embarrassed, everybody makes mistakes. we blurred his face. let him move on, people. there is no need for him to be stuck or for that matter in the that does it for us. >> up next, is it a murder, suicide, or fraud? >> red flags were going off i think for our detective bureau. >> investigators followed the money trail for clues. >> there was a $5 million policy that ultimately we found later. >> there was a lot of items that weren't matching up at all. >> but in the end, only science has the answers. >> i've never seen a case that

took so many turns in so many different directions and really, it was bizarre. >> diesel truck pulling is obscure sport in the united states, but it enjoys a loyal and growing fan base. >> it actually involves pulling way more weight than these trucks are designed to pull. >> here we go. >> and so you have to be a really good mechanic to be into it. >> for 39-year-old building contractor ari squire, preparing diesel trucks for these competitions was more than a hobby. it was his obsession. to accommodate this pasttime, ari built a 2300 square foot garage on his property in the chicago suburbs. >> ari was a bit of a gearhead. so had he his truck that he was apparently he was always working on. >> it wasn't considered a dangerous hobby until one february morning in 2008 when ari's wife called 911. >> 911, lake county sheriff. >> i think my garage is on fire. i just heard some noise and i opened the door and it's all black smoke. >> and there's smoke coming from your garage? >> should i go outside or what >> wait inside where it is safe.

okay? >> when the smoke cleared, firefighters found ari's lifeless body underneath a truck. >> it appeared the truck had slipped off the front jack and it had crushed the victim. >> he had suffered severe burns over most of his body. it looked like the truck fell off the jack while ari was underneath working on the fuel filter. fuel spilled from the filter on to ari's clothes. the truck broke a fluorescent lamp and a spark ignited the fuel. >> this was likely an accidental death. we've certainly seen deaths of people working under their vehicles that have slid off of jacks, fallen on them and crushed them to death. >> although the body was unrecognizable, ari's driver's license was recovered from his back pocket. >> we rarely actually compare these things to a driver's license.

people lie on their driver's license. and so sometimes that information isn't correct. >> the medical examiner wanted to make a positive identification using scientific methods. this proved to be harder than anyone expected. >> based on the extent of the burns on the face and the hands and the arms, we couldn't do fingerprints. we couldn't do facial recognition. so our only choice was dna and dental. >> well, as it turns out, ari squire hadn't been to the dentist in almost a decade. >> at the fire scene, investigators saw something suspicious on the garage circuit panel. >> checking out all the circuits on those, i noticed that they were all in the off position. >> if the circuit breakers were off, there would have been no electricity to power the light, which, theoretically, had started the fire. >> i inquired whether the fire department had indeed you know turned those off. they said, no, they hadn't touched the circuit box at all.

>> ari had been working on a diesel truck fuel filter. but tests showed there was an accelerant on ari's clothing more flammable than diesel fuel. >> some red flags were going off i think for our detective bureau certainly. >> it was consistent with like a gasoline type which would have been more of a lighter petroleum product. >> when investigators looked into ari's personal life, friends said there was no love lost in the squires' childless 14-year marriage. >> they did not sleep in the same bed. when i did get to the house, i did see that it was obvious that both beds had been slept in that night. >> it wasn't really a close knit marriage. that was coming out very clearly. >> even more suspicious, ari had $5 million worth of life insurance and ari's wife denise was the sole beneficiary. but when questioned by police, denise claimed she knew nothing about it. >> so we began to try to find

out why the wife would not know these details concerning ari. >> ari's wife moved quickly to cremate his body before being stopped by police. >> the fire was on saturday and she wanted to have that body released. i think she was making phone calls by monday or tuesday that she needed the body for cremation. >> it became more and more obvious that, indeed, this was a homicide that had been covered up. nature valley crunchy granola bars contain 1/3 of your daily whole grains,

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ari squire was working on a diesel truck fuel filter at the time of his death. when investigators re-created the incident, they discovered it would have been easy for someone to release the jack holding up the truck and kill the person working beneath it. >> a lot of people showed surprise that ari would not have used safety equipment when working underneath his vehicle. >> as investigators tried to figure out what was going on, detective morrison was home watching television and saw an episode of "forensic files" that was eerily similar.

