Cold Case Files - DNA SPEAKS: Killed For The Cash

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

When a Texas gas store owner, Subir Chatterjee, 58, is shot inside his check cashing booth in 2002, detectives suspect his killer is someone Subir knew. With the murderer’s DNA in hand, one detective refuses to retire until the case is solved.GreenLight - Sign up today at GreenLight.com/ColdCase today!SimpliSafe - This week only, take 50% OFF ANY new system with a select professional monitoring plan by going to SimpliSafe.com/ColdCase HERS - Start your free online visit today at ForHERS.com/CCF This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance! 

Hi Cold Case listeners, I'm Marissa Pinson, and if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. The following episode contains intensely disturbing accounts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. My uncle was a kind person and a trusting person. His wife called me and said that he has been murdered.

He was face up, shot in the neck. Lying in a pool of blood. His glasses were broken and blood spattered. I knew it was my job to catch whoever did it. Somebody desperate enough to do a crime in the middle of the day like that, where they would take over $100,000 and end up killing the man for it. Was the killer somebody that he knew? Because we had the DNA, we were really persistent. I was thinking that he's going to get away. I thought maybe he would never be caught. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America.

Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's February 15, 2002 in Oak Ridge North, Texas. The midday sun shines high above the Houston suburb of Oak Ridge North when a customer at a local gas station stumbles on a crime scene. Jessica Bettencourt is the producer and host of the DNA ID podcast. He had driven up to the gas station and gone inside to presumably make a purchase and saw a guy in the booth, not visible except for his feet, which were lying on the ground.

And he realized immediately that there was a distress situation. So he went outside and called the police. When I arrived and walked inside, everything appeared in order. But when I walked around to the booth, there were signs of a struggle. In the picture, you can also see a chair turned over. It brings back some of the same feelings I had that day even though it was 18 years ago. More now. I saw the body laying there. His head was turned to the side. He was face up, laying on his back. He had been shot in the head and also in the neck, and it bled everywhere.

It was a quite bloody scene. Looking at the gunshot wound, there was a tremendous amount of stippling and gunshot residue. The gun was almost against his neck. There hadn't been a homicide in Oak Ridge North in, gosh, maybe 20 years. I was nervous because it was my first homicide and I was the lead detective. So I knew it was my job to catch whoever did it. The victim is the owner of the gas station, 58-year-old Subir Chatterjee.

Sunil Chatterjee is Subir's brother, and Neil Chatterjee is Subir's nephew. Me and Subir was very close. Subir is my brother, and I was about two years older than him. Everybody in my household loved him. My son, Neil, was very close to him. My uncle, Shabir, when he first came to the US from India, he was my only relative outside of my parents in the US.

He actually lived with my family in our home. And so the first few years of my life, he was a constant presence. After moving to the U.S. with the help of Neil's father, Subir opened a gas station in the Houston suburbs. When I was a kid, we would go and visit. We didn't have a lot of money. We didn't get a lot of gifts at Christmas.

So my uncle would take us to his store and just basically let us get whatever we wanted, sodas or gum or little toys. He was a very generous person, not just with me, but with everyone. Subir quickly discovers a profitable sideline. The area around Houston where the gas station was at the time was really being built up. So you had a lot of laborers and folks who maybe didn't have access to traditional bank accounts.

And my uncle discovered this opportunity to make money cashing checks. Sometimes, you know, when we are visiting him, you know, many times he go to the bank and get the money. So it's close to $200,000 he was doing that. He said that, well, it is a very good day for me and all that. It was lots of money, you know. Subir runs his check cashing business from a specially made booth inside the gas station. Charlie Nation is a detective with the Oak Ridge North Police Department. It was bullet resistant glass.

He was thinking of trying to deter robberies himself by making a booth like that inside his store. Mr. Chatterjee was very paranoid about people. As I recall as a patrol officer, I remember taking a call there on a fraudulent call there, and I had to conduct my investigation through a slot in the window. He wouldn't open the door for me, but we've discovered as we were doing our investigation, Mr. Chatterjee would allow frequent customers into his booth. I told Subhi's concern about his safety.

