Cold Case Files - Favor for a Friend

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

A husband and wife fall victim to a seemingly random shooting... and the key piece of evidence stays buried for more than a decade. Check out our great sponsors! Go to Purple.com/coldcase10 and use code "coldcase10" to get 10% off any order of $200 or more! Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!  Find your next place at Apartments.com - THE place to find a place!  Download June’s Journey free today on the Apple App Store or Google Play!

On March 8th, 1987, Ray and Rita Duhamel enjoyed drinks and music at their local VFW. The couple left around 8pm and headed home in their van. Ray seemed a little off, though. He pulled over near the Blanco Bridge and then passed out. Ray's wife Rita shook him and yelled his name, but she couldn't get him to wake up. It was before the time of cell phones, so Rita tried to flag someone down for help. A man in a dark-colored pickup truck stopped, and she was relieved that help had arrived. She wasn't relieved for very long, though.

The man fired two bullets through her husband's window. Less than an hour later, this call was made to 911. Radio. Yeah, I've got a man on my assistant's line reporting that there's a lady reporting that her husband is lying in the van. He's shot out the window. He won't be brought to her

and she doesn't know he's dead or alive. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Rita had finally managed to get someone to stop and help her. They placed the 911 call, and Detective Dana Peterson was dispatched to the location where the Dumels' van had been parked. He discovered Rita crying hysterically, and 49-year-old Ray shot to death. This is Detective Peterson.

Mr. Dumel was in the vehicle. He was in the driver's side. The side window of the driver's door is broken. I recall one bullet hole through the roof, and the other bullet had entered Mr. DeMell from the left side. Rita DeMell told the detective that her husband had passed out. Then she explained that the man she thought was coming to help was the one who had shot her husband. He may have been able to wake Mr. Duhamel up because the van rolls and contacts the

suspect vehicle. The suspect gets real mad, according to Mrs. Duhamel, and starts shouting, no mother can run into my van or something along that line. The detective believed that the shooter broke the window with the butt of his gun, and that caused him to accidentally fire the first shot. Yeah, I think he would have just hit it and broken it this way, and that first round, as his hand passed through, it pre-shattered it. It put the first round up through the top of the roof. And then he just continued down.

Mr. Duhamel was probably leaning away when he was shot, and that's why he was in that position. The crime scene evidence appeared to support that theory. Investigators collected two.45 caliber shell casings inside the van. The tire tracks of the scene seemed to show a second vehicle pulling up close to where the Duhamel's van was parked, consistent with Rita's story. One last piece of evidence discovered was a small address book that was laying in the dirt close to where Ray Duhamel was shot. This is Detective

Gordon's own. Sometimes bad guys make silly mistakes and and that's all to our benefit you know. So when we found the address book, we figured, well, this has got to take us someplace. In the same way that I might call a person's contacts in a found cell phone to identify the owner, the police started contacting the people listed in the book. This is Detective Peterson. But we just basically started calling the people in the notebook. Tell them we found this notebook.

Basically, we're trying to identify who owns it. The book belonged to a local man named Norman Baird. He was 27 and, according to his friends, owned a dark gray pickup truck. The detectives paid him a visit to ask if he was missing the book. We just made a casual contact with him, non-accusatory, saying we just found this laying out in this area and do you recognize this book? Is it yours? And he was able to identify it as his. We told him that we were involved in an investigation and we needed to ask him some questions on his whereabouts the day before.

And he indicated he'd not been out of town, that he'd not gone out by the Blanco Bridge, which is where the crime scene was. But he couldn't explain how his notebook had gotten to the crime scene. The detectives didn't totally trust Norman Baird's story, but they didn't have any evidence that would support searching his home or truck. So they went back to the address book and made contact with someone who identified himself as Norman Baird's oldest friend. We're calling him Ron. We did everything together. You know, if you've seen one, you've seen the other. If you had to hide from one, you better hide from the both of them.

Ron told the police that he had been with Baird on the day that Ray Dumell was killed. They were at a party together. No, there wasn't nothing particularly bothering him. There was a lot of time spent over by his pickup with a few other people, but no, there wasn't nothing that stood out. Then Ron told detectives that Baird left the party to go to a job interview in Marina, meaning that he would have been driving down Blanco Road when Rita Duhamel was looking for help. Ron's statement conflicted with what Baird had told detectives.

This is Detective Sohn. That was just another confirmation that Baird was not being truthful. And the more inconsistencies and the more lies you can catch a suspect in, the better for the investigation. The investigators developed a theoretical timeline for Baird's actions on the night of the murder. Baird had been drinking at the party and might not have been as reasonable as he could have been. Maybe he had a little road rage incident and took it too far, shooting Ray Duhamel and dropping his address book. The detectives filed for a search warrant, and less than two weeks after the shooting, they were able to search Norman Baird's home and then his parents' home.

They started with the truck. Here's Detective Peterson again. We looked to see if there were any paint transfers on the truck, any damage or freshly repaired areas, and we found none. While searching the homes, the detectives found a.45 caliber gun, but it didn't match the slugs that had been pulled from the crime scene. Having not found any physical evidence during their search, the detectives tried to question Baird again. The suspect wouldn't talk to them, though.

He requested an attorney. With no physical evidence tying Baird to the scene, they weren't able to make any charges stick. And the case went cold. This is Detective Peterson. We needed a little something more to relate the suspect to the victim. We really just don't have enough. We're just right there at the cusp, but not quite enough to push it over. Thirteen years passed, but Detective Peterson never forgot about the unsolved Duhamel case.

