KAHL: East Gillespie is a small, tight-knit community,
and you think it's safe
to go out to mow your yard, and this happens to you.
[banging noises, commotion]
[dog barking]
PAINTER: Just knowing somebody could do that
to another human was really disturbing,
especially, you know, in the presence of a four-year-old.
REKART: He had a life that looked pretty picture perfect,
and then he had a life of after hours.
A guy called and said, "Snitches get stitches."
FENLEY: That murderer runnin' around town,
as far as I know, it was my next door neighbor.
HARVEY: I'd give anything to change it.
I miss her so much.
It's the nightmare that I can't wake up from.
[theme song playing]
[somber music playing]
PAINTER: I grew up here in the Gillespie area,
And it's odd how some names stick in your brain, and some
names don't stick in your brain -- you know, Angela Lee,
I'll never forget that name.
At the time of the Angela Lee murder,
in 2003, I was a road deputy,
and I was off that night.
Um, but being a smaller department,
being a small, rural area, word travels fast.
Angela Lee was found in her house
by her boyfriend, Jason, her son's father.
When he came home that evening from work,
he had worked a little bit later than normal,
when he found her,
she was laying in the dining room in a pool of blood with
very traumatic injuries to her head and neck.
Jason had said that he discovered his son
in -- in one of the bedrooms,
apart from the dining room, watching television.
Jason then contacted 911.
[distant sirens wailing]
KAHL: I heard the squad cars go by.
I made a phone call and was informed that
we had a homicide murder down in East Gillespie.
I was kind of shocked about it, you know,
because we don't deal with a lot of murders
in Macoupin County on a regular basis.
This was the residence in which, uh, Angela lived in.
This is the first time I've been here since
the murder happened, and it,
you know, brings up a lot of -- a lot of memories.
This house is obviously a little different now. Um...
but what I can kind of remember was when we found
Angela, she was probably,
I'm gonna say right and about in this area.
She was laying on her back, um,
with her -- with her legs crossed.
It was a very brutal crime scene.
They felt like she was probably beat
to death at that point in time.
The whole thing is -- is just brutal, you know,
and -- and such a terrible, terrible ordeal.
But to think Angela's little boy, who was
four years old, was at the house
when this occurred, we were extremely
relieved that he didn't harm her boy.
Being in law enforcement,
you know, you see bad things, and --
and this was at the top of the list
as far as bad things happening to somebody, you know,
it's hard to believe that somebody would ever do this.
The gun handle was found right here in this area.
Investigators believe that she was possibly beat with the gun.
In cases like this, you always have to look
at that person that they're in a relationship with.
And so we talked to Angela's boyfriend, Jason.
Because of the nature of this crime,
it looked like it was somebody that was really angry with her.
And a lot of times when crimes like this occur,
they are crimes of passion, where you just,
the emotions and the feelings get so overwhelming,
you just don't stop.
KAHL: After canvass of the neighborhood,
none of the neighbors really saw anything.
Investigators did talk to an employee
at the Cavallo Bus Lines who --
who worked in the garage of the bus lines,
which was right across the street.
This gentleman had indicated that he did see Angela
out mowing her yard somewhere around five in the afternoon.
So that was really about the only witness
we had of timeline, trying to figure out what --
what happened that day.
So this is my Angie,
and my dad took all these pictures.
He loved her so much.
She was just the happiest baby.
This is...
Angie's badge for school.
She had just re-enrolled right before this all happened.
What a waste of a beautiful life.
July 30th, 2003, I got a phone call from Angie's dad,
and he just told me that I needed to get there
immediately. Well...
I had to know what was going on.
So I just kept asking and kept asking,
and he finally told me that Angie had been murdered,
and...
I'm pretty sure I -- I hit the ground.
I don't think I can even describe what it's done to me.
I'd give anything to change this.
Time does not heal all wounds, that doesn't happen.
That's not true.
KAHL: The next day,
the investigators were still there processing.
I was out just kind of walking in the area, just to make sure
if anything was missed.
