Anatomy of Murder - A Deal to Die For

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

A specialty car and motorcycle loving couple disappears. Did they take off for life on the road or did their disappearance signify something much darker?For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Missing persons reports are really, really common. That being said, there are some that, you know, raise the hair on the back of the neck test, basically. And this was one of those. The random crime is the scariest for everybody. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. So today, you know, we're going back into the world of cold cases,

and I think everyone out there pretty much has a good idea of what a cold case is, but I always think there are certain questions. What do you think, Scott, that most people have questions about when it comes to cold cases? Why they go cold. And also, I think people believe the word cold case is a bad thing. It's a negative. You know, years ago, they developed specific cold case units, and it gives detectives an opportunity to put a fresh pair of eyes on these cases. Not only do police have cold case units, but isn't it true, Anasika, that prosecutor's

office have cold case prosecutors? And that's what we have here. For this case, I spoke to a cold case prosecutor by the name of Nicole Green, and she's from Pima County, Arizona. If you don't know where that is, it's Tucson and the surrounding areas in Arizona. And specifically, she worked on a case of a disappearance of a couple, two people by the name of Kathy Nelson and Chuck Russell.

Both Kathy and Chuck were just regular people. She lived in a nice house in Phoenix with Chuck, and they had been in a relationship for a good amount of time. They weren't married, but they were happy. Chuck was a fun-loving guy, recently divorced, and found a new love in Kathy. So Chuck worked for a medical supply company.

He made really good money. And he enjoyed motorcycles, classic cars. He had four motorcycles in his garage. He had just sold a classic Mustang. Now, I'm going to just put it out there in no uncertain terms, Scott. I am positive that you are the one between us who knows more about cars and, you know, choppers, if you will, between us. I do love the old classic cars. And, you know, his passion wasn't really the kind of passion that built these vehicles.

He would love to buy them, display them, go to those classic car shows or the classic motorcycle shows, polish them up, go out there and show them off, and then eventually flip them as sort of a side business. And his car was pretty distinctive for someone seeing it. Chuck had a really nice Ford F-150. I'm kind of a car gal, truck gal myself, and it's red. It's a head turner. It's a special edition.

It's a nice looking truck, and it was red. It's a head turner. It's a special edition. It's a nice looking truck and it was fairly new. It's one that would stand out. But also fortunately for Chuck, his longtime live-in girlfriend shared his passion. Kathy, at one point in time, had her own motorcycle.

She really wasn't much of a car enthusiast when they first met, but after seven years together, she really developed a passion equally to Chuck's for cars and motorcycles, so it was a great thing for them to do together. And just a little background on Kathy. She was, in 2002, she was 42 years old. She came from a large family. She had a number of siblings. They were, by all accounts, very close. She had a really good job.

She worked at the county recorder's office. And on Wednesday, February 6, 2002, her boss noticed that she hadn't shown up for work in not one but two days, and that was not like her at all. I mean, most of the people at her office said that she was as dependable as they come. So after the second day, they were really, really concerned. So what they decided to do was an interesting step, to call Phoenix police and ask them to do what we call a welfare check.

It is exactly what it sounds like. It is police go out there just checking if someone's okay. You know, no one knows if anything is wrong or maybe someone is sick or maybe they had an accident or maybe there is something, nothing wrong at all. Phoenix Police Department did enter the home through a dog door and found no evidence of a struggle. Everything looked fine, you know, just the way you would expect a house to be.

No signs of a struggle. But there was something interesting. Their dog Desmo was inside, but the only thing that seemed a little off came to the dog. The dog was home and there had been some evidence that the dog had kind of messed in the house, which was really uncommon if Chuck and Kathy were going to be gone more than just a matter of hours. They would normally board their dog if they were going to be gone for a matter of days. He had no food. In fact, Anastasia, the neighbors were so concerned, they dropped some food over the fence.

