The men's bathroom.
Body was lying face down,
Cord that was tied around her throat, extended up, and
then was secured on the brace.
Inside the stall, a chair.
Quite a bit of blood, with the source of the blood
being determined at two small holes in the throat.
[choir singing]
***
You ever heard of Creve Coeur?
No. I know it's near St. Louis.
My husband Sam went to Catholic medical school here,
and it used to be a great, safe place to be.
-It's a beautiful neighborhood. -It is.
This case is 32 years old.
-Unbelievable. -It happened in 1990
at a seminary school.
There are victims, and then there are victims,
and this is a victim.
She came to America
to further her career in education
and look what happens.
Elizabeth Mackintosh was a 50-year-old
Scottish immigrant and a student
at the Covenant Theological Presbyterian Seminary,
where she also worked cleaning the chapel.
On the early morning of March 26, 1990,
that's what she was doing when she was brutally attacked,
beaten, hung in the men's restroom,
and stabbed to death.
That is a brutal crime scene.
I mean, that guy spent some time with her.
Brings a chair into the men's stall,
then he's got that loop wrapped around her neck.
I mean, this is like Hannibal Lecter.
-Mm. -I hate to say it,
but they've got a couple of venomous snakes
right within that program itself there.
Even one witness says in the file,
seminary theology school
does tend to attract people
that have lots of issues
or are trying to work out themselves psychologically.
I think you're going to find out some ugly, dark secrets here.
"Creve coeur" means "broken heart" in French,
and in Elizabeth's case,
that seems tragically appropriate.
Her family and her community deserve
to have Elizabeth's killer off the streets.
There's a saying that God may save their soul,
and God might save this killer's soul,
but we can put them behind bars until then.
God's on our side, too, this week, I'll tell you that.
Yes, I like that.
***
Hi. How are you?
-Chief, Steve Spingola. -Jeff Hartman.
Kelly. Nice to meet you, sir.
[overlapping introductions]
Well, Chief, we read your file, and
-it's a hard case. -It is, yeah.
I'm always trying to keep a positive attitude that
eventually we'll find justice for Elizabeth and her family.
We don't get a lot of victims like her, huh?
-Yeah. -All right.
-Thank you, sir. We will. -Keep me updated. Thanks.
It's a 32-year-old case, so
if we do have witnesses that remember things,
it's coming to the last ditch effort
for us to try to solve this case.
So you were saying you were going to bring in
-some other guys, too, huh? -Yes, ma'am.
I have a couple retired captains
that actually worked on this case 32 years ago.
Great, great. Okay.
It's going to be difficult.
We don't have any hard physical evidence.
We don't have eyewitnesses, we don't have any forensics.
-Hi, fellas. -Hello.
Captain Hodak, this is Kelly and Steve.
-How are you? -Okay.
-Nice to meet you. -You, too. Thank you.
So excited to see y'all.
It's going to be based on
circumstantial evidence
and so, just having somebody
with Kelly and-- and Steve's experience--
specifically Kelly's--working with cold case homicides,
we're really excited that they
can help us out with this investigation.
Let's start off with putting
Elizabeth's pictures up here.
Elizabeth Mackintosh was 50 years old.
She's of Scottish descent.
Her father was a very high profile
Presbyterian clergy person in the United Kingdom.
This homicide made big headlines over there, too.
Elizabeth was very friendly, well spoken, opinionated.
She was one not to shy away
from confrontation, it sounded like.
Never been married, no kids,
no love interest going on at all.
So here's Elizabeth as a nurse.
That is Elizabeth on the bottom right.
After a career in nursing for 11 1/2 years in England,
she had come to the States
to be a student at the Covenant Theological Seminary.
She had intentions to get a degree in counseling
and possibly get her seminary license.
Elizabeth went to school there, studying,
but she also had a job.
She helped to clean up the chapel.
She would usually wake up at 4:00 in the morning
and then start her cleaning duties
-anywhere between 4:25, 4:30. -Okay.
March 26, 1990, at about 7:20 in the morning,
Creve Coeur police officers responded to the report
of a suicide in the men's restroom at the Rayburn Chapel.
Originally it was believed to be a hanging
'cause she had a ligature around her neck.
But there was blood all over the floor,
so the officers pretty quickly determined
that it wasn't a suicide.
