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  • 2 days ago
Killers Caught On Camera S02E01
Transcript
00:00This time, on Killers Caught on Camera,
00:08a doorbell cam witnesses the start of a late-night meet-up.
00:13But she doesn't make it home.
00:15It's every parent's worst nightmare.
00:18The police get involved in the search for her.
00:21Here! Here! Here!
00:24And in the US, a man calls in a fire at his home.
00:28I need a firefighter here. I got a fire in my house.
00:31A woman is trapped inside.
00:33The female in there to you is who?
00:35This is my life.
00:40It just sounds like something bad is happening to her.
00:43We know what happened because the video tells us what happened.
00:46I heard some gunshots.
00:47Drop it! Whatever it is! Drop it!
00:50That does not seem like a tool to my wife.
00:53The camera doesn't lie.
00:55Bye.
01:02In the UK, in Warwickshire, the market town of Nuneaton,
01:0725 miles east of Birmingham,
01:11it was home to 23-year-old Megan Newborough and her family.
01:17Megan was the glue that kept everybody together.
01:20She was the instigator in a lot of family gatherings and events.
01:25She was very bubbly.
01:27Cheeky.
01:28Very smiley.
01:29Mischievous.
01:30And very caring.
01:32Good.
01:33She had a great sense of humour.
01:35And she was always there for everybody.
01:38Friends, family alike.
01:39Megan's passion for dancing started at an early age.
01:43Megan was desperate to start learning how to dance.
01:48The dancing teacher let her join just before she was two.
01:52She wanted to be the little ballerina with a little tutu.
01:56She was one of three children.
01:58Megan was incredibly beautiful.
02:00She was so organised.
02:03She bossed us around.
02:06She was definitely the leader of the pack between the three of us.
02:10She used to somehow make every situation funny.
02:13She was good for them.
02:14She used to get the motivation going.
02:15She got the energy in the room.
02:17Megan got a job in human resources at a brick factory near home.
02:22Megan was an incredibly hard worker.
02:26Her mentality of applying herself and working really, really hard.
02:31And that ethic just stayed with her.
02:33She wants to get into HR to help others and support others.
02:37People that loved her have really loved being around her.
02:43At around 6.30pm on the evening of Friday, August 6th, 2021,
02:48Megan headed out to meet someone from work.
02:52She had arranged to meet someone to go for a walk.
02:57She hadn't dressed up.
02:58She hadn't put make-up on.
03:00So wherever she was going, it was obviously somewhere she felt quite relaxed.
03:05There was nothing out of the ordinary.
03:07And she said she'd be back in, you know, two hours' time.
03:13By 9.30pm, the family hadn't heard from Megan.
03:19We went to bed.
03:20I continued sending messages through all the different platforms.
03:25I woke up around 3 in the morning.
03:30Realising she still hadn't come home.
03:33We knew that there was something wrong.
03:35With no word from Megan by lunchtime on Saturday, Megan's father reported her missing to the police.
03:47They checked the Newborough family's home security cameras.
03:50The Newborough family had a ring doorbell.
03:53From an investigative perspective, they're absolutely fantastic because we get images of people that we would never normally get from conventional CCTV.
04:02We knew that Megan had left in a vehicle.
04:07We have ANPR, automatic number plate recognition.
04:11And so we were able to track the route that Megan had taken once she'd left her home address.
04:17Her car was captured on camera, 30 miles away from home, at 9.50pm on the Friday night that Megan went missing.
04:31I guess there was some relief, yes, you know, that she could be alive and we just got to go and find her.
04:37The police needed to find out who Megan went to meet on Friday night.
04:44We heard little stories about him.
04:47We didn't have the full picture.
04:49He was a guy from work.
04:50The last time we spoke to each other over the phone, she said that she really liked him.
04:55He treated her well with what she said.
04:58He would send her a good morning texting, good morning beautiful.
05:01So, and that's all we knew.
05:03Inquiries were made with friends, family, workplace and through inquiries they identified Ross McCullum.
05:12Ross McCullum was a 30-year-old lab worker at the same brick company where Megan worked.
05:17Police found out where he lived.
05:22An officer from Warwickshire Police went to home address and spoke to the parents of Ross.
