Cold Case Files - A Wife's Mission

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

A woman's life is shattered when her house is broken into, she's assaulted, her husband is murdered, and her home is set aflame. To make matters worse, police consider her a suspect in her own attack and her husband's death. Years later, Lynn Lopez seeks to clear her name, and get justice for her husband. Check out our great sponsors! Listen and subscribe now to THE TRIALS OF FRANK CARSON on LATimes.com OR listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts! Klaviyo: To get started with a free trial visit Klaviyo.com/coldcase  Scott's Cheap Flights: Join for free at Scottscheapflights.com/coldcase and never overpay for flights again! SimpliSafe: Visit SimpliSafe.com/coldcase to customize YOUR system and get a free security camera! Progressive: Get a quote today at Progressive.com and see why 4 out of 5 new auto customers recommend Progressive!

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Potential savings will vary. Discounts vary and are not available in all states and situations. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violent crimes and sexual assaults. Please listen with caution. Lynn Lopez thought it couldn't get any worse when a man broke into her home and raped her. It did, though, because that same man killed Lynn's husband, Jay. He was trying to defend his wife. Then, as the attacker left the house, he set the living room on fire. Lynn managed to escape,

but in a literal case of adding insult to injury, Lynn was then questioned by the investigators as if she was a suspect in her own rape and her husband's murder. Fortunately, prior to the questioning, she was taken to the hospital to be examined and to gather any biological evidence. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. I'm Brooke, and here's the awe-inspiring Bill Curtis with a classic case, A Wife's Mission. I never look at this album. I can't. It's in my room, and it's odd to have something in your room that you're afraid of. I have not gone this far in years, I would say.

On a morning in August, Lynn Lopez opens up a photo album and a window into her past. Every Christmas, my husband was the thing that you put bows on. You can see my husband so playful, so happy. Oh, this is really hard. It's very painful, and it almost makes me feel like it really never happened. But it did happen, almost ten years earlier. A handful of moments that changed Lynn Lopez's life forever. 911, what is your emergency?

Fire, rape, possibly murder. Around 4 a.m., Hillsborough County Deputy Steve Donaldson responds to a call and finds a home in flames. Before I could even get out of my car, the man ran up to me and he goes, he's still inside, he's still inside. And I said, well, who's inside? And he said, you know, the owner, Mr. Lopez. Donaldson enters the Lopez home, finds the living room engulfed in flame and 42-year-old

Jay Lopez on the bedroom floor. I could see Mr. Lopez lying on his back. He was covered in blood, and he had multiple stab wounds, and he wasn't moving. Firefighters extinguish the blaze, and police examine the body. Meanwhile, Donaldson approaches someone who survived the fire, Lynn Lopez. She was standing there on the lawn, and she approached me, probably just about as calm as I am right now,

and asked me, is my husband okay? And I just thought that was remarkable, considering how she had been terrorized over the last few hours. Lynn tells police she had been sexually assaulted by an intruder, then forced to shower as he set fire to the home. It's an account that leaves Donaldson scratching his head. Why did

he leave you alive? Why would he stab your husband, murder him, commit this just heinous act, terrorize you over the course of three and four hours, and leave you as a witness. If he has that much of a demon inside him,

how much more would it have been for him to just kill her as well? Lynn is taken to the hospital, where a rape kit is taken and semen recovered. Inside the home, investigators collect blood-stained blankets and bedding, all of which is sent to the state crime lab for testing. Meanwhile, detectives turn to their best piece of evidence, Lynn Lopez. It was important that we talk to Lynn that same day because she was the only eyewitness that we had. She was the only one that could provide us some details.

Just hours after learning her husband has been killed, Lynn Lopez sits down with detectives. I believe it was between maybe 2 and 2.30 this morning, and all I remember is all of a sudden hearing my husband yell something like, look out, or something. I remember I let out a scream that was so blood-curdling to me, in horror. And I jumped up and I saw a man in the doorway of my bedroom holding a knife, and my husband and him started fighting.

And I don't know if I'm seeing what I'm really seeing. Is it a dream? Did I jump up, and am I imagining this? According to Lopez, she watches as her husband tries to fend off the attacker with a baseball bat and is stabbed. My husband lets out an exhale breath, and quietly he just crumbles down in the corner of the room to the floor. Then the attacker turns to Lynn. He said, well, I'm probably going to get the electric chair for this,

so I might as well enjoy you. Lynn Lopez tells detectives she was raped repeatedly. Then the attacker led her to the bathroom. He took me into the shower, and he made me face the wall. I didn't use soap or anything because I didn't want to wash anything away because I heard about that. I knew that you're not supposed to wash away the evidence. And I immediately shut the water because I wanted to hear what he was doing out there.

