48 Hours - The Ambush: Who Killed Officer Daniel Green? | My Life of Crime

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

On the morning of February 5th, 2015, Tulare County police officer Daniel Green took his son to school and then returned home. While on the toilet, he is shot dead. Police have no gun, eyewitnesses, or DNA evidence. During routine questioning the following day, Daniel’s ex-wife, Erika Sandoval, tells police she hasn’t visited Daniel’s house in weeks, but her story appears to contradict a neighbor’s surveillance footage. 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty presents her investigation into the killing of officer Daniel Green on her podcast, My Life of Crime. Based on the 48 Hours episode "The Killing of Daniel Green”.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. It's Erin Moriarty, and we have a special episode for you today from my original podcast, My Life of Crime. I'm taking you inside true crime investigations like no one else, taking on killers and those accused of crimes. Here's an all-new episode of My Life of Crime

that takes you deeper into the killing of Daniel Green. Follow along as I go beyond the scene of each crime, beyond prison walls, and into the killer's inner thoughts. It's all on this season of My Life of Crime. Erica Sandoval is the person that you could meet on the street and say, wow, she seems like a really nice person. She had the type of upbringing that millions of people have had before.

She dated. She fell in love. There's nothing quite like that first thrill of love. She was so into Daniel. The first time she spoke about him, she was just like, oh, the color of his eyes, and he was so nice to her. She was just in heaven.

Erica always wanted to just have a stable relationship, have children. It is unquestionably one of the most intense, profound emotions a person can feel. When everything was going the way they should be in her eyes, she was pleasant to be around. It's only when things didn't go her way that she became nasty and things got ugly between the two of them. But when intense love flips into hate, it can lead to violence. And from what I saw, the bad was really bad. She had cut up the

couch and she had cut up the bed springs and stabbed holes in the wall and, you know, taking a bottle of pancake syrup and just spread it all over the carpet. Just a ridiculous amount of vandalism. Or even murder. On February 6, 2015, in the mid-afternoon, time stood still in Tulare County when we in the law enforcement community came to find out that Daniel Green was executed that afternoon in the sanctity and privacy of his own home. I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 hours, and this is my life of crime. There's a reason why cops investigating murders look first at the person closest to the victim. I mean, who else feels so intensely that they would risk everything to hurt another person?

The Daniel Green case may change the way you look at domestic abuse, what you think it is, who you think commits abuse, and whether the legal system treats all abusers the same. We begin on that awful afternoon in February 2015, the day when 31-year-old Daniel Green was found shot to death in his own bathroom in the town of Goshen, California. He was executed. Here's a man who was literally on the toilet when he was shot. That's the district attorney for Tulare County, Tim Ward. He was still angry when I spoke to him about the case because Daniel Green He was still angry when I spoke to him about the case because Daniel Green wasn't just a young man senselessly murdered.

He was also a cop, an 11-year veteran of the Exeter Police Department. This crime, when this happened, really ripped apart not only the small town that he was from and was a police officer in, but kind of the law enforcement community as well. And because Daniel was a cop who had dealings with local gangs, investigators at first feared his death might be connected to his job. The killer had fired four bullets at Green, the fatal shot hitting him in the forehead. He was found lying on his back in the bathtub. One of his fellow officers is the one that discovered him that day. Daniel loved being a cop.

Alex Geiser was the fellow officer who found him. He loved getting out into the community and making a difference. So on the day of the incident, Daniel was supposed to come into work right before me. When I got to the police station, I asked the lieutenant where Daniel was. You get this gut feeling that something's wrong, that something bad was happening. Daniel's home was just yards from his neighbors, but because he was shot in the day, many of them were at work. So no one heard the shots or called 911. No eyewitnesses saw the killer enter or leave the house. And the killer fled with a murder weapon. Matt calls me and I'd never heard Matt's voice

like this. And he says, hey. And I said, what's going on? And he can't really get it out. And he can't really get it out. Daniel's sister, Misty Gray, first heard the news from her other brother, Daniel's twin brother, his identical twin brother, Matt. I couldn't say anything. It was like there were no words. And I said, just tell me Daniel's okay. Just tell me he's okay. And Matt said, I said, just tell me Daniel's okay. Just tell me he's okay. And Matt said I can't. I happen to be a twin myself, and I'm not sure I have ever seen two brothers who look so much alike.

