[dramatic music]
- A brutal spring of attacks resulting in multiple murders
across the city...
- We were going after some pretty bloodthirsty,
no-boundary perpetrators.
- Victims chosen seemingly at random.
- I had seen the flash of the gun.
I had felt the bullet entering my face.
I should not be alive.
- And one of our own is among the fallen.
- The NYPD, we take offense when you hurt one of us.
- Any New Yorker could be their next target,
so detectives are in a race against the clock.
- The public was in very serious, grave danger.
These guys will kill anyone.
[radio chatter]
[tense music]
* *
- In the summer of 1991, New York City
found itself in the grips of a terrifying crime spree.
The victims were all hardworking citizens
seemingly chosen at random,
leading the city to worry
anyone could be a target at any time.
And it all started in the place we depend on
as the lifeblood of our city,
the subway.
* *
- I came into the precinct on August 1st,
and when I walked in, the desk told me,
you got a body.
It's on the B train, Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn.
You got a male found on the train, shot.
Well, my partners walked in.
We jumped in a car and responded to the scene.
- Detectives arrive at the Stillwell Avenue
subway stop, an elevated station in Coney Island.
- Coney Island was not the safest place in the city.
But to find a body on a subway train fatally shot,
that didn't happen all the time.
[police sirens wailing]
- Train left Stillwell Avenue going towards Manhattan.
Made it one stop to Bay 50th,
and people getting onto the train found the body.
I stuck my head in the car,
saw a male, white, probably in his 50s,
lying face-up in the rear of the subway car.
He appeared to have two or three bullet wounds
in the chest and one or two in the face.
- We were like a well-oiled machine at that time.
Everybody knew, all right, I'm gonna go do the canvass,
I'm gonna notify crime scene.
Everybody just knew what they had to do.
- Crime scene start shooting photographs outside the train
and work their way inside.
- There was no blood on the platform
or anything like that.
- We canvassed the passengers that found the body
and reported it to see if anybody had seen anything.
- We really didn't find any witnesses to anything.
- But we didn't know where he was killed.
* *
- There was no rigor mortis,
so we believed that the shooting had taken place
just before the victim's body was found.
* *
- At the crime scene, investigators soon discover
information about their victim that strikes a deep nerve
into the heart of every cop there.
* *
- He was wearing a postal uniform.
And he had some sort of T-shirt on underneath.
I couldn't really make it out.
And then we realized it was an NYPD shirt.
Searching the body, we recovered
from his pants pocket the shield case
with a sergeant shield in it.
So there was, like, a collective gasp.
Everybody went, oh, God, this is a cop.
Somebody killed one of ours.
That hit home.
I mean, that could have been me in that situation.
- His identification was in his pocket.
It was Sergeant Robert Zink.
He was a retired New York City police sergeant.
He had only retired--
I think it was about two months prior to being killed.
* *
- In Staten Island, 20-year-old Jennifer Zink
is fast asleep at the family home
where she lives with her parents.
- The phone rang.
[phone rings] It woke me up.
And it was my dad's supervisor at work.
He said, "Your dad's not here."
In 1991, my father was working
as a postal worker in Brooklyn.
My father's supervisor, he said,
"I'm a little concerned because your dad
is always at work early, and he's late."
So I said, "Hold on. I'll look for him."
So I remember, like, running through the house.
He was nowhere to be found.
So I got back on the phone with the supervisor,
and I said, "He's not here."
As soon as I hung up with him,
I had a sickening feeling in my stomach, a pit in my stomach.
I knew something was wrong.
- The whole family, Jennifer's three brothers and her mother,
all gather at the house and start frantically making calls
to look for their father and husband.
- I was working for the police department.
So I started making phone calls to various precincts
to see where he was, and then a commanding officer
came up and said, "Yeah, he died.
"And we're sending, uh--
we're send--"
- I just remember screaming.
Like, I ran outside, and I just screamed.
[somber music]
I just couldn't believe it.
* *
My mom was screaming.
He was the love of my mother's life.
She adored him. He was her rock.
My dad and mom met at a home insurance company.
That's where they worked together.
And they started dating.
- He joined the police department,
and he got promoted to sergeant back in 1979.
It was like his dream.
