[suspenseful music playing]
[Morley] It was just like the young man
was lying there peacefully with his throat cut.
[dramatic music playing]
He was running in fear of his life
from whoever it is that was terrorizing him.
His response was I could kill somebody.
Is he a jealous lover?
Is this a revenge homicide?
He was very shaken, and then he said,
"That was him out in the hall."
This young man that he was using for sexual gain,
dared challenge him.
[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.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Columbia, Missouri,
a vibrant city with historic charm
located between St. Louis and Kansas City.
Columbia is a college town with a very large university,
the University of Missouri.
It's a very pretty town.
It's a very progressive community
with a lot of young people.
Columbia has traditionally been a very safe place,
not a lot of crime.
[narrator] But on a warm June day,
the community spirit is shattered,
when a group of college students
make a gruesome discovery.
[phone ringing]
[dispatcher] 911, what's your emergency?
[sirens wailing]
[Morley] The 911 call comes in
at 2:10 in the afternoon.
A body has been found between two houses.
It's a primarily college student community
in that area.
[Morley] The young men who find the body think,
well, maybe this is just someone who's passed out.
And then they see the blood
and realize this person is not passed out
but is actually dead.
[dramatic music playing]
[indistinct radio chatter]
When the police arrive, they see that the body
is a young man who's lying on his back.
He is naked except for a pair of blue Umbro shorts.
When they approached the body,
they see a large pool of blood
and an infestation of insects.
He has a gash across his neck,
that's about three and a half inches long.
[Michael] Someone cut his throat and it was deep
all the way down to the spine.
[narrator] Tasked with investigating the crime,
a Columbia police detective Michael Lederle
and County Prosecutor Morley Swingle.
First thing we want to do is identify the victim.
It's very difficult because the victim didn't have
any type of identification on him.
There was no weapon found around the body
and no real sign of a struggle.
[narrator] As Detective Lederle
takes a closer look at the crime scene,
he notices a key detail.
We don't see defensive marks on his hands.
Defensive wounds are very common
when there's a knife fight
and they get cut or stabbed in their hands
trying to protect themselves.
That type of evidence is missing.
We start thinking, why?
Why did this person not defend themselves?
It was just like the young man was lying there
peacefully with his throat cut.
[narrator] When the medical examiner looks over the body,
she notices an unusual pattern of injuries.
There at the scene,
she sees that there was bruising
across the top of the chest
and when the body was rolled over,
there's bruising between the shoulder blades,
and that struck the medical examiner as unusual.
[narrator] As she studies the body,
the medical examiner notices something else.
[Morley] She also realizes that the lack of blood
going down the front of the body
and the blood flowing down the neck to the grass
indicates to her that the throat was cut
after the young man was on his back on the ground.
That's unusual.
So that suggests that either the victim was unconscious
or completely unable to respond
when the actual injury that caused his death occurred.
[narrator] The medical examiner determines
the victim likely lost consciousness
from constriction around his neck,
either from being chocked or strangled.
When it's learned that he is strangled
and then his throat is slit,
it speaks to me that the killer
had a lot of anger. This is personal.
I'm going to put my hands around your throat
in an effort to kill you
and then I'm also gonna slit your throat
almost as insurance, but also because
I have that much rage that I still need to unleash.
[narrator] The forensics team collects evidence
and sends it on to the crime lab.
His fingernails were scraped and that was collected
so that you can see if there was any DNA
under his fingernails.
Also, this young man had shaved his chest
and the medical examiner found limb hairs,
L-I-M-B, off of your arm.
Limb hairs were on his chest.
[narrator] Then investigators
get their firstbreak in the case
from a surprising source.
At the scene, an officer said he knows who the victim is.
He said that's a young man that we had actually arrested
back in April for a noise violation.
[narrator] The victim is identified
as 23-year-old Jesse Valencia.
Jesse Valencia was a University of Missouri
college student.
