The Investigators

When I go into any scene, it's me versus the bad guy.

And I know that I'm smarter and I know that I'm better equipped.

“Who's fingerprints are all over the hit TV show CSI?”

People like puzzles and mysteries. Here's a clue. This single mother of three has solved hundreds of murders, as a real-life crime scene investigator. Liz, tell us how it's done.

Richard Slesinger is on the trail of CSI's secret weapon. She does everything first. From the pronunciation of words to explaining the science. Action. And Liz won the best.

Perhaps the investigators will have a work with. Sergeant Larry Mitchell is still working the streets. Yeah, pretty bad scene. We can be here for a couple of days. Still working the real CSI that Liz left behind.

The whole family, the woman, the torture murderer. Not your typical crime scene. This chair was moved from the badny room into the bedroom.

Catching this killer comes down to one critical clue.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. A special 48-hours mystery. The investigators. We realize that it's not a straight-up hanging. In a small office hidden in the hills, just outside Los Angeles.

The body was pitched backwards over the railings. A murder mystery is unfolding. What other forensics do we have? We can tell from rope forensics that the knot was tied by somebody who was right-handed. So we're ruling him out as a suspect.

But these aren't detectives. Nice. I like it. They're television writers. And for them--

This is really good. This is really good. Murder comes easy. There's a dead dwarf hanging from a an upper balcony. Who are you?

[LAUGHTER] Who are they? The number one show on television, CSI, on a familiar network, CBS. They're a band of crime-solving scientists who have made geek the new sheek.

I like her in this home here. And made heroes out of people like-- I don't want to have our close-up CSI shot-- Liz Devine. I've been able to tap into a creative side of me that I didn't know I had. And that's been kind of interesting.

Here we go, my personal app. Liz is a single mother of three. She worked for 15 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as a real-life crime-seen investigator. A criminalist. Before becoming the technical advisor for CSI--

I really always thought I would be in law enforcement.

I always did. I never thought I'd do anything but that. So to make a switch like that, it's very exciting stuff. Let's clear, guys. Here we go.

She does everything for us. I mean, we had to have someone around all the time when we first started out

“to make sure that we knew what we were doing, that we were doing it, right?”

Let's roll. Roll and roll and roll and roll. Hey, Martin. Action. First to exhaust his appeals and get an execution day.

Hey, Philma. William Peterson and Mark Helgenberger, the stars of CSI, both rely on Liz to make them look like scientists. Cup print does very nice. That's from the pronunciation of words, to explaining the science, to the wealth of experience

that she's got. Liz? Tell us how it's done. Well, I was just saying that. In just two years, Liz has earned the title executive story editor.

She spent most of her adult life developing clues. Now she develops stories. There's no polite way to ask this. Do you feel like you've sold out? Gosh, I hope not.

I did 15 years of forensics and it's a hard thing to do every day. You're dealing with people on the worst days of their lives, and it's been nice to work in a different environment. Action. The popularity of CSI has led to a nationwide interest in forensic science, a largely

unappreciated field about his glamorous as an autopsy. Until now. God, print it. You know, a lot of times it's just when you're in the store and people come up and go, you know, my daughter's gone majoring in criminology now because of your show.

Yeah. You guys get some toys, it's not a toy, or really. Like a super-charge rent remover on a list of footprints, possibly our killers. People like puzzles and mysteries.

“And I think the reason our show has been so successful is because we're showing them the”

science that we're making it cool.

That's microscope.

“Tomorrow, Las Vegas term, she is the ace in the hole.”

She really is the backbone of CSI.

That's cool. This eye is the brainchild of Anthony Zyker, a rookie writer from Las Vegas, and a pair of Hollywood professionals. And cut into the odd. Executive producers, Carol Mendelssohn.

Why are we not using that? And and Donahue. We're enthralled by murder. Now, the people look away. We keep looking.

That's how we get our scripts. We keep looking. Forensic science is it's hard a mystery. You solve a mystery. And Liz is job when she was a CSI and Liz is job is a writer is to say, these are the facts.

