Going West: True Crime - Angela Samota // 56

Episode Date: February 9, 2020

In 1984, a 20-year-old woman spent a fall Friday evening out with friends. When she got home around 2am, she made a terrifying call to her boyfriend. Less than 30 minutes later, she was found brutally murdered in her Dallas condo. So who killed her, and why? This is the murder of Angela Samota. _______ REMRISE Remrise is a personalized formula based on YOUR sleep issues and patterns. After taking a short quiz, Remrise will recommend the perfect blend of amino acids plus Eastern and Western herbs ground and placed in convenient capsules to get you to sleep - and keep you asleep. Click this link to get your first week FREE!! https://tinyurl.com/remrisegoingwest ___ PUFFY From pillows to comforters to mattresses, Puffy has everything you need to upgrade your bedroom. Puffy's Cooling Cloud helps draw heat of their mattresses to ensure that your body stays at an optimal temperature- which equals optimal temperature. Puffy is also designed for every type of sleeper and has amazing spine alignment support- meaning you can start waking up without aches and pains. Click this link to get your Puffy mattress today! https://tinyurl.com/puffygoingwest Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans, I'm your host teeth and I'm your other host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. We're so sorry guys for this delay on this episode, Heath and I just moved into a new place in LA over the weekend and we had an extended period without Wi-Fi which is just devastating so thank you for your patience. Yeah it was really hard to watch this super bowl when you have no Wi-Fi and no cable. My hotspot really saved the day there. So we want to get started today by saying thank you so much to everyone who left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts this week. Thank you so much to Janay from Willits, California, Leah from Northern Michigan, and Colin from Flower Mound, Texas. And then a big thanks to Mazee from Troy Montana, Bobby from Brooklyn, and Ali from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Thank you guys so much, you really helped keep going west, going. So if you guys want bonus episodes and you're not a patron, head on over to patreon.com slash going west podcast and you'll get one bonus episode a month and you'll be supporting the show. Alright guys, this is episode 56 of going west, so let's get into it. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh

1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh So I walked in and the phone was ringing, I've painted it up, but it was one of her sorority sisters. And so she obviously told me the news, which I did not take well at all.

This man stabbed her 18 times, broke bones, everything. When they went in and founding, and she, there was so much blood, it looked like her heart had been cut out. founding and she there was so much blood and looked like her heart had been cut out. At the very beginning you didn't know who killed her. You didn't know if it was her boyfriend. You didn't know if it was an acquaintance that we all ran around. The police investigated, but no one was charged.

By the summer of 1985, The case had gone cold. Finding out was so devastating because everything I knew my entire life, everything I was told, the person, the circumstances in the 19th century. Angela Samota, who went by Angie, was born on September 19, 1964 in Alameda, California, which is located in the Bay Area and is just directly south of Oakland, to parents Betty and Frank Samota. But her father died the year after she was born, so unfortunately he wasn't able to be involved in her upbringing at all. So Betty was left to raise Angela and her four siblings by herself, which she did in Pennsylvania after the family moved

out of Northern California. Angela was known to be very lively and generous and just a really wonderful person to be around like the kind of person you just felt lucky to have as a friend. Angela also spent some of her upbringing in Amarillo, Texas where she attended the All Girls Hockadee School in Dallas. She was always very smart and she knew she wanted a career in academics. So after she graduated high school in 1982 she began attending Southern Methodist University also known as SMU and Dallas and stayed in the dorms.

Angela was a gorgeous young woman and definitely attracted most everyone who saw her. She just had a classic beauty about her and a huge smile. She would even get flowers and notes put on her car from strangers who saw her around. She had a lot of secret admirers. And while she was in college, she was a double major in computer science and engineering, which was kind of rare for women in the 80s. So obviously Angela was very intelligent academically, but she did struggle in school a bit due to her ADHD and dyslexia.

Nonetheless, she tried really hard in school and would often pull all nighters to get all of her studying done, which I'm sure a lot of you students out there aren't strangers to. Along with trying to make her career goals come true, she joined the ZetaTow Alpha Sorority and then became the social chairman of it, so she was like doing all the stuff. Yeah, so she was doing a lot of things within the sorority and school. Yeah, and meanwhile, she had a ton of new friends from her sorority and just from being at school, so she loved going out to bars and meeting even more people. You know, she was definitely a big people person.

