- FEMALE NARRATOR: They were an unlikely couple
who offered their home to anyone in need.
- JASMINE: They both cared about my kids
and let us live there with them.
It was a--you know, a homey environment.
You was always welcome there.
- They invited a friend to come back to the house
and stay with them for a while
because he didn't have a place to stay.
- ♪
- [siren wails]
- NARRATOR: But the welcoming household is shattered
by a deadly crime.
- Somebody was either mad or pissed off
or, or angry with him.
- The amount of shots fired suggests that the killer
had a vendetta against the victim.
- NARRATOR: As investigators search for a killer,
a stunning secret is exposed.
- He had never told his family that she was pregnant.
- JASMINE: Living under one roof like that,
there's little things there that just--you can't hide.
- NARRATOR: And the ultimate betrayal of friendship
is at the heart of a bizarre murder plot.
- They milked the venom from the rattlesnake,
put it in his food.
- This is a situation that's probably as old as time--
you have someone who has something
that someone else wants.
- [gunshot blast]
- ♪
♪♪
- ♪
- NARRATOR: In Waverly, Alabama,
friends and family take care of one another above all else.
On the afternoon of September 8, 2013,
relatives are extending a helping hand
to Carl and Angela Dickinson.
- Angela had just gotten into the hospital
and just had--gave birth to a baby.
- TAMMY: Her family and friends,
they were directed to go get a car seat from the home
and some other, um, clothing items and other stuff.
- NARRATOR: Angela's husband, Carl,
had been on a long-haul trucking route for several days.
- TIFFANY: Carl was gone a good little bit of the time.
He was only there maybe a week or two at a time for holidays
or something like that.
- NARRATOR: Angela's sister, Sabrina Murphy,
heads inside the couple's house to snag the baby necessities.
But something out of the ordinary catches her attention.
- ROB: Walking up through the driveway and through the garage,
the interior door was standing open.
- NARRATOR: Sabrina cautiously enters the home.
- When you go through the garage door,
there's a laundry room and then another door adjacent,
which is the kitchen.
Carl Dickinson's body was laying in the kitchen floor.
- ♪
- JIMMY: Sabrina called 911 and told them that they need
to send somebody quick.
They didn't know if Carl had committed suicide
or what had happened.
- NARRATOR: At 3:17 p.m., all units in Lee County
are dispatched to Carl and Angela's house.
- [siren wailing]
- TAMMY: I got a phone call that there was a possible
homicide, um, up in Waverly and that we all needed
to pretty much respond and address it.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Investigators are met by Sabrina and two men
who identify themselves as Angela's stepfather, Jesse Bach,
and a friend, Paul Phillips.
- ROB: From there, we transported
Paul, Jesse, and Sabrina, uh,
to the Lee County Sheriff's Office for interviews.
- LINDA: For someone to come into his house
and do something like that, I was kind of in shock,
I didn't know what to think.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: 59-year-old Carl Dickinson
was born and raised in Lee County, Alabama.
One of five children, he learned to appreciate family values
at an early age.
- LINDA: Probably the thing that he enjoyed most
was just family get-togethers for cookouts.
Um, whether it was just somebody's birthday,
um, holiday,
or even just picking a day to get together and eating
and sitting around talking.
- Carl was one of the best cooks I've ever met in my life.
He could cook like you never seen.
- NARRATOR: A country boy through and through,
Carl grew up fishing and hunting on the rural land
around his home.
But when it came to reeling in the right woman,
he wasn't so lucky.
- LINDA: His first relationship--
I guess you can say they were kind of high school sweethearts.
They wound up getting a divorce.
After some time, um, my brother, um, met someone else.
They were married for several years,
and they wound up getting a divorce.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Twice divorced by his mid-40s,
Carl was enjoying the bachelor life.
He had a steady income as a truck driver
and his own personal dream house.
- LINDA: He had been wanting to build his own home for
a long time, and he built that home from his own two hands.
He took a lot of pride in his home and the things that he did.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: And in 2002, Carl fell
for 19-year-old Angela Webb.
- Carl had initially dated Angela's mother
at one time, and that's how they all knew each other.
- JOHN: When their relationship ended,
Carl and Angela's relationship kind of blossomed.
- NARRATOR: Like Carl, Angela grew up in rural Alabama.
- LINDA: Beautiful blonde hair. Some beautiful blue eyes.
