- ♪
- A body that was found out behind a strip center,
face down with his hands tied behind his back.
- We were all in disbelief
and thinking, "No, it can't be him."
- It was not only one, it was two cold-blooded murders.
- DAN: In the residence, there was a great deal of blood.
We found what would be described as a makeshift coffin.
- JIM: It was pure profit and it was pure evil,
they would do these things to two different people.
- BUTCH: A sex ad had been placed.
The ad was for, "Have sex with me.
My husband likes to watch."
- TESSIE: He was not going to pull over willingly.
I was absolutely in fear of my life.
- NARRATOR: Five unique perspectives,
five points of view, one murder.
- NICOLE: I'm Rudy Lopes's niece.
- My name is Butch Matjeka--
- My name is Dan Downing.
- JIM: I was lead prosecutor in the capital murder.
- TESSIE: I was convicted of capital murder in 2003.
- ♪♪
- ♪
- I'm Nicole Costa and I am Rudy Lopes's niece.
My Tío Rudy was one of my favorite uncles.
He grew up in San Antonio.
He had two very loving parents.
He would always encourage my cousin and I
to get good grades and every time we got an A
on our report card, we would go to a restaurant.
And he was just an overall, like, loving person.
He would bring my aunt flowers just because it was, you know,
Tuesday.
He was working as a sheriff at the jail,
Bexar County.
He wore that badge with a lot of pride. [chuckles]
He was able to climb the ranks,
uh, there at the Bexar County Jail as a sheriff.
Uh, he was very--very proud and very determined to move up
and you know, he loved to do what he--what he did.
If anyone was doing anything incorrectly or, uh, wrong, uh,
we would tell them, you know, "My Tío Rudy's a sheriff,
so he's gonna come get you."
Tío Rudy and my Tía Alma were honestly a--a love story.
The way they just got along together,
they never fought in front of us and I'm not even sure
if they even fought about anything.
When my Tio Rudy and my Tia Alma got married,
I was maybe a couple of months old.
They just loved each other so much
and you could tell every time,
you know, at family events, Tío Rudy and Tía Alma
were always together.
They would go to the coast every single year
for their anniversary.
And actually, that year,
he was planning to go on a cruise.
- ♪
- NICOLE: The night of October 11th,
my Tío Rudy didn't show up at--at home.
At first my Tía Alma was like, "Oh, you know, maybe he
picked up a second job,"
maybe, um, you know, he went out with his friends
and just forgot to tell her.
When he wasn't answering his phone,
he still hadn't showed up hours later.
She had, uh, called missing persons
and reached out to our family friend, um,
who was also in the sheriff's department.
You know, this is very, very unlike my Uncle Rudy
to not show up, not call.
- ♪
- NICOLE: The morning of Friday the 13th,
I woke up at three o'clock in the morning and, um,
was trying to go back to sleep,
and then I heard the phone ringing.
It just kept ringing and ringing and so finally I was sitting up,
I was about to go answer it to figure out
who's calling at this time.
And then I heard my mom's footsteps,
and she answered the phone, and...
and she just started crying.
I was in the fourth grade at the time,
so, I didn't know what was happening.
So I went to go comfort her,
and then she told me that my uncle had been shot.
Our family friend actually knew what had happened
to my Uncle Rudy but wasn't able to tell
my Tía Alma over the phone,
'cause it wasn't correct protocol.
I believe it was two deputies who showed up to break the news
to her about where he was found and that he was found.
She couldn't believe it, and she was like,
"No, not my Rudy. It can't be."
Like, the rest of the family, too,
that he was no longer with us.
- ♪
- My name is Butch Matjeka and I was the lead investigator
on the murder of Rudy Lopes.
On October 12th of 2000,
it was late in the afternoon, I was getting ready to go home.
Our shift was just about ending.
- [phone ringing]
- BUTCH: And our office got a call for a D.O.A.
A body that was found out behind a strip center
off of Thousand Oaks in north San Antonio.
- ♪
- BUTCH: Rudy's body was found by some young girls who were
walking behind the strip center.