This is the mystery. Let's solve it.

Liz divine has had ample opportunity to acquire her particular expertise.

“How many murders do you think you've investigated?”

Somewhere between 750 and 800, I think. Several episodes of CSI have been based on murders, Liz has worked on, including one of her most brutal and challenging cases. That was one that can't be to this day. Mother's Day, 1995.

Paul Karazi was found covered with blood in a parking lot. His ex-girlfriend Sonia Salinas and his mother were dead nearby. His two-year-old son was uningered in the backseat of his car. Karazi claimed they had been robbed, but what Liz and her colleagues found at the crime scene told a very different story.

Paul Karazi and his girlfriend Donna Lee together planned a murder and they brutally stabbed these two women and left them for dead and killed them and did it all in front of his own son. In the CSI version of this crime, investigators pour a casting material into the victim's wounds to determine the shape of the murder weapon, interesting idea, except for one

problem. That's not possible. I lost that battle in the writer's room. What was the argument? The argument is you can't do that.

Here we go.

But there was one critical piece of evidence that did solve the case.

What does that look like here? That looks like a hand of crime. Both on TV and in reality, a hand print that indicated one victim put up a fight. It was with her left hand, which had been badly injured by defense wounds that she grabbed the left side of his shirt and clutched it and we could actually match the defense wounds

with her injuries. Police think Karazi committed the murders because his ex-girlfriend wanted money for child support. Liz worked on this investigation for three years and it finally paid off. Paul Karazi received the death penalty. But Liz found she also had a price to pay.

For 15 years I did that and for 15 years it affected the way I looked at my children and people in my life. How do you affect the way you looked at those folks? I'm a lot more skeptical and a lot more suspicious. I mean, I've got blood from my kids and my freezer because if anything happens to them,

I want to be able to identify them. I mean, that's not normal and I know that.

“But that's what this business did to me.”

Alright, let's clear, let's shoot. While Liz is still dealing with crime scenes on a daily basis, at the end of the day, there's one big difference. You see people get up from the autopsy table and wipe off the makeup. This is the piece of glass that's going to come out here and you go home.

We know you're making a mess, Rachel. It's okay now. Now the only crimes Liz has to solve. Mom, burn time. Are her own.

The sham rock survived, but that's about it, you guys. Alright, my mom. This is the crime scene right here. I've seen a lot of negativeness. Once you do a flower, so I'm trying to bring more positive things into my life and

surround my kids with that. And I think that's important. But the lifeless divine has left behind. Goes on without her. Yeah, take a look at this.

What's that? And all over the walls. Yeah. Look at this. Jesus.

Pretty bad thing. This is not footage from the TV show. There was a struggle in the doorway. It's the real thing. It appears as though we have four victims who have been tortured.

And the real CSI's are about to come face-to-face, no print on the window. This was negative. Until you're mere for a couple of days. With a mystery that will take all their skills to solve. This is not a blunt, it's smeared blunt next.

This is the real thing. It may look like a TV show, but it's the scene of one of the worst homicides in Los Angeles County in five years.

It's not a drama, but it couldn't be more dramatic. You got any forced entry?

“It's too crazy to let him go away there.”

Okay, slightly enough is evident. For the next 48 hours, these men and women, real life crime scene investigators with the LA Sheriff's Department Crime Lab, will struggle with a mystery that will take all their skills to solve. No print on the window.

Who killed this family? Why, Mario Ilson Longshot Sergeant Larry Mitchell will lead the investigation. It appears as though we have four victims who have been tortured. We have the late-year-old girl who has been tortured and sexually assaulted.

It never ceases to amaze me what people do to each other.

Liz Devine, who worked closely with Mitchell before moving on as the technical advisor for CSI, has seen this kind of crime before. These are things that are just shocking and horrible, but they happen. Yeah, what we're going to do with young grandchildren of his own, the 56-year-old Mitchell might well have a hard time keeping this from getting personal.