On her first day of freshman year, Angela had met another young woman named Sheila Wisekhi, who was her roommate as well as her very best friend. Sheila was majoring in psychology and wasn't really as outgoing as Angela was, so she learned a lot from her and they went on a ton of fun adventures together. They didn't always get along though. When they first met, they didn't really like each other because Angela had a boyfriend named Lance Johnson, who Sheila just hated.

So it was hard for her to be around them. Angela had been dating him since her high school years, but Angela was scared of him because he had anger issues and even once pulled a knife on her when she had upset him and also once cut up her clothes and rage. But the relationship didn't last long into her freshman year, like a lot of high school relationships. So as soon as he was out of the picture, Sheila and Angela were pretty much attached at the hip. A little bit later in the school year, Angela met Ben McCall, who was about five years older than her and was working as a manager for a construction company in Dallas.

So he was very different from her last boyfriend Lance who didn't seem to be respectful or well-rounded at all, but by all accounts Ben was a great guy and Angela really liked him. Around the time they started dating, after the school year had ended, Angela moved into her very own condo off campus, so she was no longer living with Sheila but they were still best friends. The next year and a half had passed and and Angela continued to date Ben McCall, and worked hard for her degree while still going out and enjoying life with her friends. Angela was in her junior year of college and had just turned 20. Almost a month after her birthday, on Friday, October 12, 1984,

she had a night out with her friends, which wasn't unusual for her to do on the weekends. She was out with her friend and classmate Anita Cadala, along with the guy named Russell Buchanan. Their first stop was the state fair of Texas and Dallas, which is a massive celebration that first started in 1886, so nearly 100 years earlier. And to give you guys an idea of how big of a deal this fair really is, it's attracted over 2 million people during its 24 day run in 2018. It probably didn't have

that big of an attendance in 1984, but it was still a huge fair. Angela's boyfriend Ben didn't go with them to the fair because he worked his construction job the following morning, so he didn't want to be out super late which makes sense. And he didn't mind at all that Angela was out with her girlfriend and another guy. He just didn't seem to be jealous like that. He just wanted her to have fun. Also that night the three attended the Red River Showdown which was the University of Texas facing off the University of Oklahoma in a very well-known football game. So already, they're attending popular events where there are all kinds of people present.

If any of you guys out there are college football fans, you know that the Red River Showdown is a pretty big deal within college football and it's been a big deal for many, many years. I myself am an organ duck fan, but this is one of the big rivalries in college football. So later in the evening, Angela, Anita, and Russell went to the Lakewoods Boardwalk Beach Club, but it was filled with Texas U and Oklahoma U fans because everybody was out after the game celebrating and partying, so they decided to go somewhere else. And I know that they did stay there for a little bit, and they said that it was really fun, it was just like way crowded.

Yeah, maybe too packed. So then the three headed over to a Dallas restaurant that had a nightclub upstairs called The Rio Room, where they drank champagne and they danced till about 1am. And Angela's friends reported later that she was talking to everyone there and pretty much just making her rounds saying hi to people And I believe that she was the one that actually got them into that bar in the first place, correct? Yeah, it was kind of VIP kind of club and she got them in. She was that outgoing and she just seemed to be friends with everyone.

So at about 1 a.m., Angela drove both Anita and Russell in her car, and their first stop was Russell's apartment to drop him off, and he lived very close to Angela. It was just like a five minute walk away. Then Angela dropped Anita off. Her boyfriend Ben lived about 20 to 30 minutes away, but Angela seemed to have enough energy I guess to make the drive, just before 1.30 a.m. to see him and say good night. They hung out outside his place for a few minutes and then she headed back to spend the night alone at her condo.

But at just around 1.50 a.m. Ben got a terrifying call from Angela. So as we mentioned, Angela left Ben's house just around 1.30 a.m. and it took her about 20 minutes or so to get home. So, seemingly right when she got home, around 1.50 a.m. she called her boyfriend Ben, who was asleep at this time. He answered the phone a bit disoriented and Angela immediately started saying things that just didn't make any sense. To be fair, he had also just woken up so he was confused anyway. But he later stated

