he said yes he did. i said why didn t you call for help? and he was reaching out like this and he said, i can t. it s in his pocket and he s on fire. yeah. that stays with you. reporter: and now these taunting letters from roberto s killer almost taking prideful delight in how he killed the man and almost murdered the boy. who could it be? who would do such a thing? and why? then four days after the diagram showed up, one of the alpha males of the moore clan walked in the front door. roger moore. paul s dad. and like his son, wanted to help catch the killer. and told the detectives he had important evidence to share. it was an audiotape, answering machine messages his nephew pete left on his phone.
if the vehicle or the gps monitor travels into those locations you get an alert. reporter: in addition detective salm would routinely log in to check on the where ts of peter and paul s trucks. on the morning of thanksgiving day, more than four months after the bombing, salm turned on his computer to find the gps tracker on paul moore s truck. it had gone dead. we had no signal whatsoever. this is also the type of gps that you would call. you know, just like calling on a cell phone. and wake it up. they go to sleep when they re not moving. and where are you? we couldn t get a response. reporter: the device may have just died or been found so salm got into his car with his partner, drove to paul s house to see if the truck was there. we got to his house. i look in the kitchen window and he s staring at me. okay. reporter: hoping paul hadn t recognized him detective salm hit the road. as we re leaving town i look in the rear view mirror and
reporter: he taught peter about farming, about tending the orchards. he had demacular degeneration, so i was his eyes. reporter: but when his grandfather, his patron, died, pete s life changed quite suddenly. after we buried my grandpa, in short order i was pretty much told by my dad and my uncle that they didn t need my help anymore. i don t know whether it was animosity because i had gotten so close to their dad or what it was. reporter: after a particularly ugly fight with his dad, pete was exiled from the land of plenty, moved north of this eden into town and started a landscaping business. my wife and i had nothing, i mean, when i say nothing, i mean nothing to do with the moores. reporter: and paul? paul remained the family golden boy. his doting grandmother made sure
through what? the field. the flower field. yeah. big, tall yeah. you re running through them trying to yeah. how far did you have to go? i don t know. pretty far. far indeed. more than two miles running, running, running blindly through the field of golden flowers that closed in about him. and i saw the house and i just went toward it. do you remember what you said to them? something happened to my dad. he was that way and can you help me and they said, yes. they called the police department and they came as quick as they can. when firefighters reached the irrigation canal from which little fabian had run for help, it was obvious there was no life left to save. roberto ayala s body must indeed have been on fire just as fabian said it was. why became clear when they found burn holes about an inch wide near the bottom of his feet, an
ironic, perhaps, but for all his bluster, pete has never been in arrested, never been in trouble with the law, runs his own business, has been a good father, and over the years has taken in wayward teens to give them a better start. kids like nick. in other foster homes they do it for the money. pete didn t ask for any money in return. he fed me. clothed me. he gave me a car to drive. and now i look at pete like a dad. and anybody that has anything bad to say about pete never really took the time to get to know him because he is a good, loving person with a huge heart. we need more petes in this world. reporter: why were the cops so focused on pete to begin with? well, as pete tells it his cousin paul planned the whole thing. set out to frame him. first by lying to him telling him that roberto or robert as pete calls him was out to steal his birth right. paul would come over and tell