It sent shockwaves right away. Wheres he going . Whats he going to do . Hey, you want real life . Youre getting real life. Oh, god, what the hell do we have here . Reporter winter on the great plains can be long, bleak and brutal. So, in march, when winter briefly releases its grip for a day or two, even the trees seem to raise their limbs in celebration. March 13th, 2008 was one of those days of cautious jubilation in omaha, nebraska. 61 degrees, and a light velvety breeze. 11yearold tom hunter, wore shorts and a tshirt to school that thursday. It was a little after 3 00 when tom, seen here on a security camera, got off the bus in the leafy dundee neighborhood and headed home to play video games, as he did nearly every day. It would be hours before toms father returned home, but the house was not empty. 57yearold Shirlee Sherman, who scrubbed and polished the hunter home on thursdays, was still there. By sunset, both tom hunter and Shirlee Sherman would be dead, murdered by a killer who was just getting started. Who did it, and why were questions that would eventually take omaha detectives all over north america and would take more than five years to answer. This one stood out, obviously, because of the brutality for one. Reporter detective derek mois, was working 3 00 to 11 00 that day. The 911 call came in from tom hunters dad, dr. William hunter. Dr. Hunter had come home, found Shirlee Sherman and his son deceased and would call 911. Anything unusual about that call . There wasnt a lot of emotion shown, but he is a doctor. He is a pathologist. And hes seen a lot of dead people. And hes seen a lot of death, and it was i think to use a word clinical. Reporter the detective and his partner were immediately dispatched to the hunters stately home in dundee. Nice part of town . It is. Its its an older neighborhood, middle to upper class homes, very quiet. Its not a place where we have a lot of Violent Crime occur in our city. Reporter even now, nine years later, detective mois still remembers the coppery scent of blood that hit him when he stepped across the threshold of the hunter home. Theres a heavy metallic kind of humidity in the air almost. You almost feel its presence if there is a lot of it and there was a lot of it in the hunter household. Reporter to the left of the front door, in the dining room off the main hallway, lay the body of the boy, tom hunter. Hes lying on his face. His hands are down at his side. There is a fair amount of blood around his head. Reporter and down the hall, the body of the housekeeper, Shirlee Sherman. She was found laying face down with a large amount of blood underneath her, a stainless steel handle of a kitchen knife protruding from the right side of her neck. Reporter both victims had been killed in the same way. And oddly enough, there were no signs of struggle. No fingerprints, no bloody footprints. Was this person careful or just very lucky . Could be both, you know . It its not like tv. Not every crime scene is gonna yield fingerprints. Not every crime scene is gonna yield dna, or trace hairs, or those types of things. Anything stolen . Didnt appear to be, no. Reporter in fact, the only things out of place were the knives. The knives came from inside the house. They did. Unusual for a killer to show up planning to do murder and also planning to find the murder weapon at the crime scene . Not necessarily. Reporter by all accounts, dr. Hunter was still in a state of shock when police took him downtown for questioning. When i came in, shirlee was right there in the hallway between the back door and the front foyer. So the first thing i you know, i just said, wheres tom . I think i yelled, tom. Do you have any idea who or why somebody would do Something Like this . Honestly, ive been just racking my brain. I mean, i we live a peaceful existence, uh, almost ridiculously simple. Reporter dr. William hunter, known as bill to friends and colleagues, ran the Pathology Residency Program at nearby Creighton University. His wife, claire, also a doctor at creighton, was in hawaii that day attending a conference. Her husband had to break the awful news to her from the police station. How is your wife . Crushed . Is she going to be okay . She has a work mate thats with her. So shes not alone . No. Thats thats thats good. Reporter the hunters had four boys, two grown, one in college and tom. Jeff, a student at the university of nebraska in lincoln at the time lived closest. He says it was about 8 00 that night when he happened to check his phone. I had all these missed calls from friends, family. So obviously i knew something was up, and i couldnt get a hold of my dad, couldnt get a hold of my mom. One of my friends called me, and he told me to call my brother. It was your older brother. Yeah. What did he say had happened . Just somebody killed tom, and i need to go find my dad, talk to my dad, get to omaha. How long a drive is that . Its, like, 45 minutes. Reporter those miles between lincoln and omaha seemed longer than usual that night. Its hard for jeff to remember exactly what happened when he got home, who told him what or when. That whole thing is a blur. I didnt sleep at all that night. Next thing you know, youre constantly trying to figure out whats going on. You lived in that same house in which this all happened, right . Yes, whole life. Reporter now jeffs mind was filled with thoughts of what had happened there and of his brother, tom, who was eight years younger. He was kind of a smart aleck. He, you know he was growing up with three older brothers. He he was a smart kid. He knew a lot. And he just, i mean, he always had