She had two puncture wounds that were in her neck
and defensive wounds to her hands,
contusions and bruises all over her body.
There was a struggle that originally took place
in an adjacent room to the bathroom.
There was hair on the floor, backing of an earring.
The cord that was around her neck had
been cut from a VCR from that room.
We believe that she was
possibly drug from that room,
brought into the bathroom.
The cord was tied on a bracket
and then it was placed around her neck.
She tried to get up and get out and then
she pushed through the door, fell onto the floor.
The ligature came tight around her neck
and the suspect stabbed her in the neck.
This woman's going through hell.
This is one of the most savage and
messy and painful homicides I've ever heard of.
For such a sweet lady who devoted her life to God,
her last minutes on this earth were hell.
No signs of a sexual assault.
No robbery or burglary, because nothing was missing.
Right. This was a heat-of-passion thing.
It was not something that was premeditated.
My opinion was that the perpetrator tried
to make it look like it was going to be a suicide.
The cord, the jeans, and the shirt,
we've sent off to DNA tests
-hoping for a miracle, right? -Right.
-Yes, ma'am. -Elizabeth was last seen alive
by a student leaving the chapel at about 4:50 a.m.
The next students arrived at 6:20 a.m.
and did not hear any signs of a struggle.
With the extreme violence of Elizabeth's murder,
it seems whoever killed her
must have committed that crime in that window,
and only a handful of people
would have known she would have been there.
Okay, so this is Michael Johnson.
Michael Johnson is another seminary student,
and he was actually Elizabeth Mackintosh's direct supervisor.
And they didn't get along very well, right?
Elizabeth and Michael Johnson
had disagreements over cleaning supplies.
Elizabeth requested supplies through Michael.
He did not get those supplies,
so she went over his head and spoke to his boss.
We believe this upset him, and he was probably
trying to confront her
that particular Monday morning.
They asked him if he had been in the chapel,
and he said he was.
He said he was looking for Elizabeth.
He said, "I didn't look in the men's bathroom.
"Elizabeth is sensitive about people walking in on her
while she's cleaning the men's bathroom."
Michael told police he went looking for Elizabeth
around 7:10 a.m.
He didn't find her and left,
which is after the time we believe she was killed.
But he told another witness
he had an appointment to meet Elizabeth
early in the morning at about 6:30 a.m.
So why the discrepancy in his story?
He's had a temper all his life.
He almost broke somebody's nose one time.
Abusive to the wife and the kids?
Yeah. He would fly off the handle,
and the kids would run out and stay with a neighbor.
Okay, everybody pull out their notes for Eugene Smith.
Eugene Smith is not still alive?
-Correct. -He is dead, yes.
Okay. How did Mr. Eugene Smith
first get on y'all's radar?
We started checking students
-that lived in the dormitory... -Correct.
...and came up with him because he had a record.
He was arrested for attempted rape with a knife in 1987.
And was that a conviction or an arrest?
No, he was acquitted at trial.
Then he was a suspect in a second rape in 1987 again.
And this guy is living in the--
Living in the dorms.
There were people in the dorms that were
just kind of there, kind of flopping,
and it was a free ride from the seminary.
After he left the seminary, he was arrested and convicted
of armed robbery with a knife.
At least two, maybe even three
violent felony offenses committed with a knife.
-Mm-hmm. -Lovely.
So next up, you want to do George Johnston.
-He was a librarian on campus. -Looks like a librarian.
Employed at the seminary since 1978.
And he's up on our board how and why?
The seminary fired him right after the murder.
They went back and they did a security audit.
They found that incident in 1971.
So the security guard walks into some bathroom--St. John's
-Mercy Hospital. -This is that hospital thing?
Right across the street from the seminary.
So he was dressed as a woman,
and he had some type of a metal car part...
In order to assault a woman and fondle her "gentitals."
-Knock a woman out... -In a bathroom
In a bathroom, and fondle their vagina.
So he was stopped before committing the crime.
-Right. -Investigators found no evidence
of a sexual assault,
but Elizabeth had over 30 different bruises
and abrasions all over her body.
Is it possible that she fought back so hard
that a sexual predator just gave up and killed her?
All right. Next up, David Winecoff.
