- I'm kate snow, and this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- He's like, "I'm gonna destroy you."
The fear was terrible.
I can't even describe it, it's a surreal thing.
People thought I was dead.
- The attack was sudden and savage.
- I saw a man standing there.
I heard multiple shots.
- The wife, the only witness.
- The only thing I could see was his eyes.
- Her story was concerning, about a masked man
Shooting her husband and leaving her alive.
I'm worried, did she kill him herself?
Did she hire somebody?
- Then a revelation:
The dead man had a dangerous dream.
- We ended up finding a lot of paperwork
Related to the oil business.
- I remember him telling us.
"I'm gonna make millions of dollars."
- A big money venture oozing with outlaws.
- A violent individual, been to prison for robbery.
A big man, probably two hundred and fifty pounds
Of steroided rock muscle and significant criminal history.
- Greed is what killed my dad.
Greed is what caused all of this.
- A thirst for oil, a lust for blood.
- I trusted a con artist. I trusted a sociopath.
- Wild, isn't it?
What can happen to a quiet little prairie town
When oil comes along. - Yeah.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
Businessman doug carlile
Was convinced he was about to strike it rich,
With a deal guaranteed to set his family up for life.
But after the loving grandfather was gunned down,
Investigators wanted to know who set him up.
In the hunt for doug's killer,
Detectives uncovered secrets that led them
To an intricate murder plot, and another frightening
Discovery: Doug was not the only victim.
Here's keith morrison with "a dangerous man".
♪♪
- Among the green and pleasant landscapes
Of american privilege is a fine,
Historic rise of land called the south hill.
Here, for a hundred years, has been the home of
Spokane, washington's elite.
In their queen anne and craftsman mansions,
Peace lives here.
Quiet, rectitude, and certainly not
The kind of story we're about to tell,
The kind of story with ambitious men,
Dark plots, and dames.
- I asked him, I said, "am I just
"the dumb blonde who missed it?
"or did everyone miss it?"
- The one so many people missed.
Before that dreadful event here
In the wooded enclave of life's winners.
- He thought that god was blessing him and my mom.
- We thought we were walking on water.
- Here they were, empty nesters,
All alone in their grand house in the south hill,
Convinced that their successes,
Their six grown kids, their good life,
Were products of an unflinching trust in god.
- You know, he finally got out of the desert,
And he was gonna get into the promised land.
- Yes, the promised land, riches beyond imagining.
As the not-so-dumb blond knew so well.
- It was a madhouse, it was the wild west.
- So maybe that's why the thing on the south hill
Wasn't gonna stay here.
- My life will never be the same.
I'm sorry.
♪♪
- It was wintertime when it happened, christmas season,
15th of December, 2013,
A Sunday evening after church.
- This is how our story began,
In an ugly splash of violence and terror.
- But was this the beginning of the story
Or the end?
That was the evening spokane police detectives,
Brian seznick and mark burbridge were pulled
Into the strangest case of their careers.
- It was the most unique homicide I had investigated,
Uh, and I knew that from the first moments
Of my involvement. - Really?
Just, you knew? - Yes.
- It was seznick who drove over first to the address
On south hill.
The sort of place a homicide detective can go a whole career
Without visiting a single time.
- The house, it's in a-a very
Upper class neighborhood. - Yeah.
The south hill, that's like where you wanna be
In town, yeah? - Right.
I mean, the street that it's on,
I'd never been to before. Um, there's just not--
- Why would you? As a homicide detective,
You're just not gonna go there. - There's just not--
Yeah, there's just not crime up there
In general, so it was very odd.
- The home, the detective learned,
Belonged to a businessman named doug carlile,
And his wife of many years, elberta.
First responders had arrived sometime earlier,
Put up their crime scene tape.
Seznick walked into the house.
- It was just a weird scene all in all.
Um, this was December 15th, there's christmas music
Playing throughout the house
As we're investigating. - That would be bizarre.
- It was very bizarre.
They're very religious people,
So there's religious, you know,
Scripture written on the walls.
And then you have this-this horribly violent
And gruesome murder with the body laying on the floor
That you're investigating.
It was a very, very odd scene.
- Sixty-three year old doug carlile was lying
On the kitchen floor, clearly the victim
Of a close range shooting.
- There was a lot of blood around the body, um,
A lot of-- lot of shell casings,
A lot of bullets lying around.
- How badly was this person damaged?
- Uh, he'd been shot seven times.
It was obviously a very brutal attack,
It wasn't a-- just a one-time shot
And then the person ran out.
- Clearly, somebody was making sure.
- Correct, whoever had done this,
We knew that they wanted to make sure he didn't survive.
- And whatever had happened here
Didn't appear to have been motivated
By burglary or robbery.
The entire house was locked up tight, windows, doors.
- You know, he still had his wallet,
He had his cell phone.
Walking throughout the house,
Everything was still in place.
Um, it hadn't been ransacked, uh,
Nothing was missing that we could find.
- It was elberta, doug's wife,
Who'd called 911 in what sounded like
A state of abject terror.
Arriving first responders had found her hiding
In an upstairs closet.
They took her downtown to talk to burbridge.
- Elberta, my name is mark, I'm gonna be the lead
Detective on this case. - I'm not very happy.
I want-I wanted to see my husband
And they wouldn't let me see him.
- The detective was ready to sympathize, of course,
But his training, his instinct,
His eye told him not yet.
Something looked a little off here.
What'd you make of her? - She's unique,
And some of her responses threw up red flags
And made me concerned about whether she was
Involved in this or not. - What kind of responses?
- Uh, she didn't care about the police investigation,
All she cared about was hugging her husband
And praying for him, and wanted to pray
Over her body and she was very upset
That the patrol officers would not let her do that.
- I want my husband!
- There's nothing we can do for your husband right now.
- Well, I could have- I could have held him,
I could have told him I loved him,
I could have prayed for him.
- And then, when the detective asked what happened--
- This is what happened, we got home--
- --Elberta told a story, and neither the telling
Nor the story made any sense at all.
- I'm worried whether she had a motive.
Money, jealousy, a boyfriend,
He has a girlfriend she's mad about.
- A wife's tale
Raises questions and suspicions.
- Rehearsed is a good word.
- It sounded that way to you?
- Yes, it did.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Mark burbridge had seen a thing or two
During his years on the police force.
Had heard all the lies and dodges
And witnessed floods of phony tears.
So he paid careful, experienced attention
When elberta carlile told him what happened
That Sunday evening in the house on south hill.
- What happened tonight?
- We went to church.
We went to a church function.
Nothing-- I don't know what happened.
Hell happened, a nightmare happened,
That's what happened. - Okay.
- And elberta's story, said detective burbridge,
Just didn't add up.
- All of a sudden I hear, uh, "it's okay, it's okay!"
And then I hear-- I hear, um,
"back off, back off, back off!"
And when I heard the "back off" I saw--
I looked and saw a man standing there in all black.
- Her story was concerning about a masked man wearing
All black coming into the house and shooting her
Husband and leaving, and leaving her alive.
Made me worried that maybe she'd hired a hit man
Or maybe she was making up the story
And she was involved in what happened.
- The thing was, the killer saw elberta.
She came right out and said so.
They stared at each other, soul to soul.
So why would a hit man leave an eyewitness alive?
Unless, she was in on it?
- I'm worried whether she had a motive.
Money, jealousy, a boyfriend,
He has a girlfriend she's mad about.
Did she kill him herself? Did she hire somebody?
Did she get one of the children to do it?
These are all my concerns.
- Besides, said burbridge, he's seen many people
Caught by sudden violence and grief,
And elberta was agitated, certainly,
But to his practiced eye, her emotional reaction
Was somehow flat, as if practiced.
It bothered him.
- How long had you been home?
- It happened instantly when we got home.
It was like somebody ambushed him.
- The way she told her story about a masked man
Killing her husband of forty-two years...
- It almost seemed like it was rehearsed or like
She'd thought about this and, "what could I say?"
- Rehearsed is a good word.
- It sounded that way to you?
- Yes, it did.
- But you don't have to take it from the detective,
We were able to arrange an interview with elberta too.
- My whole life was over as I knew it.
- Elberta told us that when she and her husband returned
From church that evening, they drove through the gate
Of their property as usual.
- He goes, "I'll get the gate, you get the door."
- Did anything look pretty much the same as when you left?
- No, no.
It just didn't feel right.
