Cold Case Files - The Taunt / Death in Deadwood

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

A serial rapist seals his own fate when he sends a taunting letter to police. And when a man is found dead in South Dakota, his head bashed in by a 50-pound rock, investigators go on a 20-year search for the killers.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.Figs: Check out Wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX for 15% off your first order!Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Rosetta Stone: Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcaseSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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20-year-old Kira Ash awakens to find a man in her bedroom. I saw him for a split second, and he turns out. me around and flying folded me with a bandana. He just said, do everything I say. He kept telling me, don't look at me. Do exactly as I say, don't say anything, and I won't hurt you. I just was just, God, just please just save me. You know, I don't know what's going to happen here, but don't let him kill me.

I'm not ready to go yet. The man rapes Kira and leaves her with a set of instructions. He told me to lie down, as it was already on my knees, told me to lie down, face down, not to look to the left or to the right, and to count to 50. Kira does as she is told, and eventually contacts the police. A rape kit is taken, but no semen is recovered, and the case goes cold. In time, Kira moves on, but she can never forget the moments that changed her life forever. Even another rape victim can't understand what you've been through.

They have their own story, and no one can understand the emotions that you feel. God had helped me erase that almost from my memory. Not erase it from my memory, but erase it from my heart. Somebody jumped on top of me and said, don't you know when somebody's robbing you, you pretend like you're asleep. On October 1st, 1995, four days before she is to be married, Lisa Meredith finds herself alone with a man intent on raping her.

He had immediately put a pillowcase over. my head and so I didn't see anything. When he pulled me over to the side of the bed and he asked me to take my clothes off, I knew then that's when I started really getting scared and I knew what was going to happen. Lisa is sexually assaulted and then told to count to 200. Before he left he tied me up with Michael's ties and tied me up on the bed. Michael is Lisa's fiance, Michael Byrne. The night had happened, we had had an argument and I left the apartment. So, you know, it was my fault because I wasn't there.

If I wouldn't have gone out, the door might not have been unlocked, you know, so I felt guilty. I would try and tell him, you know, if he was there, it could have gotten a lot worse. You know, he could have even killed him or they gotten a scuffle. Louisville police began investigating Lisa's rape, but find more questions than answers. At the time, working these types of cases, we were a little skeptical of whether this actually occurred. Lisa cannot provide a description of her attacker, and there is no sign of forced entry or semen from Lisa's rape kit.

Mike Vito is a lieutenant with the Louisville Metro Police Department. We really didn't have a whole lot to go on. looking back on the domestic dispute and the things that occurred prior to, we kind of had a little question. They more or less thought it was just a lover's quarrel and she was trying to get back at me. They asked me to take a lie detector test and I said, yes, I'll do whatever. You know, just please somebody believe me. Lisa passes the polygraph, but the investigation takes its toll on the young couple and casts a shadow over what should have been the happiest day of their lives.

To one point, we had decided to postpone the wedding, and we decided, you know what, we're not going to let him take this away from us. With love, I, Lisa. With love, I, Lisa. If you, Michael, this ring. Give you my wife. It was hard trying to keep a smile on, you know, for a couple hours during the wedding and so on. But it turned out to be the best day we're left. Michael and Lisa Burns go on with their lives.

and Lisa's case joins Kira Ash in the Cold Files, where both will sit for six more years. It was the summer of 2001, I received a call. In the summer of 2001, Lieutenant Joe Richardson is head of sex crimes at the Louisville Metro Police Department, when he receives a phone call from Michael Burns. I explained my situation, asked him, you know, I told my wife, told him that my wife, told him that my wife,

wife was raped six years ago, seven years ago, and nothing's ever happened, and I want to know what's going on. I put myself in Mr. Burns' shoes. If I'd had an argument with my wife or my fiance, and I had left the apartment, and then this happened to my wife or my fiance at the time, I would have felt guilty. So that gave me a little bit more of a motivation to help Mr. Burns out.