Why, if you shot any exterior shot yet. But 19 years of working crime scenes has taught him to forget his emotions and rely on his instincts.

“What are the first things you look for when you get on a crime scene?”

Anything that you see that's out of place. Things that are out of place that maybe someone grabbed, maybe someone touched to give you a finger print, maybe give you some DNA that can lead you to a suspect. I think me and D.C., but even a callous Sergeant Mitchell finds it tough to stay focused on the job at hand when he gets his first look inside the Ruiz house.

Yeah, take a look at this. Let's batter all over the walls in here. Yeah. Look at this. What's print on here?

Jesus. Pretty bad scene. Who can be here for a couple of days? I haven't seen very many crime scenes as violent as this one. There's just a lot of violence and a lot of anger in this part.

“Did the family know the killer or killers right now detectives aren't ruling anything out?”

At this point, the Sheriff's Department knows one thing for sure. Sometime between Friday and Saturday morning in this Los Angeles suburb, 38-year-old Miguel Ruiz, his wife, Maritsa Trejo, his grandmother, Analawiza Martinez, and his eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine Ruiz, were murdered, but that's all investigators know. Clear this place.

Get all you photographs. Okay. House is a wreck. They pretty much ran sack the house. You got blood everywhere on the walls on the floor.

It looks as though they tried to maybe clean the place up a little bit. A lot of work to do.

They live in years or so that I've worked on a side I've never seen a scene like this.

This is like incredibly brutal, incredibly hard to take, really even for somebody that sees this stuff every day. Detective Ray PV is a lieutenant in the homicide bureau. Take a look at the air mesh. We all have kids and you look down this little eight-year-old girl and realize that a day

or so ago she was just a normal little girl. Right. I got the two family of everything just walked up. Yes, that was my baby. Olga Ruiz lost most of her family that morning, including her brother Miguel.

They were a great family, a working class family. My brother worked out of his house. Miguel was a stay-at-home father who had a small business building computers. He was the best father any child could ever have and the best brother any sister could ever have and I'm going to miss him.

Crime scene investigators know most killers make mistakes and this is where they get caught. We are looking for a finger for evidence. It may not be as sexy as a Hollywood set but this lab is one of the best equipped in the country and with good reason they investigate over 70,000 cases each year. You can get some prints.

You guys know how these cases go, prints what's going to give us a suspect. Crime Lab will pull out all the stops on this one, photographing every piece of evidence, analyzing blood and fluids, DNA testing and fingerprint processing and identification. Sifting through the haystack, looking for a needle, a possible fingerprint. Oh, that's nice.

That's the challenge so that I would always bring in to a crime scene myself when I would

go. I know there's evidence here and my job is to find it. Blood drops are concentrated on this panel. At the crime scene the investigators are still at it, combing every inch of the house. I don't know if you can see all the tiny little dots that's actually blood spatter.

In real time, unlike prime time, it takes much more time than one hour to solve a crime.

It's a painstakingly slow and meticulous process.

“I'm sure that they won't kill me, it will kill us.”

Oh, they will most certainly drop. And a long day of work. Okay, I heard throw to slow. Mm-hmm. It's turning into what will be an even longer night.

Use throw to pierce cut pretty bad. In the real world, it's a very stressful job. You deal with a lot of trauma. You're dealing with innocent people who have been brutally murdered. You deal with the pressure of knowing that you only have one chance to process this scene.

And what you've done, you can't go back. Seeing people in their own homes murdered, it's a harsh thing to get used to. For a long time, I would hardly ever look at the victim's faces. Why not? It made it to real.

“12 hours after the investigation began, the bodies of the Ruiz family are finally removed”

from the house. But the investigation has barely begun. The mystery of why these four people were so brutally murdered. There is one piece of evidence still inside the crime scene that will break this case. And it's right under the investigators' noses.

We're just going to shut the scene down for the night. Some graphs kind of refresh and come back in the morning. I read about it this morning. I read this article and I'll just come back. Sunday morning's headlines are a chilling reminder for Liz Divide.