I was over across the street where the Cavallo Bus Lines was,
and I was walking along the road and looked down in
a ditch and saw that there was a blue rubber glove.
I notified the investigators, and then they came over
and -- and brought, you know,
crime scene over, and they photographed and collected
the rubber glove -- over in the Cavallo parking lot,
they were able to find some balloon ribbon
that matched up to what was in Angela's garage.
So we kind of had an idea that maybe it got stuck to the foot
of -- of the suspect,
and they walked towards Cavallo, and it was
recovered over in the Cavallo parking lot.
FENLEY: As I was working at Cavallo Bus Line,
I was a cleaner, cleaning buses outside and in.
The hours were at nighttime, usually from
about five at night until three or four in the morning.
The day after the murder, Cavallo's was quiet.
Nobody looked at anybody, nobody would talk to anybody,
they were just going about their business.
It was like a totally different
world in there after that happened.
The cops showed up to interview us,
and that's a stressful thing to go through.
It don't matter if you get
pulled over for speeding or interviewed for...
it's just stressful.
Every time I drove by Angie's house, I would feel sickness.
Just that hair stands up on the back
of your neck when you drive by there.
REKART: Do you want to come help me?
Okay, so put these patties
onto here, and then put those on there.
You might want to wash your hands first.
I met Angie in the third grade, and she liked to do things
other kids wouldn't like to do.
She wasn't afraid to get messy or in the dirt.
When I heard the details of how Angie was murdered,
I threw up and stayed in bed for two days.
My sister came and got me and took care of my kids.
The last time I saw Angie, she had came to our house.
She was really excited.
They had just gotten a new home, and she was excited to
decorate it and just start
making a home for her and Jason.
Angie started dating Jason around the time of
her freshman year of high school.
He was quite a bit older than us.
When Angie told me she was pregnant, and she was 17, um...
I was shocked.
I think that her and Jason's relationship
at that point was hard on her.
Angie and Jason dated, on-again, off-again,
for eight years, and in between that time,
they would make up and break up
and maybe date other people,
and Brad Wolf came into the picture.
Angie was dating Jason and kind of Brad
in the same period.
There was always that Brad and Jason...
drama.
As a young man,
there's only so many times that you're going to be
chosen second,
whether it was Jason being chose second or Brad being
chose second, somebody was being chose second and pissed.
So, you'd have to ask if it was one of them.
MOON: The media response to the Angela Lee murder
was shock.
And wondering who is this person who would do such
a thing in our small town, and is anybody else in danger?
ROBINSON: After Angie's murder,
there was a rumor going around that she owed someone
lots of money, and maybe that's why that they did it.
MARBURGER: My reaction was that she might have been involved
with something, because I had speculation
that there were people doing things that
they shouldn't be doing,
like partying at the dealership, and I felt my --
my gut was, like, that made sense
if there was a connection to that.
That was my personal feeling on it.
KAHL: There was a lot of fear in the community
when this happened.
The chatter going around the normal, well,
did the boyfriend do it?
Did the ex-boyfriend do it?
Anytime you have a homicide like this,
um, your first is to look at the boyfriend,
family members -- I mean, that's just --
in police work, that's 101 in a homicide.
The investigators interviewed Jason,
Angela Lee's boyfriend, and tried to get a timeline
from Jason as to what was going on.
Jason said that normally, he's home at around five from work,
but in that particular day, he didn't get home until about
nine that night, because he had to work overtime.
Well, that's really, like,
the first time that that's ever happened.
So in our minds, you know, that -- that's --
that throws up somewhat of a red flag.
So obviously, you know, we gotta --
we gotta track that lead.
We spoke with Jason's employer.
They indicated that yes, he was at a residence installing
a satellite, but, you know,
it was always in the back of our mind, did he, you know,
have somebody else do this?
When the investigators asked the question of who he thought
murdered Angela,
he thought that Brad Wolf was involved in the murder.
So this used to be the dining room.
This is now the Santa room.
It just kind of blew up.
My favorite one, who I can't get all
the way over to, is definitely this one.
I started collecting Santas when I lost Angie.