Of course, they became very scared, ran home,
and their parents were the ones that made the 911 call.
He was face down with his hands tied behind his back.
He had a--another piece of cloth or a shirt
that was wrapped around his-- his eyes as a...
kind of a blindfold.
We didn't get a lot of information from the girls,
so we begin what we call a canvass,
we start knocking on doors, talking to people to see
if they heard anything, if they saw anything.
- ♪
- BUTCH: The owner of the karate school, Charles Dudley,
he told us that the night before as he was closing up,
he saw a--a newer-model Chevy truck pull into, uh, the area
at the end of the strip center and go around behind it.
And Rudy had a--a brand-new 2000 Chevy truck, uh, dual cab,
gold in color.
Considering the time of the night, it was--
it was still fairly early, nine o'clock,
I don't think he really thought anything illegal was going on,
it was just unusual for him to see it,
and of course, it drew his attention
because that's his business.
We didn't get much from anybody else in the strip center.
But as the story came out on the news,
we had a police officer that called us the very next day
and told us that while he was on patrol,
he heard a gunshot go off.
So, with what Mr. Dudley told us, uh,
and what the officer told us about the time
of hearing the gunshot, we were able to place Rudy's death
around ten o'clock that night.
We went and talked to Alma Lopes, uh, Rudy's wife.
We learned that Rudy had worked in the jail,
he was a jail sergeant at the time, uh,
had a good reputation.
Alma never gave us any indication that Rudy
had any threats made, that anybody was out for revenge
from the jail.
The only thing that--that kind of drew our attention was,
she told us that they were having some difficulty
in the marriage, uh, it had been some time
since they had been together.
We pulled his bank records,
we pulled, uh, all of his phone records,
basically just threw out a wide net.
"Let's see where he's been, let's see what he's been doing."
As we looked through his financial records,
what we did see was there was a purchase made
at Frederick's of Hollywood, I think it was around $90.
Alma told us he hadn't brought anything home from Frederick's.
So, at that point we started to believe that we might be
looking at some type of an affair,
but we weren't really sure what we were looking at yet.
We sent a team of investigators to Frederick's of Hollywood
to look into this.
Clerks see so many people throughout the day,
it's hard to--for them to remember,
but amazingly, the clerk in this particular case
did remember Rudy from the description.
She also remembered that when Rudy came in,
he was with two people.
A young girl and another male.
And her idea when this purchase was made was that Rudy
was buying the negligee for the young girl.
We asked about whether he seemed to be coerced,
and her response to us was no,
this was very willing, very voluntary,
there was nothing that would give her any indication
that anything was wrong at that time.
As we continue to look through Rudy's financial records,
we found out that there were two withdrawals, uh,
from an ATM machine, uh, from Rudy's bank
on the day that we believe he was kidnapped and murdered.
One of the withdrawals was for $100,
the other withdrawal was for $300.
We went to Rudy's bank, and they were able to find
video footage that showed a young girl
driving a--what appears to be a newer Chevy model truck,
leaning out the window, putting in the PIN number
and making both withdrawals, uh, before she drove away.
Rudy wasn't in the video.
So, we continued to look through his--his, uh, telephone records,
and we found a number of calls that had been placed
to a--a series of-- a number of hotels
along the IH-35 corridor in San Antonio.
We sent a team of investigators to the hotels,
and again, thankfully, we came across a clerk, uh,
who remembered the calls being made.
They showed her the picture from the ATM.
The clerk remembered the woman and identified her
from checking in as a girl named Trina Doris.
Well, we don't have a lot of information on Trina Doris
other than her name,
so there's not a whole lot we can do.
We continue to comb through his telephone records,
and we find a phone number that he made four phone calls to, uh,
the day he died
that comes back to a Robert Brown.
We went to go talk to Mr. Brown.
- ♪
- BUTCH: When we talked to Mr. Brown,
he remembered Rudy Lopes calling his home
trying to get in touch with a woman
who had been staying with him.
He also identified the woman as Trina Doris.
He also told us that she was with a man
who identified himself as Moe.
