Let me see if I got you some invoice numbers in there.
NARRATOR: From a pile under his desk,
Fort Worth Detective Manny Reyes pulls out a murder file.
MANNY REYES: It starts small with just a simple police
report, maybe a few pictures.
And it just snowballs.
Yeah, it's 9-0-C, Charles.
NARRATOR: Reyes's cold file bears
the name of Jane Thompson.
16 years ago, she was beaten to death,
leaving behind her two sons, who now want the case reopened.
[phone rings]
Cold Case, Reyes.
The oldest brother called and just wanted
to know the status of the case.
I didn't know anything about it.
I mean, we hadn't even considered looking
at that case whatsoever.
So after putting them off for a while,
I went and got the case, opened it up.
It should be under service number 8-1-5, last one.
The more I read, everything's here.
What's wrong here, you know?
It just seems to be falling in place
as I'm reading the case itself.
NARRATOR: One witness statement in particular catches Reyes's
eye.
It is from Jane's son, Josh Thompson,
two years old at the time of his mom's murder
and an apparent eyewitness to the crime.
MANNY REYES: He wasn't being told what to say.
Like, Josh, this is what happened, right?
The line of questioning was, what happened?
Where is she?
And he answered those questions.
What I want to do is we're going to head towards the location
where he said that his mom was hit,
left out by some brush and brushes and stuff.
And the other part was that it was his dad.
Body was found right here.
They've closed this street down since then.
And then when I looked at the crime scene reports
and I saw the crime scene photos, what he was saying
was making sense.
The body was a few feet away from the actual curve.
Obviously, that's where she was killed.
There was no signs of her being dragged and killed elsewhere.
NARRATOR: Manny agrees to meet with Josh
Thompson and his older half brother, Vol, at Vol's house.
Just a question out of curiosity,
what made you decide to contact us?
Oh, man, because it never was closed.
Wide open, man.
I mean, it's-- my little brother was there.
They're like hey, we know you guys are busy and all.
And we're just wondering what the status on our mom's case
was.
We feel like we're grown up now,
and we had to take care of something that should have been
taken care of a long time ago.
NARRATOR: For the first time in almost 20 years,
Josh tells his story to police.
I remember as soon as we got out of the car,
there was arguing.
And I was in the backseat, of course.
So when she let me out the car, she sat me down.
And they just kept arguing, they kept arguing.
And he swung and hit her with his hand, just with a fist.
MANNY REYES: Do you, by any chance,
remember what the argument was about?
No.
MANNY REYES: And the thing is he didn't come out and tell us,
OK, this is the conversation my mom
and dad were having that night.
This is the location where we're at.
It wasn't like that at all.
He just remembered a certain event
that was extremely unusual for a two-year-old to see.
And he hadn't seen it before, and it was real dramatic.
And that's what he told us.
The reason I remember it is because it's the first time I
saw my dad hit my mom.
And she fell and she got up and put her hand in his face.
And then he hit her again.
Then once that happened, he took an object,
and he started beating her in the head with it.
And then the next thing I know, I'm back in the car.
And for me, I remember it was a purse sitting in my lap.
It was my mom's purse, and there was blood on it.
And then I asked, where's mom?
And he was like, oh, she's fine.
She'll be OK.
I'm going to take you to your granny's house.
And that was it.
She never got back in the car?
No.
I remember she was surrounded by a whole lot of leaves.
I saw her laying on the ground.
And the one shocker of all that I got out
of that first meeting was that the day
that this happened when Bobby Woods dropped off
his son at the grandmother's, from then on,
he had never made contact with him.
He just left and abandoned him that one day
and never turned back.
When did you next see him again?
Never again.
Never.
Never seen him again.
After that day he came and brought my bro--
MANNY REYES: He never came back to the grandmother's house?
Never seen him.
Didn't see him at the funeral.
Didn't see him at any wakes.
Didn't see him at any gatherings, nothing.
I mean, it's a parent.
MANNY REYES: He disappeared for a while.
Disappeared forever.
MANNY REYES: Forever.
It is unusual.
Too much of a coincidence.
The last day your father saw you was that Friday afternoon.
Hello, Louella, this is Detective Manny
Reyes, Fort Worth Cold Case.
I needed to get a 1990 autopsy report.
NARRATOR: At the top of Reyes's suspect
list is Jane Thompson's boyfriend
at the time and Josh's biological father,
an ex-convict named Bobby Woods.
MANNY REYES: It turns out she was last seen on June 5.
Depositions were taken.
NARRATOR: Reyes zeros in on depositions taken
between the time of Jane's disappearance
and the discovery of her body.
Again, just tell me what you remember from back then.