Richardson pulls the file. Initially, it doesn't look too promising, until he happens upon a few sheets of paper. These three sheets were in the back of that case file, and that's what got the ball rolling in this particular investigation. The paperwork is part of a 1996 interview between a career burglar named John Boston and Louisville Detective Mike Loran. And he took it to locations throughout the Louisville area where he and other. others that committed different type of crimes, burglaries, and I think there was some robberies involved. One location in particular, interest Loran. It is the former residence of rape victim Lisa Burns. In 1996, Loran and Boston visited 331 East Market Street.

We're at 331 East Market Street. What's the significant dislocation done? Mr. Boston had claimed that another individual had gone into an apartment there and when he came back out, Mr. Boston asked him, he has accomplished what had happened. He was talking about a sexual assault that it had, a possible sexual assault that had happened. He said he tied the woman up and left off the sky and said the next day when I was reading the newspaper said the woman has been sexual assaulted. Something about this one, I just had the feeling that it wasn't the person that he was trying to

claimed it, I thought that he might have been involved in it. Loran had passed on the lead in 1996, but it was never followed up. Lieutenant Richardson intends to correct that oversight. The first thing I did was to check the arrest records over at corrections to see if this accomplice, the person that Boston said did perform the burglary, was in custody. And sure enough, he was in custody on the state. So that tells me he didn't do the offense. The man John Boston claims admitted raping Lisa Burns was in jail at the time the rape was committed.

John Boston himself, however, was not. Pachman, how long ago was this? It was about finally. Richardson digs deeper into the old interviews with John Boston and finds Boston led police to a second house where a rape had occurred. 1250 hours, one in front of 426 West Hill Street, or correction, 424 West Hill Street. And I recognize that that address is where we'd had a sexual assault back in 95. One that bears some striking similarities to Lisa Burns' assault.

And the ammo was the same. He, the middle of the night, broke in, covered her head up, raped her, threatened her, and then looked for some articles to steal. Richardson eventually locates another assault, a rape from 1994, that carries an identical M.O. I said, bingo, this is a third case. Unlike the first two, this last attack has semen evidence. Now the hunt is on to find John Boston and get his DNA. This evidence contains the letter that John Boston sent to police department.

That is, until the suspect. licks an envelope and unwittingly gives Richardson exactly what he needs. It's unusual for somebody to try to haunt the police and show that they're leaving the country to quit looking for me. He just made one mistake, and that was the fatal mistake. He sent me his DNA. The letter said, Dear officer, this is John T. Boston. I have not be in Louisville, Kentucky for the last week and a half. By the time you receive this letter in pictures, I will be out of the U.S. I am and will not be coming back to Louisville, Kentucky for anything whatsoever. And then he puts a thumbprint at the bottom of his name.

Very, very arrogant person. John Boston has gotten wind that he is a wanted man and can't resist playing a game of Catch Me If You Can with Lieutenant Richardson. Also inside were photos. These photos showed John Boston and his girlfriend at the time, a bridge to Canada, U.S. Customs, inside a store apparently trying on a winter coat, and standing next to a police car, which put the icing on the cake. Little does John Boston know his postcard to Richardson might very well be his undoing.

One of the three rapes we had DNA in, so I needed to locate him and obtain a sample of his DNA to compare to the 94 case. Of course, Boston made my job easier. The envelope John Boston presumably licked is sent to the Kentucky State Crime Lab in the hope that a DNA profile might be developed. Meanwhile, the suspect can't help himself and contacts Richardson again.

I'm thinking that one of the reasons he's calling me is to pick my brain who I could share information on what I have on him, which I didn't do at the time. I just tried to play it CoolCom and asked him when he was going to turn himself in or if he was. When you're going to turn yourself in? I just let him kind of ramble on. I did compliment him. I told him that the photos he sent the department, I kind of liked them. They were kind of neat.