She was more than my daughter.
She was my best friend.
I got pregnant with Angie
in between my junior, senior year.
Having Angie at the age of 17 was difficult,
but I wouldn't change a thing.
The best thing about being a young mom
was growing up with her.
Angie was playing fast-pitch softball,
and she really was good, she excelled at that,
but she outgrew the softball and became fond of boys,
and that whole season of her life started,
and then at some point, she met Jason.
As the years went on, and I found
out things that were happening between him and Angie,
I didn't like him quite so much.
Neither of them were perfect, nobody's perfect.
Angie she did date Brad Wolf during a period of time when
her and Jason had split up, but I think
she was a little bit afraid of him and his connections,
and people that he associated with,
she didn't want anything to do with, but he was border --
I would say borderline obsessed with Angie.
When I was told that she was murdered,
I remember screaming Brad Wolf.
I was sure it was him.
Okay, so Angie's name, I got nine days after she was killed.
I got that tattoo, and the star
that dots the I, we always -- we both would, like --
we both had an I in our names, so we would dot it with
a star, and I still do that to this day.
I was Angie's best friend for pretty much our whole lives.
She was, like, the person that if -- whatever it was,
she would be the one I could call first.
This is the box that has the pictures that I have
of Angie.
So this is -- Angie and I had gone with my cousins
to a water park, and that's where we're at there.
And this one is at our friend Melissa's house,
and that's Brad Wolf in the background.
Brad Wolf was just a very huge ego.
Um, he really thought that he was the man,
but he didn't do anything to be the man,
he was just given everything.
After Angie was killed,
I had heard that Brad basically bragged that he was
the one that had done it and telling girlfriends of his,
uh, pretty much if you don't do this, that, or the other,
that you'll end up just like Angie did.
And so Brad Wolf was a suspect, but the thing is, what was
so weird, like, several weeks before Angie was killed,
she was let go from the dealership where she worked
because of something to do with her not agreeing to whatever
maybe possibly shady business they had going on there.
And so then, about a week later, a guy called a friend of mine
and Angie's and said literally used the term,
"Snitches get stitches," referring to Angie, um,
as if she had told on some
weird thing they were doing, I don't --
I don't know, so once Angie was killed, I thought for sure
that has to be who did it,
because who else would want to kill her?
She's been murdered, and we have somebody that has
threatened her life a few weeks before.
It's gotta be from that, right?
PAINTER: Brad Wolf was a suspect because of
the past relationships that he had with Angela.
My experiences in contacts with Brad Wolf in the past started
way back when I worked as a patrol deputy.
He became this person that -- of interest that we knew was
involved in illegal activity.
But we could never really get somebody to turn on Brad,
because he had been connected in so many different ways.
Because of this relationship
that he had with law enforcement,
knowing that he was always a suspect that
hadn't been caught or hadn't got caught yet,
um, was kind of a legend in his own mind.
When the investigators talked to Brad
about Angela Lee's murder, Brad had said that him
and one of his friends went to a party the night before,
didn't get back into town until around noon-ish,
drove around town, which is
something that they would normally do,
and then around five, his friend
dropped him off at his parents' house.
Investigators did have Brad Wolf take a polygraph test,
and any questions that he had been asked,
he answered according to
the polygrapher as being truthful and honest.
KAHL: Investigators were able to eliminate Brad,
but just to the extent of her injuries,
it -- it seemed like it just had to be a personal thing,
and so it was very difficult to clear the boyfriend, Jason.
It was always was he involved or was he not involved?
That was the question.
HARVEY: The police thought that the person
who did this to Angie would have
to be someone that she knew, because it was considered
a crime of passion.
I mean, the brutality of it.
So when Brad Wolf was eliminated,
I was sure it was Jason.
Whether he had done it himself or had somebody else do it,
I was sure that he was involved in some way.
I didn't talk to him until after the funeral.
Jason started talking about the way Angie looked
when he found her.
He was sure that she had been shot.
He said that he had seen wounds like that before,
and he said he was sure that somebody
had shot her right here.
