[Jeremy Helligar] Most of us think of bank robberies as a thing from the movies,
or from the days of Bonnie and Clyde.
But when People magazine
talked to folks in upstate New York
everyone knew exactly where they were
when this real-life bank heist unfolded.
I felt something cold on the back of my neck,
and I heard a voice that said,
"Do not turn around. Do not look at me. Get on the ground."
He pulled out two guns.
This was a takeover where he took control of the bank.
This individual was in the wind. I mean just gone.
[K.C. Baker] They've already killed someone.
Anything could happen.
This case did not have that smoking gun.
-[gunshot] -Somebody knew who it was.
They just were too afraid to speak up.
You murdered somebody,
and then you live your life like nothing happened.
He had gloves on. He had an FBI raid jacket on.
This person knew what he was doing.
[Douglas Gregory] Everyone was a potential suspect.
And we began to think
maybe there was an inside job here.
[theme music playing]
On the shores of Lake Ontario in upstate New York
is the town of Webster.
It has trees and farmland and it's a slice of Americana.
My name is Doug Gregory.
I'm an Assistant United States Attorney
here in the Rochester Branch
of the Western District of New York.
Webster is a village community
on the northeast side of the city of Rochester.
Pretty much a sleepy community.
They do host the Xerox campus,
where they employ thousands of individuals.
[narrator 1 on tape] With a greased pencil he wrote on a glass plate
the numbers 10-22-38 and it was a climactic moment.
[narrator 2 on tape] His discovery is called Xerography.
[narrator 1 on tape] One of the great industries of the world.
[narrator 2 on tape] The Xerox 914 copier...
[narrator 1 on tape] has to be the most successful single product of all-time.
[Baker] By the turn of the 21st century,
Xerox employed 90,000 people across the world.
The Xerox campus up in Webster, New York
was gigantic.
On that campus was a man named Raymond Batzel.
He was a machine operator
who had worked there for decades.
My name is Carrie Akins.
I'm Raymond Batzel's daughter.
My sister and I grew up on 12 acres.
We had all sorts of animals.
Rabbits. We had a donkey at one point.
My dad grew up on a larger farm,
and I think that reminded him of home
and he wanted to create that atmosphere for my sister and I.
Growing up I envied my dad's hands,
because they were rough and soft at the same time.
You can tell he worked with them.
My name is Shannon Batzel
and my father was Raymond Batzel.
As a family we were close, we were happy.
My dad made sure that that's what
we knew, family was important.
When it boils down to it, that's all you have, is your family.
[Baker] Carrie and Shannon are daddy's girls.
They adore their father.
And their dad is this kind of larger-than-life,
lovable, fun, well-liked guy.
[Helligar] While he worked hard at Xerox,
Raymond valued his family vacations
and did what he could
to spoil his daughters and his wife,
with unforgettable adventures.
In August 2003, I was 15 and Carrie was 13,
and we had a brief vacation in California,
visiting my aunt and uncle and their three children.
[Carrie] Our vacation started in Denver,
and my mom and dad were with my sister and I at that point.
And my mom and dad needed to get back to work,
and my sister and I flew to California from Denver.
Going out to California was our first trip
on our own without parents.
So that was kind of a big deal for us,
you know, "Hey, they are letting us be a little bit more adult-like."
We'd call them every night. Tell them about our day.
[Carrie] Then we would always say,
"Good night, I love you. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
And he said the same thing back.
[Helligar] The morning of August 12 started as any regular morning.
Raymond Batzel was going to make his last car payment
at the Xerox Federal Credit Union.
[Baker] It's a quiet morning.
Normally the Credit Union's kind of a boring place.
My name is Carl Wisniewski. I'm an engineer
at Xerox complex in Webster for many years,
and I design the equipment for the company.
On that day I went to the Credit Union
to talk to one of the bank managers
about refinancing our mortgage.
It was a small crowd. Maybe three or four customers,
and maybe seven employees.
I worked my way up to the teller window
and the bank officer Debbie was on break.
So I went and sat down,
and I just basically was watching people
and, you know, just mindin' my own business, waiting.
Couldn't have been more than five minutes,
I saw a gentleman coming from my right.
He looked over at me
and I was looking right at him.
There's something really odd about this person.
[Carl Wisniewski] Me, I memorize everything.
I think I was born to be an engineer,
and this is, part of my,
you know, personality.
I catch detail.
He had an FBI jacket.
I noticed that the word FBI, then, the letters
weren't centered on the back of his jacket.
They were off set and I thought,
"Is that a... Is that a handmade jacket?"
It was strange, but I wasn't...
I wasn't thinking that anything bad was gonna happen.
I watched him go into the assistant manager's office.
Couple of seconds later she went over to the vault,
opened the door.
I really wasn't sure what was going on.
Just a few moments later the bank officer Debbie said,
"Come on into my cubicle."
And we started talking about refinancing.
It's very just "business as usual,"
people going about their day.
And I wasn't more than,
maybe 30 seconds, a minute in her office
when I saw her
look up over my shoulder out the doorway,
and, and the look on her face was frozen. It was shocked.
And that's when I realized something's not right.
I felt something cold on the back of my neck,
and I heard a voice that said,
"Do not turn around. Do not look at me. Get on the ground."
I didn't have to be told twice.
I got on the floor.
Debbie was, uh, extremely upset,
whimpering, crying,
and I could hear the noise behind me.
He was yelling at the tellers, "Where is my f'in' money?
Where is my f'in' money?" Screaming.
I heard him say, "I told you to get on the ground!"
And then I heard a gunshot.
[gunshot]
Two seconds later, a second gunshot.
[gunshot]
I... I've never heard
something that loud in my life.
And in a brick room it sounded like a cannon went off.
I did not see the shooting.
Everything was heard.
I was under the desk maybe a minute or maybe two.
You have no sense of time when this is happening.
I could hear his, his heavy feet.
It was always boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[loud footsteps]
I didn't move. Debbie and I just stayed there.
I could hear people whimpering and crying
and I think they were trying to compose themselves,
and I know I reached out to hold her hands
and just, "Don't talk. Don't say anything.
Don't cry. Don't scream. Just be quiet."
[Wisniewski] I was frozen.
I didn't hear any other employees.
And then I heard the door open and then close.
I heard the click of the latch.
And then it was dead silence.
Could've been like 30 seconds passed
not a peep from anyone.
[Gregory] Just before ten that morning
numerous calls were made to 911
by at least three employees inside,
uh, the Credit Union.
[ringing]
[caller crying]
My name is Chuck Sciortino.
I'm a retired investigator
from Webster Police Department.
I've been investigator for two years at the time,
and so I went from white-collared type crimes
and, you know, some assaults
to a bank robbery and a murder.
So this is the way I came in.
As soon as the call came in
that there was an active shooter on the campus,
um, we had hundreds of police officers showing up.
The, the campus is enormous as you can see,
and uh, 20 years ago
there was a lot more employees.
At the Xerox Credit Union no one knows anything.