Hey, I kind of like those photos you sent it. That's pretty good. It was just a huge ego on his part to call me knowing that I'm looking for him and that I couldn't get him at that time. I was confident he was the suspect. But I was responsible for those three crimes, and I would eventually get the DNA. This actually is an item of evidence that was received in the John Boston case. On April 8, 2002, DNA analyst Sandra Hill pulls out the envelope mailed by John Boston and gets to work.

I made a cutting, three actual cuttings from the seal of this envelope, looking for the presence of saliva and the DNA that's in that saliva to develop a profile. A male DNA profile is developed off the envelope. At that point, the DNA profile was compared to the combined DNA indexing system, database, and was found to match, one and solved rape case. It is one of the three rapes Richardson suspects John Boston of committing. and the only one with DNA evidence. Richardson calls in the FBI and begins tracking his suspect.

Through investigations and several court orders, I found the phone number of a cell phone that was used by his girlfriend. The FBI's cooperation, they could use the cell phone tracking technology. John Boston's cell phone was last used in Texas, somewhere in Dallas. FBI agent Walter Huey gets the call and tracks the phone hit to a local motel. We're at the lamplighter hotel, hotel, I'd say, edge of Dallas and the ski. I came to this motel and drove through at the time and saw a van that sort of stood out to me. The van had Texas license plates that was wired on, it wasn't screwed on.

But there was emblems or decals on the van that made it indicate that it was possibly from Kentucky. Huey walks into the motel and inquires about the van's owner. As I look to my left, John Boston, who I believe to be John Boston, walks up to the counter, standing next to me. John Boston is arrested and extradited back to Kentucky for a sit-down with Louisville's cold case detectives. John Thomas Boston, which I've known since he's 13 years old or 14, he's got a huge ego. And that ego is his vulnerability. On May 10, 2002, Captain Steve Thompson and Lieutenant Joe Richardson sit down with Boston and let their suspect do what he does best, talk.

If we started out and he clamped up, we might not get anything out of him. So we had to, the strategy was to let him feel comfortable, start letting the ego get the better of him, to start opening up and talking. As long as he thinks he's in control, his ego, that he's smarter than we are, he'll keep talking. John Boston quickly lets investigators know he knows what they really want to talk about. one on market street, one on real street, and he said something about one on charit peace. He obviously interrogated some previous law enforcement officer in Texas to find out, you know, what the game plan was with us on what he was really facing. They got my DNA from the envelopes that I sent them and connected me to three race.

I can tell you from knowing John Thomas Boston that he probably was trying to educate himself as rapidly as possible about everything DNA's about. All right, what do you know what's going to get the fruit is there? I get the proof is there. You don't take it like to me? I'm going to deal with death in the car. I need to see the proof right now. Despite the DNA link, Boston refuses to fold.

He's arraigned on three counts of forcible rape and a trial date is set. Commonwealth is confident that after you hear, you'll be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. The man who raped, robbed, burgled these three women. That man seated right there. On March 2nd, 2004, Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Tom Vandy Rothstein lays out his case against John Boston, starting with the 1994 rape, the only one with DNA evidence. We thought if we could convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt of that first case,

the similarities of that case with the other two cases would lead them to convict him on those other two cases. Critical to the case is the testimony of the rape victims. Each takes the stand and relives the day they were blindfolded, then raped. Today, the defendant is in the courtroom. Is that man who raped you that night in the courtroom today? Yes, it is. Point at you. When I saw him,

I felt pity for him, you know. I didn't feel scared of him. I looked at him dead in the eye. And, you know, I just said, you just look at him like, you did this, why did you do this? What's wrong with you, you know? And I just felt pity on the man. I was not gonna let him intimidate me.

I really had to dig up because, you know, I had put so much, I tried to put so much behind me. Once I did, it just started coming out. For eight years, my vote most vivid memories has been of that night, not my wedding. And I feel like I've cheated my husband from that. When it's time for John Boston to take the stand, he's no longer very talkative. Did you write?