So I started to head up the stairs by this time,
And I got all the way to the top of the stairs,
And I started down the hall and I heard muffled noises.
Headed right back down the stairs.
And I got down all the way to the bottom stairs.
I called out to doug and I said,
"doug, is somebody here?"
And I looked to my left, the man was standing
Right in front of the doorway.
And so-- - how far away from you?
- Ten feet at the most. - Close?
- Nine feet. And I looked at him,
And it was a man all in black,
And he had a mask on,
And he had a gun pointed
Where I knew my husband was standing.
- So you couldn't see doug-- - I couldn't see doug--
- --You just saw this man? - I only saw this man
In black. He had a mask on,
The only thing I could see was his eyes.
And he looked at me, he never moved the gun,
And he blinked three times.
And I thought, "why is he blinking at me?"
- I would think, "why is that guy in my house
Holding a gun?" - no.
What I thought was, "oh my god, what do I do?
He's gonna-he's gonna kill me before I get up the stairs."
I pulled myself up the rail, up the stairs and--
Because my legs wouldn't work.
And I was just starting down the hall
When I heard multiple shots.
- Did you realize right away what must have happened?
- Oh, absolutely.
I knew my husband had to have been shot.
And so I thought, "I gotta hide."
- Elberta ran toward a closet on the home's second floor,
She said, shut the door, and called 911.
- Do you remember what it felt like in there?
What you felt like?
- Oh, sheer desperation.
Just sheer desperation and just this
Overwhelming need to-to go to my husband.
I wanted to go to him, I wanted to comfort him,
I wanted to tell him I loved him,
I wanted to tell him it was gonna be okay.
I wanted to pray for him.
- When the police arrived,
They found elberta in the closet.
- I said, "I want to go to my husband."
They said, "well, they're working on him."
And I said, "no, I want to go see him.
Please let me go to my husband."
And they said, "no, you can't go down there."
- Did you ever get to see him that night?
- No, no.
- Now elberta found herself face to face
With detective burbridge.
Trying to get him to believe a story about
A masked killer who stared right at her,
And yet, left her alive to tell the tale.
- I mean, that sounds a little made up almost,
Doesn't it? - Yes, it does.
It sounds hollywood.
- Have you ever heard of a case where somebody
Laid eyes on a witness to him killing someone
And didn't take any action?
- I've never had that happen.
- So you would have expected--
- Something, yes. - Yeah.
- At least an attempt.
- But there was something in elberta's story that night
That did make sense.
Before the murder, as she and doug drove to church,
She said, they saw something out of place.
- There was a van kind of sitting, like,
Up against the curb, a white van.
- Like it didn't belong there or something?
- Yeah. - A white van.
As police canvassed the neighborhood after the murder,
A witness across the street said she saw it too.
- She had come home, uh, around five o'clock that evening
And noticed a white van parked in front of her house.
And it was parked in a way that, uh,
It made her nervous to the point she thought
Maybe someone was breaking in.
- I mean, why would she be suspicious of a van?
- Right. It was a van she'd never seen before, um,
And in that neighborhood everyone knows everyone.
- The questions was: What did the white van
Have to do with the murder of doug carlile.
Or, the cops wondered, with his wife, elberta?
- A neighborhood security camera.
What tales would it tell?
- We actually saw that suspect
And saw the path that he ran.
- Could you tell who it was?
- All you could really see is that it was a subject
Appeared to be muscular build, wearing all black.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Up here on spokane's toney south hill,
Beat cops and detectives fanned out around
A neighborhood utterly unused to violent crime.
But downtown at police headquarters...
- This is a secure building, so if you need to go somewhere,
Knock on the door, okay? - What, I'm in jail?
- The victim's wife, elberta carlile,
Told a crazy story about a man in black
Bursting into the house, killing her husband,
Looking her square in the eye,
But leaving her alive.
So, burbridge wondered, did she hire him?
- In my world, wives kill husbands.
And so the relationship is-is a probability.
- But then, up at the house, they heard a curious story
From a neighbor.
That very evening for a couple of hours before the shooting,
A mysterious white van was parked just across
The street from the carlile's house.
- Of course, in many, if not most,
Neighborhoods in america, a parked white van
Might not attract a bit of attention.
- But this is the south hill after all,
Nondescript white vans don't just show up
And hang around here. So the neighbor noticed.
And then doug carlile winds up murdered.
- We didn't know if it was related or not,
But it-it was obviously something that we
Considered immediately.
- And again, this being the south hill,
Another neighbor had the wherewithal to provide
A special kind of help.
- Homeowner in the neighborhood had
A video camera that covered his driveway,
And we picked up what we thought was the van
About two hours before the murder.
- Here it is, that video.
And sure enough,
A white van coming and going
On the streets of south hill that night.
But did it have anything to do with the murder?
And what about that man in black elberta said she saw?
If he actually existed, hired killer or whatever,
He must have waited somewhere around the house
For the carliles to get back from church.
He could have killed doug carlile then possibly
Escaped in that white van, but no one saw anyone
Going out the front door.
But what about back here behind the house?
They called in a tracking dog,
Stood back, and watched.
Basically the track went through some arborvitae,
Over a little fence, through the neighbor's backyard.
And in the very back corner of their yard
Is a gate that was left open.
And just before the gate, there was a puddle of water.
And there was a good footprint in that puddle of water,
And it was apparent that it was fairly recent.
- Could be your guy. - Could be our guy.
Just beyond that, just outside the gate,
There was a-- what appeared to be a welding glove
Lying in the leaves.
- A welding glove? - A welding glove.
So right away we thought, "is this something
That may have been dropped?"
But it was odd enough and in a place that we knew
The suspect had run after the incident,
That we ended up collecting it as evidence.
- Not really knowing whether that had
Anything to do with your murder?
- Correct, we didn't know we-- you know, in something
Like this where it's a complete who-done-it,
You know, you take everything and hope
Something ends up helping your case.
- They kept looking, so did the dog.
Just beyond where the welding glove was found
Was a small wooded area.
And across the street an elementary school,
Which meant maybe the school's security system
Could get them a picture of the guy.
- Another detective was able to get that video
Almost immediately.
- And sure enough, when they looked at the video,
There he was. - We actually saw
That suspect and saw the path that he ran.
- Could you tell who it was or tell very much about him?
- It was a very grainy video.
All you could really see is that it was a subject,
Appeared to be muscular build, wearing all black.
- All black.
He was hard to make out, but there he was in the video,
The elusive man in black running toward a main road.
- When detective burbridge arrived
And got a look at this...
- I've done a lot of homicides and-and, at that point,
I thought that this was a professional hit man,
Probably unrelated to our victim at all,
Or the person involved in this.
And I went and found my lieutenant.
I knew that this was going to be
A very complicated investigation,
And we needed a lot more manpower to get
Very fast on the case further down the road.
- And so in a matter of hours,
Detectives were called in from all over the department,
Time off was cancelled.
So many questions to answer:
What else did the neighbor see?
What did that welding glove have to do with anything?
And who was the man in black?
And, a more basic question, was elberta carlile
Involved in a plot to kill her husband?
- The closer I got to the lord,
It's like the further we got apart.
- Even elberta admits their marriage had seen
Its share of trouble. - I did something drastic,
I left him without his knowledge.
- Take the kids with you? - Oh, of course.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm kate snow.
Elberta carlile told detectives a harrowing tale,
Saying she locked eyes with a masked intruder
Moments before he opened fire on her husband.
Investigators believed the killer was a gun for hire
And wondered if elberta was hiding a deadly secret.
But troubling questions about the carlile family fortune
Would soon send investigators down a different path.
Here again is keith morrison with "a dangerous man."
- As police combed the south hill looking for
Evidence of suspects in the murder of doug carlile,
His wife elberta had no idea that
Her behavior had raised alarms.
Who cares about stupid evidence?
- But, police 101, the victim's nearest and dearest
Often becomes prime suspect number one.
And elberta, with her wild story,
Was certainly no exception.
And then detective burbridge was able to get
A close look at the early evidence.
And especially that video of the running man in black.
And...
- Immediately it became apparent to me that
Whoever did this had reconnoitered the scene
And spent time planning this
Because of the very elaborate escape route.
It made me concerned that, uh,
Elberta was probably telling the truth about
Who was involved and what happened.
- When burbridge saw all that planning,
Along with the videotape showing a man in black,
He thought it far less likely elberta carlile
Was anything but a victim.
