We find him lying on his back.
He's got numerous gunshot wounds to his body.
This was a horrendous crime.
Everybody that met Jimmy, loved Jimmy.
BEENE: He was a basketball coach at the high school.
Imagine the number of students, rivals, and players who
would have gone through his life over the years.
[gunshots blast]
This opens up the floodgates in terms of persons of interest.
There's two text messages intentionally deleted at about
the time of the murder.
Someone is trying to cover their tracks.
We did find a photo of the 40-caliber pistol
surrounded by money.
He said he had to, quote,
"handle his business."
Is this a cash payment to kill Jimmy McClain?
[gunshot blasts]
NARRATOR: Every day in North America,
dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline,
the minutes and hours containing evidence that can
help unlock the mystery and catch the killer.
Cordova, Tennessee, is a quiet
suburb on the outskirts of Memphis.
Cordova is close to the center of the Mid-South.
The blues, jazz, country music.
It's a great, rich, historical part of our country.
Our motto in Cordova is farms, flowers, and fellowship.
It's seen itself grow over the years
from just a few dozen farms to now
currently about 70,000 residents.
McCLAIN: It's a upper-middle class town with great schools.
It's a nice place to call home.
VALENTINE: Cordova is a very quiet community
and doesn't have a lot of crime.
NARRATOR: That changes on a February morning
just before 10 a.m.,
when the Shelby County sheriff's office receives
a call from the administrator of a local high school.
VALENTINE: The administrators at Ridgeway High School
advised that one of the teachers there had not
shown up for work over the last couple of days.
They asked for deputies of the Shelby County sheriff's
office to go to the house and perform a welfare check.
Upon arrival,
officers checked the exterior of the house.
They noticed that no windows, no doors were unlocked,
everything appeared to be secure.
BEENE: As they looked through the window,
they noticed a shell casing on the floor.
They forced entry into the house.
VALENTINE: The deputies find the male subject
deceased on the floor with numerous gunshot wounds.
NARRATOR: Deputies call in homicide investigators
from the Shelby County sheriff's office.
[distant siren wailing]
Jason Valentine is the first to arrive.
VALENTINE: As I arrive on the scene,
I see the male subject lying there with
a large pool of blood around his head and torso.
He's got numerous gunshot wounds to his body, head, neck,
chest, lower torso.
This was a horrendous crime.
I find a wallet.
I look in the wallet, and I find
a Tennessee driver's license belonging to
Jimmy Fitzgerald McClain.
NARRATOR: 47-year-old Jimmy McClain is
a local high school teacher and basketball coach.
He has no children and lives alone.
He's lived at his Cordova residence for more than
10 years.
VALENTINE: Jimmy was shot seven times in his head,
face, and neck, with two shots directly to his face,
one of those which became lodged in his chin.
No defensive wounds whatsoever.
Jimmy did not see it coming.
ARNTFIELD: When you see multiple gunshot wounds,
excessive mutilation with a firearm,
there really is only one conclusion to draw,
and that's that this was an act of visceral rage.
NARRATOR: Investigators search Jimmy's house for clues
to what led to this brutal murder.
VALENTINE: I'm looking for a sign of a robbery,
but all of his cash,
his credit cards, everything appears to be intact
in his wallet -- I determine that it's likely not a burglary,
it's likely not a robbery.
I notice a cellphone near the body.
I collect that, send that off for further testing.
His briefcase and keys were on
a chair as if Jimmy just got home.
VALENTINE: There was no obvious sign of a struggle.
-Things weren't knocked over. -COLETTA: It was a blitz attack.
There's bullet holes everywhere -- the walls,
the ceiling, there's even one upstairs.
VALENTINE: The head stamp on all of the shell casings
is a 40-caliber, meaning that they all
came from the same caliber of weapon.
In total, we find seven projectiles on the scene that
we were able to recover and send to the lab for further
forensic examination.
I notice what appears to be muddy footprints leading
away from the front door into the living portion of the house.
We apply fingerprint dust to the white tile
on the front entryway and were able to develop
numerous sole impressions of
footwear on this white tile.
NARRATOR: Sheriff's investigators can see
the shoe prints also appear to exit through the front door.
We realized that the intruder came through
the front door and left out the front door.