Now it's tragic, you know, a family wiped out. This is the world she left behind when she traded life as a real crime scene investigator. I did a lot of cases with multiple victims. And when Hollywood. Liz is one of the best crime scene investigators that I've ever worked with.

Sergeant Larry Mitchell and his team of investigators from the Los Angeles Sheriff's

Crime Lab are now entering their second long day of work on this case.

So it's a slow process, but they haven't made a dent in the mountain of evidence left behind by the killer of the Ruiz family. Because one thing about a crime scene, you only have one time to get it right. There is this sort of amount of adrenaline rush to that. It was invigorating.

And so I did miss that. It was bloods batter from the door from the base all the way up to about six feet. The Ruiz house looks like something out of a horror movie at first. But a closer inspection reveals what appears to be blood on the walls is in fact something else entirely.

Not your typical crime scene. There is a pancake syrup, a Italian dressing, barbecues sauce, all kinds of different food products spread all over this room. It's a bizarre discovery, but Sergeant Mitchell thinks whoever did this had investigators like him in mind.

That's something that you would normally see at a crime scene. It makes you stop and think. Now maybe that was why these things were done to disguise a motive. It's a battle of wits between the killer and the investigators. 27 and 40 inches.

And I go into any scene, it's me versus the bad guy. And I know that I'm smarter and I know that I'm better equipped. And it's just whether or not he's lucky enough that somehow I don't find the evidence. You're a bit of smart killer? Not too many.

But this is a complicated crime scene. Investigators are working in teams. The identification team gathers fingerprint evidence and documents the scene. As a biology team, analyzes and interprets blood evidence. In the presence of blood, the clear solution turns purple, that's very impressive.

30 hours into the investigation, one tiny detail catches the eye of an investigator. There's a chair out of place. The chair was moved from the Danny room, into the bedroom. Did the killer move the chair? If so, did he leave some trace behind?

To look for prints, investigators use a high-tech gadget called an electrostatic dust lifter. Electric charge field will go on opposite end. See how it's starting to suck down, through electrostatic.

“And then all you need to need to do is just kind of roll it out.”

All the way through.

Finally, investigators find what they're looking for.

That needle in the hay stack, multiple prints. Not fingerprints. shoe prints. That's the highest quality one is here. Yeah, that's similar to the bloodiest shoe prints that are in the bathroom on the north side of the house.

That shoe, if we find it, we can make a conclusive match with that with those marks, because this is, yeah, that's excellent.

With photos of the shoe prints in hand, we find shoes that match these footprints, and we got the killer.

“Detective Ray PV sends his homicide detectives to interview neighbors, including one person they know has had a run-in with the Ruiz family.”

As we speak, we got investigators going out to a house nearby. In this house, just around the corner, they find their suspect, wearing a pair of shoes with souls similar to the prints lifted from the chair. The shoes were taken to our crime line up. The shoes were brought in. Bob Kyle is among other things.

I'll handle the envelope. An expert in shoe prints. I have the actual evidence item here, and I turned it over, and almost immediately, I could see that we had potential for the correct shoe. Why, what can you see here? I can see right away that there's a cut that runs across these three elements.

What is that car respond to in this photo? And that cut corresponds to this area on the shoe print. How certain are you? 100%. You're 100% certain?

“Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that these prints came from this pair of shoes to the exclusion of all other shoes in the world.”

That was good enough for detectives. Less than 48 hours after the murders, they arrested 23-year-old Alfonso Morales.

The footprint was crucial.

It did make the hair stand on the back of my neck. I knew at that point I'm going to have a hand in this, and this person's going to answer. When the crime scene investigators search Morales's house, they turned up even more evidence. We believe the contents inside this bin belong to the victims that were murdered. Morales, it turns out not only live nearby, he occasionally helped Miguel Ruiz with his computer business.

Investigators think the two men had a falling out when Morales was told to stay away from Ruiz's daughters. CS-20E isn't any sea flat-screen monitor. Here's to be a number of small, blood stains on the screen. A lot of stains here on the sides of the keys and on the side. In the midst of all the evidence, retish stains on the accord, only an expert can comprehend.

