Cold Case Files - Death Of A Hero
Episode Date: March 14, 2023A fire in January 2007 claims the life of WWII vet Bennie Angelo. A closer look at the crime scene reveals Bennie was dead before the fire, bumping an arson case up to homicide. Leads are few and the ...case sits on ice--until a key witness comes forward. Check out our great sponsors! Vegamour: Go to Vegamour.com/coldcase and use code "coldcase" to save 20% on your first order! Follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING wherever you listen to podcasts! You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery App. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust Progressive!
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An A&E original podcast.
This episode contains descriptions of violence.
Listener discretion is advised.
At 87 years old, Dad took good care of himself.
He was still active.
He was always tinkering or working on the car or adding on our house.
He was involved with sons and daughters
of Pearl Harbor survivors.
He would take veterans to appointments.
Even in his 80s, he did that.
He just had a good heart.
Everything changed that day.
It didn't seem real.
It just didn't seem like that could even happen.
The only type of person that could do something like this
had to just be pure evil.
I was just in this dark, determined space.
I didn't care about anything but finding out who did this,
who killed our dad.
There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America.
Each one is a cold case.
Only 1% are ever solved.
This is one of those rare stories. It's shortly before midnight on January 7, 2007, in Columbus, Ohio.
Becky Angelo is doing some DIY projects with a neighbor when the phone rings.
When I got the call that night, I had had a neighbor over,
and he and I were putting together an entertainment center I had just bought.
And everything was fine, and then the phone rang, and it was my brother.
And he said, I just want to let you know, Dad's house is on fire, and it doesn't look good.
And he said, I'll call you back when I have more information.
And I kept trying to call him, and he didn't answer.
I just didn't know what to do.
Becky is terrified for the safety of her 87-year-old father, Benny,
who lives alone in the old family home two hours north in Canton.
We grew up in a middle-class neighborhood.
We had the type of home where everybody would kind of hang out.
My parents threw really big Christmas parties. Mom would start baking cookies in like October. My dad
worked a lot at the steel mill, but when he was available, he'd like to have people over
and entertain. He had a great sense of humor. Sundays at our house were fun because there
used to be a radio station out of Alliance, Ohio that played polka music on Sundays. And he loved polka music and y'all polka danced. I mean,
it was just a big deal. He was kind of feisty. He was opinionated. And I believe that he was
entitled to be because, you know, going through what he went through in his life.
Dad was in the military. He was in the army. And he actually, you know, he was at Pearl Harbor.
Benny is one of the few people still living at the time that witnessed the lethal attack that pushed the U.S. into joining the Second World War.
He would tell stories where he could see the eyes of the Japanese pilots coming down.
That's how low they were when they were coming in.
They were in the chow line for breakfast,
and then the person in front of him, his mess kit,
got hit with a bullet or something and shrapnel flew,
and my dad got some shrapnel in his ankle.
Every year he would go to a couple junior high schools
and, you know, and talk about it.
He just wanted to keep that memory alive.
Benny is well-known in his hometown. to keep that memory alive.
Benny is well known in his hometown. TV reporter Tracy Carlos spoke to many people
who admire him.
Benny was a local celebrity.
Everybody knew Benny.
Everybody loved Benny.
He had deep, deep roots to veterans organizations.
A World War II, Pearl Harbor veteran.
They're the toughest of the tough, right?
Back in Canton, the fire department surrounds Benny's burning home
and attempts to extinguish the blaze.
Canton fire investigator Joe Carafelli wastes no time in getting inside of the building.
He knows it's likely that lives are at stake.
Anytime a fire comes in in the middle of the night like that, and it's in what would
normally be an occupied structure, it kind of ramps things up for the firefighters. You
know you're coming into something where possibly you have someone deceased in there, but quite
possibly you may be able to save them. You might be able to get them out.
Carafelli's firefighting colleagues are already inside.
They didn't want to waste any time with getting in and trying to get him out of there.
Minutes, seconds, there was pretty much zero visibility because it was very smoky.