But in her brain, while the detectives
Kept going on about this question or that,
Two thoughts blocked out all else:
Her desire to see her husband
And an overwhelming need to tell her children what happened.
- I went to call them and I couldn't even see the numbers,
I couldn't-- I was just frantic.
And I said to the police, "help me!"
And then I thought, "wait, you can't help me.
You don't even know who I'm looking for."
But finally, an hour away in the town of moses lake,
The phone rang at the home of shane carlile.
- I received a call from my mother.
We were hanging ornaments on the christmas tree,
And she said that,
Just in a kind of a screaming panic,
"shane, your dad--
Your dad, he was shot six times."
- You called everybody? - Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the thought hadn't even sank in yet,
It was just a straight up, "okay, let's get to work,
Let's figure out what we have to do."
I started contacting everybody and, you know,
To have to listen to everybody's cries
And screams over the phone.
- The carlile's eldest, malaney,
Was at her own daughter's ballet recital
Across the state near seattle.
- He goes, "dad's been shot." and, um-- and I said,
"I-- what do you mean dad's been shot?"
Um, "dad has been killed."
- And so malaney greeted her daughters after the recital
With the news about grandpa.
- Oh, they loved their grandpa.
He was the greatest to them, to all three of them.
They had really good relationships with him.
- It was a relationship that almost wasn't.
For any of them.
- Doug and bertie, as he liked to call her,
Were teenage sweethearts, married young,
And as often happens, even as their family grew
Their marriage shriveled.
- What happened? - Life happens.
- Bertie found god, doug did not.
- The closer I got to the lord,
It's like the further we got apart.
- Until it became clear to bertie,
She won't go into detail,
That she and doug were doomed.
Unless... - I did something drastic.
I left him without his knowledge--
- Take the kids with you? - Oh, of course.
- So you went off on your own with four kids?
- Mmhmm. No job, no nothing.
Yeah. To a city I didn't know.
- To seattle.
Three hundred fifty miles from the little town
In oregon where they lived back then.
Her church kept her going, while doug-- well,
Here's the story according to bertie.
"he kept guns," said bertie.
"lots of them. And lost and alone,
He decided to use one on himself."
- As he crawled toward-toward those guns,
He said that he heard
This horrid voice that said,
"he's mine."
And then he heard another voice that said,
"no, he's not. He belongs to me."
And he said it was a thunderous, authoritative,
Shook the whole room voice.
And the next thing he knew he felt arms picking him up
And putting him on the bed. - He told you this?
- Yes, he told me this months later.
- Quite a story.
The one that got doug saved and back with his family.
After that, he started an excavation business,
And as his kids grew up, six of them, many followed him.
It became the family business.
- He's a salesman. You know,
He can-he can talk ya into something.
- A charmer?
- Yeah, totally. A total charmer.
- What was his-his business philosophy?
I mean, was he a numbers crunching guy
Or was he a handshake guy?
What what-what sort of-- - he was a handshake guy.
He expected his word and a handshake was good,
And he knew it was.
He expected that of others, and that isn't always true.
- And there were setbacks.
Two bankruptcies, trouble with the irs,
A string of failed businesses,
And fallings out with business partners,
Who accused doug of being less than honest
And of not paying his bills.
- How would doug react to those?
- He never gave up, and we always
Took care of what we owed,
And we would move forward.
- And as he entered midlife,
Doug carlile seemed content doing deals
While his sons shane and seth ran the business.
- He would give the shirt off his back to anybody.
- He just had a huge heart.
He had enough room in it for everybody.
A huge heart.
- And taught you what you know?
- Absolutely.
Every aspect of business, every aspect of life.
- When the kids were grown, doug and bertie ended up
In spokane to be near their favorite church,
Whose pastor preached the prosperity gospel.
That is the idea that god rewards true belief
With financial success.
And they certainly looked successful when they bought
That sprawling house on the south hill.
- They wanted to get an older house like that,
That's just something they loved.
But they also always wanted all the family to
Come for all the holidays and spend it with them.
- Right.
So there's a bedroom for everybody?
- We all had our own room, yeah.
It worked out pretty good.
- Did it look to you as if your dad and your mom
Were finally at the place where they were
On the top of the hill?
- They were doing the best I ever saw them do.
They were happy, they had got it,
They had figured it out.
- But now, doug carlile was dead,
And detectives tallied up the signs of his earthly wealth.
Still parked in the drive, elberta's new mercedes,
Doug's new pickup, and inside in doug's office,
Documents detailing the family's fortune.
- There was a lot of financial paperwork,
And the ones that struck me immediately was there was
Loan paperwork that had, uh, appeared, uh,
Mr. Carlile had filled out, uh,
For different businesses.
And they had his net value at between
Six and twelve million depending on
Which piece of paper you looked at.
- And then, there were the documents
The detectives couldn't read.
That is, the ones written in arabic.
Who was doug carlile?
Successful, god fearing businessman?
Or what?
- I remember him telling us, you know,
"I'm gonna make millions of dollars,
And this is gonna be it.
And this is gonna be for our family.
And, um, you know, we're all gonna be rich."
- Investigators take a hard look at
Doug's business practices. Had he made any enemies?
- They may have a reason to be pretty mad at him.
- Our suspect list kept growing.
- I was running this investigation,
Eventually, in about eight directions,
Trying to eliminate a lot of business partners,
Seeing if mr. Carlile had a secret life.
- Even seasoned detectives are surprised.
- I just don't believe in coincidences like that.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- It was obvious now, no getting around it.
Spokane detectives burbridge and seznick
Took a look at the clues dug up that first night.
Surveillance video showing a white van circling the area,
Elberta's story about a masked shooter
Dressed in black,
The video of a black clad man running away.
All that could mean only one thing:
This was a hit, a professional killing.
Which begged the question, why would anyone want to kill
A beloved, god-fearing grandfather?
Murdered while christmas music filled his big old house.
- It was almost a surreal-surreal scene.
You know, the house is decorated for christmas,
Christmas music playing.
- Perhaps some answers would come from
What detectives found in doug's office.
Documents, half in english, half in arabic.
And those they could read
Were very interesting indeed.
- There was pre-filled out paperwork promising,
You know, 100% return on investment in ninety days
If you'd invest in their company.
- So it appeared that your victim had been
Promising people huge returns on investment?
- Correct.
- He had a whole binder with paperwork,
And it included names of people
Who had bought into this and invested.
- Wait a minute, who offers a 100% return so fast?
Was this for real?
The names, reports, and records all seemed
To be related to one thing.
- We ended up finding a lot of paperwork related
To the oil business in north dakota.
- The oil business? Why that?
Doug carlile, remember, was an excavator,
Not an oil man.
But of course, a whole army of ambitious, hard working men
Had fled to established careers
To grab for a piece of the wealth
Dangled so enticingly
By north dakota's oil fracking boom.
Thus, were prairie towns on sudden steroids,
And man camps, bursting with pent up testosterone.
By the time doug met his awful fate in December 2013,
The wild black gold rush
Around the bakken oil fields had peaked,
But investors looking for a big payday
Wouldn't have known that yet.
And with great wads of eager cash,
They chased a stake in what they hoped
Might be billions still in the ground.
Apparently, doug carlile was one of them.
According to his family, he got turned on to oil
By a friend who knew a guy.
- He told us about north dakota.
"hey, it's booming there.
You should go check things out and see what's happening."
- First, doug partnered in a trucking company
That served north dakota's many oil rigs,
An outfit called blackstone,
Started by the guy his friend introduced him to.
And then, opportunity knocked.
One of those opportunities of a lifetime
Ordained from above, according to doug.
- The whole thing kind of fell into his lap,
And I think he thought that that was his calling from god,
Is to move forward in that lease.
- An oil lease that is.
A lease that would give doug,
And any partners he could bring in,
The exclusive right to drill for oil on
640 acres of land on the mha indian reservation.
The catch was, that sort of opportunity
Doesn't come cheap.
- So he had to raise some money?
- Oh yeah, the lease was almost $2 million.
- And to raise that, doug carlile tapped his friends
Around washington state, his business partners,
Even his kids. - I put $100,000 into it,
And it wasn't for a return on it or anything, you know?
It was to help him with his dream to-to fulfill that.
- But the next step to fulfilling doug's dream
Was even more daunting:
Finding investors to pay for drilling
As many as eight wells on the property.
And that price was much steeper,
More than $100 million.
But the potential payoff was immense.