He had retired, and he decided to get into the post office.
- My father was a wonderful human being,
an outstanding family person who loved all of his children,
loved his wife, loved his entire community.
[ominous music]
- Any time a police officer is killed,
that's a line that's crossed.
So in my mind, you know, we got to get this guy.
[police sirens wailing]
- We at the NYPD take every homicide seriously.
In fact, we take every homicide personally.
- But when someone murders a cop,
that's an affront to the rule of law of our great city.
* *
- There really wasn't much evidence at the scene.
Crime scene investigators threw a lot of dust
in the area, fingerprint dust,
to try and recover fingerprints.
But tens of thousands of people
could have been on that car in the last 24 hours.
It didn't appear to be any signs of struggle.
There were no defensive wounds on his hands
or anything like that.
But since the victim was shot five times,
we believed that there was ballistic evidence
inside of his body.
- Sergeant Zink's remains are taken
to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.
- The slugs that were removed from his body
turned out to be .38-caliber slugs.
There was no firearm recovered.
There were no spent shell casings.
- That means he was either shot with a revolver,
which doesn't eject the rounds,
or that the shooter shot him with an automatic
and then picked up his brass that's been pressed.
Normally, a shooting on the train,
it's one of two things-- it's either a dispute
or a robbery that went bad.
He had his shield. He had his postal ID.
Everything seemed to be intact.
It didn't appear he was a victim of a robbery.
- Detectives arrive at the Zink home in Staten Island,
knowing his family's insights will be invaluable
to their investigation.
- Detectives come in.
They clear the entire dining room table off
with food, and they put maps down.
The first thing you got to figure out
is what his location was when he was killed.
We knew that he took the train
to 36th Street,
transfers to a B train,
and goes three stops.
- So we knew he was alive
when he got on the train at 36th Street,
or he wouldn't have got on the B train.
So somewhere between
the 36th Street stop
and the Manhattan-bound
Bay 50th Street stop
is when this took place.
That means that the B train rode all the way
into Coney Island and then came back out one stop,
you know, with the body on it.
- Detectives ask family members
about Sergeant Zink's career,
wondering if he might have made any enemies
during his time on the job.
- And my father had a very dangerous career.
He was in narcotics, and he worked undercover
running a narcotic unit for the 9th Precinct.
Back in 1979, the East Village was completely out of control.
I mean, there were drugs all over the place.
My father developed a plan called
Operation Pressure Point,
designed to weed out all the drugs.
All the narcotic units went into the buildings,
flushed everybody out.
And they would have uniformed officers on each street corner,
arresting more people and getting the bad guys.
And they did it.
They cleaned up the East Village.
This unit made the most arrests probably
in the history of the police department.
- Detectives know that if they got a convicted drug kingpin
fresh out of prison, he could be looking
for revenge out in New York City.
- Somebody sitting in jail, pissed off at me
because I put them in jail--
the first thing they're gonna do when they get out
is come looking for me.
So one of the first things that popped into my head was,
is this somebody from his past?
- I was determined to find out who did it,
and they were all determined.
[tense music]
- Coming up...
- And sure enough, there was a match on the ballistics.
- He said, if you give me a chance, I'll kill you.
- This was a big case.
This was turning into a monster.
[dramatic music]
* *
- Sergeant Robert Zink,
a retired NYPD narcotics officer,
has been found shot dead
on a Brooklyn subway train.
We don't take kindly to anyone killing one
of our brothers in blue, so detectives are looking
at every ex-con Sergeant Zink put away
who might want vengeance.
- So who got out of jail just before Mr. Zink was killed,
that Mr. Zink put in jail?
Because if they want to get revenge,
they're going to do it as soon as they come home.
And there were several people that came up
who were released a week ago.
They were interviewed.
- As the leads are being ruled out,
the family gives detectives an important piece
of information.
A week before he was murdered, Sergeant Zink told his family
he'd run into someone who seemed to be
a drug dealer from his past.
- My father had an interaction,
while he was working for the post office,
with an individual who confronted him
and said, "Hey, Sarge, what are you doing here?
"I thought you were working in the East Village,
Alphabet City."
- I remember him telling me as well that he felt that there
was somebody on his route that was a drug dealer,
and he was concerned about that.
