- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- He was a sweet-hearted drummer with big rock 'n' roll dreams.
But the music stopped the day he suddenly vanished.
- I can't believe I'm dong this right now.
Searching in dumpsters for my boyfriend,
I didn't know what to do.
- A curious disappearance that no one could explain.
Then, across town, another scare.
- I felt a gun to the back of my head.
- A teenager in danger.
- He grabbed me and said,
"you have to come with me or I'm gonna kill you."
- Two young lives strangely linked.
Could police put the puzzle together?
- It's a race against the clock,
A family's most desperate hour.
- I said, "I will do whatever I can to help you find your son.
- Can they unravel this mystery in time?
- Don't you understand every minute counts right now?
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to dateline: Secrets uncovered".
Heavy metal drummer, matt landry played fast,
But when it came to life, he took things slow.
The twenty-one year old still lived with his folks
And had just fallen in love for the first time.
Then, without warning, matt vanished.
Friends and family hit detroit's mean streets
To hunt for clues,
And would soon discover matt's disappearance
Was just the start of a terrifying crime spree.
Here's dennis murphy with "taken".
- Matt landry from the detroit suburbs
Was just a regular guy.
The kid who delivered the pizza you ordered,
Traveled his world on a skateboard,
And cracked up his friends with jackass style stunts.
- With matt, it was never a dull moment.
He was always thinking of something crazy to do.
- But if you wanted to know what made matt landry
Get out of bed in the morning, it was the music.
To his new girlfriend, francesca,
Matt was first and foremost a rockin' dude,
A ferocious drummer with a basement band
Of long-time buddies.
♪♪
- So what kind of stuff did they play?
- Stuff that's 200 beats per minute and up.
- And set the volume at 11? - Plus.
[laughing]
- Born to rock, but nonetheless,
Basically a quiet, unassuming guy.
At twenty-one, the youngest of five children
And still living at home in chesterfield, michigan
With his parents, doreen and bob.
- Creating music is what he was happiest with.
- We were gonna go to the detroit symphony
And it surprised me that he wanted to go.
- The drummer with the heavy metal band, right?
- The drummer with the heavy metal band
Wanted to go to the detroit symphony with me.
- But this story isn't about the making of the music.
Matt landry's would-be rise from basement drummer
To arena superstar.
This is about an unusual crime spree
In the detroit suburbs and how that connected to
A nightmarish week in August 2009
When matt landry disappeared.
♪♪
- Saturday afternoon, like most,
Matt had been behind the drum kit
In a practice session with the guys.
- And we were playing in my basement,
Where we always practiced.
- They'd had to date only one paying gig
In their career, a neighborhood block party;
Folding chairs and heavy metal.
- Yeah, we don't belong here. - Not at all.
- The reviews were mixed.
But, like most basement bands, they had dreams.
- We were just trying to write enough
To get an album done.
- What was very fresh in matt's life was
His first serious girlfriend, francesca bommarito,
A waitress, and like matt, a lover of all things rock.
- The doors, the rolling stones, things like that.
- Geezer rock? - No, classic rock.
- Music and movies, they devoured dvds,
Watching them over at fran's house.
Matt was the shy one, his girlfriend had to
Take the amorous initiative.
- I just kept inviting him over and he kept coming
And one day he was like, "I might have to stay here."
And I'm like "that's okay." - doreen, did you know that
He had found a serious girlfriend?
- Yeah, you know your kids, and, uh,
When he would talk about fran, his face would just light up.
- So that Saturday, matt delivered pizzas
In his mom's borrowed car, because the alarm
On his green honda was going off
Without notice, blaring.
After his shift, he killed time
'til francesca got off work at the restaurant.
They'd agreed to hook up after.
- He's like, you really want me to come over?
And I was like yes, please.
- After midnight, very early Sunday morning,
Matt's mom was having a restless night.
It was thundering and lightning out.
- And I saw matt walk outside,
And, uh, kind of circled around his car.
And I thought, "oh, no, matt, careful."
Because, you know, his alarm was gonna go off
And it was almost three in the morning.
- It was 2:55 a.M.
- So he very slowly went to lift up his hood of his car
And the alarm went off and he jumped in his car
And just went down the street to get out of the neighborhood
Until it went off.
- He came over and he had a bottle of wine.
You know, we had a really good night.
- But maybe an overly festive night.
Fran woke up Sunday, sick as a dog.
Matt attended to her.
- He gave me a hot bath, brought me tea
And a thermometer.
- He kind of showed you a tender side, huh?