There's one thing they found at the scene, anyone can understand.

A camera with photos of the Ruiz family taken just days before the murder.

So in this one awful day you lost your brother, your niece, your grandmother, and my sister lost. Miguel Ruiz's sister, Olga. How would you like them to be remembered? Just a typical family who loved each other very much. A crowd of their neighbors turned out to honor the Ruiz family and share their grief.

"He's my father." One neighbor was absent. Qsubi Ruiz is on fun so Ignacio Morales. Since we last brought you this story in October, Alfonso Morales pled not guilty at his preliminary hearing. It remains in jail waiting for his trial and could face the death penalty.

"Hey, man, you guys are great, Jeff." "Oh, you guys have got the weekend off." But even as they worked the Ruiz case, other work was already piling up. It was a bloody four days in LA. We had 17 homicides.

Even for us, that's quite a run. It's such a short amount of time. When you see multiple people, massacred like that, it's very difficult. And everybody has their own way to cope with it. And that's part of the skill of being an investigator.

Everybody in this unit is here because they want to be here and this is what they want to do. They love the challenge. They work in these difficult scenes. They love the opportunity to put their skills to work. And we're fine.

We're ready for the next one. Drink up, baby. Fantasy People Happy Hour is here to get you wins and have some laughs. Matthew Barry here and my podcast.

“Fantasy People Happy Hour has a sleeper's bus and starts at advice you need to win your league.”

We're diving into the tape. We're crunching the numbers to bring you sleepers. Bus weekly starts at advice. Whether you're defending a title or desperately avoiding last place, I've got you covered every single weekday.

The bar is open. It's Fantasy People Happy Hour with Matthew Barry. Wherever you get your podcast. tucked away on a narrow street in the exclusive Benedict Canyon section of Los Angeles sits a slightly rundown mansion known locally as the castle.

It was here two years ago that a Halloween party suddenly turned deadly.

If you look outside at the position that someone would be firing a weapon, that's an awfully elevated angle.

“Tom Street is here trying to figure that out.”

This is a crime scene photograph. A former homicide detective turned forensic investigator. He ever seen a shooting where the officers repaired all of the gunshot holes. Street specializes in crime scene reconstruction. With the track through the torso you've got an entrance in an exit site.

It's his job to put all the pieces of evidence together and come up with the theory of how this fatal shooting occurred. It's about getting to the truth of the matter. It could be street's biggest case. It's certainly the most publicized.

Los Angeles officials are investigating a weekend shooting. LAPD is under fire for the shooting death this past weekend. It was gunfire.

“The victim, a 39-year-old actor named Anthony Dwayne Lee.”

The shooter, a third-year Los Angeles police officer, Tarelle Hopper,

the officer believed that he was in danger. The police quickly defended Hopper's actions, calling the shooting justified. What was it? The incident began innocently enough in the early morning hours of October 28, 2000. Hopper and his partner responded to a routine radio call.

A neighbor's complaint about loud noise coming from the castle Halloween party. Upon arriving, the officers entered the house and began searching for the owner. They proceeded down some steps that they described into the bar room area. At this point they turned to the right. They came up this series of three steps and then moved down this direction.

The officer states that he's shined flashlight through a door pane. Witnesses on the inside said that they saw a light, but they couldn't determine who was shining the flashlight. One of the partygoers in that room with his back turned towards Officer Hopper was Anthony Lee. He looks around and spots the flashlight and sticks his hand into his waistband and starts to pull the weapon. And at this point Officer Hopper drew his weapon and began firing.

Within seconds Officer Hopper seen here in an LAPD recreation of the shooting, fired all nine rounds in his semi-automatic handgun. Four of the shots hit Lee, killing him on the spot. Then a tragic discovery. The gun that Lee was allegedly pointing at the officer turned out to be a replica of a 357 Magnum. A movie prop worn by Lee as part of his Halloween costume.