And, doug firmly believed, god's will,
A reward for his faith.
- We thought we were walking on water,
You know, with the whole deal.
We thought, "this is a miracle."
- I remember him telling us, you know,
"I'm gonna make millions of dollars
And this is gonna be it,
And this is gonna be for our family and,
Um, you know, we're all gonna be rich."
- We sat on the couch one day and he said,
"what would you do if you had
All the money you could ever want?"
And I said, "so, if we had this money
Then we would use it to serve the lord,
To serve ministries,
To serve people, our family."
- But now all those good intentions,
All those dreams were gone.
Now detectives slogged through the paperwork
On doug carlile's desk.
Those documents in arabic turned out to be
A scam a conman was trying to run on doug.
But doug, they could see, had been making promises too
To investors, promises he couldn't keep.
And he must have known it.
100% return, practically overnight?
Impossible.
- Meaning these were partners who had come in
And now he may have owed them a tremendous amount of money.
- Correct. - They may have a reason
To be pretty mad at him.
- Our-our suspect list kept growing.
- How many partners did that guy have anyway?
- About ten that we could find. There may be more.
- Detective burbridge began calling doug's partners
And discovered that most of them
Lived in or around washington.
Any one of them who could be considered
A person of interest was hundreds or thousands
Of miles away from spokane the night
Doug was murdered. - It concerned me greatly.
I just don't believe in coincidences like that.
- What? It's a coincidence
That they just happened to be not there?
- Correct. - In other words
They may have planned not to be there--
- Yes. Yes, sir. - --When something was gonna happen?
- Where do you go? I mean,
Do you know which one to target or which--
- I was running this investigation, eventually,
In about eight directions
Trying to eliminate a lot of business partners,
Uh, seeing if mr. Carlile had a secret life,
Did he owe somebody else some money?
'cause he had a lot of failed business dealings
In his other businesses.
And so I had-had a lot of concerns.
- Angry ex-business partners?
Angry current business partners?
What, if anything,
Did she have to do with it?
- Yeah, I mean obviously I didn't know at the time
What he was doing.
- Detectives learn about a charismatic couple
Knee deep in doug's oil venture.
- They look like ken and barbie,
Their perfectly white teeth and their tans.
- Did they know anything about the murder?
And then, finally,
Investigators have someone to question.
- I'd researched his criminal history
And knew that he had a very significant criminal history,
So I was concerned that was he my hit man?
- We're gonna start talking about some things honestly here.
- Okay, that's fine.
- People are tellin' me you're the shooter.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Elberta carlile was inconsolable.
- Instantly that night,
That night I lost everything.
- Elberta's eldest daughter, malaney,
Left her own family for a while
To stay with her mom, try to keep her sane.
- She would wake up screaming every single night.
And there was nothing I could do besides just hold her.
It was horrible.
- The very thing the carlile's hoped
Would create wealth, security, happiness,
Had brought instead nothing but grief.
But remember, this, the evidence suggested,
Was a hit job.
Somebody must have ordered doug's execution.
So now the detectives tried to figure out who.
- You guys have any disputes with anybody?
- Yes.
- Inevitable, probably, when the high stakes investors
Go after a prize with an oil lease.
And doug had been promising potential investors
Returns that so far just hadn't materialized.
Any number of partners might have felt
They'd been taken for a ride.
But who?
Elberta, who was no longer a suspect,
Offered a possibility.
- Who do you have a dispute with?
- His name is james henrikson.
- James henrikson.
He was the man who'd gotten doug interested
In the oil play in the first place,
The man who, with his wife sarah,
Were known as the barbie and ken
Of the oil patch.
This guy worked for them.
His name is rick arey.
- For lack of a better term, they-they stuck out
Like a couple of turds in a punch bowl.
- Well, one way to put it.
James met sarah at a drive-thru coffee stand.
She was a barista.
What was he like? - Uh, he's very, um,
Cool, calm, collected.
You know, older man, good looking.
It was fun.
You know, fun, and we would always go out.
He was nice. It was easy.
You know, I never thought I'd ever marry him
Or go do business with him.
- But that's what she did.
They moved to the oil patch in 2011,
Got married in minot, north dakota,
And by 2013, he was the charismatic face
Of a major trucking operation called blackstone,
And she was the blonde on his arm.
And a senior company official. Sarah signed the checks.
Blackstone was the business doug first invested in
Before he got interested in the oil lease.
It was a big operation, 100 trucks hauling water
To and from oil fracking sites, very profitable.
James let it be known that he was backed by
A billion dollar trust fund.
- You know, I was like, "this guy's a winner."
- A lot of money around. They were doing well.
- Absolutely. - Was the company making money?
Seemed to be? - Yes, it sure seemed like it.
- And james was tough, and buff, and all man.
- It'd be 20 degrees outside,
And he'd be wearing a t-shirt.
Everyone else has got a little shiver,
He's like standing there shivering,
But he's, you know, he's making sure his arms
Are pumped up. He's got--
- He's a buff guy. - Yeah,
He wants you to see his guns. He's showing them off.
And then their, you know-- their perfectly white teeth
And their tans, and...
They look like ken and barbie.
They didn't fit in at all.
- Not a nickname sarah took to, mind you.
- No, I feel like I have somewhat of a brain.
I don't want to just be called a barbie.
- Well you're living in a town of men.
- Mm-hmm, 92 to one.
- All jacked up on testosterone.
- Oh, yeah, I mean, it was rough.
I hated it. It was miserable.
Every day was a plan on how to get out,
But-- - with him, presumably?
- Well yeah, I mean we wanted to leave the oil field,
But he just saw so much opportunity in money.
He's just like, "one day we'll get there."
- Doug carlile liked james and sarah's
Entrepreneurial style a lot,
So when the chance to buy an oil lease came up,
They went in on it together.
James kicked in $600,000.
Doug, only $40,000.
They needed two million, remember.
Yet, doug was saying he'd be taking over.
There were disputes then over control and money,
And accusations flew.
In fact, said doug's son, seth...
- He basically said, "I'm concerned with
What james is gonna try to do."
- That was serious.
- And he said that, you know, "if anything happens to me,
You know, it's james henrikson."
- But, like the other partners,
James henrikson was far away when doug was killed.
700 miles away, in watford city, north dakota.
Detectives pinged his phone, confirmed it.
And then something happened that seemed
Straight out of some noir detective novel.
Detective burbridge put out a plea for information
From anybody who had done business with doug carlile.
And what do you know?
In walked a guy who could just as easily
Have been a murder suspect himself.
- Robert, thanks for coming down voluntarily.
- His name was robert delao.
Career criminal, gang member,
And sometimes a police informant,
He'd served time in prison on manslaughter,
Drugs, weapons charges.
- I had researched his criminal history
And knew that he had a very significant criminal history,
So I was concerned that was he my hit man?
Or what was his involvement in this?
- Delao knew doug carlile.
He also knew james henrikson.
Why was he here?
To tell the cops, just in case they were wondering,
That he didn't have anything to do with the murder.
- Did you shoot doug? - No, no, no.
- Did you drive somebody up there to shoot doug?
- No, I had nothing to do with it, nothing.
- But burbridge had seen a thing or two.
He pushed.
- Well, we're gonna start talking about
Some things honestly here. - Okay.
- And I'm gonna-I'm gonna have a heart-to-heart with you.
- Okay, that's fine. That's fine.
- People are telling me you're the shooter.
- I say hell no. You know what?
That night I was in watford city, north dakota.
- You went after him pretty hard, right?
Actually accused him of murder?
- I did.
- How'd he respond to that?
- He denied it when-- and didn't even flinch.
- Did you think he was your guy?
- I did not think he was the guy.
- So why'd you do that?
- Sometimes you do things, uh, try to pressure people
Or put them under pressure to see their reaction.
Um, and he did not flinch.
- The detectives asked delao to take a polygraph.
And he did.
- Did he pass the test?
- Yes, he did.
- So curious, certainly, but a real lead?
Or a dead end? Hard to know.
So burbridge and his team of investigators
Kept working other leads.
And christmas happened. Sort of.
- It was really a rough christmas.
I look back on pictures.
We had smiles on our faces but it-- there was--
You weren't really smiling.
And my mom, it was so hard to watch her,
'cause she wanted to give the grandkids gifts,
But she was just like, almost like a zombie.
You can't just not have christmas, you know?
But nobody felt like it.
- But grief wasn't all the family was feeling.