- Yeah.
- Then matt, still playing nursemaid, phoned his mom.
- He goes, "is there anything else
"I should be doing for her?"
And I said, "no, it sounds like
"you're doing everything, matt."
- There were plans for a backyard barbecue
Later that afternoon at his parents'.
It would be a chance for fran to get to know
Matt's sister's boyfriend, that is if she felt up to it.
- He says, "okay."
He says, um, "she's gonna take a little nap,
"and then when she wakes up, we'll come over."
And I told him-told him like I tell all of my kids,
I said, "I love you, matt."
And he said, "I love you too, mom."
- Matt offered to make a fast food run,
But she was still hurting and waved him off.
- He said, "yeah, do you want something to eat?"
I was like, "yeah, uh, never mind,
"I'm not gonna eat it anyway."
- As matt left to run some errands, fran snoozed,
Figuring matt would wake her in time for the barbecue.
- I woke up at 5:47 and I called him,
He didn't answer.
I texted him, waiting for him to reply,
Staring at my phone, and I fell back asleep.
- She called him twice more.
She remembers the exact times:
7:31 and 9:01 and got his voicemail.
She was starting to freak. Even six hours in,
You thought something bad had happened.
- Right, 'cause he always answers
Or calls me right back.
So I started calling the police stations
And hospitals.
- Over at the landry's barbecue, the salmon tasted great,
But matt and fran were no-shows.
Still, no one thought twice about it.
- I knew she was running a fever,
And you don't really feel like doing much,
Especially, you know, going over to parents' house.
- Meanwhile, matt's friends
Were getting as worried as francesca.
The band mates were used to texting and calling one another
Almost hourly, and matt had gone m.I.A.
- I guess you were all thinking, what could it be?
- Exactly, yeah. - Yeah.
- Chris emrick even got in his car
And drove down roads
Matt would likely have driven that day.
- Thinking maybe he slid into a ditch or something, you know?
- By nine that Sunday night, chris was concerned enough
To call matt's mother.
- And he says, well, you know, "we can't find him anywhere,
"we don't know where he is."
- You're starting to get worried?
- Yes, I was starting to get worried.
- Doreen landry had worked in the banking business for years,
And knows how to spot patterns of fraud.
So she clicked on her computer
To check matt's debit card activity.
That's when alarm bells started going off.
- What did you see when you logged onto his account?
- I saw three $100 withdrawals,
Cash from an atm machine
With a two dollar fee from a gas station
On seven mile road in detroit.
- What did that all add up to you?
- A few things. Um, number one,
What was matt doing at seven mile in detroit?
- Seven mile, the northeast side,
Was an especially rough piece of detroit turf.
Drug-dealing gangs ran the streets there,
A bleak landscape of burned out houses
And abandoned cars.
- Why would matt take out all of his money
Out of his account?
- Matt was careful with his money.
It didn't make sense.
- Why would matt use an atm machine with a fee?
- So you don't see matt doing this withdrawal himself?
- No, I was hoping it was him. But just, wow,
That just didn't-didn't fit the picture at all.
- Sunday came to an end and few people in matt's circle
Could sleep that night.
The next day, in one of those same nearby suburbs,
A teenager cashing a paycheck would be pulled head-long
Into the mystery surrounding matt landry.
She got the scare of her young life.
- Coming up...
- As soon as I set the check on the counter,
I felt a gun to the back of my head.
- A life and death drama at the bank.
- What'd he say?
- He said, "give me $50,000 or I'll kill her."
- What could this have to do with matt?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- When does it become, "where's matt,
"we've got to find him?"
- I'd say Monday morning.
- Matt landry, a hyper caller and texter,
Had been off the grid for almost a day.
Matt, running silent, scared everyone,
Especially his girlfriend.
- Francesca, why did you start calling the hospitals
And police stations as you did?
- 'cause nobody's heard from him.
I wanted to know, like,
Maybe if he had gotten in a car accident,
Maybe he got a flat tire on the side of the road,
Maybe he was in a ditch, I don't know what happened.
- The parents, bob and doreen landry,
Were getting more anxious by the minute,
Waiting by the phone that didn't ring.
It was Monday when they called
Their local police in chesterfield.
An officer came to the house.
- Now cops get these kind of reports
From families very often.
And usually what they say is, "he's a kid, give it some time,
"he's gonna walk in the door."
Is that what he was telling you, doreen?
- We know our kid.
- Yeah, he alluded to the fact that, you know,
Most of the time these kids end up at crack houses
And crash there for a few days and they eventually come home.