I mean, a very beautiful young lady.
- She was the pageant queen,
and she was a cheerleader.
- JASMINE: Angela was always the mothering type.
Like she was the one we would call if we--
if we had a problem or if we needed help.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: The same strength Angela provided her siblings,
she found for herself in the much older Carl Dickinson.
- JASMINE: I think what Angela seen in Carl was stability.
You know when you really needed someone,
Carl was that person you could go to.
- LINDA: Naturally, the 20 years or so age difference
between her and my brother was a concern.
But at the same time, there are people who have
a larger age difference than that that have been
in a relationship and been happy for a long time.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Despite their age difference, by the end of 2002,
Angela and Carl tied the knot.
- I think the happiest time for him was probably
the day that he and Angela got married.
- JASMINE: Angela moved into Carl's house with him.
She had a good life.
She seemed happy with Carl, and he seemed happy as well.
- LINDA: It was hard for him to believe that he had
this beautiful young lady that wanted to be with him.
And then he wasn't having to be alone anymore either.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: The Dickinsons lived with an open-door policy,
sharing their happy home with anyone in need.
- JASMINE: I couldn't afford to get my own house,
so I called my sister and asked her and Carl,
"Could we move over there?" and they didn't care.
So I was grateful he cared about my kids
and let us live them with them.
- LINDA: They bought them clothes,
they bought them things for their rooms.
They treated them like they were their own children.
- Kids and family made Angela happy, I think.
She was more happy when she was around them.
- NARRATOR: And in 2006, the couple's generosity
extended beyond family when Carl's coworker,
Paul Phillips, needed help.
- Carl Dickinson and Paul Phillips
met in truck driving school.
- LINDA: They were a team,
and they would be able to swap out driving.
But when Carl got a new job with another company,
the company didn't do team driving,
and so Paul couldn't come with him.
- JIMMY: Carl invited Paul to come back to the house and stay
with them for a while because he didn't have a place to stay.
- JASMINE: Him and Carl seemed to be best friends.
They would go hunting together, they would go fishing together.
- NARRATOR: With six people living there,
Angela and Carl were happy to have a full house.
From time to time, they also took in Angela's brother,
Jake Bartlett.
- JASMINE: Carl and them would let a lot of people move in
and stay a little while 'til they got on their feet,
and then they'd move out.
They cared about people when it mattered the most.
It was a--you know, a homey environment.
You was always welcome there.
- NARRATOR: In 2013, news of another future member of
the household came when Angela found out she was pregnant.
- She didn't have her own kids, and when she
finally did get pregnant, that's what she wanted.
She was happy she was finally having a baby.
- NARRATOR: But that happiness is shattered
on September 8th, 2013.
Lee County emergency responders confirm that Carl Dickinson
has been shot to death,
and detectives begin surveying the scene.
- The first thing we noticed
when we walked to the house was there were multiple
.22-caliber shell casings in the garage.
- ROB: The shell casings continued in a path
into the kitchen, that indicates that the shooting started
at the garage door and walked away into the kitchen.
- NARRATOR: Officers collect 19 casings in total--
14 from inside the house and 5 from the carport.
- ROB: He fell pretty much right where he was shot,
and whoever the killer was stood over him
and finished him off.
That's a symbol of rage
and most definitely wanting that person to die.
- JIMMY: The amount of shots fired suggests that
the killer had a vendetta against Carl Dickinson.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Detectives focus on Carl's inner circle in search of a motive.
- It's definitely overkill to be able
to look into someone's eyes like that.
- NARRATOR: And Carl's wife stuns detectives
with a revealing break in the case.
- TAMMY: Is it one of those stories
where a love triangle went bad?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: On September 8, 2013,
as crime scene tape barricades the once welcoming home
of Carl and Angela Dickinson, word of the 59-year-old's murder
spreads through the close-knit community.
- JASMINE: Carl was a part of our family.
I just--I--I couldn't believe.
I still can't believe it, honestly.
- LINDA: You're kind of in a fog a little bit.
And trying to grasp what just happened.
Knowing where this is about to go as far as, um,
having an investigation and how lengthy it could be in trying to
find out who actually, you know,
kills your--your--your brother.
- NARRATOR: Lee County investigators send Carl's body
to the state lab for an autopsy,
then continue scouring the scene.
