Anatomy of Murder - We Leave You Our Deaths

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

3 young women, all friends, found dead in a park. A license plate, a ruse, and a federal sting.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

These girls were killed for no reason. When I saw the news announcement, I said to myself, man, I would love to help out on that case. And lo and behold, well, not only did I help out on it, I was able to find out what really happened. 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.

Today's story is a great example of how in a homicide case, a few small clues may at first seem insignificant. But connecting those dots, if you will, helped a team of investigators bring a triple murder into focus. Things that you might think don't matter at all, but that is the piece that makes everything else fit. Well, today's case was made because of how police had to go through some truly unique ways to pull off the small parts in a very big way. So in today's story, you're about to hear the voice of Ted Jones. He's a veteran Maryland state trooper. And here's some interesting facts. He wasn't the lead investigator in this case. To this day, he's never even met the victim's families.

He heard about what happened in this case, just like most other people do. I'm up 536 o'clock, you know, going through my routine, coffee, all that stuff, shower. And so I had the morning news on. and the announcer spoke of a horrific sign overnight. A motorist is driving along the highway, encounters what he initially believes were three mannequins. But upon further investigation, of course, they weren't mannequins. They were the bodies of three victims. It was January 27, 1996. They were three young women.

Tanji Jackson, she was 21, and she worked at a high school. Tamika Black, 19, and she was a teacher's aide at a private school in Washington, D.C. And Michonne Chin, who was 23 and worked with a children's choir. And all three of these young women were friends. In fact, two of them, Tanji and Tamika, they'd been best friends since grade school. I'm thinking, wow, how horrible. You know, what could these young women, believed to be in their early 20s, what could they have possibly done to warrant that type of hate? These three young women, they all worked with kids in some way, but even more importantly, there was nothing about their lives that appeared that in any way that their lives invited violence.

And so everyone was focused on what happened to them from the start. And for Ted Jones, it affected him even more so because of something in his past. Maybe a month or so prior to that, I lost a relative to domestic violence. My niece was murdered by her husband. And so, of course, in that case, we know who was responsible, and it was her husband. But in the case of the girls, we had no idea. So they could have certainly been my sisters, my nieces. Their ethnicity did not matter. They were women. So the investigation obviously begins at the crime scene where the bodies were found.

It was an isolated stretch of Route 197 inside a National Wildlife Refuge in Prince George's County. This is a dark, isolated stretch of road. There are no street lamps or any of this. Only lights you have are the lights of the vehicles going back and forth. And the location actually was not far from a university, Bowie State University. Crime was relatively nil in that area. Now, Anastasia, what does that crime scene or the location of where the bodies were found say to you? The obvious thing is that it's a really quiet stretch of road.

Just on its face, you hear these things. It's the type of place that, unfortunately, you think of that, you know, serial killers dump bodies. Of course, it's anybody's guess as to where they were on their way to, you know, where they asked from the club. Was it a serial murderer? As the investigation of the bodies began, police realized that Tangi and Tamika were both shot at least once in the chest,

and Michon was shot in the back of the head. Now clearly, just from those details, this appears to be an execution. It was confirmed that they were shot with, I think it was a.38 revolver. I don't remember which one of the girls, but a car ran over their head. That's super gruesome. And there was more. Tanji appeared to have been severely beaten. Michon's face was slashed.

These are personal, brutal attacks. The police were able to determine the type of weapon used in these brutal murders because they were able to locate a.38 caliber projectile at the scene. They call it a wad cutter. So from that, they were able to determine that was the weapon that was likely used on all three victims. Also, they noticed that the scene was so drenched with blood, the fire department was called to wash the stains away, which is really just horrible if you think about that. Just the

image of that says so much. And I have to put my lawyer hat on to at least use the lawyerly word of jurisdiction here, because that did make a big difference in this case. Jurisdiction is where a crime falls into, whether it's state police or federal, county. And here, where they were found, this national wildlife refugee, it really factored in into the big picture of this case because that was federal land. So it wasn't going to be Prince George's County,

