[music playing]
NARRATOR: In the corner of the park,
a female lies naked in the dirt, shot eight times in the back.
Told me that her body had been found at a lot of our park
and she appeared to be a victim of a homicide.
NARRATOR: Detective Paul Villalpando catches the call
and rolls to the scene.
She was totally unclothed.
There were several apparent gunshot
wounds to her upper body.
I noticed a lot of debris nearby and some clothes.
And there was some trash, beer bottles,
and condoms found on the ground nearby
the location where she was found.
NARRATOR: Crime scene technicians
discovered two sets of unknown footprints in the dirt.
The prints are photographed and evidence collected.
Meanwhile, Villalpando tries to ID his victim.
At this time, I decided to take a photograph
and show it to the people that were
gathered in the parking lot.
One female there told me she thought she recognized
the person as being Pam, and that she hung
around the area of Hollywood Terrace and Ocean
View Boulevard in San Diego.
In general, it's a high-crime area.
We walked up to the house, but there was a pit
bull chained to the front door.
I yelled at the house, and a male, Mr. Sharpe,
came out and spoke with me.
They showed me a Polaroid, and I said that was her.
NARRATOR: Tyrone Sharpe IDs the victim
as his friend, 32-year-old Pamela Shelly, a
known prostitute and drug user.
According to Sharpe, Pamela left his house around 2:00 AM,
but never returned home.
Oh, she said she was going to the playground.
They call it the playground.
I kind of walked her up to the next block
here and just told her to be careful, you know?
And she said, well, somebody's got my money in their pocket.
And she took off with her little bouncy walk that she has.
NARRATOR: The news of his friend's murder
hits Tyrone hard.
She was the sweetest person that you ever wanted to meet.
She was a beautiful person.
And of all these unnecessary lot lizards around here,
why would they take the queen, you know?
NARRATOR: Villalpando hits the streets
and starts asking around.
This is 32nd and National.
It's high pedestrian traffic because of a nearby Naval base.
So she could get customers pretty steadily out here.
I was looking for people who knew Pamela, who worked
in the same area that she did, some of her steady customers,
any information I could get to try
and develop a possible lead.
NARRATOR: For six weeks, the detective
works Shelley's stroll, but finds
nothing in the way of leads.
When the street work fails to pay off,
Villalpando turns to the crime lab hoping to catch a break.
[music playing]
We had a lot of evidence laying there.
We had the condoms, beer bottle, clothing, a lot of activity.
So it told us that everything happened right there.
NARRATOR: On March 23, Rodrigo Viesca
sifts through the Shelley evidence
and pulls out a beer bottle found
just 5-feet from the body.
What's interesting about this bottle and this bag is we
have two items in here.
One is a beer bottle, and one is a liquid.
The liquid is what was in the bottle,
still in when we found it.
NARRATOR: Hoping the suspect's prints are still on the bottle,
Viesca applies superglue to enhance the detail.
Oh, I saw all these fingerprints on there--
some white residue with rich formation.
And it's like, OK, I've got something to work with here.
NARRATOR: When Viesca dusts the bottle,
he lifts two unknown fingerprints.
The prints are uploaded into AFIS,
but the system doesn't return a match.
Now the lead hasn't led anywhere.
It just went down a path where there was no resolution.
I felt that no one deserves to die that way.
NARRATOR: After three months, Pamela Shelley's case
goes cold.
[music playing]
In April of 2003, the two unknown profiles
are uploaded into the CODIS system,
but failed to generate a match.
Disappointment.
You're always disappointed when you don't
get a hit on these things.
NARRATOR: But Conrad isn't finished yet.
He returns to the evidence, locates the beer bottle,
and re-submits the prints for testing.
This is the latent print section of the Chula Vista
Police Department Crime Lab.
NARRATOR: On April 9, Marykay Hunt examines
the fingerprint evidence.
This is the actual lift.
So we'll place the latent print under the direct capture area
and capture that image.
NARRATOR: Hunt loads the prints into AFIS.
30 minutes later, the system returns two separate hits.
She said we got two hits off this beer bottle, off prints.
So it went from kind of 0 to 90 in about one minute there.
NARRATOR: Detective Bob Conrad has two names, Andre
Robinson and Adrian Sutherland.
