48 Hours - 48 Hours: NCIS: The Double Cross

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

Can a videotape left behind by a dead soldier help real-life NCIS investigators solve a double murder?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. On May 15, 1996, I was notified by Pager, by the Virginia Beach Police Homicide Sergeant, asking to respond to a scene of a double murder. police homicide sergeant, asking to respond to a scene of a double murder.

Eddie McDessie and his wife, Elise McDessie, had been out for a dinner. Elise McDessie was a good sailor. She was a model sailor. We received a shots fired call over the radio. The dispatcher has an individual on the phone claiming that he had found an individual raping and murdering his wife and he had just shot and killed him. I'm on the phone with the police the whole time. I'm like, I'm saying, please get here fast. Back in 1996, I was a sergeant

with the Virginia Beach Police Department. I've seen horror films. I've seen the slasher films. When I walked in, my first reaction, I remember thinking, oh, my God, this is real. I knew someone hit me on the head. After that, I was dizzy, fainted.

Elise McDessie was tied on the bed. Her throat had been slit, and there were multiple stab wounds in her chest. Blood was everywhere. Laying on the floor next to the bed was Quincy Brown. Quincy Brown and Elise McDessie were co-workers assigned to the Oceana Base headquarters. Quincy Brown is in her apartment.

And Quincy Brown has been shot dead while murdering Elise. Shot by Elise's husband, Eddie. We often talk about the sixth sense of something bad is about to happen. Before we even left the crime scene that night, we had discovered a videotape. My name is Elise McDessie. I am making this videotape in case something happens to me or to my husband, Eddie. Elise McDessie spoke from the grave to say what had happened to her. Mike Mather, News Channel 3. This was a very big story. Elise McDessie spoke from the grave to say what had happened to her. Mike Mather, News Channel 3.

This was a very big story. Elise McDessie was dead. It was a big deal at the time. Clearly there were some alerts going off that it was much bigger and a whole number of issues, far more than I had even imagined. This is the story of a murder case spanning six years and two continents. Now police believe they can solve the crime. I just have to get to Russia. The NCIS mission is global. We're on aircraft carriers, we're in foreign ports.

We watch after each other, we take care of each other. NCIS deal with every type of crime. Cyber, fraud, murder. Counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism. Every crime is a tragedy. All sisters, brothers, husbands. I feel it very personally. We live in dangerous times.

Are we ever going to give up? NCIS. The cases they can't forget. The cases they can't forget. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin.

It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely, Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists

because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet.

We received the shots fired call. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, we received a second shots fired call. This time the dispatcher is advising that the husband is the caller, and he's reporting that he caught someone raping his wife, and he shot him. He killed her and shot her. So now at this point we know that this is a legitimate shot fired call, and everything is ramped up.

We're on light siren, and we're responding at great speed. There's a police officer at your house. There's a police officer at your house. Okay, I'm going to open the door. As we exited the vehicle, there was a male subject coming down the stairs. We had no idea who he was. He had something in his hands. I advised two of the officers to take him into custody until we can determine what we had.

It was later determined that this was in fact Eddie McDessie coming down the stairs, and he had a portable phone in his hands. It was clear that there was some kind of struggle that had occurred right at the front door. There were some containers of food that were on the floor as well as a bottle, probably a wine bottle. As we entered the house, we're moving rapidly because we may have injured individuals. I turned to the right at the very end of the hallway, which turned out to be the master bedroom,

and this is where I find Elise McDessie and Quincy Brown. Even now, to this day, that is probably one of the worst crime scenes I had ever seen. I mean, blood was all over the bed. It was on the walls. scenes I had ever seen. I mean, blood was all over the bed. It was on the walls. It was on the ceiling. It was a horrific crime scene.

Quincy Brown was closest to me. I went quickly to him and very quickly confirmed that he was dead on the scene. I then turned my attention to Elise McDessie who was still alive. She was spread-eagled with her hands and her legs tied to each of the four posts of the bed. The wounds that she had on her throat and on her chest, none of us were trained for this type of injuries and wounds. I was telling her to hang on, that rescue was coming.

And there was a point in time in the room when it was just me and Elise McDessie, when she was looking at me and I'm looking at her. You know, we don't talk about this very often, but there's an unspoken promise that I'm not going to forget this. You know, I'm not going to let this happen. Somebody will be held responsible for this. A male subject deceased. A seriously injured, critically injured female was pronounced dead en route to the hospital. And then the third individual, we believe, is the woman's husband, is injured. He's also at the hospital.