Robert Brown had contacted Trina Doris and Moe at the time
in response to a sex ad that had been placed in a magazine
in San Antonio called The Current.
The ad was for, "Have sex with me.
My husband likes to watch."
Uh, that never happened,
although the promise of sex kept coming.
They told him they were from out of town
and didn't have a place to stay.
He allowed them to come to the house and stay with him
for a couple of nights.
He remembered that on the day that Rudy Lopes was killed,
Rudy called his house four times looking for Trina,
trying to get in touch with her.
Uh, Rudy had been scheduled to meet with her,
allegedly to have sex that day.
Robert did tell us that Trina was a dancer,
and she was going out looking for work as a dancer.
And so, what that necessitated was for the homicide unit
to visit almost every strip club there was in San Antonio
at that time.
We sent investigators out, uh, primarily around the area
where he worked, but we did visit as many strip clubs
as we possibly could.
We got lucky, we actually found a strip club on 410
where Trina was working for a short period of time.
Uh, and in finding that,
we were able to get her driver's license.
Now we have something we can look into for Trina Doris.
- My name's Dan Downing, I'm one of the investigators
that worked a murder case
just south of Indianapolis in 2000.
We received information from San Antonio officials
that they had a similar case, uh, with an individual
that was shot and killed there, uh, Rudy Lopes.
There were some differences in, uh, Rudy Lopes's death.
However, they were both bound behind the back.
Both individuals were shot in the head.
Just prior to 8:00AM,
I was notified by our communications center,
um, of a request for investigators at a residence.
I spoke with our uniformed officers that were on the scene.
Um, they kind of gave me the rundown
of what, uh, had taken place.
The, uh, homeowner was found in the trunk
of a burning vehicle just north in Burton County.
A passerby reported the, uh, the car fire.
It was just off of a state highway.
We learned via dental records that it was Robby Bott.
He was an airplane mechanic, um, locally here in Indianapolis.
Um, basically, a, uh, a divorced father, um,
kept to himself.
Mr. Bott's home was extremely neat.
Um, everything had a place and you could tell that
it was very well taken care of.
Um, but items were missing, so there were imprints
from where, um, a stereo would've been sitting,
um, and different electronic items in the house.
We found, um, in the kitchen area,
two chairs that were facing each other,
and a, uh, large pile of cigarette ashes
to the side of one of those chairs.
There was also a small amount of--of blood droplets
that were located around the chair.
That went along with our theory that some type
of an interrogation or a negotiation that had taken place
there in the kitchen, uh, because they were
low-velocity droplets, like someone had been struck.
There were a couple fingerprints but the majority of the surface,
as we printed every surface in the residence,
we found that they had been wiped off.
- ♪
- DAN: On, uh, day two of the investigation,
um, we received a call from the Speedway Police Department
that a, um, identification belonging to Robby Bott
had been located in a rental property in Speedway.
The actual landlord had been evicting his current tenants.
He had hired a cleaning crew to come in and clean out
all the property of the tenants that were
living in the residence.
When they lifted up a couch cushion,
they found a .22 rifle and also the wallet.
There was a great deal of blood, um, that went
from the garage area, through the service door
into the residence, and then down the stairway.
Once we got to the basement, we found a wardrobe, um,
that was lying on its back and had a, um, a padlock hasp
attached to the front of it.
There was a bullet projectile that was in the, uh, box itself.
There was also a pillow that had a through-and-through
gunshot wound, um, which would have been indicative
to using a pillow over the end of a firearm
as a suppressor to muffle the sound.
A lot of the items that we found missing
from Mr. Bott's house were now being utilized
in the Speedway home.
It started to become more apparent that Mr. Bott
was encountered in his residence in some way,
and then taken to the secondary location in Speedway, uh,
where he was then kept for a period of time
until his final demise.
- ♪
- DAN: Initially we found some credit card receipts
at Mr. Bott's residence.
The wallet did not have any credit cards,
so we started running, uh, through the different
credit services, um, Mr. Bott's information
in an attempt to find out or trace his last steps.
