Page 2 - Nelson Serrano News Today

>> the word erie was very fitting that day. >> lucy, was it chilling for you to walk into this place? >> yes, especially the office where the three gentlemen were. it was much smaller in person than i felt it was in the pictures. and just being in there, i wanted to get out. >> there they saw the ceiling tile that had been moved, where serrano had been accused of hiding a gun used in the murders. but as for a supposedly tell-tale dusty footprint on a chair beneath that tile, some jurors dismisse...

Against his former business partners and the parking ticket and the long chain of circumstantial evidence was the proof that he was the killer. >> its getting harder and harder and harder to think that all of these things could just be coincidences and they happened to poor mr. serrano. thats one diabolical son of a gun sitting over there. >> it was now up to a jury to decide. >> there was no evidence, no witness to put him in polk county, none of those things. and keeping an open mind, he was s...

>> they laid out their evidence for serrano being in florida that day. they called the nephew who rented a car for his uncle and he told a damaging story. the day after the murders, he said his uncle ordered him to retrieve that same car in the orlando airport parking garage and drop it off at the rental company. weeks later the uncle told his nephew to keep his mouth shut about the incident. >> he said you cant say anything. you know that because it could jeopardize my marriage and success, cop...

The state had put on three fingerprint experts, two agreed that it was serranos, but the third surprised the prosecutor when under cross-examination, he testified he wasnt entirely convinced. >> i had and i still have reservations about this particular latent. >> an expert in the field, the prosecutions own witness telling the court he had reservations about the fingerprint. why, he wondered, was a finger from serranos right hand on the ticket and not one from his left. >> if youre wearing a sea...

Committed, he said, well work it out. well get him out of ecuador. >> and thats just what tommy ray did with the full cooperation of ecuadorian authorities. when officials there discovered serrano had actually been a u.s. citizen for years, they deported him to america in the custody of detective ray. in september 2002, nelson serrano walked into a central florida courtroom and pleaded not guilty to the murder charges. after a snarl of legal delays in september 2006, nearly nine years after the ...

Out. >> we got a phone call from the two detectives that went up to atlanta, they said hey, we have got him here in the afternoon. he couldnt have done it. >> but that didnt mean the detectives thought serranos hands were clean of the crime. >> we thought that nelson was in atlanta and that he had hired someone for a contract killing. >> for all the red flags flapping around them, detectives never could get enough to arrest nelson serrano. years went by, the twins had other birthdays. nicoletta ...

>> ill challenge anybody to show me -- ill pay them a million dollars if they can do it. >> if they can do it in the time allotted. >> 28 minutes. cant happen, didnt happen. >> the biggest hurdle for the defense is just ahead. starting with the testimony given by the nephew that he had arranged a car rental at the orlando airport for his uncle on the qt. the defense grilled the nephew. portraying him as somebody who was just interested in saving his own skin. >> you werent someone they just want...

>> then six months later came another 911 call from erie manufacturing. four dead, shot execution style. given serranos stormy relationship with his partners, homicide detectives asked him to give a taped statement the day after the killings. >> i have no idea where it happened, when it happened, how it happened. >> serrano talked to police willingly. sharing details of a business partnership gone awry. >> we never had any problems until we started making serious money. >> even speculating on ho...

>> i did. just the simple fact that there was no evidence, no witness to put him in polk county, none of those things, and keeping in mind he was still innocent. >> jurors also weighed whether serranos nephew was a possible suspect as the defense suggested. after all, the nephew had not only rented the car, he also admitted to lying to investigators early on. do you think he was in on it at all, the nephew? >> no, i dont. >> none of you do? >> nelson serrano hung him out to dry. >> and jurors ha...

>> and in that day of travel, the defense argued that there just wasnt enough time for serrano to have pulled off the crime he was charged with. leaving the orlando airport garage at 3:49 p.m., the time coded parking record indicated. detective tommy ray testified it had taken him an hour and 15 minutes to drive from the airport to erie manufacturing. leaving him only 15 minutes to kill four people. your important part of the timeline is, look when the last victim is killed, it has to be 5:20? >...