on so many things,
Eddie Charles just couldn't
murder his grandfather.
I believe, when he had
all three of them in the car
and left
the Terraza Place house,
he drove the car down
behind a gas station in a big
parking lot.
And it would stay there
with the naked bodies piled up
in the rear seat
of the Honda Civic.
And it went unnoticed
for a full day
while he went to work
at the gas station
in Fullerton.
In the letter, he said,
Monday night,
he got back in the car,
but the bodies smelled
at that time,
so he stopped at the El Camino
High School parking lot.
And there, he gives his parents
a Viking funeral.
He sets the car
on fire and torches it
with his brother in
a fetal position in the trunk.
It's a pretty grisly chore.
It's fratricide, it's patricide.
It's crazy.
All you can do is picture
what she must have been
going through
at the time this happened.
What kind of tragedy was
she hiding all these years?
Dolores had
to have been brokenhearted
time and time and time again
by Eddie.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum.
This built up
over years.
A year after he was arrested,
Eddie Charles went on trial
for the murders
of Danny, Edward
and Dolores Charles.
His picture-perfect family
had been torn apart,
and their hidden secrets
laid bare
in the wake
of his heinous acts.
He, of course, was saying,
"You know, I didn't do it."
We're at the position like,
"Look,
there's all this evidence.
Obviously, you did."
He didn't look very good
at his psych eval.
He would come out sociopathic.
So it was very hard to have
a genuine conversation with him
Eddie Charles was one
of the coldest suspects
we'd ever dealt with.
Tiffany-- she did come
to some of the trial stuff, but
she knew
that he was never coming out.
You guys, just please
leave me alone.
Please? Please?
When Eddie finally
goes to court,
he's represented
by a public defender. Why?
He didn't have access
to the trust fund.
The family has turned the key
on it.
It's locked up.
The money that motivated him
has been denied to him.
And there's
some poetic justice there.
They had all the facts. You got
the blood evidence,
you got the neighbor
watching him wipe down
the driveway,
where the blood's found
in the house.
There was so much
other evidence.
This was
kind of a slam-dunk case
for them.
Eddie was found guilty
of one count
of first-degree murder and two
counts of second-degree murder.
All three counts should have
been first-degree murder.
But a lot of people
had sympathy on this kid.
Bernie was angry with Eddie,
but he got on the stand
and testified
on Eddie's behalf
because he felt
it would just further devastate
a family
that's already been devastated
to give Eddie the death penalty
And so, he begged for his life.
In 1998,
a fourth jury gave Eddie Charle
the death penalty,
but a moratorium on executions
in California leaves him
on death row to this day.
In families with no money,
there's still
sibling rivalry and complicated
family relationships.
This was over money.
This was a money grab.
Just breaks your heart
all over again.
It's awful.
This is a case about a family
that had the American dream--
money and talent
and opportunity.
All these things were laid out
in front of these people.
They were all spread out
on the table.
But one of the members of the
family-- he flipped that table.
It's a case
that's uniquely Orange County
and uniquely tragic.
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