I remember saying to him, "I-I pray to god you're right.
"I pray to god you're right."
- As the landry's worried inside their house on Monday,
A few miles south in harrison township,
A young woman was walking towards the flagstar bank.
- I was cashing my first paycheck
From a dog kennel.
- New job, first paycheck? - Yeah.
- Sarah maynard, nineteen, noticed a young guy
In sunglasses on the street, definitely checking her out
As she approached the bank.
It creeped her out a little, but she tried to ignore him
And went directly to a teller's window.
The man in the shades stormed in right behind her,
As seen in chilling detail on the bank's security cameras.
- I handed them my check, and then as soon as
I set the check on the counter,
I felt a gun to the back of my head.
- Then, all calm and collected, he began giving
The bank teller instructions. What did he say?
- He said, give me $50,000 or I'll kill her.
- And you could feel the muzzle of the gun
On your head.
- Yeah, he pressed it against me hard enough
Where I was bent over the counter
And he had his hand on the back of my neck, too.
- The teller resisted the bandit's demand for $50,000,
She said she didn't have that much.
The man with the gun continued to threaten sarah.
- So give me $50,000 or she's dead?
- Yep.
- How long did this go on? - Um, not that long.
She ended up opening the drawer
And giving him what she did have.
- The robber then let go of sarah
And crossed the bank lobby, where he grabbed some more cash
As others hid in fear.
But he wasn't done with the pretty blonde,
Who'd apparently caught his eye.
- He came back over to me and grabbed me and said,
"you have to come with me or I'm going to kill you."
- What did you say? What did you do?
- I sat down and said, "no".
- So you sat right down on the bank floor?
- Mm-hmm. - It was a standoff of sorts.
The man had his firepower,
Sarah, her willpower.
- And he's saying, "get up, you're going with me"?
- Yeah. And he tried to pull me.
Um, and he said, "get up or I'm gonna kill you."
And I just sat said there,
And then he ended up running to the door.
- We begin with breaking news out of macomb county,
A manhunt under way right now for a bank robber
Who hit a flagstar bank in harrison township.
- The armed robber had fled.
Bank employees and customers knew
They had literally dodged a bullet.
Police would say later that sarah,
By refusing to go with him as a hostage,
Had done everything right.
- They give you a lot of credit
That you may have saved your life in that moment.
- I was just scared. I didn't want to go with him.
It just seemed like the best option.
- But that gunman gave the cops chills.
A robber, cool, poised and seemingly all too ready
To do whatever it took to pull off his crime.
Scott blackwell was a detective with
The chesterfield p.D.
- Normally, bank robbers come in,
Pass a note and get the money and move on.
This was a violent bank robbery.
- But what did the brazen young robber
Have to do with matt landry?
That connection would have to wait
For the story told by a gas station atm
And the security camera pointed at it.
- Coming up...
- I can't believe I'm doing this right now.
Searching through dumpsters for my boyfriend.
I didn't know what to do.
- At last, a break in the case.
- A big development. - Yeah, a huge development.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Bob and doreen, the parents of matt,
The young man missing for the third day now,
Could only pray that he'd walk in the door.
The police told them, often kids go off like this,
And it's something to do with drugs.
The parents weren't buying it.
- Didn't fit the pattern for matt.
- Something innocent would explain matt's absence.
- I still had hope that it was something crazy.
It was something, you know-- he'll show up.
- Yeah, something that we'd laugh about.
- But just in case it wasn't that,
Matt's mother and girlfriend,
After waiting the required twenty-four hours,
Went to matt's hometown police in chesterfield
To get an official missing person case going.
- And bob stayed here, just in case,
We wanted to make sure
Someone was always here at the house.
- At first, chesterfield p.D. Told the landrys
That it wasn't their case.
They'd need to go to the cops in another jurisdiction,
Roseville, some 13 miles south where francesca lived
And where matt had last been seen.
- Did you get the feeling you were being brushed off?
- Yes.
- It was a nuisance case? - Yes.
And he's like, "go wait in the lobby."
- Was the family frustrated?
- I think they were frustrated.
- But chesterfield detective scott blackwell was struck by
Doreen landry's unshakable belief in her son's integrity.
- I said, "the right person
"will end up with this eventually,
"but it will be taken care of, you know,
"we're not gonna leave you hanging."
- Detective blackwell was especially interested
To read doreen's printout of
The suspicious atm withdrawals from matt's account.