He was the victim's pastor.
Yeah, he had a church about 10 miles away.
So the political ideology at the seminary
at this time was in turmoil.
There was some differences in their--in their sect beliefs.
Elizabeth had actually got accepted
to a more liberal school in Florida,
and Winecoff was believed to be the more conservative side
and there was a lot of contention
there at the seminary about those religious differences.
The night before her death,
she had attended Sunday services.
So it was some concern when she showed him
that acceptance letter, if they were actually
arguing or if she was flaunting this letter
as a way to show people she was happy to be leaving.
'Cause that would be the genesis
of why he would be mad enough to want to kill her.
-Correct. -His fingerprint's found
-on that letter in the stall. -Correct.
Elizabeth was seen chatting with David Winecoff on Sunday night,
which could explain his fingerprints on that.
But that wasn't the only reason he's a suspect.
He's deceased why?
-Fell off a mountain. -A climbing accident.
His rope failed or the knot failed
that he had tied, and then he fell.
That was in '93.
They thought he'd committed suicide
because he was feeling guilty over being a murderer.
We have Elizabeth's boss, a violent criminal,
a wannabe predator,
and a man with his prints at the scene.
But after 30 years, our biggest challenge might be
finding witnesses who are still around
and have a good memory from that day.
[choir music resumes]
***
We're going to go see
Elizabeth's younger sister Helen.
Yes. She's just as nice as can be and helpful
and even adds more reason why we want
to get her some help and resolution for this.
Sadly, with Elizabeth's case being this old,
her poor parents and her brother passed away
never being able to get any kind of answers or justice.
-Hi. -Hello.
-Is it Helen? I'm Doug. -I'm Helen, yes.
Today we're meeting with her younger sister Helen,
who named one of her own daughters after Elizabeth.
So what was she like as a little girl?
She was a very loving sister
to me, though, when I was little.
And then as the years went by
and Forrest and I got married,
and as my children were born,
she celebrated that and came, and they loved it.
She was the fun aunt,
so she was very bright and creative.
As a very young nurse in her early 20s,
she went to Peru and went up into the Andes
to a mining community and worked there as a nurse.
And, Helen, when this happened in 1990,
how did all this affect your mom and dad?
Oh, well, it was unspeakable.
My parents, they leaned on their faith.
They leaned on each other,
and the family in Scotland was very supportive.
But of course, it was a...
it was an unspeakable blow to them.
It was an unnatural, horrible death.
And so, um...
***
It caused the people who loved her a great deal of pain.
My dear parents, their suffering was intense,
and they leant on their faith greatly,
and the promise...
that in all things, God was with them,
and would have been with Elizabeth,
and Elizabeth would have known that.
Even in the midst of the horror,
she would have had that faith.
She was of such strong faith.
But still, it's incredibly unfair.
She was a wonderful, wonderful person
-and we miss her terribly.
Well, if it's okay with y'all, we're going to get started
trying to talk to all these people
-and see how far we can get. -Please.
-Pray for us, okay? -Yes.
[choir singing]
***
-Good to see you again, man. -[chuckles]
Did y'all meet Chris?
-We sure did. -Yep, yep.
Today we've flown in our reconstruction expert
to see if he can try and help us
re-examine and maybe reenact Elizabeth's murder.
The seminary has granted us access to the chapel
and to the rooms where her murder happened.
This is the original chapel to the campus.
So we're really talking about, then, this level,
which is the ground level and then the basement level
-where everything happens. -Right, right.
-Okay. -All right.
We can head on downstairs.
Being here in this house of God,
in this place of worship and faith,
it's hard to imagine someone
from this community committing this crime.
A chapel is the last place where you would think
a savage murder like this could ever happen.
So this is lecture room three,
and we think that she was assaulted in here.
Oh, it's way bigger than I thought.
Maybe an argument started in this particular room
and then carried over into the men's bathroom.
We had signs of a struggle. Elizabeth's earring,
some clumps of her hair that were pulled out.
The audio/visual cart was in here,
so that was what happened-- The electrical cord.
The evidence suggests that Elizabeth was cleaning this room
when she was confronted.
And while we don't know if Elizabeth
and her attacker initially got
into a verbal confrontation, that seems likely.
And so, you and I are talking. I'm going to come towards you.