NARRATOR: Reyes unearths a former associate
of Bobby Woods, one who claims Bobby confided
in him about the murder.
He's critical because he's pretty much a witness
to what he said, you know?
You go out there and you tell people what you did
or what happened, you know, you just-- you do
that, it's going to come back.
Let's get to the part of Jane's disappearance.
He told her to turn around or something,
like he saw a rabbit or something.
He went and got the shotgun, and he come back.
And he told her to turn around.
And that's when he hit her in the back of the head
with the shotgun.
And the shotgun broke, which is consistent with what
the autopsy showed--
blunt force trauma to the head.
NARRATOR: On a Wednesday afternoon,
Detective Manny Reyes prepares to arrest
Bobby Woods for murder.
Reyes's best piece of evidence-- the couple's only child,
Josh Thompson, just two years old at the time and an alleged
eyewitness to the crime.
MANNY REYES: When you pick him up at work,
he knows it's serious.
It's a little more serious when somebody shows up at your work
than they show up at your home.
This is serious stuff.
NARRATOR: Detectives transport the suspect
downtown, where Josh is waiting with half-brother
Vol and Vol's fiancee.
Bobby, you're in custody, like we've
told you before, because of something
that happened a long time ago.
As a matter of fact, the offense was in 1990.
We'll get to more details on that in a little bit.
But we are investigating the death of--
--Jane Thompson.
At the what?
- Fashion boutique. - Boutique.
OK.
At the fashion boutique?
Yes.
OK.
NARRATOR: In 1990, Woods' statement made no mention
of a fashion boutique.
Instead, he told police that Jane had disappeared when
he took her to get food stamps.
It really surprised me.
I would have expected him to have
rehearsed his story in his mind at least 1,000 times.
If I'm ever arrested, if I'm ever questioned again
in regards to Jane Thompson, this is the story that I gave,
and this is the story I'm going to stick to.
And it turned out that he changed it all.
What did you do the rest of that afternoon
once you couldn't find her?
Once I couldn't find her, I went back across the street
with Joshua, and we sit there.
MANNY REYES: His new story turned out now
that he spent hours there where he had dropped
her off at the boutique.
He spent hours there looking for her, walking up and down,
checking all the locations.
Then, all of a sudden, another shop was closing.
And I asked the guy.
I said, did you see a Black woman wearing a brown shirt
and yellow shorts?
He said, yeah.
He said, she was talking with two guys.
And I said, two guys?
I said, where did they go?
She said-- he said they was sitting in the car down here.
I said, how long ago?
Oh, he said hours ago.
The thing is, if that had really happened, you would have
at least brought that up, if not to the family,
but to the police back then and say, hey,
you need to look for two guys in a car
because that's where she was last seen.
That would have been brought up back in 1990.
That would have been investigated in 1990.
And of course, he didn't bring any of that up in 1990.
NARRATOR: Reyes turns the questioning
to Woods' criminal past, including his conviction
for armed robbery.
Woods lays blame for the crime on his nephew.
What kind of weapon did your nephew have then?
He had a short sawed off shotgun.
So it was a sawed off shotgun.
What I took from him.
So that was good to know that we could actually
put the possession of a shotgun on him
a week prior to the murder.
And the day of the murder, we believe the shotgun
is what was used to hit her.
And you never were told or you have no idea how she died?
[crying]
You don't know if she was shocked or strangled,
drowned, or anything like that?
We had reached the point where I was going to start telling
him, OK, now, wait a minute.
You said this, now it's this.
And everything that he had told me
was going to be contradicted.
OK, let me go get that statement that you gave back then,
and I'll show it to you, see if we can--
see if it'll refresh your memory a little bit.
Can I get an attorney or somebody?
Because all this is going through,
and I don't know if I'm going home or what's going on.
And you want to show me statements,
and I don't know what's going on.
MANNY REYES: No, it's your statement I want to show you,
the one that belongs to you.
Can I have an attorney to look at it with me?
Because right now, I don't know what I'm getting into.
So I think he realized, well, what I just said, I don't think
it's what I said back then.
What am I getting charged with?
MANNY REYES: It's murder.
So he realized that it wasn't going
to be very good after that.
I definitely need an attorney if you
think that I killed my wife?
MANNY REYES: Yes.
Bobby, I'm not going to talk to you anymore.
I got nothing more to say since you've requested a lawyer.
But this young man here would like to say a word for you.
I think the anger came afterwards when we found out
he was denying it, and he was making up stories and stuff
like that.
That's when the anger came.
I hope this helps you a little bit, one way or the other.
[inaudible].
NARRATOR: At day's end, Bobby Woods sits in a jail cell.
[music playing]