He said, I have two things left to do. One of them is to kill you, and the other is to torch the house. Those are the exact words. He laughed in this demonic laugh and, like, kind of hit the door and laughed and said, nah, I don't think I'm going to kill you. According to Lopez, her attacker set the living room on fire and left. Now sitting in a police interview room, Lynn hopes her account will help find her husband's killer. I want to tell you all about a new podcast from the reporter behind Dirty John

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that's S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash cold case today. I felt that the questions, as painful as they were, were what the questions I had to be asked to find the perpetrator. Let's describe this man. He's a white male. A white male. He's approximately how old? I'm going to say in his mid-thirties. He's about how tall?

Maybe six feet. And what type of hair? Very frizzy. It seemed like it must have been in a ponytail. And the word she used was like a Michael Bolton haircut, which he had pulled back in a ponytail. A composite sketch is developed, but it leads nowhere. Instead, all paths and questions lead back to Lynn Lopez. This is a fight that she's describing that took place between two grown men, pretty good-sized men, based on their descriptions with a baseball bat. And you can see that nothing appears to be disturbed on the bed.

There's nothing broken. After taking Lopez's statement, detectives review the evidence and come to a difficult conclusion. Lynn Lopez might well be lying. The story that she was providing about how the attack took place, not just on her but on her husband, didn't seem to match the evidence that we were seeing at the crime scene. Police questioned Lynn several more times.

I remember the detective kept saying to me, we have nothing, we have nothing. You have to wonder, is there something else involved? Was there something else going on? DNA results come back from the Florida Crime Lab. A male profile is developed from the rape kit and some blood on the bedding. It isn't from Jay Lopez or anyone else in the state's DNA database.

Was it somebody that Mr. and Mrs. Lopez invited into their house? And then once they were in the house, you know, the situation became out of control and escalated to the point where someone was murdered and the house was set on fire. She may not want to incriminate someone if it was a friend of the family or something like that. Detectives ask Lynn to take a polygraph test. Of course I'll take a polygraph. I'll tell you everything. What I look for are reactions in all three components, the breathing, the heart rate, and the amount of sweat or moisture that's on the hands. Lynn Lopez takes her polygraph in November of 1996 and promptly flunks it.

I completely lost it. Deception? What kind of deception? Unable to make a case against Lynn, but without any other leads, the case starts to go cold. Lynn, wanting to clear her name, takes a polygraph and fails. Ironically, a polygraph has the same accuracy rate as a coin toss, about 50%. So I didn't know if she was being completely truthful about the information that she was provided that took place in her house, or if she failed the polygraph simply because of the emotions involved. Emotions aside, police need to take a harder look at Lynn, and Lopez feels the heat. I was horrified. If I saw a police car, I would panic because I would think they're coming to get me. So I had to secure an attorney to protect me from the people who are supposed to protect me.

I couldn't fathom this. Although no charges are ever filed, a shadow of suspicion hangs over Lynn Lopez and stays there for seven years. Until one day, when she decides to take the matter of crime and punishment into her own hands. I knew from that minute I am going to rattle this cage, and I'm not going to stop, no matter if I end up in a psychiatric ward, I'm never stopping. The case goes six years without a lead until Lynn, desperate for answers, calls the detectives and begs them to keep looking.

This is my psychologist's office, Dr. Collin, where two years ago I reopened the case. The case Lynn Lopez is talking about is that of her husband, Jay, who was stabbed before her eyes in 1996. It's a loss she has dealt with for the past six years, in private and in therapy. And this is where she asks for a meeting with detectives. I felt safe because my doctor was here and there was a trust issue.

I wasn't comfortable with the detectives at that time. She had gotten to the point where she was ready for something to happen. And I think you can see that in her demeanor and in her eyes that it was time for something to happen with this case. For six years, Lynn Lopez herself has been considered a person of interest in her husband's murder. Now she is determined to clear her own name and find her husband's killer. She wanted us to find the person who did this to her husband and to herself.

I know it took a lot for you to come in here and talk to us. Detective Harry Hoover promises to give the case another look, and Lynn Lopez, hopefully, a second chance. This is our evidence room for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Amidst the hundreds of boxes lining these shelves, Harry Hoover pulls evidence from the J. Lopez case. This would have been all the evidence that was originally secured from the crime scene back in 1996. We have the bedspread, blanket.