05:28Ross wasn't there at the time.
05:30They called Ross on one of their mobile phones and handed the mobile phone to an officer to speak to Ross.
05:37Hi Ross, I'm a police officer with Warwickshire Police.
05:41Hi.
05:42Hello.
05:43We've just come to your mum and dad's house.
05:45We're just looking for Megan, she's been reported missing.
05:48Have you seen her at all?
05:50She came on Friday, I've been trying to call her though.
05:53Have you?
05:54She came on, she came on Friday for about an hour.
05:57Yeah.
05:58Then she, she left about nine-ish.
06:01Right.
06:03And, does she say anything of where she might be going or where she might be?
06:09What she said was she's going to go to, she's like going to McDonald's on my own and get like a milk shake.
06:15Yeah.
06:16That's it.
06:17So you haven't seen her since yesterday about, was it half nine you said?
06:22Nine o'clock.
06:23Nine o'clock.
06:25Detective Sergeant Charlotte Mee was looking for clues in the video.
06:28His demeanour here is quite casual. He doesn't seem any really concerned about her. He's given her a lot of detail.
06:39We've not heard anything from her at all?
06:41Nothing at all.
06:44I've sent her about, I've sent her about 15 WhatsApp messages.
06:49Yeah, you're obviously worried about her.
06:51Yeah.
06:52She's honestly, she's lovely actually. I work with her, she's HR.
06:55She's a really nice person.
06:56Yeah.
06:57She's really worried.
07:00There's no concern in his voice at all. He's just intent on telling us the fact that she's gone to McDonald's for this milkshake.
07:09Therefore, he thinks she's all right.
07:12Yeah, you're obviously worried about her.
07:14Yeah.
07:16Professor Coral Dando is a forensic psychologist.
07:21When people are being deceptive, that's exactly the type of behaviour that we see.
07:26So they talk a lot, they say a lot, but actually their words aren't, don't carry very much useful information for the investigation.
07:37Or they have a tendency to talk about the minute detail.
07:40Are you in a relationship, you and Megan?
07:43Yeah, well, yeah, we've been seeing each other. She's HR at work. I work with her.
07:48Yeah.
07:49We've been seeing each other for about a month.
07:51Ross has not inquired at all about why we're wanting to speak with him. What's happened to Megan? Is Megan all right? This doesn't seem at the top of his agenda.
08:02What car do you drive?
08:04I don't drive.
08:05You don't drive?
08:07He wants to tell us about why it wasn't him.
08:11Are you planning on coming home soon?
08:14No, I'll be home tonight. I can come back whenever you want me to.
08:17Ross is coming across as being very helpful, a helpful witness. He's given extra detail, detail of which he doesn't need to give, including directions to the location he says he's at.
08:31OK, thank you very much. Bye.
08:32All right, thank you, bye.
08:34Ross provided some information, but Megan was still missing, and so was her phone. Megan's brother John turned detective.
08:45If you've lost your phone, you can just go on this website, you'll ping it, a flag will appear at its last known location.
08:53John, being very savvy with the computers, managed to track a phone.
08:56And some family members dashed over to try and find the phone.
09:02The way we did it was we had Mum back at home on our MacBook, pinging the phone.
09:07It was just a live ping. We knew the phone was alive, we knew it was there in a bush right next to a pedestrian footpath.
09:16When the phone was found, my heart sank, yes.
09:18We knew something must have happened, not least because she hadn't been in touch, but she's never away from a phone.
09:27At that time, concerns for Megan increased significantly, and the investigation was changed from one of a missing person to a kidnap inquiry.
09:38When police analysed Megan's phone, they discovered a series of messages from Ross.
09:47John Camay is a leading barrister who analysed all of the communication between Megan and Ross.
09:52The first one was, you're amazing. Did you get home okay, baby?
10:01Next morning, he writes, I haven't heard back from you. I hope I haven't done something wrong.
10:08He also left a voicemail at about 11 o'clock that night.
10:16Received 11.27pm on Friday the 6th of August.
10:23Hello, babe, it's Ross. I'm just worried about you if you haven't rang back or, you know, text me or anything.
10:30Um, no, it's probably nothing. Probably friends guys always fell asleep, but, uh, yeah, I'm just worried, that's all.
