Snapped: Women Who Murder - Angela McGraw-Hester

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Investigators are left with a gruesome scene and a missing child after a stabbing victim calls 911.Season 30 Episode 25Originally aired: Apr 3, 2022Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on ...the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee 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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Starting point is 00:01:56 There was a large amount of blood on the floor, on the bed, and on walls. She was stabbed over 60 times. Whoever was stabbing was having a very personal grudge against her. To solve the crime, investigators must wade through a slew of suspects. It could have been someone that a couple of sheep was with. We had an open relationship.
Starting point is 00:02:25 It's been a bitter custody battle, and it still was going to be ongoing. As investigators inch closer to the truth, a calculating suspect will emerge. They clearly have been researching how to murder someone. The person who has the most motive and opportunity to commit that crime is you.
Starting point is 00:02:44 So how can I deny something that I can't guarantee if I'm asleep? Though it's less than an hour from busy Portland, Gresham, Oregon manages to steer clear of most big city problems. It's kind of a smaller town center, and then it gets rural to the east of it. Gresham has always reminded me of a city that wants to make clear they're not Portland, right? They're their own small city.
Starting point is 00:03:26 It's affordable. It's a working-class neighborhood. A good place to grow up and be close to the big city, but, you know, not deal with the problems that might happen in other parts of Portland. But in the early morning hours of June 10th, 2016, a call comes into 911 that shakes this quiet suburb. At about 2.59 in the morning, a woman called 911 from her living room at her apartment in the city of Gresham. 911, how can I help you? I'm trying to feel it.
Starting point is 00:04:03 Okay. Where is this person at now? The woman identifies herself as 34-year-old Anastasia Hester. It doesn't surprise me, but based on the injuries, the time of day, and just shock alone that she's unable to identify her attacker. Where did he stab you? As dispatch works to get help, Anastasia grows weaker by the second. Anastasia, weaker by the second. Six minutes after Anastasia makes the call, first responders arrive at her apartment on Eastman Parkway. on Eastman Parkway. The stab wounds ranged in depth of penetration from about half an inch to about eight inches. The knives pierced all of the vital organs.
Starting point is 00:05:38 We need to get this person to the hospital if there's any chance of saving her life at all, which is our number one priority. any chance of saving her life at all, which is our number one priority. As Anastasia is rushed to the closest hospital, it's unclear whether she will survive the brutal attack. She was stabbed over 60 times. Whoever was stabbing was having a very personal grudge against her. While Anastasia fights for her life, detectives arrive at her apartment and are immediately troubled by what they find.
Starting point is 00:06:09 We had the indication that there was a child, but the child had not been encountered for. That was a huge concern. That became a main objective was to find the child and figure out if they were all right. We believe by looking at the crime scene, we have a mom and a daughter that live here, but there was no daughter.
Starting point is 00:06:29 The crime scene was a bloody mess. Anastasia was transported to the hospital with life-threatening critical injuries, and that was what was on the thoughts of everybody's mind. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Starting point is 00:06:45 Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Starting point is 00:06:53 Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Starting point is 00:07:01 Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. fairly young and then her dad passed it when she was a teenager. She always stayed very close with her mom and stepdad and her brother. She did a little bit of college after high school. When Anne wasn't working towards her future, she loved to hang out at a local game shop in Gresham called EnterZone.
Starting point is 00:07:24 She loved sitting around with the family in the evening and playing games. And did a lot of tabletop role playing and playing Magic the Gathering. In 2006, Ann met fellow gaming enthusiast Matt Hester. Anastasia and Matthew met through their mutual interest in board games, in sort of that nerdy pursuits that a lot of people around here enjoy.
Starting point is 00:07:53 He would just lose himself in video games and fantasy and playing magic. And it was games were his life. Anne and Matt began dating and in 2008 decided to take their relationship to the next level. She really loved him. She really did. She had every intention of when they got married that they'd be together the rest of her life. In November 2011, Anne's dream of having a family was realized when she gave birth to a daughter.