- He said the first thing he's gonna do is
Let's find out if this was even matthew
Who did these withdrawals.
- So the detective, hoping to find an answer
On the security cam video, went down to the sunoco,
In some of detroit's most crime-ridden streets,
And caught a break.
- I went to sam's club, and just for that,
To get that system.
- The gas station owner, moses rahimi,
Just three days before matt went missing,
Had bought a new security camera system.
The security cam he was replacing had a blind spot
In the back where his atm dispenser was.
Moses opened the carton and set to installing
His new video security system.
It was the weekend, his son said,
"forget it, let's wait."
- I said, "no, we're not going home
"until we hook it up."
- And on the security cam video,
Detective blackwell was seeing something
That filled him with dread.
- Someone else is using his card at that point.
- That's correct. And it's obvious foul play.
- The news didn't surprise me for some reason.
I was hoping it was matt.
- Meanwhile, on that Tuesday, back north in the near suburbs,
Matt's friends and family fanned out through the county,
Putting up flyers with matt's face.
They checked auto zone stores, maybe he'd stopped by
One of them for his broken car alarm.
Francesca was searching, too, checking out dumpsters.
- And I'm like,
"I can't believe I'm doing this right now.
"searching through dumpsters for my boyfriend."
I didn't know what to do.
- As francesca moved south into detroit proper,
She saw a crush of police cars, flashing lights.
She elbowed her way through the gawkers
To see what everyone was looking at.
It was matt's abandoned car.
- And I was like, "yeah, that's his car."
- Big development. - Yeah, huge development.
- Francesca managed to put one of the police officers
On her cell with doreen, matt's mom.
- Did they tell you about anything they'd found
In the car at that point?
- He mentioned some maps.
But matt delivered pizzas,
It's like, matt keeps maps in his car.
- By Tuesday, August 11, 2009,
21-year-old matt landry's disappearance
Had become a t.V. News story.
- ...Family members have been busy during the last few days,
Handing out these flyers,
Hoping someone will help them find matt.
- In that same newscast, viewers were getting an update
On that brazen bank stick-up the day before.
- A local teenager and a look of terror
That has gripped metro detroit in fear.
- Just watching the news, like anyone else,
Was a police detective from roseville,
Lieutenant ray blarek.
- This was a vicious incident, huh?
- Very vicious, yes, sir.
- The detective watched the security cam pics
Of the bandit in sunglasses,
Holding a gun to a young female customer.
A bad crime, but still one
He never expected to investigate.
- Because it didn't have anything to do with
The city of roseville where I'm in,
It's a couple jurisdictions over.
- But by the next day,
The detective would prove himself wrong.
He would be thick in the bank robbery case,
As well as the disappearance of matt landry;
A missing person report he knew virtually nothing about.
But, dots were getting connected,
And there was one more to come.
- Coming up...
- Another brazen attack on a bright afternoon.
- He was approached at his driver's door
By a-by the suspect.
- The guy displaying a gun? - Displayed a gun,
Told him that, uh, to get out of the car.
- Will it shed light on what might have happened to matt?
- You need to get a detective in there, now.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin.
Matt landry was missing, and police suspected foul play.
Security video showed a mystery man
Using matt's atm car,
Then, police discovered his abandoned car.
Meanwhile, two towns over, a young woman at a bank
Had been threatened at gunpoint.
Now, another violent confrontation
Was about to go down.
And soon, a sharp-eyed detective
Would make a chilling connection.
Once again, here's dennis murphy with "taken".
- Lieutenant blarek of the roseville police,
Was at his desk Tuesday, August 11, 2009,
When the call came in.
A carjacking in progress at the wal-mart,
Just down the street.
Blarek and his fellow officers responded quickly,
But surprisingly, the carjacked car, a red civic,
Was still in the wal-mart parking lot.
The vehicle's owner was shaken up, but okay.
- He was approached at his driver's door
By, uh, by this suspect.
- Guy displaying a gun? - Displayed a gun,
Told him that, uh, to get out of the car.
- And why didn't the gunman take off with the car?
- When he got in the car to attempt to drive away,
He didn't know how to drive a stick..
- You're kidding. - No.
- Nearby, an officer spotted a nervous-eyed man
With a bad '70s era afro wig.
- He took off running, the foot chase was on.
During the foot chase, the wig fell off.
- A guy who steals a car he doesn't know how to drive
And then bolts in a jimi hendrix wig
Might have been comical,
But this suspect on the run was also armed.
- He was putting his hand in his pocket,
Possibly trying to get the gun out.