If I hit you as hard as I can,
I think I can knock you out, down to the ground.
Everybody feels like she's down on the ground at this time.
-Yeah. -She's downdown.
Laying down. She's not sitting up.
-No. -At this point,
it seems likely that Elizabeth was incapacitated
and possibly unconscious.
And while we don't know how the struggle
actually played out,
this is likely when the assailant
grabbed her by the hair and forced her
into the men's restroom and cut off the VCR cord
to use as a ligature.
Now I grab you by your hair
and I lead you from here into the bathroom
because the hair is pulled out of her head, right?
I agree. He's got her by the hair.
He's dragging her around, grabbing the scissors and stuff
so she doesn't get out of here, because he's not going
to leave her laying here.
So we're going to go in the bathroom,
Okay, so I'm gonna move you this way.
And at this point, I push you into the stall.
At some point, she's going to fight back some,
because this is where we see defensive wounds.
Another struggle in the stall could help explain
why Elizabeth had over 30 wounds to her head and body,
as Elizabeth was struggling for her life.
Now, I slam you so hard down
that your head knocks that off of that.
And now you fall to the ground.
If you knocked that toilet dispenser off there,
I think you're out for several minutes, right?
-It would be a hard hit. -Because--oh, my gosh.
-Got that big horizontal bruise. -Totally.
And then while you're down on the ground,
I go and get the chair.
Now I'm gonna have to sit you up in the chair.
Okay.
And now, at this point,
I'm kind of pulling this over.
It's unclear if the killer's true intent was
to try to stage this death as a suicide,
but he was clearly trying to strangle her to death.
He may have been content
to strangle her with that, but I think it wasn't working.
And she doesn't die fast.
Doesn't die, so he comes back in.
So the scissors were used to stab her.
The killer possibly grabbed a knife
or other sharp instrument from the classroom
or still had it in his hand from cutting the cord.
But at this point, he realized he would have to
stab Elizabeth to kill her.
And now I stab you twice. I just go once up,
And then once down,
And then I'm going to get out of the way,
because as soon as I stab her, I'm just going to back out.
Where are the killer's footprints in blood, too?
She's not bleeding, not until he stabs her
in the neck and then backs out.
How does she get forward, then? 'Cause when she's found,
she's forward like this.
Because when she falls off,
she's two inches off the ground.
You mean the rope doesn't let her hit the ground?
-MEN: Right. Yeah. -It catches her?
That's why she strangles to death?
That's why she strangles to death.
So she's kind of like...
Keep going. Like right there.
So that's why the cause of death is strangulation.
Mm-hmm.
My God, the torture this poor woman endured.
And can you even imagine how helpless she felt
in the very last minutes of her life?
This poor woman, slaughtered
in the bathroom of a place where she worshipped,
where she went every single day for comfort.
I can't imagine a more horrible place and way to die.
-Talk about the letter. -The letter was found over here
in the back part of the stall and it had a fingerprint match
that came back to David Winecoff.
You know, there were some of Elizabeth's friends
that saw her at a worship service
the night before, holding that letter.
That letter was an acceptance.
She was showing it to different people, like a graduation.
You know what I'm saying? So people are reading it.
She also could have just had it in her back pocket
-and it fell out. -Right. It just fell out.
Does anybody see any sexual element
-to any of this? -No.
She was fully clothed.
No indication that her clothes were torn.
-This isn't a sexual fantasy. -Right.
I don't think he's getting off to it.
I think he wants to make sure she's dead.
-Yeah. -And she's taking too long.
To get a woman who at some point
is going to fight back some,
and you got to get that chair in here.
-Mm-hmm. -And you gotta tie this up.
How long is all that going to take?
I'd say no more than ten, for sure.
-No more than ten. -In this room.
-This room. -Plus the three over there.
We're talking about 13, 15 minutes.
And he just walks back out.
I've worked a lot of sexual assault cases,
and if you think about the fact that the attacker
spent about 13 minutes with Elizabeth alone
and didn't attempt a rape
like the one our suspect Eugene Smith was arrested for,
or a molestation
like the one our suspect George Johnson fantasized about,
I think we can pretty much assume
that these are not our guys.
This was personal. This was rage.
***
You ready?
