Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shattered Souls: Pressure

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Motive is the name of the game after the brutal and baffling murder of a long-serving police officer. Karen relives the crime scene, sifts through the evidence, and takes listeners on a roller coaster ride as she and her team meet several dead ends before locking a suspect firmly in their sights.Subscribe to the Shattered Souls podcast and catch up on all of Season 1 available now:Apple PodcastiHeartSpotify Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is anattered Souls. I'm your host, Karen Smith. This podcast contains graphic language and is not suitable for children. Welcome back to Shattered Souls. This is episode three. This case will detail a homicide that happened in August of 2005. Before I get started, I want to tell you something. Sometimes when you work a murder, there are things about it that are deeply rooted. And sometimes you just can't get over it. This was one of those cases. Human instinct sometimes dictates a direct pursuit of the suspect. And sometimes taking that high road is the hardest thing in the world to do.

Justice is just a seven-letter word. And sometimes it's a four-letter word. Because there isn't any. But let's get started on this case. In August of 2005, the entire police department desired revenge. Because the victim in this case was a police officer. His name was Roy Andrews. Roy Andrews had spent 30 years of his life on the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

He dedicated his whole life to public service. And after he retired in 1996, he worked as a volunteer at the city methadone clinic. So his volunteerism didn't stop with the sheriff's office. He continued working for the public good after he left. And before he was a police officer, Roy Andrews was an army paratrooper. Yeah, he served his country too. So when we found out he was the victim of a heinous murder, it spun the entire investigation on its head. A little bit of background on Roy. He married his wife Patricia prior to retiring from the force, and they had a couple of sons and a stepson.

Roy mentored a lot of police officers along the way. He was the guy that you went to when you needed help. All the rookies looked up to him, and he worked one of the most dangerous areas of the city for his entire career. He didn't move. He didn't want a cush job before he retired. He stayed, and he worked for the public of Jacksonville until his very last day with the department.

So when his body was found at the rear of an old cemetery road, all of us were in shock. When I got the call, it was about 10 o'clock in the morning. A 911 call had come in saying they had heard what they thought were some gunshots at the back of a cemetery. So police officers responded, and when they got there, they found Roy laying on the curbside in a pool of blood. The first responding officer made a mistake, and he took Roy's wallet from his back pocket. And when he flipped it open, he saw the retirement badge, and he saw Roy's police ID. And I responded shortly after that. And that officer walked over to me, and he saw Roy's police ID. And I responded shortly after that.

And that officer walked over to me and he handed me the wallet. And he said, hey, this is a cop. And I looked at him and said, what are you talking about? And he said, it's Roy Andrews. Now, I did not know Roy. Roy retired shortly before I became a police officer.

But from everyone I spoke to who did know Roy, they said he was a kind, gentle, effective police officer who could get people to thank him for giving them a parking ticket or a speeding ticket or even arresting them. He was that guy. He was the cop that you wanted to encounter when you were having a bad day. Roy was the officer who always made people smile. He was the officer who operated with fairness and impartiality.

And when I heard it was Roy, I called my supervisor, and my lieutenant showed up. And when I told her who it was laying there on the curbside she looked at me and she said please tell me you're kidding and I said no ma'am I'm not I'm sorry it's Roy Andrews and her tear welled up in her eye and she looked down at the ground for a second and then she looked back at me and she put her finger in my chest, and she said, you find out who did this. After my lieutenant arrived at the scene, so did everybody else. The sheriff, the undersheriff,

the state attorney, everyone, including news trucks who parked across the street and raised their boom mics and their big cameras, and they were cutting into live programming with breaking news. It was really disconcerting and quite a hectic crime scene on the periphery. When you look out and you see past the crime scene tape and you see the sheriff and you see the state attorney and they're wanting answers and they want them now. It's a lot of pressure. But you have to be methodical. As much as you want resolution, as much as you want the answers, they don't come that quickly. You have to work the leads. And at this point, the leads were pretty thin. The pressure wasn't necessarily just on me. There was a whole team of homicide detectives that responded that day. And all of

us were going to work in tandem to find out who had done this to a beloved police officer, to a man who dedicated his life to public service. We needed to get him that justice that can be so elusive. Like most cops, Roy was a stickler for routine. He had a predictable schedule, and when he volunteered at the methadone clinic, he would get to his job way, way early, in the early wee hours, and he would take his break at the same time, and he would go home at the same time every single day.