- The gun and a clip were tossed away
During a foot chase that ended
When police zapped the man with electrical charges
From a taser gun like this one.
When the jolts wore off and the man was back on his feet,
Lieutenant blarek recognized a familiar face,
Someone he'd seen just recently on tv.
- He was standing right there, right in front of me
In the wal-mart lot when I said, "that's the bank robber."
- The same ice-cold bandit who'd held a gun
To 19-year-old sarah maynard's head
And demanded money.
- "give me $50,000 or I'll kill her."
- He's a violent suspect,
He's involved in two things that we know of,
A-and who knows how many others.
- Could one of those other things be a missing person?
Just that day, the detective had become aware
That doreen landry had reported her son missing
To the police in roseville,
Where matt's girlfriend lived and he'd last been seen.
And lieutenant blarek knew something else:
Detroit police had just found the young man's car
Abandoned in a bad neighborhood.
He wondered, did the wal-mart suspect,
Now in his holding cell,
Have an appetite for carjackings?
Had he also maybe stolen matt's car?
By then, the abandoned car had been towed
To the police station
In matt's hometown, chesterfield.
The detective called a counterpart there
About his hunch.
- I told him, I said, "I think it's all related."
I said, "can you get somebody to go into the car
Without destroying any evidence
And see if there is anything in there
That links the bank robbery
To-to matt landry?"
- And sure enough, there was.
And it had to do with that map found inside matt landry's car.
When investigators got a closer look at it,
They saw an x marks the spot pinpointing the flagstar bank,
Which the guy in the shades had robbed,
And where he'd briefly held a 19-year-old hostage.
Now lieutenant blarek began filling in the blanks.
He figured that the guy who pulled off the bank job
Was the same guy who carjacked matt landry's honda
With matt in it.
But he wasn't ready to share his conclusion
With matt's parents yet.
He had something to do first.
At 11:30 Tuesday night,
The detective and a partner went down
To that bleak section of detroit,
Where matt's green honda had been ditched.
- We start looking for matt landry.
- So the question in your mind, lieutenant,
Is are we gonna find the body of matt landry,
Or do you expect to find this guy
Bound inside one of these houses?
- I didn't know what we were gonna find,
But I was hoping he was still alive.
That's why I went out there.
- Two other people were searching
That same bad neighborhood that Tuesday night,
But they weren't the police.
- This was our first house that we looked at.
- Two the friends of matt's father,
Bob perugi and chris manning,
Had come down to investigate on their own.
- You think your friend's son could be in one of these houses,
You know you're gonna search until you find him.
- The family friends, amateur detectives
Armed with only a flashlight,
Managed to search dozens of homes,
Many of them burnt-out shells.
A local guy challenged them.
- We had to tell him we were, you know, working on a case,
And he believed that we were the police,
Which was good for us.
Who knows what he would have tried, you know?
- Right.
- The two friends, like the cops before them,
Also went to the sunoco station
And got the owner to play them
The video of the atm withdrawal made on matt's card.
As the friends studied the security cam video,
A clerk behind the counter was watching local news,
Up popped a recap of the bank robbery story.
It was a, "hey, that's him" kind of moment.
They swiveled heads from the news clip
Of the sunglasses-wearing bank robber
To the figure on their security cam
Who has just withdrawn the money.
Bingo.
- We all put together that it's the same guy.
You know, it was the same guy who did the bank robbery,
Same guy that used matthew's atm card
At this sunoco station.
- What's more, the guy behind the counter
Recognized the person in the atm security cam video,
A local guy who went by the name of ihop.
The counter man said he had a rep as being
A gang member and a violent thief.
The friends told the landrys what they'd learned,
That a kid named ihop
Seemed to be behind matt's disappearance.
And the landrys also heard on local news
That the very same guy was already in police custody
For the botched carjacking at the wal-mart.
Matt's mom called the roseville p.D.
- I said, "the man you're holding
"who just robbed the bank, armed robbery,
"is the same man who used my son's debit card.
"and my son is missing.
"you need to get a detective in there now
"to talk to him."
- That detective would be lieutenant ray blarek,
Who'd just pieced it all together himself.
Now he needed answers from the man they called ihop,
And the veteran cop had a few tricks up his sleeve
To get what he wanted.
- As the officer prepares for an intense interrogation,
Friends uncover troubling new information,
An eyewitness on the day matt vanished.
- Coming up...
- Tell me the--
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- By early Wednesday, August, 12, 2009,
Matt landry's fourth day missing,
His parents, bob and doreen, had put together
Some facts that scared them to death.