Even Matt had trouble pointing out to me who was whom in photos. We were kind of like a team. It was the three of us against the world type of thing. They had grown up in the nearby small town of Porterville, California. Both brothers became police officers, although Matt later traded law enforcement for law school. I always thought it was neat that my big brothers, who are twins, were both police officers at the same time. And I actually have the same photo of the two of them, and I cherish it.

And now Daniel was gone. We will never be the same. Never. My life will forever be changed by this. That's just how it is now. Was his death connected to his job? Daniel did have a reputation as a hard-nosed, by-the-book cop. But that theory didn't lead investigators anywhere,

so they took a closer look at Daniel's personal life. At the time of his death, Daniel Green was divorced and living alone. But at one time, he had had a very passionate and often tumultuous relationship with Erica Sandoval, his ex-wife. Hours after Daniel was found dead, Erica rushed to the scene, teary-eyed and distraught. She told police that she hadn't seen Daniel that day, and Daniel's brother, Matt, believed her. If it had been years earlier, I think I would have automatically assumed it was her,

but we'd just seen them together, you know, a month before, and it didn't seem like there was any tension, so I just didn't know. I didn't know what had happened. Daniel had met his future wife six years earlier in 2009, and he fell hard. I think he loved her. In his way, he wanted the family. He wanted so desperately to have a family. Matt was married. By then, I was married, and he was the only one that was not. He was, you know, infatuated with her.

And Erica was just as infatuated with him. It's like a little girl, like, you know, when they get candy, they get super excited. She was so into Daniel. Was she? She was. That's Angelica Ramirez, one of Erica's close friends from childhood. But the two came from very different backgrounds. Daniel and his siblings had a tough childhood,

while Erica was from a close-knit, middle-class family from Southern California. David is her older brother. She wanted to find the right guy and then obviously start having a family. She wanted to find the right guy and then obviously start having a family. Still, everyone was surprised when Daniel and Erica skipped a traditional wedding and got married in Las Vegas. Daniel was 26, Erica 23. I remember getting a text message at 10 o'clock at night with a picture of a marriage license in Vegas. o'clock at night with a picture of a marriage license in Vegas. And some of Daniel's friends, especially from a local motorcycle club, were downright concerned. Few things happened before they even actually got married. And I pulled Daniel aside and I said, dude, don't marry this

chick. That's Herb Adame. Tell me why. What happened that made you say that? It was all the incidents at the house. Herb says that Daniel had talked about Erica's anger. He said that she had once cut up furniture with a razor blade. Daniel's brother said that he had heard Daniel crying after Erica laced into him. It devastated me to hear my brother crying and to hear the way that she was talking to him. It broke my heart. Erica was trying to create a rift in the family between us. Daniel's sister and brother said

that he might have thought that kind of behavior was perfectly normal because they had grown up in a troubled home with an abusive stepfather. Alcohol. Drugs, alcohol, abuse, stuff like that. Were any of you abused? Just, you know, physical abuse probably and some neglect and stuff. Would your stepfather hit you?

Yeah. With his hand or with? Hands, belts, boards. Well, I guess whatever was laying around. Their stepfather had a long criminal record that included arrests for assault, domestic violence, and driving under the influence. And Misty says her older twin brothers took the brunt for her. Matthew and Daniel always protected me.

