to a crime, and you're probably going to get five different scenarios. you do the forensic science, you're going to get one. and that's it. gambling has a lot more visibility than it used to. it's on the internet, it's on primetime television, and it's almost a varsity sport on some college campuses. but several young men learned the hard way that gambling can put your money at risk, and sometimes, your life. >> gambling isn't confined to casinos, church bingo and backroom card games anymore. now it's everywhere. there are poker tournaments on the computer. you can place sports wagers offshore. and you can play the daily

lottery, now run by local governments. 28-year-old jason mcwiggins saw gambling as a way to have fun and also to make a living. he dabbled in casino gaming, but his real love was sports handicapping. he was known to wager thousands of dollars on a single event. >> he was not a bookie. he had made the offer to quite a few people that if you give me some money, i'll sign you up with a betting service and give you advice. he was essentially trying to sell his advice. >> mcwiggin had spent some of his time with his associates and acquaintances, boasting about the gambling. he almost was starting to emerge as almost a wanna be gangster. >> on a warm june afternoon, jason's aunt stopped by his apartment to pick up an old computer. she found the back door open. inside were the remnants of a massacre. >> jason mcwiggin is laying on his back on the bed with his

feet curling over the bed to the floor. >> mcwiggin had been shot twice with a .9-millimeter handgun. jason's two friends, daniel swanson and dustin wilson, were shot to death in the living room. >> it could have been a professional hit, just because of the way these bullets went into people. >> inside jason's apartment was a receipt for a .9-millimeter glock pistol. he had purchased it just a few weeks earlier. but the gun wasn't found in the apartment. also missing was the key to jason's bank safe deposit box. investigators believe jason mcwiggin was the intended target and that his two friends sleeping in the living room were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. >> it's t was just totally unexpected. he didn't really have any enemies that we knew of at all. so, when this happened it was a big surprise to us. >> jason, dustin and daniel,

they were just normal kids trying to make something out of their life. they weren't bad kids. >> when local news agencies reported the murders, a witness came forward with some revealing information. a few hours before the murders, the witness saw three men in a cadillac escalade shouting obscenities and making inappropriate gestures to an asian man in the car behind t m them. >> she remembers it clearly. she thought it was a road rage incident, and these three white kids were somehow racially attacking this asian kid. >> the witness identified the three men in the escalate as jason mcguigan, daniel swanson and dustin wilson, the three murder victims. >> in a case that had so many stunning revelations, this one ranked right up there with them. of two young boys life could be hectic. angie's list saves me a lot of time.

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police in verona, wisconsin, were investigating a triple homicide. an analysis of the crime scene indicated that jason mcguigan's two friends were killed first as

they slept in the living room. the killer took jason into the bedroom. there was some sort of discussion before he, too, was killed. in a search for suspects, police learned that jason mcguigan and his upstairs neighbor, todd vincent got into a fight a week or two before the murder. >> mcguigan had slapped todd. todd retaliated by choking jason or throwing jason to the ground. jason reported to the police. it turns out there wasn't enough of a conflict that anybody got charged. >> todd denied any involvement in the murders. gunshot residue tests on his hands were negative. but he said something curious, that he didn't hear any gunshots from jason's apartment. ballistic experts say that's not necessarily unusual. >> if they don't expect to hear a gunshot, when they do hear something, they'll interpret it

some other way. >> next, police started to run down the vehicles parked outside jason's apartment. one was jason's cadillac escalade. the other was a red toyota, one of two vehicles owned by jason's friend, 19-year-old mark wu. he was from taiwan, the son of a wealthy businessman and an honor student at the university of wisconsin. when police tracked him down, mark wu was in new york city and about to board a plane to taiwan to visit his family for the summer vacation. mark said he left one of his two cars in jason's parking lot because it was safer than parking in the city. >> wu had a residence downtown in madison, and parking down there is very difficult, and he had a number of vehicles. and so, by keeping one out at jason mcguigan's residence in

verona, he didn't have to worry about getting parking tickets. >> on the night of the murders, mark wu said he was in his apartment in madison, wisconsin, and spent the night alone. but mark's cell phone records indicated he was in verona, about 30 miles away from his apartment, which is where jason mcguigan lived. >> wu makes a call at 8:16 p.m. and it hits the verona tower. verizon tests show that any cell phone call that hits tower 165, the verona tower, is basically going to be confined to someone that's within the city limits of verona. >> he didn't really give a good explanation on why he had lied, but the gist of it was that he didn't know anything about these murders and he just thought that he should have basically an alibi. >> mark wu had no history of violence or erratic behavior. >> mark wu was about as unlikely a suspect in a triple homicide as you're going to get. his yearbook entries, his classmates, former teachers,