He was basically just going by feel as he crawled through there. Found the bedroom,
of course that's one of the first places you look, felt up on the bed, felt Mr. Angelo,
and immediately pulled him out and tried to get him outside.
He didn't notice any signs of life, couldn't hear him breathing.
There was no coughing or response from him.
Once he got him out, that's when the paramedic was trying to resuscitate him.
But it's too late.
Benny Angelo is dead. The first responders look inside of Benny's mouth to see if there was any soot and see that there is none.
This indicates that Benny died before smoke engulfed his house.
Carafelli carefully enters the smoldering house to investigate.
We had to determine every possible competent heat source
that could start a fire and then rule those out one by one. The stove was ruled out. We rule out
the hot water tank. We look at the electrical system of the house. In the front room, it was
basically just cluttered there. You know, you had some chairs and furniture and boxes, pictures of
him as a proud soldier, pictures of him with his family. It looked like stuff had been rummaged through
and thrown aside, and the tables were upended
and there were chairs piled up on it.
There were several liquor bottles laying around,
and there were strange burn patterns.
You could see what appeared to have been liquor
that was splashed around and then lit.
The suspicious burn patterns tell fire investigator Carafelli
that the fire was almost certainly started deliberately,
and there are more signs of something sinister.
We went into the bedroom.
You could see where Mr. Angelo took his last breaths,
and there was some blood and stuff on it.
There was a safe open right there at the foot of the bed,
and it just kind of telltale, you know? It looked like we had a crime scene here.
Canton Police Detective Victor George remembers that tragic night when he got the call to attend
Benny's house. I came immediately out to the scene and started scouring the house for any evidence that could be found.
Of course, with the water damage
and the condition of the house,
physical evidence was kind of few and far between.
From what we've seen in the bedroom,
we were able to deduct that this was a home invasion
or a burglary.
We could not find any sign of forced entry. There was no breaching of the door jams or the locks or anything of that nature.
I felt that somebody knocked on his door, got inside his house,
allowed somebody else or some other people to come in.
So with that, he possibly knew the person who was trying to get into the house.
There was no pry marks on the safe.
There was no tooling marks,
nothing that indicated that there was force applied to the safe.
Inside the safe, we were able to find a handgun that belonged to Benny.
I spoke to the family in reference to this handgun
and asked, did he have any other firearms? And they told me that he kept
a revolver next to his bed, always. And it was a.32 caliber revolver. It was missing.
Benny Angelo's remains are transported from the scene, and the medical examiner finds a number of puncture
wounds on his body. They are believed to be bullet holes. At this point, the investigators
believe that someone forced Benny to open the safe and then killed him before setting
the fire to cover it up. It's a shocking revelation that is hard for Benny's family
to come to terms with.
My brother finally called me back
and he said, are you sitting down? I'm like, what's going on? And he said, dad, dad's gone.
He was shot four times. And I remember, I remember just kind of collapsing to the floor.
There was confusion. There was sadness. There was questions. There were so many things.
I mean, my mind was just flying all over the place.
You know, like, what do you mean he was shot four times?
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I say, because if I do die, I'm going to ask the Lord,
let me haunt you.
We so often hear about those that don't make it out of danger alive.
But what about those that do?
My body got warm and it just said, get up.
You're not done, get up.
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It's the morning after the fire was reported and Benny Angelo's body was discovered.
It just seems so surreal, like, who gets a phone call and, you know,
hey, your dad's been shot four times.
I mean, that, never in my life, ever, did I ever expect to live through anything like that.
I got in the car that next morning and drove.
I knew that I had to get up there.
So it was a long drive.
It was probably the longest drive I've ever taken in my life,
and it was only two hours.
When I got to Dad's house, it was bizarre.
It was boarded up.
There was black soot on things.
There was crime scene tape.
We couldn't even get into the house at that point
because there was an investigation going on. But just the feeling of standing out there and wanting to go in, but not being able to.
But then when all that stuff was taken down and we were able to go in and just to see the struggle
and things, it was hard. It was hard to see that. You know, it was hard to see a puddle of blood on his chair.
It was hard to see hand blood, you know, streaks down the hallway.