state troopers that took over this case. It was going to be the federal authorities. And in this case, it's the United States Park Police that covered those lands. So they took over this case right from the get-go. This was not my case. At that particular time, I'm a state trooper. Absolutely no jurisdiction whatsoever to investigate the case. So it just as well occurred in Miami or L.A. And I will say to you, Anastasia, it is so rare for a park police to investigate a homicide. I mean, normally those fall into the jurisdiction, as you said, to state police, city police, you know, local cops. Those are the detectives who work multiple cases at a time. But I really have never in my career I've ever heard of a park police having to

work a full-blown homicide, let alone a triple murder case. I haven't either. I mean, when I saw it at first, I just assumed that it would be FBI. And I think that's what a lot of the local authorities thought too. But it is the U.S. parks police that have that jurisdiction. And so the U.S. park police, they wanted to take it on and they took it on head on right from the U.S. Park Police, they wanted to take it on, and they took it on head-on right from the beginning. You would think that they'd want to use resources from the locals, but they did take it on by themselves from the beginning. And what they did first was start to develop,

which normally happens in a homicide investigation, is the timeline. And that didn't take them very long. Tamika had left her mom's house that day between 11 and 11.30, actually that night, and she was with her two friends, Tanji and Mishan. The women had planned to go out to a club in Washington, D.C., and the area outside the night spot where they had been, that was a place that had seen its share of violence. There had been several shootings there in the area.

There had been an abduction and even a rape. But the women, they didn't leave alone. They were together. The one thing that they could get from people at the club was that the women were picked up by men who were outside. They saw a car honking. The men never got out, but the women did get into the car. And according to one of the women's moms, when they left to go out to the club that night, they had seen the girls get into a blue van. Now, clearly, this is our first lead, right? We know the girls left the apartment together. We know they got into a vehicle with some men, and we know the vehicle left at a certain time.

So clearly, we need to establish who are these people. And when you think about it, I mean, right away, my head goes to this club that we know there's been a lot of violence. You know, there's often drinking and other things that go on at clubs that leads tempers to go. And people can be sometimes up to no good that, you know, I don't know, did the women leave and someone picked them up? We've been watching them at the club and then just bring them out there into the night. I mean, it's just so strange, though, because it's not one, which is what you'd expect with a crime like this, but it's three.

And the three who left together are then found dead together. It's just so horrific. Three young women shot to death and discarded along the highway, you know, like garbage. So going back to the crime scene, Park Police did find a piece of evidence that they believe could lead to a killer. There's a piece of paper found in Tangi Jackson's purse. Tangi had a handwritten note inside her address book, and it said Bones, and it had an address and a license plate number. And obviously having a name and an address book is normal, but to have a license plate number next to the name, that is not normal. And that stood out like a big red flag. So the police now have a license plate tag number. So the question is going to be,

is this a lead or could it be nothing? Just something she wrote down like you might write down in an address book. And that license plate went back to a Mazda MPV van. And I'm sure investigators were thinking about, wow, a van? You were going to have six passengers or multiple passengers leaving the girl's house that night. There were three girls and a few guys. So this van could be connected to this case. And this could actually be a very big break.

You want everything to be something and something big. But so often, as we know in these cases, it ends up being nothing. It's just maybe a license plate number of a friend of hers that she wrote down. I don't know, maybe she had to do something for parking one day or whatever the reason. But they just don't know and they won't know until they track it down. And they did very quickly. The park police investigators go to the registered owner who conveys that, yeah, that's my vehicle, but my son Dustin drives it. The car came back to a woman who said it was driven by her son, a guy by the name of Dustin Higgs, and police went and quickly found Dustin Higgs. Yeah, they show up at his apartment, who says, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, that's my tag number. I don't know why she had it.

He said, oh, yeah, I do. I drive this car all the time. It's my mom's. And not only that, I do. I know Tonji Jackson. And he said he may even have spoken to her the night before her murder. But he also went on to say, but the rest of that night, I wasn't alone. I was with my girlfriend. He was at a party with his girlfriend, Phyllis Smith, and he knew about the murders after watching the 10 o'clock news on the 27th. He was sitting with her and someone else that they're watching the news. They see about the murders and he says that he thinks he knows one of them, the Tanji girl. And then,

of course, police went and said, great, but can we believe him? So what did they do next? They went to the girlfriend and she corroborated everything that he said. She said that he had been with her all night and she even then said, hey, it's not just me. I had family there too. And so police, they went and spoke to family, too. And everyone said the same thing. Yeah, he was with us all night. Sounds like a really solid alibi. But is it?