10:36I had a fun time earlier.
10:38Um, yeah, anyway, I'll see you tomorrow.
10:41Love you.
10:42Oh, I didn't say that. Oh, f***.
10:47Police followed Megan's car through cameras monitoring the licence plate all the way to Loughborough College.
10:53Dr. Vasilios Karagianopoulos is a specialist in cybercrime.
11:01The investigators can hone in on the image and identify that it might be a male driver in the car,
11:09that there are no other passengers in that particular car.
11:13When the car stopped, the person who got out wasn't Megan.
11:23It gives us a clearer idea of the complexion of the skin of the person,
11:29what their height is in comparison to the car and the car door.
11:33And we can see over here that he is taking some stuff out of the car.
11:38This is a big bin and he's looking into that, getting rid of some stuff in that big bin and goes back to the car.
11:47After looking around, the male figure changed his clothes.
11:53He's brought another pair of trousers as well, which is showing us that he is not doing things in a panic.
12:00He's much calmer because he's thought about bringing a change of clothes.
12:05Now we are seeing that he's disposing of various different items in the bins in their surrounding area.
12:14This is showing us that he is being very rational and is trying to think things through,
12:21how he can get rid of evidence in various different bins without really putting everything in one,
12:27so it can be identified as something that's perhaps connected.
12:34I think it's also really interesting that he's gone and taken items and put them in different dustbins.
12:39Perhaps trying to second guess what investigators, police officers might look for,
12:45because they'll always look through dustbins and try and find evidence or information.
12:54The items discarded at Loughborough College were recovered by police.
12:57There's a blanket covered in blood, clothing that belonged to Meghan, covered in blood.
13:04And one of the most poignant, one of the saddest images for me for this whole, from this whole inquiry,
13:12was one item that was retrieved from one of the waste bins, and it was her glasses.
13:16You see her wearing these glasses on the ring bell footage as she leaves her home at 7.30 on a Friday night.
13:23They were angrily bent back, as if they'd been crushed in someone's fist.
13:29And for me that was powerful because it was a reminder of how wantonly brutal and evil he was in what he did to her,
13:39even to the extent that he wanted to pulverize her specks in his hand.
13:42He's hiding the items that he's just removed.
13:47This includes items from the house, as well as personal items of Meghan's, as well as his own.
13:54We can say that this is the same person that we suspect has committed the killing of Meghan Newborough.
14:02Close to midnight on August 7th, 2021.
14:07Police went to Ross's house to arrest him.
14:10He is in his bedroom when police go and arrest him, and it's almost like he is embarrassed.
14:19He doesn't want his mum and dad to hear what he's telling officers.
14:22I'm DC Gallagher from Warwickshire Police.
14:25At this moment in time we have reason to suspect your involvement in the disappearance of Meghan Newborough.
14:32And as a result I'm arresting you on suspicion of kidnap.
14:34Straight away you notice the difference in his body language. It's completely at odds to the way in which he comes over on the telephone conversation that he had with the police officer and also the way in which he presents himself on the voicemail.
14:52What's in relation to Meghan, can you tell us where she is?
14:59Say again.
15:01Talked down at the police station.
15:03Talked down at the police station. Can you tell us, can you tell us here, just quietly?
15:06I don't know, it's just Woodhouse Eves.
15:08Woodhouse Eves. What is that?
15:11It's near Loughborough.
15:13Near Loughborough.
15:14Near Loughborough. What is it though?
15:16What kind of location is it?
15:18It's on Charlie Road.
15:20Charlie Road. Whereabouts?
15:22In the Loughborough.
15:23In the Loughborough.
15:24In the Loughborough. Okay.
15:25There's no copious to me.
15:28Is she alive?
15:36Police immediately went to Charlie Road in Woodhouse Eves.
15:39At that point, this became a murder investigation.
15:54Yeah, I've got her.
15:57Yeah, she's hidden by all the leaves.
16:01One more of the leaves in the middle.
16:09Just down here, Sergeant.
16:11See her legs?
16:14Looks like she's got a top.
16:19The moment when Meghan's body is found, it was assumed that she was a redhead.
16:24Because her hair was soaked in blood.