We said, this is risky business. We always hear people getting robbed. He said, well, I'm safe in the booth. Don't worry, I'll be safe. Now the family's worst fears have come true. Shubhi's wife called me and she has been murdered, you know, shot dead. And that's all I remember after that. I just, my telephone fell from my hand and I was on the floor.

So my wife took the phone and tried to get the details and what happened. I always try to forget the day, but it is impossible. It's not possible to forget. I kind of blacked out in that moment. My wife now tells me that I threw the phone across the room, didn't even hang up, and I just couldn't process it. Tom Libby is the chief of the Oak Ridge North Police Department. I would say the first thing that the detectives did was try to find if there was any video in the store.

Surveillance cameras were installed and visible at the gas station. However, they had never been hooked up. I believe because some of the people that he would do business with did not want their pictures taken. Their main business was cashing checks. Then he had a lot of shady people coming and going out of that place. Detectives searched for evidence in the booth where Subir was killed. We didn't want to move the body and disturb the crime scene at that point.

Subir had the phone receiver in his hand. There was a spent shell casing on the floor. It was easy to see that it was a.32 caliber. The door jamb had been broken off. Somebody had to kick the door in to get to Sabir. When he interviews eyewitnesses, Hubbard quickly discovers that it wasn't the killer who forced his way into the booth. It turned out that one of the people who found Sabir kicked down the door. So that led them to the thought of how the killer got access to the booth. Sabir would not just let anybody in the booth. So was the killer somebody that Subir knew? People who would frequent the store and were allowed into the booth

would see that he generally placed the money in his briefcase with the top up. So it was clearly visible. In the security booth, the main thing that was missing was Sabir's briefcase. We went through his business records. The morning of his homicide, he had a cash delivery of, I think it was $198,000 from a armored car. So that's certainly enough money to pique someone's curiosity. And it turned out that a witness was on the scene that day, and he sees a white Oldsmobile Alero sitting outside the gas station with a fairly skinny white guy in the driver's seat. And coming out of the gas station,

the witness saw the six-foot-tall, olive-skinned man in a leather jacket and a sort of newsboy or cabbie hat with a red birthmark carrying the briefcase under his arm. And the witness sees this man get into the Alero, and it speeds off. We theorized that was Sabeer's missing briefcase and a large, large amount of cash. Police, of course, their ears perked right up and they thought, this is our suspect. Kent Hubbard is a retired detective from the Oak Ridge North Police Department.

I was very confident it was our guy. We were looking for somebody desperate enough to do a crime in the middle of the day like that where they would take over $100,000 and end up killing the man for it. Witnesses described a white Oldsmobile Alero. It had a paper plate driving away from the store at a high rate of speed. We theorized somebody had taken the license plate off so that we couldn't identify the car.

So we pursued this. The Department of Motor Vehicle provided us a list of about, I think it was close to 400 cars, but we were never able to identify the exact car. Detectives hire an artist to create composite sketches of the two men described by witnesses. Those were the people we concentrated on. This older male with the briefcase, the one that he had an olive skin complexion,

the witnesses said he's not Hispanic, but he does have an olive skin complexion. So that sort of led us to believe at that point that this guy was Middle Eastern. Next, Hubbard looks into using a promising new field of forensic science to identify the perpetrator. DNA was more or less in its infancy. We knew people that could be identified with greater certainty through DNA than fingerprints.

But in 2002, DNA was becoming real popular with law enforcement to identify people. There was just a tremendous backlog to finally get your DNA analyzed, even on a homicide. Police want to test the blood left at the crime scene because they suspect that some of it came from the killer as well as the victim. The odd thing about it was Sabir wore glasses, and there was also a 90-degree blood drop on the lens of his glasses that were totally inconsistent with blood spatter from the gunshot.