It was always personal with me. It was the first homicide I'd worked that I really had a major role in. I always felt that this case could be solved, so it always bothered me. Peterson became the head of the County Robbery Homicide Division and in October of 2000 sent one of his detectives, Fred De Los Santos, to a seminar on cold cases. When Detective De Los Santos returned, he was eager to put what he had learned to use. Peterson suggested he look into the case of Ray DeMille's shooting. Here's Detective De Los

Santos. Detective Sergeant Peterson at the time always felt that the key person in this thing was going to be a friend of the suspect. De Los Santos decided to re-interview Ron, hoping that time might have made him a little more open to the questions. When Ron was originally interviewed, he said that he didn't know anything that happened after Barrett had left the party. And he answered the door, I told him who I was and what I'm investigating, and told him that I needed him to come down to the office, and he agreed to do it. The two men went to the police station, and De Los Santos started the questions.

Here's some audio from the interrogation. I know you didn't shoot the guy. You're not the murderer, you're not the guy I'm looking for. Okay? Here's some audio from the interrogation. State of mind was very erratic. Crying. Talking too fast. He did not know if he had hit anybody or anything like that. But he said he had fired the weapon into the vehicle. And he didn't know what to do.

Ron said he took the gun from his friend, not knowing what else to do in such an intense situation. In a situation like that, where do you want the gun? Your hands or his? His hands, the whole public's in trouble, maybe. My hands, you can't get it back. Let me ask you, did you destroy the gun? No. Did Norman give you the did you destroy the gun? No.

Did Norman give you the gun to get rid of it for him? If I was to answer that, it would incriminate me, wouldn't it? Detective De Los Santos believed he was very close to being able to find the gun that had killed Ray Jamal. He had started to waver by saying, you know, if I say something, is it going to incriminate me? And I kept assuring him that he was helping me in this investigation. So as he spoke to me, I could tell that he wanted to tell me something, and he knew where the gun was. He doesn't push, though. He just continues his conversation with Ron. Well, you got an address I can go get the gun in?

No, sir. I'll just drive over there and pick it up. It's not at an address. Is it buried somewhere? Yes, sir. But I wanted to get rid of that gun. I didn't want it around where he could come back and get it. So I disposed of it.

I buried it in the side of a mountain. Is it Old Stage Road or San Juan Road? San Juan Grade Road? I guess it'd be Old Stage. Okay. Can you point it out to me? I hope so. Ron told the investigators that he had put the gun in an ammo box and buried it in a field next to a tree. The problem was the field was an entire acre and had around 100 trees. I thought, we're never going to find it. This was just something, another thing that's going to end up being a dead end.

Detective De Los Santos was discouraged, but he didn't give up. He decided to ask for help from a group that was known for their expertise in finding things, the Treasure Hunters Society of Santa Clara Valley. It was formed in 1976 by a few friends who liked to use metal detectors and hunt for treasure to share their common interests. The group size increased, and a lot more than just a few friends had become members. On January 30, 2002, 24 treasure hunters with their metal detectors came to help search the field. This is Warren Whited, one of the treasure hunters. It was just hard-packed cow pasture ground, and we were coming up with bullets, nails, and all kinds of other pieces of metal. but as I got up to closer to the

trees I thought in my mind that if I was going to hide something I need a landmark. These trees look like that'd be a perfect perfect spot. I took off the scraper and scraped away about maybe three or four inches of leaves and then start bringing down maybe three to four inches of dirt and I could make out the outline of a ammunition box and so I gave a good holler, got a target over here, and the lead man got hold of the officer, and up they came. Detective De Los Santos confirmed it was an ammo box, like the one Ronna described. They'd been buried for more than a decade. When they opened the box, they found a.45 caliber gun

and cartons of ammunition. The investigators were able to lift fingerprints from the gun, even though it had been in the ground for over a decade. They sent the fingerprints out for analysis and waited to see if their treasure hunt had paid off. After all that time, they got back a match. The fingerprints belonged to Norman Baird. A fingerprint match alone wouldn't be enough to satisfy the prosecutor. It only proved that Baird had touched the gun, not that it was used to kill Ray Dumel.

Investigators still needed to place the gun at the scene of the crime for the fingerprint evidence to even be useful. So, detectives sent the recently unearthed gun to the ballistics team to compare with the shell casings found in the Jamel's van. The team was able to confirm that the gun in the buried box and the gun that killed Ray Jamel

were one and the same. Fifteen years after Ray Jamel was shot to death, Norman Baird was charged with second-degree murder. Baird pled no contest to the charge, meaning he wasn't admitting guilt, but acknowledged there was sufficient evidence to convict him. He received a sentence of 15 years. Ron was conflicted about his role in the conviction. You never feel good about anything like that. It doesn't matter how much weight's off your shoulders. You still feel like hell.

Because you participated in it, period. Whether it was brought to your door or not. Ron was a lot younger when he took his friend's gun and buried it in a field. But as he matured, his priorities changed. When it happened, it was just me to worry about. Since then, you have a child, you get married, you have a second child, you buy a house, you got a mortgage, you got responsibilities. Life grows bigger and better and fun.

And like that, somebody else's actions can bring you down. Rita Duhamel attended the sentencing hearing in 2004. Six years later, she passed away at the age of 72. Norman Baird was denied parole in 2011 and will not be eligible to apply again until 2021. Ray and Rita's two surviving daughters still attend Norman Baird's parole hearings. Cold Case Files the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake

Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold case files at aetv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at aetv.com slash realcrime.