His intention was to go to law school someday.
Jesse was very active in the college life.
He was known to socialize quite a bit.
He was a free spirit.
He was model beautiful.
He was gay and it seemed like
everybody who met him liked him.
[narrator] Investigators turn to the medical examiner
hoping she can help establish when Jesse was killed.
The medical examiner determines
that Jesse was killed before it's sunrise,
which was at 5:44 am.
[narrator] To find Jesse Valencia's killer,
detectives will now need to reconstruct
his final 24 hours.
They begin by canvassing the neighborhood,
looking for witnesses to the crime.
They didn't find people who had heard anything.
Then they found an apartment where the door
had been left ajar and it turns out
it was the apartment of Jesse Valencia.
[narrator] Detectives speak with Jesse's neighbor,
Christopher Kepner, to see if he heard or saw
anything unusual in the early morning hours.
Christopher Kepner said that he got home from drinking
at 3:00 in the morning.
He'd been very intoxicated.
Christopher's awakened by bumping
and loud noises and voices.
So something was happening in Jesse's apartment.
The pounding that Christopher Kepner had heard
had occurred on a narrow timeframe,
sometime between 3:00 and 5:44 am.
He said he heard a voice saying, "Stop it. Stop it."
And Kepner pounded on the wall and he said,
"Yeah. Stop it. Be quiet."
And then he never heard anything else.
[dramatic music playing]
[Morley] Investigators got a search warrant
to search Jesse's apartment.
So the time of Jesse's death is placed
in the early morning hours.
Who would be at Jesse's apartment at this time?
Somebody who knows him and perhaps
has an intimate relationship
or a romantic relationship with him.
And moreover, Jesse's door was ajar
and Jesse's body was found outside,
partially clothed, almost like he was running
in fear of his life from whoever it is
that was terrorizing him.
[narrator] As detectives comb through the apartment,
a crucial detail catches their attention.
They find a note addressed to Jesse from an ex-boyfriend.
The note was from a person that signed it as Jason
and was talking about things needed to be returned
from a breakup between Jesse and this person.
Looking into a homicide,
lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends,
those are often people that because of emotional rage
might end up committing a homicide.
So once the investigators see
that there's this letter from Jason,
Jason automatically becomes a potential suspect.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] After breaking the news
to Jesse's family about his murder,
they ask his mother about his relationships.
[Morley] Linda Valencia, she was from Kentucky
and Jesse had been her favorite child.
She doted on him.
Jesse was very open with his mother.
She knew that that he had multiple relationships.
Maybe a little promiscuous.
[narrator] When Detective Lederle
brings up Jason's name,
Linda immediately recognizes it
as her son's ex-boyfriend.
Linda felt that the breakup between Jesse and Jason
had not been a good one
and that it had been more Jesse's idea than Jason's,
and she felt like it was possible
that Jason wasn't taking the breakup well.
She was fearful that he was a possessive type of person.
And that he may be the stalking type.
We have to unravel
the mystery behind Jesse's death.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] In the brutal murder of 23-year-old
University of Missouri student, Jesse Valencia,
detectives are zeroing in on their first suspect.
Jason Speedman, a recent ex-boyfriend.
Jason was another very handsome young man,
very friendly.
And when he found out that Jesse was dead,
he totally broke down in grief.
During our conversation with Jason Speedman,
he described a very different scenario from Jesse's mother.
He admitted to having a relationship with Jesse.
They broke up two to three months prior to that
but they still had a really good relationship.
They remained friends.
[dramatic music playing]
[Morley] Jason gave his alibi
that he had been at work that night
until shortly after 6:00.
And then went to a new boyfriend's house
until he came home about 1:00 in the morning
and went to bed.
Even though the police find Jason believable
from his demeanor, they still can't rule him out
because at the crucial time when Jesse was being killed,
Jason was home alone sleeping.
And being home alone sleeping
is not a particularly good alibi.