They're just scrambling for information,
chaos has ensued.
I was the third car in. I was there within minutes.
When I walked in, I saw how traumatized
the witnesses and the employees of the Credit Union were.
I saw our victim lying on the floor.
There was blood everywhere all over the floor.
Something I'll never forget.
I learned through talking to our witnesses
and employees
that the victim's name was Raymond Batzel.
So within the first few minutes we knew
that we had a major case on our hands.
[Gerald Pickering] We learned quickly from the witnesses
that the gunman had left the building
but we didn't know where, where the gunman had gone.
[Chuck Sciortino] We didn't know if he was still on the Xerox complex
or if the shooter had got on a vehicle and left.
I don't have a lot of details at this time.
I'm not sure if it was just, uh, a robbery that went bad.
We shut it down tight.
No one that was on campus were allowed to leave.
Immediately after the call came in
we asked our own police to go to their safe spaces.
They'll remain there now.
[Wisniewski] The place was crawling with police,
and employees were upset, then they were angry
because no one was telling them what happened.
It was intense.
My name is Peter Ahearn.
I'm a retired FBI agent.
I've worked a lot of bank robberies in my career.
It was a Federal Credit Union
insured by the Federal Government
and tactically it was an FBI violation.
At the time of the shooting
the FBI is about 15 minutes away
monitoring a PGA event.
[Peter Ahearn] When the call comes in
you really have to move your resources pretty quickly.
It took us about 20 minutes to get to Webster, New York,
to the Xerox facility.
While the local police wait for FBI to arrive
they begin interviewing
everyone inside the Federal Credit Union.
There was approximately eight to ten people
between the employees, and, uh, witnesses.
Most of the employees were either behind the counter
or in their offices.
But I learned when the shooter entered
there was one person that was sitting in the lobby area.
And that was Carl Wisniewski.
And we relied on him heavily
for his description of our suspect.
[Wisniewski] I told them
he had a wig on, pulled down tight,
and it looked like it was working its way off his head.
It was like more of a beanie cap than a wig.
It just didn't fit him right.
He had women's tortoise shell sunglasses on.
Big round, like an... like an actress would wear.
He had black slacks with a satin stripe down each side,
and he had black polished shoes.
[Ahearn] When we arrived at the campus
the FBI agents were dealing with the evidence
and working the interviews of the key witnesses.
And the witnesses were saying that he had two guns,
a sawed-off shotgun and another weapon.
He had gloves on.
It was obvious he was wearing a wig.
He had an FBI raid jacket on.
He had a badge and the witnesses
described it as a US Marshal badge.
[Wisniewski] I told the investigators
that I believe this person
knew what he was doing.
He knew the bank.
He knew how to get in and get out.
He planned this well.
[Ahearn] He managed to get $10,000.
I was really kind of surprised.
But it certainly didn't justify the taking of a life.
So far investigators have identified one victim.
But there were two gunshots.
[gunshots]
I learned through talking to our witnesses
and employees
that a second person was shot.
I was told his name was Joseph Doud.
[Baker] Joseph Doud, 28 years old,
was a software engineer
who had been at Xerox for about three years.
Fortunately Joseph's injuries aren't life-threatening.
He was rushed to the hospital
where he was treated and monitored.
[Sciortino] Our investigators followed him to the hospital,
ended up taking, uh, a deposition from him
with what he remembered.
We learned Doud was headed over on a break that day
to conduct a transaction at the bank.
As Mr. Doud walked in to the Credit Union,
he could see that there was an altercation going on.
That altercation involved,
51-year-old father, Mr. Raymond Batzel.
[Gregory] We learned Mr. Batzel was told to get into another office.
Mr. Batzel stated, "I'm not going anywhere with you."
At which point almost immediately
the perpetrator shot Mr. Batzel through the neck...
[gunshot]
...instantly killing him.
Obviously a very violent death.
Mr. Batzel was shot directly in front of Mr. Doud.
And he turned to run out the door.
[gunshot]
He turned just enough that he was shot once
in the upper shoulder on his backside.
He ran off and went to the next building over.
[Pickering] I wondered if Ray recognized the gunman
or if the gunman recognized Ray.
It's really unusual that to kill someone during a bank robbery.
So I wondered if that was because he was trying
to kill witness that may have known him.
[Gregory] Once the perpetrator exited the bank
it appears that he went down the sidewalk.
He did pass by another employee,
who saw a male with dark clothing pass by him,
bound towards the south parking lot.
[Pickering] We had law enforcement
going building to building, room to room,
looking for a gun man.
And what they found were employees locked
in the premises that were frightened.
[Sciortino] There was no evidence
that the suspect stayed on campus
any longer than it took him to run from the Credit Union
to the parking lot where his vehicle was parked.
[Gregory] We didn't have any cameras on that south parking lot.
So we had no sense of what car he may have entered
or what direction he may have fled.
[Pickering] When we did make the determination
that we are going to allow people to start to leave,
we had armed officers at every exit at the roadways
looking for the gunman. We searched every car.
It took hours.
Meanwhile a manhunt
spreads across western New York State.
There were at least a 100 law enforcement members from different agencies
on scene, the perimeters and chasing leads
that were outside on the highway
because the Xerox center
sat right off of a major road.
[Sciortino] He could have came out of the building jumped in his car
and been on the expressway in less than a minute.
And then within a five to ten minute drive
from the Credit Union he would have been in the city of Rochester
with hundreds and thousands of people.
So we definitely wanted to find him.
[Pickering] New York City police had a couple of choppers
in the air for us to get a bird's eye view
of the campus and the areas in and around,
to see if they can glean any information that would be helpful.
[Ahearn] We had no pictures outside the bank.
We had no idea what car, any of that information.
[Helligar] After an extensive search,
New York State police are no closer
to finding the killer and thief.
[Ahearn] This individual was in the wind.
I mean, just gone.
He just disappeared up in the thin air.
One of the victims was shot in the head.
He died inside the Credit Union.
The other was shot in the shoulder.
He ran from the building
into another Xerox building where he collapsed.
Police immediately began their search
inside and the outside the Xerox complex.
Late in the afternoon of August 12,
the terrible news travels across the country
to California where his 13 and 15-year-old daughters
are visiting family.
My sister and I were having a movie day at the theater
and then all of a sudden
my cousin came and pulled us out of the theater,
and in the hallway
my aunt's crying, my cousin is crying
and they said "Your dad has been shot."
And I have this weird state of,
"Okay, well, this is... He's gonna be okay.
He's shot but he's alive."
[Shannon] My sister thought he was in the hospital.
I knew instantly,
kind of had an out-of-body experience,
just knowing that... he wasn't...
alive anymore.
[Carrie] It was so overwhelming,
that my brain wasn't allowing me
to hear that he was dead.
We get to my uncle's house.
And at that point,
they said, "Carrie, no,
he's not in the hospital. He died."
[Shannon] I was there watching my sister break down,
and my body just kind of like,
I don't want to say shut down, but it just,
it was moving on autopilot.