16:26You get a knock on the door at 2.30 in the morning.
16:33On the Sunday morning.
16:35And the police came in.
16:36Two police officers arrived.
16:38And they informed us that they believed they found a body that they believed to be Meghan.
16:43And, uh...
16:44And, uh...
16:45And, uh...
16:46And, uh...
16:47And, uh, obviously, I found it destroyed from that point.
16:52We had to go and identify her the next day.
16:58The autopsy revealed how Meghan was killed.
17:09She died through strangulation.
17:12And, mercifully, would have lost consciousness very quickly.
17:16It would obviously use quite an amount of considerable pressure,
17:22which you could see through the petechial haemorrhagen in the eyes.
17:26What was perhaps most awful was what he did to her immediately after he strangled her.
17:33Because he went into the kitchen, he took a knife from the knife drawer,
17:36and he cut her neck across the front of her neck.
17:43The wound was 13 centimetres across, several centimetres deep,
17:47and so deep that it left striations on the spinal column.
17:53He said in police interview he did that to ensure that she was dead
17:57so that she wouldn't be able to tell people what a bad man he'd been.
18:02We believe that he was making a real and significant attempt
18:08to decapitate Meghan for whatever reason.
18:13Post-mortem mutilation of a body is seen as going one step further
18:20in depravity, in criminal behaviour,
18:24in highlighting fundamental issues with personality.
18:30It's unclear what his motive was,
18:33but it seems as if he wanted to carry on and punish her.
18:38It was about being in control, being in charge,
18:43and I think would allow him to bolster his self-esteem.
18:49Ross's messages to Meghan provided some clues about his motive.
18:54They start off in a very innocent way.
18:59There's a particular dynamic.
19:00Ross is someone who feels pitifully inadequate,
19:04obsessed with his own shortcomings.
19:07She is eager to make him feel better about himself.
19:10She shows great kindness, moreover, a lot of patience with him.
19:15And then gradually the conversations become a lot more sexual.
19:24What these messages showed us was a man who had a dark and a deep obsession
19:31with sexual distortion, dominance, coercion, fear, threat.
19:39His sexual fantasies and ideations were not just unhealthy.
19:47They were, to the likes of you and I, potentially very dangerous.
19:52The messages also revealed that Meghan had met up with Ross the week before her murder.
20:01They'd had an assignation in the woods somewhere.
20:04Reading the text carefully, it was apparent that they'd planned to have some sort of sexual encounter,
20:11but it hadn't worked.
20:13We discover that immediately after that failure,
20:15he goes online to buy the packet of a reptile medication.
20:19It appeared, Ross's impotence became a catalyst for his lethal response.
20:27He knew that the reason that he killed her
20:31was because when that moment came that night,
20:35he let himself down.
20:38He was humiliated, so he lashes out.
20:42When the police searched Ross's parents' house in Colville,
20:45they found evidence of a violent struggle in the living room.
20:50There was ornaments that had been knocked down,
20:52which we believe is indicative of a struggle.
20:56When Ross was strangling Meghan, we believed that she was fighting for her life.
21:01Ross had tried to tell his parents that he'd spilled a cup of coffee,
21:05and that's why it was wet, but it wasn't.
21:07It was Meghan's blood that was there.
21:08And there were smear stains along skirting boards within the hallway,
21:12so we believe that that is where he dragged Meghan out as well.
21:17Through the forensic examinations, we could put together the story
21:21of what had happened to Meghan.
21:25After disposing of Meghan's body on a country road,
21:28Ross went back home.
21:29He lives this life in a squalid bedroom that is filthy and covered in rubbish.
21:38It would predict that he's got a disorganized approach to trying to cover up evidence,
21:45to try and manage the post-murder process.
21:48Ross then researched relationships.
21:54His voicemail to Meghan at 11pm on the Friday evening after he'd killed her
22:00could now be read in a new light.
22:01100% contrived.
22:18And he makes this call about two minutes after he Googles the question,
22:25how to tell a girl that you love her.
22:28And for me, that was perhaps the most chilling aspect of anything that he did
22:38after he disposed of her body.
22:43The following morning,
22:45Ross also started searching the names of several serial killers
22:49and looking at pornography.