It's like blood just falls down, hits the floor, and spreads out. So that was unusual. It looked as though somebody had stood over him, I guess to make sure that he was indeed dead. So we collected the 90-degree blood drops. We had a fairly large quantity. It took a while, as I recall, for DPSPS for the crime lab to actually confirm that there were at least two sets of DNA in the crime scene. There was severe and there was also DNA from an unidentified male. And we put that DNA in the CODIS hopefully

to get a hit. We were looking for a criminal that's been in the system. We were thinking we would get a hit right off the bat. But surprisingly, they didn't get any hits because it was felt that this killer, who was so brazen, had likely done something before. But that was not the case, at least not to the level that he was entered into the federal criminal DNA database. So from there on out, there was not

much they could do with the DNA. They had the guy's DNA, but that doesn't lead to a name. Investigators shift focus to Subir's check caching business. Detective Hubbard figured out that this check caching business was operating in a larger scale than he anticipated. Their main business wasn't pumping gas. It wasn't selling snacks. As a matter of fact, I remember in that store,

a lot of this stuff was expired. From time to time, Sabir would cash checks in excess of $100,000. I mean, I had no clue of that. I figured it was just your common day worker cashing to a $300 check. So there was a lot of cash flowing through the gas station. Subir had a logbook in the office,

and he would take photocopies of their driver's license. So many driver's license copies were found in his files. Quite a few people were sort of engaged in nefarious activity, stuff that's under the table. Subir's business was sort of no questions asked. It wasn't his job to question the source of the checks that he was taking in. One man named Terry Edwards immediately jumps out. Terry was a regular check cashing customer of Subir's, and Terry somewhat resembled the guy in the sketch with the cap in the alero.

I got a call from an investigator with the Harris County DA's office. They were working a case on Terry. Terry had been defrauding the company that he worked for. It was a furniture store, and Sabir was going to be their star witness. Sabir gets killed about, I think, two weeks or so before the trial starts. We really were interested in that.

After Subir's death, Terry's sort of bragging that he was not going to jail. He had the charges beat. Now, the only way to make sure that that would happen is to remove any witnesses who could testify against you. So this became, all of a sudden sudden a very, very good lead. Terry certainly had motive to kill Sabir. He was our number one suspect. So I was like, this is it. This is the guy. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. We all know the old saying,

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and 1, the time of the murder. But there was no record at the restaurant they said they ate at of that lunch. So that made Terry even more interesting to investigators. There's nowhere near enough evidence to charge Edwards with murder, but he is convicted of the fraud charges, giving detectives an opportunity to collect his DNA and compare it to the DNA found at the crime scene. Terry went to state prison. We flew up there. We had a burn, but he volunteered to give us DNA. It was not a match. Boom, hit the brick wall and have to start from scratch all over again. Investigators go back to Subir's logs and look for more customers with questionable backgrounds. Donna Hanson is the felony division chief

for the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office. Detective Hubbard told me that they encountered criminals at every corner in this investigation. They were literally coming out of the woodwork. Because if you think about the people who would frequent this type of check-cashing business, you do have people who are anxious to immediately get hold of their ill-gotten gains over the years we were locating people and

interviewing them asking for dna i wish i could tell you how many people but it was just it was just non-stop it seemed like i got to the point where I would not let myself get hopeful because it hurt so much to hit the brick wall. And it got to be devastating. The Oak Ridge North Police Department was not going to give up. We would not have given up on the family. Under my watch or the next chief's watch,

we would not have given up on that homicide. But they tried everything that the science would give us at that point in time. We were never able to identify the few people that everybody described and that we thought at that time were involved in the homicide. We spent years of the investigation trying to find these two gentlemen, and we were

never able to do that. We followed every lead available, but as time went on, you know, it turned into a cold case. With no new leads, the case of the murdered gas station owner goes cold. Until 2011, nine years after Subir is murdered. Neil would call me once a year, generally on the date of Subir's murder. I was really the one that continued to