But other than that, we have no further information at this time. Eddie McDessie and his wife, Elise McDessie, had been out for a dinner at one of the restaurants in Virginia Beach. They had come home, and Eddie was attacked at the front door and then tied up. Eddie said he broke free, grabbed a gun, and shot the intruder. But it was too late to save his wife. Mike Mather, News Channel 3. This was a very big story.

Virginia Beach bills itself as one of the safest cities in America, and it is. So any murder is relatively rare. A double murder, exceptionally rare in that city. Elise McDessie did well in boot camp. When she went to air traffic controller school in Memphis, she graduated at the time with the highest grade point average ever. She was in the pipeline to become certified as an FAA and Navy air traffic controller. She was having problems applying the theory into practice. Quincy was a career sailor. He was

married to a career sailor. His wife was a first-class hospital corpsman. He ended up being temporarily assigned to the corner deck with Elise McDessie. And the corner deck in Navy tradition is where you're greeted when you come aboard a ship or when you come aboard a base. A sailor serving honorably at Oceania Naval Air Station had been murdered in her own home. And somebody else she worked with was involved. There was a sense of just how could this possibly happen, and what's the connection? We have been able to identify that there was sexual intercourse between Elise McDessie and Quincy Brown that night. We had that forensically.

We had a search warrant for the apartment and everything in the apartment. We had discovered a videotape and we had discovered what looked like to be a journal. The journal almost matched word for word with what Elise McDessie had on the videotape, almost like a script. And Egan, threaten me. You can't prove anything, So keep your mouth shut. We knew that it was our duty to conduct a thorough investigation into her allegations.

We had to speak for Elise. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets,

the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals.

Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. This is the story of my life as a defenseless woman in the Navy. It was probably one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in my life. woman in the Navy. It was probably one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in my life. It is essentially Elise McDessie walking into frame, sitting down, starting off with, My name is Elise McDessie. When we found the videotape and the journal, they were inside a fire safe or one of those little home fireproof lock boxes. She was making claims that she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and

harassed by active duty service members at a number of commands, every place that she had been assigned since she'd been in the Navy. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. It's a story of a woman who was sexually harassed and raped at her job working for the United States Navy. It was the first time in my entire career I've actually seen somebody talking from beyond the grave to me, and it was unsettling. Very soon, I'll have enough evidence to send to the media, and then something will be done. The only thing that was left out of the video that was in her journal is that she had actually named sailors from each command,

primarily that had sexually assaulted and harassed her. And one day in January of 96, I was raped. I was raped. Elise's journal named Quincy Brown one of the suspects that had sexually assaulted her. I got raped in the woman's bathroom. And Egan threatened me and told me, you can't prove anything, so keep your mouth shut, or else you and your husband can get hurt.

Obviously, we knew that it would be hard to prosecute a case without a victim, but we knew that we had to look into her allegations because just the simple fact that Quincy Brown is named in her journal, Quincy Brown is in her apartment, and Quincy Brown has been shot dead while murdering Elise, clearly we know that we have to open up an investigation. So there was a second investigation going on, not just of the deaths at that apartment, but of Elise McDessie and who may have harmed her at work, and was she harmed at work. In 1996, I was in the United States Navy, and I was stationed in Virginia Beach, Virginia,

as an air traffic controller, and I worked alongside Elise McDessie. We had a memorial service for Elise. There was a lot of angry people in that room, and I didn't understand that. I didn't know what was going on. I started to hear the stories about her accusing people that she worked with of sexually assaulting her, raping her, punching her. I was Elise's supervisor, immediate supervisor, our overall supervisor, another very strong female. And we compared notes, like, have you ever heard anything else? No, I never heard anything about it. Eddie said he broke free. There was a local reporter named Mike Mather. Eddie trusted Mike Mather.

I got a phone call from Eddie McDessie saying that he would like to talk about what happened, he would like to tell me his story. It's rare that a reporter gets an inside look at a crime scene. At the time, Mather was a newspaper reporter for the Virginian Pilot. He started working for a local TV station a few years later. I remember Eddie had mixed himself a drink, and he was always rattling around the ice in the drink. He seemed very nervous. He seemed very agitated. And over the next hour and a half,

he walked me from the front door through every portion of that apartment into the bedroom where his wife was murdered and where he said he had shot and killed the intruder. The bed had been disassembled. I looked down at the carpet, and there were cutouts where he said his gun had fallen. The walls had webs of twine where they were tracing the blood spatter. I remember thinking