* *
- I remember saying to him, "You know what, Dad,
I'm really worried about you."
- And so I was concerned that there was someone there
who had a hit on him, that was looking to kill.
* *
- Detectives locate the potential suspect
on Sergeant Zink's route.
- We brought him into an interview room.
- I wanted to get a sense of what kind of guy this guy was.
- After extensive questioning, the suspect admits
he had been a drug dealer and knew Sergeant Zink
from the East Village streets.
But he insists he had nothing to do with his murder.
- His alibi, in fact, turned out to be true.
We couldn't place him at the scene.
- All of the recently released ex-cons
were interviewed and cleared.
Now, 48 hours into the investigation,
we've run out of leads.
Detectives decide to turn to the streets
to see if there's any buzz out there
about who might want Sergeant Zink dead.
- We shake the tree, so to speak,
to see if there's anyone that's in the criminal world
that has information on a case like this.
[police sirens wailing]
- Nothing.
Nobody really had any information.
So it was kind of a dead end.
It just makes me want to work that much harder.
I'm persistent, almost to the point of being annoying.
And the guys I work with will probably tell you that.
But I don't give up, and I don't get discouraged.
* *
- You can say it's a New York trait--we don't quit.
Every precinct in the NYPD handles their own cases.
But when we hit a dead end, we reach out
to neighboring precincts to see if they
have any similar crimes on their books.
- We're hoping that the suspect
had done something else.
So maybe that time, there's a witness,
or maybe they left some evidence.
- The NYPD community digs deep and finds a lead.
Several days later, detectives get a call
from the 78 Precinct,
which covers the South Prospect Park neighborhood
of Brooklyn, 5 miles north of the Zink crime scene.
- They said there was an active homicide
that had taken place 11 hours before Zink's murder.
It was with a .38-caliber.
- The same caliber as a Sergeant Zink's shooting.
- And they're in luck.
There are witnesses passing by on the street
who saw the shooting and who did it.
- A livery cab driver, Wah Lee.
He had been ending his day.
He was exiting his cab.
- He's got a satchel and a radio,
like a portable car radio that he would slide in and out
of the track to use when he was working.
Two male whites jump out.
- They produced their firearm.
- The one guy goes to take the radio, and Mr. Lee resists.
He pulls back.
Those radios were like 2 grand at the time,
back in the day.
That's his livelihood.
He loses that radio, he can't work.
* *
So he made the mistake of holding on to it.
And the other guy shoots him and killed him,
and he goes down.
They grab the radio and his satchel.
They hop back in the car, and they take off.
Poor guy walking down the street,
just minding his own business.
Shot him dead, all because he didn't want
to let go of his radio.
- The witnesses saw two men kill Wah Lee,
but they can't provide any real specifics.
- But people, you know, walking on the street nearby
couldn't really identify anybody.
Nobody got a plate number of the vehicle,
just a general description.
- It was a white Dodge Dynasty.
- We put out a citywide canvass message
that goes to every precinct, every detective squad,
regarding the perps' car.
- While they look for the car, they investigate
whether there's any forensic connection
between the two murders.
- Ballistics are brought
to the New York City Police Department lab,
and a comparison was done to check the ballistics
from that case to the Zink case.
* *
We get a call.
And sure enough, there was a match on the ballistics.
Both of the bullets that were used in both homicides
were fired from the same gun.
- Two murders, 11 hours apart,
both committed with the same weapon.
- So we now knew that Wah Lee and Sergeant Zink's murders
were connected.
But we didn't really know why.
- Did the two victims know each other,
or are they random attacks committed
by two men on a killing spree?
Killers who strike at random tend to be antisocial
and move around frequently.
They can be much harder to capture.
- I thought that, oh, my God, maybe we were
looking at a serial killer.
[tense music]
* *
- It's been three days since NYPD Sergeant Robert Zink
was found murdered on a subway train.
Police have just discovered that the same gun
was used by two men to kill cab driver Wah Lee
just 11 hours prior.
We check in with the Zink family.
They are laying their father to rest,
and they are just beginning to understand
the magnitude of their loss.
[somber music]
- We were trying to process that somebody
who we loved so dearly died so brutally.
