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tv   MSNBC Reports  MSNBC  October 22, 2011 11:00am-12:00pm PDT

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thanks for watching. i'm john seigenthaler. >> due to mature and graphic subject matter viewer discretion is advised. you are about to become a witness. >> they couldn't possibly have known what hit them, killers blast into a private home terrorizing and torturing everyone they encounter. >> what a contrast to see people having such a good time and then just like that -- >> each of them were shot at least twice in the back of the neck. just plain execution. it is likely one of the most violent murders you will ever witness. >> he doesn't know it.
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the camera is up. >> and the disturbing story this videotape tells is troublingly not unique. >> they figure a person at home is at their weakest. they're not expecting it. >> usually the victims are rendered helpless, they're bound, oftentimes they're beaten unconscious. there's very little evidence left at the crime scene and there are hardly any witnesses ever. >> how safe are we in our own homes? captured on camera, eyewitness to murder. we'd all like to think that our homes are our castle, places where our privacy and security are more or less guaranteed, but across the country police record waves of vile event break-ins to private homes where criminals are willing to use deadly force against anyone they encounter. the home invasion story we're about to tell you is chilling not only because of the level of violence used, but because it is all captured on camera. we'd like to warn you again the
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attack you're about to witness is extremely graphic and not suitable for younger viewers. ♪ ♪ no one in the neighborhood heard the gun fire. ♪ ♪ >> each of them were shot at least twice in the back and neck. >> no fingerprints were left by the killers. >> we got limited, limited physical evidence at the scene. there was no design of any forced entry. >> we have few leads. >> this sunday morning triple murder in miramar, florida, just north of miami would be as tough to crack as the killings were cold blooded until detectives took a look in the vcr. >> this was the ultimate snuff film. there it was. the entire attack on videotape captured by a hidden home security camera.
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there is no sound on this tape, just the stark, silent images of three victims, two gunmen and one horrible crime. >> to them it was a job. a function that needed to be done. former miramar police detective paul manzella was called to the scene moments after the the crime was first discovered. >> quite honestly, it was something to where i never dreamed i would have that type of evidence that the entire homicide was committed on tape. it is june 26, 1994, early on a sunday morning, three people are relaxing in a living room. the homeowner is 48-year-old butch casey. he has invited marie rogers and sharon anderson, both 25 years old for an early-morning drink after a late night out. >> from what i can tell they are just flirting.
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they're flirting with one another and having a good time, as you can see. >> it is 7:15 a.m. the three have just come from casey's nickelodeon, a nearby all-night bar that casey owns. >> i was at casey's nickelodeon that night and she wasn't feeling too well. >> his friends, sharon and marie were about to call it a night when fong says he saw bar owner casey approach the two women. ♪ ♪ >> she was getting ready to go home. right before she left she was talking to casey and then she called marie over and marie came back and told me she was going back to casey's place to see what it was like and she dead her to accompany her. >> casey, whose real name is cass mir sackarsky, jr., is regarded as a charming man. >> i think he tried to show sharon his house and he was the
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kind of bay that liked to show off. >> he was taking them through the house and showing them the backyard and the sliding glass door has already been opened. >> the home security camera recording all of this had just been installed by casey a few weeks earlier. casey, it seems, had security concerns. >> the manager of his bar told us that he, in pack, was the one who installed the video cameras because of his trouble with his girlfriend who had been kicked out of the house a few weeks earlier. >> chuck morton is the broward county prosecutor assigned to the case. what a contrast to see people having search a good time and just like that. suddenly at 7:15, the video shows a man at the patio door, the home invasion escalates quickly and violently. the gunman smashes casey across the head as a second man enters
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the home armed at this point only with a stick. casey's two guests are quickly terrorized, too. >> he chases sharon anderson into the back bedroom. marie rogers is being shoved down on the floor and she pretty much stays there for the entire time. >> butch casey is immediately pinned on the floor apparently questioned and clearly beaten over and over. >> it's quite possible from the first shot that casey took to the head that he's somewhat stunned. doesn't really know all in all what's going on at this point. >> casey's captor seems to be shouting instructions to the second intruder in the bedroom who has apparently tied up sharon anderson. >> the second intruder has a gun in his hand which he didn't have before. that was a gun initially if you watched the videotape earlier, he has his own -- >> while one gunman holds casey, the other searches through the house and then they search casey