- JIMMY: We found a mark on the back door
inside of the garage that appeared to be
from a screwdriver or some type of metal object.
- ROB: We were able to locate an orange handled screwdriver,
and we photographed it,
along with the damage on the door frame.
- NARRATOR: Throughout the home,
there are more telltale signs of a burglary gone wrong.
- Property strewn about-- a toolbox knocked over,
BB guns out of the gun cabinet laying on the floor,
pillow cushions on the floor.
It appeared to be a forced entry,
burglary/robbery gone bad.
The residence looked as if it had been ransacked.
However, nothing was missing.
- JIMMY: All items of value were still there,
including the victim's wallet, flat-screen TVs,
it just appeared like it was a setup.
- ROB: We did not know who the suspect was at the time,
but we did have an idea that it's going to be
someone close to him.
- JOHN: It's definitely overkill.
To shoot someone multiple times in the face is a personal--
it's a personal feeling anyway, um,
to be able to look into someone's eyes like that.
- NARRATOR: With the clock ticking,
investigators divide and conquer.
- TAMMY: We kinda spread out.
Half went to the scene and half came to the office.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: At the sheriff's office,
they start with the 911 caller, Sabrina Murphy.
- TAMMY: She was the one that initially made contact
with the victim.
We start to obtain information: What happened?
How did you find this victim?
You know, what were the circumstances
leading up to that?
- NARRATOR: Sabrina explains she'd been helping Angela
at the hospital while Carl was away for work.
- ROB: Sabrina wanted to go get the car seat,
and she was surprised by finding Carl.
Her reactions were genuine.
- TAMMY: She appeared to be appropriately upset,
she was very adamant that the victim
had not possibly killed himself.
- NARRATOR: Sabrina says that Paul Phillips and Jesse Bach
were also visiting the hospital and accompanied her
to Carl and Angela's home.
- TAMMY: Jesse Bach was Angela's--
for lack of a better term-- stepfather, father figure.
He had briefly been married to her mother at one time.
Um, they had recently maintained a father-daughter relationship.
- Jesse Bach was in some type of nursing home
or something like that.
Paul Phillips went to Florida, picked up Jesse Bach,
brought him back.
- NARRATOR: In a separate room, Jesse confirms
that Paul Phillips arrived at his place in Florida
on Friday afternoon, then brought him back to Alabama,
where they stayed at the hospital with Angela.
- JIMMY: He said they were at the hospital,
and then Paul wanted to go back to the house.
He--he rode back to the house with Paul and Sabrina.
- ROB: Paul said that Sabrina went into the house,
immediately started screaming, came out screaming.
And Paul went in halfway
and confirmed that Carl was dead.
- NARRATOR: The group's statements are consistent
but offer no leads.
- Paul or Sabrina or Jesse didn't have any suspects
that they thought might be responsible for it.
We questioned them about that.
- So, we all was just shocked.
We didn't know what was going on.
He cared about people, you know?
Nobody deserves that kind of thing to happen to them.
- NARRATOR: After concluding their interviews,
detectives immediately set out for East Alabama Medical Center.
- ROB: We went to the hospital to talk to Angela.
We told her that her husband was deceased.
When she understood that,
she had a breakdown.
- JIMMY: Her demeanor was-- as anybody should have been--
you know crying and that sort of thing.
She said that she had no idea who could have done it
or even if he had any problems with anybody.
- NARRATOR: Once she calms down,
Angela explains that she's been in the hospital
since going into labor three days ago.
- JOHN: She can't be the person who's killed her husband
when she's literally in the hospital giving life herself.
- JASMINE: She got there like about 5 o'clock
Thursday afternoon, and then she had the baby
the next day on the 6th.
- NARRATOR: She says she's been trying to reach Carl
the entire time.
- ROB: Angela told us she called maybe four times
and did not get a hold of him.
She did not think that was super strange,
because he's a truck driver,
and he could be out on the road without service.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Angela about any guns
that may be missing from the home.
- ROB: She says that she doesn't have anything.
They had recently, within the last month,
pawned all of their guns to make money.
So there was no guns in the house, only BB guns.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Angela why Carl
would be out of town while she was giving birth.
That's when Angela drops a bomb.
- We found out that Paul was actually
the father of Angela's baby.
- ROB: She said she's married to Carl.
She says that she has a baby by Paul,
and that he is okay with all this.