I think I was more angry than anything.
I think at that point is when it clicked.
I just remember the family being there and detectives being there
and news people being there,
and it just didn't seem like there was any time to even process anything, you know?
There is a small comfort for Becky
as she spots a familiar face
among the investigators at the scene,
lead detective Victor George.
Victor and I went to high school together.
You know, he was an athlete, I was an athlete.
You always want to run into your old acquaintances,
you know, your high school classmates,
but you don't want to have to tell them,
I'm investigating your father's murder.
Just having him around, somebody familiar,
was comforting in a way.
He was just really reassuring that he
was going to solve this case.
The coroner's report confirms that Benny has been shot
with a.32 caliber gun four times,
once in the head and three times in the chest.
The revolver was believed to be the one belonging to Benny Angelo.
To be killed with your own gun in your own home,
you know, that's a hard pill to swallow, you know.
Even though Benny was 87 years old, he was in good health.
He wouldn't have gone down without a fight.
That's why I believe there was more than one person, because I don't, I think it had
to be, because it would have taken more than one person to take my dad out.
You know, that's the type of, he had such a strong spirit.
The fire and the damage caused by the water used to put it out
have made the investigator's job much harder.
There is little chance of finding any forensic evidence.
You have to go in and put a bunch of water into a place to put it out.
There was active fire in there,
and water did need to be put on it to put it out.
Otherwise, it all burns up.
This is something that's kind of unique to fire investigation.
You know, it's one of the only crimes that your evidence decreases as the crime progresses.
If there was any DNA that we wanted to try to retrieve from somewhere in the house,
it would have destroyed that.
Against all odds, one potentially valuable clue survives the blaze.
Our identification bureau was able to find a hair
in the front door mechanism, one single hair.
That hair appeared to be blonde.
I know the family of Benny Angelo, and they're all dark-haired.
Benny had white hair, but he had very short hair.
Why is there a blonde hair in the mechanism of the door?
That was a huge lead for us.
I believe that belonged to the person who entered the residence
and ultimately assaulted him.
Detective George sends the hair
to the lab for DNA analysis.
The family and the town of Canton mourn the loss
of their local hero.
We had a vigil on the front lawn of Dad's house,
and we had the military there, we had the 21-gun salute.
People were laying teddy bears, flowers, and things.
And then the bugle player showed up.
And then the bugle player showed up.
Benny's friend, Carol Parker Park,
had mixed emotions at the service.
It was so hard, but it was a proud moment for me
to see how many people cared.
Despite the solemn affair,
Becky can't help but think of her father's killer.
I was just amazed by how many people were out.
I mean, it was bitter cold.
I remember being there and looking at everybody and just watching people, how they were reacting,
thinking maybe I could see somebody behaving strangely or like,
who is this person? Why, you know, why are they here? Everybody is suspect at that point because,
you know, nobody knows anything.
A young blonde woman wearing a cowboy hat stands out among the mourners.
We just thought she was acting a little suspicious or just different.
And she had this pink cowboy hat.
So she put this hat on the pile for the memorial,
and I thought, okay, we've got to get this hat,
and they're going to get DNA off of it,
and we're going to figure out who this person is and why she's here.
In the days after the murder,
the family wonders about one of the people seen at their father's vigil,
the young woman in a pink cowboy hat that none of them had seen before.
Detective George is told about the stranger and brings her in for questioning.
So when I interviewed this female of interest, she answered all of our questions.
She cooperated with us.
She didn't appear to be stammering around looking for answers.
It turned out to be nothing.
It was just some woman from the neighborhood
just wanted to leave her hat there.
But, you know, when you're that desperate and you're grasping,
any little thing you see, because nothing is too small,
any little thing off kilter, you automatically say,
okay, that could be the person, you know,
or maybe this person's involved,
or maybe this person knows something,
until you drive yourself half nuts.
Looking for a lead,
Detective George interviews Benny's family.
Becky Angelo told me that when her mother passed away,
her father put four envelopes in that safe,
and it had $5,000 apiece in it.
That money was for each of the children
when he passed away.
