Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Family

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

When a 19-year-old girl goes missing, her family suspects the mafia is involved...but it will take another 16 years for her body to surface and nearly 20 years to bring the killers to justice.

On October 17, 1982, Michelle Basil, who was 13, answered the family phone in her Portland, Oregon home. On the other end of the line was her 19-year-old sister, Kim. Michelle heard her older sister crying and begging to come home. The call was disconnected, but before the line went dead, Michelle heard what sounded like an assault. Kim was never heard from or seen alive again. Sixteen years later, in 1998,

Kim's body was discovered buried just outside Friend, Oregon. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the unparalleled Bill Curtis with the classic case, The Family. What we looked for when it came up, we looked for indentations in the snow, and the first one was right over here. Michael Gates is a Multnomah County investigator. This was the actual pit here, and what we're doing is we're digging a parallel ditch and then go in. On April 19th, he returns to a hole in the ground,

where seven years ago, a team of cold case detectives uncovered the remains of a woman named Kim Basil, a woman who had been missing for 16 years. This is the first one you guys tried? This is the first one. Okay. We had two holes where we started simultaneously. Today, Detective Gates is joined by the victim's family, who have made the three-hour drive from Portland

to see for the first time where Kim was buried. So I started this one, and Gary and the rest of the guys started the other one over here. For me, she was my daughter. She was gone for 16 1⁄2 years. We needed to see this. Are you looking for some threads from the sleeping bag? What is it?

You can just look at anything. Okay. I wanted to see if I could find a small piece of my sister that was left. Maybe a piece of jewelry or a bone that they didn't get. Just to fill the soil in my hands of where she was that whole time. What is this right here? The physical act of visiting a makeshift grave. The feeling of dirt sifted through one's fingers. These are the rites of mourning. One family's attempt to come

to grips with a murder that began more than 20 years ago with a phone call. We're not going to but much further because it's really, it's a rut, hon. She was crying hysterically when she called right from the beginning. On October 17, 1982, Michelle Basil is 13 years old and at home when the phone rings. At the other end of the line, her sister Kim. She just said that she was in trouble and she needed to come home. She was standing in the shower, so no one would know she was on the phone. Kim Bessel's family has not heard from her for several days. Before Michelle can question Kim as to why, the conversation is cut short.

And then someone came in and found out she was on the phone, and they started to violently beat her. And the phone dropped, but it didn't disconnect. And then they started burning her with cigarettes. I could hear it begging them to stop burning her. I just listened as long as I could, and then finally someone hung the phone up. In 1982, Michelle is barely a teenager and badly frightened. She tells her mother about the phone call and about Kim.

I contacted the police and they told me I had to wait the two weeks to file a missing person. They considered her a 19-year-old runaway. She was an adult until they had something proving that she was gone. There really was very little investigation. Runaway or murder victim, the fact is Kim Bezel has disappeared and is still missing a year later, when a local drug sting produces an arrest

and then an informant. This person had heard that Kim had been killed and went on to tell me that Esther Benita Cahoot and John Santmeyer were two of the people that were involved in killing Kim. Hopefully you guys are out there taking care of business. I'll talk to you in a little bit. Thanks. Joe Goodale is a detective with the Portland Police. The names Cahoot and Santmeyer are familiar to him. According to police, both are members of a local crime family allegedly headed up by Danny Longoria.

The group that we're talking about, the older participants, were constantly setting up crimes, using younger people so that if someone got caught, it wouldn't lead to their arrest. They were very good at it. These families were infamous since the first day I came on the police bureau in the late 60s. That's just a way of life with them. According to Goodale's informant, at the time she disappeared, Kim Basil was Danny Longoria's girlfriend and had been used by the family in a massive shoplifting scam. I think at one point during this investigation, the store informed me that

they believe they may have lost up to a quarter million dollars worth of merchandise before they had figured this out. They set up a surveillance with video surveillance and captured this on film. Caught by security cameras, Kim Basil was looking at possible jail time, and according to the informant, reportedly asked the Longoria family for protection. She told them, you need to help me, and if you don't, I'm going to go to the police, and I'm going to tell them about your cocaine trafficking, the safe burglary, and these thefts from Fred Meyer. Wrong thing to say to these people. We knew she was with some very bad people and young and somewhat naive and probably in over her head. Goodale believes