that it was as if she was speaking in some sort of code, kind of saying just random things. Ben asked her what she was talking about and she replied with something along the lines of, I'm freaked out, a dude knocked on my door and asked to come in and use the bathroom and the phone. I let him in, but I'm really freaked out. She also mentioned that she just wanted Ben to stay on the phone with her and just talk to her. And Ben had no idea what was going on and was about to ask her what was going on and who this guy was, but before he could say anything, she said she would call him right back and she hung up. He called her back but didn't get an answer. So obviously this was

extreme grounds for concern because his girlfriend of over a year and a half who lives alone is scared, super late at night after she let a strange man into her home and now he can't reach her. So something is clearly not right here. He got into his works company car and sped over to her apartment and he got there really fast. But I also want to mention by the way so I just said that she told him she would call him back and then she didn't. But I also read in a lot of other reports that the phone was disconnected and I don't know

if that means that something was said and then the phone was hung up or the line went dead I don't really know but I read these two things, I'm not sure which is true. I kind of go with the latter of the phone being disconnected, considering I can't imagine why she would hang up the phone if she was seemingly scared enough to call him in the first place, but I just wanted to tell you both reports. Right, yeah, it wouldn't make any sense for her to want Ben to stay on the phone with her and then say, hey, I'll call you right back. Unless something happened very abruptly, which we'll get into that, but I just don't see her doing that. It's probably more likely that the phone disconnected.

I agree. I don't know why both of those stories are out there or how one of them was made up, but I'm not sure which is true. Either way, we know that the phone call with Ben did end very quickly. Ben went up to Angela's front door and knocked and he called her name, but there was no answer and the front door was locked. So now he was really worried that something had happened. He immediately ran to his work truck and used the car phone to call information since 911 wasn't heavily

established in the area at this time, which is kind of crazy to think about a time where there wasn't 911. Especially in the early 80s, I kind of figured that it would have been more of a thing by then, but I guess not. He was connected to police who rushed over right away. To give you an idea of how fast all of this happened, Angela called Ben at around 150 a.m. and the police arrived at the scene at 2.17 a.m. And remember he lived like 20 to 30 minutes away so that means after like 150 a.m. he

drove to her house, she didn't answer and then he called police and they showed up all within 27 minutes so this happened like real quick. Yeah. So that lets you know that he was booking it to Angela's condo. The person to pick up Ben's frantic call to the police was rookie cop Janice Crowther. And she and a couple other officers headed over right away. And when they got out of the car, Janice said that she felt dread in the air. And she later stated that she immediately

started shaking because she just had a really bad feeling about what she was going to discover. Once they entered Angela's apartment, another officer went in first and Janice noted that a single woman's shoe was on the floor in the living room next to a scuffmark on the ground, which possibly indicated a struggle. That's when she heard her partner say, Hey Janice, I found her. The officers found Angela Samota, lying on her bed with her heart pretty much sitting on top of her chest, and her bright blue eyes were wide open. There was a giant stuffed bunny next to her on the bed, which was likely from the fair

that night, and there was very obvious evidence of sexual assault. There was male DNA found on both her genitals and her mouth, which was collected for testing, and after a medical examiner studied the scene, it was determined that the cuts on her hands and thumb proved that Angela had attempted to ward off her attacker. Do the blood smeared on her face and the lack of blood spatter around her mouth? It's believed the killer put his hand over her mouth to cover her screams, which would also explain why no one heard the attack occur. Angela Samota was stabbed 18 times in the chest, all of which had penetrated her left lung

and eight that had penetrated her heart. The strikes to her heart were so extreme that the knife had torn her heart right out of its cavity, which was why it appeared to be lying on top of her when she was found. The medical examiner also discovered that two of the stab wounds had entered her sternum, which would have required significant force, meaning this attack was incredibly violent and vicious. Because of this, police felt as though it was someone she knew. Because often times when, you know, attacks are very brutal, people think that it's personal, and so you automatically start thinking about someone that the victim knows. Right. So there was a knife

missing from Angela's kitchen, and her wounds matched those that would have been caused by that knife, so they're pretty sure that he had used the knife from her kitchen and taken it away from the scene because it was completely missing from the scene as well. So Ben had obviously told police what Angela had said to him on the phone, you know, that she had let a man into her house to use the phone in the bathroom, which would then indicate that this was a stranger and not at all someone she was familiar with, but since they didn't know who it was off the bat, they had to consider that Ben was a suspect