Starting point is 00:08:29 She had every intention of being a stay-at-home mom and wife. But after the birth of their daughter, the couple struggled to connect. In an attempt to save the marriage, the two mutually agreed to a unique approach. Matt and her talked about opening their relationship. But in order for this new open arrangement to work, Anne had one rule, no sneaking around. They had an agreement that they would kind of communicate back and forth to each other on what
Starting point is 00:09:02 was going on, and he started not to. And found out that Matt had cheated on her at least once, going outside those rules that they had set up. And at that point, she started talking about filing for divorce. In 2012, the couple's four-year marriage came to an end. In order to provide for her daughter, the now single mom had to play both breadwinner and caretaker. She worked at a call center in downtown Portland that did, they'd call on medical surveys.
Starting point is 00:09:38 She mainly took the job at the call center to be able to take care of her daughter. They had a one-room apartment. Anne got full custody of her daughter, and Matt had his scheduled weekends. The one thing Anne did complain about Matt was he was never good about paying his child support because he kept constantly losing his job. To help pay the bills, Matt took in a roommate, single mother Angela McCraw and her three
Starting point is 00:10:08 children. Matthew and Angela McCraw moved in together, allegedly just as roommates. But within a month, it was a romantic relationship. In September 2014, Matt and Angela married. His ex-wife Anne took the news in stride. Anne told me that after Matt and Angela got together, that Matt was taking more of an interest in what was going on with his daughter and wanted more time with her.
Starting point is 00:10:38 Anne really, really was hoping that they could have at least a relationship in such that they could communicate and co-parent effectively. But just two years later, Anne is barely clinging to life after being brutally stabbed inside her apartment. It was a large number of stabs. EMS had transported her to the hospital to try to save her life. As detectives wait for word on Anne's condition, they begin to process the bloody scene. It was readily apparent to us that there's at least two people lived in this house, our victim,
Starting point is 00:11:19 Anastasia, and then also the single bedroom in this apartment was a child's room. The initial respondent officers and our sergeant started making some phone calls and trying to find this child. Just as authorities launch a hunt for the missing child, they receive some tragic news. I had been on scene about half an hour and then my phone rang, and it's the call that I hoped I wouldn't get, but I did. And that was the call from the hospital saying that Anastasia had died. Despite their best efforts, Anastasia was too far gone.
Starting point is 00:11:56 She had multiple perforations to her lungs, her internal organs, and the amount of blood on the walls and the carpet, put her in a situation that she could not survive. Now that we have a homicide investigation, we've really stepped up our game with the search for the child. Where is the child at? Do we have a murder and an abduction? Coming up, the truth of Anne's horrifying final moments shocks this quiet community. There were lacerations down to the bone in her hand and in her fingers that told me she put up a fight. And as the investigation begins, detectives find a treasure trove of potential leads.
Starting point is 00:12:40 Help paint a picture for me. She was in a relationship with both the man and the woman. Detectives in Gresham, Oregon are processing the scene of the brutal murder of 34-year-old Anastasia Ann Hester. But detectives fear Ann may not be their only victim. The fact that we had a young missing child was concerning to all of us. And so that was, you know, one of our first goals was, you know, try to identify where this child is and to make sure that the child was okay. We contacted our child services unit and determined that the child has a biological father, Matthew Hester, and he lives in Portland, about 10 miles or so away from where Anastasia lived.
Starting point is 00:13:35 Detectives immediately tracked down Matt Hester. We were able to contact Matthew Hester and determine that the child was with her father and this was a predetermined child custody sharing arrangement. Matt tells investigators he had picked up his daughter from school the day before and brought her back to his home for their weekend together. It was his turn, you know, for custody of the child. He didn't know anything, you know, about what happened, and he was cooperative. Matt and Angela agree to come to the station
Starting point is 00:14:13 for an interview later that day. Matthew obviously is important to talk with because, you know, he's the ex-spouse. It's important to get his timeline. It's important to get his timeline. It's important to get that information to either clear him as a suspect or to identify if he is a possible suspect. Meanwhile, investigators turn their attention back to the crime scene and piece together a theory of events.
Starting point is 00:14:42 You can't go into a homicide investigation with tunnel vision. You have to keep an open mind. We had to look around and try to take a totality of our evidence that we had and our circumstances and what best fits. We had observed that the air conditioner had been removed and then from outside we could see that it would look like a cinder block had been placed. It appeared to us that the killer used a cinder block to step up on, slid the window open, climbed in, and that was how they made their point of entry. So you basically had the living room area where she had her bed.
