to be something, you know, verya bad. reporter: oh, and it was. i was barely out of my car before i saw the homicide lieutenant, the homicide sergeant, two commanders and, obviously, a bank of black and whites. so my first thought was there was an officer-involved shooting.t either an officer had been shot and killed, or an officer had shot someone. reporter: but no, not that. no.ut what really happened was far stranger than that. long beach police department. yes, i d like to report i believe we have an attempted i break-in going on at the moment. reporter: it was a neighbor who saw it, like the start of some dreadful shock movie, rolling out in slow motion. it was 11:03 a.m.in it s taking place at my neighbors , which is the house just to the west of me. okay.st one just west to you. yes. it s the schockner residence. reporter: the schockners. the caller s next-door neighbors.kn several cops responded, were there in minutes.
we got him on everything else, he was trying to dig himself out of a hole. reporter: or maybe frank didn t understand how deep the hole was. as undercover cop kris nelson prepared frank for his big meeting with fred, el cubano got a call from his wife. he said, hey, i m down here with cops and i m helping them. and he goes, i ll be home later. he actually thought he was still going home. he even told me, he goes, well, i didn t kill her. i almost wanted to slap him and go, no, you hired somebody else to. reporter: oh, he must have known. i mean, you got to be blind and deaf not to know that. you d think. we used to laugh like is this guy for real? reporter: frank set it up, called fred s land line, got the answering machine, still lynn s voice. hi, you ve reached the schockners. sorry we missed your call. please leave a message after the tone and we will get back to you. have a great day. bye-bye. hey, old man, it s frank. just wanted to come on by and see you and talk to
to make this one work and function. reporter: to make a complete family, a desire that only intensified once charlie came along. she wanted her son to be the best person he could be. and would stop at nothing to make sure that he got that. reporter: around bixby knolls the schockners were considered a perfectly normal, if upscale, family. certainly not the kind of people who would be targeted by drug dealers. of course, members of the family had a slightly more intimate perspective. mark, for example, loved his sister but found fred a little obnoxious. he wasn t shy about dropping hints about the extent of his holdings. reporter: mark didn t see them very often. he lived way across the country in georgia. but when he did come to visit in long beach, and they went out for dinner, fred always managed to monopolize the conversation,
and as they talked to the 911 caller, they heard and saw a little white dog barking aw incessantly from a window at the schockners house.ce it was a little american eskimo or something that s called. w yeah, not a very large dog. yap, yap, yappie dog. reporter: a petite-framed woman came to the window to see what her dog was barking at.ca an officer gestured to her, come outside. clearly bewildered, she finally opened the door.rl so he is telling her that they got a call from a neighbor that they saw a prowler. and would it be okay if they looked in her backyard and looked around the house. she had said that was fine. reporter: but hold on, the woman said to the police, let me grab the key. the gate is locked. so she closes the front door, walks through the house and walks out the back door. reporter: three cops waited outside the front door. two more cops pulled in right here in the alley behind the