20/20: The After Show – “One Last Call” — Podcast

[0:04] hi there everybody welcome to 2020 the after show i'm deborah roberts and as always it's great to [0:09] have you with us as we take a deeper look at one of our 2020 episodes and today we're going to look [0:15] at our latest one called one last call now this is a story that is riddled with family betrayal [0:25] lies a secret relationship a cold-blooded calculated murder i mean it sounds like something [0:32] out of a tv movie right well this was real life in evansville indiana robert door was a 28-year [0:40] veteran firefighter in evansville he was a father a grandfather and many considered him one of the [0:46] community's bravest first responders well on february 26 2019 after getting off work robert was [0:54] gunned down in his driveway police body camera footage captured the heartbreaking moments of [1:00] the family learning of the news of his death that's my dad to get down there i understand [1:05] you're not going through this crime scene okay well then get my mother down here her name is elizabeth [1:10] door where's my mom follow me okay is he alive no oh my that's a daughter it was a lot that we revealed [1:33] in the 2020 episode that just sort of grabbed us of course by the heart well understandably his family [1:40] and his community were shocked devastated desperate to find out who would want to do this to a man who [1:46] was so highly regarded well turns out we wound up speaking to the person in an in-person prison [1:53] interview parts of which you saw on friday night and some that you didn't see which we will reveal [1:59] oftentimes we give you clips here that you haven't had a chance to see and we'll do that today on this [2:04] podcast but first to get us up to speed is 2020 editorial producer mike replier hello mike mike you [2:13] and i first of all this is the first time you've done the podcast so welcome here you and i have [2:17] worked on so many stories together and you're one of our star bookers and when you think about this [2:22] community and how shocked they were and you've got a veteran firefighter a first responder um people were [2:29] really shocked so when you've started digging into this story and of course we'll talk about the [2:34] murder and how that all unfolded but talk to me a little bit about the family and the community and [2:39] when you arrived there and what you sort of learned from them this had already happened a little time [2:44] before that but what'd you learn from the folks when you first got there about robert door and his [2:48] his death i spoke to a lot of people in evansville um a lot of people who knew robert basically everyone in [2:54] town knew of this guy he had been a firefighter for 28 years his father was a firefighter it was sort [3:01] of the the family business they called him robbie robbie yes so robbie's how everyone refers to him [3:07] and robbie was just like a beloved teddy bear type of guy and he loved the job a true hero yeah a real [3:16] hero he he famously rescued a baby from a burning building and a photo of him carrying the child away [3:21] from the building made the local papers that classic photo right yeah we had that in the show [3:27] and he he just lived for the job he lived to help other people um he just loved doing good and putting [3:34] good into his community and he didn't get rich off of this job he had to take a second job in addition [3:41] to being a firefighter but he just really loved what he did yeah so that was why it was even more shocking [3:47] i think because this was a guy who had such heart in what he was doing and to be gunned down in such [3:51] a horrible vicious tragic way so let's go back to that night of the murder he's arriving home it's [3:58] somewhere around seven or so in the evening his wife elizabeth who they refer to as becky is at home [4:04] he pulls up into the driveway she would tell police that she heard gunshots later on we would hear the [4:10] 911 call so these first responders people who know him are responding to his killing and learning in real [4:19] time that it's one of their own and what describe that scene a little bit because we played that [4:24] out in our episode two on friday yeah you see in real time the first responders getting there the [4:30] the members of the of the fire engine arriving looking at the victim on the ground and realizing [4:36] recognizing him as one of their own and you just hear their disbelief and shock realizing that it's robbie [4:43] their their close friend their colleague and then we see one by one his loved ones and family arriving [4:49] at the scene and just the the look of absolute disbelief and panic on their face trying to get [4:56] information not really knowing what's happened yet uh then realizing that that he's he's dead that he's [5:03] gone he's dead on the on the driveway they they heard he'd been shot and didn't necessarily realize that [5:09] he had already passed away when they got there and that is just heart-wrenching one interesting thing [5:14] when the um investigators got there of course they're always looking for a dna or something that's [5:19] telling on the scene they're not finding anything right away um they don't uh you know no security [5:25] cameras that's revealing someone who who maybe snuck up on him ultimately one of those bullets [5:30] actually they're able to retrieve and that becomes the one thing that's kind of telling in this story [5:35] right so the the bullet that he was killed with matches a gun called a tourist judge it's a very [5:42] unique i've never heard of that before right it's not a type of gun that you typically hear about it's [5:46] very uh rare type of gun and it's unique because it can shoot both bullets and shotgun shells so this is [5:53] a great lead because it's a rare gun um that you know in theory police should be able to hopefully [6:00] track down who owned that gun yeah and they are able to learn that a local pawn shop had a tourist [6:06] judge in stock that was recently stolen they start digging more into this pawn shop and they see that [6:12] one of the employees is a man young man in larry richmond jr his father is intimately involved in [6:19] this story in this family he's engaged to becky's sister and his father had been to prison so alarm [6:25] bells are starting to go off because this is kind of connected to the family this isn't just some [6:29] random person who showed up so where do they go from there well at that point this web is starting [6:35] to form and they're starting to see like these cannot be coincidences that the rare gun that's [6:41] used to commit this murder is tied to someone connected to the family so they start looking into [6:49] becky's phone calls and her most recent calls before right before the murder they see that there [6:55] was a call minutes before her husband was shot dead in the driveway and that's the big twist here [6:59] that that becomes the big twist and what our show is named after yeah they end up going to the [7:06] memorial service and they pull in many members of this family take them in for questioning and put [7:14] everyone in different rooms and try to nail everyone down on their story and figure out what's happening [7:19] here and we've done other stories before too where police or investigators wind up at a funeral or at [7:27] awake because a crime has just happened and they suspect somebody in the family might be involved [7:32] but that whole idea that there was a phone call between becky and larry senior was really really [7:39] telling to the police so they were convinced at that point that she had some involvement in this [7:45] i think they were pretty convinced i think the fact that when they did bring in for questioning and [7:50] asked her who had called minutes before the murder that she didn't own up to it they already knew at [7:57] this point that she had had a phone call with larry richmond senior so the fact that she attempted to [8:03] hide the call from them i think really convinced that she was hiding something that knew more than she [8:08] was if she's hiding that what else is she hiding well they are starting to look at larry senior he's dating [8:13] mandy becky's sister but are there other romantic involving this is a guy who just came out of prison by the [8:18] way we talked about um does he have other romantic involvements what are they finding out about him [8:23] yes so larry as we come to find out was seeing a number of women around town um even though he was [8:31] engaged to mandy becky's sister he was seeing many women uh several were interviewed by police he had [8:40] sort of irresistible charm apparently that really drew people in well the plot thickens because we're going [8:47] to look into his background and also how he wound up being connected to this case so mike don't go [8:54] anywhere because now we've got an alleged affair we've got a murder a strong suspicion that becky [8:59] might have been hiding these secrets as you say so when we come back we're going to unravel how police [9:04] actually made an arrest and how finally robert's killer landed behind bars and some exclusive family [9:11] interviews that you're going to also hear about so stay with us welcome back to 2020 the after [9:23] show i'm deborah roberts and i am here with our editorial producer at 2020 mike replaya mike and [9:29] i are unraveling a case that we just featured on 2020 it is the murder case of robert dora a veteran [9:36] firefighter and a local hero in evansville indiana when we left off mike you and i we were talking about [9:42] the fact that his wife becky and her sister's fiance larry senior were hiding a secret and police of [9:50] course were suspicious they weren't quite sure but there have been whispers around i guess the area [9:56] right that that becky somehow might have been connected to robert's murder even before police [10:00] were absolutely certain when she showed up at the fire station asking about his pension uh not long [10:08] after she just lost her husband a lot of folks thought that was pretty strange definitely even her [10:12] own son really really was concerned and and disturbed by that why that why that within a day of her [10:21] husband's death she was questioning the pension um going to to find out more about the pension at the [10:27] fire station and for her part she says that so many people were asking her about his pension and her [10:34] plans for it that she wanted to get more information because she didn't know anything [10:37] mm-hmm well paint a picture mike because you were there on the ground and you're you know getting a [10:41] sense of this community you're getting