NARRATOR: So they wonder, how was
the front door locked when deputies first arrived?
The only way that can happen is if, when the killer left,
he locked the door behind him.
Whoever did this had a key to the house.
NARRATOR: Based on the evidence they've seen so far,
investigators can now form a narrative of
what happened when Jimmy McClain was killed.
VALENTINE: We feel that the perpetrator of this crime
came in through the front door, uninvited.
Jimmy was immediately alarmed.
[gunshots blasting]
COLETTA: The killer just went crazy shooting
and didn't stop firing, even after Jimmy hit the ground.
VALENTINE: Jimmy ended up falling right by
the fireplace, where he was shot multiple times thereafter...
[gunshots blasting]
...the suspect finally leaving out through the same door
they came in.
NARRATOR: Investigators notify Jimmy's next of kin.
BEENE: At this point in the investigation,
I began talking to his sister, Easter.
NARRATOR: Easter is devastated by the news
of her brother's death.
BEENE: Easter confirms to us that Jimmy teaches at
Ridgeway High school, and he was a basketball coach.
Everybody there loves him.
Easter confirms to us that he's a pastor of
a church, as well.
NARRATOR: Jimmy was the fourth of eight brothers and sisters.
He earned an MBA and had been
a star basketball player at the University of Central Arkansas.
McCLAIN: Everybody that met Jimmy, loved Jimmy.
He made them laugh and feel comfortable.
Jimmy was an educated, smart, funny, helpful,
humble individual.
NARRATOR: To catch Jimmy McClain's killer,
investigators will need to reconstruct
the last 24 hours of his life.
Police found Jimmy's body on Friday,
February 22nd, at 10 a.m.,
and administrators at Ridgeway High School tell investigators
Jimmy was last seen at work two days earlier, on the 20th
at 6:30 p.m.
The autopsy indicates he was dead at
least 24 hours before he was found.
That means Jimmy was shot
and killed sometime between 6:30 at night,
February 20th to 10 a.m.
the next morning, a 15.5-hour window.
Investigators canvass the neighborhood in the hopes
that someone saw or heard something
that might narrow that wide window.
We were able to speak to a neighbor who told us that two
days prior, on February 20th, as
he was sitting in his dining room,
he heard gunshots at approximately 8:40 p.m.
[distant gunshots blasting]
NARRATOR: The neighbor reported it to 911,
but when sheriff deputies responded,
the neighbor didn't know exactly from where the shots
had been fired.
Now, investigators believe the shots heard at around
8:40 p.m. must have been
the same ones that killed Jimmy.
Perhaps Jimmy's phone can confirm it.
VALENTINE: In looking at the analytics from the cellphone,
we determined that the last communication on
the cellphone was a text message at 8:41 p.m.
to a female named Katherine.
In taking the neighbor's statements about
the shots fired along with the cellphone data,
we're able to estimate that
the approximate time of death is 8:41 p.m.
on February the 20th, 2013.
NARRATOR: Not only do investigators have
a more specific time of death for Jimmy,
they also know the last person he communicated with, a woman
named Katherine.
BEENE: I asked his sister, Easter, does she know
who this person is?
She tells us that Katherine Samuelson
is Jimmy's new girlfriend.
Police ask Easter if Katherine has a key to Jimmy's house,
and Easter says she believes that she does.
NARRATOR: 42-year-old Katherine Samuelson has not only been
dating Jimmy for the past six months,
but she likely also has access to his house.
So investigators consider her a person of interest.
When it's learned that Jimmy is dating someone new,
this person becomes a logical suspect.
In four out of five murder cases,
the suspect and victim are known to each other.
[gunshot blasts]
The intimate partner could be one of the most likely killers.
[gunshot blasts]
BEENE: We contact Katherine, who lives in Nashville,
which is a 2.5-hour drive from Memphis, and we ask her to come
in to do an interview.
Katherine is shocked and upset at Jimmy's death.
Katherine advises that she last saw Jimmy two weeks ago.
She tells us that she talked to him the morning
of the day of the murder,
as usual, and then had several text messages with
him throughout the day.
She talked to him again after work.
