911 emergency.
Yeah, we just heard a huge boom, like a gas explosion or a car
blew up or something.
San Diego's fire department responds to the 911 call
and the single vehicle blazing away along La Jolla
scenic Drive.
While a journalist rolls tape, the flames are doused.
Smoke begins to clear and the charred remains of a human body
first become visible in the passenger seat of the car.
Plates on the back of the car are issued out of Kansas.
And check out to a David Stephens current address,
Pacific Beach, San Diego.
San Diego homicide works
the interior of David Stevens apartment
looking for any clues as to his killer.
Scattered throughout the apartment are other signs,
fresh signs that David Stevens last night on Earth
was perhaps not spent alone.
As I made my way into the bedroom,
I found a discarded wrapper for a condom in the wastebasket,
as well as a tube of KY jelly.
There was also two glasses on that same nightstand,
one of which had lipstick on it.
And the bathroom. I found strands of black hair.
They were long and straight. Appeared to be a female's hair.
In the bedroom,
Joe Cristinziani finds two sets of fingerprints
plastered on the mirrored headboard over Steven's bed.
What struck me as unusual
about these fingerprints were two things.
A, It was almost ten fingers, as in two hands.
I had two sets of hands.
One was obviously larger than the other,
which would indicate a man and perhaps a woman's fingerprints.
We were real confident, and it was very obvious
that someone recently had sex in that apartment.
Detectives collect physical evidence
focusing on the smaller set of prints and the long black hairs.
Both signs of a woman, one who most likely had sex with Stevens
shortly before his murder,
and one who may know what happened to him.
All detectives have to do now is find her.
There was a little topless bar
right next door called Dancers.
And we would go there 2 or 3 times a week.
And that was the only place that I could think of
that he would have met someone.
Detective John Tefft hits the club
and circulates Stephen's picture.
A lot of them knew the guy. He was a regular customer.
They were upset about it.
All the employees were always made available to us.
Many of the employees came down, provided DNA samples,
fingerprints, whatever we wanted.
Fingerprints from the dancers are compared to those found
in David Steven's bedroom. None of them match.
With no viable leads on the mystery woman,
Detective J.R. Young decides to take a different tack.
And opens up the victim's personal address book.
An entry he had in his day organizer,
which he had a smiley face
and there was a name associated with it.
I learned that that had not been followed up on.
So I contacted the person whose phone number that was,
and it turned out to be one of the dancers
that we had not yet talked to.
Young interviews the dancer.
She tells him that she and Stevens were casual friends.
He submits her prints for comparison.
Again, no match.
Four months after David Stevens was pulled from his car,
his case is dropped into the Cold Files,
where it remains for two years
until detectives decide to play a long shot.
On January 28th, 2001,
the Baltimore Ravens prepare to play the New York Giants
in Super Bowl 35. With a huge television audience,
San Diego Homicide decides to run a Crime Stoppers spot,
flashing David Stephens's picture and requesting help.
The next day, an anonymous female calls in.
There was an individual at a party
Super Bowl party with several other people.
And when that was shown, this woman goes,
that person that was involved in that killing
is a friend of mine.
And she then telephoned the police and said,
you should go talk to this person.
She knows something about your killing.
The caller identifies a possible suspect
and it happens to be the same stripper
who two years before had said
she and David Stevens were friends.
Her DNA and her fingerprints didn't match.
So physically, we couldn't put her at the crime scene.
Even without physical evidence,
detectives believe the call might be more than coincidence.
For the next six months, they worked the strip club angle.
Month after month, they continued to come up empty.
Until one day in November of 2001,
when another call reaches the homicide team.
Was actually sitting at my desk in the homicide office
when the secretary got the call and says,
I have a friend who's an eye witness to a murder
and she needs to talk to somebody.
So she transfers the call to me. I speak briefly with the friend
who in turn puts me on the phone.
Ny is Ny Nourn, a woman who claims
she has information about the murder of David Stevens.
I didn't press her on the phone and asked her
if we could come up and talk with her.
And she said 'Yes, of course', and then John and I went up
and spoke with her up at her business.
Nourn tells police David Stevens was her supervisor
at the perfect match as well as her lover,
and that she knows the name of the man who killed Stevens.
Detectives stopped the interview and asked Ny Nourn
to accompany them back to the police station.
Ny Nourn tells police, three years earlier, at the age of 18,
she began a workplace flirtation with David Stevens.
The fly in the ointment was Ny's boyfriend at the time,
a 34 year old married man named Ron Barker.
She was seeing him on the side
and she was becoming kind of dissatisfied with him.
And David was expressing an interest in that.
According to Nourn,
she and Stevens made plans to go on their first date.
According to Nourn, she left Stephen's apartment at 3 a.m.
and drove home only to find Ron Barker
waiting in a jealous rage.
Ny Nourn tells Barker a version of what happened that night.
To cover her infidelity.
however, she tells Barker the sex was not consensual.
And what happened was, is basically she relayed it to us,
is that she met with David, had sex with him that night,
and then Ron found out about it. And then Ron Barker killed him.
Ny Nourn tells police she was present
when Barker shot and killed Stevens,
but could do nothing to stop him.
That she was as much a victim
of Ron Barker's rage as David Stevens.
She's implicating Barker as the person
who's the jealous boyfriend
who actually kills Stevens and burns up his car.
And I said, Are you willing to phone him
and talk about this while we record it?
Because now it's no longer her word. It'll be their word.
And so she was willing to do that.
Detectives have two suspects,
each pointing a finger at the other.
Ron Barker, however, has a bit more credibility
as he readily admits to being the shooter,
while Ny Nourn claims to be entirely innocent.
According to Barker, Stevens drives Ny Nourn
to where he thinks her car has broken down.
Barker follows behind.
When Barker flashes his lights, Nourn tells Stevens
it is her brother there to help with the car.
Stephen suspects nothing and Barker gets into the back seat.
Then he reaches over and shoots Stevens twice in the head.
They set up this pretty elaborate plan
and how to get him out of his apartment,
get him into a remote area,
and then put your arm around his neck
and shoot him in the back of the head.
Barker goes on to explain
that he set the victim's car on fire,
hoping to destroy evidence of the shooting.
Barker even has the burns to prove it.
According to Barker, he and Nourn swore each other to secrecy
and kept things quiet for three years
until the relationship fell apart.
Detectives charged Ron Barker with murder in the first degree.
The next day they arrest Ny Nourn and charge her
with the exact same thing. In January of 2003,
Ron Barker represents himself in a San Diego courtroom.
He questions witnesses and asserts
his tape confession was coerced.
The jury, however, doesn't buy it.
After deliberating just two hours,
they find Barker guilty of first degree murder.
He is sentenced to life in prison on January 27th, 2003.
Ny Nourn is also found guilty of first degree murder
and sentenced to life.