No, I didn't. Did you write Kara Ash? No, I didn't. Did you write Lisa Meredith? No, I did. The jury doesn't believe him. They find John Boston guilty on all counts. and sentence him to 420 years.

Stand beside a police car. It looks like a Detroit police car, but that really got my goat. According to the Kentucky officer who put John Boston behind bars, ego got the better of Boston and ultimately put him where he is today. He was throwing it in our face.

We couldn't catch him, so he had to pose him beside a police car. Like he can get away and we can't catch him, so that was putting a seat. Selt in the wound. But it didn't stop us. It made us more determined. It backfired. Kira Asch's verdict has since been overturned. The Kentucky Supreme Court found statements Boston made in 1996 inadmissible in her case. Kira doesn't want John Boston retried. Instead, she does her best to move on.

I hope that he finds the Lord and that he will ask for forgiveness and that he'll repent of everything he's done, not just what happened to me or the other girls there, but who knows how many other bad things he's done. For Lisa and Michael Burns, the conviction puts an end to their nightmare and helps to heal a marriage that has already survived so much. I love the stress. Oh, you look beautiful in it.

You know, when you've been through as much as we've been through, you know, to let, you know, everyday things like most people get divorces over, you know, is nothing to us we laugh about. You know, we've been through way too much. And, you know, we have our faith in each other and trust. our faith in God and that's what's gotten us through. I'll be more today than I did 11 years ago. Did it.

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In 1982, Dwayne Russell is a detective with the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office. He arrives on the scene of a murder with Deputy Nell's Yuso, five miles outside of Deadwood, South Dakota. Deputies at the scene are Nils Juso arrived first. The vehicle is a Chevy. Looks like a Mazda. I do remember the victim, he had defensive wounds on his left arm and his arm was up. There was a lot of blood and it would have been a pretty vicious murder. This area, one of two tables, miscellaneous clothing to the right, a mattress, Budweiser can.

the far side is that is the remains of the unknown. The white male said that his head is covered with blood. It was smashed in pretty good. Blood, very bloody. You couldn't recognize him.

And I knew that this person at the time we didn't know who it was. The man is IDed as David Crockett rose, a local man who had been bludgeoned to death by a rock. Well, from just by looking at, at it, you could maybe surmise that there was a struggle, there was a fight.

The rock was a weapon of opportunity. There's hair right here on the rock. Blood on both sides of the rock. Mostly on this point toward rock weighs approximately about 25 pounds. Blood on the bottom part of the rock. There's also blood splatters on the top of the rock here. Around the campsite are several beer cans. Next to the body is a jumble of clothing and personal effects.

Stuff was just strewn about. It looked like a Salvation Army box had been a drop-off point. There was old clothing. Once you kind of put two and two together, looks like somebody was kind of in a panic situation, lighting in their load and getting rid of as much as they could. Some of the personal items have names attached. One of those names is a free-

spirit named Vernon Cheney. It was an excellent summer. Excellent. Believe it or not, I had the best time in my life that year. Vernon Cheney is an old hippie. I had long hair. When I had long hair.

In the summer of 82, he channels the spirit of 69. Not a bunch of hippies to get together. We were kind of hooked up back in the late 60s, early 70s, and made a coalition. to be free peace people. They call themselves the Rainbow Family, and they draw attention wherever they go.

They come from all over the world, lured by the rainbow vision of sharing and caring. All are part of the loosely knit Rainbow Family of Living Light. They get together every summer in a national forest for a giant old-fashioned love inn. We're just on road trip. The road trip, however, was not all peace, love. and understanding. This couple in-law, outlaw hooked up with this. And they started pilfering and stealing stuff from people.

So we kicked them off the march. You gotta go. You're not part of us. These are very tolerant people of each other, so he must have been a little worse than the others for them to kick him off. According to Cheney, items found at the crime scene were stolen off the peace bus by outlaw and in-law. An in-law. All I ever got was Outlaw, and he was with an in-law. He was called Outlaw, and he called his girl that is with him as in-law.