While the officer was walking through the house, he noticed two other things. Kathy's pocketbook, which was left in the bathroom, her wallet was not inside. But he also noticed a flashing answering machine and determined that there were several days of messages that had gone unretrieved. But unfortunately, we know that things like this do happen from time to time. Not an excuse, but not necessarily any sign of foul play. So right away, police are just wanting to know, well, okay, Kathy's not here, but where's Chuck? There were some really big concerns for foul play, even though there was no sign of a struggle in the house.

And the interesting thing is, is that Phoenix PD, they now got a second call into them. And this time, not for Kathy, but for Chuck. He, too, had not shown up for work for two days. So now the investigation clearly is heating up to where Chuck and Kathy are. And ultimately, they were told that they recently were involved in the sale of one of Chuck's Mustangs.

The timing of that was very close to their disappearance. Could this, could this transaction have anything to do with the sale of that car? The people that responded to the ad, each of those people were called and interviewed. They found the buyer was from California. That buyer had paid $15,500 in cash. And they also found out something interesting, that two other buyers had been interested and that one of them had been planning to visit that same previous weekend and that that person was supposed to show up on February 3rd

and that Chuck had sold the car before, but never reached that person to let them know that the car was gone. Did that transaction lead to the disappearance? So police did a quick job of finding out all of the parties involved, and police were able to locate the buyer, and his story checked out. They actually found the guy that bought the Mustang. And he had been back in, I think, San Diego by the time that Chuck and Kathy disappeared on that Saturday. So now police looked at all of the potential buyers and they all checked out. This couple was just gone and they were looking for any all information they could get about where Chuck and Kathy might be. And they quickly got a phone call and it was from a guy who owned a local motorcycle shop.

And he said that the beginning of the weekend that Chuck and Kathy had come in, they came to buy tie downs, and they had talked about leaving to go buy a Ducati motorcycle over in Tucson. So I don't know that much about motorcycles, but I know that Ducati is a brand that attracts, you know, a certain segment of the population. They're generally more expensive kind of motorcycle. Now, Ducati motorcycle, I actually had to look it up because I'd never heard of one before. They are apparently very, very special bikes. They look fast because they are fast. There's not a lot of them around. In this particular case, the motorcycle that Chuck was interested in was somewhat of a special

edition. There were only a handful that would have been delivered to Arizona for sale. Chuck told the motorcycle shop owner that he saw a newspaper ad that a guy was selling one of these bikes for $12,000 in cash. And the motorcycle shop owner said, well, that's a pretty good deal because I would turn around and sell that 2002 bike for $15,000. So right there, you've got yourself a good deal. You know, when I looked up these Ducatis, they are known as the Ferrari of motorcycles. They are manufactured in Italy. Their claim to fame is that they are manufactured by people. And for a car guy like Chuck, this was going to really be a feather in his cap. And so by all accounts, he was really excited to go get these bikes. The deal was supposed to be cash, but

Chuck told the owner that he was actually going to get a cashier's check. So that is a really, really solid lead for investigators. And you know why, Anastasia. Well, because when you have a check, it's going to be made out to somebody. Who was the check made out to? And sure enough, they got a name. Tony Nantieri. But hold the handcuffs for a second. Because when police called the Tucson paper to determine, did Tony Nantieri actually take that ad out?

Is there a connection between the cashier's check and the ad? They immediately reach out to the newspaper only to learn that the ad was taken out by somebody else. The detectives, when they went to Chuck and Kathy's house, they actually found an ad there. All right, who put this ad in the Arizona Republic? So police are hot on the trail trying to get information on this newspaper ad, and they're not getting one names. They are getting multiple.

You know, they looked into Tony and Terry. That was a strikeout. There were a couple of different names involved in the placement of this ad. Now they look into who purchased the money order, and the ad came from someone by the name of Jose Hernandez. They look at the phone number that was used to purchase that ad in the newspaper, and it comes back to another name, Richard Miranda. And that has a completely different address than the two before. So at this point, you know, who are these three people? Either they're three people that are all connected together, or they're one person using three fake names.

