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tv   2020  ABC  June 12, 2015 10:00pm-11:01pm EDT

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you do?" you can connect with us anytime. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. and don't go away. "20/20" starts right now. a burning mansion. in the flames, a terrible secret. >> the fire appears to be intentionally set. >> it shook that community to the core. especially when those horrific details started to come out. >> reporter: a mother, father, 10-year-old son, and the family housekeeper, all held hostage for almost 20 terrifying hours. finally, a ransom in cash. but it doesn't save the helpless captives, murdered in cold blood. only the smoke escaping out a window. this, in a wealthy washington enclave, the vice president's neighborhood. >> if this could happen there, what about the rest of us ordinary joes? what chance do we have? >> reporter: tonight,
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"20/20" takes you inside the mystery of the d.c. mansion murders. new details, new voices. >> my guess is, they used the 10-year-old to get whatever they wanted out of the adults. >> i can't stop thinking about that day. >> reporter: we'll hear from the surviving housekeeper about life at the mansion. >> was there anything in the savoupolos' life that suggested they had enemies? >> reporter: room by room, clue by clue. the burning porsche, the shadowy figure caught on surveillance cameras, the telltale takeout meal. >> tries to burn the house down, but guess what doesn't burn, the pizza with his saliva on it. >> boom. they get a hit. we've got a name. we've got a face. >> police have their target. >> thus begins an intense 48-hour nationwide manhunt. >> we really had a lot of motivation to catch this guy. >> reporter: the high-stakes
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capture of suspect daron wint through the eyes of the u.s. marshal who stalked him up and down the east coast. so this is where it happened? >> at the red light. that's where we made our move. >> so you had to block him in from all four sides in some way. >> reporter: and new revelations about that prime suspect. tonight in a "20/20" exclusive, his history of violence. and knives. >> he was windmilling, just kept coming at me. >> you can't take your eyes off of this case because it's just that horribly incredible. good evening. david is off tonight, i'm elizabeth vargas. this is a fast-moving case. just one month ago, it sent a shiver into every family's living room. a family and a housekeeper, spending a terrifying day captive in their own home. there are questions about what happened, as the family texted from inside, even ordering
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pizza. could anyone have intervened? you'll have questions, and we're live tweeting throughout the show. #abc2020. ask us if you have any questions. ryan smith takes us step by step how we ended up here. >> reporter: it wasn't supposed to be like this. two teenage sisters mourning their murdered parents and little brother 11 days ago. >> reporter: their multimillion dollar home boarded up. newly surrounded by a locked chain link fence, starkly out of place in this, quiet, leafy d.c. neighborhood. an abrupt ending to a love story that seemed destined to play out as happily ever after. a love story that starts in high school. amy martin and savvas savopoulos meet at spring brook high school in silver spring, maryland, just
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north of washington, d.c. they both decide to attend the university of maryland, where a popular and outgoing savvas spends the next four years pursuing the beautiful but shy amy. >> savvas had a crush on her for all four years and pursued her and pursued her and pursued her. and she would never say yes till the very end. she finally agreed to go on a date, and the sorority sister said thank god, because they seemed like a perfect match for each other. >> reporter: he, a fifth-generation washingtonian, the son of a metalworks company ceo. she, a self-described "army brat" whose family moved often. after college, the couple has a large greek orthodox wedding at washington, d.c.'s st. sophia's cathedral. their wedding picture seen on their daughter's instagram account, set up as a tribute. what were they like together? >> they love each other. >> reporter: their housekeeper of two decades, nelly gutierrez
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says the savopouloses were the picture perfect couple. >> in my 19 years, 20 year working for the family, they never fight. they were so good together. he really love amy very, very deep. and the same way. you know, she was the same way. >> reporter: they would have three children. abigail, now 19, katerina, 16, and philip, 10. what about philip though? he's 10. >> he was very, very mature. he was very funny, you know like, when i always talk to him in spanish he gets so excited. but then when i talk to him a little bit more, he's like, no, no, i don't understand. >> reporter: an incredibly tight-knit family, embodied by pictures posted as a memorial slideshow on the funeral home's website. >> they adored each other. they were incredibly close. >> reporter: family friend elizabeth blalack. >> the parents loved those children and the children had a wonderful relationship with each other.
