License to prove it. I said im a private detective, i need you to tell me all the evidence, all of that. Wasnt well received, at all. Finally, the break they needed. We got the match. Leading to one of the greatest twists of all time. You could not have shocked me more. What really happened in the middle of the night. Thanks for joining us. Im lester holt. In some of the most difficult murder cases there just arent any suspects. In this story, there were plenty. But it would be years before technology and one determined woman would help reveal who the killer really was. And in a case that started out with so many possibilities, no one would believe how it ended. Heres josh man ca wit. It was october 1984 when sheilas phone rang. It was a girlfriend. And she said that theres been an accident. An accident involving sheilas good friend, freshman roommate and fellow student at Southern Methodist university, angela. And i initially thought and gee h and angie had been in a car accident, i went through the is she in the hospital . And my girlfriend was crying. Thats because it wasnt an accident. That same morning, angies Sorority Sister gave her the news. She had been stabbed, naked with a lot of stab wounds. Angie had not only been killed but butchered, repeatedly stabbed in her own bedroom, it was a bloody end to a life that had so much promise. She was the most amazing person. She was full of life. She could light up a room. She was a very hard worker, and she knew where she was going. She was very, very driven. Angie had grown up in amarillo, texas and had attended the all exclusive school. Angie was this amazing, shining star, to so many people that she knew. She was absolutely brilliant, before her time. She was a double major in engineering and Computer Science at smu. At a time when girls were not doing that. She had this amazing joy to thee, this absolute love of life. Was really the life of the party. Beautiful, intelligent, single, and 20 years old. Its a combination that attracts men of all kinds. She used to get notes on her car. Shed get flowers. Shed come in and show me who wrote her that day. She had a lot of attention, absolutely a lot of attention. Am i right in thinking that she didnt always have the best taste in guys . Like any other 18 to 20 year old, she didnt always choose wisely at that point in her life. Some of those choices and some of those men would figure prominently in the interlocking stories of angies life and of her death. There was lance, whom angie had dated back home in amarillo and through her freshman year in dallas. According to her friends, angie said she was afraid of lance because he had a temper and had once pulled a knife on her. There was ben, angies boyfriend at the time of her death. Older and already out of school, he was a construction supervisor in dallas. Sounds like he was kind of the opposite of lance. I would say hes the opposite of lance. And there was russell, a new friend of angies whod gone out that evening with her and her friend anita, another female engineering student at smu. You saw her that last night. Yes. How was she . She was angie. She was fine. That night, anita accompanied angie and russell on an expedition to a series of bars and clubs. Angies boy friend ben was not present. I was aware of the fact that angie and russell and i were all going out together. At least to angies friend ever lip, ben didnt seem like the type to get jealous or violent. You couldnt imagine ben hurting angie. I could absolutely never imagine ben hurting angie. The evening ended at 1 00. Angie was dropped off and then anita went home. She thought about spending the night at angies but decided against it. What was the last thing you said . See you tomorrow night at the football game. She didnt meet me there. And she was pretty much a woman of her word. My roommate said theres something i need to tell you. She said, you might want to sit down. She goes, angie was murdered last night, and the police are wanting you to call them back. What did you think . I didnt want to believe it at first. Beyond that, i started with the whole, what have, could have, should have. Could i have prevented it, should i have spent the night . Would things have been different . But she was not the last person to see angie alive. It turns out angies boyfriend ben was that person. She had stopped by his place on her way home. After dropping off anita. Later that night, it was ben who called police to angies condo, and what got their attention was not just what ben said but how he sounded when he said it. Her car is here, and she wont answer the door, cant answer the door. Does he sound frantic . Panicked . Investigators didnt think so. Coming up, police start focusing on ben. But soon, the list of suspects gets longer. Hes a pretty scary guy. Hes creepy. When, in the middle of the night continues. Es could save you fifteen percent or more on Car Insurance. Yeah, Everybody Knows that. Well, did you know that playing cards with kenny rogers gets old pretty fast . You got to know when to holdem. Know when to fold em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run. You never count your money, when youre sitting at the ta. What . You get it . I get the gist, yeah. Geico. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on Car Insurance. Go ahead, run in the halls, put your feet on the furniture, jump on the bed. The rules can wait, its time to play freely, in pampers cruisers. They adapt at the waist, legs and bottom, with up to 12 hours of protection for pampers best protection and fit, and all the freedom to play. Wishing you love, sleep and play. Pampers. Id 6 or 7 times a day. Let like clockwork, every 20 minutes i clean the toilet. Sometimes i get up in the middle of the night and clean the toilet. Now every time you go, lysol cleans for you. New lysol no mess max gives you max cleaning with every flush. While its fragrance gels release 4 weeks of max freshness. Thats what i like to hear. Someone cleaning the toilet for me. Lysol. Start healthing. The heavy lifters. Ers. Just for men does more than get rid of gray, your facial hair looks fuller, thicker, the best beard ever. After all, youre not just a champion of saturday afternoons. Youre a champion of facial hair. Just for men mustache and beard. Great rates for great