Anatomy of Murder - Nightmare Next Door (Kristin Scarabelli)

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

The family, community and police are convinced that a strange neighbor is behind the murder of teen girl. But a phone call confession urges detectives to look in a different direction. 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

The bottom line to this case was that people could have done something, and they didn't. 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. When I saw today's case on the AOM interview list, I just thought to myself, oh no, I remember that one well. You know, cases grab us for different reasons. And beyond the what of this one, it is definitely the where. As the case recovery today developed, I was a reporter at the NBC station here in New York City, and the story

did receive intense media coverage. It took place in Suffolk County, which is on Long Island in New York, which is where I grew up. And I think when things like this happen close to home, they impact us differently. My name is Douglas Mercer, Suffolk County, New York, Homicide Squad. It was Mother's Day, 1996. Detective Douglas Mercer was celebrating the day as he normally did, which was cooking for his mom and his wife, his mother-in-law. But today, those plans would dramatically change. So we got called out to this person who was missing, and then we picked it up.

Then there was another family, the Scarabellis, who had different plans for that Mother's Day. Victor and his wife, Charlene, had four children. Each of the kids was doing their own thing that day while the parents had gone up to Rhode Island. They had a house up there, so they wanted to open the house up for the summer. So they did, and they were going to celebrate Mother's Day when they came home. When they came back home around midnight, their youngest daughter, Kristen, who was 16 years old, wasn't home. At first, they thought she had already gone to bed or perhaps spending the night at a friend's house. They saw a note said something about her friend Mara, and they didn't want to disturb her because they thought she was sleeping. But they later realized that, in fact, was not the case.

The next day, Monday, she wasn't home. And that's when they panicked and realized that she hadn't been home all night. Almost as soon as police realized they had a missing teenager on their hands, investigators were called in. And almost as soon as they got to the home, Victor told investigators what he had noticed that seemed off to him in his house. The father noticed that on the staircase going up to the second floor, there had been a towel on the staircase.

And that towel was at the top of the staircase when he left. It was now at the bottom of the staircase when he left. It was now at the bottom of the staircase. So that to him was odd. Other than that, there was no disturbance in the house. You know, to me, Anna Seager, right off the top, there are three obvious theories here. Is she just off with her friends and intentionally not reaching out to her parents? Or is she missing under suspicious circumstances? Or is she missing because she was actually abducted from inside her home? And that theory is based on how the towel was positioned within that stairwell. What do you think? I don't know. That towel to me, I think it's one of those things that I didn't think that

much of it when I first saw it. Something I would take note of and maybe revisit it later, figuring out, you know, if it had anything to do with something sinister, once we knew what happened to Kristen. No, they thought she was missing, but they didn't like the fact that she was missing. They felt that there was something seriously wrong, that she wouldn't just go missing like this. To understand how to approach all of these theories is to know as much as you can about your victim. It's also known as victimology. We talk a lot about that on AOM. Kristen was a cheerleader in high school who took accelerated classes so that she could graduate a year early. And even though she was 16, she was only a month

away from saying goodbye to high school and starting the next phase of her life at the University of Georgia. And while right now she is a missing person, her family was already fearing the worst. They always have hope. They don't think of a dead person. Most people do have hope. And these parents had hope also. But with the hope comes the knowledge that deep down inside, they know something's wrong. And the Scarabelli family was quick to tell authorities who they were already suspicious of, and that was their next-door neighbor, Stephen Manolis. He was a strange character.

They felt he was always looking at her, he was watching her. Stephen was in his 40s and lived at home with his parents, and other neighbors had described him to police as someone who at times displayed odd behavior. Even published reports talked about the fact that he was a diagnosed schizophrenic who did continually display erratic behavior. He was like in his 40s, long stringy hair, very thin and very quirky. He would like run around talk to himself. Let's stop for a moment and just talk because we brought up one of which is definitely a mental health condition, which is the published reports of Manal suffering from schizophrenia. But, you know, here's one thing.

And I hearken back to something that an FBI profiler once said. that those diagnosed with schizophrenia are likely to cause violent crime, when in fact, in his experience, they are more often than not the victims of violent crimes. We questioned him that day, questioned his mom. When we went up to his room, the first day we were there to try and talk to him and he ran out. He wanted no part of us, so we left him alone. At the onset of this investigation, Kristen was a 16-year-old missing teen. And of course, the first goal here was to find her and bring her home safely. We did a complete search in the neighborhood. It was hands-on.