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they were what everybody wants for their own family. >> reporter: savvas, known for a strong work ethic and gentle manner, succeeds his father as ceo of american iron works, supplying metal not to your local five and dime but projects like these. >> the restoration of the pentagon after 9/11. the new convention center. major hotels. so it wasn't a particularly sexy business. it was a very successful business. >> reporter: settling in as a young wealthy washington couple they buy this gabled, red brick home in 2001. with its own library and music room surrounded by manicured lawns, hedges, and gates. you notice that as soon as you walk in the neighborhood, you see embassies a block away, and joe biden's home is not more than a mile away from where they live. >> so this is one of the most established neighborhoods in washington. we're talking not only are you a stone's throw from the vice president's house, but this is sort of a billionaires'
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enclave. you'll have titans of industry, billionaires, senators, congressmen, ambassadors. >> reporter: the savopouloses listed in washington's green book a who's who of d.c. elite. and as part of the d.c. elite the savopouloses have money. a private jet and a 44-foot yacht. and in 2012, while the girls are away in boarding school, the parents are living large with son philip in the virgin islands. >> they decided to sort of play hooky for a year. they rented a home that was on an island, so amy would have to put philip in a dinghy and row across a waterway to get him to school. >> reporter: but the savopouloses weren't just living lives of selfish opulence. they were, in fact, incredibly charitable. >> they were generous of their time and their money. they donated $100,000 to n.c.s.,
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which is where their two girls went to school before going to boarding schools. >> amy, every year, used to buy everyone gingerbread houses at christmas time. and she would come in and help put them together. so every boy wanted to be in his class. >> reporter: and as their contemporaries would be playing golf and tennis at the congressional country club, savvas' passion? kenjutsu, an ancient form of samurai swordsmanship. studying the art form for 20 years. he was even about to fulfill his dream of having his own martial arts center scheduled to open the week after he was killed. like his father, 10-year-old philip, known as flip, also has a somewhat atypical and expensive hobby, go-kart racing. traveling around the country, competing in his own kart, with his own sponsor. >> this is not the thing your normal 10-year-old gets to do. philip had a coach and he had a top of the line go kart and amy made her son do his homework between races. >> reporter: and it's at one of
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those go kart tracks that savvas savopoulos meets this man. >> i feel good. >> reporter: fellow racing enthusiast 28-year-old jordan wallace. wallace creating his own website with videos of the extreme sport. >> my life is awesome. like, i have nothing to complain about. >> reporter: their friendship would lead to a job as savvas' personal assistant and wallace would end up playing a pivotal role in those final hours before that quadruple murder. >> that assistant says he got a call from savvas savopoulos to bring $40,000 cash to the house. >> reporter: was it an armed robbery gone wrong? or a calculated murder-for-hire? questions that would confound police and this once peaceful neighborhood. >> i talked to several neighbors who said they saw philip playing in the driveway. they would see amy walking around the neighborhood exercising. now passing by that house is an eerie feeling for these neighbors. one that will never go away. >> reporter: so this had to shake them to their core. >> it shook that community to the core. it shook the city to the core.
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>> reporter: when we come back, a family held hostage for 20 desperate hours. and how those last hours were spent. take out food ordered, a $40,000 cash drop and a strange and eerily calm voicemail left for nellie gutierrez under duress. >> hey nellie, its savvas. amy is in bed sick tonight. >> reporter: stay with us. it's back! by popular demand. olive garden's 2 for $25 now with more new dishes than ever before like creamy chicken firenze in a vibrant citrus sauce.