Jason said this all very matter-of-fact.
He did not act or have the emotion
that you would expect after what he saw.
When dealing with young children in crimes like this,
you have to be careful as to not sway them into what to say.
The Springfield Advocacy Center was contacted,
and they have people that are
experienced in forensic interviewing, um,
that were able to contact and talk to him
about the crime itself.
KAHL: When they interviewed Angela Lee's son,
he indicated that they had been outside mowing.
Um, when they got done mowing,
him and mommy went inside.
He says that he remembers seeing a guy, the killer.
Then the killer goes after mom, and mom tells her son to run --
run and hide.
He indicated that, uh,
the guy,
um, was the same color as his dad
and indicated that it was a big, ugly guy.
PAINTER: At some point during the investigation,
uh, the interviewer asked if -- if this was dad that
had committed a crime, and the son had said no.
KAHL: Unfortunately, you know,
the really the only thing he could tell us that he was just
a big, ugly man.
So at that point in time, Jason was
pretty much ruled out as a suspect in it.
But, you know, for a four-year-old
to have to experience this, see this --
just, you know, it -- it rips you right to the core.
HARVEY: One of the first things he said to me was...
he asked me why I didn't come get him,
and I told him that I didn't know.
I didn't know what had happened,
or I would have came and got him.
It was terrible.
I always say
I'm so thankful that he wasn't hurt,
but he really was.
And he still is. He's a grown man now.
I feel like...
when I lost Angie, I lost him, too.
I'd give anything to change it.
Anything.
[shaky exhale]
[phone ringing]
Um, this is just one part of the Angela Lee file,
and there's numerous other boxes
of evidence that -- that is here.
This is how big the case was.
Working on this case,
the most overwhelming aspect was the amount of
people that we had talked to, um, interviewed.
We took DNA from an ungodly amount of people.
PAINTER: During the course of the investigation,
investigators had ran DNA
on some of the items that
they had retrieved from Angela's house,
and through DNA technology,
um, Elias Montano,
a local Gillespie man, had became
a person of interest to talk to.
His name was mentioned numerous times through
different contacts that we had with different interviews,
and his -- his relationship with Angela Lee and past
employment with some of the car dealerships.
And through DNA
retrieved from the crime scene,
investigators had determined that Montano's DNA
was all over different places at the house.
REKART: My husband, Elias, and Angie
worked at the car dealership together.
I didn't really think anything too much when they came
and told us, you know,
when they initially told us that people at
the dealership were being spoke to,
and they came to my house and questioned me.
It wasn't until the police came to our house
the second time and took him to
the police station that I started wondering how Elias had
more to do with what was going on.
The police officers told me that Elias's DNA
and fingerprints was all over Angie's home.
I was asking Elias, "When were you in Angie and Jason's home?"
And he kept telling me he had never gone to their home.
I did not believe him.
At that point, I started wondering, why would they think
that my husband would do anything like that?
Then you start questioning everything.
Do I know this person?
I'm -- am I sleeping next to a stranger?
This is our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy,
Family Martial Arts and Fitness.
What I love about Jiu-Jitsu is
it's the most difficult thing I've ever done.
It's very, very challenging, not just physically
but mentally, um,
but it provides a lot of joy and reward.
Angie was a coworker with me at my dealership.
I was the finance manager, and she was the receptionist.
The murder in the workplace
really just kind of opened my eyes that
things like that could happen anywhere, evil is everywhere.
There were some bad apples in our store.
There were some people that, you know, that there were little
cliques of people that I knew
that partied -- the work environment
was very fast-paced.
It's just moving and shaking, because we moved
a lot of cars out of that location.
Elias, which I called Lee Montano,
he was a sales consultant at the time.
I took some salesmanship from him,
just kind of watching how he interacted with customers.
He was very smooth.
When I heard about Elias being a suspect,
I was just kind of shocked.
I never once thought that he could have done it.
It just seemed bizarre.
It was -- it was so close to home.
Here's your sweet tea.
-Thank you. -You're welcome.