pursue it. I wanted to see justice. My family lost their faith in the system. I thought maybe it would never be solved. Just praying that it gets solved. But thought that maybe I have to go to my grave, not knowing who killed him. My family did not believe that a collection

of white police officers in rural Texas would care about the murder of an Indian grocer, and they would just bury the case, and they couldn't have been more wrong. I wanted to retire, but I had promised Neil that I would not retire until we identified this person and arrested him. It's now April 1st, 2018, 16 years after Subir is murdered and DNA technology is starting to catch up. It took 16 years for the DNA technology to catch up.

And that's when Detective Hubbard had an aha moment. The veteran investigator hears about new DNA testing techniques pioneered by a company called Parabon Nano Labs. So I sent them a sample of the blood drop from the crime scene. Parabon did an updated phenotype where they tried to interpret what this person might actually look like. Hubbard believed that the person

was of Middle Eastern descent. But they discovered that this DNA was Hispanic and the person was from the Nuevo Leon area of Mexico, which borders Texas. We had believed that it was Middle Eastern the whole time for the first 16 years. We chased these ghosts down all sorts of rabbit holes. It really threw us off.

Because we had the DNA, we were really persistent. I knew we were going to eventually find them. It was just a matter of time. Next, the experts at Parabon turned to a technique called familial DNA testing, which uses the DNA found in the blood at the crime scene to try to find close relatives of the perpetrator. It seemed like some sort of magic hocus-pocus that you put a bunch of genetic code into a database and the genealogist can figure out who that person is based on connectivity with their relatives. Forensic genealogy was just hitting everyone's radar

in sort of the crime-fighting world because it was a new tool that promised the possibility of putting a name to unknown DNA profiles. In order to compare different genetic profiles, what's called a SNP profile is prepared. Parabon's forensic genealogist loads the SNP profile from the blood into a genealogical database and builds a complex family tree with the results.

Parabon went back to the mid to late 1800s to develop a family tree on the 90-degree blood drop to try and identify other family members. A month later, Parabon comes back and says, okay, our suspect was one of three brothers. I knew then that we could indeed solve this case. It felt like we were getting answers. It felt like for the first time, we were on the right track. The youngest brother was too young at the time of the homicide to really be involved. One brother had moved to Washington State. The only brother left lived only about 30 minutes from the gas station.

His name is Martin Tellez. Detectives need a DNA sample from Tellez to be certain they finally have their elusive suspect. He lived and was born in Texas, but still he had family ties in Mexico. And we were thinking if he'd found out that we were on to him, that he would probably flee to Mexico. We set about trying to covertly get DNA from him. So we set up surveillance at his house. We were waiting for Martin Tellez to discard a cigarette, gum, anything. And that never really panned out, but the FBI offered to assist us,

and they got lucky and followed he and his wife to a restaurant. And once they cleared out, they secured the table, and Lieutenant Hubbard raced over there. I collected the items that Martin had placed in his mouth. The coffee cup, a spoon, a fork, and of all things, a partially eaten piece of toast.

I found out from the crime lab that bread was an excellent source of DNA because of its porous nature. There's a lot of DNA that's in your saliva that sticks with the toast. Everything in this case is compared to the partially eaten piece of toast, of all things. Scientists extract Martin Tellez's DNA from the bread and test it to see if it matches the 90-degree blood drops found at the murder scene. I wore out the knees on a couple pair of blue jeans, praying for 18 years. But when God answers prayer, he does it spectacularly. on what's in your podcast queue, right? And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too.

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HERS weight loss is not available everywhere. Compounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Restrictions apply. Wagovi and Azempic are not compounded. It's now December 4th, 2019, 17 years after Subir is murdered. I got a call one day from the crime lab in Houston. The head of the DNA analysis told me, Kent,

not only do you have a match, you have an exact match. They give a percentage likelihood of another unrelated person having the exact DNA that Martin had. And their odds were 10 to the 27th power. Kent calls me and he's out of breath. He's so excited. I mean, he's been a police officer forever, right? And just seeing how excited he was about the possibility of solving this case has haunted him.