A bedspread and a blanket, stained in blood and taken from the crime scene more than six years earlier. Hoover sends the items out for DNA testing. We're at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the DNA extraction laboratory. We're going to be entering the area where we actually extract the DNA profiles. Melissa Sudduth works the Lopez case. Samples were re-ran to generate an STR DNA profile. It's a highly discriminating test, and it's the current standard for databasing profiles in the United States. Developing an STR profile is a prerequisite for access to CODIS

and the DNA of more than 1.5 million convicted felons throughout the United States. Siddharth begins with blood found on the blanket. Out of all of the stained areas, there was only one particular stain that actually showed a profile that was different from the two victims involved in the case, and that was this one stain that was located here in the bottom corner of the blanket. That profile matches the profile developed from Lynn Lopez's rape kit. When uploaded into the DNA databank, the profile generates a hit. If you're running brand campaign, you need to reach the right people at just the right time.

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slash coldcase and never overpay for flights again. It's join for free at scottscheapflights.com slash coldcase. scottscheapflights.com slash coldcase. scottscheapflights.com slash coldcase. To Chatsium Adam Leoy, a name that does not appear in the old case file. Detectives dig into Leoy's criminal history and find a photo of the suspect. Lynn's initial description of the guy was almost perfect to what he was, the long, frizzy hair.

Hoover asks Lynn almost seven years later to try to ID the man who raped her and killed her husband. I knew that I could not pick these out until I put myself mentally back in that room that night. I jumped up and I saw a man holding a knife. I needed to be there. It was excruciating, but I knew I couldn't pick that picture unless I got that image of what he looked like. What type of hair? Very frizzy. I was in there. There was nobody else there. I was in there. It seemed like it must have been in a ponytail.

I pointed and I said, this is the son of a bitch. That's the one she identified and that's the one that DNA placed in her home the night of this crime. Before detectives can put Lioi in handcuffs, they have one more loose end to tie up. The next step we wanted to do is make sure he had no affiliation with Lynn. So we came up with the concept of doing a missing persons alert, putting a picture of Lynn that would have been taken around the time this occurred, putting her picture on a flyer and then going door to door specifically to Mr. Lioi and asking him specifically if he had ever seen this woman, did he know this woman, which he denied ever seeing her, ever knowing her. Leoy's statement convinces detectives their suspect acted alone and removes the last hint of suspicion surrounding Lynn Lopez.

Leoy is arrested and charged with the murder of Jay Lopez. This is the interview room at our office where Chatsyam Leoy was brought in. He was escorted in. In an interrogation room, detectives Harry Hoover and Frank Losat sit down with their suspect to talk about a murder seven years cold. It was interesting to sit across the table from Chatsiam Liyoy and look into his eyes. He had shark eyes. They were black and empty.

Basically what we're going to do is we're going to go back and discuss a homicide that occurred back in 1996. It was November 13th of 1996. Okay? Any recollection of that? No. We started throwing out little bits and pieces of the crime scene and things we had,

and he still kept denying it at that point. This is not sounding very good to me. Well, I told you up front, it's a serious, serious situation we're dealing with. Oh, s***. Okay? But we put you there. We can put you in that house.

Oh, I doubt that. We can put you in that bedroom. I doubt that, too. Those rooms and that house, you left a whole bunch of DNA behind. And guess what? We have it all. And then she even IDs you, and here you sit. Those seven years we've been working on a case, it didn't go away.

It didn't go away, Chad. Both of us, we didn't fall off the truck yesterday. Leoy shrugs off the DNA match and hangs tough on his story. This was not done in my hands. Detectives send Leoy back to his jail cell. Within minutes, however, the suspect suffers a change of heart. I remember everything, okay? I can remember every single detail.

He basically told us that he had had a vision that Jay, the victim in this crime, had kind of appeared to him and told him that the only way he could be free of this was to tell the truth. Killing Jay was an accident. That was. The other thing I did with her slapped me with life, slapped me with everything, because that was me. I did that. Nobody could say anything different. I did that. Anything you would like to say to the victim in this?

There's nothing I can tell her that would make it any better. I've been, as she has been, living with this all this time myself. And there's not a day that went by that I did not think about her or NJ and about what I did to them. He could never be dead enough for me. They could put him in the electric chair 50 times. It's never going to be enough for me. Chatsiam Lioi pleads guilty to a charge of first-degree homicide

and receives a term of life in prison. For Lynn Lopez, none of it really matters, as she lives out her own life sentence, one from which there is no respite and no reprieve. The man who attacked Lynn and killed her husband confessed. But it didn't give her the peace she'd hoped for. After years of feeling alone and scared, with the police not believing her, a conviction could never possibly be enough.

Lynn will continue to struggle with the pain and trauma of her experience for the rest of her life. The love of my life was taken from me. Sixteen years of a marriage that was a dream come true was taken in about two hours. Every morning when I wake up, I still think I'm back at home and my husband is next to me. And then my eyes open and I realize I am in hell. I am living in hell.

Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by Scott Brody, McKamey Lynn, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Music by Blake Maples. We're distributed by Podcast One.

Cold Case Files Classic was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the one and only Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com.