- My feelings in that moment were, "Oh no,
"this is--something's going on.
There's more to this than that."
Is it one of those stories where a love triangle went bad?
You just have to kinda see where the evidence leads you.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Investigators uncover a peculiar lifestyle.
- You don't ever truly know what happens
behind closed doors.
Sometimes that there is a story that is just so crazy
that you can't make it up.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Lee County authorities are less than
24 hours into the investigation of Carl Dickinson's murder,
and his wife Angela has just revealed a shocking twist.
- JOHN: Angela was married to Carl,
but Angela was having Paul's baby.
And that the relationship was weird, but that it worked.
- According to Angela, Carl was okay with Angela
being pregnant with Paul's baby,
because Carl couldn't give her a baby, so to speak.
- NARRATOR: And while Carl was away
on long trips as a truck driver,
Angela says Paul kept her company in more ways than one.
- After a while of him being there for so long,
when Carl was gone and stuff, he was with Angela.
It was like they were a couple too.
- She was very nonchalant about the whole situation,
about the baby and who it belonged to,
and still being married to Carl.
- TAMMY: She was like, "I wanted him to be here
when the baby came."
And we're just like, "Really, you wanted your husband there
when you gave birth to your boyfriend's child?"
- NARRATOR: Both Angela and Paul
have solid alibis for the weekend.
She was in the hospital giving birth,
and Paul was with Angela's stepfather in another state.
- We actually verified his alibi to that point
and, sure enough, he had been down there to Florida.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: In search of a lead,
investigators begin questioning Carl's friends and family.
And suspicions surface about one of Carl's nephews,
Mike Smith.
- LINDA: Mike Smith's name came up.
He had been to Carl's residence,
and they naturally assumed that
with his history of drug abuse
that he may have gotten mad at Carl
and did something.
- NARRATOR: When investigators bring him in on September 9th
for an interview, Mike seems shocked by the news
of his uncle's murder.
- JIMMY: He advised that he had not seen
or heard from his uncle in over a year.
We asked him, did he have guns?
Did he have a .22 caliber?
And yes, he had guns,
but he was in a different place at the time of the homicide.
We ruled him out as a suspect, because he was
nowhere in the area at the time of the murder.
- NARRATOR: With one lead off the table,
the arrival of autopsy results that afternoon
confirm investigators' suspicions.
- Carl Dickinson had been shot 18 times in the chest,
neck and head area.
- TAMMY: One or two would've done the trick for him.
There was no need to shoot him that many times.
It almost makes you think that there's an emotion involved
with it and there's--somebody was either mad or pissed off
or--or angry with him.
- NARRATOR: The autopsy also provides important information
about the timeframe of Carl's murder.
- JIMMY: The date that he was killed actually
was September the 5th.
And that was the day that his wife Angela
was going into the hospital to be induced.
- NARRATOR: Phone records confirm Angela's claim that
she'd been incessantly trying to get a hold of Carl
while at the hospital.
But they also reveal something else.
- JIMMY: As the investigation was unfolding,
we found through phone records that Angela was calling
Paul Phillips on the phone the day of the murder.
She would in turn, call her husband, Carl Dickinson.
- NARRATOR: Detectives consider the possibility
that these phone calls were made to track Carl's whereabouts
on the day he was killed.
casting suspicion on Paul and Angela.
- JIMMY: What we started doing at that point was
anybody who was associated with Carl Dickinson
or Angela Dickinson,
we started bringing them in for interviews.
- NARRATOR: As detectives question Carl's family,
they discover one major inconsistency
with Angela's story.
- Carl got the vasectomy, um,
while he was, uh, married before.
He had decided that he did not want to have children.
- JIMMY: When we spoke to Carl's family members and told
them that Angela was pregnant, they were all in shock.
Nobody had ever mentioned Angela being pregnant,
it was always that she had some kind of medical issue
that was making her stomach swell.
- According to family, Carl was worried she had a tumor.
- LINDA: That's the reason why her stomach was so big,
because she had a tumor,
and they didn't know what they were gonna do.
- JIMMY: He had never told his family that she was pregnant.
He told them that he was trying to work overtime to make money
so that he could help Angela with her medical bills,
because he thought she had cancer.
How do you go for nine months and your husband's family
thinks you have some kind of medical issue,
and you hide it wearing big shirts and big, baggy clothing,
and you continue to tell your husband that you have a tumor?