A debilitating fear took hold too.
Whoever killed their patriarch
Might not be done. - We armed ourselves.
I spent about $10,000 on a security camera system
Around the house. Went out and bought a,
Uh, attack dog, a german shepherd.
- Meanwhile, the detectives hit the road.
And that's when they discovered
Something truly shocking:
Doug carlile wasn't the only victim
Of the weird goings on around the oil patch.
- For this investigator,
A tantalizing tip at his fingertips.
- I clicked on it and a flier came up.
It basically said "beware of these two people".
- And then a potential suspect gives cops the brush off.
- He leaned out the door and slapped me on the shoulder,
And then he shut the door.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm kate snow.
It was no secret that doug carlile and james henrikson
Did not get along.
Business partners, their relationship soured
After a dispute surrounding money
And control of an oil lease.
Doug told his son that if anything happened to him,
James henrikson did it.
And now the doting father was dead.
Digging into henrikson's past,
Detectives would soon discover another of his associates
Had suffered a troubling fate.
Here again is keith morrison
With "a dangerous man".
- Spokane police detective mark burbridge
Called in the troops.
A few hours after the execution-style killing
Of doug carlile in the kitchen of his big house
On spokane's south hill,
It was all too clear this had to have been
A professional hit.
Burbridge would need all the help he could get,
And now every available investigator,
Nearly twenty of them, chased the scattered clues.
- Did you actually need them all?
- Yes, I kept them busy.
One detective, his whole job was to try to identify
That white van.
- Remember the white van the neighbors saw?
- The van was unique enough because it was
An after-factory extended van
That they make for certain professions.
- Okay.
- And eventually once we were able to identify
The make and model,
We had a washing-- dol provide us with
All the vans registered in spokane county
And there were 75 of 'em.
- Which possibly fit that description?
- Yes, sir.
- Course, every one of those vans
Had to be tracked down.
And that welding glove,
The one found outside a back gate,
Maybe the killer dropped it as he escaped,
Or maybe it just happened to be there.
They swabbed it for dna anyway.
They scoured social media, the internet,
Looking for connections, looking for anything.
And then one night after christmas,
A couple of weeks after the murder...
- I was at my desk and I got a hit on a--
What's called a ripoff report,
Which I'd never heard of.
But I clicked on it and a flier came up
That basically said, "beware of these two people".
- What do you know?
The ken and barbie of north dakota's oil patch,
James henrikson and his wife sarah creveling,
Doug's primary north dakota partners.
- It said, "they're known frauds.
They're running, uh, fraud schemes in north dakota.
Don't do any business."
- 'course, as the detectives had figured out by now,
Rivalries, disputes, grievances,
Were rife around that oil lease project
In which doug and james and others were involved.
The ripoff report was put out as a flier
In stores and businesses all around the oil patch.
It was payback, apparently,
By one particularly disgruntled former partner.
But then, not everybody was a boy scout.
James, for example, had a criminal record
Going back to his teens.
Anyway, when detective seznick read the flier,
His eye landed on a very curious detail.
One of james' employees, a man named k.C. Clarke
Had up and disappeared.
- I printed it off and handed it to mark
And said, "hey, what do you think about this?"
- What did you think about that?
- It was the first time we'd ever heard of that name.
- So, who was k.C. Clarke?
- He was funny, well mannered.
- It didn't take long to find out.
K.C. Was an old friend of james henrikson.
He'd moved to the oil patch specifically to work
For henrikson at blackstone, james' trucking company.
Rick arey knew him well.
- So what'd you do? The two of you?
- We'd go up to the bar. We'd chase the girls.
We'd do the normal things a guy would do
During a boom, you know?
- Rick and k.C. Were field superintendents
For the trucking company,
Which sarah was helping to run.
How were you involved in the business?
- I worked directly with, like, the accountant.
Make sure they got signed off so we could get paid.
You know, make sure payroll is turned in on time
To the accountant. - Right.
- So I was sort of the middleman for all the paperwork.
- But you were really kind of a minor partner?
If I can put it that way. - It was the james show.
- Right. - For sure.
As much as people saw me all the time.
- Time off was rare,
And eventually rick arey and k.C.
Made secret plans to work for a rival trucking company.
- He was extremely worried about james finding out
About this whole transition.
- On February 22nd, 2012,
K.C. Dropped briefly into blackstone's headquarters,
And then was gone.
So, did he leave in a huff,
Or was it something else?
Because nobody ever saw him again.
- No sign of him at all.
He'd been missing for about a year,
Almost two years at that point.
- Was ever henrikson ever questioned about it?
- He had been questioned extensively
And actually taken a polygraph
With the north dakota law enforcement.
- And had passed? - Yes.
- Still, james henrikson had to know something
About k.C. Clarke and doug carlile.
And so the two detectives got in the car
And drove 700 miles to watford city, north dakota.
- With the wind chill I believe it was 60 below
When we were there. - Yeah.
- Their destination?
The home of james henrikson and his sarah.
- We went to the side door.
From there you can see the garage.
And in the garage was a, uh--
Like a two year old bentley,
Uh, flat tires kind of almost laying on its belly.
- A bentley? An almost new bentley?
- Yes.
- Obviously not taken care of at all.
- No.
- Sarah answered the door very pleasant,
Said the detectives, and went to get james.
- How did james henrikson greet you?
Did he, you know, tell you a story?
Did he sit you down for a cup of tea? What?
- He leaned out the door and slapped me on the shoulder
And said, "you know, it's too bad you drove all that way.
"my attorney told me not to talk to you."
And then he shut the door.
- And you had nothing? - I got nothing.
- You got nothing except a kind of a rude reception,
Which might have told you something, or not?
- He's a big man.
He was probably 5'10, 250 pounds
Of steroided rock muscle.
He bragged he was benching over 500 hundred pounds,
And he looked like it.
But I don't intimidate, and I just kind of
Grew werewolf fangs when he reached out
And tried to belittle me.
- But nothing to do but suck it up and drive
Those 700 miles back home again,
Empty handed.
Along the way, detective seznick got a blood clot.
It nearly killed him.
A month after doug carlile's murder,
They had suspects, oh yes,
But nothing was coming together.
- Coming up.
Finally, a clue, and it's a big one.
- The very top of the paper is the word "glove"
And then there's...
- What killer makes a to-do list?
- Who does it point to?
- Jackpot. - Jackpot.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Back to north dakota.
Suspicious, but empty handed,
Spokane detectives burbridge and seznick
Got back to grunt work.
Seznick still recovering from a near-fatal blood clot.
- I got ordered to go home,
I don't know how many times over the next couple days,
But obviously I wasn't going anywhere.
- And the case?
Well, they knew they had something,
But what exactly?
- It was just one of those cases
Where we knew we were on the right track,
But we also knew that there was
A lot of work left.
- And for the carliles, a lot of grief.
Elberta was a barely functioning mess.
- I didn't lose just my dad, I lost my mom too,
'cause she wasn't the same person
For a really long time.
- And, adding insult, doug's secrets were exposed
For the whole world to see.
That big house on the south hill,
Heavily mortgaged.
The fancy cars, not paid for.
The paperwork that claimed he was worth millions,
A facade.
Doug carlile was flat broke,
Hadn't even bought life insurance.
- Do you ever feel angry at all
At doug for not providing more,
Like an insurance policy or something?
- No, not at all.
Because he was a very good provider
All the days that he was alive.
And I really didn't believe in insurance policies like that,
I believed in trusting the lord for our finances,
And that's what we did.
- Secrets, just another casualty
As the little army of detectives
Searched the neighborhood for clues.
Like, for example, the strange find
That turned up on the killer's escape path,
That weirdly out of place welding glove.
They swabbed it for dna on the off chance, really,
Just a shot in the dark,
That something in or on that glove
Might match a known person.
Like a felon, say, whose dna would be stored
In a data bank.
And how about that, it did.
- What was the name? - Timothy suckow.
- Have you ever heard that name before?
- Had never heard the name before.
- Who was timothy suckow?
- A violent individual.
Been to prison for robbery.
- What did you think when you found this out?
- I thought this could be our guy.
- Was he local? - He was local.
- He was working at irs environmental,
Which is an asbestos removal company.
- They don't drive around in white vans,
By any chance, at irs, do they?
- I checked that list, and lo and behold,
Irs environmental was one of the companies
That owned a van that matched our van in the video.
- Well, well, well, what were the chances?