Starting point is 00:15:19 You had the blood located around the bed area and then kind of at the entry area. Based on the blood spatter analysis and evidence at the scene, that Anastasia was likely laying in her bed when that first attack occurred. It appears that Anastasia got out of bed after the first attack, tried to make her way to the front door,
Starting point is 00:15:46 and was met by the killer. At that point, there was a second area of attack. We know that based on heavy blood saturation on the floor. On the bloodstained carpet, detectives spot three potential murder weapons. There were two butcher knives. There was a pocket knife. The two butcher knives that were found on the floor
Starting point is 00:16:09 actually came from a knife block within the victim's kitchen. Blood makes knives slippery. It's very, very common for the assailant to also cut themselves during a knife attack. So in my mind, we probably have at least two sources of DNA in this room, one from the perpetrator and one from the victim. The importance of finding the knives is obviously to look for fingerprints in any possible DNA. The murder weapon isn't the only thing at the scene that might help investigators find
Starting point is 00:16:47 Ann's killer. We were able to identify a shoe print. Somebody had stepped in the blood as they were walking in or out. It became important because Ann was barefoot. MUSIC Detectives set out to speak with Ann's neighbors, hoping someone saw something, and they are shocked at what they find. There were several witnesses that heard a woman screaming,
Starting point is 00:17:19 but nobody called 911, except for the victim herself. The first screams were heard at around 11.15 p.m. and the 911 call came in at 2.59 a.m. and Anastasia said that her attacker had just left. So we're looking at, you know, almost a four-hour time frame for this to be perpetrated on Anastasia. While canvassing the neighborhood, investigators also search for surveillance video. The best video that we found was the neighbor that was east of the entrance of the apartment complex there.
Starting point is 00:18:01 Investigators head back to the station to turn the footage over for processing. When they arrive, Matt and Angela Hester are waiting for them. Both of them were cooperative. I actually interviewed Matt and another detective interviewed Angela. and another detective interviewed Angela. Matt tells police that on the night of Ann's murder, he was at home with his wife, Angela. We'd play a little video game together. Okay.
Starting point is 00:18:35 And then around ten, uh, put the kids to bed. He watched some television, then he went to bed and wasn't contacted by anybody until the next morning. Matt says that he has no reason to want to hurt Ann. In fact, they barely spoke. So help paint the picture for me. As far as you and Ann, do you guys constantly fight?
Starting point is 00:19:02 Is it amicable? We have no communication. We don't text, we don't talk. I drop her off at the door and go on my merry way. As far as you're in Am, do you guys constantly fight? Is it amicable? We have no communication. We don't text, we don't talk. I drop her off at the door and go on my merry way. Matt tells police he does occasionally hear curious rumors about Am through mutual friends. I know that she lives in the pirate community. was in the pirate community. We learned that people who live in the community,
Starting point is 00:19:26 adults every day, that dress up like pirates, talk like pirates, they build pirate ships, and they take them to pirate conventions. And Anastasia was a part of this world. Who's your current boyfriend? I don't know his name. Um, he's older. Like I said, he's name. He's older.
Starting point is 00:19:46 Like I said, he's part of the pirate community. According to Matt, the man isn't Anne's only partner. She was in a relationship with both the man and the woman. I don't know either of their names. We talk about polyamorous relationships. And when it comes to pirates, that is not something that's abnormal to them. After Matt's interview, investigators receive word that they may have footage of the suspect's vehicle. We got very lucky in this case.
Starting point is 00:20:19 We found video that shows a Mazda SUV coming and going from the victim's home. The vehicle looks eerily familiar to one in the station parking lot right now. Matt and Angela drove a Mazda SUV. Detectives confront Matt with the new evidence. Your car was there. And I need to know why. Your car left her crime scene.