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himself. >> he's now stripping his shoes and socks off of his feet. at that point, because it was known us to that he did, in fact, carry cash in his boot. that apparent discovery prompts another pistol whipping. this time even more severe. >> there's the attack, see? you didn't tell me that was there. you should have told me that before. if you don't follow instructions, more of of this is coming. sharon is taken out of the master bedroom. her feet are tied with telephone cable and she's lying facedown. >> as they're away from the three hostages lined up on the floor, he briefly drops the shirt hiding his face. >> he doesn't know it. the camera is in that corner there. suddenly, casey seems to think he has a chance to overpower the first gunman who has him pinned
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to the floor. you see him grab the muzzle of the tec-9 and a struggle ensues there. casey's attempt at resistance fails badly and he is shot once in the back. sharon rogers and marie remain motionless. they cannot understand why one of the gunmen decides to close the sliding glass door. >> at this point it is premeditated that they know that they're going to shoot these three people, there's no reason to close the door if they're not going create a disturbance. >> picking her up by the pants and like them up. he takes his weapon out and he doesn't shoot and he puts it back into his pants and seconds later he pulls it back out and fires one shot into sharon anderson. one shot into marie rogers and
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they exit toward the front door. >> that second bullet didn't hit her. it was ricocheted off into some books and they found that bullet. so she's not shot yet. she's still alive. >> but the other gunman wants his turn. >> he takes it and puts it to the back of three victims. >> just plain execution. >> that was the only bullet that killed the one in the middle. she had been alive through all of that apparently playing dead. >> 22 1/2 minutes after beginning their deadly home invasion, having taken three lives, but little in the way of stolen goods, the two killers walk out the front door. as they leave, one of the men makes a huge mistake. he drops his disguise as he walks by the hidden camera. the two people he shot are dead and there's no reason for him to keep his cover on his head.
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>> according to miramar police the intruders take off in casey's black mercedes convertible. it is found a few hours later torched in a remote part of palm beach county. two callous killers vanish, believing not unreasonably that their chances of being caught are slim and they might have been right until investigators find this tape in the vcr. >> the the fact that a videotape had been found of the murder where it was kept from public knowledge so that would not interfere with the investigation. >> miramar police keep the existence of the tape top secret, but they quietly produce still photos from the video and then show them to possible suspects. >> when he viewed this his eyes got so big and he had this oh -- look on his face like where did you get this photograph?
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due to mature and graphic subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. the surveillance tape of this triple homicide in miramar, florida, is shocking evidence of a horrible crime. but because it is in black and white, without sound, there is a clinical detached quality to it. the actual crime scene that police found, videotaped and later showed to a jury was all too real. 48-year-old bar owner butch casey, shot through the neck and the back, his head beaten badly. his two houseguests, sharon anderson and marie rogers, each shot at point-blank range through the back of the neck. sudden, cruel death had snatched three vibrant lives.
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>> butch certainly had a way with people. and people wanted to be around him. and they wanted to be in his club. and it was a blast. >> the same charm that made butch casey a success in the club business brought sharon anderson and marie rogers to his miramar, florida, home for what was supposed to be nothing more than an early sunday morning drink. >> butch had a magnetic attraction. women flocked around him. beautiful women. >> charm is something casey learned young, growing up in buffalo, new york, where his family owned a series of nightclubs. it was in the mid-'70s that casey's nickelodeon became a major buffalo hot spot. its popularity fueled by the personality of the man who liked to refer to himself as captain cabaret. but casey's personal life was not always a party. >> the narcotics squad, we had
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known and heard quite a bit about casey, that he was involved in drugs and into cocaine, particularly. >> in 1975, casey pleaded guilty to drug and firearms charges. >> bar is closed, folks. let's go. >> then when casey left buffalo for south florida in the early '80s, he got into trouble again. authorities raided his new club there and arrested three employees for selling cocaine. >> i believe it. but it is just astonishing to me because i don't think that -- we should have known what was going on. we should have drawn a beat on it. >> a decade later when casey was killed, it was big news back in buffalo. >> butch had led such a wild life. i guess it was a case where nothing really surprised me. >> those who knew casey well could only imagine what the charismatic bar owner might have been thinking during the struggle.