We found that, uh, during the timeframe
that Mr. Bott was abducted, um, he had went, uh,
to several locations and actually purchased
numerous household items.
Generally, people don't go on a shopping spree, um,
right before their death.
We sent investigators to those specific merchants to hopefully
obtain surveillance video.
In one of the, uh, stores, Mr. Bott was uh walking along
pushing a shopping cart that was full of numerous items.
He was accompanied by a female.
Uh, Mr. Bott is shown in the video looking up
at the camera and mouthing "Help me."
During the examination of the bank records,
we found that there were purchases
not only here in Indiana, um, at a local sex shop,
but also in San Antonio, Texas, at a similar type of shop.
We also know that there's a female that's involved, um,
so, we're--we also go back to Mr. Bott's residence.
We found in the master bedroom that there was an empty
condom wrapper lying on the floor next to the bed.
We also found that the bedsheets of the master bedroom were gone.
So, at that point, we're looking at,
"Was this a sexual encounter gone wrong?
"Was this some type of, um, hookup?
"Um, some type of a prostitution, um, element
that had went wrong for Mr. Bott?"
During communications with San Antonio Police Department,
we learned that through credit card statements,
there were purchases made in San Antonio, Texas,
and they had a similar case, um, with an individual that was
shot and killed there,
and a male and female suspect who may have been using aliases,
uh, possibly a Trina Doris, and a male by the name of Moe.
We were able to identify Trina Doris, speak with her,
and send photographs to San Antonio Police Department
so that they compare with their videos.
It was not Trina Doris.
The landlord in Speedway was forthcoming with the information
of--of who was renting from him at that point in time.
He had originally made an agreement with
the individuals that were living there that they were gonna do
some maintenance to the residence
in lieu of paying rent.
Um, they hadn't been doing the maintenance they agreed to,
so he was going to evict them.
The folks that actually rented the place, um,
was Tess McFarland and Joshua Maxwell.
Trina was a friend of Tess McFarland
and apparently had been using her information
as an alias.
We were able to run criminal histories and obtain
booking photos of both those individuals.
We then compared all of those photographs against the videos
here in Indiana, as well as the video from San Antonio, Texas,
to confirm that the people we were looking for, in fact,
was Tess McFarland and Joshua Maxwell.
- ♪
- My name is Tessie McFarland.
I was born in the outskirts of Indianapolis,
um, around Wanamaker.
My biological father was, um, killed when I was two,
but my mother remarried early on
and my stepfather raised me as his own.
In my freshman year, um, I met my son's father
and we got together and stayed together for several years.
Money was just so tight that when we had broke up,
I was kind of on my own.
Josh Maxwell, he was a friend of my brother's
and my brother's friends and during a summer
that I was going to driver's ed, I was at a party,
where we all sat around and was watching basketball.
And that's the first time I'd ever been introduced to him,
and I was 15 at that time.
Fast forward five years, I reconnected with Josh Maxwell
after he had been released from prison.
He's looking for my brother,
my stepsister and people that he hung out with.
Somehow, he ran across my telephone number.
I was just like, "Oh, wow,"
you know, blast from the past type thing.
I believe our romance was an absolute whirlwind.
He immediately moved in where I was living at the time.
Like, from, almost from probably two weeks in,
we just had that strong-- a very strong connection
from the very beginning.
It happened so quickly that I think that's also
part of the reason why I never seen red flags.
I originally met Robby Bott in the bar that I was working at
and he had--worked for Federal Express,
and had, um, been talking about openings in his job.
How well they paid or whatever, and so,
I had got a business card from him.
I thought this would be a great fit for Josh.
They started to set up meetings where he could meet him
in person and show him around.
He had came to our house, I had been to his house.
I never really realized that there was maybe
an underlying tone there.
Maybe that he expected more out of me and Josh.
I went to my sister's house to spend the night with her,
her children and my son.
We were gonna all get up and go somewhere the next day,
and apparently Robby and Josh got into a pretty bad argument,
and, uh, in the basement of the house that we were renting
at the time, um, he shot and killed him.
To my knowledge, Joshua put Robby's body
in the trunk of a car...
and lit the car on fire.