I mean, that's just unheard of.
- TAMMY: You don't ever truly know what happens
behind closed doors.
Sometimes that there is a story that is
just so crazy that you can't make it up.
- NARRATOR: Investigators turn to Angela's friends and family
for more information about the household dynamic.
- JASMINE: Angela and Paul, after they started having sex,
they was never separated.
If one person was doing something,
the other person was doing it.
- TIFFANY: Paul didn't have a job.
He didn't have family around because he was from somewhere
else, so he was there at Angela's and that's all he had.
- NARRATOR: Angela's family tells investigators,
their hunch was that Carl had finally had enough.
- JIMMY: I think that he felt a little uneasy
about Paul being there.
Carl got tired of Paul
and made him move out.
- NARRATOR: But Paul didn't exactly leave.
- JIMMY: When Carl would go to work in his truck,
Paul would stay with Angela inside of the house.
When Angela knew that Carl was coming home,
Paul would literally leave the house and sleep in the woods.
- There was a trailer-- an old trailer
on the side of their property.
- JASMINE: I mean, this went on a while.
When Carl was in town, he was staying in a trailer,
didn't have water or power or anything.
And I think Carl figured everything out.
Living under one roof like that, you know,
there's little things there that, just, you can't hide.
- NARRATOR: According to friends and family,
the situation had reached a boiling point,
and Paul and Angela began discussing
cutting Carl out of the picture for good.
- We had a relative of Angela's that told us
that Angela had tried to do something to Carl before.
- ROB: She was able to acquire some pain pills.
She would crush it up, put it into his food.
I don't know what her intentions were behind that,
but it did not do anything to him.
- She told family members and friends that
she would crush up pills and put them in his food,
but it would only make him sleep.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: That's when Angela and Paul
resorted to desperate measures.
- They picked up a dead rattlesnake
off of the side of the road.
- JIMMY: They milked the venom from the rattlesnake,
put it in Carl Dickinson's food.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Unfortunately, for the lovebirds,
the venomous murder plot didn't work.
- JOHN: It made him sick, but it didn't kill him.
That is not how you're gonna kill somebody
with a rattlesnake venom.
- TAMMY: I don't know how many plans that you have
to go through once you get a rattlesnake and try to milk it.
I don't know that can even make that up, um,
without hearing that story.
- NARRATOR: Detectives know it's not plausible that Angela
would be capable of taking down Carl by herself.
- JOHN: She couldn't have been the one to kill her husband
because she was in the hospital
giving birth to her boyfriend's baby--
the ultimate alibi.
- So now it was time to go talk to Paul.
- We just knew that if we could get him to start that
ball rolling, then we could find out what happened.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Paul comes clean about the affair,
but investigators encounter another twist.
- TAMMY: He says, "Well, okay, I was there,
but I didn't shoot him."
And we were like, "Holy sh--."
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Alabama authorities have reason to believe
Carl Dickinson's murder may be connected to his wife's affair.
Now, they have Carl's former best friend in their sights.
On September 10th, they sit down with Paul Phillips again.
- Paul had been transported to the sheriff's office
and placed in one of our interview rooms.
He was a little nervous, but he wasn't shaking like a tree.
Course we just asked him flat-blank
right out in front of him, did he do it?
And he says no.
- NARRATOR: Paul reiterates his original statement:
that he was not even in Alabama at the time of the murder.
But the autopsy revealed Carl was killed days before
Paul left for Florida.
- ROB: The incident happened on September 5th.
Paul had left for Florida after the incident.
He knew that the game was over.
We weren't gonna wait, we know he was involved,
and he just needed to tell the story.
- JIMMY: Paul Phillips was the kinda guy
that if you just treat him like you want to be treated,
and you talk to him just right,
that he would tell you just about anything.
I think that's why he opened up so quickly.
- ROB: Paul was in love with Angela.
Paul wanted to have a family with Angela and his new baby.
He wanted Carl gone.
- NARRATOR: To help achieve his dream,
Paul says he enlisted Angela's half-brother, Jake Bartlett.
- JIMMY: He said that Jake Bartlett knew a guy
that would actually kill Carl Dickinson.
- NARRATOR: Paul says that after Jake connected him
with a hitman named "Trap,"
he finally put his plan into action on September 5th.
- ROB: Paul describes that he goes over to the house
with Jake and Trap.