[suspenseful music playing]
We asked Jason for a DNA swab, he gives it to us.
We really don't have much more to hold Jason,
so we let him go.
But we continued to keep him as a potential suspect.
[narrator] Searching for new leads,
detectives continue talking to Jesse's social circle.
It's sort of like a spider web.
As you talk to one friend, they tell you other friends
and so the police department ended up interviewing
a large number of Jesse's friends
as they're trying to find out
what happened to him on that last night of his life.
[narrator] Detectives learn that Jesse attended a party
in the hours before his murder.
They tracked down the host of the party.
Another student named Jennifer Weatherspoon.
[Morley] Jennifer was just a really good friend
of Jesse's.
She said Jesse was having a good time
and sort of being the life of the party.
[narrator] Investigators learn that at the party,
Jesse had made a call to his newest fling,
a young man named Ed McDevitt.
The phone was actually answered
by Ed McDevitt's roommate.
He and Ed had ended up going to the party.
Jesse and Ed had just met earlier that week
and had struck up a relationship.
[narrator] But Ed's roommate, Eric Thurston,
makes a poor impression on the other party guests.
People described him as not very friendly.
Eric is kind of rude,
he's kind of a... Lack of a better word, a jerk.
Eric Thurston got bored at the party
and he said he was going to go
find something more exciting to do and he left.
[narrator] Shortly afterwards, Jesse and Ed
leave the party together.
[Morley] They walked a couple of blocks
and Jesse was hoping Ed would come home with him.
But Ed said he's too tired
and he has to go to work in the morning.
[narrator] Jesse then returns to the party
and spends time with his friend Jennifer.
By that time, she was cleaning up after the party
and they sat together for a while and talked.
She tells us that the last time she saw Jesse
was about 3:45 am.
He said he's going home and going to bed.
[narrator] Jennifer's account allows detectives
to narrow down Jesse's window of death
to between 3:45 and 5:44 am.
It also gives them two new suspects,
Ed McDevitt, Jesse's latest fling
and his roommate, Eric Thurston.
We discovered that Eric Thurston
does have a criminal history.
It's drug possession and minor larceny.
While that doesn't mean a person
is automatically going around and committing crimes,
it does mean you're a little bit less believable
than somebody who's gone through their life
without committing any crimes at all.
[narrator] Armed with this incriminating information,
detectives call Eric Thurston
down to the station for questioning.
The first impression is that he's a little aloof,
he's not cooperative, so that raises some red flags.
His demeanor was cold,
it was not at all disappointed,
that a young man he had just been at the party with
the night before is dead,
not at all shocked by it.
[Michael] That's kind of puzzling.
And then Eric tells us that he and Ed used to be lovers.
[narrator] As detectives drill down on Eric,
they discover the relationship
between the two men had been violent.
There had been a domestic relations incident
between Ed McDevitt and Eric Thurston,
where the police had been called in
because of a physical squabble
between the two of them.
So it did seem that there were high passions
between Eric Thurston and Ed McDevitt.
With Jesse having multiple lovers,
one of the things that we were looking at is,
is Eric a, uh, jealous lover?
Is this a revenge homicide?
Perhaps you have somebody who's very jealous of Jesse.
Jealousy is among the top motives for murder,
especially in cases where males perceive
that they're in part of a romantic love triangle
or that they want to get back at the person
that is involved with their partner.
[narrator] Having established a potential motive,
Detective Lederle confronts Eric.
Did he murder Jesse Valencia?
[Morley] His response was, "I could kill somebody.
I could kill somebody easily.
I didn't happen to kill this person.
Yeah. I could kill somebody."
[Michael] That was a weird and kind of unusual statement.
Is Eric involved? We have to dig deeper
and figure out what is going on.
[narrator] In the coldblooded killing of Jesse Valencia,
investigators have their sights
set on his new lover's roommate, Eric Thurston.