Starting point is 00:20:53 Who would have been in your car? I don't know. Somebody's got to know, Matt. Coming up, detectives up the pressure on their prime suspect. Matt, if you had anything to do with Ann's death, I need to know about it right now. I did not. I would never do anything. I wouldn't endanger my child. But does someone else hold the keys to solving this case? It's been a bitter custody battle because she refused to allow him to call and a few other things. MUSIC
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Starting point is 00:21:55 She dreamed of becoming a Hollywood movie producer. That's how it starts. Before it ends, someone will be shot dead. From Wondery and the team behind the hit series Hollywood and Crime comes a gripping tale of ambition, betrayal, and the dark side of moviemaking. Follow Hollywood and Crime, the Cotton Club Murder, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:22:20 Listen everywhere on December 2nd, or you can binge all episodes early and ad-free on Wondery Plus starting November 11th. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little known British territory called Pitcairn and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still emerge. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking
Starting point is 00:23:00 story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Detectives investigating the murder of 34-year-old Ann Hester have just discovered footage of a familiar car outside her home
Starting point is 00:23:41 on the night of her brutal attack. They're not able to see who's inside the car. They're not able to pull the license plate off some of these blurry footage from a very dark night. But it matched the description of Matthew and Angela's vehicle. So there's no doubt in my mind that your car is the one that is on video leaving the apartment complex right after the
Starting point is 00:24:06 crime was committed. So help me figure out why your car was there. I haven't heard a single denial that your car is not there. Well I didn't wake up. I wasn't asleep. I can't guarantee that my car was at home. So I'll have to deny something that I can't guarantee if I'm asleep. Matt if you had anything to do with Ann's death, I need to know about it right now. I did not. I would never do anything that would endanger my child.
Starting point is 00:24:34 After getting shut down by Matt, investigators turned to his wife, Angela McCraw Hester, who is candid about the couple's struggles with Ann. So you had a court proceeding back in January. It's been a bitter custody battle, and it still was going to be ongoing because we were just filing because she refused to allow him to call and a few other things.
Starting point is 00:24:58 Like Matt, Angela claims that it couldn't be their car on the video. No, my car car on the video. Detectives shift gears and ask Angela about her activities the night before. Angela said that she woke up about 3 o'clock in the morning. She went to let the dogs out. After letting her dogs outside, Angela says she began to feel ill.
Starting point is 00:25:30 She actually said that she puked all over herself because she had been sick. And she says that Matt got out of bed and took a shower with her and helped her get cleaned up and then brought her back to bed. Investigators find it odd that Matt hadn't mentioned this occurrence. That is a pretty significant event that Matt just didn't tell us in his story when he relayed his events for the evening.
Starting point is 00:25:56 Matt saying they remained in bed the whole time, those were the inconsistencies that stuck out to me. Despite the discrepancies, investigators are forced to let Angela and Matt go. The video was enough to show us that the vehicle departed. Unfortunately, it didn't tell us who was in that car. It's great evidence, but just not enough at that point. Leaving no stone unturned, investigators take a closer look at the pirate roleplay community. We looked through Anastasia's phone call logs, and we found a friend of hers living down in Springfield, I believe.
Starting point is 00:26:46 And we sent some detectives down there, and it was there that we learned that the lady in Springfield and her husband, boyfriend at the time, I believe, were partners of Anastasia's. I had a relationship with Anne. We were dating, as in boyfriend and girlfriend, but we were in what is known as a polyamorous relationship. So we had an open relationship. She was also seeing my fiancé at the time, which is my wife now. The three of us were together.
Starting point is 00:27:20 She was a woman I really expected would become my wife one day. We had every intention, the three of us, of being life partners. She was a woman I really expected would become my wife one day. We had every intention, the three of us, of being life partners. But investigators wonder if the couple's relationship with Anne had taken a turn. They asked, of course, where I was at the time. I told them I was in the hospital with having knee surgery. They asked me if my wife could have done it due to the oddity of our relationship.