He seemed excited about a basketball game
his team was about to play, and nothing was out of
the ordinary. -VALENTINE: At 8:40 p.m.,
Katherine sent Jimmy a text -- 12 seconds later, he responded,
and that was the last time she ever heard from Jimmy McClain.
NARRATOR: When investigators ask Katherine if there were
problems in the relationship,
she confessed there were.
Jimmy was still married to another woman.
He'd been married to Cassie McDowell for 12 years.
Katherine says Jimmy and his wife had been separated for
four years, but something made him reluctant
to legally end his marriage.
She felt that Jimmy was dragging his feet on getting
a divorce.
NARRATOR: Investigators notice
the subject is a sore spot with Katherine.
COLETTA: Katherine was uneasy with the friendly relationship
Jimmy maintained with his former wife.
STOCKDALE: The fact that he's dragging his feet
could lead to building frustration and resentment
that may have boiled over.
COLETTA: Jealousy and love triangles
are a top motive for murder.
You have to wonder if Katherine's jealousy got
the better of her and took a violent turn.
Had she been stalking Jimmy
and waiting for the right time to strike?
[gunshots blasting]
NARRATOR: One day after 47-year-old
high school teacher and basketball coach,
Jimmy McClain, is found
dead in his home outside Memphis, Tennessee,
Shelby County sheriff's investigators want to know if
his girlfriend, Katherine,
had something to do with his death.
BEENE: We asked Katherine if she has a key to Jimmy's house,
and she says no,
because she's a strict Southern Baptist, and she does
not stay at his house when she's in town.
COLETTA: The arrangement was Katherine would stay at a hotel
when visiting Jimmy until his divorce
was finalized, because technically,
he was still a married man.
NARRATOR: Although Katherine says she doesn't have a key to
Jimmy's house, she does have
a surprising amount of knowledge about
Jimmy's routine.
Katherine told us that Jimmy, in
his daily habits, was very safety conscious.
Jimmy would always back in the garage,
let the garage door down before exiting his vehicle,
and always come in through the door
leading from the garage into the kitchen.
McCLAIN: Jimmy was a creature of habit.
There was a certain time he took his coat off,
a certain time he put his attache case down.
VALENTINE: Katherine told us that the bag
that we saw at the crime scene,
it would be very customary for him to set it down in
the living room, where his keys were also found.
NARRATOR: Katherine's description
matches what investigators found at the crime scene,
but it also strikes them as suspicious.
BEENE: Katherine's details are so exact that we do have to
start wondering, since she's telling us
that she does not stay at his house,
how does she know so many details
about what's going on inside the house?
NARRATOR: Investigators consider the possibility that
Katherine snuck into Jimmy's house and shot him dead.
[gunshot blasts]
They need to confirm exactly where Katherine
was at the time of the murder.
BEENE: We get a search warrant for Katherine's phone,
and we discover that, at the time
that we believed that Jimmy was killed,
her phone was pinging in Nashville, Tennessee,
some 200 miles away.
We also spoke to a neighbor, who confirmed Katherine
to be in Nashville during the time of the crime.
NARRATOR: With Katherine ruled out as a suspect,
sheriff's investigators ask her for names of other people
who may have wanted to harm Jimmy
and who have a key to his house.
Right away, Katherine points the finger
at Jimmy's estranged wife, Cassie.
BEENE: She seems upset.
She seems to be taking the murder hard.
Cassie informs us that she has
been married to Jimmy for 12 years.
Cassie explained to us that, at the beginning,
Jimmy was very excited to be a stepparent to Cassie's
children, Dwayne and Tania.
NARRATOR: But according to Cassie, Jimmy soon
conflicted with her and her children.
VALENTINE: We learned Jimmy and Cassie's parenting styles
were different in that Jimmy was very strict.
McCLAIN: There's certain things that
Jimmy didn't allow in his home,
and Cassie was not as strict as Jimmy was, and a lot of
the conflict was Jimmy parenting a certain way
and Cassie parenting a different way.
NARRATOR: Jimmy's disciplined parenting angered Cassie's
then 21-year-old daughter,
Tania, and it quickly boiled over.
VALENTINE: Cassie told us that because of
Jimmy's strict parenting, Tania moved out of the house.
NARRATOR: After Tania left, her younger brother,
15-year-old Dwayne, also ran afoul
of Jimmy's strict rules.