a sense of these people um becky was his second wife they [10:47] both had children she had grown he had grown children talk about their relationship a little [10:52] bit and what people thought of the two of them so becky and robbie had actually known each other for [10:58] years they were colleagues at taco john's a local fast food joint um robbie actually helped train becky [11:07] when she joined the store and he apparently fell in love with her right away uh he was kind of smitten [11:13] with her uh from the start but they were in the friend zone for many years and then at one point [11:20] the timing was right where becky was out of a relationship and their friendship developed into [11:26] more yeah and before long before people even kind of realized that they were actually together robbie was [11:33] proposing to her and they were getting married but meanwhile they've got grown children and he's got [11:37] a daughter lindsay um and and she figures prominently into our piece and we see the heartbreak that [11:43] she's feeling after discovering the loss of her father what about her and becky what did she think [11:48] about her new stepmom so lindsay was not a fan of becky pretty much from the start she found her [11:58] i think something off-putting about her and she saw her dad suddenly indulging in a lifestyle that he [12:03] never was interested in before um buying a car for becky buying her nice jewelry nice gifts [12:09] and that concerned her after the murder of course police begin to drill down the investigators are [12:16] looking into this case and months and months are going by and then something important comes to light [12:22] nathan guthrie becky's son finds a little slip of paper in a sympathy card that turns out to be [12:29] kind of a smoking gun in this case tell us all about it yeah so this is a really big twist in the [12:34] story nathaniel becky's son is gathering all the sympathy and condolence cards that came in after the [12:41] funeral and he picks up one and a little slip of paper falls out and it just says we need to talk [12:50] signed by larry with a phone number he doesn't know what this is about he's confused by it it's [12:57] inside a sympathy card from becky's sister mandy so nathaniel goes to police shows him the note and [13:06] from there i think that connected the dots for police between the deleted phone call between becky [13:12] and larry minutes before the murder and now after the murder a secret note being passed in the condolence [13:18] card saying we need to talk um just seemed like too much of a coincidence to ignore yeah they know [13:24] something's going on and we should also talk about the fact that for the family members here for mandy [13:28] becky's sister and even for for uh for him and i mean this was shocking stuff she is devastated for [13:36] her larry was her everything her whole world she felt like she'd finally found someone who truly loved [13:43] her and was going to take care of her and be her partner and and so her world is completely destroyed [13:49] by this how is it that they came to this conclusion that uh robbie had to go how what was the the the [13:59] collusion there between larry and becky how did that happen so both of them still profess their innocence [14:06] so we we only know based on what prosecutors and police claim and allege that their narrative of [14:13] the story from what we understand they believe that an affair was happening between becky and larry [14:21] that started at some point when the two couples were spending time together and going out on double [14:25] dates and that at some point um during that affair the an idea was hatched to have robbie killed um get [14:36] him out of the picture to get him out of the picture you know for potentially for his pension [14:42] potentially to get her out of the marriage to be available um you know prosecutors don't have to [14:48] prove motive at trial so we actually are are still left with some some question marks about what exactly [14:56] happened and and and how this all went down you know that happens so often you're absolutely right [15:01] especially when they're professing their innocence and we want to talk more about what you've learned [15:05] but it took a while it took a few years before they were able to make a murder case against the [15:11] two of them and before they finally went to trial ultimately becky and larry are convicted of robert's [15:19] murder becky sentenced to 60 years in prison and an additional 30 years for conspiracy to commit [15:26] murder and larry of course life without the possibility of parole you know he's he's offended again [15:32] you know this was something though even though they did this and they were able to make this case [15:36] it's still tearing at a family tearing a family apart because you've got the two different sides [15:41] of you know that them professing their innocence and others being surprised that it happened and [15:46] and having a hard time coming to grips with it tell us because we you know in the piece you get to [15:50] see the heartbreak amongst the family members but you're right there with them um that was that was [15:54] real and difficult for them wasn't it absolutely uh i think just watching that that crime scene video [16:03] of robbie's daughter lindsay arriving and the reality of