And that's all they knew. They gave me the description. They gave me some of the clothing he's wearing, as much as they could remember. Other than the aliases, the detectives have one solid lead. An unknown fingerprint lifted off a beer can. There's an example here. This Budweiser beer can that was found at the scene. We used a carbide lamp to bake the print on, and then it was actually a latent print,

and it developed it, so it was to a point where we could photograph it. The problem is, in the early 80s, there's no automated database of fingerprints. It would literally have to be done by hand. This was pre-computer days. Every police department, every sheriff's office, would have to go through thousands, if not million, it would be millions and millions of files looking for an alias. And chances are you'd probably find a couple hundred thousand outlaws. Deputy Russell speculates that outlaw and in-law were kicked out of the Rainbow family,

hitched a ride with David Rose and ended up killing him. By circumstances like lightning hitting happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time, stops, saw these people hitchhiking, stops, gives them ride, probably start visiting with them. Without a name or a fingerprint match, the case goes cold. We're headed towards Mount Roosevelt, which is a monument that is just outside of Deadwood. This is where the actual crime itself occurred. And this was always kind of a little party spot for people.

Basically, the picnic area is the same as it was in 1982 when the murder occurred. And that's right over here. We get through some of the deeper snow. In 2002, Detective Randall Rosanoe is walking a crime scene, 20 years cold. The victim himself was just on the far side of the picnic table and scattered on this area, as we showed you in the crime scene photos, was property that belonged to our suspect, identified as outlaw and in-law. Outlaw and in-law are a male and female. Beyond that, Rosenau knows nothing about them. He hopes a visit to the evidence room will change that. What we did was we went back in and pulled everything out of evidence out of the vault. And have since moved it over here.

These are all either cold case. This is all cold case information. And right now, David Rose is still in here, too. This evidence hasn't been examined in more than 10 years. This one belonged to it, too? Yeah. I think they need another cart. We'll go over that little ramp over there.

Yep. This is some of the clothing items that were found. Kind of a Salvation Army collection. These are swabs from the victim. Any? No. There's four more rocks. This is probably the largest of the four, down in a smaller size.

But this one in particular did contain some flesh matter and hair. Which would indicate it was used as the weapon coming down. It's a blunt object. It's hard. I mean, it does a lot of damage. Among the most promising items of evidence is a beer can. beer can. Well, initially, through the investigation, the investigators on scene in 82 did fingerprint

and process the crime scene itself. They found a number of different beer cans that were related to both the scene and the vehicle. On one of those beer cans, they did make a lift of a viable print. Twenty years ago, print comparisons were made by hand. Now computers compare them against millions of prints in a matter of seconds. On May 29, 2002, the database yields a cold hit. Our fingerprint itself did come back with a hit and identified our individual as Thomas Dalton.

So now we had a potential name and date of birth to give to outlaw. Rosenau reads Dalton's rap sheet and notes the suspect has spent time in prison in Texas for violent assault. Within our data system, we can pull up our booking photos, and part of that process involves tattoos. I can give you an example of the outlaw tattoo that we talked about on the shoulder, the right shoulder. As I say, you got a little dagger above Outlaw, and a set of wings is what I assume that is supposed to be. Kind of an aha moment. Rosenau digs deeper and learns that Thomas Dalton is an alias as well. At that point, obviously we ran more computer inquiries into his criminal history into his background,

and eventually identified his name as Fred Allen Bates or his actual name. Fred Allen Bates lives off the grid, working as a day laborer and constantly on the move. A fact underscored by the discovery of yet another alias. In the back, he also had another tattoo, identify him as drifter. How long drifter? Very appropriate for him. The drifter part, he did move around quite a bit. He had two different names, two different social security numbers, and two different dates of birth.