and basically discount his statement because, you know, could have been a lie and he could have been the killer. Right, but Ben was also quickly ruled out because of a very interesting discovery that they had made after testing the semen. So this was 1984 and DNA technology was not great, but they could still test DNA because it was basically the earliest stages of DNA science. So they tested the semen that was found on Angela and weren't able to get a blood type from it due to the fact that whoever the DNA belonged to was a non-secreater. For those of you who don't know, you're either a secreater or a non-secreater. If you're a secreater, it means that your blood type antigens can be found in your saliva, sweat, and other bodily fluids, while non-secreaters do not have blood type antigens in their

bodily fluids. So when the semen was tested, they weren't able to determine do not have blood type antigens in their bodily fluids, so when the semen was tested, they weren't able to determine what kind of blood type this person possessed, meaning that they were a non-secreater. The interesting thing about this is that being a non-secreater tells us a lot on its own, despite the fact that it's within its very nature to not tell us anything, because in one study done, 80% of the studies population were secretors, while 20% were nonsecretors. I also read a different study done in 2014,

where 65% of the studies population were secretors and then 35% were nonsecretors. So either way, a decently significant number of people are secretors rather than not. So this really helped the police in their search for Angela's killer. And obviously investigations are very hard to find clues and to, you know, gain some sort of evidence, but this is actually a really good piece of evidence because just because of the statistics that you just explain to us because you know that you're looking for a very specific type of person at this point. Just like how blood type would, so it's cool that this can also help the investigation when we don't have the blood type. It was quickly determined that Ben McCall was in fact a secretor, so he was ruled out in this case.

They also looked into Lance, who remember his Angela's aggressive ex-boyfriend, but it was determined that he was also a secretor, and he had an airtight alibi the night of the murder. Another name came up, an SMU student named Joseph Patrick Barlow, who went by Patrick, was apparently interested in Angela and even sent her harassing notes. He was a non-secretor, yet his alibi was also airtight and confirmed by multiple people. Police focused their investigation on Russell Buchanan, who was the guy Angela was with the night that she died. And he even lived a five minute walk away.

They brought him in for questioning and to test his DNA to discover that Russell was a non-secretor, and he didn't have a verifiable So before that quick break, we were discussing how police started looking into Russell Buchanan. Angela and Russell didn't know each other too well and they had met fairly close to her death after hanging out in the same group of friends at a local restaurant for happy hour. They exchanged information, and he asked her for lunch, and to the Dallas Museum of Art

because he was an architecture. They never ended up going, and she had called him and invited him out to the fair on October 12th with her friend Anita instead. Apparently, a field agent had been at Angela's crime scene and discovered a note in Angela's trash can stating that she had a date with someone that wasn't her boyfriend been. But the agent wasn't sure who it was or when the note was written, and no one else can confirm that this note exists, but it definitely helped them think that Russell could be involved,

since they felt that there was likely an interest there, potentially on both ends. And I mean, Russell was like a tall, handsome guy with blondish hair. Please saw the possible appeal here. When Russell was questioned by police, he told them that when Angela dropped him off, he went right to sleep. He didn't get to sleep very long though because he woke up early to attend a wedding. Directly after the wedding, his friend drove him to the airport so he could take the hour-long plane ride to Houston to visit family, which was a trip that he had planned previously. Days passed after Angela's death before six police cars sped up to his Dallas apartment, lights and sirens ablaze in after he had returned

from Houston, and they had stated why they were there. He told police that he had no idea that Angela had even been killed, which was very suspicious to them because you'd assume he would have heard through the grapevine or seen the papers or the news, but apparently he was just too busy and he didn't. And remember, he had really only met her a couple times and this was before cell phone, so maybe it wasn't that weird and like he said, he was probably just busy. I mean, he was a graduate student and he had just been traveling, so he seemed to have a lot going on.