-Gentlemen. -[chuckling]
-Good morning. -Good morning.
After reenacting Elizabeth Mackintosh's murder,
we've confirmed it wasn't sexually motivated.
It was motivated by rage.
Any thoughts from yesterday that we need to talk about?
We got the DNA call today at 2:00.
-Yes, ma'am. -We know that Elizabeth's boss,
Michael Johnson, was frustrated with Elizabeth
and went to confront her that morning about their issues.
But then he claimed that he couldn't find her
and went on about his day,
never visiting the men's bathroom where she was found.
Kelly, Steve, this is Danny Rapert,
the detective at the time.
He conducted the original interview with Michael Johnson.
I guess it's no secret to you.
You're obviously a suspect.
You were in the building.
It's also a known fact that you two
weren't necessarily friendly.
I watched the whole interview again.
Not sure who that young guy was
-that was doing the interview. -[chuckling]
-Well, that was you. -Oh, okay.
Detective Danny Rapert is here today to go over
Michael Johnson's interview tape to see if we can
pick up on any possible signs of deception.
One of the first things
that I made note of is on page six.
It says "Approximately 6:25,
"I got up to take a shower.
I went there to talk to her about a couple of things."
He's referencing the memo, which might anger him.
Then Danny asks him,
"Okay, you went there about 7:10.
You were upstairs. You went downstairs, you looked around.
Did you call her name?
How's he looking for her, then?
You went downstairs then?
He says, "Okay, you left the chapel. Where did you go?"
"I went to the administration building."
Okay, now that's just about a 2-minute walk.
The admin building.
Where'd you go into it, on the side door?
Back door down by the dorms?
So he wanted a little bit of a change.
-On this day. -On this day.
8:30, you left the admin building.
Where'd you go? You went back up the stairs.
[Michael, whispering]
When he says, "I went back to the chapel,"
Dan, this is probably the most concerning portion here.
You arrive back at the chapel about 8:32,
and obviously you said, "My God,
there's police everywhere," right?
Did you walk up and talk to anybody then?
"Went back to the rest."
In order to go "back" to the restroom,
-you have to have been there. -That's a good catch.
I don't remember catching it at the time,
but, yeah, it's a good catch on your part.
According to Michael,
he never went to the restroom that morning.
According to the tape, he might have slipped up.
-All right, Danny, thanks a lot. -Thank you very much.
Maybe he was nervous and just misspoke,
but he sure doesn't look nervous.
In any case, Michael's story sure seems a little fishy.
***
You know, there aren't very many cases where
you want DNA as much as we want it on this one.
-Right. -Michael claims
he never even saw Elizabeth that morning,
but can DNA place him
or any of our other three suspects at the scene?
[line ringing]
- Katelin Hogan speaking. -Hi, Katelin.
We sent the ligature and Elizabeth's clothes
off for the most recent, advanced DNA testing,
and now it's time for the moment of truth.
So no--no male DNA present on that. Okay.
-Okay. -Wow.
Well, thank you for trying.
Well, that's unfortunate.
I know you're disappointed.
Sorensen did their best and tried their hardest.
I'm not surprised.
I think that we're all disappointed
because we would like for that to be
the easy way to answer this case, but it didn't,
so we're right back to the typical way of
solving a cold case-- We gotta go find witnesses
and see what they can remember today
and see if that's enough to piece the case together.
[line ringing]
-Hello? -Hey, Doug Manniger here
with the Creve Coeur Police Department.
Wanted to see if you have a couple of minutes
-to talk with me real quick. -Okay.
Our suspect, David Winecoff,
got on law enforcement's radar
because that acceptance letter
found at the scene had his fingerprints on it.
And some people believe that Winecoff's
fatal rock-climbing accident
three years later was actually
a suicide out of guilt over killing Elizabeth.
You knew Elizabeth very well, correct?
-Okay. -David's widow
alibied David for Elizabeth's murder.
So the question today is, can she confirm that,
or did he ever tell her anything incriminating
before his death?
That Sunday evening before Elizabeth was killed,
did you happen to be attending service that day?
Okay.
Were you aware that Elizabeth had been accepted
to another seminary in the Florida area?
So Monday, day of the murder.
Mm-hmm.
[chuckles]
Sure.