The day that Angie was killed,
Lee Montano went to the ER and had a broken wrist or hand,
and, um, supposedly Elissa said that
it was from punching something, I think, because he was mad.
I don't remember exactly, but, um, I was suspicious of him,
and I even went out with Elissa and Lee,
just trying to get information.
He's sitting there telling me about how he knew Angie
and he would never kill anybody, he would never do this.
And I'm just thinking, I never said you did or might have.
Why are you trying to convince me you didn't do this?
So it just really became suspicious.
We looked into Lee Montano, because his fingerprints were
all over the furniture that was located in the house.
When communicating with Mr. Montano,
he would swear that he'd never been to Angela's house.
He was very adamant that he
had nothing to do with Angela's murder.
MONTANO: The first time I met Angie was at the car dealership.
She was hired to be a secretary.
She seemed young, uh, ambitious.
She was an attractive girl.
Her death was absolutely a shock to me.
I remember, when I got to the car dealership,
I noticed there was some police cars there.
When I walked in, um,
I was pulled aside, and I was asked if I'd
come down to the police station.
I felt very nervous, you know,
I'm just nervous around police officers in general.
When I was at the police station, and the police
officers informed me that they had my fingerprints
and DNA at Angie's house, I was very confused,
because I've never stepped foot in Angie's house.
Police officers were implying that I absolutely knew
something about her murder.
My mind was wondering why they
were pressing so hard about my DNA.
They mentioned a couch.
Then it clicked, because we gave her
the furniture, because I was buying new furniture.
That's why my DNA was there,
that's why my fingerprints were there,
and why they --
the police department pressed so hard on the fact of me being
at her house, and I knew where she lived.
PAINTER: Investigators in the case that had talked to Montano,
they had to be able to confirm what Montano was saying.
So the investigators reached out to Jason and was able
to confirm that they did receive this couch
from Montano.
And so the investigation hit another brick wall.
MONTANO: After the interrogation at the police department,
the buzz at the dealership wasn't
the same -- sales started to go down.
People were not being as personable.
It definitely impacted the dealership.
My wife did ask me point blank if
I did it, and obviously, I said no.
When she asked me that question, of course,
I was upset.
There was definitely friction at home, and that was probably,
um, you know another log on the fire of why, you know,
we got divorced shortly afterwards.
REKART: Through the course of the investigation,
the police told me that Elias had a double life.
He had a life where he had a wife
and children at home that looked pretty picture perfect.
And then he had a life of
after hours that was not so picture perfect.
And so, at the end of this investigation,
I did not know who I had married.
We divorced -- I immediately filed for divorce.
MONTANO: After all the interviews were done,
after all the DNA was done,
Angie's dad had it stuck in his head
that either I did it or I knew who did it.
Probably frustrating on Angie's dad's end,
but it was just as frustrating on my end,
being accused of something that I had nothing to do with.
But, yeah, my life was ruined all because
I gave someone a couch.
Hi, there. How you guys doing?
In 2007, when we formulated this small
task force to work on this case,
I kind of knew we had to go a new direction.
We had to look at other things.
Cavallo Bus Lines was a lot of people employed from
the Gillespie area and throughout
central United States.
It's really the only business in East Gillespie,
large business, anyways, at that point in time,
and it was right across the street from
Angela's house.
We needed to get the Cavallo employee list,
and the Macoupin County State's Attorney at
the time was able to get in touch with
Cavallo and finally get us this list so we could run down
the employees and try to -- try to
figure out if anybody saw anything.
PAINTER: It was binder after binder of information
to go through, but the list was finally prepared
to where the investigators were able to
look at the employees that were there and go
back and compare to who had originally been spoken to
the day of the crime and -- and to
who still needed to be contacted.
FENLEY: I was at work and got called home,
said there was two detectives there waiting on me.
I'm like, man, what did I do now?
I get there. The state police are there,
and I told the police that I seen --
I was on the bus cleaning, and the night
before the murders, there was a mechanic parked on
the side of the alley by the corn field.
Then I looked up, and I seen
a car take off with a high rate of speed,
no headlights, headed out that way.