I was scared.
I was scared at first,
but I figured I needed to step up
and help my sister understand
and she didn't understand for like an hour or so.
Who would've realized that the night before would be our last night...
to say I love you.
[sniffles]
And I miss you.
See you soon.
[Baker] As Raymond's family
deals with the most unimaginable news possible,
for investigators the clock is ticking.
It's been eight hours and there's a lot on the line.
There's a lot of pressure on investigators
to find someone who's armed and dangerous.
The person who committed this heinous crime
may have slipped away but in his haste
he left something crucial behind,
his image.
[Ahearn] The camera's critical.
You can't really get a stronger lead
than having a pretty good picture
from the bank robbery camera roll.
[Gregory] Investigators located the VHS
surveillance recordings of this incident.
Obviously very low-tech,
this is 2003 and even for 2003 I would submit,
they probably weren't the most high-tech innovations
that were being used inside the Credit Union on that day.
This video alternated still shots on rotating basis between five security cameras.
And it was essentially the luck of the draw
of when that camera would have taken a particular image.
Had it been a rolling HD video
we would have had a lot better information,
but again this was 2003.
[Ahearn] Honestly when I saw the pictures,
I thought that the photos were probably
some of the best I have seen in a bank robbery.
We had a facial shot of the individual.
He did wear sunglasses and he had the wig.
But you could pretty much,
you know, look at that person, if someone knew him
they, they would say something.
We released quite a number of photos to the media
right from the start to try to identify who the shooter was.
[reporter] Police say he may have dressed in FBI garb
so that he wouldn't appear suspicious.
This was all over the news. I remember seeing it on MSNBC and Fox News,
uh, within the first 24 hours.
[reporter] He carried a silver police badge,
and displayed two guns,
something police describe as a show of force.
[Baker] Meanwhile investigators start to
put together the images from the security footage,
and witness interviews,
to figure out what happened that terrible day.
[Gregory] Based upon our interviews with the witnesses,
the first thing encounter with the perpetrator
was outside of the Credit Union, actually.
The perpetrator was walking north from the south parking lot
and passed by an employee of Xerox
who noticed that this individual was...
dressed in an all-dark clothing,
that they were carrying a briefcase,
that they had an umbrella which was open
even though it had not been raining,
and it was s sunny day.
The best we can summarize as to why he was carrying an umbrella is,
there were security cameras that were posted outside
the Credit Union on the building.
Perhaps he was trying to avoid any type of detection
from those cameras. However the cameras weren't actually working.
So, it, it really didn't matter.
[Helligar] Investigators examine the CCTV footage
and listened to a 911 call where the bank manager
recounts what happened that day.
This is the first real security camera that picks him up
and clearly this photograph shows him with the umbrella
in his right hand and the briefcase in his left hand.
And the next shot we have, pretty clear,
this one was the first time we can see FBI,
returns into the cubicle.
The perpetrator immediately went
to the office of a manager of the location.
He sat down in a chair inside her office.
She looked up.
He explained at that time that he was there to conduct a security assessment.
[Ahearn] With the FBI raid jacket and the badge,
I think he was, like, understanding that
after 9/11 police did threat assessments, and practical exercises
and he was trying to say, he was running
some kind of a practical exercise, uh, at the bank.
[Gregory] There was some type of a ruse to convince the employees
so that you can maybe get into the back room where the vault was.
But the manager wasn't buying that
and his demeanor changed.
[Gregory] He pulled out two guns.
Then pulled out a brown paper bag.
[Gregory] The perpetrator told her
to begin filling the bag with money.
She did that.
That's Ray Batzel, he's, uh, completing
his transaction with the teller.
You can see the perpetrator
standing in that doorway looking various directions.
And we are able to determine what his height is,
with an half inch, he was six feet.
So we know we have a six-foot-tall perpetrator.
After the transaction and Ray Batzel is making his way out
and you can see the perpetrator with the gun extended
in his right hand, that's moments before he shot,
and then immediately he goes down
and this photograph unfortunately depicts
Mr. Batzel on the ground.
After reviewing the surveillance stills,
crime scene techs inspect the bank for evidence.
Technicians took numerous photographs inside the bank,
uh, every possible angle.
The chair that was in the bank manager's office,
we knew the suspect had sat in that chair
when he spoke with the bank manager,
so it was taken into custody. It was swabbed for DNA.
Our investigation determined
that both gunshots were made from a .38.
[gunshot]
And there were no casings because he had used
a revolver and not a semi-automatic handgun.
[gunshot]
The wig would have been nice for DNA,
uh, didn't get that.
The gloves would have been nice.
Didn't leave that behind.
But fortunately in his haste
of committing the robbery and the murder,
he had left the umbrella
inside of the manager's office.
[Gregory] The umbrella was unique.
This umbrella had rust already.
So obviously it had already seen some weather.
In addition to that it also has very unique characteristics.
All of the writing on the umbrella was in Japanese language.
And a gold sticker said [speaking foreign language]
toiletries, umbrellas... [speaking foreign language]
[Sciortino] The umbrella was treated you know, like a piece of gold.
It was taken into custody by the Webster Police Department
where they did fingerprint analysis on it
and ultimately there was DNA analysis done on that same umbrella.
[Baker] But back then in 2003,
DNA technology was
not as advanced as it is now.
They could be waiting for weeks and even months
to get an answer.
[Helligar] As detectives wait for DNA results,
they hone in on a seemingly mundane detail.
[Gregory] At the Credit Union
there is very little signage at all.
There's a mail box out front
which just says XFCU,
and there is a small sign on the glass window.
Unless you're familiar with that campus
or have an account at that location,
uh, you'd be hard-pressed to know where that location was.
[Ahearn] And what jumped right out at me was
you have to know this is here
if you're gonna go rob the bank.
Everyone was on the table in terms of being
a potential suspect in this case.
But we began to think the perpetrator
might have an account there.
He would know exactly where the Credit Union was.
What the layout looked like inside.
So we began to think, maybe there's an inside job here.
[Baker] Investigators have been working round the clock
to find out who did this.
And now they think they have a solid
working theory about who the bank robber is.
The first place you wanna look is in your own house.
The Xerox Federal Credit Union primarily served
uh, clients who were employed
by Xerox itself.
Xerox wanted to find the bad guy as much as we did.
So we asked Xerox security
to gather names of people that were
disgruntled, disciplined, or had been terminated.
And then those names were parsed out
to the investigative teams to interview.
We were looking for, you know, African-American man who may have been fired
or laid off, uh, in the previous four years.
Unfortunately, uh, back in that time frame,
Xerox is also beginning its downsizing.
[reporter 1] Xerox has been cutting jobs in Webster for years.
[reporter 2] Xerox retirees unsuccessfully sued
the company over pension and other benefit cuts.
There was approximately six to seven hundred names
on that list.
So it didn't do all that much at the time
without knowing more or having context,
who might, uh, stand out from those hundreds of names.
I suspected his name was in that group
that Xerox supplied to us as a disgruntled employee.