Her story matches what she told the police,
and she confirms that David
spoke to Elizabeth the night before her murder.
You have to wonder if Elizabeth was so excited
about that acceptance letter
that she showed it to David,
and that would explain
his fingerprint being on the letter.
But we also need to clarify the circumstances
surrounding David's death.
You know, in your opinion, you didn't find him to be
you know, distraught or have--
suffering from depression or...?
His climbing event was, in your opinion,
an accident, is that right?
Okay. Very good.
Okay.
Gotcha.
It's been 28 years since David's
fatal rock climbing accident,
and she has no reason in the world
to burden her conscience by making up something
about what happened to her husband.
-I do thank you for your time. -All right.
-Goodbye. -Bye bye.
I think we can eliminate
David Winecoff as a suspect as well.
Okay, let's do Mr. Thomas Larson.
-So he's the boss. -He's the boss
of Michael Johnson and technically Elizabeth.
He'll attest to their work relationship, I think.
Yeah. We have eliminated
all of our suspects except for Elizabeth's boss,
Michael Johnson, who she was feuding with
by memos in the days leading up to her murder.
Hi, this is Thomas.
Hey. Good morning, Mr. Larson.
Michael's boss was a guy named Thomas Larson,
and we're hoping by speaking to him,
he can shed some light on this workplace feud
they were having via memos,
and maybe even shed some light
on Michael Johnson as a person.
Could their workplace feud really have enraged him
to the point of murder?
Can you tell me a little bit about Elizabeth?
Who else did you-- did you supervise?
And he was Elizabeth's direct supervisor,
is that correct, sir?
Right.
According to Tom Larson,
Michael Johnson is hot-tempered and arrogant.
Maybe that arrogance is what accounts for
his very relaxed demeanor during his police interrogation.
And you have to wonder if that temper
could have caused him to lose control
in confronting Elizabeth.
We wanted to talk specifically about
the memo between Elizabeth and Michael.
So I'm just going to read a little bit
from your statements
the day of the murder on the 26th of March.
"Larson also reported that he had recently received
"a written request for supplies from Mackintosh.
"He then gave the written request to
"her direct supervisor, Michael Johnson.
"Johnson became upset with her bypassing
"the proper chain of command
"and prepared a letter to give to her.
"Larson then stated that he was provided
a Xerox copy of this letter."
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the work.
Yes, sir. You're very welcome. Thank you.
I think we need to review these memos
between Michael and Elizabeth
and see if possibly all the evidence we need
has been right here in front of us this whole time.
***
So these notes...
So this is the letter that he wrote to her.
Yeah. It's a very detailed letter
for a simple supply request.
Elizabeth Mackintosh felt like her boss, Michael Johnson,
was not getting her the cleaning supplies
she needed to do her job.
So she went over his head
and wrote to his boss, Tom Larson.
This kicked off a series of exchanges
between the two of them,
and this is what prompted Michael Johnson to want
to go speak to Elizabeth the very morning of her murder.
It's time we take a closer look.
-Read the whole thing. -Yes, ma'am.
"Elizabeth, last Friday I found this note in my box.
"My first difficulty is why a note like this
"should have been given to Tom Larson.
"My frustration with this note is augmented by the following--"
He has four points.
Michael's note to Elizabeth is detailed and condescending,
listing four ways that her note to Tom
was both inaccurate and out of line.
His frustration with Elizabeth is so clear.
And then this is the note that Elizabeth
wrote to Michael Johnson
about, you're getting too worked up, right?
Correct. Her response, yeah.
You were talking about some corrections.
This is the same note.
It's returned with just some highlighted things
and pencil marks on it.
"Clearly you are wrong," she says to him,
so she's confrontational.
They take this so personally, yeah.
Elizabeth not only sent Michael
a handwritten note and told him to lighten up,
she returned his letter, correcting his spelling
and adding her own thoughts
with commentary like, "You are wrong,"
and "garbage and nonsense,"
and "Do not ever write me this sort of tone of memo again."
Elizabeth clearly had no problem defending herself.
Can you imagine that your boss sends you a note
and you just like, make corrections...
ALL: And send it right back.
He still gets it back before...
March 26, which is going to further agitate him.
-A little bit, I would say. -I would think so.
Great, great. I like that.