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"20/20" continues with the mystery in the mansion. here again, ryan smith. >> reporter: it's wednesday, may 13th, around 6:00 p.m., as washington, d.c., is closing for the night and people are sitting in traffic. the savopoulos family, with the teenage girls away at boarding school, are trying to survive the most desperate night of their lives. it begins with a terrifying home invasion. also inside the mansion, the family's housekeeper, vera figueroa. she had been with the savopoulos' since her friend,
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and the family's other housekeeper, nellie gutierrez got her the job. you helped her work with the savopoulos family, right? >> yes, i took her over there. and it was like almost five years ago. >> reporter: longtime crime reporter jennifer donelan has been covering the story for abc affiliate wjla. this started out as a story about a fire, right? >> right, we're trying to figure out, did something more sinister happen before the fire? >> reporter: that evening one of the captives, savvas savopoulos, leaves a voicemail telling gutierrez not to come in the next day. >> it's savvas. i hope you get this message. amy is in bed sick tonight and she was sick this afternoon and vera offered to stay and help her out. so she's going to stay the night here. >> reporter: but gutierrez doesn't get the message until the next day. >> when i got that message on thursday, i was thinking. and i start calling them. so i call her and i say, "hi, vera. what's going on?" no answer. >> reporter: vera's husband, bernardo alfaro, telling reporter john gonzalez from
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wjla, he begins to worry at 5:00 wednesday evening. >> he goes home. starts calling her, nonstop, on her cell phone, until the cell phone really stops ringing. >> reporter: but at about 9:00 p.m., the strangest call by far. a call for a food delivery. >> we can confirm that we made a delivery to the house. >> reporter: police say it's amy savopoulos calling domino's pizza. she orders two pies, gives a credit card number, and special instructions. >> don't ring the doorbell. i'm caring for a sick child. just leave it on the front door. >> reporter: the domino's driver says the porch light is on but the house is dark. as instructed, the driver leaves the pizza, rings the bell, and drives away, taking with him an opportunity to end the ordeal for the terrified people just inside. >> there were things that happened that, of course, now we can look back on and say, what if? >> reporter: unbelievably, somebody in that house in these dark and brutal hours has an appetite, gobbling up most of the pepperoni pie.
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leaving a crust or two. legal consultant nancy grace has followed the case. >> to think that the killer actually ordered and ate a pizza during the middle of all this. i couldn't even eat after i heard about it. this guy's eating a pizza in the middle of it. >> reporter: that night, savvas savopoulos sends a message to his assistant, jordan wallace, the man the family had met at that go-cart track, making arrangements for a package to be delivered to the mansion the next morning. tell me about the call the assistant got. >> he says he got a call from savvas savopoulos to bring $40,000 cash to the house. >> reporter: police say that wallace responded by text, "got your message. i'll call once i get the package." the longest night passes on woodland drive. as thursday dawns, housekeeper, vera figueroa's husband, after working an overnight shift, finds his wife is still not home. he goes to the mansion looking for her. >> knocks on the door, rings the
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doorbell, nothing. but, it's interesting. he says, "it felt to me like someone was inside." >> reporter: could he hear them? >> he just says he heard, like, noises, like someone shuffling inside. >> reporter: just then, his phone rings, it's savvas savopoulos, inside the house, they're just a few feet apart. >> he says, "lito, i'm sorry i didn't call you last night. vera stayed the night with us." he said he was apologizing profusely. so, the husband, a little more satisfied with that, the fact that he's heard from someone. he goes home. >> reporter: that morning, the next phase of the plan becomes apparent. jordan wallace meets another employee at a bank near savopoulos' company, american iron works. he gets four neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills, 40 grand, calls his boss for further instructions. >> savvas savapoulos tells his assistant to bring the cash to his house. come into the garage, the car's unlocked. >> reporter: not to give it to