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>> knowing butch, it seems as though he was willing to argue with them and maybe try to psych them out a little bit. you guys are just a couple of jerks. maybe you got guns in your hands, but i have the power, brain power, physical power, to take you on. and that may have gotten him killed. and that really kind of breaks my heart because nobody deserves that. ♪ happy birthday dear sharon >> that sense of injustice proved especially painful for those who knew and loved marie rogers and sharon anderson. they were young, just 25 years old. just starting to find their way in the world. sharon was an aspiring actress and model. marie had a 3-year-old daughter, simone, and was studying fashion design. >> when these ladies entered the room, people stopped. people looked. people paid attention. they were very, very beautiful. >> valerie yap says she normally
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would have gone out with sharon and marie the night of the murders. but decided not to that night. she says they all used to laugh about sharon's ability to talk her way out of just about anything. >> she was such a charming person. and she was so beautiful and men were -- they were mesmerized that we used to joke about it, that if somebody came to rob us, he would end up walking away with her phone number just to get rid of him, you know? and he would be happy with just her phone number. >> you thought, wow, sharon couldn't talk her way out of this one. she was mentally tortured before she died. not just she, not just her, but sharon and the other man. i mean, that was mental, mental torture. and then that was unforgivable. >> when margaret edwards filed a missing person's report 12 hours
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after she expected her daughter marie to come home, she could not have imagined how her child had suffered until she saw her murder on videotape. >> what really hurt so much is that marie fell on the floor and she just lay there. she didn't even move. not even a muscle. and for those guys to go back and forth and come back and stoop over and put a gun to the side of her neck and just one shot and just killed her, to me that is so senseless and cruel. >> you can see they're having a good time. they're talking, they're drinking, walking through the house. at one point sharon might be checking herself out in the mirror. you just see them enjoying life. >> sharon's sister deborah says
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the violence of that videotape overpowers the memory of who her sister really was. >> that's not what her life was about. or marie's life was about. how they died is so uncharacteristic of either one of these girls. these were normal, beautiful, inside and out, women, who loved life, who were great to their families, who are missed, who are no different or less human because their murder was caught on tape. something about watching it on tape makes it not real to people, i think. and it takes away from the life that they lived, that was so opposite of how they died. >> you had to sit and watch the murder of your own child. >> sharon's mother, barbara, says part of the heartache of watching the video is both knowing too much, and not enough. >> did she suffer? did she know what was coming? did she plead for her life?
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did she tell them that her sister was going to have a baby, that she was about to become an aunt? i don't know. >> it is very disturbing. >> for brian bond, the video of the murders is colored by the bittersweet reality that butch casey was the wayward father he was just getting to know. >> i mean, there really wasn't any contact up until, like i mentioned before, my mid-teens. >> bond was born in buffalo, in 1964, when butch casey was just 18 years old. casey never married bond's mother. in fact, bond didn't even meet his father until 1987 when he happened to be in florida for spring break. >> it was a very strange experience. it was exhilarating, exciting, here is this person who is your. >> bond says from en on, casey kept in touch, always upbeat and
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encouraging. but then, only days before the murders, casey called his son and this time bonds says his father did not sound anything like the life of the party he had come to know. >> i believe he knew that there was something -- something wrong, some kind of trouble that he was going to get into. >> a few days later, casey's apparent concerns proved real. he lay dead, alongside two young women who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. was this a random home invasion or not? faced with the daunting task of solving this terrible crime, law enforcement did have the benefit of one powerful secret weapon. >> we can speculate from the forensic evidence what may have happened. we may have heard confessions about certain crimes. but this, you can actually see
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it on the videotape. >> but will a grainy videotape be enough to catch and convict the killers? the reality is this case will prove to be far more complex and cryptic than meets the eye. [ male announcer ] a raw nose can feel really sore. achoo! [ male announcer ] and common tissue can make it burn even more. puffs plus lotion is more soothing than common tissue, and it delivers our most soothing lotion for every nose issue.