Having him gone, there's just a really big piece that's missing in my life. Lee's younger sister, Tina. I remember the first thing I thought of when I really was dead was oh god who do I call now. There's no one I can call now. Lee was a hard-working actor whose career was beginning to heat up.

He'd had a small role in liar liar. With Jim Carrot Miranda, I won't lie. Then we'll just have to find someone who will. And regularly appeared in television dramas.

“Do you think this family being black means I'm not interested in clearing this case?”

I think when it comes to black on black violence, people are all too ready to shake their heads and accept it. He was really talented, really smart, really ambitious. He was a very good, very very good brother.

Tina has never been satisfied with the official police version of her brother's death.

They've always made statements or claims that somehow my brother was to blame for this happening. Tina's doubts became even stronger after the autopsy. The autopsy report is probably the first time I really knew that he was shot in the back. Shot in the back four times. Yes.

We're talking about four shots that struck this individual in the back sight of his body. Three times in the upper portion of his back and one time in the back of the head. That's an awful long time presenting his back to the officer. It was presented by LAPD that the officer had to do it. The individual not only pulled the gun, but also pointed it directly at the officer.

And then to hear that he was shot in the back, really raised a lot of questions in my mind. Questions which prompted Tina to hire a lawyer and not just any lawyer. This is the case that cries out for some sort of justice it seems to me.

Johnny Cochran represents Tina in the multi-million dollar wrongful death suit she's filed against the LAPD and officer hopper.

Now nobody's saying this particular officer hopper got out. Went to work that evening and said I'm going to go out and shoot somebody. But he was negligent. He validated his own rules and the thing that really probably troubles me is much as anything.

In fact, separate investigations by the LAPD and the District Attorney's Office concluded that officer hopper was justified in his use of deadly force.

“No criminal charges were filed against him.”

They said something he may need a little more training. We need a lot more training. A succinctly stated a man at a custom party inside of a room who can't see outside is shot by a person who didn't identify himself. So what do we do?

We shoot first and then ask questions later.

That's what happened. This is not acceptable police work. What's amazing is of how close they were to each other. These folks were separated by no more than five to six feet. And street points out something else the police will have to explain.

The apparent contradiction between Officer Hopper's statement after the shooting and the coroner's report. Officer Hopper stated that the entire time that he fired at Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee was posing a threat. The problem with that was that the gunshot wounds were in Mr. Lee's back. He couldn't turn around and get his back to this officer by the time he shoots. That's ridiculous.

So he's lying. He's lying. What is he?

“When the subject points a gun at the camera, you say that.”

The LAPD has its own expert back with some surprising revelations.

I always love this picture because this is when he was a little boy.

To this day, Tina Lee can't understand. Afro, big Afro. And the powder blue suit, it was just so classic 70s. How her older brother Anthony, a successful character actor. It was so good and there was so much promise.

Could end up dead. Shot to death at a Halloween party by Los Angeles police officer Terrell Hopper, who thought a fake gun Lee pointed at him was real. It's Halloween. People are going to be dressed up.

You're going to safe it. Confusing situation at best. I just don't know what the officer was thinking. The officer believed that he was in danger. And others were in danger and he had to take actions.

The LAPD immediately came under pressure, which intensified after the autopsy revealed Lee was shot in the back for a time. They came out strongly and said he was pointing a gun at the office. Tina's attorney, Johnny Cochran, blames the LAPD for Lee's death. We're pointing a gun at the officer.

The officer's firing at you. You'd expect the man would be hit in the face. The torso in the front. That wasn't the case. He was shot in the back.

These projectiles travel anywhere between 900 and about 1,100 feet per second.

For Rinsic investigator, Tom Street. Well, I can you spin around at a rate of 1,100 feet per second. I don't think so. The Los Angeles Police Department turned down our request for an interview with them and officer Hopper.

Even so, there is an expert who thinks he can explain why Lee was shot in the back. Okay, let's do it again this time with a little resistance. His name is Bill Lewinsky. Remember the temporal integral angle?