They would get in between my stepdad trying to physically harm us. And when I would get scared, I would go crawl in bed with my brothers. Their mother at one point did get a restraining order against their stepfather, who is now dead. But now they worry that the domestic abuse that they all endured as children seemed to be repeating itself with Daniel and Erica. In the case of my brother, he was the one constantly being controlled and isolated and, you know, verbally and emotionally abused. As an officer, he would probably run into women who were being abused.

Would he not recognize himself in that same situation? I think he did. He just probably felt like he had nothing he could do about it, that he was maybe trapped in a cycle. We don't hear about male victims often, maybe because men like Daniel don't want to admit they are being abused. And in fact, it's not as rare as you might think. I think men don't come forward for many of the same reasons that women

don't come forward when they are experiencing domestic violence. Katie Meter runs the Tulare Family Services in the county, and she says that she actually had to expand the women's shelter to include rooms for men who were also fleeing abuse. Erica would cut up mattresses and couches. Is that domestic abuse? Absolutely. Property damage is very common. Female victims, they will often describe, well, my partner never hit me, but he did punch a hole in the wall. And so there's this threat of physical violence. If I can do this to your property, if I can do this to the things that you love, what can I do to you? As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch.

It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder i was struck by both how spooky it was but also how outrageous it was listen to candy man the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder early and ad free with a 48 hours plus subscription on apple podcasts 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 reached 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 Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Domestic abuse isn't always black and white. If Daniel thought violence was normal in a relationship, then it might explain some of his own behavior. You will model relationships that have been modeled for you. Angelica Ramirez says that Erica had said that Daniel was also abusive.

She would tell me constantly that he would grab her and choke her. She told me he choked her and that she felt like she was going to pass out. Once again, Daniel's sister missed him. It was a very toxic relationship. People should absolutely know and understand that it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. You're five foot or six foot. You can be a victim of domestic violence. Matt, did you ever tell Daniel to leave?

Of course. A lot? A lot, yeah. He knew it was bad. People don't change. She's not going to change. That's not what happens. There was one more violent episode in February 2011

when the police were called. Neither Daniel nor Erica were arrested, but it was the last straw. The marriage was officially over in January 2012, a little more than a year after it began. I remember thinking he escaped this without, you know, anything terrible happening and that maybe he could get peace and be happy. But then came news that Erica was pregnant with Daniel's child. I was like, geez, he's stuck with her for 18 years. Erica moved back in with Daniel and they tried to make it work. But Daniel's motorcycle seemed to come between them. She hated that motorcycle. Yep,

despised it. You know, he'd get on his bike and he'd take off and, you know, she couldn't sit next to him in the passenger seat yelling at him. She hated it so much that one of Daniel's friends thinks she may have sabotaged the bike one day before a ride. Once out on the road, Daniel was unable to stop for a red light. And I'm like, hey, what's going on, man? He just grabbed all the wires and he just pulled them out. It was all the wires were all cut up. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is crazy. Daniel told Mark Cortez that he believed his wife had cut the wires. He had no question it was Erica. Yeah. Erica later admitted to a friend that she had, quote, just snipped wires. Still, Daniel never reported it to the police and initially didn't even tell his siblings.

He hid a lot of the stuff that was going on. I think he knew that it would upset us. Daniel and Erica's son, Aiden, was born in January 2013. I don't have any doubt that the day his son was born was the happiest day of his life. Him having a kid was the best thing for him. On his Facebook, every day it was a picture of his kid. That was his life. That was his pride and joy.

But the couple's relationship was just too broken, and in June 2013, Erica moved out of the house. And their problems only got worse. The couple began to engage in a vicious war of words. Dan Chambers is Erica's lawyer. There's a lot of bitterness and anger throughout these text messages, no question about it. I mean, Daniel does call Erica some very bad names in here, and Erica does the same. Daniel won primary custody of his son, which only deepened the

divisions between the two. But here's the really weird part. Even with all the anger, all the vitriol, the couple would still occasionally sleep together. And yet, the dysfunction in the relationship was always just below the surface. Like a night in the fall of 2014, when Daniel told his friend Herb that he awoke to find Erica with a gun. He told you that she woke up, dreamed that he had been with another woman and held a gun to his head. What did she say to him at that point? another woman and held a gun to his head. What did she say to him at that point? She said that she was going to kill him.