Yeah, and apparently when he got back from Houston, he had been working on some school papers and things like that, so I don't really think that he had time to flip on the TV and check the news. Police stated that they were going to enter Russell's apartment and he fully cooperated. They didn't find any evidence linking him to the murder, but they did find a collection of knives and spears. But interestingly enough, they turned out to be his roommates who had just gotten back from an African safari, so he like collected all of these old knives and spears on this trip. So they were just around the apartment, but they had nothing to do with Russell. Regardless, police brought Russell down for questioning and also gave him a polygraph

which he passed. Although he didn't have a solid alibi for the time of the murder, since he was sleeping at his apartment alone while his roommate was at a town. And he was a non-secretor. Police didn't have any actual hard evidence that he committed any crime at all, so they had to let him go, but they continued to watch him very carefully and they routinely questioned him over the next six months. This was a really tough time for Russell because the police would sometimes even come into

his work, which kind of made him look a certain way to his co-workers. And he was also in the news so many people believe that he was guilty, even without hard evidence. During one interrogation, they held up incredibly graphic photos of Angela's crime scene and told him that he did that to her. He stabbed her. he raped her. At this time, Russell was 23 years old and studying to become an architect. He had no criminal history and was thought to be a very well-rounded and nice young man, but police still did everything

they could to pin this crime on him. They were kind of railroading him, so to speak. I can't, I mean, I get it. They didn't have any other suspects at this particular time. And yeah, he was with her that night. He's a non-secretor. It makes sense that they're going after him, but it's also kind of like, he might be reaching a little bit. Yeah, and I understand the integrity of police trying to solve a case, but at the same time,

you can't just be narrow-minded when you're looking into suspects. And apparently through the opinion of the police, they thought that maybe he was jealous because she had a boyfriend, and he was interested in her. It got to the point where Russell's parents begged him to get an attorney. Police of course then used this against him thinking, oh, it's suspicious now that he got an attorney, so they continue to keep watch on him, but Russell had long time plans to study abroad in London England for graduate school

and there was nothing the police could do to stop him because they couldn't hold him. But they weren't alone in thinking that Russell was guilty. Angela's best friend and old roommate Sheila Wysocki was convinced that he had murdered Angela. So, police had her wear a wire and go to dinner with Russell, which she was incredibly worried about because in her head, she's gonna go meet with her best friend's killer. They agreed to meet at a local restaurant in Dallas, and I'm not sure what the grounds were like, hey, we both knew Angela because they had never met. So during dinner, Sheila brought up Angela's death, but Russell didn't say anything strange or incriminating at all. So again,

police had nothing. So after Russell went to London and finished his education, he ended up interning in Los Angeles and eventually returning to Dallas where he became an incredibly successful modern architect. In the early 1990s, he married a woman named Karen who learned about Angela's case when they started dating because he had to be honest with her about the investigation. But he swore that he was innocent and she believed him. Meanwhile, Sheila Wiseauky continued on with her life, but she couldn't shake what happened to her best friend. So she moved to Nashville and decided to make a difference. After going to great lengths to have Angela's case reopened in the mid-2000s, she decided

to take matters into her own hands and work towards becoming a private investigator so she could solve the case herself. When Angela died, Sheila wasn't in the area, which was why she didn't accompany Angela and friends on their night out that evening. Sheila, who at the time was 22, meaning that she was two years older than Angela, had been visiting her family in North Texas. The morning after the murder, Sheila got a call on her parents' home phone and she picked it up in a cheery tone, but on the other line was one of Angela's sorority sisters who told Sheila that Angela was dead.

At first, Sheila thought that there had been like a car accident or something like that, some kind of accident, and she didn't believe that she was dead. But when she learned that she'd been murdered in her condo, Sheila screamed and immediately of course just started sobbing, which caused her mom to run into the room and ask what was going on. After that, Sheila didn't feel safe at school or for that matter anywhere, so she actually dropped out of college and didn't go back. Because at this time, you know, this is her best friend, she has no idea what happened to her or who killed her so brutally. She thought that am I next? Is it somebody I know? Are they going to come after me?

And so that's why she left school. She just she didn't know what to do. She didn't feel safe. Yeah, that's a very scary thought to think about your best friend being killed. And then you not really knowing how safe you actually are, especially on a college campus, or like kind of close to a college campus, I feel like it would be very scary for a young woman of that age to know that even a murder had just occurred regardless of it being your best friend or not.

Right, and just like in our most recent episode, last week's episode on the Michigan murders, we talk about all of these young women most of whom are in college, being murdered in this town. So, along with this too, not just being the best friend, like you said, but is there a serial killer on the loose who's gonna be killing young women in town? You just don't know. And we also have to think about this time period and this time frame. The 80s were a pretty prevalent time for serial killers. I mean, there was a lot of active serial killers.