what's happened washing over her face um seeing [16:12] her father dead on the pavement she just absolutely crumbles in grief and it's just it's heartbreaking to [16:21] watch and she still feels that very strongly today i can imagine the pain is still just as strong today [16:26] i can imagine and then larry jr has to testify he's a star witness has to testify against his own [16:32] father so many families were torn apart by this and larry richmond jr had to take the stand as the star [16:40] witness against his own father who he shares a name with um helping get that conviction and that life [16:47] sentence for him i think just was absolutely devastating for him he told me after that guilty verdict came down [16:55] that he feels broken and he's now just trying to piece his life back together he has a family of [17:01] his own to raise and he's just trying to move forward somehow and trying to do the right thing [17:07] which is which is what he was faced with uh we talked about mandy earlier um and this had to just be [17:13] shattering for her um on the one hand this is her fiance on the other hand this is her sister [17:18] they're behind bars for the death uh of her brother-in-law and she was the one really who [17:23] brought larry into the family why did she want to talk so i think for mandy um sharing her story [17:31] now was a way to try to reclaim ownership of her life her entire world was turned upside down seven [17:39] years ago when this happened everything she thought she knew everyone she thought she trusted [17:43] was completely shattered and not only that she received a lot of blame a lot of people in the [17:50] family and and out in the world blamed her for bringing this man into everyone's lives and of [17:59] course she is not accused of anything she uh has been totally cleared by police she was not involved in [18:05] any way in the plot and she's another innocent victim here but she still um you know gets gets a lot of [18:13] i think blame and negativity her way you and john quinones of course sat down with her and brought this [18:19] story to us and we got to hear her side of the story on 2020 but there was more to mandy's story [18:25] that you didn't hear on 2020 so let's let's take a listen now to someone who doesn't know him how would [18:32] you describe larry what kind of person is he to me he is very kind and loving and he takes care of [18:43] people like but he's also a killer i understand that goes in a box sir you put it it goes in a box [19:00] because i know i don't know what to do with it i don't know what to do with it because i know it's [19:04] supposed to do something to me i know it's supposed to make me scared of him i know it's supposed to make [19:08] me hate him i know it's supposed to make i know what it's supposed to do but it it doesn't i he [19:16] was he was never scary to me he was my protector he was showing up when i would get off work at 10 30 [19:24] at night just to be there to make sure we got to our cars okay so she spoke so uh you know passionately [19:32] about her relationship what about her relationship with her sister becky that's got to be kind of [19:37] tricky it's definitely tricky it's it's it's very touch and go i think still but after our interview [19:45] with mandy she and becky did speak for the first time in years and she describes it as a a hopeful [19:53] conversation i think that mandy told her that she will always love her and support her but that she [20:01] can't talk about what happened and that makes sense yeah yeah yeah i think that's how she's it has to [20:08] compartmentalize um these conflicting feelings she has about people that she loves still very much who [20:16] she feels have done horrible things have betrayed her yeah i mean she's got her sister in prison and [20:21] she's got her fiance in prison for killing her brother-in-law well i want to talk to you a little [20:27] bit more about her and those exclusive interviews because that was really something else when we come back [20:31] we're going to have more that you haven't heard from inside the prison actually where becky spoke [20:36] with mike and you're going to hear about that conversation details that you did not hear on [20:42] friday night so do not go anywhere welcome back to 2020 the after show i'm sitting here with our 2020 [20:55] producer mike replier who uh was part of a pretty unforgettable story called one last call that just [21:02] aired on 2020 story that centers around uh robert door a firefighter first responder who was killed [21:10] and his wife becky and her sister's fiancee larry senior were both convicted in his murder and mike [21:18] i've spent my time in prisons my share of time in prison sitting across from folks who were convicted [21:23] of murder and it's a fairly strange thing to do um and for our cameras to go into um this prison and to [21:30] get a chance to sit down and talk with becky was pretty remarkable too you know the assumption at [21:36] least a prosecutor certainly made the case that she was having an affair with larry they wanted robert [21:40] out of the picture she sort of told a different story of course to us she did she has stuck to her [21:46] story pretty much from the start and that is that she has no idea what what happened she was not [21:53] involved in robbie's murder and she doesn't know