They grill Eric about his whereabouts
during the window of time Jesse was killed.
[Morley] Eric said after leaving the party
at 3:00 in the morning, he had got online
and had chatted with some other people.
And so between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning,
he had gone over to a house of two young men
for the rest of the night
and they'd actually fixed breakfast together.
[tense music playing]
[Michael] We're gonna verify that information.
The police tracked down those two young men
that he said he went and stayed with that night.
And they confirmed that, yes,
he had stayed the night at their house.
So now Eric Thurston did have an alibi.
[narrator] With Eric ruled out,
detectives ask him more about Ed McDevitt,
who was Jesse's most recent romantic partner.
[Michael] Eric tells us that Ed has a drinking problem
and sometimes becomes violent when he's drinking.
It also happens that Ed is a cook
at a restaurant
and has access to a lot of knives.
[narrator] Having learned the Jesse's most recent boyfriend
had a history of violent outbursts,
investigators haul Ed McDevitt down to the station.
[Morley] Ed went into all the details
about the relationship that he'd had with Jesse.
They had met at a gay bar the night before Jesse died.
Ed tells us that he and Jesse really hit it off
and they go back to Jesse's apartment.
[narrator] Ed tells investigators
the last time he saw Jesse was when he had gone
to Jennifer's party.
After he and Jesse walked a couple of blocks,
they are finally separated and Ed was walking
toward his own home. Jesse called him
and tried to talk him into changing his mind
to coming back and spending the night.
But Ed said he's too tired
and he has to go to work in the morning.
[narrator] Ed tells detectives that Jesse's call
came in at 3:14 am.
They checked the phone records.
The phone backed up what Ed was saying
and also it showed that that call had been at 3:14
in the morning.
[narrator] But then Ed contradicts earlier testimony
from his roommate Eric.
[Michael] Ed tells us that about 3:30
when he arrived home, Eric's there.
But we already have a different timeline
from Eric that he met up with other people
from a gay dating website.
And it just throws a lot of question marks
into our investigation. What's going on here?
We have to figure out if he's telling the truth.
[narrator] With no one to confirm Ed's alibi,
it's possible he doubled back to Jesse's place
after they partied and killed him.
Looking for evidence to connect him to the crime,
they collect Ed's DNA.
Police also get a search warrant for Ed's apartment
and in that search, they did find
an extensive knife collection,
so they seized that knife collection
as potential evidence to compare
and see if maybe one of those knives
had been the murder weapon.
[narrator] Despite all of their investigative work
across multiple suspects,
detectives are no closer to catching Jesse's killer.
As the officers conduct their investigation,
they are finding more young men
who had connections with Jesse.
They had Jason who had been the recent breakup
of a long term relationship. They had Ed McDevitt
who definitely was a sexual relationship
that had just started two nights before.
So it seemed like everywhere the police turned,
there was another potential suspect.
[narrator] Then, investigators catch a break in the case.
An anonymous tip comes in through their Crime Stoppers phone line.
[Michael] What's interesting about this tip
is that it claims that a Columbia police officer
has had an affair with Jesse Valencia.
Now that really complicates things.
The person never gave a name of who that officer was
and there were a lot of Columbia police officers,
so now you had a lot more suspects.
[tense music playing]
When an anonymous tip comes in,
you have to take it for what it's worth
that the person wasn't willing
to provide their name, and sometimes they're just
people trying to get somebody else in trouble,
and sometimes there's truth to it.
But it was still a mystery as to who that officer might be.
Could it be one of ours that did this?
That's the question that instantly pops in our mind.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] Detectives have received an anonymous tip
that has turned the Jesse Valencia murder investigation upside down.
The tipster claims Jesse was having a secret affair
with a Columbia Missouri police officer.
When it comes to police officers,
this is supposed to be a fraternity
and a profession where everyone's in it
for the right reasons. And when you're faced
with potential betrayal of that trust,
it's really unsettling.