There was a lot of murders happening on campuses and all across the US. So that's very scary to think about and be a college student in that time. Oh, absolutely. It frustrated Sheila that police had actual DNA and technology had advanced over the 20 plus years that had passed, yet no one was willing to reopen or retest any of this DNA.

And it makes sense why she would be so frustrated because there are so many unsolved cases out there that have no DNA or none was collected, and the fact that they have actual DNA of semen, which is a huge deal, and they're just kind of sitting on it. I get it, you know, they probably have a ton of other cases in their lap, but why not just put this one to rest? Sheila called what was it like some over 700 times in a year to the Dallas police, and even had people who knew Angela call as well, and just say, reopen this case constantly, like probably twice a day.

We're not trying to knock the police, I realize that there are probably a lot of murder cases that they're trying to work through. But again, you know, just going back to thinking about those cases like you mentioned, that don't have the luxury of having the DNA there, and this one does, there shouldn't be any hold up, honestly. Right, I mean, I don't know what it's like to be a cop, of course, I'm sure they have so many other

things going on, and I know that it's not just, oh, let's just retest this, obviously, that cost money, it takes time, but it's worth doing. Right, so Sheila, who was the mother of two boys at this time, even had a room in her house in Nashville that she called a war room, where she looked over all of the evidence she had regarding Angela's case, which sounds like she's a badass. She has a war room where she's literally trying to piece together this fucking case for her best friend. Finally, in 2006, a woman named Detective Crumb in the Dallas Police reopened the case

thanks to Sheila's persistence. It took two years to properly test the DNA, but they did it. So in 2008, they finally got a hit. Detective Crumb called Sheila right away when she got the news and said, we got him. Sheila was more than ready to hear that Russell Buchanan was behind the murder. But the name the detective said was Donald Andrew Bess. And this was a completely new name to them.

He was never a suspect in this case, so you can imagine the shock amongst the whole force. Donald Bess was born on September 1, 1948 in Arkansas, and he had a decorated criminal record that mostly included sexual assault. In 1978, when he was 30 years old, he was convicted of aggravated rape and kidnapping. For these crimes, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was unfortunately paroled after six years into his sentencing. And just after his release is when he was 36 years old, an angel of Samota was brutally raped and murdered, so this was around the same time.

Just about eight months after her death, Donald was found guilty of raping another woman in Houston, Texas. And since he had violated his parole by committing this sexual assault, he was sentenced to life in prison. And had they just kept this monster in prison, instead of releasing him way too early, Angelo would probably be alive today. So at the time of his arrest, Donald Andrew Bess

was six feet tall, 350 pounds, and 60 years old. And in 1984, when Angelo was killed, he was the same height and was about 250 pounds, so he was definitely a bigger guy and much bigger than petite Angela. But he denied murdering Angela, despite the fact that there was hard DNA evidence proving that he was at the scene of the crime. He wrote this statement to police. I got out of prison on parole in March of 1984. During that summer, I went to Dallas to visit some friends. Over the next several months,

I visited Dallas three or four times. At the time, I was living in working in Houston. During my visits to Dallas, I met two or three women. Mostly, I would meet them at a bar in the Oklan area. One lady was from California and was in Dallas for a foosball tournament. I went with her to a hotel in Irving and we had sex. Another lady I met, I went with her to Granbury, I think, and we spent the weekend there. I remember another girl that I met at a bar, but I don't remember anything about her. I have never hurt anyone most of the rest of 1984. I stayed home in Houston and worked.

During sex with any girl, I've never been violent. And we know it's not true that he has never been violent with a woman during sex because he has been convicted of aggravated rape twice. One occurrence of which landed him in prison for life. And of course, his arrest for Angela's murder, taking place over 24 years after it happened, he doesn't have an alibi. So all we have is him saying he didn't do it, yet we have a good amount pointing to his guilt.

The trial began in 2010 and Sheila drove all the way to Dallas from Nashville with one of her sons to make sure that she was there to support her best friend During the trial a couple women testified that Donald best had raped them showing the court that he was indeed capable of such violence His ex-wife of three years even took the stand and testified that during their marriage he had abused both her and their child justified that during their marriage, he had abused both her and their child. On June 8, 2010, the jury deliberated for just one hour and found Donald Andrew Bess guilty of Angela Samota's murder, and he was given the death penalty. He's since filed multiple appeals while he sits on death row at the Polonski Prison in Texas, and each of his appeals have been denied.