And, just like his sister, Dwayne was also shown the door.
COLETTA: Jimmy asked Dwayne to move out after
catching him smoking weed in his room.
NARRATOR: This time, Cassie chose her teenage son
over her husband, Jimmy, and she moved out, too.
Jimmy and Cassie ended up separating
because of that incident.
Cassie explained to us that she harbored no bad
feelings against Jimmy, and it was very amicable,
and they were very friendly.
NARRATOR: Cassie says she and Jimmy
were getting along fine, but investigators are skeptical
about her story when they discover
she and Jimmy were fighting over the family home.
Jimmy filed for divorce 10 days before his death.
During the divorce, we learned that
Cassie wanted to sell the house.
However, Jimmy wanted to keep the house himself.
NARRATOR: Cassie demanded her share of
the money from the house, but Jimmy refused to sell.
BEENE: Now that Jimmy's dead, not only does she get the house,
but she's also the beneficiary of Jimmy's
$400,000 life insurance policy.
COLETTA: Financial motive for estranged spouses
is right at the top for
the reasons people kill -- Cassie had a lot to benefit by
Jimmy's death.
BEENE: So we asked Cassie, does she
still have the key to Jimmy's house?
And she says that if she does, she doesn't know where it is.
So now there are reasons to be suspicious.
There's financial benefits to Cassie.
She's being evasive about the key.
Her value as a suspect is starting to rise.
NARRATOR: Investigators wonder if Cassie let herself into
the house, armed with a handgun, and killed her husband.
[gunshots blast]
We asked Cassie her whereabouts on the night of
the 20th -- she told us that she went home
after she'd got off work,
spoke to her son, Dwayne, and went to bed to read.
VALENTINE: We asked Cassie if she would let
us examine her phone -- she obliged.
She said she had nothing to hide.
NARRATOR: Sure enough, Cassie's cellphone records
seem to confirm her story -- around the same time
Jimmy was murdered,
Cassie's phone pinged off a cell tower near her home,
20 miles from the crime scene.
It couldn't have been Cassie who pulled the trigger,
but investigators keep pressing Jimmy's ex-wife.
She has an alibi, but what about her kids?
Tania and Dwayne had a history of conflict with Jimmy.
Did it lead to violence?
BEENE: We asked Cassie if her kids still have the key to
the house, and she says that it's possible,
but she doesn't know.
NARRATOR: It's been four years since Cassie and her kids
have lived under the same roof with Jimmy.
Tania is now 25 years old
and on her own with a daughter and boyfriend.
Dwayne is 19 and still lives with his mom in Memphis.
Just minutes away in downtown, Shelby County
sheriff's investigators ask Dwayne to come in.
BEENE: We want to talk to Dwayne, because we know that
he's had a tense relationship with Jimmy in the past.
VALENTINE: As the interview started with Dwayne,
he was very calm.
He answered our questions.
He told us everything we needed.
Dwayne insists he got along very well with his stepdad,
even though they bumped heads from time to time.
NARRATOR: Sheriff's investigators wonder
if Dwayne's story is true or if
four years after Jimmy kicked him out,
Dwayne still hates his stepdad enough to want him dead.
Dwayne says no way.
Dwayne says he harbors no ill will against Jimmy.
BEENE: We asked Dwayne if he has a key to the house,
and he says he doesn't have one,
and he has not been to the house in a long time.
VALENTINE: We asked Dwayne his whereabouts on the night of
the murder.
Dwayne tells us that he had gone home,
seen his mom, Cassie, they talked briefly,
and Dwayne just stayed at the house
for the rest of the evening.
NARRATOR: Dwayne's mother confirms his story,
that on the night Jimmy was murdered,
Dwayne came home around 7:30 p.m.
He was home at the time of the shooting,
and he stayed home the entire night.
According to Cassie, there's no way
Dwayne could be involved in the crime.
COLETTA: Cassie and Dwayne's stories are lining up.
But are they telling the truth?
Are they covering for one another?
Just because one person corroborates the alibi of
another, investigators have to
consider that maybe they're working together, that this is
a conspiracy of two.
NARRATOR: The team needs to confirm that the data
on Dwayne's cellphone will corroborate
where he was at the time of the murder.