who did it yeah so she continues to claim her [22:00] innocence but yet she and her sister are sort of forming a relationship how does she seem to be [22:04] adjusting to prison life by the way you know becky sort of brought in this interview a calm and [22:11] collected energy and i wasn't quite sure what to make of that but i think that she is in a place now [22:19] where she's trying to find acceptance and make peace with the reality that she may die in prison she [22:27] probably will really when you think about the amount of time that she has well that conversation [22:32] was quite revealing and there were bits that you heard on 2020 and some that you didn't um but this [22:38] took you inside the prison after becky had served about a year and a half of her sentence so let's take [22:43] a listen i was able to watch part of the 2020 episode i didn't know how people you know in the prison [22:54] were going to react to it you know it's surprising it was surprising when you know somebody's like hey [23:05] isn't that you on the tv um so i just got up and went out and i'm like well if you guys are going to [23:14] watch it let's you know let's watch it together um i was upset and went to the bathroom and when i [23:29] turned around there i had a bunch of girls all the way around me and they supported me i thought [23:38] they were going to beat me up but they supported me i'm innocent basically um i didn't do this i'm [23:52] still innocent and i don't know who has who did this um but again i'm i i still stand on that i'm [24:08] innocent i mean don't don't you think that i would want to have the person that killed robbie [24:20] brought to justice it's not me though as you said she seems to be making peace with her situation [24:31] there's a little bit of a calmness there does she think that the family believes that she wasn't [24:36] involved or or does she have a sense of what other people are are thinking about her robbie's family [24:42] certainly steadfastly believe that she is guilty and got exactly what she deserved with that with [24:48] that 90-year sentence you know her family it's a little more nuanced i would say um her son taylor [24:54] her youngest son he is still standing behind her he still supports her and when it comes to her oldest [25:02] son nathaniel however he was a star witness for the prosecution he called her a murderer he went to the [25:10] police he basically considers his relationship with his mother dead and he considers robbie his father [25:17] and that's who he mourns there's a big range of emotions between the family and as for mandy [25:23] she acknowledges that the evidence points to becky becky being involved and her having an affair with larry [25:34] um but but her heart tells her something different and that's amazing heart doesn't want to believe [25:41] it her heart is still praying i think that they are innocent in spite of the evidence that she saw [25:47] in court she's still connected to larry they're still i guess together as much as one can be together [25:53] when he's in prison so they they are still in contact they still speak almost every day according to [25:59] mandy and she told us that she gets what she needs from him that he checks up on her he cares for her [26:08] he um gives her the emotional support she needs and she is fully aware of the contradiction here and [26:16] that this scene would seem completely insane to most people that that this man's destroyed her entire life [26:22] essentially and taking a life out of her family um turned everyone's life upside down and that she still [26:29] loves him and still has feelings for him um she's working on that i think she's working on moving [26:35] forward and um creating creating her own life uh separate from this man but it it's easier said than [26:43] done becky also swore to her that she and larry never had an affair a convoluted story as we said it's [26:49] hard to know what to take from this report in a way because there is so much here that is so heartbreaking [26:55] is so difficult um but then you do have the the tenderness of family i mean mandy determining that [27:02] she can still try to connect with her sister um you know i think it really just highlights the [27:07] complications and shocking secrets that can happen uh behind closed doors in a family but yet family's [27:14] still trying to go forth and and make their way out exactly exactly and families are complicated and [27:20] they're not it's not black and white and no matter how much anger heartbreak there's still that bond [27:26] and you can't just shut off your love for someone else and i think mandy is the perfect encapsulation [27:34] of that yeah that she's fully aware of how much she's been hurt by these people and yet she can't turn [27:41] off her heart and she can't turn off the the memories she has and the love she has for these people but yet [27:48] others in the family certainly have mike it's a captivating story well done always always a [27:52] pleasure to work with you and good to have you here um thank you all for being here with us and [27:57] joining us for this episode of course you can watch our latest 2020 uh episodes on friday nights on abc [28:04] and you can make sure that you come back and stream episodes like this one anytime on disney plus [28:09] and hulu hope you all have a good day