rides. Geico motorcycle, see how much you could save. In the fall of 1984, smu College Student angie had been found murdered. Arriving officers walked in on a bloodbath. They found one shoe in the den, another shoe somewhere else, then all her clothes stacked up, all in one neat pile. And then angie laying on the bed, covered in blood. Her chest area was pretty caved in with stab wounds. So this was a vicious assault. There were 18 stab wounds, ten of which punctured the heart. These are district attorneys in dallas. They say whoever stabbed angie was intent on killing her. That many wounds could certainly suggest rage, anger at the victim. Absolutely. From what you could tell, did angie have any enemies . Seemed like maybe she had broken some hearts, but enemies, she was the type of person that didnt have enemies. Everyone seemed to like her a lot. The only peop who seemed to be mad at her were exboyfriends or people that wanted to be her boyfriend. Police immediately focused on the man in angies life, starting with ben, her thenboyfriend. Ben told police a story that sounded suspicious. He said after dropping off anita angie had stopped by his place, waking him up for a brief visit and that she then drove home. Kwn minutes of reaching her condo, ben says angie called him around 1 45. In that phone call, angie said she had let a man she didnt know into her home into the middle of the night. A man whod asked to use her phone and bathroom. Ben says angie then hung up, promising to call him back a few minutes later. But she never did, ben said, and she didnt answer his calls. Concerned, ben told police he drove to her condo. But angie wasnt answering her door either, and now ben was locked outside, calling police on the early Generation Mobile phone in his truck and sounding to them, oddly, calm. My girlfriend called me, said there was a man in her apartment using the bathroom and the phone, now i cant get her to answer the phone and she wont answer the door or cant answer the door. He broke in . No. No. He didnt break in. She let him in . Im not sure. I dont believe so. And she wont answer the phone . No. Police werent sure what to make of ben and his version of events. So there was no way to tell whether the story that ben had told police on the 911 tape actually happened . The only thing we had was bens word. No cell phone records back then and no records of local phone calls, so that call that ben talked about, that may never have happened. That is correct. I would expect someone to be, i cant find her. I dont know where she is. Shes not answering. It was a very mellow, feelingless phone call. It was someone who didnt seem too concerned. Ben waited in the living room while police went into angies bedroom. They came out and told him angie was dead. The first responding officer, what he remembered most is even after he discovered the body and said so, ben didnt even ask what condition, how she was or anything like that. And sometimes people who dont ask that question dont ask it because they already know the answer. Exactly. He didnt ask how she was killed, whether it was gunshot, stab wounds. Thats unusual. Very. And there was something else. Bens story may have been suspicious, but ben himself was squeakyclean. This was approximately 2 00 in the morning. He had been awakened from sleep, and he arrived at the location in a clean, pressed shirt and he smelled of soap, as if he had just cleaned up. That tended to raise some suspicions with the first responding officers that something didnt seem right. While police were trying to process the story ben was telling, they widened their investigation to include angies exboyfriend lance, the boy next door in amarillo, the boy angie had trouble with. It was something angies friend sheila knew all about. He was so obsessed with angie. He was so obsessed with her he would come down all the time to school to see her. They had dated through angies freshman year. One night i got a call from angie. She was crying, and she said that lance had gone crazy. And i needed to get over there. She was screaming. Lance had taken a knife and shredded all of her clothes. Did he threaten her . Yes. Yes, he did. Physically verbally . Yes, and you have a weapon, whether its a knife, scissors, he threatened her. He was a pretty scary guy. He was creepy. Suddenly, lance was at the top of the investigators list. Prime suspect, absolutely. Especially when we have a 18wound stabbing. There was no forced entry. Thats right. Suggesting that whoever had gotten into her apartment had either figured some way of getting in undetected or angie knew them and let them in. Yes. And all of that pointed either to the exboyfriend, lance, or to angies current boyfriend, ben. Or maybe to a new man in her life, the man shed been out with the last night of her life. Russell. Soon, police would ask sheila, then a College Student, to help narrow down that list of suspects and solve the crime. He killed her. He needed to pay for it. Coming up. Sheilas nerve wracking night with the suspected murderer. And then investigato who wanted angie dead . An autopsy determined shed also been sexually assaulted, just before she was stabbed to death. Her friend sheila. I find out she had been raped, and i cant think of anything else. It was overwhelming. Emotionally. It was hard for angies friends to hear, but the rape did help law enforce mns. Because they now had the person traitors dna profile. But back in the mid 80s, that wasnt the help it would be today. Back in 1984, they could at least do a type of blood testing where they could determine whether or not an individual is a secreter or a nonsecreter, basically narrow it down to 20 of the population. Roughly 80 of the population are see kreetsers, meaning their bodily fluids contain markers for blood type. Meaning the others dont have those. The killer was a secreter. And that meant it couldnt be lance. Angie said lance had threatened her with a knife. Blood tests revealed lance was a see kreetser. In addition, lance had an alibi, putting him 370 miles away on the night of the murder. He was staying with his parents in amarillo, working at the local gym there, so they were satisfied he was not in town when this took place. So he was eliminated, based on that. And what about ben . Angies oddly unemotional boyfriend