- So many people came over saying,
you know, whatever you need, just let us know.
And we were just crying and grieving with neighbors.
- They were bringing food.
They were cleaning our house. [laughs]
I just remember feeling, like, so much support.
- He was just your regular, average guy at home, you know?
It was almost like Clark Kent and Superman.
And when he went to work, he was a wild guy,
did things that were extraordinary.
But then he would come home and make pancakes.
He lived a very simple life.
- It was extremely difficult for my mom.
She was extremely close to my dad.
They had a wonderful marriage, and it just broke her heart.
She had a broken heart for the rest of her life.
- He had a policeman's funeral.
I remember there was so many people.
It was just a sea of blue.
[soft music]
My dad would have been very proud to have seen
a funeral like that for him.
* *
[tense music]
- Detectives, committed to getting justice
for a fellow cop, have asked for help
from the entire NYPD.
They've put out a citywide request for any information
about a white Dodge Dynasty, like the one spotted fleeing
the scene of Wah Lee's murder.
- The 68 Precinct responded that they had a vehicle
matching the description.
- A Dodge Dynasty had been brought
to the tow pound three days earlier,
the night of Wah Lee's murder.
- We went out to the pound, and we looked at the car.
- It was a complete shell, completely burnt out.
- We're not dealing with stupid people.
They were smart enough to burn the car
and get rid of all that evidence.
They're covering their tracks.
We started poking around, and I took a look,
and I noticed under the seat, looked like a radio.
Pulled it out.
It's all burned, what appears to be
a portable two-way radio.
And it had a serial number on it.
And we were able to trace it back to Wah Lee.
- It's a huge discovery.
Detectives know for sure, this is the car the killers
used in Wah Lee's murder.
If they find the owner of the car,
they could have their killer.
- The license plate was run,
and that came back to a Kenneth Prill.
- They put Prill's name in the system.
And it turns out, this is Kenneth Prill.
- He was a priest, Reverend Kenneth Prill.
- Puzzled investigators do some digging
and uncover some terrifying information.
- According to the police report,
Kenneth Prill had been abducted, robbed,
and shot in the face in East New York on July 31st.
- The file said the witness saw that the perpetrators
were two male whites.
- Two white males, which matches witness accounts
of the two perpetrators in the Wah Lee murder.
- We figured out that Prill's car
was used in Wah Lee's shooting,
and Wah Lee's ballistics matched Zink.
So I now know all three of these cases are connected.
- There's no telling how many more victims
they'll kill if they can't be stopped.
But then we learn something truly surprising
that could change the trajectory
of the entire case.
- Reverend Prill, it turned out, he survived.
He's in the hospital.
Now we uncover a person who may have been an eyewitness.
It was a big deal.
- So we were like--I mean, we're high-fiving each other.
- He could lead us in the right direction
to locate and identify a perpetrator.
[tense music]
* *
- Detectives have identified a third shooting victim
in Brooklyn's crime spree, Reverend Kenneth Prill.
He survived, and police are hoping
that he can give a description of the two suspects
terrorizing the borough.
[police sirens wailing]
- I went to the hospital and spoke to Prill.
You know, he had a wound on his face.
It was bandaged.
You could see his face was all burned.
And I said, I need to hear from you
exactly what happened.
[monitor beeping]
- July 31st of 1991 was just an ordinary day.
My wife had an appointment in Park Slope.
Park Slope was a very safe area,
brownstone homes.
The streets were very well-manicured.
I dropped my wife off at the doctor's office,
parked my car, and was getting out of my car.
And two men came up to me,
and put a .38 revolver in my side,
and said, "Get into the car."
The man who had the gun on me in the rear seat
asked for my wallet.
And as we drove off, he said, "Look to the floor of the car
because if you look up, I'm going to kill you."
* *
- He said he drove around for about two hours.
They were actually looking at people on the street,
and he's talking about robbing people.
Like, one of them would say to the other,
like, "What about that guy?"
And he'd go, "No, no, no, it's too crowded."
Or, "Oh, there's a police car there."
Then they told him, "We'll let you go free.
We want your car."
And they drove into the old Fountain Avenue landfill.