Police really have to take three different paths to determine which one could be the actual person. There were multiple phone numbers, multiple names involved in the placement of that ad. We can't figure out who placed that ad. And then, of course, we had the name Tony Nantari. That name doesn't exist anywhere in this country, either as Tony, Antonio, the analysts looked at all different variations of that name and could not find anybody named that anywhere. There is no such person in the United States with that name, which I found interesting. I mean, I'm kind of used to my name, Anastasia Nikolasi, being, you know, there's not too many of us around. But Tony Nantari, there isn't even a person that exists by that name. So they were getting nowhere fast. But the most disappointing portion of that

was the phone number that was used in that ad, in that Tucson newspaper for the Ducati motorcycle, came back to a burner phone. Everything resulted in a dead end and following phone numbers, following names, following addresses, it was a fake ad. Does it lead to murder? Who knows? I think when people think about the Internet, they're used to at this point thinking about scams and catfishing

and tracing the source of when people are putting things for sale that it may not be all that appears. But somehow to me, when you think about someone placing a newspaper ad, it somehow harkens back to more innocent times. And it's almost surprising, at least at the outset, that it would be so much harder to trace back to the source of that ad. But like you said, Scott, everywhere they looked, they were getting nowhere. You don't have to show up to the newspaper office to actually place the ad. And there were fake names being used, a number of phone numbers, a number of addresses. And remember here, we are in the middle of a missing persons investigation. So how does a missing persons case mix with a potential scam?

It sounds like more and more, they are connected. And things started to look worse and worse for Chuck and Kathy. But a day before they reported missing, police in Tucson, which is over 100 miles away, police there got a break. We were talking about, remember in the beginning, about Chuck's red Ford truck? Well, police located it abandoned at a church parking lot in Tucson, Arizona. A teacher called in and reported that the truck had been there for a couple of days. The doors are unlocked. There's no keys.

They notice a motorcycle helmet inside. There's magazines sitting in the passenger side. Inside the glove compartment, there's a checkbook with the cashier's check receipt and a.38 caliber gun. And that gun by his family said that he kept that.38 for protection, and in Arizona, that's a very common thing. They did not locate the motorcycle ties borrowed by Chuck.

One of the first things they did was process for fingerprints. Inside the truck, there were no prints. Where you would expect prints, there weren't any, as if the inside of the truck was potentially wiped down. Which is really interesting because your prints are going to be inside your car, whether you'd been there a day before or a year before, but there was nothing on those areas. But it didn't stop them from looking further. They did locate DNA. Swabs from the driver's side armrest, the turn signal, the passenger door, the driver's seat knob, and then the passenger seat knob tested. And there were mixtures.

People hear DNA and they say, oh, if there's a crime, it's going to be solved, but not so fast because there's so many complexities with DNA. You know, was it a full profile? Was it a mixture? And basically what that means that there is at least one other person involved. So sometimes they have a partial profile. Sometimes they have a full profile. And what they found here really ran the gamut. But the most important thing, at least for that moment for investigators, was that they ran it through CODIS. And no match at all. A dead end. And after a while, the case just went cold.

You have a couple that disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving only their truck behind. That doesn't happen very often in Arizona. It doesn't happen very often in Arizona. It doesn't happen very often in Phoenix even. Missing persons investigations, generally, the person turns up alive. And that was clearly not the case in this situation. For Chuck and Kathy's family, their two loved ones were gone. They were starting to think that there would never be justice for Chuck and Kathy.

I mean, they had absolutely zero doubt that they were dead. For years, police had a real cold case in their hands. No leads, no movement until 2009, when that DNA found in Chuck's truck got a hit. And the name that came back was not Hernandez, Miranda, or Natari. It was somebody else. The DNA that police recovered from Chuck's vehicle came back to a Brian Ferry. Police clearly wanted to know, how is he connected in all of this?