- JIMMY: He had admitted that they used
an orange-handle screwdriver to make it look like somebody, um,
forced entry into the back door.
- NARRATOR: Then, Paul says he handed Trap
a .22 caliber rifle from Carl's safe,
and the three men laid in wait for their target.
- ROB: There's a trailer on the property,
and Jake was also hiding behind the trailer, along with Trap.
And then, uh, Paul was in the garage,
ducking down.
Carl had parked his truck where he always parks,
and he walked into the house.
- JIMMY: Paul said that when Carl started
walking into the house,
Trap ran up behind him with a rifle
and started shooting.
- [gunshots blasting]
- So his confession was--
pointing the finger at Trap
as being the trigger puller.
- JIMMY: Right after the murder, Paul Phillips took off.
He was trying to create an alibi for his whereabouts
during the time of the murder.
- ROB: Paul had left for Florida, he picked up Jesse.
He brought Jesse back to show his story
that he was in Florida.
Jesse had no association with anything that's going on.
- NARRATOR: Paul also remains adamant
about Angela's innocence.
- He was kind of laying himself out as the sacrifice
and saying, "Okay, Angela had nothing to do with this,
it was all me."
- NARRATOR: Officers arrest Paul and lock him up
in the Lee County jail.
- TAMMY: We immediately make plans to try to identify
who the other subjects are.
We had Jake Bartlett's name,
so we immediately start running his information down.
- JIMMY: We found Jake Bartlett at his home
in Notasulga, Alabama.
We picked him up, brought him into the office.
- NARRATOR: Jake insists he had nothing to do
with his brother-in-law's murder.
- TAMMY: He wasn't coming off of it.
We were pushing and pushing and pushing.
And he finally said, "Okay."
He said, "I was there, but I'm not the one that shot him."
And we were like, "Holy sh--."
You know, "He just said he was there."
- NARRATOR: Like Paul, Jake pins the shooting on Trap.
Jake also gives investigators Trap's real name.
- JIMMY: We found that his real name was Travis Kyles.
We also found that Travis Kyles' family
in Tuskegee, Alabama, made a missing person's report on him
just after the homicide occurred.
Jake Bartlett and Paul Phillips' statements were--
were pretty much the same.
- NARRATOR: But there is one notable difference.
- JIMMY: Jake told us that Angela
was the mastermind behind the plan.
We kinda figured that she was involved already.
That just made us believe it even more.
- NARRATOR: According to Jake, Angela had been asking him
to help her kill Carl for months,
and Angela's bounty on Carl's head
is how Jake convinced Trap to join the plot.
- JIMMY: He also admitted that Angela offered him
Carl's 401K plan.
Jake had offered to give Trap some money,
they were gonna split the 401K from Carl.
This is according to Jake.
- ROB: She was gonna pay $4,000 from his 401K plan,
give him the keys to a red F150 1977 truck
and an old Monte Carlo that was on the property.
- NARRATOR: Jake also says that Angela played a key role
on the day of the murder--
something that is backed up by cell phone evidence.
- JIMMY: Angela was calling Carl back-to-back on the phone,
finding out when he was going to be home,
what time he was getting home, and she was relaying to
Paul Phillips the times when Carl was supposed to be home.
- The overall plan was that once Angela went into labor
to have the baby, that was basically go time.
- NARRATOR: Investigators arrest Jake on murder charges
and then set their sights on Angela.
- ROB: We did not know how deep it went,
but we knew she had something to do with it.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Officers reel in the alleged mastermind.
- She was trying to play the sweet innocent person.
- NARRATOR: And the search continues for a fugitive.
- JIMMY: Anytime we're going after a suspect
who has committed murder already,
we consider them armed and dangerous.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Paul Phillips and Jake Bartlett have admitted
to recruiting a triggerman to kill Carl Dickinson,
and investigators believe Carl's wife, Angela,
was the mastermind behind the whole plan.
- There was no evidence at all that that tells us
that Carl knew that she was pregnant.
As a matter of fact, he always told his family
that that she had a medical issue.
He thought she had cancer.
We believe she came up with this elaborate scheme
to have people to kill Carl because, uh,
she did not want him to know that she was pregnant.
She planned this whole thing so that the murder would happen
on the day that she went to the hospital
to be induced with Paul's baby.