there wasn't really a sense of mark wu being a person who had been in trouble. >> i'd say naive, helpless, really nice guy. i was laughing out loud when the fbi suggested that he could be in a gang or something. >> but police found evidence that wu and mcguigan were both involved in gambling. >> we learned that mark wu, through his family, it appears primarily, had resources. so, he had money to burn. >> five days before the murders, mark wu gave jason mcguigan a large sum of money to bet on a professional baseball game. >> one game in particular was a major league baseball game pittsburgh versus cleveland. that game happened to go 15 innings and lasted about five hours. >> mark wu used his cell phone to call a sports betting service that night to find out which team won. >> the pitcher takes the sign. winds up. the pitch.

it's in the dirt, past the catcher. the runner from third is heading home! and there's the throw. safe! the game ends in a wild pitch and pittsburgh wins 7-6. i don't believe it! for the second night in a row, pittsburgh wins in 15 innings. >> according to friends, when mark realized that he won, he couldn't contain his excitement. >> wu is ecstatic, he's screaming, he's excited. 17 grand, i won 17 grand. >> when mark wu asked jason mcguigan for the $17,000 he had won, he learned for the first time that jason never placed the bet. >> jason reacts to that by pulling his newly purchased glock pistol out of his pants, waves it at him and says shut the [ bleep ] up. >> there is, in fact, no bet placed. nothing documents that wu had any money put down. jason did not have any money put down. so, this bet is completely a false bet. >> why jason didn't place the

bet is unclear. either he forgot or decided to pocket mark's money instead. regardless, this gave mark wu 17,000 reasons to seek revenge.

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activities. in jason's personal files was evidence he placed bets through olympic sports, an offshore betting agency in the caribbean. >> he would call in, and they would tell you the lines, the spreads and what the picks were on those games, and he would then place betets on those. >> gambling agencies set up shop outside the country to circumvent u.s. law enforcement. >> all of his bets throughout his entire account history with olympic sports were made by telephone. olympic sports records all incoming phone calls, and the reason they do that is just in case somebody has an argument over whether or not they made a bet or did not make a bet. they've got some kind of proof to back up what happened. >> when police listened to the tapes, they heard someone else on the phone with jason. >> 100 -- >> okay. i'll place my bet on --

>> the voice sounded like jason's friend, mark wu. and it was clear that wu was also betting big on sporting events. >> you have jason actually taking over, grabbing the phone in some manner, because you could hear the voice change on the tapes. you can also hear him in the background telling wu what to do. so, you can see that mcguigan really is sort of the mastermind behind any of the gambling that's going on. >> i'd like to know who the pitchers are for the baseball game, atlantic at new york. >> no. atlanta braves. >> yeah. >> should be maddox and glavine. >> maddox and glavine? >> yes, sir. >> i'll place my bet on -- >> he didn't know what he was doing. he didn't know pitchers' names, he didn't know team names. he didn't understand the odds. >> an investigation into mark wu's finances revealed a telling piece of information. >> when we began to discover that mark wu had over a four or

five-month period drawn more than $70,000 out of his bank account, that mark wu was telling investigators that he at one occasion had dropped $15,000 on a single bet. >> and investigators already knew there was a disagreement about the baseball bet and that mark wu believed jason owed him $17,000. >> so, it tells us that there's definitely money issues going on between the two of them and they're very severe in nature. >> mark gave police permission to search his apartment. they found no bloody clothes or weapons, but in the parking lot was the second vehicle mark wu owned. this one was silver. like the one seen following jason mcguigan the afternoon before the murders. inside was the owner's manual for a glock .9-millimeter

pistol, like the one missing from jason's apartment, the same caliber weapon used in the murders. ballistic expert bill newhouse compared the shell casings from the murder scene to the ones provided by the manufacturer when jason purchased the weapon. >> it was clearly printed as having been cartridge casings fired in, and it specified the glock pistol which it had been fired with, and the serial number and nice information we don't see very often. >> they matched, proving that it was jason's own weapon that killed him. hoping to find the murder weapon, police searched the garbage dumpster behind mark wu's apartment. instead, they found a pair of sandals in a white plastic bag along with some of mark wu's credit card receipts. police also checked other dumpsters in a four-block radius. >> they find out specifically

where that particular garbage would be dumped, and they dig, and they, you know, do that dirty work that so often is the key to solving crime, and they find this gun case. >> to see if the case contained any fingerprints, forensic analyst mike riddle used super glue fuming, a process where the chemicals from heated super glue adhere to finger oils. riddle saw what he thought might be some partial prints and used yellow dye to enhance the image. these partial prints were in an unusual location. >> they were in one of the corners in a curved portion of the gun case partially covered by the foam rubber that was in there. had i never moved the foam rubber, i probably would not have been able to develop these prints using super glue. >> the prints belonged to mark wu.