at that time, the way he was describing the murder to me did not match the evidence I saw on the walls. That night, it struck me that something was not quite right in that bedroom. that something was not quite right in that bedroom. As we move forward in this investigation, Eddie is less and less communicative with us. But it was too late. He allowed the news reporter into the apartment. He allowed the news reporter to take pictures of our blood spatter folks

who did all the examinations of the blood spatter. He continued to talk to them, but he refused to talk to us. This is the knife that was used to stab and cut Elise McDessie's throat. This knife is an extremely sharp bladed knife, and it's normally used for hunting. Thick blade and very, very sharp,

easily to cut through skin and bone with ease and no problems. This knife was recovered next to the hand of Quincy Brown underneath the bed that Elyse McDessie was murdered on. Elyse McDessie had her throat slit to the point where she was almost decapitated, and three excessively large stab wounds in her chest that was consistent with almost somebody stabbing and then dragging the knife down, stabbing and then dragging the knife down. Eddie had stated that somebody ambushed him from behind, knocking him out.

The next thing he remembers, he's woken up in the bedroom with his hands bound behind his back with a black male that he did not know on top of his wife raping and stabbing her. The knife itself, we swabbed the blades for DNA, and we swabbed the handle separately. And on the blade of the knife was Elise McDessie's blood. And on the handle was Quincy Brown's blood. At some point, Quincy Brown's blood had to start flowing to transfer onto the knife. But if you go with Eddie's original story,

Quincy Brown's blood should not be on the handle of the knife because he's not bleeding yet. Because he's got no injuries to him. The more Dunton investigated, the more Eddie's version of events didn't add up. The more Dutton investigated, the more Eddie's version of events didn't add up. This is a 38 Special Rossi revolver. Eddie had stated that somebody ambushed him from behind, knocking him out. He was able to break through his vines,

grab the gun that was located in the nightstand right next to him, and shot three times at the suspect who was attacking his wife. After further investigation and entering into the crime scene, Eddie's version of events did not really match up to what the crime scene was showing. Quincy Brown on his knees, laid back, fully clothed with a t-shirt and shorts on. His shirt was tucked into his pants, really giving no indication that he had just was raping somebody. We were having some inconsistencies. This gun was purchased a day before the murder occurred.

Elise McDessie, as a matter of fact, was the one who actually purchased the weapon. It was just starting to not make sense to us. Eddie always referred to the intruder, Quincy Brown, and said he had no idea who it was. And he appeared as shocked as anybody when the identification came out, and it actually showed it was one of Elise's co-workers. In the weeks before the homicide, Eddie McDessie had made statements to friends

that Elise was being sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by people in the Navy, and that it was now going to come to light. And when it did, it was going to be bigger than tailhook. The now infamous 1991 Navy tailhook convention at a Las Vegas hotel, where Navy pilots taunted and mauled women during a drunken night of revelry. taunted and mauled women during a drunken night of revelry. Go, go, go! JLC's got to go!

This was a difficult time in the Navy. There was a nationwide perception of how some women are treated by military members. Eddie McDessie divulged to me that his wife was harassed at work, and this murder may have been some way connected to that harassment. As NCIS looked into the allegations Elise had left behind, they also started to take a closer look at Eddie. Born in Lebanon, he'd emigrated to the U.S. Eddie McDessie grew up in Massachusetts, lived most of his life up there until he married Elise McDessie. He moved with her to several different states. We could never identify what Eddie's real job was,

that he actually had an occupation. There were a number of insurance policies. The Navy insurance that Elise got through the Navy was around $200,000. Eddie and Elise had got additional insurance on each other, between $500,000 and $750,000. Eddie was pressing hard to get his money. Eddie began receiving a series of payouts that totaled more than $700,000. Three months, four months down the road, and we're getting information that Eddie has now moved

back to Massachusetts. And Eddie has bought a boat that he's named Elise, and he's bought a Tahoe and has a personalized plate that says Elise. But according to Eddie, the U.S. Navy was determined to silence him. He's claiming that there's a Navy hit squad after him. I had a phone call from Eddie, and he was driving in his brand-new truck, and a car starts following him, and they run him off the road.

And as his truck approaches a cliff, he is able to fling open the door, dive out just in time. The car goes off the cliff and is destroyed. It wasn't long after that that I get a phone call from Eddie. This time, a second hit squad has descended upon him. And they managed to get alongside him and start shooting at him from one car to another. He told me he had been shot several times.