something to say for everything. What was he up to in his life then . He went to a Science Magnet Middle School elementary combined with a middle school, and he really liked science. He was always outside playing. So that was his big thing. Well, he was a big gamer, wasnt he . He was. But more times than not, he would be outside with neighborhood kids. Reporter but it wasnt the neighborhood kids that fascinated the cops. Tom had a lot of friends hed never actually met in real life. They were people he knew from the anonymous world of Online Gaming. It was those relationships that detectives wanted to know more about. The investigation begins. Does he play around on chatrooms or anything that you might be nervous about . Curious conversations online. He interacted with people all over the u. S. A mysterious stranger. And another murder. Where would this winding trail of clues lead . Crime like this doesnt happen in dundee. It sent shockwaves right away. Own specific health needs. 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They got straight to the point, does he play around on chatrooms or anything that you might be nervous about . I mean, i dont know. Hes on, his the only chatroom that i know hes on is whyville. Whyville, it turns out, is a Popular Online game and chatroom that attracts preteens. That wasnt all. Toms xbox, which allowed him to play and speak to other gamers online was a concern. Detectives wondered, if tom might have inadvertantly come into contact with an internet predator. We knew that he had a number of contacts and friends online through not only his xbox but his personal computers as well. And those people are essentially in many cases anonymous. To some extent, yeah, they are. So, they might be kids, or they might just be saying theyre kids. Correct. And thats what we would come to find out, that he interacted with people all over the u. S. In some cases outside of the u. S. Through these interactive sites. Did you or anybody in your family ever worry that tommy was meeting people online or just talking to people online through the gaming community, people maybe you didnt know about . That didnt really come up till after the fact when we started thinking maybe that was something that could have happened. But prior, no. And you didnt know who those people were and he didnt either. No. Reporter detectives determined tom hunter had interacted with close to 50 people online on a regular basis. Thomas hunter was 11 years old. Did he disclose that in his gaming activities . No. In fact, in some instances, we would come to find out that he portrayed himself as somebody who was older. Which in turn could end up playing into this. Yeah, absolutely. Reporter it would take months to track down toms online contacts. More pressing was what detectives were hearing from the neighbors. Several said they had seen a stranger walking near the hunter home late that afternoon. Tell me about the person neighbors described. An olivecomplected male who was heavyset dressed in a collared shirt. Some describe a jacket, possibly like an illfitting suit with a shoulder bag. And several people would correlate that individual to a silver honda crv. They identified the actual make of car . Yes. That all seems pretty helpful. Very. The same individuals would describe that that vehicle was missing a front plate. But they would describe the rear plate as kind of a white background with dark lettering and kind of describe a multiplecolored sunset or kind of a pastel sunset. So its not a nebraska plate. Out of state is what our feeling was, yes. Reporter based on neighbors descriptions, police produced this sketch and four days after the murders asked the public for help. We received hundreds of phone calls about people knowing somebody who resembled that sketch and each one of those leads had to be given some degree of consideration. Reporter reporter todd cooper covered the story for the omaha world herald. Dundee is a nice neighborhood in omaha. Its an affluent area. Doctors and others. Not mansions but stately homes. Crime like this doesnt happen in dundee. And so it sent shockwaves right away. More about the computer use reporter while the murders in dundee dominated the news, investigators were taking a second look at a less publicized crime. Months earlier, there had been another murder not far from dundee. In this one, an elderly female had been bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck. We had knives that were used from her residence in her murder. So, we had similarities in that weapons were taken from her home and used against her and left at the scene. But you had somebody you liked for that. The detectives that investigated that case had identified a suspect very early on. Somebody who was a Family Member of hers whom she had had a falling out with. And who didnt seem to have any connection with the hunters. None whatsoever. Reporter there comes a time in every Homicide Investigation where detectives have to focus on the victims family and friends. As far as the detectives knew, the hunters were a well respected family. Anything come out about the hunters that you didnt know . Gambling problems . Family problems . No. There wasnt some gigantic ghost in the closet that made us think, oh, well, there is our motive right there. Nothing like that. Reporter since bill and Claire Hunter were both doctors at creightion, he a pathologist, she a cardiologist, detectives wondered if someone at the hospital might have had a motive to harm them. Do you have any patients that are upset with you . Not as far as i know. Honestly. How about your wife . I dont know. I mean, usually not. Reporter everyone handles grief differently. After their youngest son was murdered in their home, the hunters seemed to want nothing more than to be left alone. Were kind of a private family, so were not too keen on talking with media. Reporter on the other hand the family of Shirlee Sherman, the other dundee victim, desperately wanted to keep the case in the public eye. We wanted the publicity. You really wanted this to be solved . Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. Reporter they had their own ideas about who the killer might be, and the more they talked, the more detectives wondered if perhaps Shirlee Sherman had actually been the intended target. A secret in the sherman family. She hated him because of what he had been doing to me. And a new person of interest. Immediately theres a buzz. Could it be him . Like, could it have been him . Pretty sure it is the strike zone. Here use mine. Alright. See you on the court champ. Heads up when it really, really matters you need the best network and the best unlimited. Plans now start at 40 per line for four lines. People would ask me that we traveled,ntries what is your nationality and i would always answer hispanic. So when i got my ancestry dna results it was a shocker. Im from all nations. It puts a hunger in your heart to want to know more. Tha. Oh, burnton gravy . Ie. Gotta rinse that. Nope. No way. Nada. Really . Dish issues . Throw it all in. New cascade platinum powers through. Even burnton gravy. Nice. Cascade. Health, is having the freedom to do what you want to do with your life, every single day. So at aetna, we promise to keep finding new ways to join you so nothing gets in your way. Because no matter where it is youre going, or whatever stage of life youre in. We believe that when it comes to health. You dont join us. We join you. Reporter as a Building Contractor brad waite spends a lot of time in his truck. Reporter hes haunted by the possibility that at the very moment his sister, Shirlee Sherman, was being murdered in march 2008, he was driving by, close enough, perhaps, to have heard her scream. I basically almost drove by hunters house, and so it would have been at 4 00 that afternoon. Id had no idea shirlee was working there that day. Reporter later that night, brad says he heard about the two murders in dundee on the 10 00 news. Even then he says he didnt know his sister was a victim. That news came later, in a phone call from his brother, dan. Danny called me. It was at 11 at 11 30 that night and told me what happened. Reporter dan waite says from that night on, the word housekeeper has been used as shorthand for shirlee as if her job defined her. Theyre always calling her the housekeeper, and its she was only there for a couple hours every couple weeks or a week, you know. Reporter to her brothers dan and brad, shirlee was big sis. The family glue after their parents divorced when they were young. She was the one that organized everything. She would call you before somebodys birthday and she would say you know it someones birthday thursday, or she would get everybody to go in on gifts or she would help with the shopping and that aspect of it is you just dont realize it until its gone. Reporter for shirlees children, kelly and jeff, she was the single mom who often worked two jobs and stretched every dollar to make ends meet. We were one of the poorest families in the neighborhood. My mom worked bartending in the evening, cleaned houses during the day. Gardening was her specialty. Whatd she grow . Everything. Eggplant, tomatoes, five different varieties. Feeding me was probably expensive so shed make her own spaghetti sauce. She canned her own cucumbers and made pickles out of them. Reporter after a lifetime of hard work on her hands and knees,jeff and kelly say their mom had cut back. The hunters were among the few clients she had left. So, she wanted to clean just a couple houses that would allow her to pick up the grandkids from school in the afternoons and spend time with them. Reporter spending time with the grandkids, it turns out, was relatively easy to do. She lived right next door to me. So you saw her all the time . Every day. And she talked me into buying this house so she could see her grandchildren. Reporter the situation was convenient, but kelly says it was hard to have any privacy. Her mother knew everything, who came, who went and who stayed the night, and now the plot thickens. I was dating a married guy. Let me guess. Your mom didnt approve. No, not at all. We had an explosive relationship. Meaning . Meaning things got broke. Reporter kelly says that relationship became so tempestuous, so difficult that shirlee got involved and actively tried to keep the boyfriend away. At one point in time she was thinking about getting a restraining order, mainly for my daughters sake. She would tell me, he cant come over. And i would sneak him in. One time she come walkin around my house with a hammer in her hand and saying, i want his blood on this hammer. She hated him that bad because of what he had been doing to me. Reporter in spite of that, kelly stuck with the man, got pregnant and had a baby with him. And it got uglier from there. She actually started the process of getting my house out of my name. So that she could keep him out of the house . Right. Reporter after shirlee died, what had been a very private and embarassing family feud became fodder for public speculation. Todd cooper, the reporter, says that starting on day one, kellys boyfriend was a person of interest. Immediately the name of the boyfriend of Shirlee Sherm