>> madison rutherford case, it happened in new england. i'm watching and i'm seeing he took a dead body. there's a truck fire. he faked his death and then came back and assumed another identity. there were so many similarities between the two cases. >> the life insurance amounts in both cases were virtually identical. >> madison rutherford, he had two insurance policies, one for $5 million, 1 for $2 million. it was very similar to ari where ari had one for $5 million and one for $1 million. >> the madison rutherford case unraveled when forensic odontology proved it wasn't rutherford who died in the fire. and that's precisely what happened to ari squire when investigators found squire's dentist from ten years earlier. the file was so old, there were no x-rays. >> he did get ahold of a dental note about a certain tooth and a certain filling.

>> the dentist had seen him for a large cavity on the lower right molar, and the dentist had placed a very large silver-type filling in the tooth. >> when investigators checked the victim's teeth, there was no such filling. >> the body that they had, the squire's. >> if it's not ari squire, who is it and why are they underneath there? >> one clue came to police through a missing person notification. a woman called police to report her 20-year-old son justin newman was missing. he worked at the local home depot store and hadn't been seen >> he told me he had met a man that comes into home depot quite often and he had pulled justin aside and asked justin if he would like to make more money. so justin said, yeah, that sounds good, you know? >> justin told his mom the man was ari squire and that he was going to do some work at ari's house.

>> he was supposed to be meeting with ari squire on february 23rd, the day that ari squire was believed to have died. >> he says, mom, he offered me $15 an hour. he says and, you know, right now we could really use that money. >> then the day after justin went missing, his mother got a text message from his cell phone. it said, "mom, gone to missouri to work. call you next week." >> justin's mother was very skeptical. >> justin doesn't text, you know? it wasn't justin. he would pick up the phone and call me. there was no way he would text me. >> as police tried to trace the origin of that text message, they re-examined the burned body. justin was 5'6", 140 pounds, virtually the same height and weight as ari squire. scientists compared dna from justin's toothbrush to dna from

the victim. they also took a dna sample from justin's mother. >> when we finally got the dna results backs, we were finally able to positively identify the body that we had as justin newman. >> police put out an all points bulletin for justin newman's car which was missing. they assumed if they found newman's car, they'd also find ari squire. whatever business you're in, that's the business we're in. with premium service like one of the best on-time delivery records and a low claims ratio, we do whatever it takes to make your business our business. od. helping the world keep promises.

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just one day after the arson fire that killed justin newman, denise squire received an e-mail from her husband ari. >> my will and letters are in my file drawer to my left in my office. they are located in a priority mail envelope addressed to you. >> three days after the fire, she received another e-mail from ari's e-mail account. >> when will my ashes be returned to you? where are you planning on dispersing them? is there anything you need? thank you, denise. with my love, ari. >> it appeared to me that he was trying to find out where we're at in the investigation without coming out and saying, hey, you know, how are they doing? did they buy us?

>> denise denied any involvement in justin newman's murder and claimed she had no idea where ari was, but now, another home depot employee told police a story that turned the investigation upside down. >> one of justin's co-workers comes up to the cops and he says i know ari squire. he was in here all the time, and this is the part that's really weird. he was asking me to do work for him, too. >> justin was not the primary target. ari had singled out another home depot employee who better matched his age and physical description. >> that person was sandy lively, a remarkable physical match to ari squire. >> it's a creepy picture. he's the hunter and i'm the prey. that's exactly how i thought about it. he was stalking. i mean, that's how i felt. >> he didn't know that he was a possible victim. he had no idea until we brought

those pictures in. i mean, it was scary. that was really scary. >> strangely, ari, who normally didn't wear a beard, grew one in the weeks before the murder. >> ari starts to make himself look even more like sandy lively, and by growing a beard, the two almost looked like twins. >> when sandy agreed to do some work for ari, ari gave him this extraordinarily detailed job application. >> i've never seen an application that asked where a tattoo was at, what they were of and the piercings. if i had any piercings anywhere, i don't see how that would make a difference if i have a piercing if i want to be a carpenter. >> finally, sandy agreed to meet ari at his house, but fortunately for sandy, the meeting never took place. >> i was supposed to go to ari's on a saturday morning, and the night before, my daughter had a

slumber party for her tenth birthday party and kept me up all night. so i overslept. >> just a few hours later, that same day, prosecutors believe ari grew impatient and called his fallback target justin newman. justin thought he was there to do some freelance construction work. >> what i had in mind today was to put some shelving up along this far wall here. >> prosecutors think ari used chloroform since there was no evidence of blunt force trauma. ari stripped justin down to his underwear and redressed him in his clothes and shoes. he placed justin under the truck, pumped up the hydraulic jack, and then let it fall, killing justin instantly. in order to hide the identity of

the body, ari doused it with more diesel fuel than the fuel filter would have held. then used a more flammable accelerant to propel the fire. he wanted to make it look like the truck broke the fluorescent light, creating the spark that ignited the fire, but that's not what caused the fire. the circuit breakers were off. so there was no power going to the light. he most likely used a match. and the amount of fuel on the body was inconsistent in amount and makeup from the fuel held by a truck's fuel filter. ari clearly didn't realize that fire doesn't destroy everything. justin's teeth didn't resemble ari's, clearly proving ari wasn't the victim. but the case was far from over.