We asked if we could look at his cellphone, and he says
he doesn't have one
and that he uses his mother's cellphone when she's
not at work.
NARRATOR: Since Dwayne shares his mother's phone,
investigators already know that at the time of the murder,
that phone pinged off a cell tower near their home.
The phone's call log also shows no suspicious calls
or texts were made during the same time period.
It seems like Dwayne was at home
with his mom, just like they said.
So investigators turn their attention to the other
family member who had a conflict with Jimmy,
Dwayne's sister, Tania.
So we bring in Tania, and she makes
no attempt to hide her dislike for Jimmy.
Tania was especially angry towards Jimmy, so much
so, she's writing comments about him on social media.
STOCKDALE: It's been shown that the more we ruminate,
the more we're angry about something
that we can't control,
actually, the more it leads to violence -- if Tania is on
social media, writing hateful things
about Jimmy and there's a level of
angry rumination there, investigators may want to know,
did this spill over into something violent?
COLETTA: Is it possible that Tania's nasty comments
on social media boiled over into murder?
[gunshot blasts]
NARRATOR: As the Tennessee homicide case of
Jimmy McClain stretches into its third day,
sheriff's investigators discover that
Jimmy's stepdaughter,
Tania Morrison, made no secret of how she felt about him.
Tania made no bones about not liking Jimmy.
She didn't like him, and she made sure everybody knew it.
She even went as far as to make comments
about him on social media.
BEENE: The way she explained it,
Tania was upset that Jimmy would treat her more like
a coach, being more strict.
She just did not have respect for or want Jimmy telling her
what to do, and as much as Jimmy
did for her and tried to be nice for her,
she just utterly hated Jimmy.
Now we have to wonder, could she possibly be a suspect?
NARRATOR: Did Tania hate Jimmy enough to go to his house,
armed with a handgun, and shoot him?
[three gunshots blast]
Despite her dislike towards Jimmy,
Tania swears she had nothing to do with his murder.
She claims she no longer has a key to his house.
And as for her whereabouts on February 20th,
she claims she was home with her boyfriend
and their small child.
BEENE: We asked Tania for her phone,
and she agrees to let us look through it.
NARRATOR: Results show Tania was nowhere near Jimmy's house
at the time of the shooting.
BEENE: Tania's phone pinged at a tower near her house,
which was approximately 32 minutes away from
Jimmy's house.
NARRATOR: Neighbors confirm Tania's story -- at the time of
the shooting, Tania was at home with her family.
She's not Jimmy's killer.
As Shelby County investigators search for new leads,
funeral services are held for Jimmy McClain
a week after his murder.
McCLAIN: Jimmy's funeral was at the Midtown
Church of Christ in downtown Memphis.
The church was packed, over a thousand people
were at the ceremony.
It was great to see people come out to honor his memory.
NARRATOR: Investigators also attend the event.
As they reach out to
other teachers and students at Jimmy's school,
they discover that Jimmy was well loved, but he was also
competitive and had rivals.
ARNTFIELD: Jimmy was a very respected, beloved basketball coach.
But by dint of that profession, just imagine
the number of athletes, students, parents,
rival coaches, and players who would have gone through
his life over the years.
This naturally opens up the floodgates in terms
of persons of interest.
BEENE: While we're talking to students,
we do get information that there could
be a former student involved in this homicide.
McCLAIN: Just before Jimmy's death,
a former student had been outed because he was using
a fake transcript to go to
school where he starred on the basketball team.
NARRATOR: Cary Tobermory was masquerading as
a 17-year-old high school student.
Cary was actually 22 years old
and not 17 and was expelled from the school.
COLETTA: It's unknown who tipped off the school,
but Tobermory's scandal
got him kicked off the basketball team,
his dreams of playing in the NBA squashed,
and the team no longer qualified to play at
the championship.
Maybe Jimmy was the one who tipped off the school
administration, being
the ethical man that he was, and he got Tobermory kicked
off the team.
NARRATOR: Investigators find another reason to
consider Cary Tobermory a suspect
when they receive the forensics on a muddy
shoe print found in the entryway to Jimmy's house.