Everybody came down and searched for her. Neighbors gave us a lot of information about what possibly could have happened to her. Then we just started searching the neighborhood, through the door. But as they searched the neighborhood and canvassed the area, talking to different people that were willing to talk with them, it became more clear to them

that her disappearance at least looked sinister. We observed right away drag marks on the front lawn. If I threw you on the ground and dragged you along on grass, there'd be a line in the grass. So the line is what we found. It was just a line in grasses. That was all the way down at the end of the block. And then neighbors reported this. On the night Kristen was last seen, neighbors across the street heard a girl scream and a man shout,

shut up or I'll kill you. That was around 10.45 p.m. And neighbors also told police they thought they saw two people scuffling at around 11 p.m. just outside the Scarabelli's home. The neighbor across the street said, oh, yeah, I drove into my driveway that night and I saw one person on the ground across the street in that spot. You know, Scott, just for a second, let's stop. Because as soon as I read this, I was like, wait, why are they finding out about this now when they're now looking for this missing girl? How did nobody call the police that night when they heard that sort of commotion outside? Being in this profession, we've heard all types of reasons why people just don't want to get

involved. You know, maybe they thought there were a couple of their next door neighbors fighting. Maybe they thought it could have been a couple of teens who were joking around. It's important to realize that people do things that they're most comfortable with, and sometimes calling the police is not something they're comfortable with. I think this was a real turning point in the investigation. No longer was just a young teen who just ran away. This was now looking more like a potential abduction than this. Just between the front door and the street to the right of there, one button was found, three-hole button that was on the front lawn. It was a white button from a white shirt. You know, if we jump ahead and just assume at some

point this whole case is going to end up in a courtroom, like just picture what the defense does with that. You know, a button. What is more common than a small white button that is probably found on most button-down shirts? So I certainly would like to think that it leads somewhere. There's something pretty average and not special in and of itself, to me, at least for right now. But as an investigator, if you're at a crime scene like this, where it's potentially a crime scene, and you find something, that's better than finding nothing. And the investigation is definitely heating up. They now have various witness accounts of what took place the night before.

You have the drag marks. You have the button. So now to help find Kristen, police bring in one of Mann's best search tools, and that happens to be Mann's best friend. About two days later, recording canine. The drag marks are really important for another reason, one that I'm very familiar with as a former canine deputy myself. It's at that very spot that a police canine could potentially pick up a trail. The canine led investigators down the block near a chain link fence.

There was a large tree, something similar to a drought-tolerant evergreen tree. The dog indicated at the tree, and inside, behind the branches, the body of 16-year-old Kristen Scarabelli was located. And there were bags all around her, so you couldn't see her at all. We were with the parents. We got worried that they found her, so we had to tell the parents that they found her and she was not alive. And the father went nuts on us.

We had to hold him down. This is not a shock to them, but to hear those words come out, that we just found your daughter dead, that's the shock. The Scarabellis lived on a street normally bustling with children on bikes and well-decorated homes for the holidays. But in the days following this horrific murder, the streets were lined with TV news trucks, a community in fear that a killer was at large and possibly could be one of their neighbors. You got a 16-year-old girl that goes missing from her neighborhood and she's found down the block under a tree.

Certainly that means there's a killer in the neighborhood. They want to know where she's taken from the house. People wanted to know how she got there, who killed her. It shook the neighborhood big time. But they rallied around the Scarabellis. You know, there is something in a newspaper article that really talks about the chill that swept over this community. There was a student who talked about how everyone just sat in class quietly when they heard the news, so much so that you could hear a pin drop. And I just picture that that is exactly what is going on almost all over town.

At Kristen's funeral, 500 mourners packed the church. One article even mentioned that Kristen worked at a local fruit stand. And on that Sunday, she went to work so that another employee, a mother, could take the day off. And that's how Kristen spent her last day on earth. And so again, without ever having known her or met her, that one act tells us definitely something about her, because it goes to a young woman who has a caring, kind, and thoughtful nature. Let's go back to the find underneath that tree. Kristen was found naked from the waist down. Her pajama bottoms were folded neatly, stuffed up into her shirt.