Flabbergasted. We interviewed the emergency room doctor who treated Eddie, and the emergency room doctor's opinion was that it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That was the last time I heard from Eddie McDessie for maybe a year. So months into the investigation now, Eddie is not in communication with us, and he's not in communication with the Virginia Beach Police Department on a regular basis.

I was earnestly conducting this sexual assault investigation. We had interviewed well over 200 people, both active duty and civilian in the Navy. We had interrogated all the suspects that Elise had named in her journal. We had no corroborative evidence of sexual assault or sexual harassment by anyone on elise mcdessey my name is dan rice and i was a special agent with naval criminal investigator service when i picked up this case in 1998. the case had gone basically cold for two years of being unsolved. When they referred it to us to take a look at, the further we got into it, the story didn't make sense. We have phone records from Quincy Brown's phone showing that he made a series of short

phone calls to the McDessie's house on the night of the killings. Using triangulation, we were able to show that the phone calls actually came from the parking lot of the McDessie's apartment house. He leaves a couple of phone messages on their phone machine. The cassette tape from the phone recorder was missing. It's never been found. We think that what happened was that this was a prearranged tryst that they had set up for Quincy Brown to come over to the house that night and have a romantic interlude with Elise. The crime scene, the more we thought about it, it appeared to be staged. The phone calls, the visit to the restaurant,

even the videotape. Well, once we saw the holes in Eddie's story, we got with Virginia Beach. We both agreed that Eddie was, in fact, the suspect. Police also concluded that Quincy Brown had been lured to the apartment as part of McDessie's sinister plan to fabricate a story about sexual harassment in the Navy. We had to put together an indictable case at that point. I knew about Ross Gardner, a forensic examiner down in Georgia. And his specialty was making sense out of senseless crime scenes.

At the time that I was brought into this investigation, I was a special agent assigned to the United States Army's Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Gilliam, Georgia. Eddie's original story was pretty succinct and pretty to the point. He claimed that he removed the gun from the nightstand, immediately turned, and that Quincy then came off the bed and he fired, and that Quincy rotated and went to the ground. That did not coincide with the data

that we had available from the crime scene. Taking the blood spatter evidence, he was able to conclude that Quincy was actually on his knees, on the floor, and that Quincy was actually shot in that position, and the final shot, Quincy was actually laid all the way back onto the floor. The most significant of his contradictions relate to the phone. Eddie says he shoots the

assailant, then he retrieves the phone. Nice story. Unfortunately, the physical evidence doesn't support it. When Quincy shot the second and third time, there was this immense spatter event that goes up into the air and those droplets rain down across everything. This is the phone cradle where Eddie claimed he had removed the phone from after he did those shots. But as we look at the phone cradle, we're going to see that the spatter are throughout the area where the phone should have prevented that. And the phone itself had none of these spatter on it, which tells us that the phone was not in this area anywhere at the time of that event.

Very early on, what I thought was most appropriate is follow the knife, the weapon that killed Elise. Elise was found bound to the bed, tightly. Her body lay over the top of a purple bedspread. But that's not where police found blood evidence from the knife. What we're looking at is the fitted sheet. We have this pattern transfer from the knife. But once Eddie encounters Quincy and stands up with the gun,

that kind of demands that Quincy said, excuse me, I got to make the bed before we have this little shootout. That made no sense. What we do know is that what Eddie said was going on, the order in which he said things were happening, didn't happen. Gardner's conclusion was stunning. Eddie had shot Quincy and then butchered his own wife as she laid tied to the bed. This is early 2001.

It is unmistakable the police believe he is not a victim but a double murderer. We took the case to the grand jury. Came down rather quickly. We got two indictments for first-degree murder. However, by that time, we found that Eddie had fled the country. After we got the indictments in 2001, it was just the best feeling in the world knowing that he was finally going to see the inside of a jail cell and hopefully justice was going to be done. But we went looking for Eddie and we found that he'd fled the country.

This is the man police are searching for. He is Eddie McDessie, and he is accused of killing his wife and her co-worker five years ago to collect insurance. I don't know where Eddie is at this point, and I started trying to email him. I didn't know what his email was, so I just started with every free combination I could think of.

E. McDessie at Hotmail.com. And strung out a bunch of them and just kept hitting send, send, send, send. Eddie McDessie at Hotmail.com responded. He was angry. I had told him in my initial forays of emails that he'd been indicted for murder. He unleashed on me. He thought that I had somehow betrayed him, that I had somehow had cooperated in a way to get this indictment. I responded and said, you are being charged with murder and you have the right to speak for yourself.