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they did not talk to Brian Ferry. And then they essentially let the case go cold once again in 2009. I don't know about all of you out there, but I certainly paused at that. It was certainly something that I was like, well, why? Certainly, if you had an opportunity early on to sit Brian Ferry down, what would the investigators really want to ask him? They had no body, still no sign of Chuck or Kathy. So really outside of Ferry's DNA located inside of Chuck's truck, does it make sense to question

him now? So potentially, one of the reasons were they were waiting to build more evidence, a better or clearer picture of what we're dealing here with. And until they can do that, you bring them in, you show your cards, and if you bring them back again for a second interview, you may have then prepared him on what he should say to protect himself. I think it's a really good point

because they always want to be armed with as much information as they can before they sit someone down and have that interview because it may be the only time they ever get to talk to that person at all. And so that's really kind of what happened, although it took some years, until the case really kind of got hot again. And that was when a former detective by the name of Calvin Fuller, who was then working

at the Pima County DA's office, he pulled up the case, started to look through it, and really started to do a deep dive into Brian Ferry. And he found out that on three occasions, he had stolen vehicles. Brian Ferry had stolen some cars in the past. He would respond to ads where cars were put up for sale. Three occasions convinced the people who were selling the vehicles to let him test drive it, and he drove away and left them in parking lots after having run them through a car wash and wiping them down. And it wasn't just cars. It was homes.

He had been involved in what they call home scams, where he would rent a home that he really didn't own, and he would take the money and get away. It's starting to become more and more apparent that there's a definite connection of not just his DNA being involved in this case. It's his M.O. It's his modus operandi, how he operated his scams that could have led to something a lot more dangerous. I mean, we know we have a scammer, but let's not forget,

we still don't have any evidence of murder. They don't even have a body, not one, let alone two. So Brian Perry was an interesting individual. He was highly organized, almost in an OCD way. He worked out all the time using steroids. He had no male friends. He tended to be interested in women who were somewhat vulnerable. So is Brian Ferry Tony Natari? Does he match that type of M.O.? The one thing we do know about him

is that he's a con man, and certainly in the world of homicide, I've seen my share of con man-turned-murderers. And there's one common theme about them, or at least that I've seen, is that they are savvy, they're calm, and they almost always appear confident. But then you have to ask yourself, does this guy in particular, Brian Ferry, does this sound like the type of person who would kill a couple? If he was desperate, if the transaction went bad, it seems like the personality could fit.

They had looked at him as far back as 2002 for a specific scam where he rented out a house for Section 8, which is subsidized housing, and he took the fee for a credit card so he could do the check. And then that was it. He was never heard from again. Detective Fuller found out that there were detectives that actually went to Brian Ferry's house in February of 2002. And Brian Ferry had been interviewed and he actually said he and his dad had just ripped up the carpet in that house. There was kind of no reason to mention that when they're looking at a credit card scam. So is that just a throwaway line about something that happened? Or was it evidence of something else?

They were not looking for anything related to Chuck or Kathy. They were simply doing a fraud investigation. And there was no reason to suspect Brian Ferry at that time of anything related to Chuck and Kathy's disappearance. A lot of times we gloss over dates because they're just that and they're maybe not so relevant, but this is a really important one to highlight. Because remember, Kathy and Chuck are last seen February 2nd, 2002.

They're reported missing by the 5th and the 6th. Police are hot on that trail. This house fraud, police start deep diving into that February 2002. And now Detective Fuller wanted to go back to that house and check it out. He wanted to determine whether the disappearance of Chuck and Kathy ended in that home. And a house gives you a location. And a location could bring you evidence. They don't still have a body. You know, we're talking about Arizona. We're talking about, you know, the surrounding portions

of the house where someone could potentially bury a body. Nothing's off the table. Detective Fuller had gone to the house where Brian Ferry had lived back in February of 2002. He goes and makes contact with the couple that had purchased the house. So police investigation is focusing in the interior of this home and really getting permission from the current homeowner to determine if any violent crime occurred at this house. Detective Fuller, he gets into that house. He starts to look.