the family viewed Kim Basil as a potential informant and decided to get rid of her. In November of 1983, he sits down with Linda Estes, a detective from neighboring Clackamas County, and a woman familiar with the Longoria family. Goodale brings her up to speed on Kim's disappearance. Well, you got the phone call that the people responsible for this were Esther Cahut and John Santmyer. Right. So what did you do with that? Estes and Goodale decide to approach Danny Longoria and see if he will roll over on his cousin Esther or his crony John. It's something the Longoria family is famous for. They like to

tape record other criminals and use that for barter should they ever be arrested. And instead of going to jail, they want to trade something. Danny Longoria does not disappoint. The moment he hears the name Kim Bezel, Longoria proclaims his innocence. In the next breath, he agrees to a police wiretap. He agreed to make some tape-recorded phone calls to the suspects in the case and to any witnesses in the case that might have information. Longoria first calls on Esther Cahoot. I want you to listen to me for a minute because we're both talkers. And I don't want no big arguments. You call a lawyer. In fact, I'm just going to tell you what I heard. It doesn't make a difference who it came from. A lawyer said that you said that I killed that broad. You had to please believe that.

That's a story. That's a story. Swear to God. That's an absolutely made-up story. You have nothing to worry about. You did absolutely nothing. I know I did. That's not the point. That's not the point. I don't want them to put a bum beef on me, man. Esther isn't talking, even to her cousin Danny. Then more stories begin to surface about Kim Bessel and a wood chipper. We heard rumors on the street

that her body had been run through a wood chipper. Joe Goodell and I did some follow-up investigation in regards to that. And interviewed the owner of this wood chipper and looked over the grounds. I mean, I could envision finding pieces of body parts that have been through a chipper out here. We never did, thank goodness.

Fargo Revisited never gets a chance to play in the great Northwest. Instead, Goodale and Estes come up with exactly nothing. No body, no evidence. And no one in the family willing to talk. At least, not yet. Why are you willing to talk about this situation with your recollections about Kevin? To get on with my life and to go with new friends and just basically to get on with my life. This episode is sponsored by Greenlight. My kids always want to spend their allowance on the first thing they see, candies, cookies, toys, and it can be hard to explain to them that saving money

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are learning about money on Greenlight. It's the easy, convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash coldcase. That's greenlight.com slash coldcase to try Greenlight for free. Greenlight.com slash coldcase. Before her death, Kim had fallen in with a scary crowd, the Longoria crime family, or simply, the family. She had some legal trouble, and the detectives felt like it was possible she was seen by the family as a potential informant. The family was notorious for not only rolling over on each other during interrogations, but also killing people who could potentially betray them before they were even questioned. The investigators questioned

members of the family, but no one was quite ready to talk. That is until another family member was arrested for violating his probation. Let's go back to the case. The date is January 9, 1998. I'm in the Clackamas County Jail. This is Gary Muncy with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. In my company is John Albert Santmeyer. On a winter afternoon, Detective Gary Muncy sits across from John Santmyer, an alleged member of the Longoria crime family,

now sitting in jail on a probation violation. Santmyer has asked for the meeting and wants to talk about the 1982 murder of 19-year-old Kim Bessel. There's perhaps a crack in the foundation of this group of people, and he was privy to that, and he wanted to get his word in first, probably to benefit himself. What I do remember, the night, I'm not sure the night that it was, I was awakened by Esther.

Esther is Esther Cahoot, Danny Longoria's cousin and second in command in the Longoria operation. John Santmeyer lives with Esther and her three sons. She had asked me to help move the body, for which she had already called her brother and her son, which is Roy and John, and she had showed me the body, for which down toward the lower part of the body, which would have been the groin area, was a big wet spot to where I automatically assumed that she was dead already. He said that Esther, Roy, John, and himself had carried her out of the house in the sleeping bag, stepping over other kids that were asleep on the floor out through the garage into the back of the pickup truck,

and that Roy and John left in that truck with the body in the back of the truck. And from there, I had went back to sleep, and that was that. Muncie isn't buying St. Myers' limited role in the crime, but before he can charge anyone, he'll need more evidence, including a body. So on September 82, Kim's arrested at Fred Meyers. September 10th. Muncie decides to bring in Detective Michael Gates to lead the investigation.

Two weeks later, detectives forge a second crack in the Longoria family. This time, it's Esther Cahoot's nephew, Benny Menaez, who is arrested on a charge of attempted murder and seems more than willing to trade in his aunt for a deal from the DA. When Benny came forward, it really enlightened me a little bit because what he was telling us was about this property that his aunt owned and that through the years he heard rumors of a young girl that was murdered and put in the property somewhere.

