[music playing]
NARRATOR: 7:00 PM, March 8, 1987.
Ray and Rita Demel drive home after drinks at the local VFW.
A few miles into the trip, Ray pulls
their van into a turnuot near Blanco bridge
and promptly passes out.
Unable to wake her husband, Rita becomes concerned and flags
down a passing motorist.
The good Samaritan pulls into the turnout driving
a dark-colored pickup and parks within a few feet
of Ray Demel's bumper.
Less than an hour after that, dispatch takes in a 911 call.
NARRATOR: Dana Petersen arrives at the turnout
to discover Rita Demel hysterical
along the side of the road, and her 49-year-old husband
Ray dead.
DANA PETERSON: Mr. Demel was in the vehicle.
He was in the driver's side.
The side window of the driver's door is broken.
I recall one bullet hole through the roof
and the other bullet entered Mr. Demel from the left side.
NARRATOR: The shooter, according to Mrs. Demel,
was the man who stopped to offer roadside assistance.
He may have been able to wake Mr.
Demel up because the vehicle-- the van rolls and contacts
the suspect vehicle.
The suspect gets really mad, according to Mrs. Demel,
and starts shouting, "No mother-mother-[bleep]
can run into my van," or something along that line.
NARRATOR: A good Samaritan no more, the pickup owner
grabbed a gun from his truck and fired two shots at close range
into the Demel van.
Assessing the scene, Peterson speculates the first shot was
fired accidentally as the assailant
broke Demel's driver's side window
with the butt of his gun.
Yeah, I think he would have just hit it
and broken it this way.
And that first round is his hand passed through that tree
shattered it, and put the first round up
through the top of the roof.
And then he just continued down.
Mr. Demel is probably leaning away when he was shot
and that's why he was in that position.
NARRATOR: Evidence at the scene supports Peterson's theory.
Two 45-caliber shell casings are found
inside Demel's van, consistent with an attack at close range.
Tire tracks appear to show a second truck pulling quite
close to where Demel's van was parked, again
consistent with Rita Demel's story.
Finally, an officer picks up a small address
book, dropped in the dust, close to where the shooting occurred.
Detectives wonder if the killer didn't perhaps drop
the book as he fled the scene.
Sometimes bad guys make silly mistakes,
and that's all to our benefit, you know.
So when we found the address book,
we figured, well, this has got to take us someplace.
But we just basically started calling
the people in the notebook.
Tell them we found this notebook,
and basically we're trying to identify who owns it.
NARRATOR: The address book appears
to belong to a 27-year-old local named Norman Baird.
According to friends, Baird also owns a dark gray pickup.
Detectives approach him at home and ask whether he might
be missing an address book.
DANA PETERSON: We just made a casual contact with him.
Non-accusatory, saying we just we
found this laying out in this area
and do you recognize this book?
Is it yours?
And he was able to identify it as his.
We told him that we were involved in an investigation
and we needed to ask him some questions on his whereabouts
the day before.
And he indicated he had not been out of town,
that he'd not gone out by the Blanco Bridge, which
is where the crime scene was.
But he couldn't explain how his notebook
had gotten to the crime scene.
NARRATOR: Detectives are not necessarily buying
Norman Baird's story, but have no probable cause
to search his home or truck.
They returned to the names in the address book,
hoping to get a handle on whether Baird
is telling them the truth.
One of the first people they want
to speak with Norman Baird's oldest friend,
the man we will call Ron.
Ron tells police he saw Baird on the day Ray Demel was killed.
The two attended a party in Salinas.
Ron says Baird left the party around 6:00 PM for a job
interview in nearby Marina.
Contrary to Baird's statement, that would have taken him
down Blanco Road at about the time
Rita Demel was looking for help.
That was just another confirmation that Baird
was not being truthful.
And the more inconsistencies and the more
lies you can catch a suspect in, the better
for the investigation.
NARRATOR: For investigators, it's
all starting to make sense.
A man with perhaps a few beers under his belt
gets into a roadside beef, pulls out a gun,
and fires, then in his haste to leave the scene,
leaves everything but his business
card for police to find.
Detectives filed for a search warrant,
hoping a look inside Baird's home and truck
will move their case from theory to fact.
Detectives want to question Baird further
about his whereabouts on the night of the shooting
and how his address book got so close to a murder.
The suspect, however, lawyers up and refuses to talk.
Investigators cannot get a murder charge approved against
Baird and the case goes cold.
A little something more would not
surface for more than a decade.
In January of 2002, DeLasantos knocks on Ron's front door.
And he answered the door, I told him who I was,
and what I'm investigating, and told him that I needed
him to come down to the office.
And he agreed to do it.
NARRATOR: According to Ron, Baird brought the gun
with him into Ron's home.
Not knowing what else to do, Ron took the gun from his friend.
In a situation like that, where do you want the gun?
Your hands or his?
His hands, the whole public's in trouble maybe.
In my hands, he can't get it back.
FRED DELASANTOS: He had started to waver
by saying, if I say something, is it going to incriminate me?
And I kept assuring him that he was helping
me in this investigation.
So as he spoke to me, I could tell
that he wanted to tell me something
and he knew where the gun was.
NARRATOR: DeLasantos is a statement away from getting
a fix on his murder weapon.
The detective doesn't push, letting
Ron find his way to the truth.
But I wanted to get rid of that gun.
I didn't want it around where he could come back and get it.
So I disposed of it.
I buried it in the side of a mountain.
NARRATOR: Norman Baird's best friend
tells cold case detectives he put Baird's gun
in a military style ammo box and buried
it in a field next to a tree.
Problem is, the field is nearly an acre big
and contains close to 100 trees.
FRED DELASANTOS: I thought, we're never going to find it.
This was just something-- another thing
that's going to end up being a dead end.
NARRATOR: Hoping to shorten his odds,
DeLasantos calls upon a group expert
in finding lost things, also known as the Treasure Hunters
Society of Santa Clara Valley.
Less than an hour into the effort,
Warren Whitehead works an area near a large oak tree,
locks on to a solid signal, and begins to dig.
Took out the scraper and scraped away about maybe three
or four inches of leaves and then start bringing down maybe
three to four inches of dirt.
And I could make out the outline of ammunition box.
And so I gave a good holler, I got a target over here,
and the lead man got hold of the officer and up they came.
NARRATOR: Detective DeLasantos the ammo
box says the one Ron buried more than a decade earlier.
Inside it is a 45-caliber gun and cartons of ammunition.
Latent prints lifted off the cartons
are matched to Norman Baird.
Ballistics tests confirm the buried 45 was the weapon
used to kill Ray Demel.
Cold case detectives have all the hard evidence they need.
15 years after the fact, Baird is charged with second degree
murder, pleads no contest, and is sentenced to 15 years
to life in prison.