And I believe in speaking with Becky Angelo,
she was the only one that knew that.
So there was $20,000 in the safe that was not there.
After speaking with Mr. Angelo's four children,
it was very clear that none of them
had anything to do with his death.
He didn't have life insurance. He didn't even have homeowner's insurance.
So the house, when it got destroyed, was a loss to the family.
Detective George checks police records connected to Benny's address and discovers a troubling incident.
Two weeks prior to Mr. Angelo's murder,
he had a burglary to his residence.
He wasn't home at the time, but somebody had broke in
and they had stole envelopes that had cash in it
for Christmas presents.
Now, a patrol officer went out, took a report,
he looked around,
didn't see any sign of forced entry. Now you go two weeks ahead, and he's broken into again.
Investigators think that the pattern of repeated burglaries could be significant.
And Becky wonders if it's someone from the neighborhood behind it all.
There was actually two brothers that lived down the street.
Both of them were drug addicts, and they've had issues with burglaries and the drug trafficking
and, you know, minor violent stuff.
We thought maybe that they broke into the house to get money to buy drugs.
So being that they were on probation,
their parole officer did a home visit,
and we didn't find anything that would link that young man
or his brother to Benny Angelo at that time.
We developed another female suspect of somebody
that would come over and do work for Mr. Angelo.
The family felt she took advantage of their father for monies,
and she had blonde hair.
I went and interviewed this young girl.
I asked her if she'd voluntarily give me some DNA sample.
And she said, sure.
And I said, I just want to get a couple of your hairs
out of your head.
Before he can run the test,
the lab results come in on the blonde hair
found at Benny's house.
It was a non-human hair.
It came from a dog.
Investigators widen the search and follow every possible lead, until an accidental discovery
offers new hope. It's July 1st, 2007, seven months after Benny Angelo was found dead.
An elderly gentleman who was just cleaning up his debris
underneath a bush, he rakes out the old dead leaves
and he finds a brown leather holster
and a wallet with Benny Angelo's ID in it.
I would say the way the crow flies,
it was probably 1,500 feet from Mr. Angelo's house.
The find is their best lead yet.
What the discovery of those items did for us
was show us a path that one of the persons
that left Mr. Angelo's house was walking
and discarded those items under some bushes
so nobody would ever find them.
It revived me with a new sense of energy on the case,
and I was excited to hopefully come up
with a resolution to this murder.
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The holster and wallet containing Benny's ID are sent to the crime lab for analysis.
But the items had been exposed to the elements for months,
and there are no fingerprints or DNA evidence found.
The lack of any developments frustrates Benny's family.
Victor took some phone calls from me at all hours of the night that probably I wasn't my best self.
I was like, are we ever going to solve this case?
I said some terrible things because things weren't happening
maybe as quickly as I thought they should.
I would get another homicide case and be able to solve it right away,
and that's when her anger would come, and she says,
you know, you can solve everybody else's murder, but not my father's.
You know, you take it with a grain of salt. I understand what she's going through.
It was frustrating, just not knowing nothing's happening fast enough. He allowed me to just get
it out, and then we would just move, we would move forward. I just kept thinking, what else can I do?
I started investigating stuff on my own, knocked on doors, approached people to ask them questions.
You know, I wasn't afraid to ask anybody anything.
I got a little determined, I think is a good word, determined to find out who did this.
I knew where there were a couple bad spots in the neighborhood, so I would casually,
kind of incognito, wear a lot of clothing and go hang in, you know, go walk around these
people and be
amongst them. I knew I had to be careful because I was all over the news at that point and I didn't
want to be identified. Becky's determination is admirable, but it worries the investigators.
Having a civilian attempt their own investigation is always a concern. You know, leave it to the detectives.
We know the do's, the don'ts, what we can do.
There's always that potential that you're going to scare somebody off.
She would sometimes put herself in situations
that maybe were not the best situations that she should have been in.
Determined to solve this case,
Becky and the FBI offer a reward for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons responsible for Benny Angelo's murder.
I walked around with a sandwich board on me for a long time with who killed Benny with the reward.
And it was like a three-year-old put this thing together, but I didn't have any shame in wearing it.