It's unusual to see a mechanic at Cavallo's
at 10 o'clock at night.
Kind of made you wonder what he was doing.
FENLEY: When the cops spoke to me,
I told the police the night before the murders,
around 9:30, 10 o'clock at night,
we were cleaning buses about right here.
I heard a car door.
I look up, and it was Tony.
Tony Ashby was a mechanic, and so I thought,
"Well, what's he doing here?
He shouldn't be here."
The mechanics worked in the daytime.
The cleaning crew was here at night.
So it should only have been cleaning crew here.
Tony was parked over here.
We noticed him
taking off at a high rate of speed with no headlights.
The fact that his headlights were off was really weird.
About a week later, Tony had quit, but it wasn't anything,
you know -- Cavallo's was a turnaround.
People come and go all the time.
So I didn't put two and two together.
At this point in time of the investigation,
Anthony Ashby was never mentioned,
never on our radar.
We started doing the background on Anthony Ashby.
He had a fairly clean record.
Um, but there was some sort of
domestic disturbance that had occurred in
Litchfield, Illinois.
The Litchfield Police Department went
to Anthony's residence -- as they approached
the door and they began knocking on the door,
they heard a gun go off.
[gunshot blasts]
Police!
KAHL: They got the door open, rushed inside the house,
took the individual down,
which turned out to be Anthony Ashby, and recovered a gun that
he had discharged inside the house
while they were outside the door.
We went over to Litchfield Police Department
to see if they still had the gun.
They took me into one of their office areas,
pulled the gun out.
Grips were missing off the gun, and the sight was missing.
Early on in the investigation, we had parts of a firearm,
and parts that were missing
from Anthony's seized gun and the parts that were collected
as evidence at the crime scene matched.
Everything linked together.
That's the hard part of trying to get everyone
in the thing here.
We sent investigators to Anthony's workplace
to interview him.
KAHL: During the interview, he was pretty quiet.
He didn't seem agitated or anything.
KAHL: During the course of the interview,
Anthony was asked about the gun discharge.
And he was asked, has it ever been
out of his possession, and he indicated no.
So at that point in time, we knew that
he had never gave this gun to anybody else,
and he'd always had this gun since --
since the murder happened.
KAHL: Once we started pushing him, pressuring him,
then he became more agitated.
With DNA on some of the items that they had
retrieved from the gun that was in
Anthony Ashby's possession,
um, they had obtained DNA that matched
Angela Lee's DNA.
That was the nail in Anthony's coffin.
When I first heard that Tony was
arrested for the murder, I about crapped my pants.
I couldn't read it out of Tony that he was a violent person.
Tony didn't show no violence.
HARVEY: I cried and cried.
I was happy and sad.
Relieved -- oh, huge relief.
Like, the world lifted off my shoulders.
It was very close to him
not ever being caught -- very grateful.
PAINTER: Ashby ended up killing Angela Lee,
most likely looking in the windows and somehow
fantasized about being with her.
Had tried to take that fantasy
one step further and had gotten caught.
At the point that him getting caught in some way, in his mind,
he felt that he could explain it away to her to make it okay,
and when he found out that he couldn't
make it okay, he had to kill her.
PACE: When he took the 33-year plea, I felt cheated.
I felt like Angie was cheated.
I did not feel that was justice.
He'll get out when he's 60 years old.
I fear certain things, like when he gets out of jail.
What if I did see him at a gas station or something?
Just the thought of even running into --
I can't even imagine,
I don't -- I don't know what that would be like.
FENLEY: Angie's murder changed me by the way
I look at people now, the way I trust people,
the way I process through my head.
Are you the next killer that's coming around?
And before that happened,
I wouldn't look at you like that.
This kind of affected me in -- in a lot of ways.
It has made me understand that you never give up.
You never stop working on the case.
HARVEY: My heart is so broken from losing my daughter.
Not just losing her, but the way that I've lost her.
And I miss her.
There's not a day that I don't
wake up and realize she's not here.
I'm never gonna see her.
It's the nightmare that I can't wake up from.