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one minute, butch casey, marie rogers and sharon anderson are enjoying life. the next, death is at the door. >> just like that, split second, they realize that there is danger here and i could be dead in a minute. >> most people don't have hidden cameras inside their homes. so the home invasion wave that has crashed through neighborhoods across america has rarely been revealed with such horror. but caught on tape or not, the threat is real. >> 210, 481 seventh street, rear apartment. there are trespassers.
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>> while there are no national statistics, police forces around the country say violent attacks against homeowners have become a serious and significant threat. >> they victimize the weak and they figure a person at home is at their weakest. they're not expecting it. >> detective gary teague of the buffalo police department's major case squad has responded to dozens of home invasion cases, like one involving an elderly woman in this quiet and affluent neighborhood. >> victim had been out shopping, she returned home, it was about 8:30 in the evening. she opens the door, preparing to take the groceries in and out of nowhere, out of the bushes comes this assailant at knife point, grabs her and forces her into her home. >> the intruder got the woman's wallet and keys, but she was not hurt. >> when residents are home, the alarm systems are off. >> fort lauderdale assistant chief of police james hurley has published a study of home invasions. he says criminals today know it
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is far easier to storm someone's home than hold up a convenience store. >> the crime of home invasion robbery presents a formidable challenge for law enforcement. because all of the benefits are with the offender. it is very, very difficult to solve this type of crime. usually the victims are rendered helpless. they're bound, oftentimes they're beaten unconscious. there is very little evidence left at the crime scene. and there are hardly any witnesses ever. >> unless you happen to have a hidden home security camera mounted in your living room. but most home invaders break in, safe in the knowledge they're not being videotaped. >> if you intrude and invade on the homeowners while they are in the home, then you don't have to worry about burglar alarms. you can spend as much time as you like, you can intimidate and force the owners to point out to you and tell you where things of value are. and then leave.
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>> for those whose families have been shattered by the brutality of the home invasion, their lives change in many ways. >> i can't live in a house without an alarm. and it has to be on during the day in broad daylight because that's when she died. >> the violent death of sharon anderson means even her young niece is worried about home security, long before any child should ever have to be. >> it's just a little sad at times. she's 6 and she won't go to sleep unless i check every door in the house. she's 6. >> if there's any good at all to come of this evil crime, it is the fact that this videotape will make the arrest and prosecution of the killers a slam dunk. or will it? 4g-- the next evolution in wireless technology.
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hello. i'm melissa rehberger, here's
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what's happening. king abdullah left a hospital in dubai. this comes less than a day after the king's younger brother and heir to the throne died of cancer. meteorologists in texas are telling people in west texas that as the epic drought continues so have the dust storms. it's bracing for another storm after 70 mile-an-hour winds whipped up a dust cloud on monday. back to our program. due to mature and graphic subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. two men break into a private home in florida, torture and murder all three people they find inside, and it is all caught by a home security camera.
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the story unfolding is a startling and graphic example of the kind of violence that is on the rise in the united states. and in this case, the story apparently isn't so clear cut, despite the videotape that reveals the faces of the two home invaders. the discovery of a videotape that shows butch casey, marie rogers, and sharon anderson being shot and killed was without question a formidable piece of evidence for law enforcement. >> it's rare, very rare, that you get a videotape of a murder. >> it still didn't tell investigators in miramar, florida, the names of the killers. but police did catch a major break when one of the gunmen pulled off the shirt covering his face as he exited the crime scene. >> we used the videotape to copy stills of the images that we found on the tape to try to identify the persons without letting anyone else know that there was a videotape involved.