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him. but, to put it in a car? which you would think would set off alarm bells. >> and then you wonder why didn't that person call police. >> reporter: before wallace makes the drop, police records show he sent a text at 9:00 a.m. to a woman with a picture of the cash. the woman responded, "damn. i wonder how much it is." wallace replies, "40." wallace heads to the savapoulos home, drops the cash on the driver's seat of the red sports car. at 10:26 a.m., wallace sends this text message to his boss -- "package delivered." the cash is dropped, but for some reason that doesn't stop the crime. police say the killing begins. >> we were getting source information that there was blunt force trauma to the bodies. that there were stab wounds to the bodies. that the bodies also had been tied up. >> reporter: the family's terrifying final moments alive pieced together from police documents and abc news sources. the three adults, savvas and
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amy savapoulos and vera figueroa are held in an upstairs bedroom. the women are restrained. savvas is not. why do you think they moved the victims upstairs? >> because they have less profile. >> reporter: abc news tracked down these blueprints of the home which we reviewed with former fbi agent, brad garrett. >> if you left a window open, left a curtain open, you can see what's going on. if you move them up, it's more difficult to see what's going on. >> reporter: the adults sustain terrible fatal wounds. they were hit and stabbed, just days ago police revealing a baseball bat with what appeared to be blood on it was discovered in the room. the little boy, philip, separated from the grown-ups, in another bedroom. >> the son is where it appears according to documents is where they set that fire. the fact that the three adults were in one room, you have to wonder how much the suspects were using that son as a point to extort them. >> reporter: once 10-year-old philip's room is set on fire, the killers flee. >> to think that a human would torture and murder a 10-year-old
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little boy while his mother and father sit in the next room hearing his scream in order to get money, it's heinous. >> reporter: before the fire can spread to where the adults are the fire department gets the alarm. it's 1:30 p.m. on thursday. the story blows up. >> the case, shaking a neighborhood to its core tonight. >> reporter: the media descends on the neighborhood. early that afternoon, someone notices amy savapoulos' blue porsche is missing from the house. police ask the public for help. but, it wasn't hard to find. just follow the smoke. the porsche, torched in a church parking lot in maryland. >> now, what came with that, which was critical, was surveillance video. they were able to capture video of a man exiting out of that car and leaving the scene. they immediately put that video out to the public. >> reporter: notice enhanced video shows a man carrying a white bucket.
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jot that down. back at the burned mansion authorities are already sifting through the grisly scene, starting to ask how whoever did this got into the house in the first place. >> they look for a door that has some vulnerabilities. for example, you have two french doors over here. the police are reporting that there was a french door kicked. there is a footprint on the door itself. >> reporter: this is the picture, that print. how difficult is it for them to try to figure this out with that house being burned so badly? >> the whole reason why you set something on fire in a case like that is to get rid of evidence, >> reporter: but, getting rid of the evidence is not as easy as it seems. not with the country's best crime-fighters on the case. >> they're going to comb through that house and try and find whatever evidence they can to close this case and to capture everyone involved. >> reporter: when we come back, a microscopic clue in the strangest place. and the daring late night manhunt and takedown.
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u.s. marshals tell us they're forced to do something they've never tried before. >> and then he said, "move, go, go, go." >> reporter: stay with us. i...i...i got bit by a snake. poison? oh god. oh wow. ok, yeah. i feel that. that's definitely poison. apparently i'm immune to venom. immune to venom? immune to venom? immune, steve.