Both had lived in Chula Vista at the time of the murder.
They had both been in the Navy.
And then I noticed they were both from the same hometown
in North Carolina.
We had to make a decision.
NARRATOR: The prints are a good start, but Conrad needs more.
We knew we had a potential defense of,
oh, well, I was just drinking in the park
and I had nothing to do with this murder.
[music playing]
OK, this is where we came to contact Adrian Sutherland.
NARRATOR: After 15 minutes, Conrad shifts gears.
But when we started pointing a finger at him,
he got very defensive.
He and Robinson both lived within a half a mile
of the park at the time of the murder.
And he denied knowing where the park was.
He denied ever picking up a prostitute.
He just denied everything.
NARRATOR: With search warrant in hand,
Conrad collects a DNA sample from Sutherland
and sends it to the crime lab.
Meanwhile, investigator, Mike Howard,
finds Robinson stationed in Norfolk, Virginia
with a career in the Navy.
[music playing]
He played it very cool, extremely cool.
He doesn't show his emotion on the outside.
NARRATOR: Robinson seems eager to provide
information about his old buddy, Sutherland.
[music playing]
As the interview progressed, the questions start turning
toward Robinson himself.
NARRATOR: Robinson denies any involvement in the crime
and hands over a swab of his DNA.
There are two separate DNA profiles
that came from spermatozoa, which were from items that
were found at the crime scene.
I actually found that the DNA profile obtained
from the condom matched the DNA profile
obtained from Mr. Sutherland.
And the DNA profile obtained from the vaginal swabs
from Pamela Kelley matched the DNA profile
obtained from Mr. Robinson.
Really doesn't get much better than that.
NARRATOR: After seven years, cold case
detectives have what they need.
We were prepared to get the arrest warrants
and go after these guys.
[music playing]
NARRATOR: In an interrogation room at the Chula Vista
Police Department, Mike Howard faces
off with Adrian Sutherland.
What he was telling me, that Robinson was the shooter,
made sense.
Details that he told me fit the evidence that I knew
was in the case.
NARRATOR: But Howard isn't ready to let Sutherland
off the hook just yet.
And then he went back and forth.
He wavered.
I don't remember having sex with that woman.
Well, maybe I did.
And then at one point he says, OK, I did.
No, I didn't.
I don't remember.
NARRATOR: After 4 and 1/2 hours, Howard ends the interview.
It's pretty exhausting.
And, boom, had to hop on a redeye.
And, boom, as soon as you land there,
you're ready to take on Robinson.
[music playing]
He was quiet, reserved, playing
it cool, like he was before.
NARRATOR: During questioning, Robinson admits he
and Sutherland picked up a prostitute,
but he says Sutherland killed her.
[music playing]
He's playing a con game with me, hoping that he
can con his way out of it.
OK, we're going to get to the truth here.
NARRATOR: Robinson crumbles under the pressure
and gives it up.
He says he and Sutherland picked up Pamela Shelley,
forced her to perform sex acts, and then he
shot her in the back.
He couldn't give a reason.
He said it was senseless.
He said he just snapped, it just happened.
NARRATOR: Robinson and Sutherland
are each charged with murder and sent to jail to await trial.
[music playing]
In February of 2006, Andre Robinson
stands trial for the murder of Pamela Shelly.
It's kind of a dream case for a prosecutor to have.
Not only did we have the fingerprints on the bottle,
but then we had Robinson's DNA, the body cavity swabs, OK?
And we also had a complete confession.
NARRATOR: During trial, Robinson changes his story
and says Sutherland was the shooter.
The story was, I just confessed to it
because I was under stress, I told
them what they wanted to know.
And it really wasn't me.
It was the other guy.
NARRATOR: It's a claim the jury doesn't buy.
After two weeks of trial, Robinson
is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The only difficulty in the case was against Sutherland,
and that's why we decided to offer him a plea.
NARRATOR: Five months later, Adrian Sutherland cops a plea.
And he pled guilty to 12 years.
I think justice is done in that, I
mean, 12 years is a long time in prison for the second guy,
the non-shooter.
But the shooter got life without parole.
So the rest of his life, he'll never get out.