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>> the videotape was kept top secret so the killers would have no idea police were on to them. instead, detectives distributed these flyers to law enforcement agencies all over south florida, featuring photos pulled from the video without mentioning the source of the pictures. three weeks after the triple homicide, they got a break. a call from miami-dade police about a suspect named pablo. >> looked at pablo and looked in our flyer and said, you know what, let me give miramar a call. it looks like this might be their guy. >> 22-year-old pablo ibar was already in the dade county jail, a suspect in another violent home invasion in southwest miami. the police report in that case described a vicious 3:00 a.m. break-in. one of the suspects, the report said, threatened to disembowel a pregnant woman with a meat cleaver. >> i put it to his face and said, how i did get this, pablo? >> former miramar police detective paul manzella had this photo taken from the videotape of the suspect who had dropped
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his cover at the end of the killing spree. manzella says he could not wait to show the photo to pablo ibar. >> the look on his face was worth a thousand words. you could just see his eyes and it was just like, where did you get that photograph? and he just pushed himself away from the table and put his head down and at that point, i knew i had something worthwhile. >> according to the police report, ibar told cops he had been at butch casey's bar, casey's nickelodeon, on the night of the murders and the staff at the bar told detectives that ibar had had words with casey over a problem paying with a credit card just a few days before the murders. but miramar police say ibar did not confess to the killings. still, law enforcement now had a name to go with this face. detectives were eager to show their photos to pablo ibar's friends.
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>> each friend would say, that's pablo ibar. that's pablo ibar. mind you, they did not know they were looking at a picture of pablo ibar walking out of a murder scene. >> police say even pablo ibar's mother identified him from the photo. >> pablo ibar. >> as a result, pablo ibar was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, and three counts of robbery with a weapon. >> counts one and two, there is no bond. count three bond is $7,500. >> the other suspect would prove tougher to find. in fact, miramar police were tracking someone else when an informant told them they were after the wrong man. >> that witness said, no, that's not him. that's seth penalver. >> 21-year-old seth penalver had already served seven months in prison for a drive-by shooting and trafficking in stolen property.
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>> seth was identified two weeks later by friends of theirs. he was also shown this photo flyer and, again, no text on it, no information based on who that was outside of the glossy photograph, and he looked at it and says, well, yeah, that's seth. and where did you get that picture? it looks like a high school yearbook photo. >> the photo miramar police pulled from the videotape didn't exactly look like a yearbook picture. still, police said they could produce witnesses who would not only put seth at casey's nickelodeon before the murders, they could prove penalver then went to get a gun with pablo ibar. >> seth was dancing with his girlfriend. they had been drinking, having a good time. they went home where they had picked up their firearms. they went back to the bar with seth's vehicle. they went ahead and followed casey home after he left the bar.
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>> detectives finally located penalver. he surrendered at the broward county jail. >> seth penalver. p-e-n-a-l-v-e-r. penalver. >> seth penalver was also charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of robbery with a weapon. with two suspects now in custody, prosecutors did not hesitate to push for the ultimate penalty. >> if there's any case that deserves the death penalty, that is the worst of the worst cases, the most egregious cases, the most heinous, the most atrocious, the most cruel, that would be the crime that fits. and should deserve the death penalty. >> but as prosecutors and police confidently prepared for trial, there remained a major hole in their case. >> we were still unable to get any physical evidence that would actually put any one of them at the scene.
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>> no fingerprints, no hair, no blood, nothing other than a heart-stopping videotape. >> the mere fact that no prints are there in the home, doesn't mean that person wasn't there. we believe that from what we could see in the videotape that some sort of latex gloves were being worn. >> then in july 1997, two weeks after the trial had begun, a new witness emerged, unexpectedly, with an incriminating story about seth penalver and pablo ibar. >> i know it was them. without a doubt. just from watching the video, i know it was them. and i know who i seen in my house that day. [ inner voice ] establish connection.