Timothy suckow must have been the muscular man in black
Seen on this video
Running for dear life
Toward the equally mysterious white van.
They looked him up.
He lived in the suburbs,
A wife, kids.
His house was ten miles from the murder scene.
- We had the swat team sitting on him
For about twelve hours waiting for him to move
'cause we didn't want to take him at his house
With the p-potential of firearms.
- But when suckow and another man left the house,
The police moved in to make the arrest.
Here, a few hours later,
The police photographed suckow's many tattoos.
- Mr. Suckow is a very hardened prison type individual,
Very large man, 275 pounds of solid muscle.
- Be a few minutes, we've got some paperwork to do
And some stuff that we have to get in, okay?
Tell you what's going on. - Sure.
- When the interview began,
Detectives made no bones about it.
They thought they had suckow dead to rights.
- Today is the day to help yourself out.
I didn't come to you by accident, okay?
My killer left something up at the house,
And your dna is all over it.
No joke, the van at your work
That you drive is on my video up there.
- You should be scared.
You're looking at federal conspiracies
To commit murder,
Fraud, life in prison.
- Yeah.
- That's your choice.
- At this point, we're probably beyond accusations.
- You are-you are under arrest,
And-and you can help yourself out.
- I'm not kidding you about having your dna.
- I have your dna up there.
- Okay.
- Timothy suckow was done talking.
And...
- He just looked me in the eye and laid his head down
And went to sleep.
- Seriously? - Seriously.
It's like a big emotional release to him
That it's finally over.
- After that, the detectives rounded up
Some search warrants for suckow's house
And his car.
- In his car we found
A very significant piece of evidence.
- What was that?
- It was a piece of notebook paper
With a-a list of items to be done.
At the very top of the paper is the word "glove"
With a question mark.
And then there's statements about "wheelman"
And "wingman",
"show getaway route on google earth",
"practice with pistol".
- That's almost like a confession
Right on the notepad, right?
- It-- - what killer makes a list of--
To-do list of things to do?
- It was a to-do list of how to prepare
To go do this murder.
- What did you think when you saw that?
- It's almost hollywood-like.
It was kind of shocking to find that.
- This is a month after the murder,
And we arrest who we believe is our shooter
And he has a to-do kill list in his car.
I mean, it-- you can't make this stuff up.
- Suckow also had a storage unit
Where a surveillance camera picked up a white van
Pulling up soon after the murder.
Suckow had to be their shooter.
The question was, who put him up to it,
And why?
Suckow wouldn't tell them, refused to say a word.
So then they got a search warrant for his phone.
- In his contact list, said "james in nd".
- Jackpot. - Jackpot.
So that was the-- that was the first time
We had ever connected him with henrikson.
- James and sarah arrived to become the ken and barbie
Of the oil patch, and before long,
One man is missing and another is dead.
And the suspected hit man has james on speed dial.
And as for sarah,
There was a shock in store for her too.
- I mean, emotionally difficult to deal with.
- Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it's ruined my life.
- Coming up.
Sarah becomes suspicious about her husband.
- Did you think at the time,
"I wonder if james had something to do with this?"
- It seemed fishy to me.
- Then she gets a call from the sheriff.
- He said, "you need to come to my office right this second."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Sometimes the best detective is named luck.
A dropped welding glove leads to a tattooed presumed hit man
Named timothy suckow...
- Timothy eugene suckow--
- ...Whose phone provides a direct connection
To the man who may have ordered
The murder of doug carlile,
James henrikson in north dakota.
Investigators were now able to rule out
All of doug carlile's business partners
In washington state.
- By this point, did you feel as if you had
The outlines of what the conspiracy was?
- I thought we had a pretty good idea
Of-of what had actually been going on,
And-- but that turned out to be a lot more.
- A sentiment which, as the investigation
Turned rapidly back to north dakota,
Sarah creveling, aka mrs. James henrikson
Could have put in exactly the same words.
But for more personal reasons.
- Best I remember is there was rumors
Of james having an affair.
- It's an old story of course.
Husband cheats on wife with a younger woman,
Even younger than sarah
Who was only in her twenties.
- What was it like to hear that he was cheating on you
In the first place?
- Well I mean, that was hurtful,
But it was so off the wall
I just didn't believe it.
- Like generations of wives before her,
Until the truth was impossible to avoid.
- What was that like to hear? - Oh, horrific.
And especially when I found out with who,
I just thought, "absolutely not, no way."
- Wouldn't believe it? - Wouldn't believe it.
I mean, she was like my little sister.
- This is her, the young woman
In the unpleasant little triangle.
But she wasn't just some other woman.
This is peyton martin, daughter of tex hall,
Then chairman of the mha nation
On whose tribal land was the oil lease,
The one james and doug carlile wanted so badly.
Peyton was 19.
- You knew her? - Mm-hmm, yeah.
I had vacationed-- family vacationed with her
Quite a bit.
- In fact, here they are in hawaii.
James in the water, sarah there on the paddleboard,
And there on another board was peyton.
- I think I found a picture of her on facebook
Where she was pregnant.
And, uh, so I called her and asked her,
And she said it's none of my business,
But if it's my husband's, then get over it.
Mm-hmm.
- Peyton denied saying that by the way.
But when the baby was born,
A very healthy and happy looking little boy,
James and peyton named him...
- Bentley of all things.
- Bentley, just like that expensive automobile
James bought for sarah,
Then left in the garage with flattened tires.
- You can't make it up.
- It's weird. It's so strange.
- Bentley. - Yeah.
As you can see, he was the one who wanted the car,
And the name, and the show.
- Tex hall, as you might imagine,
Was not pleased about any of that.
He banished james from the reservation.
But there was something neither tex nor sarah
Knew just then.
Not just that the spokane cops were investigating
Sarah's wayward husband.
Out on the north dakota prairie,
Another lawman had been poking around for more than a year.
Homeland security agent darrik trudell
Had heard from a colleague about the missing k.C. Clarke,
And the ripoff report, and other possible crimes.
- He told me the story and it-it just sounded--
It sounded unbelievable is what it did.
- Derrick trudell was hooked.
So by the time burbridge started showing up,
Trudell could tell him a thing or two
About james henrikson.
- How would you describe him?
- Yeah, I mean he-he comes across as a--
I mean, just-- - you're at a loss for words.
- I mean you could say that he comes across
As a-as a used car salesman,
But that's really not fair to used car salesmen.
I mean, the guy is just-- he's a scumbag.
- By the time doug carlile was murdered,
Trudell had, really just coincidence,
Been on james' trail for more than a year,
Looking into possible illegal drug imports,
And the mysterious disappearance
Of friend and employee, k.C. Clarke.
It had to look like henrikson was behaving like
Some sort of latter day, wild west outlaw.
- He's a sociopath.
Above all that, I mean, the guy's a coward.
You know, he didn't-- he didn't get his hands dirty
In any of-- any of it.
- Trudell already suspected henrikson may have ordered
Someone to kill k.C. Clarke.
Then doug carlile was murdered out in washington,
And trudell began working with detective burbridge.
If timothy suckow was the hit man in spokane,
Did he kill k.C. Clarke too?
Agents pulled records of all the cell phones
Being used around the time of k.C.'s disappearance
In north dakota. And...
- They checked mr. Suckow's number at the time
Against the phone records they had acquired
Back when mr. Clarke disappeared,
And mr. Suckow's number was in those records.
- Meaning suckow was in the area
When k.C. Clarke disappeared.
Sarah, meanwhile, her marriage falling apart,
Had begun to harbor suspicions about james,
And not just his cheating ways.
It went back to the day james told her
About doug carlile's death.
- He just walked into the room and was like, "doug's dead."
Straight faced, nothing.
It was the strangest thing ever.
- Did you think at the time... - Mm-hmm.
- "I wonder if james had something to do with this?"
- You know, it-it seemed fishy to me, it did.
But again, you don't-- [chuckling]
Your life's already crumbling,
You don't want to think that your husband
Could be doing anything like that, you know?
- I mean, why didn't you get out of that marriage?
- I was scared of him.
You know, everyone wants the fairytale,
Everyone wants to be married with a good life, with kids,
And it kind of came crashing quickly.
- So finally, sarah started talking about divorce.
- I told him, and he'd be like,
"how are you gonna feel if you divorce me
And you find out all this isn't true
And the kid's not mine?"
And he's like, "you'll be the horrible person
"and I'm gonna destroy you",
And he was very threatening.