And at that moment, her cause of death appeared to be strangulation, which was later confirmed by autopsy. She had on her pajamas, but she was naked from the waist down. Pajamas were folded up neatly, stuffed up under her shirt, which the top part of her pajamas were. So the pajamas were stuffed up under her shirt, and the bottom part of her was completely naked. We didn't know if she was raped or not, but she had been sexually abused. For police, they have to automatically start thinking, well, what type of killer are they dealing with? And here they know that there is a 16-year-old who was just going about her evening or into the night, and she is likely taken. Again, remember, there's the drag

marks. She is strangled. She is killed and also likely sexually assaulted. All of this leads in the direction of a predator, someone who may have been stalking the victim. Even more, may have been waiting for an opportunity with the intent to kill. Detective Doug Mercer knew what was at stake here. Emotions were high. As he pressed on for more information, more evidence, he began to interview family members, her friends, the neighbors. But there was another source of information. Within the first two days, we found her diary. It was typical girl stuff. Some of it was true, some of it wasn't.

But buried on those pages, written in her own words, was a secret about Kristen. It is always useful to find out as much as you can about your victim as possible. That family, friends, and the closest one to your victim can let you know about them. And then there's this type of insight that may actually come from the victim themselves in the form of a private diary. And you know, in cases when we get them, you know, of course, we're scouring them. We are reading every word hoping to uncover some clue in the case. And certainly the ones that I've had, that is unfortunately rarely the case, but it does give you a snapshot into their lives. And that is always helpful. I think when it comes to helping in a case, I've seen it mostly helpful in domestic violence cases. Unfortunately, it starts to paint a picture that the outside world maybe didn't really see.

But, you know, in Kristen's case, investigators uncovered another hidden facet of this young woman's life. The biggest aspect was the drug aspect. You know, here they did have a teen who was writing about experimenting or using narcotics. So again, that is now another path that investigators must go down. You know, that is at least potentially a motive because we all do know that narcotics, unfortunately, can often lead to bigger trouble. And during the investigation, Doug was able to uncover that Kristen's own brother may have been dabbling in drug sales. Here's the reason why that may be relevant. Could he have brought in some type of criminal element to the home that may have had access to Kristen?

We talked to the brother. We found coke in the brother's room. So we found out he was dealing cocaine. We talked to him. So we got the brother in and we talked to him. During that talk, that conversation, he swore to us that he had nothing to do with it, that none of his friends had anything to do with this. And we kind of believed him. So police do want to dig more. And to do that, they're going to try to speak with Kristen's friends.

And they started with her best friend, Mara, because she was actually with Kristen that Sunday night while the rest of the family was away. Mara lays out the timeline of her last moments with Kristen. And according to Mara, the two spent most of the evening together. And Kristen dropped Mara off at home about 1030. Remember, it was about 1045 to 11 when neighbors heard the screams and another spotted two people scuffling just outside the home. So based on what investigators are getting from Mara, it is likely that she was the last person to see Kristen alive. At least that's before the killer.

But, you know, with Mara, she was not an open book, and it definitely wasn't easy for investigators to get information from her. You got to understand something. These kids at the time did not trust us. They didn't like the police. They didn't trust us. They kind of like refused to talk to us because they thought we were trying to get into

other bad behavior aspects of their lives. You know, Anastasia, as you know, in any murder investigation, especially of a high school age student, the amount of others that they interact with on a daily basis can be challenging for investigators. When you go to school with several hundreds of other students, it's difficult to determine how many people they had within their circle and who may know what.

Depending on the size of the high school, and from what I remember, Northport was a large high school. You know, this could really add on to such an extra amount of work because the potential pool of suspects is that much greater. There was one classmate that did stand out to investigators. His name was Jimmy Marr. Jimmy Marr was a classmate of hers, and apparently they had gone out a few times. Marr was trying to get with her, so he looked at him.

As investigators found more about that relationship, the short-lived relationship became more alarming, and Marr definitely did not take the breakup well. He had, like, you know, threatened her a few times when they broke up or whatever, so we wanted to talk to him also. Friends of Kristen told police that Jimmy blamed her for driving his girlfriend away from him, and that he wanted to assault Kristen. And when it came to answering Doug's questions while Jimmy was willing to talk, it did take several requests to come into the station for the one-on-one sit-down. We talked to Jimmy Ma like years later