The same guy seen on tape using matt's atm card
Looked to be the man who'd robbed the flagstar bank.
- When I saw him holding a gun to that girl's head,
Knowing he was the one who used my son's atm card...
I knew it wasn't good.
- And the suspected bank robber, street name ihop,
Was also carrying a gun
When he attempted a carjacking at the wal-mart,
According to the police.
Ihop was now in a holding cell at the roseville p.D.
And the landrys, getting desperate,
Time not on their side,
Began pressuring the police there
To get immediate answers from him
As to matt's whereabouts,
Even though matt's disappearance
Wasn't officially their case.
- Give me back my brother. - We're coming.
- Just bring him back!
- Sister gina turned up the heat on the internet.
- I actually put on facebook
Anyone who can go up to the roseville police station,
And all these people showed up
At the roseville police station at, like, midnight
Just to kind of show power in numbers
To get them to question him.
- Bob and doreen went over to roseville
To talk to the detectives in person.
- You need to get somebody in there right now.
Don't you understand?
Every minute counts.
- Lieutenant blarek didn't need the prodding.
He and a partner were itching to question the suspect
After they'd returned from detroit,
Where they'd spent a long night
Searching for matt with no results.
- We're just checking abandoned houses,
Checking alleys, checking burned up garages.
- And you're seeing nothing?
- No evidence of matt landry at all, sir.
- At 3:45 in the morning,
A bone-tired blarek and his partner
Devised an interview strategy,
Hoping ihop would cough something up.
I was just gonna sit there in the chair
And I wasn't going to say anything to him.
- In the interrogation room,
The other officer peppered the suspect with questions,
But ihop was dodging him.
So blarek pulled an investigator's trick
To rattle him.
- I had a, uh, picture of matt landry
Inside of my notebook.
And so when it got to the point where it was obvious
That this wasn't going anywhere,
I took out that picture and I held it up
And I said, "we found him".
- Reaction from him?
- He saw a ghost. - Huh...
- He saw a ghost.
- But not shaken enough to spill
Whatever he might know about matt landry.
- What are you seeing, lieutenant,
When you're right there with the guy?
You see anything in his eyes?
- Just a cold, callous, heartless person.
He is definitely near the top of the list,
If not on top,
Of one of the coldest people that I've ever talked to.
- The landrys headed home from the roseville p.D.,
Satisfied at last that the police
Were now seeing their son's disappearance
As they were.
Gina, their daughter, meanwhile,
Was learning more troubling information
About her brother,
Something she'd picked up on the internet.
- I got a phone call from one of my best friends,
And she said, "gina, check your facebook
"when you get home."
And, you know, "there's an important message on there."
- The heads up was from a woman
Gina had known in high school.
- Her parents had witnessed on Sunday
A violent carjacking,
And it was a green honda.
- The previous Sunday afternoon,
The police in yet another small city near detroit,
Eastpointe, got a 911 call.
The distressed witness was reporting
An apparent carjacking and abduction
In the parking lot here behind the quiznos sub shop.
But when the police officers arrived,
The car in question was gone,
And they weren't sure exactly what it was
They had to write up.
The incident at the quiznos went largely unnoticed,
Until matt's sister got tipped to it
By a friend online.
So now you have a lot of very bad information
At your disposal, huh?
- Well, I just felt sick
When I showed my mom the facebook message
And it said, "carjacking at the quiznos".
- As soon as she said quiznos,
I said, "that was the last place
Matt used his debit card, other than the atm."
- Tell me--
- What the 911 caller had seen, in fact,
Was the abduction of matt landry.
- So there was the missing piece of the puzzle.
- And as francesca put it together,
It all started because her concerned boyfriend
Had decided on his own
That she, feeling crummy, needed a tlc sandwich
To get back on her feet.
- Well, he had mentioned to the girl at quiznos,
Um, "my girlfriend's sick.
"I don't know what to get her. Can you help me?"
And that's why he got two subs.
- Two subs that started a three-day crime spree
In the detroit suburbs.
From the quiznos in eastpointe on Sunday afternoon,
Spreading ten miles to the flagstar bank
In harrison township at high noon on Monday
And ending eight miles away
At the wal-mart in roseville, midday on Tuesday.
Bad news, bad patterns.
But matt's family and friends were still clinging
To a sliver of hope.
- Okay, he's still alive somewhere,
He's still alive somewhere.
Maybe he's just tied up. Maybe he's just tied up.