- Was he serious?
A month after the murder of doug carlile,
January 2014,
Sarah got a call from her local sheriff.
- He said, "you need to come to my office right this second."
- Coming up.
Sarah gets some frightening news.
- Homeland security was waiting for me,
And they were like,
"your husband is trying to have you killed today."
- What was that moment like for you?
- Doesn't seem real. It's like a movie.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm kate snow.
Detectives were convinced timothy suckow
Was the gunman who murdered doug carlile.
Phone records showed the career criminal
Was also nearby when k.C. Clarke vanished.
Investigators believed suckow killed both men
On the orders of oil patch upstart james henrikson.
And soon they'd get wind
There was a new name on his hit list.
Here again is keith morrison with "a dangerous man."
- Sarah creveling didn't know which way to turn.
With investigators in two states closing in,
Her husband james had vanished,
Their marriage was on life support,
And she'd just been summoned by her county sheriff.
- So I went into his office,
And homeland security was waiting for me,
And they were like, "sit down.
"we need to talk to you."
And they said, "we just received,
In the last ten minutes,
That your husband is trying to have you killed today."
- Sarah, on the hit list?
But why?
Sarah had a pretty good idea.
- He wanted all the money.
And he knew I had it locked up
With the divorce getting ready.
So, get her out of the way and we'll get all the assets.
So they could run to brazil.
[chuckling]
- But sarah, marked for death?
Yes, the sheriff told her,
She was supposed to die that very day.
- What was that moment like for you?
- You can't even describe it.
It doesn't seem real. It's like a movie.
I sat there and spoke with them all day,
And I had asked, "can I call someone?"
Like, I don't know what to do.
- They said, "nope, we have to take you into a safe home."
- Call no one? - Uh-uh.
- Not even your mom? - Nope, no one.
Because they were afraid that james would harass
My family and friends to find my location.
'cause once he realized I wasn't responding to him,
He went into panic mode.
He didn't know if I was working with the police,
If I was dead, if I was on the run.
- The cops knew her husband was lurking somewhere out there,
But they couldn't find him.
- He was harassing a lot of my friends and family,
Trying to see if they'd heard from me,
Which they hadn't.
- Now the cops were sarah's best hope to stay alive.
They tried a ruse to throw james off the scent.
- They even drove me to the border in canada
To make it look like I had, like, jumped the border
To see if james would chase me.
- He did not.
But where was he?
No one seemed to know.
With sarah close enough so they could actually see her,
Investigators tried to track her husband's phone.
- You're sitting in homeland security's office
And you're listening to them ping him across the state
And he's on the run, he's on the move.
I think a car backfired in the parking lot
And all these agents pull their guns out
And run to the windows,
'cause they didn't know if james was in town.
It's a surreal thing. [chuckling]
- Even if they found him though,
They couldn't charge him with murder or conspiracy.
Didn't have enough evidence for that.
But they did have something quite useful.
A few days earlier, search warrant in hand,
State and federal agents
Including homeland security's darrik trudell
Descended on james and sarah's empty house
While they were out of town.
- What'd you find in the house?
- Found a lot of financial records.
Uh, found some firearms.
- Some firearms?
- Yeah, I mean I-I can't remember
The exact number of them.
- But it doesn't matter if there was one there,
He's a convicted felon, right?
- Correct.
- Grounds for immediate arrest.
Agents fanned out around north dakota,
And a few days later,
In a little place called mandan,
There he was.
- What was he doing?
- He was over at his girlfriend's
Friend's apartment.
- That is, the apartment of a friend of peyton,
The chairman's daughter.
- We had guys staked out around it,
Doing surveillance on it. - Mm-hmm.
- And as we drove by, I recognized him.
Um, and that was him and-- - on the street?
- Walking down the street, yeah.
And we stopped, we hopped out,
Told him to turn around and show me his hands.
- James henrikson was surrounded by cops,
Guns drawn and pointed.
So what happened then was very odd.
- He had his hands in his pockets,
And so we kept telling him to show me his hands,
But he wouldn't show me both hands
At the same time.
And he's got this stupid smirk on his face.
- Like he's playing with you?
- Yeah, so then eventually enough is enough,
So we just put him-- helped him to the ground,
Put handcuffs on him.
- Helped him to the ground?
- He's just smiling up at me and asked me,
You know, like, "hey, how are you?"
He instantly went into, like, trying to charm us.
- He was trying to pull a con on the cop?
- Yeah, I mean I don't know if he thought
He was gonna build rapport with me
In-in relationship
And-and, you know, we were gonna be buddies.
- Bizarre though the arrest was,
James henrikson was at least in custody.
But sarah, no choice they told her,
Had to stay in deep cover herself,
Hiding in a secret shelter, unable to call friends,
Or even her parents,
Just in case the hit was still a go.
- I had a bunch of friends call,
Um, the sheriffs and the police
And they were asking, they said,
"we think that he's had her killed.
I mean, will you drive around and look in ditches?"
No-- 'cause no one was allowed to know.
They wanted him to think that it had gone through
To see what he would do.
- I can't imagine what it would be like for your family.
- Oh... It was hard for them.
- And james?
Agreed, very civilized, to talk to investigators.
But what he did not do--
[laughter]
- --Was tell them the real story
Of what he'd been up to.
- The mexican mafia and drug cartel.
- He gave us-- I mean it was a story.
I mean, he talked about, uh, the cartels, the-the triad,
I mean all these organized crime groups
That he implied having connections to.
- Did he think you were buying it?
- Oh, I think in his mind, you know,
He thought we were buying it.
But I mean it was so outlandish,
Nobody's gonna believe that.
- I have to handcuff you
Before we bring you back up to the--
- Trouble was, investigators in north dakota
And spokane still didn't have enough solid evidence
To tie james henrikson to the murders of k.C. Clarke
And doug carlile.
For that, they'd have to keep digging
While henrikson waited in jail.
That is, if they could keep him there
When he had other ideas.
- Coming up: Preparing for the great escape.
- They knocked out that window,
Dropped some bed sheets down to the ground.
- Nine stories. - Oh, my god.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- James henrikson was one of the stranger perps
Homeland security agent darrik trudell
Had ever encountered, and had an attitude.
But, as trudell discovered,
Henrikson was also an inept criminal.
Rarely seemed to get his illegal schemes to work.
- It's almost like a tragic comedy
When you see the-this group of people
That were involved with this case.
- Like the time they put out a hit
On another business partner,
But the hit man ran off with the money.
- The guy rips him off for $10,000,
And, as he said, that was the easiest $10,000
He ever made.
- Gradually, agent trudell
And spokane detectives burbridge and seznick,
Amassed circumstantial evidence to show henrikson,
For all his criminal fumbling,
Did orchestrate two murders: K.C. Clarke and doug carlile.
But it was not quite enough circumstantial evidence
To take to trial.
'til finally, the break they needed.
- Timothy suckow, remember him?
Admitted he killed both victims on
Orders from james henrikson.
And the middleman caved too.
Robert delao, the man who came snooping around
The investigation a couple of days after
The carlile murder and passed a polygraph,
Which might say something about polygraphs.
Now, delao admitted he recruited suckow,
And transmitted henrikson's orders and the money.
- So, in September 2014,
Nine months after his arrest on weapons charges,
James henrikson was flown from north dakota
To spokane, washington, and charged with
Multiple federal counts of conspiracy, solicitation,
And murder-for-hire in the deaths of k.C. Clarke
And doug carlile,
And attempts on the lives of three more business partners.
He was not charged, however,
With trying to kill his wife, sarah,
Because, said the prosecutors, they went with the charges
That were easiest to prove.
So, henrikson was toast. Unless...
As he sat in the spokane jail awaiting trial,
Henrikson did his best to see that
The trial would never happen.
- He tried to hire people to attack the marshal van
That was transporting him between our jail
And the u.S. Courtroom.
Shoot the driver, set fire to the van,
And, uh, break him out the back of it
While the van's on fire. - Good lord.
- He was still letting on that he had a lot of money.
And in jail, obviously, it doesn't take too long
To find people that'll bite on that.
Unfortunately, he found one that also needed, uh,
Help with his current charges
So he turned him in pretty quickly.
- And thus, the plan was foiled.
- Yes. - Yes.
- But henrikson wasn't done.
- He was in his cell with another person
Suspected of murder.
Our spokane county jail,
There are windows in each of the cells.