But at the end of the day, you have a job to do.
[narrator] The tipster doesn't name the officer,
but does mention a friend of Jesse's,
Andy Schermerhorn,
who may have details about the affair.
We locate Andy Schermerhorn and he comes in voluntarily.
[Michael] He and Jesse are both pre-law students
at University of Missouri,
and he described their relationship
as friends with benefits.
[foreboding music playing]
Andy confirmed that in fact Jesse
did have an affair with a Columbia police officer.
[Morley] But he didn't know the officer's name.
Jesse referred to that officer as Columbia's finest.
[narrator] Detective Lederle asks
how Jesse and the mystery police officer met.
[Morley] He said friends of Jesse's
had been having a loud party on April 18th,
and the officers had responded.
They were arresting those friends
for a noise violation,
and Jesse who was intoxicated
and who wanted to go to law school
and who was brash said, "What's your probable cause
for arresting my friends?"
And the police officer had arrested him.
[narrator] Jesse had been released quickly
with a ticket for obstruction of justice.
But there had been instant chemistry
with the arresting officer.
[Morley] They had begun their sexual relationship immediately that night.
The officer had come by after he got off his shift at 3:00 in the morning
and began having this affair with Jesse.
[narrator] Detectives continue to press Andy for more details
and he makes a shocking revelation.
Andy tells us about an incident
involving this officer, Jesse, and himself.
Andy says that Jesse and him are having sex
at Jesse's apartment...
[knocks on door]
when there's a knock on the door.
[Morley] Jesse went to the door
and here was a uniformed police officer.
Andy was panicking and Jesse said,
"That's okay, that's okay. This officer's a friend."
And then the officer came over and ended up
engaging in sexual activity with Andy and Jesse.
When it was over,
he looked at Andy and said,
"This has got to remain a secret."
[Michael] Andy was shaken.
[Morley] Then Jesse said to the officer,
"When will I see you again?"
And the officer said, "Well, sometime when I drop by."
And left.
[narrator] Andy reveals that over time,
Jesse was becoming increasingly frustrated
with the officer.
Jesse was starting to get upset
because he had assumed
that the municipal court ticket he had gotten
would go away since he's having sex with the officer
and it hadn't.
And also he's starting to think
the officer was married.
Jesse said that the next time the officer came over,
he was gonna confront him about whether he's married.
[Keira] This police officer has a lot to lose.
He could lose his job, he could lose his relationship,
and he could lose his standing in the community
if he does not want it to be known that he's gay.
And so in that sense, Jesse would turn the tables on him
in that power dynamic.
So it's possible that Jesse prompts this attack
and this rage.
[narrator] Detectives hope Andy can identify the police officer.
[Michael] We start showing him police yearbooks.
He'd thumbed through the pages and closed it and said, "He's not here."
And the detective said, "Wait a minute,
all the officers are in there."
[foreboding music playing]
Andy sat there for a minute and then he said,
"That was him out in the hall."
Andy whispers and points stating, "That's him."
[narrator] The officer is Steven Rios,
a three-year veteran of the department
with a wife and baby at home.
[Morley] Rios was a officer who had been very ambitious.
He had political aspirations,
he wanted to be in the management
at the police department.
So now police had another suspect
and it was a suspect that was within the police department.
[narrator] Complicating things even further,
is that Officer Rios
helped secure the crime scene.
Did he tamper with evidence?
Did he remove the weapon that we didn't see
because he already took it out of there?
So now we have to develop tactics
because unlike other people we interview,
an officer has the inside track
on how we work that area.
This officer may in fact try to outmaneuver us
during an investigation.
[narrator] Detectives are caught off guard
by what happens next.
The investigators got a surprise
because Steven Rios showed up on his day off and said,
"I understand you got a anonymous call."
He said, "I think some people are speculating
that it might be me and I just want you to know
it definitely wasn't me. I had nothing to do with it."