There appeared to be some holes that were patched up in the walls. He goes so far as to start ripping up pieces of the walls. He actually gets into the drywall. So now they start cutting sections out. They also found a bullet that was between the studs in the wall. And they find a.45 caliber H&K bullet. This is a very powerful round shot from a very powerful weapon. But now the important question is, can you link any of that back to Brian Ferry?

And the answer, interestingly, was yes. So Brian Ferry actually had a.45 caliber H&K pistol. He had purchased it in 2001 and then sold it. And it was all on paper. It was all paper trail with the proper forms. And when they started to look, there's also a.45 caliber rifle, but that they could link to a friend of his. And then in early 2002, he had a female acquaintance purchase a.45 caliber H&K rifle. Either of those two.45 caliber H&Ks would have been capable of firing the bullet that was found in the drywall between the studs. Not sure how it happened, but ended up having zero paper trail because the information filled out by the gun store had the wrong serial number on it. Is there enough evidence to say that Ferry had a.45, be it a pistol or a rifle, at the time of the shooting?

The prosecutor, to me, says no. Everywhere that Detective Fuller was looking, arrows kept pointing at Brian Ferry, I think I'd know the answer. I would say, it's great, let's get on it, but we're certainly not charging or going to court. Remember, there's still no bodies to prove murder, nor is there any actual evidence to say that if there was foul play, that it was at the hands of Brian Ferry. So once again, they're left with just the papers in the box. So this is where this case takes its most unusual turn. It's 2014, six years later, which is 13 years after Chuck and Kathy disappeared, when a man walked into the police station. He's in there because he had had an argument

with his then significant other. And so he was in there to tell the police he was going to turn himself in. And so while he's talking about that altercation, he starts to walk down his life and he's saying, you know, I'm having a rough time. I'm kind of at the end of my rope on all sorts of things. But also that his conscience was bothering him.

And that's when he got very specific and told the police that he wanted to get off his chest, something that his son had said to him years back. What do you want to talk to us about? Well, there was a disappearance of two people in Pima County around 1998 to 2000. Okay. I don't know their names. They were maybe 1998 to 2000. Okay. I don't know their names. They were maybe husband and wife. Okay.

Maybe boyfriend and girlfriend. I don't know. They were in their 40s. But I have information on that. Okay, sir. So you said you have information that referenced two missing people? Yeah, and also the murder of them. It was my son murdered two people.

And I just want to come clean and let you know about it. What is your son's name? Brian. B-R-I-A-N. Sorry. This is the recorded exchange between investigators and John Ferry, Brian Ferry's father. How do you know that your son is the one that murdered those two people? No, he told me. In 2002, his son had called him to come to that very home.

You know, the one where they found the bullet holes in the wall and the carpet had been pulled up? His son had asked him to help him dispose of what he thought was large palm tree trunks wrapped in tarps. I helped them bury the two bodies. Yeah, they were thrown into the dump, the city dump over there. Did you ever see anything while you were loading that up that looked the two bodies. Yeah, they were thrown into the dump, to sit and dump over there. Did you ever see anything while you were loading that up? They look like two bodies? No, not at all. Not at all.

So the huge question looming out there now is, is he telling the truth? Is the father telling the police the truth about the son? We certainly have seen crazier things that someone, maybe he doesn't like his son, maybe he's having issues with his son, maybe they're having money problems. And he knows that his son has been looked at maybe for things over the years. So this is a way to really kind of do him in. It sounds horrible for a parent to do to a child, but we all know that crazier things or worse things have happened before. And then, if it is Brian Ferry that said it, and if he talked about killing two people,

are those two people Kathy and Chuck? They were from either... You know, I couldn't get any information. The deceased couple were either from Las Vegas or the Phoenix area. And did they drive down to town? Yes, they drove down. Do you know what they drove?

