♪♪
Narrator: Up next, a woman is gunned down in a crowded parking lot.
This was six days after Heather's 25th birthday.
Narrator: The murder looks like a professional hit.
Our victim had a single gunshot wound to the forehead.
Narrator: Evidence reveals a killer with an elaborate plan.
This was no spur-of-the-moment act of vengeance.
Narrator: But how many enemies can a churchgoing young mother have?
It was pretty intense for us to get to the bottom of it
to try to find out what was going on.
♪♪
Narrator: At 6:00 on a Sunday evening in the spring of 2009,
Heather Strube met her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Steven,
in a shopping center parking lot near Atlanta, Georgia.
As part of a regular routine, they were exchanging custody
of their 19-month-old child, a little boy named Carson.
Downs: Because of the issues they were having during this divorce,
they decided to meet at this particular
shopping center parking lot
because it was in the open, there were people there,
and they just felt that was the best place to meet.
Narrator: As Steven drove away, Heather took baby Carson
and strapped him into the car seat in her SUV.
This was an everyday sort of occurrence,
nothing unusual about it.
But there was someone who seemed unusual in the parking lot
that afternoon, and a lot of people took notice.
Mayfield: The callers reported seeing a strange person
walking about the parking lot.
Short male, mustache, kind of a bushy haircut,
kind of an unusual look.
And it drew the attention of the eyewitnesses
who were in the parking lot.
Narrator: The person walked up to Heather Strube,
the two exchanged words, then, to the horror of onlookers,
drew a pistol from a shoulder bag and shot Heather
point blank in the head.
Calls from witnesses flooded into emergency dispatch.
Police arrived to find Heather dead.
The absence of a shell casing led us to believe
that it had to have been a revolver
that the suspect would've used.
Baby Carson was unharmed.
All told, a half dozen people called 911.
Their descriptions of what happened,
and of the shooter, were remarkably similar.
The reports on the 911 calls were consistent.
They reported that the shooter calmly turned
and walked away from the scene,
walked behind the shopping center,
where the witnesses lost sight of him.
Narrator: The witnesses, and even police,
were shocked by what they'd seen.
Mayfield: This murder was the type of murder
that really disturbs the community.
The entire community feels vulnerable when,
in broad daylight, someone is murdered in a parking lot.
Narrator: And as the witnesses recounted what they saw,
it got even more disturbing.
All of them said the shooter
and the victim appeared to know each other.
Clearly, robbery wasn't the motive.
Mayfield: All of the victim's belongings were still in the van.
Some of those were valuable.
None of those items were taken.
It was apparent to us that someone knew
that Heather would be in that parking lot at that time
to make the exchange of the child.
Narrator: But who would want to kill Heather Strube?
She grew up locally, worked at her parents' flower shop,
was active in her church --
a young woman liked and respected by everyone.
We felt like, from the start,
it had something to do with Carson.
And so we became very fearful,
because if we had Carson in our custody,
were we gonna be a target?
Narrator: But if this murder had something to do with baby Carson,
why did the shooter leave him in the vehicle?
Police, the family, the community,
everyone was baffled by what happened.
This crime didn't fit into our usual categories of robbery,
domestic killing, drug deal gone bad.
This was different.
♪♪
[ Gunshot ]
Narrator: Heather Strube's murder,
an execution-style hit in broad daylight in a public space,
had the community of Snellville, Georgia, reeling.
Whitehead: It's highly unusual for us
because we have so few violent crimes in our city.
At the time, that was, like, the sixth murder
in the history of our city.
Mayfield: The medical examiner conducted an autopsy of Heather,
and inside the cranial vault,
she located the bullet that killed Heather,
and they were able to determine forensically
that this bullet was fired by a
.38-caliber Rossi or Taurus firearm.
Narrator: After the shooting, the killer never touched the victim
or the vehicle, so there were no fingerprints
or other physical evidence at the scene.
But police had something going for them --
multiple witnesses and surveillance cameras.
Mayfield: There were two primary surveillance cameras
in the front of the shopping center.
One of them was located on the roof
and had a very wide view
and sort of swept left and right.
Narrator: A second camera, an older model, showed the parking lot
and the area where the shooter walked into the woods.
In a bad break,
neither of these cameras caught the actual shooting.
The camera was panning to the opposite side
of the parking lot. It was very disappointing.
Narrator: But the second camera did capture images of the shooter
walking to and from the scene.
Mayfield: The older system was very grainy.
It was VHS-based.
And it took one picture every second or two.
So you could look at the sequential pictures
and get an idea of the size of the person,
how they were walking, a little bit about their description,
but not enough to identify a face, jewelry, tattoos,
anything like that that might be
a positive identification of the shooter.
Narrator: But the video did show the person
who shot Heather had an unusual way of walking.
It's a gait that you could say that it's very unique.
It's not the normal gait that you would expect to see.