If he left her? Yeah, or if he cheated on her. By the new year, Daniel and Erica seemed to have turned a new leaf on the relationship. They were still living apart, but they were civil with each other. were civil with each other. And that's why neither Matt nor Misty thought she could possibly be responsible for his murder that occurred one month later. That morning, February 5th, 2015, Daniel Green dropped off their son Aiden with Erica's mother and then went to the gym. It was when he returned home that someone shot him dead, Tulare District Attorney Tim Ward. This was not anything other than a cold-blooded calculated execution.

The day following the murder, Erica was brought in for routine questioning, and that's when her stories began to shift. Erica originally said that she hadn't been inside Daniel's house in weeks, but a neighbor's surveillance camera appeared to contradict her. The video that is out there shows a female enter into that home. On the very day of the murder, you could see a woman enter the house. Investigators couldn't ID the woman in the video, but they tricked Erica, and they told her they knew it was her.

That's when she broke down and led detectives to an empty lot where they found the murder weapon, a car 9mm gun. She had shot Daniel with his own gun. Erica Sandoval was arrested for first-degree murder. 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. 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? 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. Erica Sandoval faced the death penalty for killing a cop who happened to be her ex-husband. Her legal team took nearly five years to prepare her defense. But finally, in October 2019, she went on trial. And that's when prosecutors revealed what they believed was the motive. Daniel was shot one week after he posted an Instagram photo

of a new girlfriend, 20-year-old Brenda Vela. Is it possible that Daniel Gray would still be alive if he had never posted that picture on social media? That's an impossible question, but you wonder. It's such a tragedy that we'll never know. We'll never know. Still, there is compelling evidence to support that theory, including a yellow sticky note found in Erica's purse with Brenda Vela's name and birth year. Erica also bombarded Daniel with 167 phone calls in the days leading up to the murder. I think when Erica found out that the girl was hanging out with her son and that kind of made her snap. But at trial, Erica's defense attorney,

Dan Chambers, tried to shift the guilt away from Erica to Daniel Green himself, in essence, putting the dead police officer also on trial. And at the end of the day, he was abusive. The jury listened over and over again to audio tapes of the couple's verbal battles, like this one over their son, Aiden, who was just a baby at that point. Get him back to me, Danny. Don't touch me. You're going to f*** me, right? Don't hit me. All right, you're going to jail, you f***. And then Erica takes a chance and takes the stand in her own defense,

hoping she can convince the jury that she was driven to take her husband's life. It was a collective decision, and it wasn't an easy decision. At that point, we were arguing a lot. You're listening to Erica herself on the stand, describing to jurors the abuse she claims she suffered from Daniel over the years. He grabbed me by the shirt, my shirt, and he started shaking me back and forth. And as he was yelling at my face, shut the up. He's like, you know, I could kill you and make it look like an accident. That's when, um, when he, uh, grabbed me from my ponytail, he slammed my head up in the dashboard while I was holding Aiden. And then she told them why she'd gone into her ex-husband's home on February 5th, 2015.

According to Erica, she had just gone there to snoop around. I saw the kitchen window and I figured I'd try to see if it was open. And so I took off the screen and'd try to see if it was open. And so I took off the screen, and I wedged it, and it was open. She walked through the house, grabbing two of Daniel's guns, and then she claims she found an open safe that contained two photos depicting child pornography. The first picture I saw, it was like a girl. She looked to be maybe like 12, 13, next to a bed. Erica's story took prosecutors and investigators by surprise because she had never mentioned the photographs in any previous statements district attorney ward doesn't

believe her account that was the very first time that we ever had even heard that or anything close to that ward says no such photos were found but on the stand erica says she left them in the safe she left them in the safe. It just made me think, like, fantasies that he, like, had with me. The school girl fits here for me. Where, I thought, you know, like, is he watching this kind of stuff around me, son?