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"20/20" continues, with the mystery in the mansion. >> police are on the scene of a deadly house fire. >> four people found dead inside. >> reporter: if the fire at 3201 woodland drive in washington, d.c., had burned faster, if the washington, d.c., firefighters had responded a little slower, the key evidence in the case might have been destroyed. the killer or killers of savvas, amy, and philip savopoulos, and vera figueroa, might have gotten away with that terrible crime. and those stacks of hundred dollar bills. but the location of the
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crime, the nation's capital gives authorities a special advantage. >> this is washington, d.c. we're unique in that sense. our metropolitan police department and our d.c. fire department is backed up by federal agencies. >> reporter: the arson task force at the mansion includes the atf, which boasts perhaps the one lab in the country best equipped to extract dna from fire damaged evidence. greg zaranopas is the deputy assistant director who runs the lab. >> typically, we're looking at debris from a fire scene. >> reporter: this is where that strange delivery, the domino's pizza, and those discarded pieces of crust, comes back to bite the mansion home invader. >> a slice of pizza crust broke this case wide open. >> reporter: crime scene specialists recover the leftover crusts. nothing more than household garbage to you or me. for them, the perfect serving of prime evidence. >> the crime scene detectives go inside that house. they see two boxes of pizza. slices of crust still inside the box. >> reporter: they rush the crust to the atf lab. working around the clock. >> looking at food, when someone
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takes a bite of it, we can see if there's any dna present. >> reporter: todd bill, an atf analyst, lifted the dna profile off that pizza crust. >> if there's something, like, in this situation, where there's a violent offender, we can call the fbi and they will do an immediate search for that profile. >> i have never seen a dna hit turned around that quick. never. >> reporter: tuesday, may 19th, only five days after the fire and the murders, a breakthrough. >> boom. they get a hit. we've got a name. we've got a face. >> reporter: daron wint, 34 years old. big muscles, and a rap sheet as long as his dreadlocks. >> his dna was on file because of that lengthy criminal record. and now we knew at least one person who was allegedly inside that house. >> reporter: now all they have to do is find him. >> thus begins an intense, 48-hour nationwide manhunt. >> reporter: robert fernandez with the u.s. marshals service
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is part of the task force now hunting for wint. >> we try and draw a picture of relatives, locations where he's lived, friends, patterns of life. >> they do this massive trail. it is an unbelievable investigation with the best in the business. >> reporter: then, wednesday night, exactly one week after the family had been taken captive in their mansion, authorities get a line on wint. >> we were able to determine that he had fled the d.c. area. >> reporter: allegedly loaded with thousands in cash, they say he chooses to travel by bus. 200 miles north to brooklyn, new york. and that's his girlfriend's apartment, right? >> that's his girlfriend's apartment. they deploy. >> police think he's in our a a area. >> reporter: but they're too late. >> he saw himself on the news, from what we understand, and then fled the area. >> reporter: you just missed catching him. >> that's right. >> reporter: wint hires a livery cab and amazingly heads right back to the epicenter of the
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manhunt, washington, d.c. as the dragnet tightens, everyone worrying about one thing, the danger. >> there was major concern that he has nothing to lose. were people going to get hurt? >> reporter: thursday night, a week after the murders and fire at the savopoulos home, u.s. marshals track the group to this howard johnson's in the d.c. suburb of college park, maryland. you're going in ready for anything. >> that's right. >> reporter: and immediately, a surprise. the u.s. marshal's advance team notices wint leaving the hotel, but he isn't alone. >> that advance team radioed to us where they had a suspicion that he was in one of two vehicles that were right over here. >> reporter: authorities tail the group, now traveling in a
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two-vehicle caravan. a box truck with north carolina tags, followed by a small white chevy cruz. how many cars are following him at this point? >> all together, it could have been 25, maybe 30 vehicles. >> reporter: at one point the truck and car make a sudden u-turn, but apparently still do not know they're being followed by a small army of police. moments later, authorities spring the trap, employing a daring maneuver to stop the cars cold. >> it's called a vehicle pin blocking maneuver. >> reporter: the marshals' cars surround the white chevy and the box truck on all sides and, on the commander's go, the front car reverses, the rear car speeds forward and four more cars surround the target vehicles on all sides. >> basically, pinning the car at four points and immobilizing it. >> reporter: it's a tactic the marshals have never tried with a vehicle as large as a box truck. so you had to do something you had never done before. >> that's right. that's why i wanted the helicopter. >> reporter: air support is called in from prince george's county pd, and the marshal in command on the ground waits for the perfect moment. >> we finally got to the red
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light. and he said, "move, go, go, go." they were looking in their mirrors. they saw all the lights and they put their hands up. >> reporter: immediately. >> i think they were completely and totally startled and surprised. >> reporter: so this is where it happened? >> yeah, right here. >> reporter: in the rear passenger seat of the white chevy, daron wint, trapped. >> he followed commands. he got out, he crawled. he got on the ground. he was immediately handcuffed. and brought over to a police vehicle and he didn't say a word. >> people were coming out of their homes. you could hear people asking to each other as they stood on their porches, "is it him? is it him?" the fact that this went down without incident as they say was a huge relief for everyone involved. >> reporter: in the car wint was driving in, police report finding clothing, an ipad, two knives, cash and thousands of dollars of money orders. and in the box truck even more cash. what did you see?