22:52He is flicking from image to image to image,
22:55until he sends her a text message,
22:58morning, babe.
23:00It was pretty clear from that,
23:02that he was getting some sort of sexual gratification.
23:07Upstairs,
23:09in a room above where he'd murdered his so-called girlfriend,
23:13just, what, ten hours or so previously.
23:16By looking at other serial killers,
23:20maybe he was thinking that this is the way that he might progress in the future,
23:25that maybe he got a real high from murdering Meghan.
23:30Looking at other serial killers,
23:33he may be thinking about the fact that he could now put himself in that group
23:38or potentially think about killing again to get that pleasure.
23:44Ross McCullum was charged with Meghan's murder.
23:48But they still had to convict him in a court of law.
23:51In his defense, Ross claimed a loss of control and diminished responsibility.
23:56He blamed his actions on childhood sexual abuse.
24:02John Camay presented the evidence against Ross McCullum at trial.
24:08He made out that she'd touched him in some way,
24:13which had just triggered this violent reaction,
24:16over which he had no control whatsoever.
24:19And he started strangling her.
24:20It was as if, in some narcissistic way, he is the victim.
24:26And he is compelled, against his will,
24:31to flip out in a way that culminates in him violently taking her life.
24:39He strangled her with his hands over her throat for three minutes.
24:45Three minutes gives you bags of time to pull back and retract.
24:48The surveillance footage was crucial in undermining Ross's defense.
24:56What the CCTV shows is just how in control Ross was,
25:03that he was able to form, you know, a really strong and solid mindset
25:09to think about what to do with Meghan's body,
25:13about how to get rid of her clothing.
25:15It's not really up for debate whether or not it did or didn't happen.
25:21You can watch it with your own eyes.
25:23I don't think you can underestimate for a moment
25:27how important and crucial digital evidence is in any investigation nowadays.
25:34After a six-week trial, Ross McCullum was found guilty.
25:37The jury took just 90 minutes to convict him.
25:38Did he feel any empathy? Did he feel any sadness or any appreciation for what he'd done?
25:51Absolutely not. Nothing.
25:53What he did do over and over again was express self-pity.
25:59On December 16th, 2022, Ross McCullum was sentenced to life in prison,
26:09with a minimum term of 23 years.
26:13Well, Meghan had her whole life ahead of her.
26:16Getting married, having children, seeing her brothers and sisters shine and move forward.
26:20Everything was just ripped apart on that very evening.
26:24You lose a part of yourself. It's gone forever.
26:28How am I going to walk down that aisle knowing my sister's not there as my maid of honour?
26:34Like, how am I supposed to do that without her there?
26:37Living a child is devastating. It's life-shattering.
26:43It's, you know, everybody's parents' worst nightmare.
26:49I just miss everything about her. She was always there.
26:53You could always, you know, just message, give her a call.
26:57Everything. Miss everything.
27:08There were just over 600 murders in the UK in 2022.
27:13Only 7% were by strangulation.
27:18In the US, it's even more rare.
27:21Only 1%.
27:24Most people who perpetrate sexual homicide, they're more likely to use strangulation.
27:30They're more likely to do things that are up close and physical than other kinds of homicide perpetrators.
27:35Strangulation's a very personal thing that requires quite a lot of effort.
27:39Partly because it's much harder to do.
27:41It's much more personal, as in you're close to, physically close to the victim.
27:46As in if you're trying to kill somebody, strangulation's hard compared to using a gun.
27:53In the United States, the state of Ohio, Madison Township.
28:0015 miles southeast of the capital, Columbus.
28:05September 2021.
28:08A desperate situation has been called in.
28:15911, where's the address of your emergency?
28:18I need a firefighter here. I got a fire in my house.
28:21Did you get everybody out of the house?
28:23I just grabbed the case out and I couldn't go in. I tried to get in now. I can't control it.
28:27Emergency services were on the scene in minutes.
28:32Commander Victor Boyd from the Madison Township Police Department was recording on his body-worn camera.
28:38We got a dispatch call that there was a working house fire. I drove into the scene and got as close as I could and started communicating with the fire chiefs.
28:55When Victor arrived, the fire had already been extinguished.