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ari squire's motive for setting the arson fire and faking his own death was money. he was about to turn 40 years old. and he could no longer afford to pay his monthly premiums for his $5 million life insurance policy, and those premiums were about to go up. >> the insurance premiums were $2,000 a year, but he came to a point where they were going to be jumping up to $13,000 a year and he was broke. he didn't have the money. >> investigators also found evidence ari squire's construction company was virtually bankrupt. >> at the time of this incident, the housing boom had now crashed. people were starting to retract. there wasn't any work. his project down in florida was failing and in bankruptcy. and he was having a lot of financial difficulties. >> to fake his own death, ari squire needed someone who looked like him in height, weight, and physical appearance.

>> he gave me his number and took my number and called me every day and stopped in every day and pretty much was pretty persistent. >> when sandy lively failed to show up for his appointment with ari, in frustration, ari turned to his second choice, justin newman. and dna positively identified that it was justin who perished in the arson fire. >> it was the worst feeling i've ever had in my entire life. he was my best friend and still nowadays i just look and i go, i just can't believe he's not here. >> police assumed ari fled to missouri because that's where he said he was in the phony text message he sent to justin's mother. police in missouri had been on the lookout for justin newman's red sports car. and nine days after the fire, an

alert police officer found it in a motel parking lot. >> the motel's not your typical family hotel. it was more of a rundown type motel. >> the clerk at the motel identified ari squire as the man who rented the room. >> and is he here today? has he checked in? >> but the room was registered in the name of justin newman. >> the policeman decided to approach the room without backup. and he knew, most likely, ari would be armed and ready. >> police officer. >> before he could get through the door -- a loud gunshot. he walks in, there's a body there and there's the gun laying there. >> the victim had justin newman's identification. the same color hair and eyes. but despite the attempt at disguise, dna confirmed the dead

man was ari squire. >> he knew he was in some deep, deep, you know? he took the easy way out because he knew he was going to go to jail. he was going to jail for the rest of his life. >> the thought of being behind bars for the rest of his life, forget it, it wasn't going to happen. ari squire and his self-consumed mind-set and his narcissism was too cowardly to come back and face the music and be forced to own up to what he did. >> donna fiorito filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against denise squire for the death of her son justin and a jury awarded her $6 million. >> i just can't believe he's not here. that man and his wife, ari squire and his wife, always had money but it wasn't enough for them. they had to go kill a young kid that had his whole life going for him. >> a criminal investigation into denise squire's possible involvement continues. denise's attorney denies she was involved.

>> she knew nothing about the plan. she knew nothing about the design. she knew nothing about this newman man who was deceased. >> however, the e-mails exchanged between ari and denise squire after the fire leave little doubt in the minds of investigators. >> he needed denise involved because they weren't going to give the $5 million to him. who were they going to give it to? denise. so in order for him to get anything out of that, she would have to have been involved. >> ari squire spent months planning the murder. but science inevitably had the upper hand in finding the truth. >> a coward that took the easy way out after he took the life of a 20-year-old kid that had a whole life ahead of him. >> in this case forensic science worked, forensic dentistry forensic odontology worked. >> i've never seen a case that took so many turns in so many different directions and really,

it was bizarre. >> you can't fool science. >> you can't -- by definition, it's science. and it works. and it's repeatable. and it's verifiable. and it's accepted. >> up next, a suspicious house fire nearly kills an entire family. had she been in there much longer, she certainly wouldn't have survived. >> a month later, the husband is assaulted and the wife is dead. >> who did this? who would have possibly want wanted to hurt her. >> everyone was in lockdown move. new lights, new sensors had been purchased. everyone was on edge. >> police have no witnesses, no motive and no suspects. >> this was a savage brutal attack. >> until science uncovers an elaborate plan. >> everybody was scratching their heads.