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>> well, in the truck i saw, in the side compartment of the passenger door, a big wad of cash. and it was hundred dollar bills. you could tell it was hundreds. >> reporter: police say one of the people stopped with wint converted at least $10,000 into money orders. >> it was the end of a painstaking 48-hour manhunt. no sleep. >> from d.c. to new york, back here to the d.c. area, now he's in custody. >> reporter: wint appears in superior court the next day, charged with first-degree murder while armed. >> what was interesting to me, the capture instead of almost answering questions led to even more questions. >> reporter: why? >> people kept saying, "there's no way he did this by himself." >> he couldn't pull this off on his own, no way. i don't think he's got it up here. >> the community wanted to see everybody who was responsible locked up at once, case closed. >> reporter: but this case is not closed, not by a long shot. when we come back, a man who came face to face with daron wint at the wrong end of a
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wint's family and friends have ducked the cameras. but out of the blue, a new player emerges. his former attorney robin ficker, who takes the national stage to go out on a limb for wint with outlandish observations. >> he never eats pizza. he doesn't like pizza. >> reporter: the bombastic ficker makes sweeping statements about the innocence of a man he defended on a handful of traffic tickets. >> i know him to be a kind, gentle, non-aggressive person. someone you wouldn't mind your grandmother going to lunch with. >> mr. ficker says that he's really a gentle giant. that you'd want to sit down and have tea with your grandmother. well, not my grandmother. >> reporter: clearly ficker hasn't done his homework. >> i know that he does have the violent tendency to harm someone. >> reporter: michael babcock speaks for the first time about his terrifying encounter with a knife-wielding daron wint. >> i put my hands like this, and he just came in like this. he'd be tried for my murder if
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it wasn't for me surviving it. >> reporter: and wint's case file reveals that babcock is just one in a long trail of people who have been violently threatened and attacked by wint. yet when wint emigrated from the south american country of guyana to the u.s., his future seemed bright. 12 years before the mansion murders, he landed a well-paying job as a welder at american iron works, the company owned by savvas savopoulos. but for reasons unknown wint left the company after only two years. and that's when things went south for him. while living in suburban maryland, wint's own father, shown here on his facebook page, feared living with him. getting a protective order after he says wint threatened to shoot him. a relative, who didn't want to be named, telling abc news that wint had a hair-trigger temper. >> he's very hostile. he's arrogant. everywhere he went he fought with people. he fights with his father, his brother, everybody. >> reporter: by 2006, wint
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picked up stakes and moved here to the quiet upstate new york town of oswego, living in this apartment building. it's in this port city nestled along lake ontario, where michael babcock is about to get into some hot water with wint. we brought him back to the scene of his cousin's house, where babcock was trying to get wint to leave after his cousin complained. after an altercation, wint suddenly attacked. >> daron had come out and was windmilling with the knives, and i went up like that blocked, and this is where he stabbed me in the wrist. there were slices on my shirt and on my chest and my stomach where i didn't even know he had cut me. i thought he had just stabbed in my wrist. >> reporter: wint was arrested and ordered to stay away from babcock. but while waiting for trial he suddenly ambushed babcock a second time on this bridge. >> i didn't see the knife this time because it was really small. he had the knife cupped in his hand and he swung and caught me in the neck right here. >> reporter: babcock was rushed
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to the emergency room, where he was told he was lucky to be alive. >> when daron stabbed me in the neck, if it would have been a little bit lower, the doctors told me that i would have died before i made it to the first hospital. >> reporter: wint was convicted of assault, but gets only 89 days in prison for both attacks. no sooner was he released then he stabbed another man in oswego, causing "substantial pain and bleeding which required hospitalization." this time wint was hit only with a slightly stiffer sentence. 10 months in jail. after being released, wint returned to maryland. but with three strikes already against him, he was arrested again for assault after his girlfriend said he "choked, slapped and punched" her. wint got a 30-day sentence and yet another protective order. >> he has a rap sheet as long as my arm. and that gives a perfect example to the claim of revolving door justice. >> reporter: wint dates another