Maybe he's just-- they're holding him
At a crack house or something.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.
- You had a dream?
- I had a dream before he went missing
That he was kidnapped,
And I found him in a basement tied up
To one of those old-time heaters.
- Five days in, a joint police task force
Had been formed to search those basements
And burned-out homes on detroit's northeast side
Near where the car had been found.
The same suburban police departments
Who initially couldn't agree on whose case it was
Now came together for one purpose:
To find matt landry.
From chesterfield, where matt lived,
Roseville, where he was last seen with francesca,
And where the wal-mart carjacking went down,
And eastpointe, where matt had been abducted
At the quiznos.
- They're working with the gangs unit
In detroit p.D. - Yes.
- And they had been going, frustrating,
Block by block, finding not much of anything?
- Right.
- And then there's Thursday.
- Yeah.
Then there's Thursday.
- Thursday, August 13, 2009,
The task force was out in strength.
Fifteen officers banging on doors,
Issuing search warrants,
Pressuring gang members who may have known
The suspect called ihop.
- I have a son. I have kids too.
I had made a promise to doreen.
And I said, "even though it's not roseville's jurisdiction",
I said, "I will do whatever I can
To help you find your son."
- Helping, walking mean streets.
- More homes are abandoned than are occupied,
And it's a rough neighborhood.
- That Thursday morning, lieutenant blarek
Had teamed up with jim knobelsdorf,
A fellow roseville detective at the time.
- We were just coming to dead ends
And we walked out of one of the houses,
And there was a penny,
Uh, lying in the street.
And, uh, had the heads up
And I picked it up,
I said, "this is it. This is it."
- Your luck had turned?
- Yeah, my luck turned.
A short time after that,
We ended up going for a ride and we ended up here.
- It was the first house they checked
After blarek had found the lucky penny
Just minutes before.
- And how we got here or why we got here,
Uh, I can't explain that one, but we got here.
- It was now 10:30 in the morning.
- I see what looks like a little footpath
Where somebody had gone through there
At some point in the summer,
And make my way up what used to be the porch.
And I look in, the house is all burned out.
As I peeked around the corner, I saw some flip-flops here.
I stepped in further
And-and saw the body itself.
- In the August swelter,
The body had decomposed beyond recognition.
They knew they had a white man
With an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
The victim had been wearing jeans
And telltale flip-flops.
- It's not the outcome we wanted,
But at least he was found.
- The hometown detective, scott blackwell,
Rushed over from nearby streets
To confirm the finding.
- When I saw, uh, this body, I knew it was him.
- Detective blackwell's immediate concern
Was to let the landrys know, in the most humane way possible,
Before the media was onto it.
He called his chief of police.
- I remember, um, chief of police coming
To the front door.
I knew when he walked in,
I could tell by the look on his face
What he was gonna tell me.
I didn't want to hear it.
After I got done crying,
I wanted to take a shower,
Like it was gonna wash it all away.
My matt.
- Coming up...
Could one man have done this?
- I'm 6'6", 280 pounds,
Matt could take me out.
Matt was that strong.
- Maybe one man didn't.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
No one wanted the search for matt landry
To end that way,
With detectives discovering his body
In an abandoned house.
Police now had one answer,
But there was still a mystery to be solved.
They thought matt's death was tied to a violent crime spree,
And a suspect was in custody.
But another person's secrets
Had yet to be revealed.
Here's dennis murphy
With the conclusion of "taken".
- We stayed up late, it felt so right,
I'll never forget that wonderful night.
- In a journal she keeps, francesca enshrined
Her last hours with matt landry in a song.
A reworking of "last kiss",
An oldie mash-up by pearl jam.
- Well, now he's gone, even though he's in my heart,
I lost my love, my life, that night.
- So when do you guys miss him?
- Every second, every day.
- Yeah.
- And, like, I miss him any time I touch an instrument
Or anytime I listen to our favorite bands.
- They identified him on Friday.
- Matt's decomposed body,
Discovered in a hellhole of a house,
Was positively id'd by the medical examiner
Through dental records.
The m.E. Determined cause of death
Was a single gunshot to the back of the head.
Already under arrest
And now charged with a fresh crime, killing matt,
Was a man known on the streets as ihop.
He'd given police the phony name giles,
But his fingerprints revealed him to be
17-year-old ihab masalmani.
- Born in this country?
- No, born in libya.
- His attorney, joseph kosmala, said masalmani came to michigan
To live with relatives,
Who, according to juvenile court records,
Neglected him.