What's the next thing you remember doing? I heard his truck. I was thinking about Aiden. I don't know if he was being said to Aiden maybe. And then Erica says she heard Daniel come home and so she hid in a closet. And I heard him coming down the hallway passing by the room. I was scared. I didn't know where he was going and when she heard him go into the bathroom Erica told the jury she just snapped I stepped out of the closet I stepped out of a man's room and I said right there in front of

Daniel I said he saw me, he said, I'm going to kill you. And he started getting up. As soon as he started raising my arm. Then he shot. How many times? I didn't know how many times I shot. But I know I shot.

Do you regret what you did? Of course I regret it. Every day. I regret it every day. Has it cost you? My son. My son. My family. And Erica sticks to her story about the photos,

even when cross-examined by the assistant DA, David Alavesos, who clearly doesn't believe it. You know they're not in the report, so you just expected them to magically show up. No, I advised my attorney as to what i saw and nobody else no just my attorney erica says that she deliberately kept the information from investigators i didn't trust them they've never given me a reason to trust them daniel always told me how they always had each other's backs. She never loses her cool, but Alivezos makes it clear for the jury what he thinks of her story.

That's a disgusting lie. To make you feel Daniel's not worth a murder charge. To defile him as a human being. That is the sole purpose of it. But what will the jury do with the information? Will they believe Erica? Will they feel sorry for her and find her guilty of something less

than first-degree murder? In his closing arguments, Erica's attorney, Dan Chambers, puts the blame on both Erica and Daniel. Tied together, he says, by a traumatic bond that is difficult to understand. Both are victims and both are aggressors. On November 20th, 2019, the case went to the jury. On November 20th, 2019, the case went to the jury. After four long days of deliberations, they tell the trial judge they're done.

They are hopelessly deadlocked. I am going to declare this trial as a mis-trial. A mistrial. Deadlocked 11 to 1, with one single juror refusing to convict Erica of murder in the first degree. Three of the jurors agreed to discuss that pulled-out juror. It became evident that day after day, hour after hour, that she wasn't going to waver. And then the reality of a hung jury started to sink in.

And she just never gave much reasoning behind why she felt the way she did. Tensions just got high and they started yelling at each other and they were getting emotionally involved. The one juror refused to budge even as her fellow jurors raised doubts about Erica's story about finding that child porn. There was never any picture that we saw. You can tell she obviously lied on the stand and I think a lot of the trial was spent by the defense not defending her but rather attacking Daniel. I think every juror had empathy for her. They also had empathy for him. We saw just how vindictive or forceful that she was towards him.

And why is she still staying there? Why is he still staying there? These are the same questions we all have. Why were Daniel and Erica still sleeping together? Could anyone have intervened? Erica is alive, but she's lost everything. She's lost her son, her freedom, her future. Although she wasn't convicted this time around,

she will remain in prison until she's tried again for the first-degree murder of the man she says she once loved. It'll never heal. Ever. Daniel's son, Aiden, is almost 10 and is now living with a man who is the spitting image of his dad, Matt. You're raising Daniel's son. Was that a tough decision? No, I don't know.

The least that I could do is make sure that he knew how much his father loved him. I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 Hours, and that's my life of crime. This podcast series is developed by 48 Hours in partnership with CBS News Radio. Judy Tigard is 48 Hours' executive producer. Jonathan Clark is CBS News Radio executive producer. Production and editing for this season of My Life of Crime by Alan Pang. This episode was also produced by Polarosa and Cat Turfs of 48 Hours.

Craig Swagler is vice president and general manager of CBS News Radio. And finally, a thank you to all of you, our listeners. We owe it all to you, the millions of 48 Hours fans. Don't forget to join me online. I'm at EF Moriarty on Twitter. And we're at 48 Hours on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I'll be talking to you soon.