I need to hear your side of the story again. I need your reaction to this indictment. Eddie McDessie sent me a document, the unbelievable true story of Eddie McDessie. He had told me that he had left the country and went first to Syria. And in Syria, they believed he was some kind of a spy. They had jailed him. They had confiscated all his money. This is the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he had gained from the life insurance payouts. So he was essentially kicked out of Syria with no money.

He eventually ends up living with a Russian bride about four hours north of Moscow. He had, in fact, married a Russian woman and had a child with her over there. And he was granted Russian citizenship, which we knew was going to make it harder to get him back. He is in Russia, and there is no extradition treaty of any kind with Russia. I sent him an email and said, would you be interested in sitting down with me no extradition treaty of any kind with Russia. I sent him an email and said, would you be interested in sitting down with me

and formally, for the first time, telling your story about what happened that night, what happened after, and how you've ended up here? And he agreed. In October of 2002, I traveled to Russia to meet with Eddie McDessie in person. I worked with the CBS bureau there who provided me with a translator and a fixer, and they provided me with a driver. My initial thought when I heard that Mike Mather had gone to Russia

without telling anybody to interview Eddie McDessie was that was the craziest thing I'd ever heard. I was very surprised that he would take that chance because that was very risky for a story. I had been pressured a lot by the State Department, by the U.S. Embassy, by the police department to divulge where I was going, what I was doing, have them somehow assist, and that was more than I could possibly stomach. I needed to be there as an independent journalist to get his story.

It was this odd cloak and dagger journey through the Russian countryside. I called Eddie, and he said, drive to this town and call me. And we drove to this town, we call him. Drive to this town and call me. We drove to this town and call me. We drove to that town and called him. We can come to you. What hotel are you in? Finally, he gave us the name of another town and a hotel where we could finally meet him. We arrived at that hotel in this throwback Soviet-era city. It was largely vacant and abandoned.

And in a closed breakfast bar area is the man I haven't seen in years. The first thing I recall that really made me nervous is I went to put a microphone on him. And as I clipped the lavalier to his suit jacket and I part his coat to put the battery pack on, he's wearing a gun on his hip. Nobody knows where I am, and the man I'm trying to interview

is carrying a gun to the interview. And I had this fleeting moment. Maybe I've bitten off a bit more than I could chew. You know the police don't believe your story. So let me ask you this. Did you kill your wife of course not it is too much blood I remember too much blood there's blood on my hand clothes blood everywhere she was tied I remember I'm trying to get her untied, and she's looking at me.

I asked him, do you want to come back and face trial? He said he did. If they want me to be tried, try me and kill me better than make me suffer. Please. I just can't take it anymore. I told him that I can guarantee him a plane ticket from the embassy, but I need to tell them he has a valid passport. He went home and got his passport.

We converged in the hotel parking lot. I've been in Turkey, I've been in Jordan, I've been in... Okay. And do you want me to call you tonight or tomorrow? Whenever you like. Okay, I'll call you. Call me today, call me tomorrow, call me every day. You know how long it's been I haven't spoke to an American. And as soon as I shook his hand and took one step back,

it felt like people just appeared next to me. And they were putting their hands on us and pulling us away. And they were Russian agents. Remember the men on the hotel stairs? They took our tapes, they took our passports, and herded us to separate rooms. They asked if I was a police officer. They asked if I was a spy.

I, for a while, believed I'm never getting out of here. My wife is home, pregnant with triplets, and I'm stuck in Russia, and I will never see the light of day again. They had taken our main videotape, and as we were being told we could go, this bear of a man with this giant scar through his forehead reached down and then rushed in and said something and the translator said, please let us not have this incident

affect our country's growing affection. And I shook his hand and said sure and we got in the car and headed back to the hotel. After answering dozens of questions over and over, they finally accused us of interviewing residents without a permit, and then they let us go. We didn't know what happened to McDessie until the next day. They asked me questions about maybe two hours, and then after that, one person stayed at the door and got in. He said, you can't leave the room.

So they did not give you your passport back? No, I asked him, where's my passport? I need to go back to the U.S. They said, no, we forgot. The Russian authorities confiscated Mike Mather's film, and they also confiscated Eddie's Russian passport, which basically left him stranded in Russia with no way to get out. Eddie said that he wanted to come back to the United States.

He needed to get his Russian passport back. The Russian foreign ministry expelled us without our tapes and without any guarantee McDessie would return for trial. I wanted to tell this story. I think I owed it to Elise's family. I owed it certainly to Eddie's family. I owed it to all of our viewers to tell this story. I kept writing letters to our embassy, to the Russian embassy, just begging with them, pleading with them to return this videotape.