Starting point is 00:27:50 I told him, no, we both loved Anne too much for that. She was with me the whole night. While Breanne and James insist that no one in the pirate community would hurt Anne, they know who might. And the names are all too familiar to investigators. I brought up Matt and Angela because they'd just gone through a pretty bitter custody case. The custody case between Matt and Anne had only wrapped up maybe a couple months before
Starting point is 00:28:22 she was killed. According to James and Breanne, following Matt's marriage to Angela, the newlyweds tried to get full custody of Matt and Anne's daughter, sparking a months-long dispute. They filed for full custody, claiming that Anne was an unfit mother. In order to make a determination,
Starting point is 00:28:45 the judge ordered a caseworker to perform independent evaluations of the two households. They had a one-room apartment. Anne set up the living room as a bedroom for her, where her daughter had the full bedroom with her toys and all of her stuff and that. She had sacrificed her own bedroom
Starting point is 00:29:02 so that her daughter could have somewhere safe to be at night. That's not the case for Angela and Matthew. They lived a very disorderly, chaotic, messy life. Their house was not a safe space. It was not well maintained, unkempt, you could say. Anastasia works full time, and Matt and Angela are not employed. They figure out how to get by on multiple different government assistance checks and they just have no drive to do anything. Matt explained that his children have different disabilities and get Social Security benefits or payouts from the state. So he lives off of the proceeds of his kids' disabilities.
Starting point is 00:29:52 According to James, less than a month before Ann's murder, the judge released his decision granting Ann full custody while allowing Matt weekend visitation. With the custody dispute settled, the court ordered Angela and Matthew to pay Anastasia back child support now that Anastasia was going to have full custody of her daughter.
Starting point is 00:30:15 The court found that Matt owed $29,000 in lawyer's fees and then an additional $13,000 in back-oad child support. The ruling did not sit well with Matt and Angela. Angela and Matthew had no income other than those government checks, and those were only about $1,500 a month. There was really no way that they could pay off that money. On June 16, less than a week after Ann's death, detectives get a phone call from a local insurance agent that fuels their suspicions of Matt and Angela.
Starting point is 00:30:51 The agent tells them that Matthew Hester has just rung them up and asked a lot of questions about Anastasia's $100,000 life insurance policy. He's already calling trying000 life insurance policy. He's already calling trying to collect the money. That was highly suspicious to me. Coming up, to nail a killer, investigators must rely on clues left behind. There were two profiles found on the knife block.
Starting point is 00:31:24 And a long wait pays off. These DNA results finally come back, and it's a surprise. Less than a week after single mother Ann Hester was stabbed over 60 times in her apartment. All eyes are on her ex-husband, Matt. Matt lost custody of his daughter, and Anastasia got custody of her daughter. So that upset Matt. And all that was kind of coming to a head in the two weeks
Starting point is 00:32:04 prior to this murder. On June 22, 12 days after the murder, detectives hear from the forensic scientist tasked with identifying a bloody shoe print from the crime scene. We were able to identify pretty quickly it was a size 9 and a half women's Airwalk. We contacted the manufacturer. They told us the shoe sole pattern was used on an Airwalk Myra boot. And I made some phone calls and we found that our Clackamas County Payless Shoe Store is the only ones that distribute those shoes in the area. Detectives immediately head to the store and start combing through their purchase records,
Starting point is 00:32:47 looking for anyone with a possible connection to Ann. We checked their point of sale system for a pair of shoes that are size 9 and 1 half AirWalks. We get to one that were sold on November 8 to a person using a credit card at about 1130 in the morning. And when we ran the credit card records, the credit card holder was Angela McCraw Hester. Our attention definitely shifted more towards Angela
Starting point is 00:33:14 as far as the actual person inside the crime scene committing the murder. Investigators begin taking a closer look at Angela. Twice divorced with three kids, Angela had seen her fair share of tough times. I don't know much about my biological dad or their relationship. I just got told what she told me and what I heard from other family members, which was he wasn't a good person. Angela found more stability in her second marriage to Erin McCraw in 2006. When we started dating, it was great.
Starting point is 00:34:02 We got pregnant with our son and we got pregnant with our son, and it was just the happiest time of her life. But by 2012, Angela's marriage to Aaron started to unravel when she began making odd claims about her children. Angela was convinced that all of her children were sick and had some sort of mental disorder. about her children. Angela was convinced that all of her children were sick and had some sort of mental disorder. I don't remember much except her making me see a counselor when I was younger.
Starting point is 00:34:34 She would basically tell him stuff about how I was supposedly acting at home that related to this disorder. And she somehow got said doctor to prescribe some kind of medication to handle it. Based on Angela's stories, her other children were also diagnosed and prescribed medication. We had OCD, bipolar, autism, and another bipolar.