when he agreed to talk to us. But when you talk to him later on, he's fine. He didn't want to get implicated. He said, yeah, he was going out with her. He was infatuated with her. But then that was it. It was typical 16-year-old stuff. So, you know, it comes down to, is Jimmy Moore someone that should be on police radar? And the answer is, of course, yes. You know, until he's ruled out, he has to still be in. It doesn't make him responsible for anything. But until they know the who and who is the definitely not,

they need to keep all these potential people in the mix. For Doug, he felt the time would be better spent focusing on their number one suspect, who was Steven Manolis. We had nothing on him to bring him in to question him. There was nothing to link him to this case other than the drag marks that we found to his garage area. But that doesn't mean it's him. There was nothing to link him to this case other than the drag marks that we found to his garage area. But that doesn't mean it's him. Digging deeper, Doug found out that Stephen Manolis had a record and was on probation for grand larceny. And in New York, grand larceny is the charge applied to thefts that are considered more serious because of the value of the property

over $1,000. It also includes stealing a firearm, a credit card, or even a vehicle. And when they found out he was on probation, they actually learned a bit more. And that is that on multiple occasions when probation had gone to see him at his home, that according to probation officers and what's been reported, the parents actually shielded him and always said that Steven Manolis wasn't home. And it really left probationers not with much information. But unfortunately, rather than following up, eventually they just gave up. So finally probation gave up and said, how would it, he's not doing anything, leave him alone. And they let it go. But Bob was definitely protecting him. Another missed opportunity, apparently, Anastasia.

Yeah. There's a reason that people are supposed to be checked on when they are on probation and parole. And that is to kind of make sure people are on the straight and narrow and hopefully all involved, whether it is the probationee themselves or family members, they should want that too to kind of right their wrongs and kind of get themselves back on the right path. It is pretty well established that at this point, Manolis is a strong person of interest, but to take it to a point of charging him with Kristen's murder, investigators definitely needed more. Because really, what do they have right now?

As a prosecutor, I'm saying basically nothing. They have drag marks, which are interesting and maybe become much bigger later. They have a button that isn't leading anywhere. But that's it. You know, what about the garbage bags? Can they tie the garbage bags that were near Kristen back to the home? Is there maybe some sort of evidence inside his home now while they're not there yet, but that somewhere down the road that they can get inside and at least check?

You know, I don't really see anything right now that is clear evidence that is going to be proof against him in a courtroom. You got to remember something. Back then, DNA was not an option. We had no proof of anything for her. You know, all we have is saliva marks. So, you know, we didn't have DNA. We didn't have any indication or anything connecting Manolis to her.

So to talk to him was ridiculous because he wasn't willing to talk to us. Let me put it that way. Over years, years, Detective Mercer and his partners tried to generate more information about Manolis, and that entailed building a birdhouse. That's right, a birdhouse. Yeah, we built the birdhouse on the spot where the button was found. And in the birdhouse, a photo of Kristen. And just behind that, a hidden camera. We were hoping that he would come and talk to it. And say something to her, like, I'm sorry I killed you. I'm sorry I did this.

I'm sorry I did that. That's just a fantastic way of at least trying to gather evidence. It is crafty. It is definitely not the norm. I've never heard about the birdhouse as a way to try to get someone on tape, if you will. And again, you know, it's just in a way like different enough that just maybe it's going to work. You know, it's one of my favorite things about doing the stories that we do, Anastasia, is seeing the creative side of so many members of law enforcement, hoping their prime suspect

sticks his head into that birdhouse and hope he begins to talk to her picture, perhaps even admitting the murder. It's pretty ingenious. Here, the but is that it didn't work. Manolis pretty quickly spotted the camera. He too, pretty smart, took his flashlight, was shining it on the picture and could presumably see the camera on the other side,

the lens, and so he burnt it out. So we tried other things where we put out other items on the lawn with cameras on them, and he burnt those lenses out. So we stopped doing that. Investigators are getting nowhere with proving that Steven Manolis killed Kristen Scarabelli. But maybe that's because he didn't do it. Maybe he's innocent. But during that time he was kept under surveillance, police received this call. There was a guy from Georgia who called up and said he killed her. He was confessing to the murder of Kristen Scarabelli. A couple years after Kristen was murdered, which is now 2000, a 27-year-old man named Anton Chilinski walked into a precinct,

not on Long Island, but in Douglasville, Georgia. We got a call from Georgia saying they have a guy, Chilinski. That was his name, Chilinski. He was confessing to the murder of Kristen Scarabelli. Here we have a caller from a thousand miles away confessing to the killing, and on the surface, it seems outlandish. But here's the background on Shalinski. He grew up in East North Port, Long Island, and he was a drifter. So it is possible that he did know Kristen. I don't know how he met her, but he said he tried to date her. And in their conversation with him that he said that he had tried to date