29:01Outside the house was the man who made the 911 call. 41-year-old Mamadou Diallo and his two young children.
29:09I walked over to Mr. Diallo and spoke to him and made sure he was okay and made sure his children were okay.
29:19What have we got here?
29:20He was home. He got the kids out.
29:22The kids had been saved, but not everyone had made it out.
29:2835-32, no Bixby. We've got a structure fire and we've got a body on the inside.
29:36Oh, God! And there's a body inside there.
29:40That is correct. They're saying this fire was in the room that this body is found in.
29:46Firefighters confirm the body is female.
29:53Commander Victor Boyd questions Mamadou to find out who the woman is.
29:58The female in there to you is who?
30:00It's my wife.
30:04It's your wife.
30:05My wife.
30:06Okay, well, what is your wife's name?
30:07Fatumata Diallo.
30:08Spell the first name.
30:09F-A.
30:10F-A.
30:11T-A.
30:12While his wife Fatumata was lying inside the house,
30:15police and the fire service tried to work out what happened.
30:19It sounds like from him, she must have been babysitting the two kids and he was gone.
30:25And he just happened to come home and gone?
30:27He just came home and opened the door and it was full of smoke.
30:32Kids were still in there playing around on the floor and he got them out, but couldn't go back in for her.
30:36I went and started talking to the fire chief, getting some more clear information of what is inside the house.
30:45Do you have any idea, is she alive in this?
30:48It's hard to tell.
30:52Okay.
30:53I can't believe it.
30:55I don't know.
30:57The blaze itself was small.
30:59Outside, there was no obvious sign of fire.
31:02But inside, Victor Boyd was faced with a gruesome scene.
31:07Once I walked over to the window and I looked in, I looked down, I could see the body directly on the floor below me.
31:14The whole room was black inside, burnt and charred really bad.
31:21Her arms were kind of in a position like this, which is a normal reaction to a body that burns.
31:28Just a few feet away from his deceased wife, Mamadou insisted his children were fed.
31:35The restaurant here, they eat African food. The kids, they're hungry.
31:39I told him, you can't leave the scene.
31:41You know, you have to stay here.
31:43There's questions to be answered.
31:46Right now, sir, I understand they're hungry, but you just can't leave.
31:49Okay.
31:50Just hold tight.
31:52Commander Boyd tried to establish a timeline of events leading up to the fire.
31:58Can you see on your recents what time you called 9-1-1?
32:02It was right here.
32:041-0-9.
32:051-0-9?
32:06You got home here at about 13-0-9?
32:09Something like that.
32:10Yes.
32:12The 9-1-1 call was made at 9 minutes past 1.
32:16Victor questioned Mamadou to find out where he'd been that morning.
32:21Before you came here and stopped, were you making a run, making a delivery?
32:25No.
32:26I went to the shop.
32:29I was talking to him about his time frame, where he had been that morning.
32:34And do you have any idea, sir, off the top of your head, what time you would have been at Medina?
32:398-30.
32:408-30?
32:41He had said that he had been to a shop to get his truck worked on.
32:45And then from there, you say you went to the Volvo dealer?
32:48They fixed my ABS sensor on the truck.
32:51And from there, he came home.
32:54Mamadou's reaction raised eyebrows.
32:56Mr. Diallo was very calm, cool.
33:02No, you know, sadness, no anything.
33:05I mean, he'd just answer questions and that was about it.
33:09You were at the Volvo around 11?
33:11Yeah, that's when I was around 11, yeah.
33:14Police officer Brandi Krantz was also called to the scene.
33:18I got a lot of information to feed you.
33:20OK.
33:21OK?
33:22Yeah.
33:23So when I was on scene, something kind of clicked that I had met her before.
33:28I know who this person is.
33:33Ms. Diallo moved here from Guinea.
33:37She was very beautiful and was spoken about very highly by her community.
33:44And unfortunately, she was not treated very well in her marriage.
33:51Mr. Diallo, I've learned that he has a family in Africa that he would travel back and see.
33:57He has a wife and children there.
34:00So she was not the only wife that he had.
34:05Brandi had actually met Fatoumata when she'd reported Mamadou for domestic violence.
34:10She came to our police department to file a report about Mr. Diallo's actions toward her
34:17and him wanting her to move out of the house and not let her have access to the house.