One day at the office, I got a call that there was an overnight express-type envelope at the front desk. Inside was a videotape. One day at the office, I got a call that there was a overnight express type envelope at the front desk. Inside was a videotape. And I thought this is gonna be the biggest joke ever. I'm gonna go take this, put it in the player, and it's going to be entirely blank. So I walked back, pushed it in player, hit the rewind button, pressed play,

and there was Eddie McNessy. After that, Eddie went to the United States Embassy in Moscow. I got this call from Eddie again, and he said, I am at the gates of the U.S. Embassy, and they won't let me in, and I'm just about to lose it. I say, stay right there, And I'm calling the detective. I'm calling my State Department contact. And I'm saying, I don't understand what's going on. This is the guy you want back to face a murder charge. He is knocking on your gates, literally, and you won't let him

in. Eventually, somebody contacted the right person. They opened the gate and Eddie McDessie walked into the United States Embassy in Moscow. We worked with the State Department, with the Russians. He was able to get his passport back and then travel to the United States under escort of the U.S. Marshals. Eddie, how are you? Are you glad you came back? We brought Eddie back and put him in Virginia Beach Jail in August of 2003. You got to prove your innocence still? Eddie, why did you come back? To prove my innocence.

These guys came to my house and they tried to kill me and my wife and they shot them. Eddie changed his story during the interrogation from the 1996 statement he gave to the police after the murders. When he told them initially there was one assailant, now he was up to five assailants attacking them in the apartment. He said you really don't want to discuss what happened that night. No, really not what happened that night because I feel like I'm getting really screwed. I had handcuffs. I didn't kill my wife. No one has any idea how much I loved her. For seven years, not one night of good sleep because of this. I'd talk with Eddie routinely in the Virginia Beach jail. He had a lot of pretrial motions.

One of the pretrial motions was about Elise McDessie's videotape. Whether he was guilty or whether he was innocent. You can't prove anything, so keep your mouth shut. That tape, if it ever got in front of a jury, would be the definition of reasonable doubt. And the judge said the tape will not be admissible in trial. Eddie was devastated. He was so angry. Our theory of the crime was that Eddie concocted this scheme in order to get rich, to get $700,000. Another motive that Eddie probably had was trying to concoct a lawsuit against the Navy to try to perhaps get more money out of that by using that scheme.

Elise was a quiet, shy individual. She was meek. She was manipulated by Eddie. She was controlled by Eddie. NCIS was certain the claims Elise made in the tape and the journal were false. She'd been coerced into going along with the scheme, only to be double-crossed by her own husband. I believe that Eddie decided to kill his wife when Eddie realized that Elise was not strong enough

to follow through with these allegations. What really got to me was the fact that he duped his wife into going along with this, knowing that he was going to kill her and then killing her. going along with this, knowing that he was going to kill her, and then killing her. In 2006, we finally get Eddie to trial. We're ready.

I shot him once, then twice. At his trial, Eddie said he now couldn't remember witnessing Quincy Brown killing Elise. McDessie backed away from the most consistent detail of the story, saying he is no longer sure he actually saw the intruder stabbing his wife, a woman he has repeatedly professed to love. She was like the nicest person you can ever meet. She would never do anything to harm anyone. It was Katherine Dodson in her closing argument that said to the jury,

you are allowed to consider prior inconsistent statements. Eddie McDessie is the poster boy for prior inconsistent statements. The whole case was done in a little less than two weeks. It was actually a quick jury verdict. The clerk comes out. Eddie stands up. His defense attorney stands up. And the clerk reads the verdict.

Guilty of two murders. The jury sentenced McDessie to two life terms plus 13 years, which was the max incarceration. It was very gratifying. Captain Santos came up to me afterwards and hugged me and said, now he can sleep at night, and that felt real good. The promise was fulfilled that I made with Elise McDessie, and all of that hard work that everybody was involved in

finally came together at that one moment in time. I lived and breathed that case for three years. If you ask my family, that's what my whole life, unfortunately, was devoted around that case and oftentimes not around them. The more that I got involved in learning about Quincy and learning about Elise McDessie, that I said, we need justice for them. Well, when you have a Navy or Marine Corps victim like we had here,

with two of them, knowing that we're the ones who are entrusted with bringing their cases to fruition and hopefully seeking justice. It puts a great responsibility on you, and we're never going to give up.