[Helligar] Investigators dig through the names
and find that some have criminal records.
After gathering several mugshots,
they contact their star witness, Carl Wisniewski.
Captain Pickering called me up
asked me, "Can you swing by
after work and look at some mugshots?"
I saw hundreds of pictures.
But I never saw a face that matched.
It made sense to me that it was someone who worked on campus.
I didn't recognize him.
[Baker] So we've got the DNA
which isn't coming through with anything.
We've got a picture that isn't yielding any leads.
So now they're thinking,
"Are we looking at this the wrong way?"
[Pickering] When we didn't solve it right away,
we wanted to encourage someone to come forward.
If they're fearful, they wouldn't ordinarily
come forward for the right reason.
[Ahearn] I had authority to automatically put up
up to $20,000 reward. I did it right away.
It was, I mean, it was a no-brainer.
See if we can generate some tips.
[Helligar] The phone lines light up,
and investigators receive hundreds of tips.
But none of them pan out.
However,
there's one tip that flies under the radar.
My name is Andrew Jasie.
I'm an investigator with New York State Police.
Few days after the robbery an employee of Xerox
had gone to the Webster Police Department with his father.
His father asked to speak with the Chief.
The Chief was not in,
and there was a disagreement.
Usually, uh, they would take information
and it would be forwarded up to me.
He didn't leave a name or number
and, and never recontacted the police department.
He just walked away.
That's really hard.
[Helligar] As investigators continue to sift through hundreds of other tips,
the Batzel family prepares to lay Raymond to rest.
My father's funeral service was huge.
People that he went to high school with came.
People that he had worked with came.
It was a big thing for me to see that they...
cared about a man...
that just went and did his job.
I remember standing there,
and it was just an endless line of people,
giving their condolences.
I just had wished that it was over, like...
I just lost my father, I don't want to be here talking to people.
[Wisniewski] I didn't know the man. Never met him before.
I really wanted to
give my respect to a man who lost his life way too young.
And, uh, oh, my God,
reporters gathered around me,
and management gathered around me,
"This is the guy that was in the bank, you know?"
It was, uh, something I've never felt before.
[Shannon] The media around my father's murder
was like a circus.
You know? Everybody wanted to know
details and what happened and how and when and where.
We ended up turning off
our television and phones and the Internet.
'Cause we were just done.
We just wanted to be left alone
and to process everything.
We just kind of became a unit of three.
[Pickering] Every time we'd start to get more leads called in, mostly lookalikes,
it turns out they have a solid alibi
or there's, you know, there's no way that they could be the suspect.
[Gregory] Law enforcement thought
it would be prudent to look at,
"Hey, who else is committing bank robberies?"
Are there any people that are involved
with robbing Credit Unions?
At that time we were having a number of bank robberies,
and people would try to cover their facial features.
[Sciortino] But to wear a costume
intimating that they're a federal agent
was very, very rare. Very unique.
Somebody put some thought process into it.
So we knew that we weren't just dealing with
a first-time criminal.
So we thought who has the ability to be violent,
who has the ability to, you know, get the handgun
and point at somebody's face from pointblank range
and pull a trigger and kill them
without even thinking twice about it.
Then we get a notification from the jail
that there was an inmate that wanted to speak to us,
who had information on the robbery.
He was an associate with a gentleman named
Thomas Terrell Lofton.
And lo and behold he was saying
that Mr. Lofton was involved.
Reason why he wanted to come forward
is he wanted to get out of jail.
[Gregory] I know for a fact that there were a number of people
on law enforcement that were sure
that Mr. Lofton might be involved
because he had been previously involved in Credit Union robberies.
And Mr. Lofton's mother lived approximately a mile away from the Credit Union,
and she was a former employee of Xerox.
When you take the whole picture into account
he was the guy.
Thomas Terrell Lofton was doing gun-point robberies
of other drug dealers.
He had younger males
that he had power and control over
that would do whatever he would ask them to do.
One of the unique things that happened is
they were dressed up as an RGE employee which is our gas and electric company
and they knocked on somebody's door
and when the person open the door
that's when the gun came out
and that person was robbed at their house.
He was the guy in the city
that nobody wanted to mess with.
[Gregory] In 2002 and 2003,
Thomas Lofton was involved with two other individuals
who were well-known for committing bank robberies
and Credit Union robberies.
Thomas Lofton was the driver
on at least one of those robberies.
[Sciortino] So we definitely wanted to find him
and talk to him,
and then lo and behold he got shot.
It was him and another person.
They had their little war going on in the city,
and they've been trying to take each other out.
He was in the hospital within a week or two of the Xerox homicide.
So Mr. Lofton was interrogated,
and of course he denied it.
He said he didn't know anything.
[Helligar] Police aren't convinced
Lofton is telling the whole truth.
So they embark on a thorough investigation.
Law enforcement did put a full-court press on
investigating Mr. Lofton,
along with several of his associates.
[Sciortino] We had talked to, uh,
Mr. Lofton's girlfriend at the time,
and she puts him in her apartment during the shooting.
Problem is the camera system there didn't work either.
So we couldn't corroborate that.
[Helligar] It's a shaky alibi.
But there are other problems with Lofton as a suspect.
[Gregory] He's a extremely large muscular man.
He did not fit the description
of the perpetrator of this crime in any way.
Secondly, when he did do Credit Union robberies,
he was with two other individuals.
You know, two other individuals
were the brain sort of the operation.
By the time the Xerox Credit Union robbery occurred
those two individuals were already locked up.
So he didn't have, uh, the crew with him at the time
to be able to carry out a sophisticated robbery.
It just, as it turned out, uh,
really there was just nothing
connecting Lofton to the crime at all.
[Sciortino] It was very disappointing and heart-breaking
but there was nowhere else
you know, the investigation can go
unless someone came forward with some new evidence.
Lofton is discounted and investigators have no other viable suspects.
So they turn to the best piece of evidence,
that the killer left at the crime scene.
What we have here is the umbrella
that was brought into the Credit Union.
Unfortunately, there were no usable fingerprints found on the umbrella.
The perpetrator was wearing gloves.
Didn't leave any fingerprints behind.
But the Monroe County Lab was in fact able to remove
human DNA from the umbrella.
We were able to obtain DNA from this latch
on the bottom end of the umbrella
where one might use it to push open the umbrella.
We also found DNA on this wraparound.
We are always hopeful when we do crime scene evidence gathering
that we are gonna get that piece of evidence
that's gonna immediately connect
the bad guy to the crime scene.
[Gregory] But given the level of ability
for testing back at that time,
they were not able to develop a DNA profile.
Just didn't have enough DNA to be able to do that.
On the face of it it looked like
they had all this evidence.
Two big things.
DNA found on the umbrella,
and a photo from the security footage,
and normally that...
would be enough to catch the suspect.
But it wasn't.
I think one of my biggest surprises was
when we put that photos out
that we, we didn't get many good leads.
So we upped the reward to $60,000.
It was a strategic move.