It sounded like it was. But ultimately, it wasn't. They executed a search warrant of Higgs' residence because they believed he was involved in several bank fraud violations. And while they went into the home and they got a variety of documents, cash bundles, they also found drugs, a.380 semi-automatic gun, a box of ammunition for a.380,.45, and.38 caliber weapons. And he was arrested on federal drug charges. And then very quickly, the girlfriend said, you know what, what I said, not true all along.

They pulled her into the grand jury and she recanted and admitted that he had only been with her at 5 a.m. that morning of the 27th. I think it's important to talk, Anasiga, about building a case which may not be in relations directly with a homicide, but it gives you an opportunity to bring somebody in and put the pressure on to try to get the most accurate information, the truth from somebody. It is pivotal in so many cases. You know, if we just bought what people told us, hook, line, and sinker, there would be many, many less cases that are solved. Because while many people are truthful and accurate, unfortunately, many are not.

And it's not always for sinister reasons. It's not always because they think that they're covering up for homicide. They think that they're helping someone in some other way. You know, here, for example, Higgs' girlfriend, she thought she was helping him out with drugs. Now, that's bad. She's lying. But she said that, you know, I knew there was drugs in the apartment. And so I didn't want him to get in trouble for that and what he'd been up to. And so that's why I lied for him. And when she only knew that police were actually there inquiring about something else, that she said, you know what, this is bigger than me and what I'm willing to be involved in. And that's when she came clean. So Higgs pleads guilty to the possession with the intent to distribute cocaine.

And he was ultimately sentenced to 17 years imprisonment for that charge. But of course, we're not here talking about that case. We're here talking about a triple murder. So when we talk about the weapons and the types of weapons that were recovered from the search warrant, clearly you hear a.38 caliber. You're thinking, wait a second, is there a direct connection between this triple murder and that weapon? And police could say the projectile was a.38 caliber, but they couldn't definitively say it was a match. So when I read it, though, it's like they can't, it's not an actual match, right?

It's consistent, but it's not enough. Because also, they're shot with the revolver, the ladies, so they don't even have the shell casings. Right. It's an automatic ejects the shell casing, a revolver, the shell casing stays in the weapon. Right. They can say it's the same caliber, and there are various markings that lead them to say it's consistent.

That's not going to get you over the finish line. Something to put in your pocket, but they have to keep going. And a defense attorney could say, yeah, they were both similar brand of weapons that leave similar brand of markings. But it's in the end not enough to connect the two weapons or the two projectiles to our homicide. And a.38 caliber is a very often used weapon, so they have to keep digging. But then they had nothing for almost 18 months. The FBI's Safe Streets Task Force is put together with various different jurisdictions within the areas. There's more than 100 of them now in cities all over the country. And as a prosecutor and even law enforcement working on a case, I mean, we love task forces.

Because what do we get with task forces? We get resources. Whether it is more bodies that are assigned to a specific case, they're concentrated on that specific crime, or whether it's a type of crime or one case, will always take as much help as we can get. A FBI Violent Crimes Task Force out of the Baltimore office, not sitting around looking for cases to work. You're not twirling your thumbs looking for cases. So in my experience, I have worked on task forces before.

The one I was involved with directly was a fugitive task force with the U.S. Marshal Service. But the reason why task forces are so important at NSEGA is because as a local cop, you know the local bad guys, and you know you have your own snitches, you have your own informants. So ultimately, as a fed reaching out to a local guy, the local guys give great color to the community, and they really know who's doing what. They know where people hide out. really know who's doing what. They know where people hide out. They know who their known associates are.

So when you connect the feds with a local department and they're part of a certain task force, the resources not only on the federal side are great, but the abundance of information is incredibly worthy. I get a call up at headquarters and the major says, hey, I'm going to send you down to work that task force. We're going to look at a number of cases that's been unsolved. It started out as a one-year assignment. I stayed for 10 years. And here's where it gets interesting and connects to this case. So they're looking at all different cases.

Ted Jones gets there and he is assigned to a case that they clean up very quickly. And then he's asked to help out with this other case, another case he knew very well because it was the case about the girls. Wow. I remember clearly. How could you forget watching that on the news? Right. So that Monday morning, I joined the team of guys that's already working. OK, so what is our next move? While investigators had been interested in Hicks and looking at him, they never really had enough on him. So what do they do, Scott?