They drove a truck. As investigators, when we get information like this, we're sitting back and thinking, oh, this is solid. We love this. This is firsthand testimony of what the alleged killer said to somebody else, and now they're telling us what they heard, right? But clearly, there could be other motivations. But when I first watched his interview, I really believed what he was saying was absolutely true. He didn't walk in and say, hey, I'm going to tell you something about my son. He was actually there about something completely unrelated. He was there to turn himself in for a fight with his significant

other. And only in showing his upset with the state of his life and all these things that were really weighing on him, that he then got around and saying, you know what, I'm in here telling you all these things. Let me just finish baring my soul. I have to tell you something that my son told me and that he actually may have gotten me unknowingly on my part involved in too. That really strikes me as having those threads of credibility that as a prosecutor, together with all the other evidence, it strikes me as enough. So now 13 years later, it is now officially classified as a homicide. But still no bodies recovered. I decided that there was enough information to go ahead and charge Brian Ferry with the murder of Chuck and Kathy.

I had absolutely no doubt that they were dead. The tough part was proving that they are dead. So Anastasia, walking into court, what's the prosecutor's frame of mind of prosecuting a case without bodies? We do it more than you think. And I myself, in all the cases I handled, I never had a no body case. But certainly as a supervisor in the Homicide Bureau, I handled plenty and supervised the investigations over and over. But really what the challenge to prosecutors is that you now have something extra to prove. So in a no body case, the additional hurdle is that, you know,

in any other murder case, the death of the victim is obvious. In a no body case, number one, you don't have that element already built in or you don't have anybody to say, yes, I saw these people and they were deceased. And then I have also the inability to answer the question, how were they killed? You have to prove that the murder occurred. I mean, that's usually the obvious. You have the body and then you have to prove how it happened and who did it, but you know it happened. Here, you first have to prove it happened. And how you do that is really by circumstantial evidence. It's really kind of often follow the money. Certainly in these day and ages, people have all sorts of financial transactions. You can show ATM receipts. Are they taking money

in and out of the bank? Is their credit card being used? What about contact with family and friends? Have they shown up for their job? Have they gone to visit their kids or even called them on the phone? So there's all these different things that we look for. And when you end up coming up with dead end, dead end, dead end, no, no, no. Eventually it proves one thing. That that person is gone and it's not voluntarily. On one hand, you know, I had to produce evidence to prove that they were dead. But the benefit in this particular case was showing the jury who they were, because we don't very often get to talk about the victims in terms of their jobs and their personalities, and we don't get to call their family members generally to talk about their plans for the future and things like that.

So on one hand, it does make it more difficult. On the other, we hardly ever get to talk about that. And in this case, that was a benefit, quite frankly. But at the end of the day, we have no idea the specific mechanism for their death. Now you have to prove a cause of death, and you don't have that. We usually can say this was by strangulation, this was by blunt trauma. You didn't have that here. So again, they had to prove that it was suspicious, that it was a crime. And also, they started to do that circumstantially. And that goes back to, Scott, the bullet holes in the wall that you were talking

about before. But also a big step, Anna Segal, would be motive. So what would be the motive for this double homicide? I think that Nicole Green really laid it out well when she put together the pieces to say what most likely would have happened and the jury really could see is the only thing that common sense tell you did happen. So on February 2nd, Chuck had seen the ad in the Arizona Republic for the Ducati motorcycle, saw that it was a good deal, and decided that he was going to call that phone number. He called that phone number, and Brian Ferry was on the other end. Brian Ferry used a fake name, that name being Tony Mentari. And so the deal was $12,000 cash. They drive down here. Chuck made two calls

on his cell phone once in Tucson to the number in the ad that were very, very quick, as if he were saying, I'm here or I'm outside or something to that effect. Brian Perry lived in a house that had a garage. The garage door was shut. Maybe it was open. But the fact of the matter is, is there was no motorcycle. Chuck and Kathy went in the house. At some point in time, Chuck learned that there was no motorcycle. Or maybe Brian discovered that there was no cash, that it was a cashier's check that was completely useless because it was filled out to a person that didn't exist. There was something that happened in that house where Brian discharged the gun at least two times, killing Chuck and Kathy.