BEENE: A muddy shoe print was submitted to Nike for
identification, and we were
informed from Nike that it did have ridge detail
that was consistent with an Air Force One, which is
the same type of shoe that you
might find on a basketball player.
They determined that it appears to
be somewhere around a size 10.5.
NARRATOR: Investigators need to find out where Cary
was on the night of the murder.
They also want to know what size shoe he wears.
So we contact Cary, and he refuses to talk to us.
He lawyers up right away.
We reviewed Cary's fake high school transcript
and found out that it was submitted
by his mother.
NARRATOR: When the woman claiming to be Cary's mother
arrives at headquarters,
investigators are met with a surprise.
BEENE: We learned that this woman is
not actually Cary's mother.
It's his wife.
Cary's wife explained that they submitted this transcript
so that even though he had
already had his high school diploma,
he would appear to have been 17.
That would enable him to
pursue a career in the NBA.
In other words, they just made up the entire thing.
NARRATOR: But sheriff investigators learn
it wasn't Jimmy who tipped off the school to the truth about
her husband, Cary Tobermory.
In fact, the wife admits it was
her that tipped off the school, because Tobermory
started cheating on her with a high school girl,
and this is how she got back at him.
BEENE: So we talked to Cary.
He confirms that he has moved back to Memphis.
He has an alibi, and he is cleared as a suspect.
NARRATOR: Just as the investigation
hits another dead end,
investigators receive new information from a local phone
carrier regarding the cellphone
that both Cassie and her son, Dwayne, share.
Although cellphone tower evidence does show their phone
was nowhere near the crime scene on the night of the murder,
the call logs from the phone carrier suggest
the phone itself may have been tampered with.
VALENTINE: We find out that there's a block of time
on February the 20th where nothing happens on the phone.
We determined that the reason there was nothing on
the phone is that communications on the device
itself had been deleted.
There's two text messages that were intentionally
deleted at about the time of the murder.
It must mean someone's trying to cover their tracks.
NARRATOR: Is that someone Cassie or Dwayne?
There's no way to recover the contents
of the deleted messages on Cassie's phone.
But her phone records do have a valuable piece
of information --
the phone number the messages were sent to.
BEENE: We need to see who received these text messages
and see if these text messages still exist on that phone.
NARRATOR: The phone number is traced to
a 19-year-old guy named Rick Collins.
Rick is a petty drug dealer known to the sheriff's office.
But why did Cassie or Dwayne text
him on the night of the murder?
And what did they say?
Investigators don't want to tip their hand
by confronting Cassie and Dwayne.
So they follow the lead.
ARNTFIELD: Police now need to track down Rick and gain
access to one or more devices in order to determine
what role those text messages
played during the crime.
BEENE: We get a warrant for Rick's cellphone,
and we put him under surveillance.
Within a few hours of surveilling Rick,
we approach him, and he takes off running.
We have to catch Rick.
We can't risk losing whatever information is in that phone.
NARRATOR: Two weeks after the murder of Jimmy McClain, Shelby County
sheriff's investigators in Tennessee are hot on the trail
of local drug dealer, Rick Collins.
They want to know if deleted texts sent to him on the day of
the murder from the phone belonging to Jimmy's wife,
Cassie, are saved on Rick's phone,
and if those text messages point to the killer.
[gunshot blasts]
BEENE: We managed to catch him, and we discovered
a large amount of pills and marijuana on him.
Rick refuses to answer any questions and asks for a lawyer.
BEENE: Rick is placed in jail on his drug charges,
and while he's in jail, then we go through his phone.
NARRATOR: If investigators find texts linking him to
Jimmy's shooting,
Rick could also find himself charged with a murder.
[gunshot blasts]
Forensics confirms that Rick was texting Cassie's
phone on the night of the killing,
but we can't look at the text,
because Rick also deleted the same text messages.
So we still don't know what they say.
ARNTFIELD: And the destruction of these records
is probably more damning than whatever was
contained in the message itself.
The fact that these efforts
were undertaken is really incriminating.
NARRATOR: With the text messages deleted
from both Cassie and Rick's phones,
the content of what they said might never be recovered.
But investigators do find something on Rick's phone
that might prove even more incriminating.
What we did find on the phone
is a photo of what appears to
be a 40-caliber pistol laying
on a bed, surrounded by money.