I, you know, and I went with whatever I could just to let people keep talking.
Don't let people forget.
We learned some things, but nothing really ever amounted to anything.
Another year goes by, still nothing.
It was just like everything was stacked against us.
It was frustrating.
To go on that long not knowing, your mind goes places,
and you think about, what am I missing?
This person's probably right under our nose.
They have to be close.
It's now June 2008.
18 months have passed by with no new leads,
and the case has gone cold.
I felt like I did everything I could,
and there was just nothing left to do at the present time.
When you're out of leads
it's kind of out of your control. This case going unsolved played a lot more on my emotions than
any of the other cases just based on the fact that I had a personal friendship with the daughter of
Mr. Angelo. I never lost hope even if it was was just a teeny tiny bit, I hung on to it.
I mean, I hung on to it.
It was just so tiny, I was afraid if I let that go,
you know, I don't know that I'd even be sitting here today, really.
That's how dark it was.
I'm like, if somebody could do this to Dad, 87 years old,
we got to stop him, we got to get these people off the streets.
The only thing I cared about was bringing justice. That's when I started sending out posters to the jails. People
in jail talk. I just kept thinking, somebody's got to know something. Years pass without any
new information, and it's now the summer of 2011, four and a half years since Benny's murder.
Becky Angelo does not give up her fight for justice.
She continues doing anything she can to keep her father's case alive.
Just one night I thought, okay, I think we've put flyers on every telephone pole and business
and wasn't really doing anything.
And I just figured people in jail brag and talk,
so let's go there. I thought, okay, Ohio has 88 counties, which probably means there's
88 county jails. And I thought then maybe I should branch out to PA, Michigan, you know,
Indiana, all the surrounding states. I just attached a little eight by 10 poster
with a note to the sheriff, please post this in your jail.
The unorthodox method pays off when an inmate reads the poster in May 2012.
They were hung up right in the receiving area
where you bring a prisoner in.
And in May of 2012, I received what they call a kite.
And it is a message that a person in our county jail
passes on to a corrections officer,
and their request is to speak with a detective.
We get requests from inmates a lot
that they have information in reference
to a certain case we're investigating.
It really doesn't spark an interest to us
unless they could tell us something
that has not been released for the public to see or hear.
So I went out there to meet with this young lady,
and she told me that she's in a pod cell
with a young girl whose name was Regina Crank,
talking about the murder of Ben D'Angelo
and that her cousin
was involved. Now, I was able to interview Regina on the same day. Regina told me that she was at a
party and her cousin was there, Chester Crank. Apparently, she was raised with Chester like
brother and sister. They were very close growing up. So he trusted her. He had been drinking. He
had mentioned to her and other people that he is going to go to prison
for the rest of his life for shooting and killing somebody.
And that somebody was Benny Angelo.
Chester Crank was somebody that wasn't even on our radar.
This is something fresh, something new.
I mean, I was enthused.
The name Chester Crank is unfamiliar to Benny's relatives,
but it's mentioned twice more by other inmates who tell police similar stories about Crank's involvement in Benny Angelo's murder.
You hear it once, you take it with a grain of salt.
You hear it twice, your ears perk up.
You hear it three times, now you've got something there.
I did my due diligence on Chester Crank.
He had a handful of felonies.
I found out that Mr. Crank lived on 19th Street and Harrisburg Road.
Crank's address aligns with the details of Benny's case.
It's close to Benny's house,
and the spot where the holster and wallet were found
is between both locations.
So the pieces, to me,
were starting to come together on this case.
I asked Regina if I was able to get her released from here.
Would she be willing to wear a recording device
and go out with Chester Crank.
You know, I told her there's a reward put out by the family
if you get an arrest and a conviction out of it.
But if you mess up, you're going right back in.
She was more than willing to do it.
On August 16, 2013,
Regina meets with her cousin Chester Crank and talk quickly turns to his claims of being a murderer.
Chester, what is wrong? You got me scared.
You scared somebody?
No, you didn't.
Yes, I did.
Really?
Yes, I did. I promise you.