[Pickering] I went on every radio station I could get.
I took it to America's Most Wanted.
[Carrie] In the beginning we were hopeful.
I was like, America's Most Wanted,
there's gotta be something coming from this, right?
This might be the chance.
[Shannon] I thought, "Somebody knew who it was.
They just were... I think too afraid to speak up."
[Sciortino] It was a case we worked on tirelessly.
And every case has it's curves in the road.
And sometimes you have to wait
a very long time in order to get the phone call
or the piece of DNA evidence
or you know, witness statement that helps
put that piece of the puzzle together
that you have been waiting for.
[Wisniewski] After the robbery,
I was upset but...
I walked away that day.
You think about it in your dreams, and that's upsetting.
I was very sensitive to loud noises.
[gunshot]
But over the years
you start thinking about it less.
I felt that the robber had gotten away with murder
and he was never gonna be found.
[instrumental music playing]
[Gerald] Justice delayed is justice denied.
And I feel like I'm the guy.
I'm the one who has to solve the crime and I didn't solve it.
[woman] It was, I think, a lot harder on my sister.
They were closer as father and daughter.
I was more vocal about things, just about how angry I was.
My sister kept a lot of her feelings in.
We both didn't know how to handle it with each other.
I didn't cry for four or five years.
Because I was so closed-off
and hardened by it.
I would really want her around
but I didn't know how to tell her that.
[instrumental music playing]
It's been eight years since Raymond Batzel's murder
at the Xerox Credit Union.
However, new technology may give them a way
to crack open this cold case.
[Douglas] In 2011,
members of the Webster Police Department
decided that they would take that second set of swabs
down to the office of the chief medical examiner in New York City.
[Andrew] The additional swabs
from Monroe County Crime Lab were analyzed
for touch DNA.
Very small samples of, of skin cells,
likely that were picked up on that second set of swabs.
What these new testing kits allow us to do
because they have such higher sensitivity
is develop these DNA profiles
from much smaller quantities of DNA.
[Jeremy] A little more than a month later,
investigators finally get the news
they'd been waiting for since 2003.
[Douglas] And lo and behold,
they were able to establish through a 1 in 6.8 trillion chance
that the DNA in there is from the person who touched that umbrella.
But it was to a John Doe.
We didn't know who it belonged to.
[Jeremy] This is a huge breakthrough in the case.
They have a profile
but now they need a match.
[Gerald] I'm sure that the gunman
had no intention of leaving the umbrella behind.
Truthfully, I was very hopeful
that that DNA evidence,
that would ultimately lead us to our shooter.
We ran it through the CODIS system.
Uh, to see if we could get any hits.
Unfortunately, we did not receive a match in this case.
[Chuck] It was very disappointing and heartbreaking.
We were no closer 10 years later than we were 10 seconds after.
It will take another five long years
before they achieve another breakthrough.
[slow piano music playing]
My name is Seth Fleitman.
Special agent with the FBI.
So in 2016, uh, when I came in to the taskforce,
there was a push to reinvigorate the investigation.
And we were gonna do that by putting
new pictures out there.
The photographs that were out there were very grainy.
Um, certainly, all the technology, as we know,
uh, has evolved rapidly over time.
[Gerald] The VHS, uh, videotapes
were sent to Quantico to try to enhance
the video to get better pictures of the shooter.
[pensive music playing]
They put a little more brightness or a little bit more color here
or just zoom in and out, put it on a better quality paper.
Weeks later, the FBI finally has an enhanced image to share.
[Baker] In March, 2016,
the FBI holds a press conference
showing the improved photos.
[man] We hope that with the newly enhanced pictures,
people are able to figure out or believe
that they may positively know who that person is.
[Andrew] It was the highest quality photograph
that we could provide to the public.
To make that last-ditch effort to try and see
if we could get an identification.
So this is one of the photos that we were using.
As you can see, it's grainy, it's fuzzy.
That's something shiny that was on his lapel.
But once that gets enhanced and you can just see
what we're looking at, it's a US Marshals badge.
We saw the photos and it did look better
and a little bit more clear.
[officer] I would ask anyone with information
to please come forward and report it. You can remain anonymous.
We had a $50,000 reward that was presented at the press conference
in March of 2016.
We raised monies for large billboards.
We had him postered all up and around Monroe County.
A week after the press conference,
someone steps forward.
[Andrew] In March 2016, Jamie Labatte,
employee at Xerox,
called the FBI tip line...
-[ringing] -...after the press conference.
He told us that he had gone to the Webster Police Department in 2003
with his father, and tried to provide
certain information about an individual.
[Chuck] He came after hours.
And he was greeted by one of our road patrol sergeants.
He wanted to speak to Chief Pickering and only Chief Pickering.
And the road patrol sergeant said,
"Sorry, either he's not here" or "He's already gone."
Whatever, you know, words they exchanged,
Jamie and his dad left.
And never followed up with either the chief
or anyone else at the police department.
[Andrew] Jamie told us that his father had passed away in January of 2016.
And he saw the press conference few months later.
And he felt that it was a sign from his dad
to come forward with the information that he had.
He'd felt incredibly burdened by the fact
that he had held on to the information.
But he also believed
that somebody else had to have the information as well.
That he wasn't the only one.
He recognized the individual
in the enhanced photographs that were out there at the press conference.
We met him in my truck.
The person he provided to us worked for a period of time
while Jamie was in that particular division.
In what they called "scuff".
It was a refurbishing section
where they would sandblast and paint copier parts.
The name of the person he provided to us
was Richard Wilbern.
The next step is to try and find out everything about him.
The SOS, Staff Operation Specialist,
would run all the background.
And shortly after I'd given her Richard Wilbern's name,
she came back to my desk
and said, "You've gotta take a look at this guy."
[gun cocking]
[Seth] So when we got the tip from Jamie,
that he recognized those images to be Richard Wilbern,
we obviously started digging in.
When we're investigating bank robberies,
we will get people to see if there's a pattern to what they do.
[Jeremy] The FBI does a background check
and learns that not only does Wilbern have a record,
but the first thing on his rap sheet
is a bank robbery.
On September 3, 1980,
Richard Wilbern held up
the First National Bank of Rochester.
[Andrew] 1980, Wilbern would've been around 19 or 20 years old.
And we always believed, as investigators,
that the person who committed the Xerox robbery
had also committed a prior bank robbery.
They seemed very organized.
They seemed very planned and calculated.
Back in 1980,
he disguised himself by putting pantyhose over his face.
And he pointed a gun at the manager,
tossed the manager a bag
and in a slow, controlled voice,
ordered the manager to fill the bag.
[alarm blaring]
[Seth] One of the patrons in the bank realized there was a bank robbery,
ran out and called the police.
They stopped Richard before he even
was able to get out of the parking lot with the car,
and arrested him right then and there.
[mysterious music playing]
He served several years in jail
and then he has another conviction in 1987,
uh, down in Virginia for possession of a sawed-off shotgun,
which was illegal.