And the photo is timestamped
on the day of the murder,
February the 20th.
NARRATOR: Evidence found at the crime scene indicates that
a 40-caliber gun was used to kill Jimmy McClain.
If Rick is the one who pulled the trigger, is the gun in
the photo the murder weapon?
And why is it surrounded by stacks of money?
We begin to wonder, is this a cash
payment that Rick received to kill Jimmy McClain?
NARRATOR: If investigators can find that gun in the photograph,
it might point them to the killer.
They search Rick's apartment but find no
trace of the gun or the money.
If Rick is the shooter, without the deleted texts,
cash, or the gun,
investigators have no evidence to prove it.
BEENE: So while Rick is in jail,
we begin to monitor his phone calls in the hopes that he will
trip himself up and reveal more clues about what happened.
NARRATOR: The break they're looking for comes on March 8th.
-[phone ringing] -Three weeks after
Jimmy's murder, Rick makes a call
from jail to a known criminal named "Jabir."
In the recorded call,
investigators overhear a coded message between the two men.
BEENE: During the conversation,
Rick told Jabir, "I wish I would have known that
night that the pit bull was sick."
Pit bull is slang for a gun.
Sick means it was used in a crime
and that he needs to get rid of it.
[gunshot blasts]
NARRATOR: From the call,
investigators learned that Rick sold the gun to
Jabir just days after Jimmy McClain was shot dead.
If Jabir still has the gun, investigators need to find it
before he has time to get rid of it.
We jump on that and get a search warrant for Jabir's house.
In the closet of Jabir's bedroom
in a shoe box,
we found a Smith & Wesson Sigma handgun.
The Smith & Wesson handgun was sent for forensic
examination, where it was determined that
that handgun was the gun that fired the rounds that killed
Jimmy McClain on February the 20th, 2013.
NARRATOR: Four weeks after Jimmy's death,
investigators have found the murder weapon, but they still
need evidence to prove who pulled the trigger
and who else may have been involved.
BEENE: We have to link Rick, Jabir, Cassie, Dwayne --
all of these have to be put together now.
NARRATOR: As investigators work to connect the dots,
a sheriff's deputy from a town that's 400 miles away
blindsides the team in Shelby County.
BEENE: We receive a tip from Deputy Green in Crossville,
Tennessee, that at 11 p.m.,
a frightened woman runs into the sheriff's office.
She tells them that her husband's nephew
is involved in a murder
involving a basketball coach in Memphis, and she is afraid
for both her and his life.
NARRATOR: Investigators need to talk to the frightened
woman's husband to find out what he knows.
So we find out that she is married to David Cadell.
Right away, we drove to
Crossville, Tennessee, to interview Cadell.
NARRATOR: As Shelby County investigators
travel to meet David Cadell,
they have no idea if he's a false lead
or a witness who is about to name
the killer of Jimmy McClain.
[gunshot blasts]
NARRATOR: Shelby County investigators have traveled
400 miles to Crossville,
Tennessee, to meet a potential witness named David Cadell.
His wife claims David's nephew
confessed to killing Jimmy McClain,
but it's already very clear that unlike his wife,
David Cadell has no desire to talk to police.
At the beginning of the interview,
David's very uneasy.
He's not wanting to talk to us.
We inform Cadell that if he's withholding information
involving a homicide,
that he could be held as an accessory to murder.
So he starts talking.
It turns out that David Cadell
is Cassie's brother and Dwayne's uncle.
NARRATOR: Dwayne is the same nephew
who David's wife claimed killed Jimmy McClain.
David tells us about a conversation he had on
February the 26th with Dwayne Moore.
Dwayne said he was not gonna let anybody disrespect
his mom.
When Cadell asked Dwayne what he meant by that,
he said his mother and Jimmy had been discussing their
divorce and that Jimmy had gotten out of line.
So he had to, quote,
"handle his business."
[gunshot blasts]
BEENE: Cadell asked Dwayne straight out,
"Did you have something to do with this murder?"
And Dwayne did not respond.
He gave him a look, and then Cadell said,
"You know what? I don't want to hear anymore."
NARRATOR: While investigators believe Cadell's
story about Dwayne is plausible,
Cadell's secondhand hearsay proves little.