Dude, my heart is racing. No, you did not.
I promise you. They can never prove it. You did not kill somebody. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. The recordings are brought to Prosecutor John Ferrero
at the Stark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
When our office heard the tape conversation,
we were confident that we had enough to present this to the jury.
We finally had him on tape.
He was charged with arson, murder, robbery, and burglary.
Under interrogation at Canton Police Department, Crank denies everything.
Mr. Crank named three other suspects, but he said he was not involved in this case at all.
I probably spoke to him for over two hours, tried everything I knew to try to get him to break,
to tell me the truth, to tell me what happened.
And it did not come to fruition.
The audio tapes covertly recorded by Regina tell a very different story, providing damning
evidence against Crank, evidence he can't ignore.
He made an admission that he was the one that shot and killed Benny,
and explained why there was four gunshots on his body.
When the other three, they're inside ransacking the house, a gunshot goes off.
They run into the back bedroom where the gunshot was.
Benny Angelo was in there, and Crank had told the other three that they had to shoot him too
because they were all as culpable or responsible as he was.
After months of delays,
Chester Crank's trial finally gets underway in July 2014.
Crank's attorneys claim that he was drunk
when he made the alleged confession,
and there was no evidence to support the ramblings.
Mr. Crank was sort of nonchalant, you know,
that I didn't do this, you know,
you got the wrong person kind of attitude.
I have to say that was one of the hardest things
I ever had to go through, was to sit in the courtroom,
probably four to six feet away
from the person that killed our father,
and he was just smirking,
and, like, he didn't care about anything.
The things we had to hear, it was tough.
My dad fought till the end.
He had defensive wounds on his arms,
and I believe one of the bullets even went through his hand,
and then it went through his head.
And I wanted to inflict as much pain on Chester Crank
as I could physically.
But we knew we couldn't do anything to jeopardize a mistrial or anything.
The defense offers no witnesses.
And after just five days, the trial concludes.
The jury returns with a verdict,
finding Crank guilty of aggravated murder,
aggravated arson, robbery, and burglary.
At the family's request, the judge passes the sentence immediately,
ordering Crank to spend the rest of his life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
The guilty verdict was very satisfying to me
because I knew how his family was so involved
in making sure justice was served here.
And I know how Detective George just worked very hard on this case.
So I was satisfied that Chester Crank definitely received what he deserved.
While Crank is securely behind bars, there are unresolved elements of the case.
There was evidence to show that there was approximately three other people that was involved in this whole incident.
If any evidence comes forward, I'm sure they will proceed to present it to a grand jury.
But at this point in time, that's all they are at this time is suspects.
And that's why that chapter might be closed, but this book isn't done,
because I know that there's other people that need to be held accountable.
Chester Crank took the only father that we ever had.
Becky's determination to not let her father's case turn cold pays off.
I was truly happy for the family that they finally were getting justice
for the murder of their father.
This had been a case that had gone cold for a lot of years.
Becky is among the strongest people that I've ever met.
She did not give up.
She did not waver.
She wanted this solved, and she got it.
You talk about a celebration.
I mean, it's almost like you could breathe again.
Like you could just get air in your lungs and be like wow this okay this this is happening you know it's not it's I'm not living this nightmare
anymore and it was worth it all the struggles all the tears all you know I
mean to finally get somebody it was a great feeling I think I finally felt joy
for the first time yeah the first time in about seven years, I felt like finally.
The holidays aren't the same.
I mean, not having Dad in the way he was taken from us.
Yeah, I don't even put a Christmas tree up.
I know, it's tough.
I'm working on that, you know.
I'm just trying to get better about it.
Every day I miss him.
There are certain things, somebody will do something or say something, and it'll be like, God, that reminds me of dad. You know, I miss him a lot.
Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network
and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson.
Our composer is Blake Maples.
For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher
and our supervising producer
is McKamey Lynn.
Our executive producers
are Jesse Katz,
Maite Cueva,
and Peter Tarshis.
This podcast is based on
A&E's Emmy-winning TV series
Cold Case Files.
For more Cold Case Files, visit aetv.com.