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never before in the history of the broward county courthouse or just about anywhere else for that matter had murder one defendants gone to trial facing videotape evidence showing the actual killings. to the friends and families of these three victims, this was an open and shut case. >> you got them on tape. we know that it is them. the family i.d.'d them. why are we sitting here? >> as the trial began in june 1997, prosecutors charged that pablo ibar and seth penalver had been caught in the act of home invasion. caught in the act of murder, caught on tape. >> even pablo ibar's mother identified pablo from that photograph. >> the seemingly powerful case was fortified by bombshell
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testimony from this woman, seth penalver's ex-roommate. >> i pull up in the yard, there is a big black mercedes in the garage. >> on the morning of the triple homicide in miramar, less than an hour after the murders were committed, kimberly ann sam was moving out of this house she and her children had shared with seth penalver. at about 8:00 a.m., sam says penalver showed up suddenly with a friend. both of them looking agitated. >> i said who the hell are you? he said, i'm pablo. i went straight through the kitchen, out through that little door and through the garage and that's where i seen seth. and i'm like, what the hell are y'all doing? >> then sam says she looked at the washing machine and saw what she claims was a clear attempt to launder away evidence, bloody clothes. >> and there was pink bubbles spewing out of the washer. i lifted it up and it was real pink.
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and i'm like, you know, what is in here? he says, i put too much soap in it. i said, what's so pink? >> sam says penalver and his friend pablo put on new clothes and then drove off immediately. >> they were very, i don't -- just real weird, like, you know, like they were doped up or they were zooming, just, like, zooming, you know what i'm saying? >> the mercedes they drove, the prosecution says, was the same one that had just been stolen from butch casey's home, right after he, sharon anderson and marie rogers had been murdered. the same car found three hours later, torched in palm beach county. the prosecution then introduced more damning evidence against pablo ibar, collected from a house where he had been staying. >> what was found was a brochure of the tec-9, of the weapon that was concluded to be used in this particular case. and there was no question from all of the individuals who lived
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in that home who had given statements and who testified that clearly in that home during this period of time mr. ibar had access to the tec-9, which was identical to the type of gun that was used in this crime. >> then, this man, jean clemesko testified he saw ibar and penalver two hours before the murders. ibar, he said, removed a tec-9 handgun from under his bed. he then claimed ibar and penalver returned about 7:30 that morning with a big, black car. faced with a mountain of evidence against their clients, defense attorneys started by attacking the videotape itself. >> when you look at it with a fair eye, i think you say, it is not conclusive for sure. >> defense attorney hilliard moldoff, representing seth penalver, argued it was impossible to prove the identities of the gunmen beyond a reasonable doubt, especially from a grainy, black and white videotape.
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>> we weren't able so much as to establish an alibi as to show the witnesses that were putting them in the middle of this who were not worthy of belief. >> then the defense went after the witness whose bloody laundry story had caused such damage. >> kim sam is not someone -- if she said it was raining outside, i'd like out the window before i got my umbrella, you know. >> attorney moldoff even had the laundry area of sam's home tested for any trace of blood. >> where the washing machine was, pulled the baseboards off the wall, did a phenolphthalein presumptive test for blood, found none. >> then the defense introduced these letters written by kimberly ann sam to seth penalver in jail. >> she was, you know, for years not to be found and then comes forward and says she's doing it out of conscience and yet we had love letters from her that she denies she ever wrote. >> me and seth were only friends. but they tried to make a mountain out of a mole hill. >> the defense also attacked
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jean clemesko's testimony saying his criminal record and admitted drug use raised serious questions about his credibility. then there's the fact that even the prosecution couldn't deny, no fingerprints or dna from the defendants could be found at the crime scene. >> fingerprints and dna, they're not a panacea to everything. >> by late january of 1998, the triple murder trial had lasted nearly eight months. theories, questions, and doubts hung in the courtroom as the jury finally deliberated. but the prosecution was confident. after all, they had videotape of the murders being committed, and they had witnesses who identified penalver and ibar from that video. once inside the jury room, what looked like a clear-cut case of two killers caught on tape was suddenly not so simple. the panel deliberated and argued for three long days.
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then returned deadlocked. a mistrial. two of the jurors said they just could not identify the killers from the videotape. the families of the victims reacted bitterly. >> if i did not have an ounce of sense and a child to raise, i would have been looking for a way to get a gun in there and just end the whole thing. >> there would be no quick end to this case. by the time ibar and penalver returned to court for separate retrials, the three murder victims had been dead nearly five years. yet even after all that time, another new witness surfaced. this time, for the defense. pablo ibar's new wife, tanya. >> i can tell you he was with me and that he couldn't be a suspect because he was with me. [ male announcer ] to the 5:00 a.m. scholar. the two trains and a bus rider.