Kristen and she basically rebuffed him. But other than this, you know, somewhat tenuous connection to her, there was really nothing else that showed that Shalinski had anything to do with her murder. We talked to him on the phone. He was convinced that he killed her. So after a 15-minute conversation with Shalinski, investigators felt that he had nothing to do with her murder. He said he had tried to date Kristen. There was no evidence whatsoever that they even knew each other. He was homeless. So it was a way of him getting to jail to get a house. So, you know, hearing that this is not a likely mental health issue that is causing him to say he committed a homicide that he had nothing to do with, here the reason being different

is that he was basically living on the streets and didn't have a home, and he so wanted that roof over his head that he had decided that long-time jail was a better option. And to dig into that thought and that premise is probably a conversation for another day. But in this case, detectives shifted their focus now back to Stephen Manolis. And Doug Mercer uncovered that he had a disturbing history with women. And we found out through records that he had gone to college out in Stony Brook University. And he was going out with a girl and he raped her. But she didn't want to press charges.

We found out from this girl that she continued to get phone calls for 16 years and the person would call her and hang up on her. Remember, this investigation was going on for years. And all the while, the Manolas continued to live right next door to the Scarabellis. Every morning, they would leave for work. Every night, they would come home and they could see the Manolas literally getting away with murder. And of course that extends to all of Kristen's neighbors as well, who believed they were living next to someone who could do something like that.

Mr. Scarabelli wanted to kill the guy. We had to constantly calm them down to tell them, hey look, we think it's him, but we don't know for sure. It could be somebody else out there. So until we can lock him up, bear with us. It's not a case that's going away. So they were very patient with us. They're very patient. You know, in one article, Kristen's dad, Victor, said that he never got more than two hours of sleep because of his daughter's open case throughout those years. Well, we both know the hands of justice move slow, but when they're right next door to you, that lack of movement and that in-your-face potential activity just adds a tenfold. I really think I'd have to just pick up and move right away, but I will say to the Scarabelli family what strength that exhibited to handle that and one step in front of the other until they

hopefully got to where they thought they were supposed to be. And we went to see a profiler, New York City Police Department profiler, and his profile basically said it was somebody near to her. So when we told him about the next door neighbor, he said, absolutely, it could be him. Doug and the homicide unit knew that they needed to keep up the pressure and remain as creative as possible. They knew their target and they needed to keep a watchful eye without him realizing it. Because whoever did this, just think about the type of crime it was. It is that she is literally taken and dragged and strangled, which means that the person, the offender who committed this, very likely at some point will strike again if he is not stopped. We put up a surveillance camera on the pole outside and he broke that.

We're staking him out to watch him document what he does with certain things. But as detectives stake Manolis out, Manolis turned the table and would stake them out. We would hide behind trees. We'd hide behind other houses. He would always find us. He would pick us right out. If you just stuck your head out a little bit, he'd find you. He knew where we were at all times. He would shine a flashlight at us. We had a camera and a night scope, and he was there. No doubt about it, he was there. He was a wily coyote, if you would. Kristen was murdered back in 1996 when DNA was still in its very infancy. But now that they're five years ahead in 2001,

every investigator in America knew that that just might be the answer to their cold cases. But since they didn't have the actual evidence against Manolis to get a warrant for his DNA, detectives relied on another means to try to get it. So as part of their surveillance of their prime suspect, they wanted to know more about him. So one technique was to go through his garbage where there's no expectation of privacy to see, you know, what is his interest? Does he like cars? Does he read car magazines? Or something they can learn more about him so then they could potentially send him an offer in the mail, hoping that he would return that offer and lick the envelope on the return.

Then by licking the envelope, guess what? We could get some type of forensic evidence from that. And Anastasia, you know this from previous cases that we've done. There was one story that we did where the investigator approached their prime suspect saying that they were survey takers. And they knocked on the door, gave them an envelope and paid them $5 to take this survey. The person signed the survey, licked the envelope and gave it back to the undercover agent. So when it works, it's fantastic. But will it work here?

