Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Death of A Hero

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

A 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.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 a car or adding on their 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 he. 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 one percent 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... 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.

When he was available, she'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 poca music on Sundays. And he loved poker music, and we all poca dance. 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 shrap no flu. and my dad got some shrapnel in his ankle. Every year he would go to a couple of 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. 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, 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 him.

You might be able to get him out. Carapelli's firefighting colleagues are already inside. They didn't want to waste any time with getting in and trying to get him out of their 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,

felled up on the bed, felt Mr. Angelo, and it immediately pulled him out and tried to get him outside. He didn't notice any signs of love. 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. 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 a insoled. 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 Carapelli that the fire was almost certainly started deliberately and there are more signs of something sinister. He 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 water damage

in 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'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.

And, you know, like, what do you mean he was shot? four times. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly these days, but actually asking for help can still feel difficult. Better Helps' 26th State of Stigma Report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. That gap is hard to ignore. A lot of us believe in therapy, but hesitation, stigma, or uncertainty can still get in the way. Even in everyday conversations, it can feel easier to listen than to suggest someone take that next step. The more we normalize those conversations, the easier it becomes to actually follow through.

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Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash cold case. That's better, H-E-L-P-com slash cold case. 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 for a time.

I mean, 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. It was black soot on things. There was crime scene tape. We couldn't even get into the house at that point because, you know, 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. 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 and 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 a 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 Beniangelo, 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 at Dad's house,

and we had the military there. We had the 21-gun salute. People were laying like teddy bears flowers and things. 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. 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 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're going 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 us. 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 who, from the neighborhood, just wanted to leave her hat there. But, you know, when you're that desperate and you're grasped, you know, 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 a piece 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 homeowners 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. Angela'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, 2000. and seven, 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 Beniangelo'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. 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. 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 for 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 been 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 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. 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 to, 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 Andrew. I walked around with a sandwich board on me for a long time with who killed Benny, the reward. And it was like a three-year-old put this thing together, but I didn't have any shame in wearing it. And I went with whatever I could just to let people 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? What, you know, 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 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'd 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, the dad, 87 years old, we got to stop and 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 the PA, mission. in Indiana, all the surrounding states. I just attached a little 8 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 pocket. Odd cell with a young girl whose name was Regina Crank, talking about the murderer of Bendiangelo 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 a 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, assaults. 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. Did somebody? No, you did.

Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I promise you. Dude, my heart's crazy. No, you did not. I promise you. They can never prove it. You did not kill somebody.

No you did. Yes, I did. Took me for a life. You did. Took him like a bitch. Yep. Yep. I let my homies watch it. Why are you going around saying it? Why would you just say it for you to do? I'm your family. That's just a bad.

The recordings are brought to prosecutor John Ferreiro at the Stark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. When our office heard the tape conversation, we were confident that we had enough to present us 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 omission that he was the one that shot and killed Benny. And explain 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 them 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'd have to say that was one of the hardest things I'd 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 bought 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 Crink 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 a process, 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 can. 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. Oh, 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 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's certain things that somebody will do something or say something, and it'll be like, God, it reminds me a dad, you know, they miss them 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 McCaamy Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Mai Tequiva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series Cold Case Files. For more coldcase files, visit AETV.com. You'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV. Where all your blockbuster favorites are landing. all summer long. Catch Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy. Fantastic. Men in black, one through three.

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