Well, we had no idea who may have had motivation to murder this man. We didn't have a whole lot of evidence left at the scene. Roy's body was there. There was a shoe, one of Roy's shoes, right next to his pickup truck, which was parked next to his body, and the passenger door was open. Again, there was blood rolling down the curbside. We could see clearly that he had been shot at least once. There were a couple of pieces of paper on the ground and a black ball cap laying next to the truck. And that was really about it. That's all we had.

We found out that the truck belonged to Roy. And as I was processing the crime scene, the medical examiner showed up. Now, I'm not talking about an investigator. I'm talking about the medical examiner. And that's a little bit unusual. Normally, we get an investigator on their behalf. But because Roy was a retired cop, the medical examiner himself showed up.

And when he did, we approached his body after I had photographed everything. And the first thing that we saw on his shirt collar was some black residue in a fan pattern. It was gunshot residue. We knew that it was a close contact gunshot wound. Now think about this. You're dealing with a 30-year police officer and a former army paratrooper. This man was perfectly capable of handling himself in close quarter combat. His shirt was still very neatly tucked in his pants. His shoe was off, but that was understandable considering he was

laying on his left side on the ground. So that told us right from the get-go somebody got the jump on him. Was it a robbery? Was it some kind of revenge killing? We had no idea what was going on. So as the medical examiner and I looked closer at his pockets, the wallet that the patrol officer had taken out contained some money. There was a gold nugget in his pocket. He still was wearing his wedding ring. He was still wearing his watch. And when we looked further into that wallet, there was over $1,000 in cash in it. So that pretty much excluded robbery from the motive. It was very difficult to try to comprehend why anybody would want to kill this kind and gentle man.

So the first place that homicide detectives focused was his work at the methadone clinic. As you can imagine, the methadone clinic is not filled with the most savory individuals in Jacksonville. But that doesn't mean that they're murderers. It just means that they've got a drug problem and they're going to the clinic to try and seek help for it. But we can't rule anything out. The homicide detectives went to the methadone clinic to find out who Roy was seeing there as a counselor. Did any of them have an issue with him? Did he make any of them mad? Did one of them come off their meds and go ballistic? There were so many questions, and he had a large caseload.

But unfortunately, when they went there, the homicide detectives were told that his cases were confidential, and they weren't able to give out that information without a warrant. Back to square one, and back to the forensics. Let's go back to out that information without a warrant. Back to square one and back to the forensics. Let's go back to the crime scene for a second. I told you that one of Roy's shoes was off. The other one was still on his foot. There were a couple of pieces of paper around the truck and a black ball cap. All of that was collected. And as I worked the crime scene and collected all of this evidence, the supervisor told me that there were some extraneous pieces of evidence that he thought were important over by a garbage can.

One of them was a cigarette butt. And I said, well, okay, it's a little bit far removed from the crime scene, but you know what, it's better to collect things and have them than not collect them and not have them. So I took some pieces of trash and the cigarette butt and I packaged those as well. And unfortunately, as it is in Florida in the summertime, a storm rolled in really fast and we heard the thunder and we could see lightning in the distance. Well, the truck needed to be sealed up. We needed to package all this evidence and we

needed to get Roy's body out of there. So the first thing that we did was collect Roy's shirt. First of all, we could see the gunshot residue. There were also small bits of blood spatter on his shirt. And we wanted to preserve that as best we could if this case ever went to trial so that the jury could see exactly what we saw at the crime scene. So with the help of the medical examiner, we removed Roy's shirt and we tacked it onto clean cardboard and we packaged it just as the way it was at the crime scene. I also saw some hairs embedded in Roy's fist. Now, Roy was an older gentleman. He was in his 60s. And these hairs were brown. Roy's hairs were gray. So these could have been as a result of that close quarter combat. So I carefully plucked those out with tweezers and placed them in an envelope.