34:21And I know that our officers had responded out there multiple times to their residence.
34:26I was told by other officers that Mr. Diallo was not nice to her at all,
34:30did not treat her very well.
34:33Mamadou's behavior has to be considered in the context of what was a violent relationship.
34:38One of the reports to the police was that she had been strangled by him.
34:45Fatoumata reporting repeatedly to the police is a sort of string of cries for help
34:52that also show that she can't leave him otherwise she surely would have and not just kept reporting.
35:00What's called non-fatal strangulation is actually characteristic to lots of domestic violence settings.
35:05And it's massively under reported.
35:08So we don't know just how common it is also because often it doesn't leave marks.
35:12And people often feel like they don't have long-term consequences of being strangled.
35:16And so they don't go to the hospital for example.
35:19Women who have experienced non-fatal strangulation within domestic violence settings,
35:23a lot of them have brain injury. They just don't know it.
35:26At that point, I advised the detectives that we had history there and that I had just taken a report several months earlier of a domestic dispute between her and Mr. Diallo.
35:40An interview with one of Mamadou's grown-up children also revealed a terrifying picture of family life.
35:50My father was abusive.
35:54Pops got cold multiple times.
35:56We used to get weapons all the time.
35:59It would be like a cord and like a belt sometimes.
36:02Okay, when we say a cord, what are we talking about?
36:05Like a phone charger.
36:06We pulled the history up of this house.
36:13We have some pretty bad domestics here.
36:16Have you?
36:18The house was made a crime scene.
36:21Detective Sergeant Brian Meister from the Sheriff's Office was called in.
36:27When we get to the scene, it was quite apparent that something just wasn't right.
36:32I know if one of my loved ones just perished in a house fire, I would be acting very differently than the way he was acting.
36:42The female who's in here, you said she's your wife?
36:44She's my wife, yes.
36:45Okay, that's what I thought you said.
36:46She asked me four kids.
36:47I got you.
36:49Mamadou's mannerisms were revealing.
36:52You can see how he seems to be trying to manage his body movements and he's facing away and he's trying to really downplay the severity of the situation.
37:04The stereotype of a liar is someone who's nervous, who's twitchy, who's looking up and to the left, who's avoiding eye contact, all of which are myths and stereotypes about liars.
37:13But if you overcorrect, then you might look too calm and too collected given the circumstances.
37:21Once the Franklin County Detective Bureau arrives on scene, you could see it in their facial expressions, the little, little red flags popping up for them as well.
37:32I went in with the fire investigators and we actually viewed the body.
37:37We found a coaxial cable around her neck.
37:42And then once we moved the body, there was a burnt up charcoal lighter fluid bottle underneath her.
37:54And that pretty much summed it up that he did something to her.
37:58The children were put in the care of extended family, and Mamadou was arrested.
38:07Why is the wind?
38:08Because you're riding in his car.
38:11Have a seat.
38:15At that point, they went in and went through the entire house.
38:19They collected what they needed to collect.
38:21The coroner's office came.
38:23They did their investigation of the body.
38:26Forensic pathologist, Mike Kaplan, performed the autopsy on Fatoumata's body.
38:36There was a ligature that was encircling her neck.
38:41The ligature specifically was an electrical cable that was probably about an eighth or three sixteenth inch in width.
38:48So we knew right away that that may have played a potential role in Ms. Diallo's death.
38:56When we're talking about personal weapons, a USB cord certainly would count as a personal weapon in that it's close, you have to be physically close to the victim.
39:08And whether or not that's the weapon you always choose is sort of not really why we call it personal.
39:14It's more that you're up close and personal to the victim.
39:17By personal weapon, what the literature means is something that is physical, that is personal to me as opposed to something that's more anonymous and at a distance.
39:27So shooting a gun, for example, is removed, it's physically removed, it's quite emotionally removed compared to getting up and beating someone or strangling someone.
39:36You're in that person's face, you're very physically close, as opposed to physically and or emotionally removed.
39:46Detectives were eager to ask Mamadou what really happened.
39:49You want to talk to us about this incident tonight?
39:53If I have to call my lawyer, that would be maybe much better.