So sheriff's investigators head out to pick up
Dwayne himself
and hear what he has to say about his uncle's claims.
Dwayne refuses to talk to us.
NARRATOR: With Dwayne stonewalling,
investigators bring his mother, Cassie,
into the room next door.
Previously, she had claimed that on the night of
the murder, Dwayne was home with her.
Now, investigators press her to know whether that's
the whole truth.
BEENE: When confronted, Cassie admits
that Dwayne was not at home the entire night of
February the 20th.
He had gone out for a couple of hours, and he had also gone
out with his girlfriend, Helen, at about 10:30 p.m.
NARRATOR: Investigators ask Helen if she can confirm seeing
her boyfriend Dwayne on the night of the murder.
We interview Helen, and she stated around 10 p.m.,
February the 20th, she received a call from Dwayne,
who stated he wanted to come see her.
When Dwayne got to her house,
she said he appeared nervous or uneasy.
She described the clothing he had on, and she specifically
remembered that Dwayne had on a pair
of Nike Air Force One tennis shoes.
NARRATOR: Could be the same Air Force Ones
that were identified at the crime scene?
VALENTINE: Helen tells us that Dwayne wore a size 10.5,
the same size shoe sole impressions that were recovered
from the entryway of Jimmy's house.
We're pretty confident that those Air Force Ones had
blood on them when they left the scene
of Jimmy's homicide that night.
NARRATOR: If investigators are right,
and Dwayne still has the shoes,
it will be enough to charge him with murder.
We conduct a search warrant on Cassie and Dwayne's house.
NARRATOR: They don't find the Air Force Ones
they were searching for, but there is one thing in
Dwayne's bedroom that catches investigators' attention.
BEENE: We do notice the distinctive markings
on the bedspread.
The bedspread is the exact match of the photo
that we found on his friend Rick's phone
on the day of the incident.
NARRATOR: According to Helen,
Rick and Dwayne are best friends.
It was Rick who procured the gun for Dwayne
and helped him get rid of it after the murder.
So now we can put the murder weapon in
the bedroom of Dwayne Moore on the day of the killing.
NARRATOR: With the evidence against him,
Dwayne is arrested and charged with the murder of
Jimmy McClain.
Sheriff's investigators now believe they know what
happened on the night that Jimmy was killed.
VALENTINE: On the morning of February 20th, 2013,
Dwayne Moore buys a firearm from his friend, Rick.
NARRATOR: They take a photograph to mark the occasion.
Seven hours later, Jimmy McClain starts his work day at school.
After school,
Jimmy coaches his team to prepare for their upcoming game
before heading home.
BEENE: At 8:20 p.m.,
Dwayne pulls up to Jimmy's house and waits outside.
McCLAIN: At about 8:30 p.m.,
Jimmy pulls into the driveway and backs
into his garage, gets out of his car,
unlocks the kitchen door, walks in,
sets his keys and his cellphone down.
COLETTA: At 8:40 p.m.,
Jimmy receives a text from his girlfriend, Katherine,
and promptly replies.
BEENE: At 8:41 p.m.
Dwayne uses his key to enter
the house through the front door and surprises Jimmy.
[gunshot blasts]
VALENTINE: Dwayne begins firing, striking Jimmy,
and continues to shoot.
[gunshot blasts]
[two gunshot blasts]
Jimmy ended up falling right by the fireplace.
Once Jimmy's down, Dwayne stands
over him and continues shooting.
[gunshots blasting]
BEENE: When Dwayne is sure Jimmy is dead,
he leaves the residence, locking the door
behind him, unknowingly leaving the footprint behind.
VALENTINE: On June 27th, 2014,
Dwayne is convicted of Jimmy's murder.
He is sentenced to 22 years in prison without parole.
VALENTINE: This case would not have been solved this fast
if we had not talked to so many people that knew Jimmy.
Each person gave us something a little different that shined
light on something that we needed light shined on -- all of
that coming together through this entire investigation is
what resulted in the conviction of Dwayne.
McCLAIN: Jimmy's life was about teaching.
I learned so much from my brother, and if Jimmy walked
through that door now, we'd be smiling and laughing.
And when he left you, you would just feel so much better.
He was just a bright gift to us all.
He really was.