These notes really paint a clear picture
of the conflict between Elizabeth and Michael
in the days before the murder.
And according to the case file,
this was not the only stressor going on in Michael's life.
The day before the murder, he was denied
a recommendation from the seminary.
He was told he was going to have to move out of his house,
and according to the neighbors,
he got into an argument with his wife
the night before the murders.
That is a lot of stressors.
If we're all thinking that he's not going to stand there
and talk to y'all for very long tomorrow,
if you're only going to get one question
or two minutes with him tomorrow in Texas,
maybe this note is it.
Maybe this is what'll make him say something.
Mm-hmm.
***
Hey, buddy.
Hey, Doug. Chuck and Steve here on speaker.
We have located Michael Johnson's vehicle.
Nice.
We do believe that he's inside working right now.
Detective Parker and I flew down to Texas
to confront Michael Johnson
face to face, once and for all.
He wasn't at home, so we've tracked him down
to his job at a home improvement store.
Y'all found his car in the parking lot?
-We did. -Great.
You know, he could be getting off within an hour,
or it could be--you know,
he could be the late guy. We don't know.
Catch him when he's walking to his car
and he's not going to have any idea
you're going to be coming at him there.
We're going to wait it out and see what happens.
-Good luck. -All right.
Thanks, Chuck. Keep us updated.
We don't want to approach Michael
inside the store and create a scene,
so now we sit and wait.
Okay, we wait.
Nothing like surveillance.
***
Man, when they used to have to conduct surveillance like this,
this must have been a long freaking night.
We've done it on bank robberies before.
-Yeah. -And it was cold, too.
We did it in the winter.
***
There's an older guy walking over there.
-It's not him. -Yeah.
-Here he comes. Praise Jesus. -That's him.
Okay, let's go hot with the recorder.
-Yeah, it is on. -[groans]
Let's go. We got...
***
-Michael Johnson? -Yes?
Hey, I'm Chuck Parker.
I'm a detective with Creve Coeur Police.
-How are you doing? -Pretty good.
Okay. Hey, I just wanted to update you
on the Elizabeth Mackintosh case.
There's been some evidence that's developed.
Would you like to take a look at it
and provide some input on it at all?
-No, not right now. -Okay.
You're not interested at all at what's been
-developed over the years? -No.
-Why is that? -I've talked to police before,
and I've dealt with police before,
and any time I've talked to the police
it has not gone well.
-Uh-- -I know that anything I can--
I say, can and will be, and it was used against me.
Well, you put yourself in that chapel
right near where she was murdered that morning, right?
I just walked through the hall.
I mean, I walked by the bathroom,
but I didn't go in the bathroom.
You went there looking for her, though, right?
Yeah, to talk to her about the whole issue
with the bathroom, I think it was.
What time do you think that was?
Well, I think we've talked about it, gentlemen.
Now, look, Michael, I mean, we're different investigators.
We can look at this from a different perspective.
He basically refused to talk to us,
but, you know, he's an experienced guy at this.
This has got to be his 6th or 7th time
that law enforcement has approached him.
He's not going to let us have an easy game here.
He wants to make us work for it,
and that's okay.
Okay, he's not going to talk to us.
Some days the homicide gods are with you
and some days they ain't.
***
-Good morning, boys. -Good morning, good morning.
-Hello. -How are you feeling today?
Doing all right.
Steve and Chuck are back from their trip to Texas
to try and talk to Michael Johnson,
who had no interest in answering
their questions about Elizabeth's murder.
The more you make this case less cloudy,
the more everything just focuses back
on one person, but that's okay.
We may have figured it out ourselves.
So Eugene Smith was on our board because...?
He had an arrest record, sexual assault with a weapon.
And George Johnston.
He was known to have sexual fantasies.
Did we find one witness who ever puts him in the chapel
-the morning of our murder? -No.
No.
Eugene Smith was an alleged rapist,
and George Johnson had violent sexual fantasies.
But the truth is, nobody has ever been able to
put them in the seminary that morning.
And it seems that her killer
didn't even attempt to sexually assault her.
At this point, we don't have any reason
to believe that he had any involvement.
-Eliminate them? Yes. Yes. -Everybody's good.
If there's one thing a repeat offender never changes,
it's their motive.