Mayfield: One can look at the various photographs
sequentially that are taken by the video
and see that the person takes extremely long steps
and straightens out the knee of the front leg when they walk.
This was rather compelling evidence.
Narrator: In an attempt to create a likeness of the shooter,
the witnesses who called 911 were sent to a forensic artist.
We had a high volume of eyewitnesses in this case.
Narrator: Despite the unusual number of witnesses,
there was striking agreement among their descriptions.
All of the witnesses said the shooter
was a very slight man between 5'5" and 5'8",
and, most important,
there was something very odd about the suspect's hair.
At least one of the witnesses identified this crazy hairdo
as possibly a wig.
Whitehead: The most distinctive thing they reported was this wig
that looked somewhat like Sonny Bono.
But they called it a wig and a mustache.
Narrator: This was the composite sketch
that was ultimately released to the media.
Even veteran police officers
said they'd never seen anything quite like it.
The sketch was interesting.
It had -- showed, like, a wild hairdo and a mustache
that was kind of strange-looking.
Mayfield: The artist's sketch almost looked like a clown-like figure.
Not very realistic.
But then we realized that the witness statements
also described the shooter
as having a clown, strange-like appearance.
Narrator: Now things got even stranger.
All the evidence indicated Heather Strube knew her killer,
yet no one -- not Heather's friends,
not her family, not her co-workers --
had any idea who this person was.
Detectives were coming to an uncomfortable conclusion.
Perhaps the killer had been wearing a disguise.
Quite frankly, I have never worked a homicide case
where the shooter wore a disguise.
This was a first for me.
♪♪
Narrator: Heather Strube's bizarre murder was big news
across the Atlanta metro area.
So when police released this composite sketch of the shooter,
it generated a lot of interest,
and it caught the eye of a truck driver
who happened to be staying in a hotel
near the shopping center at the time of Heather's murder.
He observed a white pickup truck in the parking lot,
and he observed someone sitting in the driver's seat
that looked rather crazy --
had a wild hairdo and a mustache.
Narrator: For now, this didn't help much in identifying Heather's killer.
But the truck driver had more information.
He looks at cars all day long, and he said
that he would recognize this car when he saw it again.
It was an older-model, white F-150
and had a little bit of trim on it
that wasn't common to all such vehicles.
Narrator: Why was this important?
Because the Strube family owned an F-150.
And Steven Strube, Heather's soon-to-be-ex-husband,
had a possible motive to harm her --
custody of their 19-month-old son, Carson,
had become contentious.
Allen: There was a custody dispute.
I mean, Steven wanted to be the primary caregiver.
Narrator: But Steven was seen driving away in his own vehicle,
not the family truck,
right after he gave Heather the baby.
He wouldn't have had time to double back
and commit the murder.
Perhaps most important, he was 6 feet tall,
much taller than all the descriptions of the shooter.
Steven could not have been the one
that actually pulled the trigger.
Narrator: Detectives turned back to their key witness,
the truck driver who got a good look at the shooter
and the shooter's truck, an F-150.
We did ask this person, this witness,
if he would be willing to ride with us
to take a look at a pickup truck
and see if it looked like the pickup truck he'd saw.
Narrator: The witness took one look at the Strube family truck
and made a positive identification.
He was 100% confident that that was the same vehicle
that he saw in the motel parking lot behind the shopping center.
Narrator: This was enough for police to get a search warrant.
Whitehead: Being an older-model truck like that,
you would expect there to be all kinds of fibers,
all kinds of particles in the carpet
or on the seat or wherever, but it was just immaculate.
It wasn't a new truck, but it was a clean truck.
Narrator: The only piece of visible evidence was a receipt
for ice cream dated the day Heather was killed.
It was from a fast-food restaurant about an hour's drive
from the site of the murder.
Joanna Hayes, Steven's 43-year-old mother,
freely admitted she was the one driving the family truck
and said she'd driven it on the day of Heather's murder.
She indicated that she stopped and bought the ice cream
on the way to her parents' house.
Narrator: This appeared to put enough distance
between Joanna and the murder
that she could not be the shooter.
Forensic analysts now did an extensive search
of the truck.
They went over every interior surface
with what are known as tape lifts.
Downs: They're like big pieces of tape
that they put down onto the floor,
they smooth it out, they peel it back.
Narrator: Even though the truck had been extensively cleaned,
analysts found something.
It looked like a single black hair.
It was sent to Chris Thompson of FiberVisions,
an international manufacturer of synthetic fibers.
Using infrared analysis as well as light microscopy,
Thompson determined the fiber had several unusual qualities.
It did not contain any texture, and it was pigmented.
So, kind of limits the number of applications or products
that it could go into.
Narrator: The fiber's length, 4 inches, was also uncommon.
The length was consistent with something
you might find in a wig.
Narrator: And that wasn't all the tape lifts recovered
from inside the Strubes' truck.
Trace elements of gunshot residue were also found.