So we sent him a letter hoping that he would lick the envelope and send it back in and we'd try and get his DNA. When DNA became available, the envelope wasn't licked. There was water on the envelope. There was nothing to show that he had licked the envelope. He signed it, Kyle Stewart. And remember, our victim's name, Kristen with a K, Scarabelli with an S. Kyle Stewart, KS. He was fixated on her.

There's no doubt about it that he was fixated on her. Investigators seemed so close and that somehow it didn't work. And it's clearly possible that Manolis was toying with them, knowing that they were trying to set him up. He was on to us. He was playing with us. I think he was playing with us anyway. So, you know, if Manolis knows that police are on to him, why even send the envelope

back at all, right? But again, we all know that also killers, sometimes they almost enjoy the attention, even if it's because police are hot on their trail, or it's almost like that cat and mouse, you know, sure, you want me to do this? I'll do it, kind of, but it's not going to get you anywhere. Now let's go back to that button, the small white button found in the grass. It was clear that it belonged to a white shirt, and Stephen Manolis was known for wearing only white button-down shirts. So I'm putting my shirt on at home one day and I see this button. And I said, you know, when I put this shirt on and I'm closing the button,

I'm running my fingers over this button and the holes all the time. I'm leaving epithelial cells within the holes. And Doug did uncover more details about Manolis that may make this discovery even more critical. There's a district in New York City called the Garment District. We went down there, we showed them the button, and we found out that it was made for one shirt and one shirt only, which is a white shirt, which is what he wore all the time. Nothing else but a white shirt.

So this is now a potential new opportunity, and who knows, maybe the last opportunity that investigators have to see if they can link Manolis to the murder. We took the button and we gave it at that time down to the lab for DNA testing, and it came back to him. Okay, DNA on a button from a shirt that belongs to your prime suspect. Sounds like a done deal. So his button was there, DNA on a button from a shirt that belongs to your prime suspect. Sounds like a done deal. So his button was there.

But who says he came off during a struggle on that day, Mother's Day in 1996? It could have happened days, weeks, or even years earlier, right? But of course, there's still a benefit. Because what if you didn't test the button? You could get DNA off of it, but it comes back not even to his. Well, now the prosecutors have total egg on their face, right? And it's a ridiculous thing not to do. We're here, again, by itself.

Does it prove anything? He lives there. He wears the shirts. But it happens to be near the drag marks. How many it just happens? Can there be before it's all pieces of proof beyond a reasonable doubt? I guess that's my argument. And I'd step back before we even got to court. And I'd have him, if he's talking, and I may present that evidence to him and show it to him that we have your DNA at the scene.

Before he even gets an opportunity to challenge it in court, throw it back to him. He may see that opportunity like the Anna Segal line, jig is up. I'm caught. Why does that keep becoming my line? It's not even my line. Because you said it. That was one of those moments that I'm searching for a word, right? And it's like, and now it's become my line.

I crack up every time you say it. I mean, that's why it's important. You have an opportunity to challenge him if he's willing to talk to you in an interview that you have DNA. It's not enough to secure a conviction, but it is enough to get an arrest warrant. But it has to be strategic. And here's why is because, of course, you always want to get a statement if you can, if your suspect is willing to speak to you. Well, if they don't play their cards a certain way and they have the parents involved, then they think they're more likely to get attorney involved. And while the attorney certainly has the right and will give

that counsel to their client, they're probably going to say, don't say a word at all. So the police don't want to do that. So they are going to be strategic in wanting to get him in a way that they don't want to get an arrest warrant. They don't want to have to go into the house. They're going to wait for an opportunity to try to arrest him and then see if once they get him into the precinct, if they can get that statement, whether it's a denial, admission, or whatever he wants to say. After years of being on police radar, you would have to imagine that Manolis knew the possibility that this day may come. Perhaps in his mind, he gamed it out, stockpiled some weapons. It's possible. And because of that possibility,

Doug and his team wanted to, as I always say, control the environment in an arrest scenario. We had told everybody in the neighborhood to stay inside the house. If they hear something at night, don't worry about it. We're in the neighborhood. We're going to control it. So now it was a question of getting him out of the house.