They knocked out that window,
Dropped some tied together bed sheets down to the ground.
- Nine stories. - Oh, my god.
- Some people showing up for work at the jail saw--
- The bed sheets.
- --The rope hanging out the, uh, window.
- Can you really see anybody squeezing through
A window that size?
- They're purposely designed so that an adult human head
Won't fit through that window. So there was no way
They were getting out that window.
- They could have charged him for his escape attempts.
They didn't.
The prosecutor had bigger things to do.
And finally, in January 2016,
James henrikson encountered them.
- I was so mad I couldn't see straight.
- Doug carlile's still grieving family.
- I had to close my eyes several times
And actually say a prayer, "god, calm me down."
I wanted to put my hands on him for sure.
- Yeah. And then you'd be in trouble.
- It'd be worth it.
- Federal prosecutors aine ahmed and scott jones were, however,
Not exactly confident about their case.
- Proving k.C. Clarke's murder
Was the toughest part that I was thinking of.
We didn't have a body, we had no forensic evidence.
- So to get a conviction,
They'd need these two sketchy characters
Who, allegedly on orders from henrikson,
Had done some truly awful things.
If they didn't tell the story and make the jury believe it,
Henrikson would get away with murder.
But if they did tell it, what sort of credibility
Would a person like that have?
- My concerns-- our most important witness, um,
Is gonna admit that he killed two people.
Literally beat k.C. Clarke's brains out.
- So how do you handle that? - You have to embrace it.
Our number two witness has a tattoo on his back
Of him urinating on the headstone
Of the last guy that he killed.
These are our two star witnesses.
- Still, tim suckow, the actual killer,
Was by far the more important witness.
After all, suckow could tell the jury chapter and verse,
About the many twisted and homicidal plots
Set in motion by james henrikson.
So, two nights before the trial was to begin,
Attorneys jones and ahmed went to see suckow,
Prepare him for his testimony.
And that's where it all went south.
Suckow is bipolar.
- He was laying down on the floor of the prison cell
In a fetal position.
And so, this is two days before our star witness
Is going to testify-- - yeah.
- And he's basically sucking his thumb
On the floor of the jail cell.
I mean, we're there at 10:00 at night
Trying to make sure that this guy gets his medication
So he can effectively testify before jury.
- Would james henrikson, the desperado of the oil patch,
Go free?
- Coming up... The entire courtroom stunned.
- I had decided, long before then,
That james henrikson was crazy.
I didn't know he was that kind of crazy.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It was no easy task preparing tim suckow
To testify at the trial of the man accused of
Paying him to kill two people.
He was off his meds, he was a mess emotionally.
[sobbing]
So when the trial began in federal court,
No cameras allowed,
The prosecutors held their breath.
And...
Suckow, back on his meds, came through.
And in court he repeated just what he said here
In his pre-trial interviews.
That he met delao when they both worked for
The company that owned the white van
They drove the night he shot doug carlile.
But a year before that job, he said,
Delao told him he could make money
For roughing up some guy in north dakota.
But then the boss, that is james henrikson,
Changed the plan.
- So when k.C. Showed up at james' office
Before going on vacation,
Suckow was behind the door with a heavy truck jack.
- They ditched k.C.'s truck in a nearby town, said suckow,
And then they took k.C.'s body to a lonely spot
Twenty miles out of town.
Suckow said he did the digging while henrikson stood nearby.
- Anyway, he said, he got the twenty grand
And he burned the bloody clothes.
Investigators found buttons and other evidence
Of that burn pile.
But, though they took suckow out to the prairie twice
To look for the burial site,
They never found k.C. Clarke's body.
- K.C. Clarke was simply killed for the reason that
He just wanted to leave james henrikson's employment.
He felt wronged. - So I'm gonna kill him?
- Yeah, it was almost like a jealousy,
Cheating spouse, kind of thing.
- And why, according to the prosecutors,
Did james henrikson want doug carlile killed?
- He really thought that the oil deal
That they were involved with
Was worth tens of millions of dollars.
And he thought that doug carlile was standing in the way
Of him getting most, a large share
That was tens of millions of dollars.
- Mr. Carlile had already threatened mr. Henrikson that
He was going to get him out of the oil drilling business.
- And that was the thing
That triggered this whole business?
- Yeah.
- They were just trying to get each other out of the deal.
- At the trial, prosecutors introduced
Hundreds of text messages.
An almost play-by-play account as the plan rolled out.
- You can watch a text message go from henrikson to delao.
And then the content is passed from delao to suckow,
And then back the other way.
Negotiations over payment, um, who's gonna be there,
Does he have an alarm system?
- So, when doug carlile returned from church
That evening in December, suckow was waiting.
He'd brought a heavy welding glove
In case he had to punch in a window.
He didn't have to.
- And then, somehow the welding glove
Got left behind.
The glove that revealed suckow's dna,
And broke the case.
- Without the glove,
We would probably be unsolved to this day.
- And what could have happened then?
James henrikson, according to prosecutors,
Was a very dangerous man.
Was actively planning more murders.
Eventually, they said,
Had suckow not lost his welding glove,
Henrikson might have become that worst of all criminals.
- A serial killer is someone who causes the death
Or murder of three people.
And he certainly got an "a" for effort,
Because he tried.
There were about 11 people that we know of
That he tried to have murdered.
- James henrikson's defense attorney's
Declined our request for an interview,
But they blame the murders on suckow and delao,
Not henrikson, and essentially argued
The jury should not believe two such unsavory characters.
- Elberta carlile watched the trial play out
Day after day, same prayer on her lips.
- I prayed for justice for my husband.
I prayed that the truth would come forth,
And that there would be a way to go on in life.
- Deliberations took less than a day.
On all eleven counts, murder-for-hire, solicitation,
Conspiracy, and more,
The jury found james henrikson guilty.
- We wanted to jump up and down and clap,
You know, as a family.
'cause our whole family was there.
It was great.
- In the weeks that followed, robert delao, the go between,
Was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
When timothy suckow, the hit man, faced the judge...
- The only thing that he ever asked for
Was that we do what we can to ensure that
He was sent to a prison with appropriate
Mental health facilities so he could figure out
What was wrong with him.
- Then in court, he turned around
And faced elberta.
- He said, "please forgive me.
"I'm so sorry for what I've done."
- Did he seem genuine? - He did.
He said it in tears, and he said,
"I can't forgive myself, but can you forgive me?"
And I-I told him yes.
I said, "I forgive you. And god forgives you."
- Thirty years for tim suckow.
When it was james henrikson's turn,
A ripple ran through the court.
Would he too ask forgiveness? Admit guilt?
Apologize?
Reveal the location of k.C. Clarke's body?
Well, no. Not a chance.
- He read a short story, that was very graphic,
About abortion.
So much so that everybody in the courtroom
Was very uncomfortable with what he was saying.
And I think he just did that to purposely upset people.
- I had decided, long before then,
That james henrikson was crazy.
I didn't know he was that kind of crazy.
- Henrikson will leave prison only in a box,
Having received two consecutive life sentences.
He's chosen not to appeal.
And here, in the vast north dakota grasslands,
K.C. Clarke's friends and family
Are still searching, vowing to stay with it
Until they find him.
- You just wanna, like, "all right, james,
"you son of a bitch, we're gonna get him ourself.
"we don't need you.
"we're gonna go bring him home
"and we're gonna finally get some closure
"for everybody here."
- And elberta...
- Sometimes grief overwhelms me.
You know, I'm just in a pile of tears.
And I've not lived alone ever. - It takes some figuring out.
- Sarah, thoroughly investigated,
Was held blameless,
Not involved in james' violent conspiracies.
Though, in the community,
And among some in law enforcement,
Suspicion lingers.
In June 2017 she pleaded guilty
To conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
Sarah was sentenced to three years of probation.
And ordered to pay over $340,000 in restitution.
- So, as you look at all of these events
And you think,
"gosh, what sin did I commit to be in this spot?"
What would you say?
- I trusted a con-artist. I trusted a sociopath.
I-- since I married the monster,
Some people think I should be one too,
But I'm not.
- Wreckage, lots of it.
Once upon a time in a flat and gracious land,
Where tough men wrestle for oil,
Murderous ambition bubbled up with the crude,
And made a play as old as humankind.
- What was it all about, really?
Why? - Greed.
Plain and simple, it just came down to greed.
It was all about money.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm kate snow, thanks for watching.