So he was a little bit hard to track. We knew it was going to be kind of an elusive quarry. Bates has one outstanding arrest warrant from downstate Illinois. For Cold Case Detective John Fitzgerald, it's a start. So what we did was we got a hold of the sheriff's office in one of those large counties who told us that they had a marshal service that basically did nothing but track down fugitives. and we gave the information that we had, and it was more or less overnight. Once, Illinois, it's pretty well a Rivertown.

Pretty low in the crime rate. We have our share of methamphetamine crimes, but we've got some real good agents that keep those numbers down. Fred Kinsley is a deputy with the U.S. Marshals' Fugitive Task Force. When a violent fugitive is wanted in an area, we all combine manpower and go to that area to try to capture that fugitive. Hello? Yes it is. On March 19, 2003, Kinsley gets a call from Deadwood about a man named Fred Bates.

What's in the file here is actually the booking record from the Adams County Sheriff's Office. This is the mugshot of Mr. Bates. We did not know him personally as one of the more known bad guys in town, I should say. We run some backgrounds on him and run some police. checks, come up with nothing recent. So he wasn't really known to us. He's pretty well living a normal life. Bates has recently applied for welfare assistance and provided a current address in Quincy.

It gave us a start, you know. A lot of it's good old footwork too, you know, talking to people, talking to neighbors. Have they seen this person, you know, heard things like that. The Deadwood detectives travel to Quincy. Together with Kinsley, they survey Bates' house on 6th Street. Sixth Street, this is four, so about two blocks up until you're right here, we're going to be where he was living. As soon as he exited to the house, we rolled up in the surveillance van and took him down right on the front porch. No struggle, very surprised, but that's the safest way. It's the ultimates of surprise, so a subject cannot get to a weapon or anything like that. We thought we had the right person, didn't we?

Right. At that point, we decided that we had enough to issue that warrant. Fred Bates sits in an Illinois jail cell as cold case detectives map out a strategy for securing a confession. The game plan was always open because we never know whether Fred was even going to talk to us or maybe even confessed to us. So it was kind of an open book as far as that goes. Rosenau takes Bates back to the summer of 1982 and the Rainbow Family Gathering. He did identify initially right away to us that, yes, he was involved in. in the Rainbow Gathering in that year.

Yes, he did leave, but was in the Peace March, left that. Fred Allen, Bates, you're talking about an individual that probably spent most of his life living on the street from conversations either later or investigations later. When you're tying back into homeless shelters, a number of different cities, maybe living with friends, kind of spent most of his life drifting about. Detective Rosenau then asks Bates why his fingerprint was found at a murder scene. And then at a latter point we talked about specifically about fingerprints, and at that point he decided that he was done talking to us. Basically, the interview, too, was a fishing expedition on his part.

You know, he was looking for information from us at the same time, so we got to the specifics and he felt a little cornered. Right. He then used his rights and asked for an attorney, so. Which was probably another indication that you were going the right direction, because when you got to those areas, of concern, he didn't want to answer any questions at all. Bates is transported back to Deadwood, booked into jail, and given a cellmate, who provides detectives with the piece of information they need.

They had fingerprints on a beer can, and it was... Okay. He was... Was that his term for it? That was his term. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. With International Women's Day on the Horizon, it feels right to pause and recognize the incredible weight women carry.

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Is that right? That's right. This is a videotaped deposition of Serge de Rozier, a cellmate of Fred Allen Bates, who, police believe, killed David Rose with a 50-pound rock. Captain Brian Dean is from the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office. When people commit crimes, particularly heinous crimes, they seem to always tell somebody. What did he say about how the killing had occurred? Said that the guy, David, turned out to be a...

That he was looking for trouble and that he left. David left with some of his personal stuff. Did he talk about his fingerprints? He did. He said that he... He told the cops, you've never been in South Dakota, but they had fingerprints on a beer can, and it was . Okay. He was . . . . . . . . . was that his term for her?