- The landfill was, like, this eerie area
where bodies were often dumped.
* *
- It was completely deserted.
They told me they were going to let me go home.
The man in the back said,
"All right, get out of the car."
I put my foot on the ground,
and I saw a little flash of light in my left eye.
He fired the gun into my face from 2 two feet away.
I felt the bullet entering my face
as it threw me to the ground.
I fell as the car sped off.
I immediately had an excruciating earache.
I knew if I was ever going to survive,
I had to reach civilization, so I started running.
My good Samaritan stopped, and he said
he would call for an ambulance.
[ambulance siren wailing]
The doctor in the emergency room said,
"There is no reason why you should be alive."
* *
The bullet hit the rim of my eyeglasses,
and they were stainless steel rims.
The bullet stopped in the soft tissue
behind my right main sinus.
Thank God for those glasses.
The doctor said, "I have to leave the bullet there."
Because if the bullet had moved the slightest bit,
even a millimeter, I would be dead.
That is where the bullet still is to this day.
[monitor beeping]
[soft music]
- I remember he was wearing his collar.
And I thought to myself,
what son of a bitch would shoot a priest?
These got to be some cold, cold-hearted people.
[tense music]
- They said, "Did you see the two men?"
So I said, I would look up over my glasses
without moving my head to see the rearview mirror,
and I saw the face of the man who was driving.
- And so Reverend Prill worked with the police artist,
sketch artist, and they created the sketch.
* *
- The composite sketch did appear in local newspapers.
- The police wanted the public to see that
and hoped that it would generate a crucial tip.
[phone rings]
- Over the next three weeks,
the hotline is inundated with calls.
- We got people that saw something--
yes, it was suspicious.
However, it wasn't related to this.
They all turned out to be dead ends.
This was a big case.
This was turning into a monster.
That's when we formed the task force
to merge all three cases.
- They started pulling detectives from all over.
- The motivation was there to solve this case.
I mean, come on. These guys shot a priest.
They killed a retired police officer,
and they shot an innocent livery cab driver.
We looked into the fact that,
did any of these three know one another?
And we came up that they didn't.
There was no link.
- Since the victims seem chosen at random,
police have no idea who the killer's next target might be
or how to protect the public.
- The two perpetrators, they were just on a rampage.
- People were upset. People were scared.
They were worried for their families
because the shooter was on the loose.
- It made me even more determined.
I got to get these guys.
* *
Then we got a call
from the Middlesex County Correctional Facility.
* *
And there's a gentleman saying,
I got this kid here telling me that he knows about a cop
that was killed in Brooklyn.
I was like, oh, really?
He says, "When can you be here?"
I said, "We're on the way."
[police siren wailing]
We got the warrant to eavesdrop on his phone call.
He says, "We shot a cop." I almost fell out of my chair.
- Coming up... - I know it's go time.
I got to take him by myself.
I pull my gun. "Police, don't move!"
I was on him like white was on rice.
- 20 years on the job, that's the most evil person
I've ever dealt with.
[tense music]
* *
- NYPD detectives are chasing two killers
on a deadly spree across Brooklyn.
The suspects have shot three men, killing two.
A month into the investigation, a tipster has come forward.
He'd been arrested for robbery in New Jersey.
- There's a kid by the name of Eduardo.
He wants to give up information in exchange for some leniency.
- Eduardo tells police that he'd been speaking
on the phone with two friends of his while he was in jail.
Their names are Richard Springer
and Marc Asher.
- He said these two guys, Richie Springer and Marc Asher,
they used to do burglaries with us in Jersey.
They were addicts.
Well, the people doing drugs need money to get high.
- On the phone, they specifically mentioned
that they had killed a cop in Brooklyn.
- Well, there haven't been any other cop homicides recently.
So it had to be--they had to be talking about my case.
So now we knew this kid was on the money.
* *
Has he got any proof of this?
"Just only what they told me."
Where are these people?
He says, "Richie went to Vegas.
But I've talked to him on the phone several times in Vegas."
I was like, would you be willing to do that
with us listening in and recording it?
He says, yeah.
* *
We tell him, don't go right into this,
like, hey, you know, you smoked a cop, what's wrong with you?
You know, start off, hey, what's going on?