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in 1998 after four years inside the broward county jail, pablo ibar got married. and as the defense prepared for his retrial, tanya ibar came forward to say she now wanted to testify in support of her husband. >> he had stayed the night with me that night. and not only myself, but my sister seen him and my cousin seen him and he didn't leave until the morning time. later that morning. >> at the time of the murders, tanya was 15 years old. she says she was involved with pablo ibar, inviting him to stay the night one weekend when her mother was on vacation. >> i know that it was around 2:00 or 3:00 that he did come to my house. and pablo did stay the night over. he was there until the morning time. >> that was the same morning butch casey, sharon anderson and marie rogers were killed.
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tanya ibar was convinced her story would exonerate her husband. but that would be up to the jury led by foreperson diane mills. >> it was just not believable. there was no way that her testimony was believable, that she was with him that day, that suddenly after six years, she discovered and remembers that she was with pablo, the person she loved, the night of the killing. and i think that was a mistake on the defense attorney's part to bring up what -- what i think everybody in the jury felt was a made up testimony. to protect a husband that is in jail. >> once again, the defense questions the legitimacy of identifying suspects from a low quality videotape. >> we probably picked out in one saturday afternoon a dozen young latin males in a mall in dade county, florida, that could have been pablo's twin. so unfortunately mr. ibar is in
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a community where there are many young latin or italian men that could look like this photograph. >> yet this time, presented with virtually the same evidence, two separate juries reached a far different conclusion. >> there were men and women on the jury who cried over having to make that decision and it was a tough decision. >> six years after the slaying of butch casey, marie rogers and sharon anderson, two verdicts. pablo ibar, guilty. seth penalver, guilty. >> the videotape is so compelling that it is my belief and i have talked to jurors from the case that they disregarded other cross-examination evidence or alibi evidence in favor of saying, oh, he looks enough like this person, he's the one that did it.
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>> the jury sentenced both ibar and penalver to death. >> i really feel that they should be executed. both of them. they did a horrendous thing, absolutely terrible. and they should pay for that crime. >> seth penalver successfully appealed his conviction. in february, 2006, the florida supreme court ruled the judge in penalver's second trial allowed improper evidence to be used against him. penalver is awaiting what will be his third trial. the following month, pablo ibar's appeal was denied. why a different outcome for the two people who allegedly committed the crime together? the justices said ibar removed his disguise during the home invasion. there are questions about this case that may never be answered. like why the pair of home invaders were willing to kill, but left with almost nothing. >> the only thing we can establish that was missing was a very expensive watch that mr. sucharski wore. >> and what was it that bar
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owner butch casey seemed to be suddenly fearful about in the days before he was killed? >> he mentioned something about that things in south florida were very -- were fierce and things were -- something was not quite right. >> while many say casey mentioned his mysterious fear before he died, the reason for his apprehension will likely never be known. >> no one ever ran down those leads. >> as for the friends and families of marie rogers, sharon anderson and butch casey, they are not interested in any talk of mysteries or doubts. they are waiting for the day they get the call to report to the florida state prison to witness two executions. >> and i want them to suffer. i do. i think they will suffer. >> i will be there. >> the videotape that one won justice for the families and
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friends of the victims is the same videotape they will never be able to erase from their memories. >> sometimes i sit by myself and i think, the pain she must have gone through, you know. she just lay there very still and she must have been saying, oh, my god, you know, what is going to happen? >> there is no way you can watch it and not think about it. or dream about it or replay it over and over and over and just wish it was a different ending. >> lawmakers across the nation have considered laws that would make penalties tougher for criminals who commit home invasion robberies. in florida, where this crime took place, a robbery that is committed in someone's home could carry a much stiffer penalty than a similar crime carried out on the street. that's our report for tonight. thanks for watching. i'm john seigenthaler.

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