So we can eliminate both of them.
Okay. David Winecoff.
People saw them talking to each other
the night before Sunday night in church.
No issues, no argument, no nothing.
And then you spoke to David Winecoff's widow.
David Winecoff had his fingerprints on
her letter found at the scene,
but it seems now that those fingerprints
were there innocently
from her showing him that letter the night before.
His alibi was confirmed and reconfirmed.
He had no motive whatsoever to want to kill Elizabeth,
and his death was nothing but a tragic accident.
David Winecoff can be eliminated as a suspect.
So we got one man left standing, Michael Johnson.
He has admitted that he was going to meet Elizabeth.
And how do we first find out about the issue,
the reason for all the dispute?
A memo that was a back-and-forth between
Elizabeth and Michael Johnson
about these supplies and the toilet paper roll.
So he gives her,
in this letter that's admissible, the stressors.
Looking for a job. He's trying to find...
-Yeah. Pretty big. -...a new employment.
And we know from other people, how's his marriage going?
-Not very well. -They're struggling.
You got the whole universe
already starting to crumble down.
With all he's got to deal with,
he's going to go at 5:00 in the morning
and talk to Elizabeth about cleaning supplies.
What's this man's temper like?
-He's angry. -Yeah, short temper.
Very volatile, and how does he respond
when people disagree with him?
He beats his wife.
It's easy to dismiss this idea.
How could Elizabeth be killed over something
as stupid as cleaning supplies, right?
But when you put all the circumstantial evidence
together, you can piece together a case
that it's a whole lot more than that.
How do you feel about your case, Chuck?
I think it's the strongest it's been.
When you picture the person that's Michael Johnson,
with his temper and his control and anger management issues,
you know that he was stressed.
He had been told he was rejected by the seminary.
He'd been told he had to move out of his house.
All of this caused a fight with his wife
the very night before the murder.
And on top of all that,
this woman that has the audacity
to go over his head to his boss
to complain about the cleaning supplies,
he sets a time to go meet with her
the morning of the murder.
It wasn't just cleaning supplies.
It was the last straw.
And so you guys would be asking your prosecutor to do what?
To get warrants issued for murder on Michael Johnson.
Good luck.
***
* Make your way *
* To the river, amen. *
* Bring your pain *
* To the river, amen. *
I'm really looking forward to tell her we have
a good case I think that hopefully
the prosecutor will give some credence to, so.
Been waiting 32 years...
-That's right. -...to hear what you're
-going to tell her today. -That's a long time.
Doug and Chuck have set a meeting with
their prosecutor to go over all the facts of the case.
This is as close as Elizabeth's case
will ever be to getting justice.
It's time for this case to move forward.
It's nice and hot outside.
-Yes. I'm glad you got in. -Yes.
-So... -Well, we...
are very interested to find out.
Yes, ma'am.
We worked very diligently.
We talked to a lot of different witnesses.
We feel we have a good case.
We have one person that we're really focused on.
We believe that it was somebody that--
that was probably there on campus,
somebody that lived there.
Again, somebody that knew her routine...
Who's covering up their reason
for needing to see her at that time.
Yeah.
We're going to present it
to our St. Louis county prosecutor
and see what they have to say.
He was able to find enough witnesses
still, 32 years later,
to reconfirm all the little pieces,
to put it all together.
It's a circumstantial evidence case...
-Mm-hmm. -but it's still a good case.
-That's wonderful. -Yeah.
That's wonderful that you have a way forward.
We've thought about this for so many years
and wondered for so many years,
and it's just remarkable
that they're able to bring something together.
It just shows how passionate they were.
Perhaps they can bring it to conclusion now.
I'm so very hopeful that they can do that, finally.
Everyone was, you know, so pleasant
when they talked about Elizabeth and her personality.
-She was very alive. -Lots of new stories.
She was very bright.
Everybody remembers her.
They couldn't be more happy
that they're still working on the case.
-Yeah. -So be happy
to know that people still think about your sister.
Yes.
Elizabeth Mackintosh dedicated her life
to God, to helping people,
to doing the right thing.
And, my God,
we all want to think that she's
looking down from heaven right now,
watching all of this, knowing that everyone is trying
their very hardest to get her the justice she deserves.
***