Starting point is 00:35:07 That's what the divorce came to the fact that I wanted to make sure my kids weren't getting poison and drugs in their body that they didn't need. Once she married Matt, Angela became convinced that his daughter was bipolar, a claim Ann fought and doctors dismissed. The caseworkers who were assigned to this custody dispute were well aware that Angela was pathologizing normal behavior.
Starting point is 00:35:38 Instead, Ann believed Angela and Matt were using her daughter in a greedy scheme. Matt and Angela both claimed that their children were diagnosed with different ailments by doctors and as a result received disability benefits from the state. Though the behavior is suspicious, detectives still don't have enough for an arrest warrant. But they do have one last hope, DNA. We got to a point where we had tested pretty much all of the evidence that we could test, and we were coming up with no results. But it was about that time that the Oregon State Police Crime Lab got new technology
Starting point is 00:36:23 and a new way of testing DNA. All of this stuff takes weeks, months, sometimes years to get the results back. Finally, in August 2017, over a year after Ann was murdered, detectives get the news they've been waiting for. These DNA results finally come back, and it's a surprise. There were two profiles found on the knife block. The most DNA evidence belonged to the victim in this case,
Starting point is 00:36:55 Anastasia. The minor profile was female DNA, and that source is Angela, and Angela is responsible for murder. On October 4, 2017, investigators track down Angela and Matt. But Matthew doesn't go down willingly. He's throwing up his elbows. He's saying, don't touch me. Police have to cuff him, take him into custody on a resisting arrest charge.
Starting point is 00:37:31 At the police station in Pocatello, investigators are eager to find out if Angela is ready to come clean. She's a whimpering mess and can barely look these people in the eye. Getting nowhere with Angela, police turned their attention to Matt, who now has a new story to tell. Matthew says that Angela hated Anastasia and that Angela talked all the time about Anastasia being dead
Starting point is 00:37:57 or someone killing her. Matt claims he didn't believe Angela would make good on her threats against Anne until she returned home in the early morning hours of June 10th, waking him from sleep and asking for his help. He said that she was covered in blood and that she was panicked and that she wanted help from him. He got in the shower with her and he helped her wash blood out of her hair. He says that he never asked her what happened
Starting point is 00:38:28 or why she was injured. Eventually, they get him to admit that he thinks she probably did kill Anastasia. And they realize they have enough to charge Angela with the murder of Anastasia. But they don't have enough to charge Matthew. ... Detectives need more evidence
Starting point is 00:38:50 in order to bring charges against Matt and to make the charges against Angela stand up in court. We issued a search warrant for all of Angela's Google records, and part of those records are her Google Maps, her Google Tracks, which are essentially a breadcrumb trail in Google as to everywhere she goes. Investigators quickly notice some movement out of the couple's normal routine
Starting point is 00:39:17 in the days surrounding the murder. Angela and Matt have the same activity, kind of a routine. They go to the school, they go to the store, they go to McDonald's, they go to Taco Bell. And that is pretty much daily activity for them. When we saw that Google track that went out to the Mount Hood National Forest
Starting point is 00:39:34 and then came back, it was an outlier. It was unique. We have to look into that. Coming up, detectives strike gold in the Oregon woods. They found a boot caught in a logjam across this creek. And Angela faces a life-changing choice. I remember just telling her she needs to take the deal. Over a year after Ann Hester was stabbed to death inside her apartment, police finally have Angela McCraw Hester in custody for the brutal slaying.
Starting point is 00:40:21 But they're eager to connect the victim's ex-husband, Matt Hester, to the crime as well. We try to interview Matt a couple of times about their roles. Matt doesn't want to tell us the truth. But a trace of the couple's phones may be the key to connecting Matt to the murder once and for all. About three days after the homicide, they have a breadcrumb trail or a track that shoots about 35 miles out into the Mount Hood National About three days after the homicide, they have a breadcrumb trail or a track
Starting point is 00:40:45 that shoots about 35 miles out into the Mount Hood National Forest. That was not a pattern of behavior that they had engaged in. And that outlier was suspicious to us. Detectives actually went out to that exact location in the middle of the National Forest. And when they walked into the woods about 100 yards,
Starting point is 00:41:07 the detectives found a boot caught in a log jam across this creek. The shoe tread pattern matched the shoe treads from the crime scene. It was an Air Walk Myra, size 9 and 1 half, the same as the shoes that Angela purchased on November 8th. Investigators seize the couple's computers, looking for further evidence tying them to
Starting point is 00:41:37 the crime. Angela actually Googled how to make homemade chloroform. The Google search history from Angela and Matthew is incriminating. It turns up these wild searches, basically everything from switchblades to chloroform to how to improvise a firearm, they clearly have been researching how to murder someone. Matthew had been searching for everything having to do with life insurance, custody, and what happens after someone dies, who gets the money?