This residue is almost impossible
to completely clean up.
Mayfield: This trace, minute evidence is more common
than most people realize.
Narrator: The evidence was compelling.
The killer was almost certainly driving the Strube family truck
the evening of the murder.
But who was behind the wheel?
Who handled the gun?
Who wore the wig?
We were not able to come up with a single piece
of direct evidence
concerning the guilt of anyone in this case.
♪♪
Narrator: A wig fiber and gunshot residue told detectives
that Heather Strube's killer
was most likely driving the Strube family truck.
Joanna Hayes, Heather's Mother-in-Law,
admitted driving that truck that very day,
but she claimed she couldn't be the killer
because she had an alibi.
A receipt for ice cream from a restaurant
an hour away from the murder showed
she could not be Heather's killer.
Well, we found the receipt and we looked at it
because she was adamant that she couldn't have done it.
Narrator: Joanna did have a motive.
She didn't want to share custody of her grandson with Heather.
But even prosecutors had to admit
that a single wig fiber and traces of gunshot residue
made for a thin case.
So they gambled.
They brought in Steven Strube
and showed him their surveillance tape
of the shooter recorded at the scene.
We began to ask him if it looked like anybody he knew.
And he began to really look hard at the video.
Can you tell?
It is apparent from not only what he said,
but how he reacted that he recognized his mother.
Narrator: Prodded by detectives,
Steven agreed to call his mother while they listened in.
She didn't act like most people would,
where she just came right out and said, "You're crazy.
I didn't do this."
Narrator: Detectives now looked hard at Joanna's alibi
that she was an hour away from the murder, buying ice cream.
Downs: We knew, after looking at the receipt
for the ice cream purchase, that she was there at 7:19.
Narrator: Heather was shot at 6:00.
Could Joanna have been at the site of the murder
and the fast-food restaurant 64 miles away?
Could she have been in both places?
We decided to drive from the shopping center
to the chain restaurant where she purchased the ice cream,
and we were able to determine
that she had plenty of time to commit the murder
and drive to the store to purchase the ice cream.
Narrator: Joanna also had another possible connection.
She once owned a gun like the murder weapon,
a .38 caliber.
Mayfield: Joanna Hayes' ex-husband had stated that,
before their divorce, she had access to that type of weapon.
Narrator: When questioned, Joanna still denied any involvement.
When confronted with the evidence we had against her,
she was not convinced that we had enough.
Narrator: And prosecutors worried she might be right.
The murder weapon hadn't been found,
and neither was any sort of wig.
And every single witness -- and there were a lot --
said the shooter was a man.
I had to overcome the evidence of my own witnesses
saying that they described a male shooter.
That's a high burden.
In May of 2011, Joanna Hayes
stood in court facing a felony murder charge.
Steven Strube was cleared of any involvement.
Prosecutors said Joanna had an elaborate plan
for killing her daughter-in-law.
Joanna donned the disguise -- the wig and mustache --
in an attempt to hide her identity.
She waited in the parking lot for Heather and Steven
to exchange the baby.
Once she was sure the baby was secure in his car seat,
she approached Heather.
No one knows what they said to each other,
but Joanna let her gun do the talking
and essentially executed Heather in broad daylight.
She drove 64 miles away and bought ice cream
in an attempt to create an alibi.
But police proved that she could have made the drive
in plenty of time.
Joanna didn't realize she left a single wig fiber
and gunshot residue behind --
clear proof that whoever drove the truck
was Heather's killer.
Where Joanna got rid of
the .38 caliber and the wig, no one knows.
In the end, the most damning evidence came from her son,
Steven, who recognized her
from this scratchy surveillance video.
Mayfield: Based upon the quality of that videotape,
a stranger could probably never identify
anyone to any degree of certainty,
but it's different to identify a family member
that you've lived with your whole life.
Narrator: A jury agreed.
Joanna Hayes was convicted and sentenced to life in prison,
plus five years probation.
She still maintains her innocence.
Mayfield: The prosecution used your son's own words against you.
I know.
And now he's got to live with that.
Because they dangled his son as a carrot in front of him.
They told him repeatedly, "Call your mom, do this,
and we will go help you get your son."
Narrator: Steven later retracted his identification of his mother.
Heather's father has primary custody of baby Carson.
In a biting piece of irony,
Joanna can have no contact with the grandson
she was willing to kill for.
Allen: Carson has a laugh that very much reminds me of Heather.
When we lost Heather,
that was just a hole in my heart that --
it's never gonna heal.
Downs: Joanna Hayes almost pulled off the perfect crime --
closer to committing the perfect crime than anybody I ever saw.
Mayfield: Of all the murders I've prosecuted,
very seldom do I see a planned, calculated, cold-hearted,
cold-blooded murder like this one.
This one was different.
What made it different was Joanna Hayes.
She's just the most evil defendant
I've ever convicted of murder.