As we often know, you have to go to people that are associated with your targets or your suspects, because maybe that's another way to figure out if they're going in the right direction or not. Law enforcement then start looking at his associates. One of his associates being Willis Haynes. Who was a local marijuana dealer. And police were very familiar with him. In fact, undercover officers building cases against him and some of his other associates, had bought marijuana from him multiple times. But if they end up getting enough and he's charged with that,

as so often happens, maybe he's willing to talk to them about Hicks to try to help himself. They've made a number of buys from him. Small amounts of weed, not enough to get a search warrant. Whenever he is transacting business, he has another subject with him. Small amounts of weed, not enough to get a search warrant. Whenever he is transacting business, he has another subject with him who is sometimes operating as his wheelman. He's driving the car. And on one or two occasions, he actually served the customers himself. No idea what, if any, involvement they have with the murder of the girls. So they're looking at Haynes for these marijuana sales. But with that, they also see that the car that he's driving, that he's selling out of, has temporary tags. If you get a chance to go to the dealership, there may be a plethora of information

about your suspect. And so we get to the dealership, we talk to the manager, and he has like three purchase folders. He opens the first one, nothing jumps out. He opens up the second one, nothing jumps out.

He opens up the third one, my colleague says, hey, that's him right there. Inside of the purchase folder, sometimes they'll have a copy of the driver's license. He says, well, it's a picture of him, but it's someone else's information. So this suspect is using the name of Kenny Fagan. And when they look at how he paid for that car, it's with a check. A bad check. So forget the marijuana.

Now they've got someone that's basically stealing a car under this presumed identity with a bad check. He wrote a $500 deposit, which came back on a closed account. Well, as you know, that's not an insufficient time. That's an automatic fact. After we found out that he had written that bad check, and I said,

all right, well, we'll go get a warrant for him. So I get a call from the dealership that the guy you guys were talking about is calling to get his hard tags. What should we do? I said, well, stall him. Tell him someone will call him back.

So I'm in the office, and I said, hey, guys, we need to put together an operation if we can at least get his fingerprints. Police had a plan. They planned a sting operation with their agents posing as customers and workers to try to lure Haynes in, telling him, do you know that temporary tag you got in the car? Well, the actual physical plate has come in. So let's set up an appointment. Why don't you come on in and we'll get you the

tags. They're hoping to get that person that comes in when they touch the paperwork to give their fingerprints and fingerprints, as you know, except for identical twins, it only comes back to one. And so that person, if they can prove that that's actually Willis Haynes, then it's a home run, and then hopefully they're off to the races. The FBI went to work, man. And Ted Jones was the right man for the job to set this next plan into motion. Ted Jones had worked undercover work before. In fact, he even had an alias.

They called him Fred McNeil. I'm a con man. I can talk my way out of it. worked before. In fact, he even had an alias. They called him Fred McNeil. I'm a con man. I can talk my way out of it. I went into jail as an inmate on a murder case. Nobody in the whole jail knows that I am a state trooper. That's the level of undercover stuff I've done. And I always loved, you know, when I was in narcotics and worked with a lot of the undercovers, I always thought that it was just a really cool part of the work. And yes, it's absolutely dangerous, but it takes, like you said, Scott, a really specific skill set. This is a different type of danger. And it's just the type of thing that when I always hear it, I'm like, wow.

You better know how to handle yourself. Not in terms of pulling a Navy SEAL move and karate chopping four or five guys, but you got to know how to talk to people. You got to have the right temperament. I'm out there in an undercover operation, and I have my.40 caliber handgun in a newspaper, and I am very aware of this. I'm very aware of the fact that I'm not the only one out there with a gun

and that their guns are probably much more larger than mine with a whole lot more firepower. Undercover officers put themselves in the most dangerous positions out there. They're police officers not wearing body armor. They're police officers not carrying guns. And the only thing they have is their wit and their skill. And this was a dangerous operation. The person that you're targeting could show up with multiple weapons. They could actually show up with multiple people. Or maybe you pulled them over five years ago when you're in uniform and they recognize you. In every one of these undercover operations, you hope everything to go by the book. But in this case, that didn't happen.