I heard him talking to somebody on the phone about the property of a friend that my mom and dad used to own. That's how I knew that she was going to be moved up to there. I was the one that dug that hole. Did you dig it for this reason? No. Why did you dig it? For an outhouse.

I thought it was going to be used for a grave. And Benny drew a map to the location where he believed the body was. The land Benny describes is in a remote area outside Portland. Gates procures a search warrant and heads out, looking for the body of Kim Basil. We knew that the foreman had relatives that owned the property, so for us, that information became extremely reliable. I was pretty sure Kim was up there somewhere.

We didn't know exactly where she was up there, but we knew she was up there somewhere. On a cold day in February, detectives descend upon 38 acres of woods and begin to dig for Kim Bezel's body. We had two pits that we needed to work on. Both of them were outhouse pits, and we knew that. But we didn't know exactly which one Kim was in.

So we spent two or three days digging down through this area using metal detectors and noting things beneath the surface. So we started digging on a grid system through here. By the time I was almost finished with the other one, one of the detectives found a sleeping bag in this one. So we concentrated all our efforts on this hole right here. We need this section. It's very fragile.

And that over there. We knew from the very beginning that Kimmy was in a sleeping bag, and we cut just a corner of the bag and saw what appeared to be a human bone. Dental records prove that the body is that of Kim Bessel. It is left to Michael Gates to contact the victim's family and let them know, after 16 years, what happened to Kim. I was very relieved, but you have so many different emotions that come

through you. You're excited for a brief second because you finally know, but then at the same time, you don't really believe it's your sister. I mean, is it really true that she was murdered? And then you're so sad, and then you're angry. How dare someone do this? Investigators have found Kim Bessel's body, but have not ID'd her killer. As he talks to the Bessel family, Detective Michael Gates makes a promise. I told him we were just going to continue on with this case, and we weren't going to stop. And I thought for a moment, and then I told him that, you know, I'm not going to shave until this case is solved. He gave us his life basically looking for. He promised that he would not shave until someone was charged for Kim's death. No one had ever promised before that they would, they would not stop working on Kim's case until they solved it, and Michael promised that. Gates puts his razor

away and picks up Kim Basil's murder book. His case thus far relies almost entirely on a string of informants, most of them pointing a finger at either John Satmire or Esther Cahoot as Kim Basil's killer. Gates feels he is close to an indictment. Then the chatter begins to dry up, and the Longoria family closes ranks. And once family members learned that Esther was more likely than not involved in the murder of Kimmy, things started quieting down, people were disappearing, and people were really clamming up. One of those people clamming up is Benny Menez, Gates' original

informant. She told me the rats died and she said that you wouldn't ever burn family, would you? And I said, no. And she said, well, you know what would happen if you would burn family, would you? And I said, what? And she said, don't play the stick with me.

Are you afraid of being killed if you tell me the truth? She's straight up with me, Ben. Right now. Is that a yes? Can you say it? Yes. Esther is Benny's aunt, and Benny would be in trouble. And if I didn't get the heat off of him,

then my mother and my father, my sister and their kids, and my wife and my kids would be killed, including with myself. They said that they would disappear. She's mean. She's conniving. Cold stare right through you. She knows what she's doing. Capable of murder, anytime. Everyone, it seems, has stopped talking, and the case against Esther Cahoot begins to soften. Meanwhile, Michael Gates' hair continues to grow. It kept getting longer and longer and longer, and it was a visual reminder to myself that you need to solve this case, and you made a promise. And it really made me strive to

work harder and harder for this case because I did want to shave one of these days. The whole case was going to rely on people talking. And unfortunately, in this case, people didn't want to talk. Michael Gates is a detective with a problem. He needs to get inside a Portland crime family and get people talking about the murder of 19-year-old Kim Basil more than 15 years earlier. There were several people that we talked to that felt that they would end up the same way as Kimmy did if they talked. Gates has promised the Basile family until he solves Kim's murder he will not shave. Six months later, Gates' stubble has thickened into a beard, and he discovers that his promise has a hidden benefit, helping him operate in Portland's criminal underworld.

I looked like a normal cop, and people didn't want to talk to me. And once the beard started growing and the hair started growing, I found that people really wanted to talk to me and they would talk to me. They invited me in their house. By being one of them, I think it worked tremendously for me. When Mike first came up and spoke to me, I was in this mentality to where you're not supposed to talk to police officers, you're not supposed to say nothing no matter what.