Steven Rios may have thought that all he had to do
was come in and say that
and leave and it would all be over.
But instead detectives said,
"Well, would you be willing to sit down and talk?"
And Rios said, "I'd be glad to."
I believe that Steven Rios was supremely arrogant.
The sort of person who thinks he's smarter
than everybody else in the room
and he felt he would be able to deal
with any question
that the detective might have.
[narrator] When the investigators interview Steven,
they ask how he knows Jesse Valencia.
[Morley] There's an old saying in law enforcement
that a provable lie
is the next best thing to a confession.
And it turned out that Steven Rios is a born liar.
He started out by saying
the only contact I've ever had with Jesse Valencia
was when he gave him that ticket.
The detective let him run with that for a while.
And then he said, "We talked to a young man named Andy
who said he was at Jesse's apartment
on May 15th having sex with Jesse
and you showed up and joined them."
And Rios goes, "What? Sex?"
Like it's the most absurd thing in the world.
The detective said, "You guys had a threesome."
Then Rios goes, "Well, it wasn't a threesome.
I just watched them having sex."
And ultimately he ends up admitting
that he had a sexual affair with Jesse.
He admitted that it began
on the night that he had arrested Jesse.
His strategy became admit the sexual affair,
but deny the murder.
[narrator] Detectives drill down
on Officer Rios' timeline
in the hours leading up to Jesse's murder.
Steven Rios said that he had worked his shift
and got off at 3:00 in the morning,
and that instead of going directly home,
he and some other officers went up
to the top of the parking garage
and drank beer together.
He said that he left about a quarter till 5:00
and that he got home around 5:30.
And he said as soon as he got home,
he went to bed.
The detectives asked him if he had a knife
that would have cut the throat of Jesse Valencia.
[narrator] Officer Rios denies owning such a knife.
Even if a homicide didn't occur,
he was having sex on duty,
that's a fireable offense.
That's within our code of conduct, it's prohibited.
It could end his career.
Now we truly have a motive here.
[narrator] Officer Rios continues to deny
his involvement in Jesse's murder.
[Morley] He concluded by saying, "I didn't kill him.
I had nothing to do with his death."
They let Rios go along on his way
because they still had no proof for sure
that he was the killer.
They just knew he was a liar.
[narrator] But before Officer Rios leaves,
he agrees to provide a DNA sample.
When the DNA results came back,
they were huge.
DNA under the fingernails of Jesse Valencia
turned out to be a combination of Ed McDevitt's DNA,
he'd been in a sexual relationship with Jesse
and this police officer, Steven Rios' DNA.
[tense music playing]
[Morley] There was no match to Jason.
There was no match to Eric Thurston.
It really narrows it down now
to Ed McDevitt and to Steven Rios.
They both had somewhat of a motive,
so now we're looking at
who has the strongest reason to kill Jesse?
[tense music playing]
[narrator] With two DNA matches,
investigators go back to the autopsy
hoping that Jesse's body may offer more clues
as to who killed him.
His most recent boyfriend Ed McDevitt
or his secret lover,
Officer Steven Rios.
Detectives focus on the mysterious bruises
found on Jesse's body.
We're trying to determine
what possibly could've happened
to cause him to have these bruises
on his upper torso.
The one went across the collarbone area
and the other was in the middle of the back
between the shoulder blades.
[narrator] When they look closely,
the pattern looks strikingly like the bruises caused
by a police chokehold known as an LVNR,
Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint.
The officer will get the person's neck
between their bicep and their forearm and squeeze
and it cuts off the blood going to the brain
and it renders a person unconscious
between three and seven seconds.
The officers demonstrate that hold
to the medical examiner
and the medical examiner said
that's consistent with the bruises
being found across Jesse's body.
Every officer on the force is taught this technique.
We know that Steve Rios knows this move.
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] Even with the evidence stacking up
against Officer Rios,
the case against him is still weak.