And those were taken directly to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for analysis. The rest of the evidence was bagged and tagged. We had to get the truck out of there. We had it towed to the warehouse, and we sealed up the crime scene for the day. The homicide detectives continued to follow lead after lead the methadone clinic, family members, and they went to go speak with his wife, Patricia, and make notification of his death. Obviously, she was extraordinarily distraught. She didn't understand who could have done such a thing to Roy either.

And his stepson, Robert Peterson, was there as well. And Robert broke down in tears. He had no idea who could have done this. He said that he would be happy to come downtown and speak with detectives because Patricia was not in a state of mind to do so. So Robert went down to the homicide office, and he spoke with detectives about the night before. He had seen his stepfather at that point and he said that he was inside the truck with him and they were just kind of chitty-chatting

about their day. The detectives asked about blood evidence in the truck and Robert said, well, yeah, my stepfather had a nosebleed the night before and I helped him with it and it was pretty bad and he got blood in the truck. Okay, so that was a question asked and answered. We also asked Robert about the ball cap found at the scene and Robert said it was his. He said that his stepfather liked ball caps and he liked different ones and this one was from Daytona and it had flames on the side and Robert said that his father really enjoyed that hat and he the side, and Robert said that his father really enjoyed that hat and he wanted it, so Robert said he probably just left it in the car. Well, there was another lead gone. It flipped the investigation right back to forensics.

I arrived shortly after nine in the morning at the medical examiner's office. I had to finish processing Roy's body for any evidence that might link him with a suspect. So as the medical examiner performed the autopsy, one of the things they have to do is they have to shave the person's head. And when the medical examiner did that, everyone in the room sort of caught their breath for a minute. There were dozens of half-moon-shape blunt force trauma impacts to Roy's skull and face. His left eye socket had been completely shattered, and the medical examiner took one look at it and said he was beaten with brass knuckles before he was shot. And the homicide investigators and I looked at each other and said, what? Somebody beat him. They beat him. And they shot him after he was beaten and they didn't shoot

him once. They shot him twice. One went through the left side of his head, and one went through the right. We had no idea that Roy had been beaten. We had no idea the severity of the injuries at the scene because he was so bloody, and he was on his side. We knew that we had a close quarter combat situation. So anytime that happens, you have to be very cognizant of any evidence that might be on the victim's person. So the first thing that I did after I took my photographs is I swabbed his hands and his face and his neck for any kind of transferred DNA from the suspect. Now we're dealing with brass knuckles and gunshots. Well, brass knuckles, I've never worn them, but I can imagine that if you punch someone with them, the possibility exists that you would scrape the skin off of your own knuckles

as you're throwing those blows at the victim. So my first thought was maybe blood transfer evidence. Second was touch DNA. Touch DNA happens when skin cells are rubbed off from one surface to another, from the surface of your skin to another surface. So because it was close quarter combat, I was hoping that there may have been some of those skin cells exchanged between Roy and the perpetrator, either on his hands or on his face where he took all those blows or maybe on his neck. So after I took all of the DNA swabs, we looked closer at the gunshots and there was soot embedded

in both of them, meaning that the gun was very close to his skin when both of those gunshots were fired. That told a story. And when I looked at Roy's forearms and his hands, there were small dots of blood spatter on both of his forearms. Now, there was no blood at all from his waist down, nothing at all. His clothes were clean. And that told me that because the source of that blood was his head and his face, that he likely had his arms up in a defensive position. And when we looked at his forearms, there were bruises, and there were marks from where he

had deflected some of the blows from the brass knuckles. So all of that evidence told us that Roy did not see this coming. He did his best to defend himself against the blows, but they came swiftly and they came hard from whoever did this. And the final coup de grace were the two gunshot wounds to his head. So now my job was to put the perpetrator with Roy Andrews at the back of that cemetery when the homicide happened, using all of the available evidence. And damned if I wasn't determined to figure it out. We knew where his body was at the scene, and we knew where his truck had been parked at the scene.