- ♪
- TESSIE: I absolutely was forced into leaving Indiana.
I would have never left my child behind, period.
Consequences be damned. I would've stayed.
Josh was not going to allow me to stay because he felt like
I knew too much and that whatever I said
would lead the cops directly to where he would go.
I was handcuffed to every bed, every bedpost.
He took the handset off of every telephone
in every hotel room.
I never went in anywhere by myself.
I was absolutely in fear of my life.
One time I was able to write a note to a hotel clerk.
I would try to sneak it in in between the stacks of bills
that I was paying with.
And I don't know if they just thought it was a joke
or they just never looked into it but nobody ever
contacted or reached out to any number that I left.
We arrive at San Antonio and, um,
the car that we were driving has got mechanical problems.
We go into a Shoney's restaurant,
and not knowing at this time,
I guess Josh had also contacted Rudy Lopes.
To my knowledge, a sexual ad was placed with Josh
and an ex-girlfriend of his by the name of Trina.
It just had to be something that was a long-standing
or a long-running thing and you have to cancel it.
I don't know if it was a newspaper thing,
I don't even know anything about it.
Apparently, Rudy had left a message in his inbox
and he had gotten a hold of him.
He comes into the restaurant and sits down and tells Josh
that a cousin of his drives a tow truck
and he could get our car towed to a mechanic
and he would give us a ride back to the hotel.
At that time, I thought Rudy Lopes
was an absolute stranger and just being nice,
helping us with the car.
Later on is when I find out that this was all a setup.
This was something that Josh had planned.
When we go to pick up the car later on that night,
there was a bunch of trash in the bed of his truck
and it was rolling around making a lot of noise,
and he was complaining about it.
So, he wanted to get rid of it.
He felt like it was scratching the bed of the truck up,
and so he asked could he please pull in there
because he saw a dumpster.
I was inside the truck, I have the radio on.
I heard what I thought, like, was a car backfiring.
- [muffled gunshot]
- Josh explains then that they got into a physical altercation.
There was a discrepancy with the amount of money
that was paid to have the car fixed,
and a gun was pulled and ultimately Mr. Lopes was shot.
I ask Josh then, "What--what now?
We have to go back and see what's happened,"
and he's, like, not going to go for that.
Um, he gets on the highway immediately
and just starts driving.
We arrived in California in the middle of the day
and was looking for a hotel to stay in.
We pull into a gas station and go in to get gas
and ask for directions.
And we no sooner get pulled out
and I notice that there is a cop behind us.
The police officer looks like, to me,
that he is running the plates of this truck,
and I tell Josh.
He just tells me to put my seatbelt on,
and that, of course, was his way of saying
that he was not going to pull over willingly.
He shoots right behind my head
and then he shoots another shot out the side window
where it's rolled down.
The rest of the shots that were fired
were by the San Francisco Police Department.
A motorcycle cop pulled right up on the side of the car
and shot into the cab window
and it knocked the cab window out and went into my neck.
Josh is now going down one-way streets,
he's hit two cars, I mean, it's become mass chaos
and confusion, and, uh, the whole time,
I have a bullet in my neck.
I start to freak out, I'm bleeding a lot,
losing a lot of blood, and so I take a towel
and I wrap around my neck and I tell him to let
my mom and my son know that I love them.
- ♪
- My name is Jim Kopp, I was lead prosecutor
in the capital murder prosecutions of Joshua Maxwell
and Tessie McFarland.
When this case occurred, I was chief
of the Intake Division of the Bexar County
District Attorney's Office.
We were aware of the murder of Rudy Lopes,
but at that point in time, we did not know
who had committed the offense.
The district attorney got a call from San Francisco saying that
they had apprehended two people that were involved in it.
On October 17th in San Francisco,
Joshua Maxwell and Tessie McFarland
were in Rudy Lopes' stolen pickup truck.
They had run a red light,
so a San Francisco police officer pulled them over.
When he approached, they took off in the vehicle.
He ran back to his car and gave chase.
There was a gunfight through the streets of San Francisco
at about five o'clock in the afternoon.