Investigators need more to build their case.
[Michael] It appears that Steve has a solid alibi.
Then we start looking closer.
[Morley] There were several officers
who had gotten off the shift
and gone to drink beer at 3:00 in the morning.
And one, a dispatcher named Leah Wooden,
she remembered that as she was leaving,
she got a phone call at 4:57.
By that time, she told us
Steve was already gone
and she estimates that he left about 10 minutes prior
to that phone call.
[narrator] This new information
places Officer Rios' departure
from the garage at 4:47 am.
Levy Rios, the wife of Steven Rios
had told the police officer
he had gotten home around 5:30,
and so that gave this window of time
between 4:47 and 5:30.
[Michael] Is it possible for Steve to leave
the top of the garage at 4:47,
drive to Jesse's apartment,
have an altercation,
kill him,
and then drive back to his home
by the time his wife tells us around 5:30?
[narrator] Investigators do a test
to see if Officer Rios could have killed Jesse
in that 43-minute window.
We left the police department
and we drove to Jesse's apartment.
And then we drove from Jesse's to Steve Rios' home,
and we timed all of that.
The total time...
was approximately 10 minutes.
And that's enough time to slit somebody's throat,
so you did have a situation
where Rios would have had the opportunity
to commit that crime.
[narrator] Then a piece of evidence comes in
that cracks the case wide open.
The DNA on the limb hairs
found on Jesse's body was Steven Rios' DNA.
It was clear that Jesse's body
had Steven Rios' limb hairs across his chest.
So all those pieces come together
and tell us that Steve Rios
is in fact the murderer.
[narrator] With this final piece of the puzzle,
detectives are able to piece together
Jesse Valencia's final 24 hours.
Jesse would been going home and going to bed
at about 3:45.
About 4:47,
Steve Rios drives over to Jesse Valencia's apartment.
Arriving at Jesse's apartment at 4:50 am.
Jesse's upset about him not taking care of that ticket
that he received back in April.
He's threatening Steve to tell
about their sexual encounters
and the fact that Steve has
been performing some of those encounters in uniform
while on duty.
Rios, this politically ambitious officer,
is feeling that his whole career
is about to end
and he's just not gonna let that happen.
[Michael] At this point, Steve's mad.
[narrator] Officer Rios becomes violent.
The neighbor heard the young man saying,
"Stop it, stop it."
Jesse runs when he realizes that Rios is dangerous.
Rios chases him
until Rios catches him from behind,
puts him in that Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint,
renders him unconscious.
That whole encounter can be done in minutes.
[Michael] At this point, Jesse is incapacitated,
then Steve puts him back down on the ground.
He pulls out his knife.
[ominous music playing]
[Michael] And he cuts Jesse's throat
and killed him.
It's such an aggressive cut,
it literally nicks his spinal column.
This is a crime that was motivated
chiefly by ego and narcissism.
Steven's reputation and his ambition
was more important than this young man's life.
[narrator] Steven Rios is charged
with first degree murder.
He's found guilty and sentenced to life in prison
plus 23 years for killing Jesse Valencia.
I started out my closing argument
by saying that Steven Rios
used his badge for sex
and then used his knife
to close the lips of his lover forever.
It's a despicable crime
and he deserves every day that he serves in prison.
When you have a cop who commits a crime,
that's the worst of the worst,
in my opinion.
We're held to a different standard,
you know, it's a higher standard.
Bad cop's a bad cop,
they need to be out of there.
I'm so glad that we got the right person
and put him in jail.
It'll never give back Jesse to his family or friends,
but hopefully that's some type of solace
to the family.
[narrator] Jesse's loved ones will always remember him
for his carefree spirit.
None more so than Jesse's adoring mother, Linda.
Just the thought of it, just me talking about it,
I'm getting a little choked up here
because that's a relationship that is forever gone,
you know, I can't even imagine.
I don't wanna even imagine what she's going though.