We had blood evidence in his truck, and I hadn't gotten in there yet. Since we knew it was a close-contact gunshot, who may have gotten the jump on him? The one thing I was missing was a murder weapon. Yeah, that would have been nice, but unfortunately, whoever did this wasn't kind enough to leave that behind, so we had to work with everything else that we had. There were no casings at the scene, so it was likely either a revolver or whoever did it was savvy enough to pick the casings up and take them with

him. That was highly doubtful because there was so much other evidence just on the ground around the truck, but we had to take that into consideration. So now we're dealing with a blunt force trauma and gunshot wounds. We knew it was a cold-blooded homicide. What we didn't know is who did it and who had motive. But lucky for us, the case was about to break wide open. After I finished at the medical examiner's office, I still had to go down to the warehouse and process Roy's truck. Now, I knew from the crime scene that there was a lot of blood in this truck. And when the homicide detectives told me that Robbie Peterson's excuse for all of that blood was if it was just a happenstance thing that, yeah, maybe Roy had a nosebleed the night before that was just a weird coincidence with this murder, it was a question that we had to answer. So when I got to the truck, I took my overall photographs, and I took some fingerprint evidence from the exterior of the vehicle,

and I opened the door. And when I opened the door, the bloodstains on the seat were deeply embedded in the cushion. It was all over the back of the seat. And there was a void pattern on the seat that looked like something blocked the deposition of blood on that area. And on the rear window, behind the passenger and driver's head, there was a swipe mark that looked like it might have ended with some ridge detail from some fingerprints. So the first thing I had to do

was process that and photograph it to see if there was any detail that could lead to an identifiable print. So we had a glass specialist come and remove that entire window from the rear of the truck. It was such a close quarter in there and there was blood all over the seats. And the last thing that you want to do is destroy other evidence while you're trying to get evidence that you need. So we had the glass removed and we placed it under clean brown paper. And that glass was processed at our latent print unit. And unfortunately, when they came back with the results, there just wasn't enough detail there to make any kind of identification.

So the DNA swabs were going to have to do. We had no idea if the blood belonged to Roy Andrews, which was the likely cause, or if the close quarter combat situation took place inside the cab of that truck, and if the perpetrator had injured themselves if they had made that swipe mark on the rear window. You know, blood looks like blood. Sometimes it's really difficult to discern who it belongs to, and by the looks of this truck, almost everything that happened to Roy Andrews happened either in or directly outside of this truck cab. As I looked around, in the glove box, there was a hole.

And the hole looked like a bullet strike. I took out the entire glove box. And when I did, I could hear something rattling around inside. And I knew it was a projectile. It was a bullet. Well, here's something curious about that. When a bullet strikes plastic, like a glove box, it's not going to stop there. It's going to continue all the way through to the engine block. Bullets hold a whole lot of power, and that impact, that kinetic energy, travels until that kinetic energy stops. So when I saw that the bullet only penetrated that little flimsy piece

of plastic in the front of the glove box and then stopped, that told me it had to go through an intermediate surface before it went through the glove box. And that intermediate surface was Roy Andrews. So now we had a projectile, which was great, because if we could find the murder weapon, if we could find the gun, ballistics could do comparisons between a test-fired bullet from that gun and the projectile from the glove box. So we needed to find the murder weapon. At this point, we didn't have that. So I just continued on with the rest of the truck. And I processed a lot of blood evidence, a lot of fingerprint evidence. But unfortunately, there wasn't anything left in there other than that to go on. So I was hopeful that some of the blood that I had collected would come back to somebody other than Roy.