All right, so now, operation is on. This is a tactical operation. And I picture them setting it up like something you see in the movies. You know, you see the FBI come in with their windbreakers, with the big yellow FBI across the back, and they take over two rooms and they wire both rooms. They have them set for sound. They have them set with visuals because they want to capture everything recorded that he's saying.

They also want to make sure the person that they're going to have on the inside, their agent, is safe. But you could just picture all of them descending on this car dealership, want to make sure the person that they're going to have on the inside, their agent, is safe. But you could just picture all of them descending on this car dealership. And I just picture the guys that are walking in there like, wow, what a cool day. And just as other employees had no clue who I was, didn't ask me questions, they were busy doing their thing. And just as a side note to explain a tiny bit more, so they're setting up a sting operation

to hopefully get the person's fingerprints that'll come in and then see if that leads back to the guy who they know who's been selling drugs out of the car and the picture they see in that driver's license, Willis Haynes. And there is a phase two part of this operation is once he comes in and recovers the plate

and they get what they need from him, the plan was to follow him back to his home to try to recover evidence using a search warrant. But when he comes through the door, I can actually see him. But he, of course, has no idea who I am. And so he asked the receptionist for Fred McNeil. The receptionist announces over the loudspeaker,

Fred McNeil, Fred McNeil, we have a customer in the lobby, Fred McNeil. And this is all looking legitimate. So I grab my clipboard and I come through the door and now he has another guy with him. I have no idea who that is. No idea who that is. No idea who that is. Investigators, agents, everyone inside had to then now take into consideration

we've got two targets within the dealership. Go back to my desk, and I have my radio, and I call out to everybody. I said, hey, be prepared. Subject confirmed in the lobby. I said, he has an unidentified subject with him. Stand by. Operation is underway. Turn off my radio. I come out through the door, and now I'm walking, and he's walking alongside me, and so is the other guy. Well, I stopped and said, oh, wait a minute. I said, who is this guy? He says, it's my man. I said, well, your your man's gonna have to stay up front okay this is just you know you and me so he needs to stay up front oh yeah okay I'm sorry no problem it ain't no big deal grab some coffee young man we won't be long so we go back and as soon as he sat down in his

chair of course he's on video I come in I sit down hey how's it been going fine fine fine he said I said listen we were trying to reach your references in the initial application, and it doesn't seem like they've been successful. Oh, really? Really? Oh, man. You know, he said, no one's called me. I said, well, I think they have tried to call. I said, do you have a girlfriend or something? Maybe she's not giving you the messages.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been upset with me because, you know, I've been staying out late. you know how women are okay yeah he says uh i'll be working i'm a technician i work all kinds of hours i said okay nowhere in anything i read it was he employed especially a technician of any sort i said okay well write down three references that we can call we'll call them later we've taken the paper and of, he's putting his fingerprints on it, you know, trying to brace it and stuff. And so it's all going good. So then he goes to hand it to him, and I said, no, no, no.

I said, can we just sign it? You're hearing that they want his fingerprints, but yet they're saying he has to sign. So the question maybe is why? And it's really two-part here. Is that one, they want him to sign because they're locking him in to that assumed identity, the Kenny Fagan. Well, that's a crime in this context. But Ted Jones has to be so careful

with the handling of that paper because what they really want to get is the guy that's signing is his fingerprints. And so you only want to make sure that there is one set of prints on that paper and not more. And there's no confusion or nothing that can be attacked down the road. And he just found the bottom clip and so, boom. So that piece of paper, he's signing one name, but the fingerprints prove that he's somebody else.

And right there, that is the identity theft. But we're not done yet because we got phase two of this operation. We're going to tail the car. We're going to follow Haynes back to wherever he's going so we can gain more information about Willis Haynes. And so phase one complete. He goes, he gets his tag, he walks out. Of course, I stay behind to make sure everything is in its process right.

And I watched them leave. You know, I hear the radio traffic where the surveillance guys are picking them up and probably not four or five minutes into phase two, the surveillance part, I hear someone says, hey, we lost them. We lost him. Haynes was able to shake the tail, and Haynes was able to elude them, and they lost him. And I can just picture the looks on their faces when that car is no longer in their sights. I mean, I must admit, Anastasia, I, in my career, have lost vehicles that I've been following.