who officers thought acted strangely the night of the murder. The police checked to see whether there were scratches or bruises on him . They checked that. They checked his vehicle. They checked his apartment for any type of blood, bloody clothes, anything like that. Nothing . Nothing. And tests showed, ben was also a see kreetser, whoever had raped and killed angie was not. So cross ben off the list. Which leaves russell. And he was a nonsecreter, so he could not be eliminated. His alibi was that he was home in bed, not exactly the strongest. There was no witness that could confirm where he was after he was dropped off by angie and anita. No one can confirm he went to bed. No one can confirm where he was after that. Did he ever move off that story . No. And, russell said there was nothing romantic about the evening. It was just a night out for three young people. He continued to insist three didnt have any feelings for angie, that he didnt perceive that evening as a date and wasnt romantically frintereste in her. And i get the feeling nobody believe thad. Right. A lot of things werent adding up. Soon, they questioned angies friend anita about russell. Did i think he was romantically interested in angie was the primary question. They thought he had romantic interest in her and she rebuffed him and since he lived in walking distance he committed the crime. What anita didnt know is that the day after the crime, russell left town for about 24 hours. He said he didnt know anything about angies murder, even though it was in the headlines and all over local news. It seemed hard to believe. Police saw both motive and opportunity. And while there was no witness placing russell at the crime scene, there was also no one to back up his alibi. Angies friend sheila met with the lead detective who laid out for her the Police Theory. Russell snapped, is the word he used. And then he grabbed a knife, took her into the room and proceeded to rape her. This is probably the one and only murder he will do, that it was just a passionate moment and he snapped, and hes going to be back to his old, calm self. Investigators asked sheila to have dinner with russell and ask him about his whereabouts the night of the murder. She agreed. He was so uncomfortable. Here i am sitting across from this man thinking im eating dinner with a murderer. Im getting into a car with a murderer. This guy murdered my roommate. But even to sheila, russell stuck to his story, just as he had a couple weeks after the murder, when police asked him to take a lie detector test. In fact, russell was found to be truthful when he was asked questions about angies murder. But about three months later, Dallas Police took a second look. And they looked at the polygraph again and came to a consensus that he was deceptive on those questions. Thats a big difference from the way his original polygraph results were perceived. Huge. They had their guy now. I did not want to believe that it was somebody close to her. It was more than could i handle. Did you think police were going to charge russell . Oh, yes, absolutely. But think didnt. Russell hired an attorney and stopped talking with police. They told me that he had lawyered up, and they couldnt touch him. They also said that russell was leaving the country, so, of course, he was leaving the country. He lawyered up, he is hiding. Its done. Hes going to get away with murder. Not so fast. Russell buchanan is about to tell us a story that will make you reevaluate everything you just heard. Coming up, russell answers the tough questions. The Police Theory was that you attacked her, you had sex with her, and then you stabbed her to death. And then, will investigators finally have a way to know if hes telling the truth . They did have a sample that in todays technology could be tested to try to find a dna standard. When in the middle of the night continues. Like clockwork, every 20 minutes i clean the toilet. Sometimes i get up in the middle of the night and clean the toilet. Every time you go, new lysol no mess max cleans for you. Get max cleaning and freshness with every flush. Lysol. Start healthing. Everybody here got the lunchtime blues they need to be inspired Something Better than the rest. New lipton peach iced tea with that ham and cheese it tastes so sunshiney [ carl ] drink it down and youll believe the taste of peachiosity [ carl ] drink it down curing a yeast infection relieving the itch. Can happen instantly. Vagisil max strength antiitch wipes relieve itch and odor instantly as they cleanse. So why wait to feel comfortable . Trust vagisil. The number one wipe for itch. Scrubbing bubbles, we have toilet duty at the local fire station 20 guys use this toilet. Lets bubble our toilet gel works with every flush monday shift . Clean sunday shift . Still clean nice job, guys we work hard so you dont have to you want to save money on Car Insurance . No problem. You want to save money on rv insurance . No problem. You want to save money on motorcycle insurance . No problem. You want to find a place to park all these things . Fuggedaboud it. This is new york. Hey little guy, wake up aw, come off it mate geico. Saving people money on more than just Car Insurance. Several months after angie was savagely raped and murdered, the prime suspect, Russell Buchanan hired an attorney and refused to speak with police. Several months after that, he left the country. It seemed suspicious, but without enough evidence to arrest russell, police could not stop him. Russell was not arrested or charged with angies murder. He went on to become a successful architect, now 28 years after angie was murdered, russell is talking once again about what happened that night. And about angie. Her friends describe her as the kind of girl that guys get crushes on. May be so. Possible that you had a crush on her . No. No. Not at all. I hardly knew her. But after questioning angies friend anita about that shared night out, investigators wrote that she told them that the evening centered around russell and angie, and that anita felt as if she were along for appearances sake only. It certainly didnt occur to me that it was angie and russ event. It was the three of us. I remember anita and i sitting at the table, visiting while angie was out on the dance floor, dancing. Russell had told police a