[Andrew] These are all certainly tell-tale things
that mirrored the information that we had in the Xerox case.
So investigators were cautiously optimistic
that this may be their guy.
But there's more to Richard than just his criminal background.
My name is Ray Wilbern and I'm the son of Richard Wilbern.
And I live in Rochester, New York.
My dad did tell me before I was born,
you know, he had an altercation with a bank
and he did time, I think about a year and some change or something like that,
And he said that was gonna be the last time, and you know,
the best thing that happened in his life was me being born.
So he put his focus and everything else towards something else.
And he bettered his life since that.
Growing up in Rochester, New York,
it was always me and him.
He was a single Black parent.
We wasn't on food stamps.
We didn't get assisted living or anything like that.
My dad was always working.
I went to prep school,
2003, in West Newton, Massachusetts.
And I was on the basketball team.
There was never a shortage of money.
[Jeremy] According to Ray,
his father was a devoted dad.
The FBI digs deeper
and hones in on Wilbern's past international travel.
[Andrew] Richard Wilbern made more than a dozen trips to Japan.
And what's most interesting about that is the only piece of evidence
that was found at the crime scene
was an umbrella with Japanese writing on it.
It had stickers which clearly had been placed,
uh, on the umbrella by a proprietor
selling that particular umbrella.
[Andrew] And the FBI translation team
said that it was a specific shop
in a specific area near Tokyo.
So when you find out about someone's travels,
and, um, you look at the people they may have traveled with,
we learned through various investigative techniques
that one of his associates that Richard had traveled to Japan with was Qadir.
So investigators want to talk to him.
[Seth] Qadir knew Wilbern for years.
But Qadir and Richard were no longer very close.
It wasn't that they were enemies.
They didn't have a falling-out.
But they were just, they were acquaintances at this point.
So he had no reason to try to protect Richard.
We learned the travel to Japan was to bring marijuana to Japan.
[Seth] We never found out exactly how much money they were getting,
but we were told it was a substantial amount.
It is tough to get marijuana in Japan.
So they were paying top dollar for it.
[Andrew] We showed Qadir the picture of the Xerox suspect,
without specific facts as to what happened that day,
and he identified the person in that photograph
as being Richard Wilbern.
He also noted the FBI raid jacket,
and then he indicated that when they were in Japan,
there were a number of shops that sold law enforcement memorabilia.
FBI, DEA, ATF, NYPD
jackets, hats, shirts, badges.
And they would frequent these shops during their trips to Japan.
[Seth] Richard tried to be a master of disguise.
On a trip to Tokyo with him,
Richard tried to wear a wig,
what Qadir described as a Rastafarian wig.
Qadir had actually called Richard out,
saying, "What are you doing?
We're not supposed to be bringing attention to ourselves.
You look ridiculous in that thing.
You look like a drug dealer."
But according to Richard's son Ray,
smuggling marijuana never happened.
My dad's friend Qadir was an odd man, to say the least.
I've known him since I was little.
When I went to Tokyo, yes, it wasn't just me and my father.
It was with Qadir, too.
But it was us together.
Hangin' with the locals, just understanding the culture and just...
vibin' with everybody and having a good time.
It was nothing drug-related or seeing my father was in
any type of illegal activity or anything like that.
[Jeremy] The circumstantial evidence
doesn't bode well for the single dad.
But the FBI is floored
when they discover that Richard considers himself a comedian,
and his videos are all over the Internet.
My name is Richard Wilbern.
And, uh, I'm from Rochester, New York.
Videos of him attempting to do stand-up comedy.
My dad was a man of, uh... a lot of things.
[audience titters]
He always had some type of joke on the side.
He wanted to be a comedian.
And he actually went to New York everyday
to take comedy school.
[Richard] The other week, I got in a fight with a ninja.
I got a lucky punch in. Bam!
[audience chuckles]
Knocked the mask off.
And I could see that it wasn't a ninja.
It was a Muslim lady.
[audience chuckling]
His comedy is...
I think, many people would say, offensive.
I finally figured out a way to be successful in New York.
I was cringing when I was watching it.
I can work for Sammy Davis.
He's one of a kind. If you get... you know,
if you hear his jokes or whatever,
you won't hear 'em nowhere else.
[Baker] Richard isn't doing stand-up
in some rinky-dink hole-in-the-wall.
He's doing it at clubs that are very well known in New York.
[indistinct chatter]
So like Carolines.
And the Gotham Comedy Club.
[Ray] No, he wasn't running, he wasn't hiding.
He was in plain sight.
He's up on YouTube.
Doesn't sound like a guilty person, I mean.
But there's one thing that puts him over the top
as a potential suspect.
Richard Wilbern absolutely had a grudge against Xerox.
[Jeremy] Richard began working for Xerox in 1997.
But according to Xerox,
he was not a model employee.
[Ray] My father was always chronically late and leaving early.
Which is not good but he had to do
what he thought he had to do was best for his kid.
'Cause, during those years, I was in fifth and sixth grade.
He didn't want me at home by myself all the time.
'Cause I didn't have no baby-sitter.
And he just felt that management above him
didn't understand the situation.
He kind of felt that he was being unheard.
He just felt like it was racial discrimination.
[Jeremy] Three years later, in February 2000,
Wilbern filed discrimination charges against Xerox.
One year after Richard filed his lawsuit,
he was fired for excessive absenteeism.
[Ray] His termination was based off of him dealing with me, his child.
And when they basically gave him an ultimatum, a job or his kid,
he's gonna choose me every single time.
[Jeremy] In 2001,
Richard filed a lawsuit against Xerox
alleging racist discrimination and harassment.
As well as a claim that he was fired in retaliation
for suing Xerox.
[Seth] Richard Wilbern lost.
The judge ruled in favor of Xerox,
and so that case was closed.
[Jeremy] After learning about Richard Wilbern's employment history,
the FBI agents re-visit the list
of disgruntled Black male employees
that Xerox produced back in 2003.
Richard Wilbern's name was there, and uh, everybody missed it.
I hate using that word, I "missed" it.
But it was there.
[Baker] After being terminated from Xerox,
Richard was making nearly $16,000 a year.
But by 2003...
he was only making $3,000 a year.
So you could say he was a desperate man.
[Ray] The school cost $30,000
to go there just for one year.
And I got a scholarship for $21,000.
And I know we had to come up with the other $9,000.
[Chuck] Usually on bank robbery,
you might get 2 grand maybe if you're lucky.
But our suspect got just over $10,000.
Obviously, we have a lot of pieces starting to fit together
with Richard Wilbern
between his criminal history, his former employment at Xerox,
the lawsuit against Xerox.
So now, the next thing is to find him
and get his DNA.
We didn't know where he was living.
We had some indication that he was at least
present in the Rochester area.
But we didn't have a good residential address for him.
We didn't really have a good vehicle for him.
We didn't know where he was.
[Andrew] He was a nomad.
We knew he was traveling but we didn't know his destination.
My dad had a kid
and moved back to Rochester to help his ailing mom
that was dealing with health issues.