and on the sandals from the garbage dumpster, scientists found tiny mist-like droplets of blood. dna testing revealed the blood on the sandals came from the youngest murder victim, 17-year-old dustin wilson. ironically, the dumpster should have been emptied the day after the murders, but the garbage truck driver didn't pick up that day. >> we spoke to the garbage collector, and he admitted that he often fibs on the document indicating that he did pick it up when, in fact, he does not pick it up. >> mark wu was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder, but he would never be convicted. [ as schwarzenegger ] show me the movies with the arnold schwarzenegger

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yeah, i want to see "the real housewives." rewind! yeah! jimmy? it's been hours. we told you the x1 entertainment operating system show me "the tonight show starring jimmy fallon." that's what i'm talking about right there. [ cheers and applause ] [ female announcer ] control your tv with your voice. the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. mark wu's parents flew to the united states from taiwan because they sensed trouble. mark had withdrawn over $70,000 from his bank account and wouldn't give his parents an explanation. >> wu had had been involved in some sort of money losses in their words and hadn't been a very good boy, and they were taking him back to taiwan to make him sort of a good boy again. >> prosecutors say mark wu tried

to collect the $17,000 jason mcguigan owed him for the baseball bet. he wanted to deposit this money into his bank account to placate his parents, but jason didn't place the bet, so he refused to pay. around 3:00 p.m. on the day of the murders, a witness saw jason mcguigan's friends threaten mark wu, angry, apparently, because wu had been following them. later that night, around 8:00 p.m., mark broke into jason's apartment, but jason wasn't there. so, he stole jason' jason's .9-millimeter glock pist pistol, then called jason, asking him what time he was coming home. mark wu returned to jason's apartment around midnight and jason still wasn't there. instead, jason's two friends

were in the living room asleep, the ones who harassed him a few hours earlier. mark wu killed them to eliminate potential witnesses. in doing so, he got dustin wilson's blood on his sandals. jason didn't come home until close to 2:00 a.m. and mark was waiting for him. again, mark demanded his $17,000, but jason didn't have that kind of money in his apartment. in desperation, he handed mark the key to his safe deposit box. then mark shot jason with his own gun. no one knows what mark did with his bloody clothes and jason's gun.

he threw the gun case containing his fingerprints in a garbage can a few blocks from his home. he put his bloody sandals in a garbage bag and tossed them into the dumpster behind his apartment with the identification provided by his credit card receipts. the next morning, mark flew to new york city with his parents. they were about to leave for taiwan when police intervened. >> he's holding a plane ticket to taiwan, a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the united states. if mark wu gets to taiwan, mark wu never becomes the criminal defendant in this triple homicide. >> but the day before the trial, there was a stunning development. mark wu hanged himself in his jail cell. >> he was about to be essentially humiliated in the

public. his parents are going to find out what he did. he's 20 years old. he's going to prison for the rest of his life. he killed these three boys to try to cover up what he had done with all his parents' money. then he had to kill himself, again, at the last minute to cover up what he had done and not face the truth. >> as a courtesy to the victims' families, prosecutors laid out their entire case just as they would have presented it to the jury. and the science left no doubt, there would have been a conviction. >> we gave what would have been an opening statement or a closing statement to these family members and went through the evidence we had so that they knew we took care of their family members, their friends' killer, that this was the right person, there is not somebody else out there. >> to me, they showed that wu was guilty. and it was one of the better

things that they ever could have done for us, short of having an actual trial. >> the dna spatter, the shell casings and the fingerprints are all what really wrap up this case and take it from a circumstantial case to a case that's proven by forensic that's proven by forensic evidence. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com breaking news overnight, happening now, deadly protests taking over the streets of ukraine, a country in absolute chaos as we speak. we are live. terror threat at the airport. the new alert this morning on how terrorists may be trying to smuggle bombs on board flights to the u.s. and temperatures rising across the country, but with the warmer weather comes a new danger. our indra petersons is tracking what is coming our way. >> good morning, everyone, and welcome to "early start." boy, it is really early. >> it is really early. >> i'm don lemon. >> good morning, everyone. i'm poppy harlow. good to be with you, thursday, february 20th, 5:00 a.m. on the east coast. we begin this morning with breaking news from