For most of his career, it was really, really special. And so I said, well, get up here. Let's write this warrant. I'm ready. The match of the DNA. It was everything. It was everything. That was the basis of the arrest warrant for Martin. Yeah, it was crucial. Martin Telles has never been in any trouble with law enforcement. I think within the 18 years, he was stopped for a traffic citation and was given a verbal warning, not even a written citation. Telles' clean record explains why his name didn't show up in the CODIS searches.

It was somebody who was a first offender, so he wasn't ever going to pop up as a suspect on this case. In the years since the murder, Telles has been living a quiet life with his wife and kids in a suburb close to Sabir's gas station. Martin had just gotten a job and was happy, and he posted it on LinkedIn. And from that, then we knew where he worked. So we went there, and as it turned out, he was the only one in the office. As soon as I opened the door,

I recognized him as Martin Tellez. I walked in, I introduced myself, and told him I had a warrant for his arrest. You have anything on you? No, sir. Nothing whatsoever? No. You ever been arrested? No, sir. You had an ID? Yes, sir. Where's it at? Do you mind if I do? No. Stay right there. May I ask what this is? Sure, it's for the murder of Sabir Chatterjee. His eyes went wide, and then he dropped his head to his chest. You have the right to remain silent and not make any statement.

It was the highlight of my career to put my handcuffs on him. I have goosebumps right now. I'll never forget the day Hubbard called me to tell me he had made the arrest. And he literally cried. It's one of the most powerful moments of my life. I was just overcome with just complicated emotions,

but mostly, you know, joy and relief. Martin Tellez is brought to the Oak Ridge Police Department for an interview. Prosecutor Donna Hanson joins Detective Kent Hubbard for questioning. So as we walked into the room to try to take a statement from Martin Tellez, one of our goals was to see would he admit to what he had done. I told Martin, look, what I'm going to ask you about is something that you've lived with for the past 18 years.

And I'm sure you'd like to get that off your chest. This is your first arrest. I would think you would remember that like it was yesterday. I won't lie to you. I'll do my best with recollecting. Telles admits to going to the gas station that day, back in 2002, to commit a robbery. Martin told me he didn't intend on killing him. He produced a gun and said, I want all the money. Sabir hit him over the head with a telephone,

and that's where the blood came from. You know, I shot him in the neck and in the head. You shot him? It was watching a man who's kept a secret for 20 years just kind of unburdening himself in that moment. His children were going to find out. His wife was going to find out that he wasn't the guy that she thought he was. It was finally over for him. because of the blood, because of the DNA testing. That's the problem. Who had thought the guy would just confess? After he confessed, he asked to call his wife.

Hello? Hello? Me and I have been arrested. I did something bad a long time ago. 2002. It's caught up to me. I called, I didn't lie to the police. I wasn't gonna lie but I just, I decided there was time to.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. After with his family and mine. He finally told his wife what he'd done for the first time after almost 18 years of marriage, and I could hear her screaming through the phone. Martin was charged with capital murder for killing severe Chatterjee in the course of a robbery. Finally, Detective Hubbard can set a date

for his long-awaited retirement. I had done my job. When you spend, I guess, your whole life working, you know, it's natural, I think, to look forward to retirement. It's now April 9th, 2021, 19 years after Subir Chatterjee is murdered. As he awaited trial, COVID hit. COVID was going to run rampant through the jails and prisons.

And anybody who didn't have to be there, they didn't want to be there. So they reduced Tellez's bond to $500,000 and he bonded out. I was at a golf outing with friends, and I got a call from Charlie Nation, and Charlie said that Martin had escaped. He cut his ankle monitor off. He just decided to cross the border into Mexico. I was anxious and nervous and thinking that he's going to get away. I was pretty irritated.