- [siren wailing] - [gunshots]
- JIM: Ultimately, they were able to stop them
by a police officer knowing that their direction of travel
pulled crossways into traffic so nobody could go forward,
so they were able to stop the truck and get them out.
During the pursuit and gunfight in San Francisco,
the only person injured was Tessie McFarland,
she was hit by a bullet.
The San Francisco police officers had no idea
the car was stolen, they were simply pulling it over
for a red light.
It was not known that Joshua Maxwell
and Tessie McFarland were involved
in an incident in Indianapolis
until after they were apprehended in San Francisco.
- JIM: Josh pretty much wanted to take full responsibility
for the crime, and he did what little he could
to try to shield Tessie
from the consequences of what they'd done.
- ♪
- JIM: In terms of Robby Botts,
we know both from the statements Joshua made,
as well as the evidence recovered in Indianapolis,
that Joshua and Tessie were in Robby Bott's house.
I--They watched a movie, we believe,
at that point in time.
We believe they abducted Robby Botts.
What they did is, they took him to the basement of the house
that they were fixing up in Indianapolis,
put him in a wardrobe in the basement and locked it.
They went back to his house, took all kinds of items,
vacuum cleaners, all kinds of things.
Then they went back to the house.
At that point in time they let him out of the closet,
took him upstairs and they had him take them shopping.
They went to a store in Indianapolis
and charged up about $2,000 on his credit card,
and we have a video of this.
Then they take him back to the house in Indianapolis
and lock him back up in the wardrobe.
They take a pillow, shoot Robby Botts several times,
take the body, put it in the trunk of his car,
drive it to a deserted area outside of Indianapolis
and set the car on fire.
Well, both people, uh, Robby Botts and Rudy Lopes,
made contact with Joshua and Tessie through some type
of advertisement for sexual services.
We don't really know what hold they had over 'em,
but I figured there was probably some type of blackmail.
I don't recall him ever giving a motive for the killing.
There was other video tapes which we had recovered,
in which he indicates a very strong dislike for the police.
But other than that, we didn't really have
any particular motive other than probably just pure greed.
After hearing the interview of Joshua Maxwell,
the detectives did wanna talk to Tessie.
Tessie was in the hospital undergoing medical treatment.
She never indicated that she was involved
in what had occurred during her statements to the police.
- JIM: All the facts and circumstances surrounding
this case led us to believe that Tessie was fully involved
in everything that occurred.
We don't believe she pulled the trigger,
there was certainly no evidence of that,
but there was also no evidence that she wasn't involved
in every aspect of what went down.
Before I went to San Francisco, all we really knew was
that they were apprehended in Rudy Lopes' car.
We didn't have a whole bunch more evidence
at that point in time,
but once we heard from the San Francisco detectives
that Joshua had confessed to what had occurred
in San Antonio,
at that point in time, we had a pretty strong case.
The District Attorney of Bexar County
called me into her office and told me to fly out
to San Francisco, because she wanted me to make
every effort to see that we could get 'em back to Texas
to stand trial.
One of the main reasons was that they had killed
a Texas police officer,
and of course it was a horrendous offense
that we certainly wanted them to face justice for.
It was my understanding from Indiana
that they would not be able to put on in their trial
what had occurred in Texas,
whereas in Texas, in our punishment phase
of the capital murder trial,
we could put on what occurred in Indiana.
The jury would know it was not only one murder,
it was two cold-blooded murders committed for profit.
- ♪
- NICOLE: When I heard about the shootout in San Francisco
with Joshua Maxwell and Tessie McFarland,
and that they had been the ones who were accused
of killing my Tío Rudy,
I was extremely thankful whenever they did catch them.
- We had, uh, numerous items linking them back to the crime
here in, uh, in Indiana.
There were also witnesses, um, that were placing them
in San Antonio, we had video evidence,
we had, uh, fingerprints.
The evidence was definitely overwhelming against both.
- Joshua and Tessie were indicted for capital murder,
but we couldn't try them together.