And I think a lot of it has to do with not wanting to stick out, not wanting to go through a red light, not wanting to cause someone around you to skid that would bring attention to your car. So, lo and behold, Monday morning, supervisor calls me, it's 5 o'clock in the morning, 5.30, says, hey, his fingerprints ultimately made it to headquarters, positively identifying those fingerprints as belonging to Willis Haynes, not Kenny Fagan. And thanks to the original investigator who had been buying the drugs from him, the narcotics side of this, he was able to follow him on one of those occasions to a residence in a gated community that he was using to sleep, and there he was using the name Kenny Fagan.

We hit the house. He's in there by himself in a very sparsely furnished apartment. I think there was a TV in there, maybe one or two things in the fridge, no couch, there's a mattress on the floor, and that's it. It really reminds me of kind of a flop house, just a place that they go to potentially to store weapons, to store drugs, but really not to live in. In the closet, we find a magazine for a nine millimeter handgun. The girls were killed with They did have enough to arrest Willie Haynes and his driver, a guy by the name of Victor Gloria, and bring them both in. Victor Gloria was Haynes' wheelman,

someone that drove him around and someone that was involved in his drug peddling. So when they brought him in, they decided they were going to take a unique approach to gain information about them. And part of that is not always necessarily telling someone right off the bat why they're there. I mean, they knew that they'd been arresting them on drug charges, but they were trying to get up the tree to Higgs for this triple homicide. So they didn't even tell Gloria what he was arrested for right off the bat. So Jones is going to have an opportunity to talk to Victor Gloria. So Gloria is being escorted through the building, up the elevator, and then something unique happens. Doors open, they step off. I come out heading towards them. And they stop.

Good morning, gentlemen. So he starts to look at me. He starts to, he's now trying to figure out where he's seen me. And then I say, young man, what's up? I say, you act like you know me from somewhere. You're looking at me like that.

He says, no, no, no, no. You kind of look familiar. I say, you think you know me from somewhere? No, no, no. You just kind of look familiar. I said, you think you know me from somewhere? No, no, no. You just kind of look familiar. I said, I'll give you a hint. I used to sell cars. Victor Gloria was the person who accompanied Willis Haynes at the dealership. Oh my gosh. Then he mentioned the name of the local dealership. I said, yeah, yeah. Actually, I'm Trooper Jones with the state police and you're here

in an FBI building. I just wanted to share that with you. Ted is adding the groundwork for his interview of Gloria. He's making sure that Gloria knows this is serious. This is part of an FBI investigation. You're not dealing with

just any investigators. Ted Jones is the guy who one-upped him before. Yeah, so I'm not going to lie to you, and I'm not going to allow you to lie to me. Let's get that established. You understand? Yes, sir.

I said, but, you know, before we get started, I said, do you have any idea as to why you're here? He said, it's about those girls, isn't it? We have to stop here because this is the screech on the record player. They have him for the drugs. They're trying to get to Higgs. And then he says it's about the girls? Wow.

I said, he could have said, I don't know. I don't know why I'm here. Why am I? I hope you would tell me why I'm here. So you have to think about Ted Jones for a moment because while you can picture his face, he must have wanted to pick his head right up and jump like, oh my gosh, did not see this coming at all.

But he has to react very differently. He has to be calm and cool and collected because the only place that this is going, if it's going to go somewhere good, is if he seems totally nonplussed, like he expects it and he just goes with the conversation. And that's exactly what Ted Jones did. Oh my gosh, now I have to be cool.

I have to be cool. I said, well, yeah. I said, as a matter of fact, it is about those girls. I said, you didn't think we forgot about that, did you? Oh, no, no, well, yeah. I said, as a matter of fact, it is about those girls. I said, you didn't think we forgot about that, did you? No, no, no, no, no. And then he gave me the whole story. He laid out what no one in law school up to that point knew about how those girls were killed and why. And the only reason that he was aware of what had happened was because he was there.