What'd you go to Vegas for? You know, lead into it.
Don't--because otherwise, he's going to clam up.
* *
The kid is great.
He starts talking to him, you know.
"What are you doing? Where are you?
I haven't seen you."
"Yeah, I'm out in Vegas."
He says, "What are you doing in Vegas?"
- Eduardo had a conversation with him,
asked him about the actual murder.
- And then when he says,
"So you know, we had a problem in Brooklyn,"
Eduardo was like,
"What do you mean, you had a problem?"
He says, "Well, you know,
"we were doing what we were doing,
and somebody died."
So he's like, "Who?"
He's like, "A cop."
So when he said that, I almost fell out of my chair.
I was like, holy (BLEEP).
Sorry. We got these guys.
* *
- And he said, "I didn't like cops.
"That's why-- I didn't like cops.
That's why I killed him."
It was a matter of principle.
- And the last thing he says on the tape is,
"And besides, there's no subways in Las Vegas."
So now I know we got this guy. This is them.
- We knew we had the right people in our sights.
* *
- We call over to North Las Vegas, and we say,
"Listen, we've got a guy who killed a cop,
"shot a bunch of people.
We want him picked up."
- That's all the North Las Vegas PD need to hear.
Eduardo has provided police
with Springer's landline number.
And from that, they quickly determine
where he's hiding out.
- So they go out, and they boom the door,
and they scoop this guy up.
They bring him in, they call me,
and they do this in like an hour.
They're like, "We got him."
I was like, "What do you mean you got him?"
He's like, "We got him. He's in the cell.
Come get him."
I said, "We'll be on the first plane."
Off we go.
Get out to Vegas.
We go walking in, and Richie Springer is sitting there.
And he looks and goes,
"You two guys from New York State parole?"
And he's laughing.
I said, "No, we're New York City homicide detectives."
I says, "And before I say one more F-ing word to you,
"let me just say this:
There's no subways in Las Vegas."
And I slammed the case folder down on the desk.
And he had a look on his face like
a deer in the headlights.
He was like--and he realized at that point, he was done
because he knew he only said that to one person.
So he knew we must have been listening.
So yeah, we're going to talk.
He says, "All right.
I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
He said, "I did all of it."
He said, "You got me. I did all of it."
And I'm thinking to myself, we got this fool.
- Richie Springer says he and his partner, Marc Asher,
needed drug money and were trolling the streets
looking for someone to rob.
First, at 4:00 p.m. on July 31st,
they kidnapped and shot Reverend Kenneth Prill,
and then, using Prill's car, robbed and murdered
Wah Lee two hours later.
- But Springer says that it was Marc Asher alone
who shot Sergeant Robert Zink on the southbound B train
the following morning at 6:00 a.m.
The detectives aren't buying it.
* *
- Richie Springer told us,
"The guy on the train was a matter of principle.
I don't like cops."
He said, "If you give me a chance, I'll kill you."
He told us that day, right there
in the Las Vegas police headquarters.
He said, "I will kill you."
20 years on the job, I could say
that's the most evil person I've ever dealt with
in my career.
And I've dealt with some bad ones, trust me.
- Police have apprehended Richard Springer,
one of the men responsible for the three shootings.
But that means the job is only half done.
The other suspect, Marc Asher, is still at large.
- Springer gave up the location of Marc Asher,
his home address in Brooklyn.
- Springer also told the police that Asher
was still holding the .38 revolver used in the murders.
- The other information he gave was
that Marc Asher would always carry the gun in his backpack.
[dramatic music]
* *
Surveillance started on Asher's residence.
* *
I have a bulletproof vest on.
I have four units that are standing by on my order.
If he comes out of location, I'm to radio to them,
and we're to converge on him and arrest him.
So sure enough, he comes out of the location,
and he has the backpack on.
But I can't get through on the radio.
So as he starts to get down the block,
maybe 10, 12 steps behind him,
another gentleman starts walking down the block
who also has a backpack on.
I was worried that the surveillance team
might arrest this other guy with the backpack.
I was afraid, when they converge on that second guy,
Asher was gonna take the gun out and start shooting.
So I wasn't giving him the opportunity.
So I know it's go time. I got to take him by myself.