But we had to wait for the lab to do their analysis before we would have those answers. So I finished with the pickup truck, and I called the lead homicide detective, and I said, hey, you know, I don't know if I have a whole lot here, but here's what I've got. And I gave him the rundown. And they told me to pick my top five samples from the truck to send over to the lab and I did that. I used the blood patterns, the swipe on the back window, and I thought, well, if we're going to get anything other than Roy's blood in here, here are your best bets. And we all crossed our fingers. As I was busy processing the pickup truck, the homicide detectives were busy following other leads. They had gone back to the methadone clinic with a search warrant for Roy's records of everybody

that he'd interviewed, everybody that he'd counseled. And they were hoping that that might lead to a potential suspect, somebody who was pissed off at him, somebody who had some kind of vendetta against Roy. Well, what they got was something completely different. The manager told them that Roy was having some issues with his stepson, Robert. And Roy had planned to take his wife, Patricia, to the bank to have his name put on the bank account. See, Patricia was feeding Robert Peterson money, a lot of money. As a matter of fact, she gave him upwards of 24 grand over the last year. She was paying Robert's bills. She was paying Robert's cell phone. She was paying all of his insurance. She was paying everything. And Robert was pretty much a dirtbag. He was spending money

on dope and prostitutes and everything but being a responsible citizen. So even though Robert Peterson had alibis, this was a new twist. So we spun our investigation back on Robert Peterson to find out just what in the hell he was doing that morning. Remember, at the crime scene, we had a black ball cap that Robert Peterson said belonged to him. We also had Roy's truck, and witnesses said they saw a green pickup truck leaving the scene. So we followed up on the green pickup truck, and we didn't find anything. Robert Peterson drove a red pickup truck. Now, only if you're colorblind would you mistake green for red? So we tried to find Robert Peterson's red pickup truck, and we did. And that truck was processed for evidence and came up with zilch. Nothing. Nada. Nothing that would link Robert Peterson with this murder. So even though we

were focused on him, we needed a lot more to place him at the crime scene at the time of Roy Andrews' murder. And we had something in our back pocket. Let's review this case so far. We have a dead, retired cop in the back of a cemetery. We have his pickup truck left at the scene. We have a black ball cap with flames on the side that his stepson, Robert Peterson, admitted belonged to him. We have a ton of blood evidence in the truck that showed it was a close quarter combat situation. We have possible fingerprints that basically amounted to nothing. And we also have a timeline.

We know that Roy Andrews left his job at the methadone clinic about 9.30 that morning, and we know that the murder happened right about 10 o'clock that morning. So there's a half-hour window that we have to account for. Robert Peterson, when he was interviewed by detectives, said that he was working at a neighbor's house starting about 9 o'clock that morning. Homicide detectives went to interview those neighbors, and they said Robert Peterson wasn't here at 9 o'clock that morning. He didn't come over until that afternoon. Oh? Well, that's curious. So they didn't stop there.

Detectives went back over to re-interview Patricia, Roy Andrews' wife. She said that the night before, she didn't remember Robbie wearing a ball cap when he went out, and she didn't remember him wearing a ball cap that morning when he left either. She also said that he didn't come back over to the house until well after noon. So her testimony, her interview with detectives, also shattered Robert Peterson's alibi. Not only that, Roy Andrews had taken his wife Patricia to the bank to have his name added to the checking account that they shared because Patricia had been feeding Robert money, $24,000 worth of money in the last year. And Roy had had it with that. He wanted Robert to be more

responsible. He wanted Robert to get a job and take care of himself and quit milking his mother and his pension for money that he had worked so hard for. Do I smell motive? You're right. So we spun the investigation right back onto Robert Peterson. And what we did next? Blew the lid off the entire investigation. And what you're going to hear in a few moments will blow your mind. Detectives kept following up leads on Robert Peterson, and they found out that he had been

staying in a hotel room. And they pulled the surveillance footage. At about six o'clock in the morning, the morning of Roy Andrews' murder, Robert Peterson exited his hotel room, walked down the hallway and down the stairs. He was wearing blue jeans, a t-shirt, and that black baseball cap from the crime scene. Now, this wasn't just any ball cap. This was from Daytona's Bike Week. It had flames on the side. It was really unique. And detectives zoomed in on that surveillance footage,