- TAMMY: It's almost as if Angela having the baby
was a catalyst for them to start their new life together
and be a family.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Only 3 days after the murder of Carl,
on September 11th, 2013, with a warrant in hand,
Lee County deputies track Angela
to the local health department.
- JASMINE: We was at the health department trying to get
the baby's Social Security card, and next thing I know,
just police started coming through the front door,
their guns out.
- She was a little bit surprised,
she was upset.
- JASMINE: She was just like, "My baby. My baby."
But you know, there was nothing nobody could do.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: At the station, investigators sit down
with Angela in an interview room.
- JIMMY: She was just still denying, denying, denying.
Angela's demeanor was this of a
meek, sweet, girl.
She seemed to be very deceptive
at what she was trying to tell us.
- Each interview, she would come off with a little bit more
information than the previous interview.
It was almost like pulling teeth.
And then she started portraying Carl as the bad guy
and kind of deflecting any--any role that she had in it.
- ROB: So we just flat out told her,
"You're gonna tell us the truth this time."
And she broke down.
Angela, in her second statement, would say that Carl
was abusive to her verbally.
Carl would dog cuss her and treat her like trash.
- NARRATOR: According to Angela,
both Paul and Jake had witnessed the verbal abuse...
but there's one problem with her claim.
- There were no prior domestic violence cases
or any reports that where she had reported
any type of domestic situation.
- NARRATOR: Detectives have another theory
about the timing of Carl's murder.
- Once she got pregnant,
she didn't know how to get out of it.
- ROB: When the baby's born, something has to be done.
And so it became the--uh, the timer, if you will.
- NARRATOR: That's when Angela enlisted
her half-brother's help.
- TAMMY: Jake, he had a soft spot for Angela.
He liked to protect her.
She was surrounded by men that just wanted to protect her.
- ROB: Angela was the little devil on the shoulder,
talking to Paul and Jake and getting them to do her will.
She admitted that she was basically behind the whole idea
of Carl being killed.
- NARRATOR: Angela is cuffed and escorted
to Lee County lockup.
But investigators aren't finished.
They still have to find the alleged shooter-for-hire,
Travis Kyles, aka "Trap."
- He was put in the nationwide system as a BOLO,
as a missing person.
- JIMMY: Anytime we're going after a suspect
who has committed murder already,
we consider them armed and dangerous.
- The US Marshals ended up locating him in Atlanta.
- JIMMY: There was no incident, um,
he didn't give them any problems at the time,
he went with them to the Atlanta PD.
I sent a couple of my investigators up to Atlanta,
and they took him and interviewed him.
- NARRATOR: On October 2nd, nearly a month after the murder,
police finally get Trap's side of the story.
- JIMMY: He admitted that he was there
at the time of the homicide.
But he said that he was outside
and that the garage door was closed.
Well, there's no garage door on the garage.
- He puts himself there, but he does not admit
to being the trigger puller.
- NARRATOR: Trap doesn't offer any further information
about the murder, but the admission of his presence
at the murder scene is enough for detectives to arrest him.
- TAMMY: Once he said that, it was like, "Okay.
"We're on that right track.
We've got that core group."
So, we were glad about that.
- NARRATOR: Angela Dickinson, Travis Kyles,
Paul Phillips, and Jake Bartlett
all face capital murder charges.
- JIMMY: There was so much evidence,
and you have the confessions from all parties.
I don't believe there would have been any doubt if this case
would have gone to trial.
- NARRATOR: But none of the defendants
would see a Lee County jury.
- They all pled guilty to murder
and each one got 30 years in prison.
- ROB: The way they killed Carl,
the way they planned it and then executed it,
I think 30 years is light.
- LINDA: They still have the opportunity at some point
to--to be walking free.
My brother doesn't have that opportunity anymore.
They took that from him.
- JASMINE: I'm not gonna say he was a perfect person,
'cause none of us are.
But you know, in the end of the day,
Carl was a good person.
He--he--he was--he took care of his family, he worked.
And he--he cared about people.
- JOHN: This is a situation that's probably as old as time--
you have someone who has something
that someone else wants.
Carl lost his life, four people are in prison,
and a child was born into this world
that no longer has their mother or father,
because they're serving time for killing a man
that should never have died.
- JASMINE: She's missing out on her son,
and we're missing out on him and,
you know, she's just missing her life pretty much.
- ♪