He wasn't running. He wasn't hiding.
-[phone ringing] -[Baker] After 13 years,
investigators get a lucky break.
-[phone ringing] -[Andrew] The FBI found his phone number
in and amongst calls that had been made to the FBI.
[ringing]
[Seth] We checked our public access line
where people can call to make complaints.
On this line, we discovered that Richard Wilbern
-had himself been calling, trying to talk to an agent. -[ringing]
Claiming that he was a victim of somebody trying to rent him a property
that they didn't actually own.
[Baker] His call came three weeks
after the FBI press conference
on the Xerox Credit Union murder.
[Seth] Too good to be true? Are you kidding?
I didn't know what to think at that point.
I just couldn't believe it.
[Jeremy] So now that they've found him,
the next thing the FBI needs to do
is get Wilbern's DNA.
[Andrew] We were very concerned he would try and run.
So we devised a plan.
We called Richard Wilbern
to tell him we wanted to meet with him and talk with him about the real estate scam.
And we wanted him to come to the FBI office in Rochester
to sit down with us and talk about it.
After more than three months
of trying to track down Wilbern,
he's coming to the FBI
and he has no idea that he's been on their radar.
It's myself and Andrew Jasie.
Richard has his child with him.
His son's approximately maybe one years old at the time.
He's an infant for the most part.
We had presented him with a bottle of water
in an attempt to surreptitiously collect a sample of his DNA
to compare it to the unknown sample that was located on the umbrella.
You don't want touch DNA.
You want saliva. You want, like, good, solid DNA.
And so, we spoke to him for I think the better part
of an hour-and-a-half to two hours,
trying to get him to drink from this water bottle.
His son was playing in the room on the floor
and kept taking his attention away from us a little bit.
[Ray crying]
Eventually, me and Andy go and get him the bag of chips.
[Richard] Okay.
[Seth] And we're hoping that maybe if he has a little bit of salt,
he'll wanna open up that water.
[Richard] Mm-hmm.
[captivating instrumental music playing]
[Seth] So, sure enough, he starts eating the chips.
And then eventually drinks from the water bottle.
You know, me and Andy kind of look at each other like,
"All right, let's go back in there, let's close this up."
We were ecstatic, right?
Like, plan went without a hitch. Like, no problem.
Took some time but we were, we were stoked.
[Andrew] But then we get the curveball.
Both me and Andy knew it wasn't good.
After he drinks from the water bottle,
he then hands it to this son.
All I see is contamination.
There were two samples of DNA
admixed with each other.
It contaminated the DNA.
I think it was just bad luck
and a bit of misfortune for us
that he brought that child with him.
So we had to come up with another way of getting his DNA.
[Seth] You know, me and Andy went back to the drawing board
and had to figure out how to get him back to the office
and give us another sample.
So Andy comes up with this great idea
to bring him in under a ruse
that he was gonna help us with this white collar scam.
We knew he was down on his luck.
And we thought a good motivation
would be to sign him up as a source and potentially pay him.
We had to create documents to sign him up as a source.
The paperwork said that,
uh, you are agreeing to, you know, come in and work with the FBI
as a confidential human source
about this white collar crime or fraud
or swindle or whatever you wanna call it.
And then, I think there were a couple of ways
that we, you know, could monitor
your conversations with this individual that we were targeting.
[Andrew] So while I was creating the documents,
Seth said, "What if we have him put the documents
after he filles them out into an envelope?
And he seals the envelope."
And I thought that was the most brilliant idea.
[intense music playing]
[Andrew] I think him coming to the FBI office
shows that he had supreme confidence that he had gotten away with murder.
And I think he thought he was in control of the situation.
[Seth] And then he reads it over.
Signs the paperwork, folds it up,
puts it inside of the envelope
and then seals the envelope by licking it.
And I was ecstatic.
I mean, the only thing better would be him taking a cotton swab
and putting it inside of his cheek and rubbing it.
[Andrew] I felt incredibly fortunate
that our plan had worked
and we had a good DNA sample
of Richard Wilbern and Richard Wilbern alone.
Once we had the envelope secured into Evidence,
we sent it down to test that DNA.
They had acquired a DNA sample from the envelope
and compared it to the male donor A that was on the umbrella
in the two different locations,
and they found it to be a match.
It was incredible.
We knew it was him. But he didn't know that we knew.
And that was huge for us.
And we had to exploit that in the best way possible
by keeping that secret.
[Jeremy] Confident they have their man,
investigators invite Wilbern to the FBI office.
We want him to feel that this was just a conversation
between people who were working together
as a confidential informant.
We sat him down,
we told him there were some things
that we wanted to talk to him about.
We told him we wanted to get to know him a little better.
And because we were doing that,
we wanted to talk about some of his criminal history in the past.
And so, we almost immediately in the beginning,
Mirandized him through this idea
that we were gonna talk about his previous criminal history.
[Andrew] Eventually, we funneled it towards the conversation of Xerox
and the Credit Union.
[Seth] At the moment, he realized
what we were getting at.
He's starting to... smell it out, right?
He's starting to realize that maybe
we're not so interested in this...
this residential scam as we said we were.
[Andrew] And that's when Richard became very... guarded and solemn.
I wanted him to say, "I did it."
"I'm the one who killed Raymond Batzel."
I think he thought we were gonna show him a dead body.
You know, like they do on TV.
We were just gonna show him a picture of the umbrella.
And his demeanor changed.
He didn't wanna talk about Xerox.
Richard shut down.
[Andrew] Okay.
[Seth] And that's when we took him into custody.
[Peter] I, you know, heard an arrest was made
and then I heard how they did it.
And I just laughed.
You know, 13 years later, this was pretty good,
the way it ended.
I was thrilled, I think more than anything, for the family.
[Carrie] I received a phone call.
I was told
we arrested somebody. They'd caught somebody. He's caught.
And I just started crying,
screaming, "Oh, my gosh!"
Like, "It's not real!"
I'm overwhelmed with emotions
because I was never expecting that day to come.
When I had heard it was somebody that had worked at Xerox,
I felt hatred for him.
And I don't use that word often.
There's a human life
that was taken away.
Was it really worth it?
[news presenter] Well, it's been more than 13 years
since a suspect walked into the Credit Union
at the Xerox complex and robbed that location.
-Two people were shot, one was killed. -[siren wailing]
Now, federal prosecutors say that suspect
is in custody.
[Carl] I saw it on the news that he had been arrested.
And honestly, um, his face, his body size,
he was the right guy.
[Jeremy] But not everyone is relieved
by news of the arrest.
Richard's son, Ray, is utterly blindsided.
[slow instrumental music playing]
[Ray] 2016, September 27.
I got a phone call from the FBI
saying we need to talk to you about your father.
And I talked to him last night
so for the FBI to reach out to me,
I'm thinking his life is on the line.
In a physical way.
I said, "Okay, anything I need to know?"
And that was the first time I heard about a robbery
at the Xerox Credit Union.