So in his confession to Jones, Gloria laid out exactly, in graphic detail, what happened on the night of January 26, 1996. He made it clear that Higgs and Tangi both knew each other, and it was their idea to get together. Higgs telling Tangi, get a couple of friends. I'll get a couple of friends. I want her to come over to the apartment and we'll hang out and party. And then at some point,

when the three women and the three men are there, the three women, Tamika, Tangi, and Mishan, and the men, we'll use their last names, Haynes, Higgs, and Gloria, and Higgs and Tangi began to argue. He actually assaults her. He wanted to have sex with her. She did not come over there to have sex. Gloria, and Higgs and Tanji began to argue. Tanji goes downstairs, opens her purse, and writes down Dustin Higgs' tag number. And she said on her way out,

I know some guys that will take care of you. And when she leaves out, the other two girls are saying, well, hey, we're not going to stay here. We don't know you guys. The girls then had started walking away from the apartment, I guess, trying to make their way back into Washington, D.C. Higgs saw Tangier write something down, and he was furious. So he got the rest of the guys to get to the van to try to catch up to the girls.

And they pull alongside of him, allegedly apologize. The bygones be bygones, we'll take y'all home. They get in the car. So as they're riding along, he pulls over. And the girls ask, are you guys putting us out and they respond yes something like that so at this point in time dustin higgs according to the confession that i got dustin hands the gun to willis and says take care of him he gets out opens the middle door girls are screaming he grabs samika black first pulls her out and she gets out she opens the middle door. Girls are screaming. He grabs Tamika Black first, pulls her out. When she gets out, she's able to go one or two steps.

He shoots her in the head. She falls. You can only imagine the absolute terror that these girls are going through. Sean Chen, I believe, was the second one shot. And he gets her out and still runs a short distance, shot her twice in the back, I believe. And now you have Benji Jackson. You know, you just witnessed the murder of your two girlfriends. But you know what's coming next.

After firing a few more shots, Haynes gets into the van and shuts the door. They go down to the Anacostia River in D.C. and discard the gun. They throw the gun in the river. They then drive, they go back to the apartment, and they are wiping down cases in the apartment that they think the girls may have touched, the glasses and whatever. I mean, here they're clearly trying to clean up the crime scene. The men then left the apartment and dropped Gloria off

when he was told by Higgs to keep his mouth shut. Anastasia, this is just an incredible confession. And what a brutal crime. You know, I've read this multiple times in getting ready for our conversation and looking at this case, and it reminds me of a case I did myself that was very similar. And I just think of the unnecessariness of it all. And so when he wrote it out, man, I came out of the room.

Gosh, we got it. We got it. We got it. Now they had enough, not against one, but against three. The fact that you had this incredible confession, you still had to prove the case with your other two defendants. What were their involvements? You're putting guns in people's hands. You're saying that someone murdered somebody else. There's still some work to be done behind the scenes.

So you have this confession. It's so detailed, but makes all these other little seemingly innocuous things start to fit. And remember when back there speaking to Higgs' girlfriend, Phyllis Smith, and she says that while they're sitting there watching television, that Higgs says they watch the news about the girls dying, that he says that he thought he knew Tanji, one of the girls. Well, what investigators knew was at that time, they had never released the names of the victims. So how would he have known that one of them was Tanji

unless he was there? All three men were arrested. Victor Gloria agreed to cooperate with the government. In exchange, he received a lighter sentence. He pled guilty. With his testimony, ultimately, Haynes was tried and got the maximum life without parole plus 45 years. On October 11th of 2000, Dustin John Higgs was found guilty on all counts, three counts of first-degree murder and kidnapping

in the slaying of Tonji Jackson, Tamika Black, and Michonne Chin. When the judge handed down his sentencing in January 2001, Higgs received the first federal death sentence in Maryland's history. The judge calling Higgs a cold-blooded killer who deserved to die for ordering the murder of these three Washington women. When I asked Ted Jones what this case meant to him, from the undercover operation to the critical confession he obtained, I was a bit surprised to learn this interesting fact. Jones has never, to this day, had an opportunity to meet the families of the three innocent victims. Now, I'm sure if he did, he would find a tremendous amount of appreciation for his role in solving these brutal murders.

But yet it's clearly a case in the women that he worked so hard for that meant so much to him. You know, when I was reading about the sentencing, it was actually what the judge said in Haynes' sentencing that really struck a chord with me, because at the end of his sentencing, he cited a poem called The Dead Young Soldiers by a man named Archibald

MacLeish. And at the end of that poem, as the courtroom is sitting there just silent, he left them with, we leave you in our deaths. Give them meaning. We were young. We have died. Remember us. 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.