He then entered the state's child welfare system
And it didn't go well,
Fleeing foster homes for a life
On detroit's gang-ridden northeast side.
- My job here is to make sure
That he gets the best and fairest trial he can get.
- Please state your name for the record.
- Ihab masalmani.
- Masalmani faced a slew of charges,
Including murder,
Kidnapping and carjacking in the landry case,
Bank robbery in the flagstar stick-up,
And carjacking in the wal-mart incident.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
- Maybe his best shot is, ironically, the homicide.
- Correct.
I'm not admitting that my client committed a bank robbery,
I'm not admitting that my client committed
A carjacking in roseville.
However, those cases are very strong cases
For the prosecution.
- Evidently, the bank security cameras
Apparently showing him brandishing a gun,
And clues from the wal-mart,
Including a discarded gun, don't lie.
However...
- The homicide is not a slam dunk for the government.
- Police never found a gun or a bullet
At the death house that matched the gun
They recovered at the wal-mart.
- Nobody can put a gun in-in masalmani's hand.
- Masalmani alone had been charged
In the wal-mart carjacking and flagstar bank heist.
- But there were two assailants who attacked matt
At the quiznos, according to that 911 caller.
Matt had been double-teamed,
An explanation, his friends say,
For why this powerfully fit drummer
Was taken against his will.
- I'm 6'6", 280 pounds.
Matt could take me out. Matt was that strong.
- After matt's body was found,
The taskforce continued combing northeast detroit
For quiznos suspect number two.
Sources squeezed on the street told the cops
They should be looking for 16-year-old
Robert "fat daddy" taylor.
- We flooded that area
And we shut down the drug trade in that area.
- You guys were bad for business.
- Oh, we destroyed the business for one week
And we made a statement to them.
Therefore, I believe they made a statement
To fat daddy
That you better get out of our neighborhood.
So he ultimately turned himself in.
- Taylor was also charged with murder
And kidnapping in the quiznos abduction.
He pleaded not guilty.
At the trial, the defense theorized
That matt had gone voluntarily
With ihab masalmani and robert taylor.
- They were going down to do a drug deal
And, uh, then what happened happened.
And I don't know what happened.
- Any reason to think that he would have known
Who those guys were?
Like a drug purchase gone bad or anything?
- No, sir, we believe that it was totally random.
Totally random.
- Wrong place at the wrong time.
Could have been any one of us.
- And these detectives had advice for anyone ambushed
Like that in broad daylight or even at night.
- At no time should you allow someone
To take you from point a to point b.
- Don't go. - Don't go.
- You fight. You fight to the death, period.
Because once you're on their turf, it's over.
- The young woman at the bank dropped right to the floor.
She says, "I'm not going with you."
- That's what saved her life.
- Grass is growing, my flowers are blooming,
But I am just dead inside.
Just dead inside...
- In the days after she lost her son,
A grief-stricken doreen landry
Went public with a cause important to her.
Condemning the burned-out and abandoned houses
In northeast detroit that area gangs called home.
- I'm pleading to the mayor of detroit,
That area needs to be cleaned up.
It's nothing but a garbage pit.
- There's thousands of houses in detroit that are abandoned
That they live in.
- That just raze 'em, knock 'em down.
- Just flatten 'em.
- In fact, in 2010, the detroit mayor
Started a program to do just that.
The house where matt's body was found has been demolished.
Ihab masalmani was convicted of first-degree murder,
Kidnapping, and carjacking,
And sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Robert taylor was also convicted of murder,
And he too is serving a life sentence without parole.
Both have appealed their sentences.
- It took one second, literally one second
To end matthew's life.
And that one second
Has literally turned our family upside down.
- Matt's funeral service,
As that day's program explained,
Was intended to remember the joy,
The laughter, the smiles.
And no one would forget on that sad day
That matt was also a rocker.
- Matthew was a drummer,
But he had an acoustic guitar.
He would always start "stairway to heaven"
And it seemed like through time
He would get through a little bit more,
You know, he'd learn a little bit more of it.
And I'd love to listen to him doing that.
And we asked the priest,
"father, I know this is unusual",
I said, "but, um, if you have anyone
That could play 'stairway to heaven',
That would be beautiful."
He says, "let me see what I can do."
- And so, he came up with a group of musicians
To honor matt with a song he loved,
About a symbolic stairway
That he climbed way too soon.
- And it was so beautiful,
And it was just... Perfect.
Matthew loved it.
He would have loved it.
- That's all for this edition of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin, thank you for watching.