Joshua had prior convictions out of Indiana,
so, because of that,
we could not try Tessie with him.
- ♪
- Josh stood trial in-- in February of 2002.
We attended that trial and presented evidence
from the Indiana case.
Um, Josh had already confessed to being the trigger man
and being the mastermind behind this entire, um, crime spree.
- NICOLE: I followed that trial like nobody's business.
I wish I was a little bit older,
so I could've been a little bit more involved,
but I guess that's kind of a good thing,
'cause I've heard it was pretty graphic
with all the pictures in there.
- When Joshua and Tessie were apprehended in San Francisco,
in the truck were some video tapes and a video camera
that they had used to film some recordings.
- BUTCH: One of the main things that I participated in in trial
was introducing these tapes, um, to show not only
Joshua Maxwell's personality,
because in these tapes he's smoking dope,
he's using drugs, he's walking around with a gun,
he's portraying himself as that gangster persona.
- JIM: Joshua Maxwell, he never testified,
but during his incarceration in Texas,
he had, without provocation or any excuse,
attacked a jail guard, and that was further evidence
we were able to offer at the trial to show
that he'd be a future danger.
- BUTCH: The defense's position in every death penalty case
is to mitigate, uh, the actor's involvement.
Show me something in this man's life
that he didn't have a choice.
It was a bad childhood, he was raised horribly.
He's got mental deficiencies or mental issues
that he can't deal with.
- JIM: During the trial, it did come up that Joshua,
at about the age of 12 or 13, was--
found out that he had been adopted and, of course,
didn't take very well to that,
and that that was part of the reason why he fell
into the violent crimes.
- JOSH: That's what I'm talkin' 'bout right there.
- JIM: To me, it wasn't very compelling.
- Look down the barrel of my [bleep] of my [bleep].
Hah.
- BUTCH: At the conclusion of that trial, Joshua Maxwell
was sentenced to death.
He was incarcerated in, uh, Huntsville,
and remained there on death row.
- JIM: About a year later, we tried Tessie.
- We had all intentions of moving forward
with a death penalty against her.
- JIM: We had a pretty strong case.
There was a sex tape that Tessie and Joshua had filmed
along with a third person that we don't know who he was,
just laughing and having a great time.
- Her defense was, "I'm a victim. Joshua forced me.
Joshua kept me."
But those tapes prove that that wasn't so.
- TESSIE: Okay, now get out. - Alright.
- TESSIE: I'm running my shower.
Be a good kid. - JOSH: [laughing]
- The tapes, as well as all the other evidence,
led us to believe that Tessie was fully complicit
in what had occurred,
that she wasn't acting under duress.
- NICOLE: I can't say that, you know, I've ever been
in that type of a abusive relationship,
and I'm not trying to talk down upon anybody who's like that,
but she knew what she was doing.
She's--chose not to call the police.
Even though she didn't pull the trigger,
she's just as guilty.
- ♪
- JIM: About two weeks into jury selection,
Tessie came to us and indicated that she wanted to plead guilty
to capital murder if we would waive the death penalty.
We conferred and agreed to do that.
The state waived the death penalty,
so she was assessed a life sentence.
She'll be eligible for parole in 40 calendar years
under Texas law.
I was satisfied with the outcome.
- I don't think that justice was served because
Tessie McFarland deserves to die.
The things that she and Joshua Maxwell did
to Robby Bott, uh, in Indianapolis
are just horrific.
- NICOLE: The outcome, it's provided some closure, uh,
with my family, um,
but I don't think there'll ever be any full closure because
our question would still be why.
Why would they do that to anybody?
- JIM: They would do these things to two different people.
Essentially torture them both by holding them, shooting them,
everything else they had done to them, and it was pure evil.
- Looking back on that situation,
I would have handled things
in a completely different manner.
Um, I'm almost 40 years old now,
I'm a completely different person.
I absolutely feel horrible for everybody involved.
If I could take either one of their places, I would,
I absolutely would.
- NICOLE: No one ever expects it to happen to them.
Hold your loved ones very close.
Um, tell them how much you love them every single day.
- ♪
♪♪