And so ultimately what they do is they actually lure him out with a blinking light. We borrowed a Liper truck, a Long Island Power Authority truck. And where his house was located, there was a pole. So we went out there and we put up a box with a little red light that blinked

face towards his window. So he would have to come out of the house to do something about this light, which we knew annoyed the shit out of him. So the plan was to wait for of the house to do something about this light, which we knew annoyed the s*** out of him. So the plan was to wait for Manolis to leave his house. Police had a lot of backup on the scene that day on the street. They had 14 police officers located in various different areas on the streets, on the houses across the street, on the houses next door. Four people inside Scarabelli's house, four people outside

in the house next door on the other side, four people in the back. I was across the street watching everything. Everything was in place, waiting for Manolis to walk out. After they have the light in place, all of the officers surround the house, and then they wait. They're in position. They wait some more. Eventually, Stephen Manolis did come outside. So when he came out, he used a 14-foot pole pool to try and knock this box off of that pole. We knew that he would try and get back into the house.

First officers came out of Scarabelli's house towards his house to block the front door. The second officers on the other side, they blocked the side door. The second officers on the other side, they blocked the side door. With the house completely surrounded, police knew that they had to make their move. And quickly, Manolis realized that he was, in fact, surrounded.

He has two options, fight or flight. But Manolis chose to fight. I mean, he tried, he kicked the screen, he bit one officer, punched a couple of guys. It took a lot to take this guy down. He didn't come easy, let me tell you. There is up to 14 members of law enforcement there, and it took most of them, in some capacity or the other, to ultimately apprehend Manolis and get him safely into the car to head down to the precinct. And we had a van that pulled up in front of the house to whisk him away and bring him out to police headquarters out

in Yapping. When we locked him up, neighbors, they came out of their houses like we just liberated them from this disease. One person was telling us about her daughter. You know, after Scarabelli was killed, she would find footprints outside the daughter's window. Along with the arrest warrant for Stephen Manolis, they also executed a search warrant of his home, and stolen property was found in his room.

Another neighbor across the street, he had been broken into so many times. When we did a search warrant on Manolis' room, we found items that were taken from his house. And he never knew it. You know, kind of let's get back to the emotion that is traveling through so many of them at that moment. Let's start with and end with Kristen's father, Victor Scarabelli. Remember his reaction five years ago when he got the news that his daughter had been murdered? Police had to hold him down. He was so besides himself with grief that they needed to stop him from running out of the house and doing who knows what. Well, now that man who had to be held down five years before, now he collapsed in tears, tears of relief. Mrs. Scarabelli started crying. Mrs. Scarabelli

just walked around in circles for a while until they realized and let it sink in that Manolis just got locked up. Doug remembers making the original death notification to her father, Victor, and the tremendous pain in his eyes that day. But notifying him of the arrest was the type of notification that Doug had been hoping to deliver. It's hard to explain to somebody that your daughter's killer has just been arrested,

and we got him. Well, now that he's heading down to the precinct, investigators are going to take that one shot that they have to see if Steve Manolis is willing to speak with him, and if so, if they can get any type of an admission. At first he was quiet, but then he was, like, angry with us. He would curse us out, but then he started talking. But that quickly turned into this.

He began to talk about a person named Kyle Stewart. He would never talk about himself. He would always talk to us about Kyle Stewart and then the third person. He would say things like, I don't know, talk to Kyle. Kyle did this, Kyle did that. But we knew it was him. He never admitted that he himself killed Chris Scarabelli. He's saying it's somebody else, but we know, based on everything that we know,

that that other person is going to come straight back to him. And it comes back to that letter that the police sent out, like they didn't get his DNA off of it, like they were hoping. But here, this really is the next best thing because they knew it went to his home. They knew that he sent it back and he signed it with the same name that he is now putting this homicide on this likely fictitious person, Kyle Stewart. Kyle Stewart instead being the alter ego of Stephen Manolis. So now that he owned it, right, owned the name and stated the name, do you see this as a sort of omission?

They really got everything they could have hoped for, that by sending that envelope all the years before that Kyle Stewart is guilty of that homicide, but Kyle Stewart is none other than the person sitting in the defendant's chair, Stephen Manolis. He did say things that implicated Kyle Stewart, and we knew he was Kyle Stewart. And now, at this point, the jig is up. Well, I had to say it because now, of course, it's my line, Scott.