I'm like, I'm ----ing taking this guy.
[tense music]
* *
- Detectives have already arrested Richard Springer,
one of the men suspected of killing two men
and shooting a third in Brooklyn.
And Detective Phil Grimaldi has just spotted
the second suspect, Marc Asher, on the street.
- I jump out of the vehicle.
I go running down the block.
I pull my gun.
"Police, don't move."
I started using expletives, "Get down on the floor."
I was on him like white was on rice,
and things came out of my mouth that I didn't even know
were in my vocabulary.
I get him on the floor.
I pull the backpack off of him.
I get him handcuffed.
This was a big moment.
We got the guy that committed this horrific 13-hour rampage.
And I get him in the back of the car.
And he says, "What's this about?"
And all I say to him is, "You know what this is about.
You know exactly what this is about."
The blood starts to go out of his face,
and he tells me, "I know this is about the cop, isn't it?"
* *
He starts to tell us word for word what happened with Zink,
word for word what happened with Prill,
word for word what happened with Mr. Lee.
- When Asher was telling the story,
when he was walking us through all the events,
he came off as almost like a very mild-mannered guy.
- Asher said that it was Springer
in that shot the Methodist priest, Kenneth Prill.
- When he started to talk about the horrible deeds
of shooting and killing people, his eyes got very, very dark.
He almost became excited about it.
Asher said that it was--
Richard Springer was the one that shot Robert Zink.
He was killed because he was a police officer.
- Mm-hmm.
- I really believe that, that day in the interview room,
that I was talking to the devil, for sure.
[police sirens wailing]
- As police continue interrogating
the two perpetrators, they make a shocking confession.
A year earlier, they committed another homicide.
- Richie Springer tells us they had done this murder
about a year before, Lorraine Finnegan.
And he was like, "Yeah, we picked her up,
we had sex with her, and then we killed her."
It just boggled my mind
because this guy talked about killing people
like it was like, you know, I had a ham sandwich for lunch.
- We charge both men with two counts
of second-degree murder, two counts of robbery,
two counts of weapons possession,
and one count of kidnapping.
- Detective Boyle said, "We've made an arrest.
In fact, we've made two arrests."
So the biggest sigh of relief came over me.
- I felt just really relieved
that they got the both of them.
- Both of the perpetrators in this case,
they took credit for the stuff they did,
except the murder of Sergeant Zink,
but I believe Richard Springer was the one
that shot Robert Zink.
* *
- As the case goes to trial, detectives delve
into the background of Richard Springer, age 38,
and Marc Asher, 31.
Asher was on parole for a 1983 manslaughter conviction.
Springer was also an ex-con.
- I learned that they knew each other through--
Richard Springer was in--
shared a prison cell with Marc Asher's brother.
They had a long criminal history.
- Richard Springer ended up getting in trouble for drugs,
and that's when he ended up in state prison.
Marc Asher came across as a follower
and has drug problems.
- This case is really about drug-addicted heroin addicts
that just went on a rampage.
* *
- They were convicted of everything
except the murder of retired police Sergeant Zink.
And apparently, the jury didn't feel they had enough.
The phone call was not enough to link him to Zink's murder.
- After the trial, Richard Springer,
he slowly turned and looked at me in the eye
and winked at me.
[soft music]
- And it was stunning to witness that.
I thought it was a very brazen act,
certainly an act of disrespect.
- To me, that was like, you know, "I did it.
I got away with it."
- Richard Springer received
a hundred years to life in prison.
Marc Asher, he got 82 years to life.
- So they're both gonna die in jail.
- We did not get a conviction, but we got the guys.
I'm comfortable with the fact that they're in prison
for the rest of their lives without parole.
I can live with it.
- When you think about all the crimes,
what did they get out of it?
Nothing.
And everyone's lives were turned upside down.
* *
My father was the rock in the family, and I miss him.
* *
But I feel that, through my actions
and through my children, that he lives on.
- I became a cop.
I think my father would've been very proud of the work
that I did in the police department.
- I like to think that I survived
so that I could get justice
for Lorraine Finnegan,
so that I could get justice for Wah Lee,
so that I could get justice for Sergeant Robert Zink.
* *