39:58The victim's obviously no longer with us, we can't talk to see her side of the story.
40:03Without Mamadou's testimony, the police couldn't move forward.
40:09They needed hard evidence to uncover the truth.
40:16I assigned a few guys to do a canvas of the area.
40:20We're looking for cameras in the area, anything that can further our investigation.
40:26Mamadou had disabled a security camera above the front door.
40:30But he'd left the doorbell cam recording.
40:37This first video clip, it shows Mr. Diallo coming home from wherever he was at.
40:42He pulled up in his truck.
40:44And if you notice the time, the time is 1224.
40:47The first 911 call came in at 109.
40:51He said he came home and found his house on fire.
40:54This totally discredits his story.
40:5640 minutes after the first clip, the house is now on fire.
41:02So he's taking the kids to the car and attempting to call 911.
41:07He has no sense of urgency.
41:10He is just casually walking to the car with his two kids.
41:14Like he doesn't have a care in the world.
41:16And right now, the house is on fire.
41:18A camera across the street provided another vital piece of the puzzle.
41:26This is Mr. Diallo's house.
41:30This camera helps us because it's a continuous view.
41:33Nobody else is going into the house.
41:35That means we have no other suspects entering the house that could set the house on fire.
41:41Mr. Diallo is our key suspect from this video.
41:44The video ruled out any other potential suspects.
41:51A chilling insight into Mamadou's actions.
41:55As you see here, he is casually walking back up to the house.
41:59He'll go over to where she's located.
42:03And he peers in the window to make sure she's on fire.
42:08Right there.
42:19All the evidence seemed to point to Mamadou.
42:23But they needed to prove it in court.
42:31Dr. Mike Kaplan's autopsy report provided crucial information for the case.
42:36It became pretty obvious to me that Mrs. Diallo did not die from the fire itself.
42:45If somebody dies from a fire, if they're alive at the time of the fire,
42:50they're going to be breathing.
42:52So we're going to see a black discoloration involving that entire airway going into the lungs.
42:58But Fatoumata's lungs and airways did not have any black discoloration.
43:05We were able to find just a little trace of soot below the level of the vocal cords.
43:11But it was very trace, so it would have been a very short or fleeting time.
43:16The burns and ligature were obvious.
43:21The carbon monoxide levels, less so.
43:24The fact that we're just seeing just a trace, a touch of that,
43:29tells us that she was most likely unconscious when this fire started.
43:33But she may have taken a few what we call agonal breaths, breaths at the end of her life.
43:39So the cause of death in Mrs. Diallo's case was strangulation.
43:44This form of strangulation is called strangulation with a ligature.
43:51And so that's anything that you use to wrap around a neck to cut off air.
43:56In the U.S., strangulation is an incredibly rare way to kill somebody else.
44:00It's personal. There's often wrestling.
44:01There's a lot that goes into that, which isn't the case if you're shooting a gun.
44:05Police dug into Mamadou and Fatoumata's relationship to try and understand what motivated him to kill.
44:18She went over to Africa, back to Guinea, to visit.
44:24And when she arrived back home, they said the relationship was strained.
44:29Something happened over there, but nobody knew what it was.
44:32I think it's easy to see Fatoumata's reporting as a sign that she had options.
44:39But I see it as exactly the opposite.
44:41So I think the fact that she had to and chose to report a number of times to the police that her partner was violent towards her,
44:51I think that is a sign of a really broken and trapped person.
44:55Mamadou Diallo was charged with fatally strangling his wife Fatoumata with a USB cord and setting fire to her body in the hope of destroying evidence.
45:08He was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 31 years.
45:19If we didn't have the security footage, it would have been much more difficult to get a conviction.
45:27Security cameras, they just don't paint a picture.
45:30They show you that picture.
45:33Mr. Diallo got what he deserved.
45:39It's just a shame that he felt he had to do this.
45:43I'm sure the real answers probably never really come out.
45:47He took the mother away from four children.
45:50He took a sister away.
45:52He took a daughter away.
45:54It does give you a sense of accomplishment when you finally get a conviction and you know he's going to be going away for a very long time.
46:22I'm sure I'm sure the easy
46:42were defeated.
46:46There are a few cartoons that are now,
46:52You