So I wound up meeting with them
and they said, "Well, we think he did,
you know, this bank robbery over in 2003."
And then I'm like, "Okay, I don't know nothing about that."
They started showing me pictures
and everything else,
trying to make me ID that that was him.
And I said, "I don't know who that person is."
It wasn't my father. It wasn't somebody else.
He didn't have a murder or a killing personality.
He's a loveable guy, man. He's a...
The greatest man I ever been around, to be honest with you.
No matter what goes on, he has a positive attitude.
The reason why I'm looking at this photo
and I'm saying this is not my father, um,
my father's a little taller than what this is.
Even with shoes on, he's close to 6-feet.
This looks like a shorter person.
You can kind of see the face is kind of more puffy.
Dad's face is not really that puffy.
At the time of this incident, in 2003, my father still had braids.
We grew our hair out together during this time.
Where is the hair part?
With that much hair, you wouldn't be able to move that freely.
I don't know who this person is.
Unfortunately, that is not the person who I lived with my whole life.
They don't have none of the guns.
The don't have the FBI jacket.
They don't have the wig.
The evidence that we have is a umbrella.
And when they say there's a DNA sample,
that shouldn't be enough to convict him.
I know they don't have the right man.
[news anchor] It's been one of western New York's biggest unsolved cases.
A US attorney says Richard Leon Wilbern is in custody
for the 2003 Xerox Federal Credit Union robbery and murder.
[Baker] This case was a big deal for Rochester and the FBI.
The prosecution looks airtight.
They have his DNA.
They have the fact that he's a disgruntled Xerox employee.
But cases are often
much more complicated than they look to the public.
[Seth] This isn't Hollywood
and things aren't always perfect.
This case had a lot of pieces
that had to be put together,
and they had to be put together in a specific order...
[gun cocking]
[alarm ringing]
...to tell the story of what happened,
why it happened,
provide a motive,
and make a jury believe that this man did this heinous act.
[Jeremy] The prosecution is confident
the facts are on their side.
But there is a suspect from the past
that some still believe
is responsible for the robbery-homicide.
The name Thomas Lofton still was kicking around
as somebody who might be involved with this.
Knowing that, as we prepared for trial in this case,
we made a conscious decision
to obtain Thomas Lofton's DNA.
So I had FBI agents
swab him here in the federal building,
and send that down to OCME
to have it tested against the DNA profile that they had developed
back in 2011 on the umbrella.
And within weeks, they were able to issue a report
saying that he was completely excluded
as a contributor to any of the DNA on that umbrella.
[tense music playing]
[Seth] So trial started three years after his arrest.
I was very confident that we had the right guy.
I was less confident that we could convince 12 jurors
that this was the right guy.
[Douglas] We didn't have the wig,
the FBI jacket or the guns.
But we had the DNA on that umbrella.
[Andrew] The defense team questioned the validity
of the technique of the DNA testing.
Touch DNA testing is the best chance
to be able to develop a profile
and in this case, there's a match.
They were just trying to attack the evidence that we had
rather than giving some sort of alternate story
as to how his DNA ended up in the Credit Union that day.
[Jeremy] The defense also challenges
the surveillance photos from the day of the robbery
as an accurate means of identifying Richard.
[Andrew] The defense team believed that Jamie's identifications were invalid.
And that's the biggest wildcard, right?
You don't really know what's going on in the jury's mind.
[Seth] Qadir testifies and he identifies Richard in these pictures
and all the, you know, information he provided
about traveling over to Japan.
He wasn't getting any benefit from testifying.
And he knew Richard for a very long time.
[Andrew] For me, the most compelling testimony
came from the employees of the bank that day that testified.
It was incredibly moving.
[mysterious music playing]
[Carl] When I saw him sitting at the trial,
I looked at him
and he didn't have any emotion.
He didn't have any remorse.
But I didn't stare.
I know the jury was looking at me, 'cause they were listening.
I was just a good witness that day.
After Carl Wisniewski steps down from the witness stand,
the prosecution asserts
that Wilbern was desperate for the money.
[Seth] So the prosecution theorized that
the main reason that he went into the bank that day,
I think, was to get money
to pay some of these bills
and to keep his son enrolled at the school that he was in.
I don't think he went there necessarily
premeditated that he was gonna kill somebody.
But I don't think that he ever hesitated when the time came.
And he did it.
[Jeremy] The five-week trial concludes
on November 8, 2019.
And the jury adjourns to deliberate.
[Carrie] When the jury went in I was definitely nervous.
I was like, "They've got to convict him.
They've got to. There's DNA.
Like, how are they not gonna convict him?"
But there's still that doubt of...
"Are they going to?"
[Shannon] I was nervous while they deliberated.
I couldn't breathe.
The jury deliberates for approximately seven hours
before delivering their verdict.
[news anchor] A verdict is in.
Richard Wilbern has been found guilty on all charges.
[Shannon] I ended up running out of the court room
'cause I just needed to get out and get fresh air.
I... It was so surreal. Like, wow!
I could breathe again.
I have to say that I am proud of all the investigators that worked on this,
and there was a cast of a thousand.
It was a multi-agency approach.
From a small-town police department
to federal prosecution of the case in federal court.
You know, it's...
it's nice to know that the good guys did win.
[Douglas] They were under tremendous pressure
back in 2003 to solve this crime.
There were turns in the road where, yeah, we were frustrated.
The community, perhaps, was frustrated.
But in the end,
the, the goal is to get the right person.
And if that took three months, three years
or in this case, 13 years,
we have the right person.
And that's all that matters.
[Jeremy] On September 22, 2020,
Richard Wilbern is sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
[slow instrumental music playing]
[Ray] I've come to grips with the understanding
that he will die in prison.
The main thing I want somebody to know about my father is
he's not a monster.
No matter the situation, I am proud of who I am.
I'm proud to be a son of Richard Leon Wilbern.
And that nothing, no media, nobody's going to take that way from me.
I'm proud of my father.
My hearts do go out to that family, 'cause they lost a loved one.
You don't wish that on nobody on their worst day.
So my sympathy still goes out to that family.
[Carrie] It's hard to say his name for me.
Sometimes I wish I didn't see his face and know who he was.
You murdered somebody.
You took somebody's life on purpose.
And then you go out and you live your life
like nothing happened.
And I don't know Wilbern's family.
I don't know his kids.
But my heart hurts for them because they're suffering
because of their father's actions.
[piano music playing]
[Shannon] I think about my father everyday.
As my kids play,
I can just see my dad throwing them up in the air
and playing with them
and you know, being the best grandpa that he could be.
And then it just... it hits you.
My son, Jackson,
he got my dad's blue eyes and his blonde hair.
It reminds me a lot of my father.
And he's always happy as well.
And my dad lives through our kids.
[Carrie] Well, there's a ripple effect.
It hurts his family.
His youngest son is now living without a father figure
on a daily basis.
It's not only my mom, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles,
my sister and I
but it's my kids, my sister's kids.
There's hurt everywhere.