I do believe that Chuck and Kathy were then put in the landfill. I'm not convinced that John Ferry helped him with that. Brian Ferry took the truck, drove it, not knowing anything about DNA, wiping the inside clean of where he would have left his print, and then went about his way. And as much of a challenge as it is for the prosecutor here in this case about not having the bodies, potentially it is an angle for the defense, right?

Oh, absolutely. If I was the defense attorney here, I would go in there and say, hey, these were two people that had these nine to five office jobs and they just wanted to be a couple of free birds. They now are living some sort of romantic lifestyle off in the Caribbean, for all we know,

or riding their bikes on the highways from state to state. You can't prove otherwise. And while you might think that they're dead and you might think that something went wrong with my client, Brian Fair, you might think that he killed them. You just don't know. And that that doesn't equal proof beyond reasonable doubt. And if that's the case, then you have to acquit him. I mean, that would certainly be my argument as the defense. The jury definitely wrestled with those decisions. I mentioned to the jury, murder is not a spectator event. People don't kill people in front of others. Common sense tells you in a circumstantial case if someone's guilty or not. The only common sense explanation for what happened to Chuck and Kathy was that Brian Ferry killed them. And the first trial was a mistrial. And Nicole explains that really well too. And what she saw

as the place that she wanted to kind of fix what she saw as going wrong is that she started out by opening the case by saying, well, we're never really going to know who placed the ads, but it came back to all these different names. And what she realized later is like, no, of course we know who placed it. It was Brian Ferry on paper. We don't have his name. But circumstantially, we know by all the evidence it was him. And so that she changed that when she tried it the second time around. She added in some evidence.

She had the money order that was used to get that ad in the paper originally. And when it was analyzed, the analyst said that the money order that was used to get that ad in the paper originally. And when it was analyzed, the analyst said that the money order showed that it was very deliberate and slow, the type of thing that investigators often look about when people are writing ransom notes or going into a bank, writing a note, that they're trying to disguise their true handwriting. She really thought that that made all the difference the second time around. And the jury agreed.

The jury convicted Brian Ferry of two counts of first-degree murder. But that's not the end of the story here, because before sentencing in June, something happened. And this time, to Brian Ferry. Prior to sentencing, Brian Ferry committed suicide. He hung himself in the county jail. And as a prosecutor, and really just as a citizen, that is infuriating. The thing is, is in this particular case, that family had waited for so long just to get to the point that they could talk about how this has impacted their lives. And he literally stole that opportunity from them. And I was mad. I was very upset.

And something else that Nicole Green had to worry about is that in certain states that sometimes if someone commits suicide before a sentencing, what that ends up doing is actually making that case go away, that the verdict, the case is just dismissed. It came up, you all might remember the case of Aaron Hernandez. That was something that when he committed suicide had to be looked at, too, for his case. And so Nicole Green, she did her homework and found out very quickly that in Arizona that wasn't the case, but she wanted to make sure that she could at least have that part of final closure, that while he took his own life, that Brian Ferry died a convicted felon for the murder of Chuck and Kathy. This case is done. It's over. There's no appeal. You know, it also is some element of closure for the family. You know, for investigators, they made every attempt to locate Kathy and Chuck. My suspicion that they are in the landfill

because the landfill is a place that someone could dump bodies and they never be found. A detective did go out once John Ferry came forward to the landfill and basically discovered that it would have been impossible to find them 13 years later, 14 years later. I want to just end for a moment talking about Nicole Green. You know, the fact that I get paid to do this job, sometimes it's like I would do it anyways in a case like this.

They are just really, really good people and didn't deserve to have this happen to them. And I'm just really, really super happy that I was able to get justice for them. Nicole Green, she did this for two families and for two people. And I'm sure that sense of closure for her was priceless. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is Executive Producer.