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girl but the script is the same. he's arrested after threatening to kill her, her daughter and her friends. telling her he's "good with a knife" and could "kill them easily." but despite that graphic threat, wint is convicted only for smashing the windows of his girlfriend's car. and as the years pass, wint apparently had not forgotten his former employer. in 2010 he made a bizarre and menacing return to american iron works. the company he had left five years earlier. >> he's found outside the american iron works with a machete, a bb gun and a can of beer. so, there's this weird incident that occurred outside of the very place where savvas savopoulos was president and ceo. >> reporter: although charged with concealing a deadly weapon, wint was allowed to simply plead guilty to having an open container of alcohol and fined $919. >> i wonder what those prosecutors are thinking now. i let that guy go on a lesser
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offense. >> reporter: wint was able to stay out of the courts for the next five years. unchts. >> the suspect arrested. the next time he surfaced was when he made national news as the prime suspect in the savopoulos murder case. daron wint's had a long criminal history. he's had some incidents where he's attacked people with knives. >> for him to then take that a step further and get involved in potentially killing four people with a knife, it's really not a stretch based on his background. >> reporter: coming up, what about that carload of people who were with wint when he was arrested? could they be his accomplices? >> oh, there's clearly more people involved. you can't control four people for 19 hours by yourself. >> reporter: when "20/20" returns. you've been rea week and you're miserable baby, i have loved every day. every minute every second if you want to go back to work, i understand.
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"20/20" continues with the mystery in the mansion. here's ryan smith. >> reporter: we are learning new information. authorities believe more than one person may have been involved. >> he did not act alone. mark my words. >> reporter: that's the big mystery. who else was involved? still unknown, almost one month since that horrific night on woodland drive. >> though mr. wint is now incarcerated, our work is not done. >> i was in the fbi for 30 years. i worked a lot of home invasions. it just doesn't make any sense that one guy can control four people for almost around the clock. confine them. constrain them. brutalize them. and then set them on fire. >> reporter: investigators are continuing the hunt for those accomplices, but where to look? did savvas have enemies? >> no. >> reporter: not that you saw? >> no. >> reporter: nelly gutierrez also worked as a savopoulos family housekeeper, says she's known the family for 20 years.
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>> very good family, they were so nice, very good, happy about life. >> reporter: with the potential for violent accomplices still at large, there are several unanswered questions that we know of tonight. number one -- motive. >> i'm not totally convinced that it was just about money. you have a guy that's a millionaire, lives in a beautiful $5-plus million house, you're gonna ask for forty grand? i mean, none of that works for me. >> reporter: another question, why did jordan wallace change details of his story? remember wallace, who posted these videos on his enthusiasm for go-kart racing? savopoulous met wallace working at the go-kart track, where he coached 10-year-old philip in racing. now, hired as assistant and driver to savopoulos, he was tasked with delivering the $40,000 in cash to the house that horrible day. yet, when questioned about his role in dropping off the cash, police say he changed his account. >> and the big question is why? why are there these inconsistencies in his story? >> reporter: first, the timing. he tells investigators,
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savopoulos' instructions to bring the money came on thursday, the day of the murders. but, then police read a text on his phone and see that contact actually happened the night before. >> then, after detectives confront him with a text message and show that no, that's not the way it happened. and he says, "yes, you're right." and he tells a different story. >> reporter: wallace also said at first he was given the money in the manila envelope, yet later changes that to a red bag. and finally he claims to have found the keys and unlocked the savopoulos car where he had been told to leave the cash. yet later admitted it was unlocked when he arrived. >> and while they may not be serious discrepancies, they are discrepancies. conflicts nonetheless. and that raises a red flag. but the proof is in the pudding. he has not been arrested yet, nor has he been named a suspect. >> reporter: wallace has a clean record. we found just one traffic ticket to his name.