That was his term. How many times did he say that? Many times. Serge de Rosier is looking at a long sentence for an unrelated crime and is eager to cut himself a deal. Our job was to try to verify if we could independently whether he was just making the this story up to get a plea bargain, or there were things in the story that only the killer would have known and therefore Serge's story was accurate. Fitzgerald believes there are telling details in DeRosier's statement, details only the killer

would know, or someone the killer had confessed to. Was he concerned about any other physical evidence at the scene? The detail that comes to mind as the most significant was that Fred Allen's. Bates had told Serge that the police still had his hat. They had clothes of his and they had a hat of his, and you couldn't believe how after 20 years they still had all those of his. Up to our right here, just about 10 feet off the road

is a leather cap. And there was no way that Serge de Rozier could have known that information have known that information unless he had talked to the killer himself. Did he describe it as an accidental killing or an intentional killing to you? Accident. He said accident many times. What it did was for the first time we could do more than just paint the picture of Fred Allen Bates being at the scene of the killing. We could now actually put the rock in his hand. And we had a confession that he was the one responsible for killing David Rose back in August

in 1982. So it strengthened our hand tremendous. Before Bates goes to trial, there's one more loose end to tie up. Outlaw's suspected partner in crime, a woman named in-law. And there was always the in-law element. Right. We certainly hoped to find some kind of indication of who she was. But she was just another link, another piece of evidence that needed to be explored and gotten to and interviewed. Today's date is November 28, 2003.

My name is Randall Rosenoff. Five months later, detectives find a clue on the woman they believe to be in-law. Ultimately, we developed a small light of hope that we might have located her. Pouring through old arrest records, cold case detectives find a woman who used to run with Bates, whose name on the street was in-law. It seemed like it had been a long time ago. It seemed like it was something that she had spent the last 20 years trying to forget. The woman is now a college student, living in California.

Cold case detectives ask what she remembers about Bates. Was he taller than you? Before trouble broke out. Who are you talking about? Well, a guy got killed, so that's the trouble I'm talking about. In-law says she and Outlaw were hitchhiking through South Dakota and wound up at a campsite with David Rose. Then she says David Rose made a pass at her.

Bates, whom she knew by another alias, Thomas Dalton, didn't like that. Well, is that what happened when Thomas was hitting him with boulders? Times did Thomas hit David with boulders? Then we knew we had what we needed. We needed another independent witness to place Mr. Bates at the homicide and put the rock in his hand or the murder weapon. putting that rock in his hand was pivotal too. And you've had an opportunity to view the rock.

You can see that it's definitely not a defensive type weapon. So the mere fact that we can associate a rock and that particular rock to the victim himself will give you some indication of the condition of the victim at the time that was used. I mean, that's a heavy rock. It's not a defensive weapon. As for in-law's culpability, Fitzgerald believes she might have been an accessory after the murder. but the statute of limitations on that crime has expired. The only crime that she could have been prosecuted for would be the homicide itself.

And there just was not enough evidence to prosecute her for homicide. Fitzgerald's case against Bates is made. In December 2003, however, Bates decides to cut a deal and pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter. He is sentenced to 35 years in prison. I consulted with the relatives, and there was agreement that they were satisfied that justice would be served. If we let him plead guilty to manslaughter and first agree. I think he'll be eligible for parole when he's about 70, if he lives that long. In the town of Deadwood, the family of David Rose finally has some answers.

David Rose had two children, and they grew up. They were very small children when their dad was killed. And so I know that they were happy to see that this man, his life was so important that 20 years later, they pulled out the file and dusted it off and they solved it. And I'm just really proud to have been a part of it. Thousands of free movies and TV shows. You swear? If I'm mine, I'm dying. This is the mindset.

Free. This is the mantra. Free. This is the... He's like Interstellar, Dreamgirls and Gladiator. And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, the fairly odd parents and ghosts. Pluto TV is always free.

Hazzal. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.