Starting point is 00:42:11 On June 19th, 2019, Matt is arrested and charged with hindering prosecution and conspiracy to commit murder. I, from day one, said Matt was in bulk. The only thing in Anne's life that was volatile at all was the situation with Matt. In November 2020, Angela's defense attorneys reveal that she is ready to make a deal. I remembered just telling her she needs to take the deal, telling her that there's already so much evidence against her. Angela never provided a narrative as to what she did that night.
Starting point is 00:42:53 She just simply put guilty in court. Without a confession, detectives must theorize what took place that fateful night. On June 9th at about 1035, 1036 p.m., Angela Hester left her house in East Portland and drove to Anastasia's house in Gresham. Angela went to the back of Anastasia's apartment, set a cinder block up against the wall, removed the air conditioning unit, slid open the rear slider window,
Starting point is 00:43:29 and stepped in to Anastasia's daughter's bedroom. From there, Angela went into the front living room. Anastasia was laying in bed when Angela started attacking her with a pocket knife. From about 11 15 PM till about 3 AM, something very, very violent and tragic occurred inside that apartment. The victim was absolutely tortured
Starting point is 00:44:02 during those three hours. Investigators say the pocket knife was enough to incapacitate Ann, but not to kill her. Angela discarded the pocket knife alongside the bed. Angela went into the kitchen area, to the knife block where she selected two knives. She returned into the living room to find Anastasia trying to escape the house and make her way towards the front door. A second attack occurred.
Starting point is 00:44:37 Angela had the choice to turn back at any time, but she didn't. She continued to stab and stab and stab Anastasia over and over for multiple hours. And with Anne out of the picture, Angela could be in control of her family. Angela wanted what she wanted, and she wanted Anne gone. I think that she didn't know how to share. She did not want to share custody of Matthew's daughter.
Starting point is 00:45:07 She did not want to share Matthew. Angela is sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. I don't even know how to put it together in words. She's not the kind of person you would ever want around your kids or to have kids. I don't want anything to do with my mother. I don't need her hearing about my life, you know,
Starting point is 00:45:33 what's going on, you know, how I am. That's none of her business, and that she lost that right. Matt quickly follows suit in August of 2021 and pleads guilty to all charges. Matthew was sentenced to 56 months in prison. Even with Angela and Matt in jail, Anne's family and community will forever struggle to come to terms with the loss of one of their own. I see the world a little bit of a darker place. When you lose somebody that you care for that much,
Starting point is 00:46:11 it's kind of hard to see the bright side of things all the time. She had the biggest heart in the world, and that's the part of her that all of us will always remember is that heart and that love she had for everyone. Angela and Matt divorced while in prison and no longer remain in contact. Angela's children were placed in foster care following her arrest. Ann's parents were given custody of her daughter. and created by Ben Watkins. Multiple victims I connected to this comes a thrilling new series. He's a serial killer. I don't kill for fun. Mr. Kelleher thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.
Starting point is 00:47:12 So honest it goes out there. He actually believes he's an artist. You're gonna be part of a masterpiece. This is the product of an unbelievable obsession. Aldous Hodge is DC's finest Alex Cross. If we don't find him soon, we may never have another chance again. 30 years knowing Cross, I learned to trust his gut. I get inside his head.
Starting point is 00:47:30 The clock's ticking. He was hitting my house. He messed with my kids. He's gotta be getting close. Do you think you can stop him? I know I can. Because I know him better than he knows himself. Cross. A new original series. Only on Prime Video. Watch now.

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