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and seemed to love his job, posting this photo on instagram from inside amy savopoulos' porsche. "another day on the job. my office today is pretty nice!" >> breaking news, the suspect in the murder in the washington, d.c., mansion arrested. five others with him. >> reporter: our next open question, who were the others arrested with daron wint? and why were they quickly let go? >> why at the very least you didn't charge them with aiding and abetting a fugitive, because they obviously were with him. because the idea that they don't know anything about what happened in that mansion is just pure fantasy. >> reporter: police find a large stack of hundreds in the truck, cash and money orders in the chevy, and one occupant admits to buying at least $10,000 in money orders. at this point, we only know the name of one of daron wint's five companions that day. his brother, darrell wint. >> it's still unclear to me how those people got released within a few hours, but it does give
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you the potential mechanism then to track them. who do they talk to? who do they call? who do they visit? all of the things that may lead you either to further corroboration they had some involvement or to somebody else in the crime. >> reporter: finally, is the burning savopoulos porsche a clue that there are other suspects? it had been driven from the murder scene and found about 15 miles away. at one point, someone was seen driving this porsche that had short, close-cropped hair. but, wint has long hair, long dreadlocks. what does that tell you? >> it's always sounded like to me that somebody else drove that porsche to that location. and that that's another player. >> reporter: and remember that man caught on surveillance video fleeing the burning car? that white bucket we pointed our earlier could be another important clue. we noticed that it's similar to these buckets found by police searching the home of daron wint's parents, the very place he'd been living at the time of the murders.
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also found in the burnt porsche, a lime green construction vest, perhaps like this, that matches several more found in the garage of the charred house. >> maybe they used that as a ruse to get in the house. i mean, if they knocked on the door and the house people answered and they said, "you know, we're from the gas company and we think you have a gas leak," she's probably going to let you in. >> reporter: i asked housekeeper nelly gutierrez if those vests could have belonged to the savopoulos family. did you ever see anything like that when you were there? >> no. >> reporter: meanwhile, moving trucks appeared at the savopoulos house this week, clearing out the belongings of lives cut tragically short. and the surviving daughters, abigail and katerina, returned perhaps a final time to what was once their home, now the crime scene of their nightmares. what do you say to the savopoulos' teen daughters? >> that i love them. >> reporter: nellie gutierrez,
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who helped get her fellow housekeeper, vera, hired, now misses her and the rest of the family every day. >> it's very hard. and sometimes people, they don't realize how hard it is when you care for a person like amy or this family. vera, my friend. and i learned a big lesson, so many lessons through this. that life is very short. because today's today and tomorrow you never know what's going to happen. >> and those two surviving daughters, one of whom graduated from
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if jublia is right for you. new larger size now available. forecast. >> the weekend forecast being tomorrow will be hot. 90. humidly lowering through the day. the heat index in the afternoon 90 same as air temperature. will feel 10 degrees cooler than today. on sunday it won't be quite as hot. it will be warm, 86. with increasing humidity. most of the weekend will be dry. few thunderstorms this afternoon. definitely getting a lot more comfortable. >> all right. we'll have more on the forecast and breaking news at 5:30 we'll have more on the forecast and breaking news at 5:30 tomorrow morning with nydia han of qulon of that's our program tonight. thanks for watching. i'm elizabeth vargas. for david muir and everyone at abc news, have a good night and a great weekend. >> a grinding crash injured 8
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people in bucks country tonight and severe storms turn trucks toppscy turvy in the lehigh and severe storms turn trucks toppscy turvy in the lehigh valley next >> friday night airport big story on "action news" tonight is braeinging news from bucks county we go right to video a violent head on collision injured at least

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