Lewinsky, who teaches law enforcement at Minnesota State University, has spent years doing time analysis research on the moves suspects make when they pull guns on cops. My goal was to understand how quickly the weapon could move forward and shoot at the officer.

“In other words, how much reaction time would the officer have?”

The LAPD heard about Lewinsky's research and contacted him. But why? The shooting fits very closely with one of motions that I studied. It's called the 180-degree turn to square back position. We need to take a look at two things here.

How long it takes to pull the trigger and how quickly someone can do that turn. The list exists conducted by the LAPD similar to this one, which 48 hours arranged, estimated that it took officer Hopper about two seconds to draw and fire all nine shots of his 45 caliber handgun.

But keep in mind, only four of the nine shots hit Lee. Five shots missed. What do you make of that? I believe those five shots were the first five rounds that were fired. And the last four rounds were the ones that impacted on Mr. Lee.

He had to have time to do the turn. But could Lee have made a 180-degree turn in the time it took Hopper to fire those first five rounds about one second? Okay, if we look at this motion, I see how quick that rotation can occur. If we look at frames, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven frames.

And the average subject is almost half a second.

“Half a second, giving Lee more than enough times as Lewinsky”

to have turned his back square to officer Hopper. His conclusion? The first rounds firing. Causing Mr. Lee to realize this was for real. And he had to get out of there.

And then he moved into the shots as he was turning. And that quick turn he made, you're saying, basically it would appear as though the officer shot him in the back when there was no longer a threat. That's correct.

To further prove his point, Lewinsky set up a simple demonstration. When the gun is pointed at you, you say, "Bang." That's all I got to do. That's all you got to do. Bang.

“He shot me, but now I shot him in the back.”

You shot him in the back. Bang. Then I shot him in the back. You shot him in the back. Bang.

It's very quick. Bang, bang, bang. I shot him square in the back. It's tough. No, this is not a blanket excuse for cops shooting people in the back.

But it does explain how an officer could see a situation. Justifiably, shoot at the subject that's presenting the threat. And yet, have a pass with a different outcome. The one factor that is etched in granite is that that person had their back

“to the shooter at the time they were shot.”

It'll give us the deflection. Street's theory of the shooting depicted in this forensic animation is very different from Lewinsky's.

He believes the first four shots fired by Hopper hit Lee in the back,

spinning him around before he fell to the floor. But even if Lewinsky's theory is correct, it still doesn't explain why officer Hopper fired all nine rounds from his handgun. These weapons are fired in burst of two or three. Then you assess the necessity for additional shots.

And the officer didn't do that. He stood in the front of this glass doorway and fired nine shots. Firing through glass was a punch. That many rounds will curing so quickly. Could he stop his action?

Two seconds? We're expecting a lot from someone when they're facing their own death. But as far apart as street and Lewinsky may be on what really happened the night Anthony Lee was shot, there is one thing they do agree on. I don't have any doubt in my mind that Anthony Lee thought the officer was somebody from the Halloween party.

And that's why he did what he did. There's no reason that anyone would pull a fake weapon and point it at a police officer under these circumstances. What occurred was an absolute tragedy. It's a tragedy like so many officer involved shootings are a real tragedy. Tragedy for the officer.

Tragedy for the department, the community. They're most of all for Mr. Linus family. It's really hard when I look at my daughter because I just know he would have been just a wonderful call.

And it's just so hard because I know that she'll never know how wonderful it was.

Tina's wrongful death suit against Hopper and the LAPD was settled in February more than two years after Lee was killed. The agreed upon amount of $225,000 was far less than she had originally sued for. But for Tina, it's not the money, but the message that matters. I'm hoping somehow that if nothing else, if it makes LAPD think a little bit more about their policies and how they train their officers.

If it makes them hold their officers just a little bit more accountable. If they take more seriously investigated, officer involved shootings, then at least that's a step in the right direction. In 2005, Alfonso Morales was convicted of all four murders and sentenced to death. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions in California. Paramount plus is your streaming home for the NFL on CBS every Sunday.

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