Frank is a cousin in the Longoria family and just out on bail when Michael Gates approaches him. He asked me if he could talk to his girlfriend and get back to me. I go home and I speak with my wife and we start talking and she tells me to do what you think's right. And the next day I went back and he wanted to sit down and she tells me to do what you think's right. And the next day I went back and he he wanted to sit down and interview with me and I taped the interview. I was drinking with this associate John Satmar and he was a little intoxicated and he started talking about how

he smothered her. When you say her, how do you know it was Kim? He said her name. He said that he smothered Kim on the couch in my aunt's home and that she was fighting for air. And he said he took her to the mountains and put her in a pre-dead hole. Frankie was another piece of the puzzle. He was polygraphed as to what John Satmeyer talked to him about,

and he passed with flying colors. On March 19, 2000, John Satmeyer is arrested for the murder of Kim Basil. Gates, however, is not yet satisfied. He believes Esther Cahoot, second-in-command of the Longoria family, was intimately involved in the crime. I wanted anybody that was involved in this case in prison, and we knew she was involved. I just couldn't prove it at the time.

While the Longoria family seems willing to throw John Santmyer to the wolves, Cahoot appears to be another story. Gates is reduced to waiting, watching, and hoping Esther delivers herself into the hands of police. I knew if we got Esther to admit to anything that we had her. In October of 1999, Esther Cahoot is arrested on drug charges. As she sits in the county lockup awaiting arraignment, Gates sees this as his last and perhaps best chance. The detective, who hasn't seen a razor in over a year, plants stories about Kim Basil's murder in the local press

and then listens on the prison phone as Esther Cahoot's family begins to call in. So I kept listening and listening and listening. And then finally it happened. Esther's son, Lonnie K, who called her and said, Mom, they found the body. They came out in the newspaper today. What did?

That they found the body. Uh-oh. Yeah. Esther says, uh-oh. And then they continue to talk about it. Who's going to be involved? Who are the police going to come after? Well, that's just great. That's really good to hear. Jesus Christ, what motive would I have? What anything would I have?

I mean, I have no motive. They just continually talked about it, but Esther never came out and said she murdered Kim. The phone call is a damaging piece of evidence, but not enough to bring Esther down. That privilege lies with her co-conspirator and whipping boy, John Santmeyer. What I'm going to do now, John, is advise you to concentrate your rights. John, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that? Yes, I do. Inside the county jail, investigators turned the screws on John Santmyer.

Police believe Santmyer and Cahoot had beaten and tortured Kim for hours. According to Santmyer, Kim was tied up in a sleeping bag when he and Esther decided to kill her. Esther came up to me and said, hey, let's just do it this way. She's in the sleeping bag. She brought me into the front row, showed me Kim was in the sleeping bag. All the dust, the only part that was shown was her head.

And he showed me how he held her down until Kim't move around. And when she stopped struggling, they held it down for a couple more minutes to make sure she was dead. Why did Esther want Kim to show up in the end? You know, hey, when you know it's done, I can do this. You know, hey. Esther Cahoot is indicted for first-degree murder. She pleads guilty to manslaughter and is sentenced to nine years. John Santmyer pleads guilty to murder one and receives a sentence of life with the possibility of parole after ten years.

You know, all the pictures I saw of Kim, I mean, she changed a lot. We finally got some closure on Kim. We brought her home. That's the first thing we wanted to do, and then we put two people in prison. So I think the job was well done by all, and the conclusion was a wonderful one.

This is bringing back a lot of memories. Yeah. He just wasn't going to let us down. He was bound and determined he would find someone. I mean, at that time, we basically knew who they were, and we had for years, but it was trying to find the proof. With a promise fulfilled, after nearly three years, Michael Gates finally gets his face back.

And I told him once we solved it, I was going to shave. And we did that. We came to the office. The media was there. And they shaved my beard off, and it felt wonderful. Someone finally cared enough. And to find someone like that is really remarkable. Because she took a plea deal for manslaughter and agreed to testify,

Esther Cahoot faced a much slower minimum sentence requirement. She only served seven years of her nine-year sentence, and she was released from prison on November 4, 2005. John Santmyer is currently incarcerated in Oregon and his earliest release date is listed as life. I looked into his inmate records and in October of 2010, Santmyer was found guilty of another charge, second-degree assault. The details are unclear,

but it looks like he was convicted of that assault while still serving his life sentence. He's currently 55 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. We're distributed by Podcast One. Cold Case Files Classic was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the one and only Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn about more cases like this by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com

slash realcrime. Stay cool inside watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Titanic, or The Wolf of Wall Street. No matter your vibe, download the Pluto TV app to spend summer doing what you love, watching endless movies. Tell me that's not the deal of the summer. Summer of Cinema on Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.