But he doesn't have an execution date set at this time. And during the trial, the state of Texas tried to kind of create a scenario where Donald Andrew Bess had seen Angela out at one of the many bars she was at that night with her friends. And he was, you know, attracted to her as many work as she was just such a light to her so beautiful and then he followed her home and that's when he went up to her door and made this excuse. So that's what they think happened but since he didn't confess we don't know what happened

which is really unfortunate because if he's put to death for this crime and we have solid DNA evidence that he did it, he should just tell us what happened. Yeah, I mean I don't see, he should just tell us what happened. Yeah, I mean, I don't see what he has to lose at this point. He might as well just tell the details and let Angela's family have some peace. And I was also kind of thinking about the fact that he was free for a period of time after Angela Samota's death, or murder, I should say, what is the possibility that he, I mean, if he killed once, who's to say that he couldn't have killed again?

So if there's any unsolved murderers around that time in that area, I think police should probably look into Donald Andrew Bess. That's a really good point. I mean, this case is so scary to think about because this kind of thing can really happen to anyone, and the fact that it was a stranger who likely followed her home, and then approached her door with some bogus story, it's just sad because she was so nice that she probably either felt scared to say no to this man, or she felt that he meant no harm. And of course she was worried enough to call her boyfriend, which were lucky she did because she got to partially tell the story of what happened to her.

And I told Heath this yesterday, but a few years ago I was closing at work, and I walked out to my car in the parking lot, and it was pitch blackout. And there was no one around when this 50-something-year-old man came out of nowhere and told me that his car broke down, and he was a professor at a university that was a couple hours away, and he left his wallet at his friend's house, la la la. Basically, I had tips in my pocket and I gave him them because I was at a crossroads in my head. It was so dark that it was known around so I felt if I didn't give him the money, what if he became angry and had a weapon. But after I gave him the money, I think it was like ten bucks. He went away. But three weeks later, he approached my friend and I at a nearby gas station

and I went off on him, telling him that his story was BS because he'd said the same thing to me weeks prior, which of course he denied. So bottom line, he wasn't this nice professor who lost his wallet. He was lying. So poor Angela, I mean, who knows if she had a people or not at her front door, but she opened the door to this 36-year-old man and was probably at a crossroads in her mind. Do I let this man in and maybe he's harmless or do I say no and maybe he gets mad and forces his way in?

And you don't have time to think because you have to act, you have to respond. And we were also talking about the fact that if she had told him no, the reason why we think he probably would have persisted in trying to get in was because if he went through all the trouble to follow her home from a bar, this complete stranger, obviously he was physically infatuated with her and I believe in my mind that he was going to do anything he could to get into that condo. And like we said, he was 250 pounds and six foot tall. I don't know Angela's height and weight, but she looks rather petite in her photos.

You know, she's thin and she's a young woman. She's 20 years old. Right. She's 20 and he's 36. Yeah, and he's this like big dude. So obviously, if she opens the door and there's this guy, if she had said no, he probably would have pushed the door open and come in anyway and killed her anyway. Yeah, definitely.

And I think it's really sad that he's trying to throw out all these appeals when we literally have DNA evidence. Like, dude, we have your DNA evidence you are done for. And he's committed other horrible crimes, so you're not innocent of shit. And to be honest, when I saw this guy's face He just looks like a total scumbag. I'm sorry if that's you know judging a book by its cover And which I'm not I'm not judging a book by its cover because we know the facts of these cases So yeah, you're a piece of shit. He is actually very creepy looking

It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside if you're a killer or a killer, but he's creepy. So Sheila had originally planned to let her PI career rest after Angelus' case, but she loved helping people so much and had an overwhelming amount of messages from people who wanted her help solving cases close to them. She now has her very own firm called Without Warning Private Investigation. She remains in contact with Russell Buchanan, and she is since apologized for basically trying to get him arrested for something it turns out he didn't even do. But Russell holds no ill will whatsoever towards Sheila, nor the Dallas Police Department. So this guy's just a really nice guy.

The Dallas Police Department actually did give him a formal apology for badgering him all of those years, but Russell commends them for working so hard on Angela's case and is just glad that the real killer has been put to justice. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you everyone for listening to this episode and next week we'll have an all new episode for you guys to dive into. If you guys just need more going West episodes head on over to patreon.com slash going west podcast.

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