and they could see that exact logo on the ball cap that Robert Peterson was wearing that morning. Not only that, but when he returned to the hotel about 10 15 that morning, 30 minutes after the murder, he had changed clothes and he wasn't wearing that ball cap. So now we knew we had our guy and we just had to tighten the screws. Now that detectives had Robbie Peterson in their crosshairs, we had to put him at the scene of the murder. And to do that, detectives pulled his cell phone records, and they triangulated his location at the time of the murder, and yeah, it showed he was right near that scene. It wasn't perfect. It was within a half mile. But we knew that Robert Peterson, at the time of Roy Andrews' murder, was right around the area, right around the cemetery. So they looked closer at these records.

And there were a number of calls to one phone number. And it came back to a man named Jimmy Jackson. Jimmy Jackson was no stranger to the sheriff's office. He'd been arrested a number of times. The detectives staked out his residence, and they watched him. And one of the detectives ran his driver's license, and it was bad. So she watched as he left his residence, and whoopsie, he ran a stop sign. Well, shame on ya. We brought him in. And we had no idea if Jimmy Jackson was involved in the murder of Roy Andrews. So we had to get on him and get on him quick

and find out what, if anything, he knew about this murder. When detectives interviewed Mr. Jackson, he denied knowledge of anything having to do with Roy Andrews' murder. Well, big surprise there. But what they did is they asked him if he knew Robert Peterson. And Jimmy Jackson said, well, yeah, I'm his drug dealer. Okay, you're his drug dealer. That would explain the phone calls. Do you know anything about that morning, about what happened to Rory Andrews? And he said, no, what's going on? So they told him about the murder. And Jimmy Jackson was genuinely shocked.

He had no idea. So what detectives did is they used Jimmy Jackson. They had him make a recorded phone call right there in the interview room to Robert Peterson. They told Jimmy Jackson, you need to work with us here. We're dealing with the murder of a police officer. And based on your phone records, you're calling the man that we think probably committed this murder. You want to help us out? And Jimmy Jackson said, yeah, what can I do to help you? So they made a controlled phone call right there from the interview room and they recorded it. And when Jimmy Jackson questioned Robert Peterson about the murder of Roy Andrews, what happened next was unbelievable. Jimmy Jackson did a controlled phone call to Robert Peterson from the interview room at the homicide office.

And as he was talking, he asked Robert Peterson, Hey man, I saw the news and saw that Roy Andrews had been murdered. Do you know anything about that? And Robert Peterson, without provocation, admitted to murdering Roy Andrews on that controlled phone call. Everyone was dumbfounded, but we had to get more. The confession on the phone call was great evidence, but we wanted to make sure this case was airtight, so we set up a sting operation. Let me explain a little something about criminals like Robert Peterson. Their Achilles heel is their ego. The fact that they like to brag about what they think they're going to get away with. And that's what happened here. He wanted to talk to somebody about what they think they're going to get away with. And that's what happened here.

He wanted to talk to somebody about what he'd done, about this heinous, disgusting crime that he'd committed. He couldn't wait to brag about it to the first person he thought was available and the first person he thought was safe. And that was his buddy, Jimmy Jackson. So what detectives did was they took advantage of that. And they set up a sting operation. They wired up a sting operation. They wired up a truck. And they had Jimmy Jackson, in that phone call, tell Robert Peterson to meet him at a neutral location.

They actually met at a Waffle House right near the hotel room where Robert had been staying. And they met later on that night. And they wired up this pickup truck. And they wired Jimmy Jackson. And they wanted to get Robert Peterson to tell details about the crime that only the killer would know. The brass knuckles. The type of gun that was used. What happened.

When they met. Where they met. The circumstances surrounding it. Things that hadn't been released to the media. Things that only the killer would know. Next week, in episode four of Shattered Souls, you'll hear the actual conversation between Jimmy Jackson and Robert Peterson in that pickup This is the new real Opening music by Sam Johnson at samjohnsonlive.com Underscore music by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com All rights reserved by Angel Heart Productions.