You put it in my mouth enough that I'm going to do it. I'm going to own it if it's there. You got to own it. Knowing what you know right now about this potential admission and also knowing what has been said about Manolis in the past about his mental health status, how does that add to that or take it away? Someone's mental health status is always a factor to be considered. And first of all, we have to decide that if they do suffer from a mental health condition,

did they know right from wrong? And that is a defense that a defendant can choose to put forth or that a judge can say, look, I want this person examined. Many people have mental health conditions and it doesn't cause them to commit crimes. Or even if you have a mental health condition, if you know right from wrong under the law, you are accountable. So that's how you look at it here. And all the pieces that investigators put together

for all those five years, to me, and obviously prosecutors in this case, that answer was yes. After Manolis' arrest, many of Kristen's friends who had stayed silent for years came forward with new information. When we finally locked him up, they would talk to us. And they were older. They were in their 20s now. So they were willing to talk to us about him sneaking into the house. He was stalking her.

She kept a hammer and screwdriver in her mattress because of him. And I went back to the house and there they were underneath her mattress. So what we think happened was Manolis used to go into her room all the time when she wasn't home. He would sneak into her room. He found a way to open windows and sneak into the house when she was not around or no family member was around. We think that he watched her go out with Mara and he thought she was gone for the night. Then she came home. She went into her home, but she wasn't alone. She'd come up the stairs and when she got to the top of the stairs, he was in her room. And then remember that towel that had been at the top of the stairs, well, now it's down at the bottom. You could almost picture it.

She is running for fear, remember, to get out of the house, because she had found him outside of the house. Well, now she would have gone inside the house. So you can just, with common sense, say that he had been inside and he's chasing her out, and it's probably during that chase that that towel gets kicked or somehow pushed down the stairs. But it doesn't stop once he gets out because that is where he catches her. He chased her out of the house, got her on the front lawn, strangled her. And it was during that struggle, a button from his white shirt would be ripped and dropped into place. And then dragged her over by his driveway garage area, which was next door. That's what happened.

But the defense presented a different theory. The investigation lasted for five years and police looked at many people of interest. And those same people would now make for the strongest defense because Manola's team claimed they were responsible for Kristen's murder and not their client. The button was found, but it wasn't just dropped there by him. That we didn't investigate it enough that there were other people out there

that could have killed her that we didn't investigate, we didn't look at, that Shalinski was really the killer. You're hearing the name Shalinski again, the guy who had called from down in Georgia who claimed that he was the one who'd actually murdered Kristen. And that's because the interview that authorities conducted with him, well, that interview itself is about to send the trial in an unexpected direction.

That's it. I mean, there was an audio tape from Shalinski that we didn't know existed. The defense got a hold of it because we had turned everything over to them, all the paperwork over to them, and he wanted to know where this tape was. I said, well, it's in the case. He brought it up to the judge that he wasn't given the tape. It was a technical issue, a fair point raised by the defense, and the judge agreed. So therefore, the judge created a mistrial. So, Anastasia, now that this does head to a second trial, are there benefits in this retrial? Always benefits. There's definitely the downside that you have to bring the witnesses back and for the prosecutor to work on it all over again. But you now have this huge benefit of hindsight.

Remember, they know what the defense is. They know that they're going to pin it on all these other people who had been looked at during the investigation. So, you know, now prosecutors can say, presumably they're going to give the same defense. What can they do to counter that? So, you know, when you go by the numbers, it was always a really interesting thing to me when I was taught early on that when you have a hung jury and prosecutors go back to trial, it generally ends up in the numbers more likely than not a conviction. The jury heard the case for 19 days and deliberated for seven hours. It took more than eight years,

but the person who strangled Kristen was brought to justice and found guilty on a charge of intentional murder in the second degree. And he was sentenced to 25 years to life. He's got a couple of years yet to go, which he's not getting out. It's the way he's getting out. I just keep coming back to the hammer and the screwdriver. This teen was so afraid that she kept those weapons under her mattress every single night. And I just keep coming back to it for this reason. You know, there has got to be

a better way. You know, someone has got to be a better way. You know, someone that is exhibiting clearly predatory behavior and terrorizing the community and those around him. There just has got to be a better way before it ends up like this. I do not in any way claim to know the answer, but I certainly wish we did. If you see something, say something. We've all heard that phrase being advertised, especially after 9-11, when it came to terrorism. But over the years, many members of law enforcement, including myself, have preached that. In this case, neighbors heard and neighbors saw.

But at the very moment it was happening, they chose not to get involved. Whatever the reason may be, my purpose here is not to blame anybody. Just I hope my words resonate with someone and hope it can make a difference. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?