I was irritated that we had, you know, that they even allowed him to have bond. And now Martin Tellez was in Mexico. The Texas Rangers are charged with bringing Tellez back to face justice, and they called Kent Hubbard out of retirement to help. I knew more about Martin than anyone else in law enforcement, so they were calling me quite often to pick my brain about family members and places in Mexico.

The Texas Rangers decide to talk to his wife. They were at her home, and they happened to get lucky in that the phone rang, and it was him calling her. Martin Telles at the time wanted to see his family one more time. Hey, Martin, it's Derek with the Texas Rangers. Hey, you all right, buddy? I've been better. Yeah.

The ranger conveyed to him over the phone he couldn't do that if he was in Mexico. Tellez started talking about if he never came home and would the Ranger make sure that his body got back to his family. So now it started to seem like he was maybe going to harm himself. Suicide was not absolutely out of the question. The Ranger says, you need to come turn yourself in, or you'll forfeit the $500,000 bond.

Your wife is going to have to work for the rest of her life. So it seems that Martin Tellez finally decided that the jig was up. I will cooperate. Okay. I'll be at the border crossing. Matter of the adoption. A week after he had escaped, he finally walked back across the Gateway Bridge in Brownsville and was arrested by the Rangers.

Martin went into court and accepted the plea of guilty in a prison term of 60 years. Seeing Martin Tellez in person for the first time, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. You know, for 20 years, I've dreamt about the moment I would get to confront my uncle's murderer. And to actually have that opportunity in my victim's impact statement was just overwhelming emotionally. As I look at the defendant and his young family, who had nothing to do with this, my instinct is to want to forgive him.

But I cannot. Because when he murdered my uncle, he hurt not just me and my family. He hurt the entire community. After my reading of the victim's advocate statement, I walked over to his wife and parents, and I just let them know I feel sad for them. His father said to me, I'm so sorry for everything your family has suffered through. Hey, Neil, how are you?

I'm doing very well. How are you? On this anniversary day of Sabir Chatterjee's death, every year, I'm thinking about Neil and the Chatterjee family and the loss they suffered. I know this is a hard day. You know, I'm thinking about you and your family on this day every year. Well, I appreciate it.

My family is at peace today because you never gave up. And I, I appreciate it. My family is at peace today because you never gave up. And I love you for it. We met through this tragedy, but we've become good friends. I just love, I love Hubbard so much. He was so committed and so dedicated, and he wanted to provide justice to my family.

When he told me that the murderer has been arrested, and I thought, my prayer has been answered. A great relief. Finally catching the bad guys. There's no better feeling. But if it hadn't been for Smeir, we wouldn't be here today. He was brave enough to fight with a gun in his face. Having seen it all the way through to the bitter end, I am satisfied. One of the best times of my life.

I'm still enjoying it. I'll put it that way. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at ANETV.com. Did you know you can watch all your favorite crime shows for free on Pluto TV? Totally free? Totally free. They've got CSI New York, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Tracker, FBI, SWAT, all for free. There's something suspicious going on here. Nothing suspicious. Just hundreds of free crime shows. For years, Tim Ballard has been championed as a modern-day superhero.

The first time I saw one of the kids from the video, and it, like, changed my life. He was the face of Operation Underground Railroad, a movement that inspired hope around the world by rescuing children from human traffickers. However, Ballard's crusade to save innocent lives has always hidden a darker secret. Oh, I think he's a pathological liar. Beneath the accolades and the applause, a dark storm has been brewing. I mean, I can't find a time that he's told the truth about anything. Shocking allegations of sexual misconduct have surfaced, casting a shadow over his once unquestioned reputation.

I am host Sarah James McLaughlin, and in this new season of The Opportunist, we explore the rise and the fall of Tim Ballard. Join us this October for Tim Ballard, Unmasking a Hero. Subscribe to a new season of The Opportunist now, wherever you get your podcasts.