DISPATCH (ON PHONE): This is the police department.
NARRATOR: On June 19, 1989, Livonia Police Sergeant Donald
Vandersloot responds to a home on Seven Mile Road,
where a man has been shot.
The victim is Xavier Giller, the 67-year-old owner
of a Detroit cab company.
Mr. Giller's body was lying here on the concrete.
His head was down in this area.
His feet were pointing at this area toward the street.
And right on the concrete, literally
right next to his right hand, was a 38 caliber revolver.
NARRATOR: Giller had discharged two
rounds of apparent self-defense, but missed his attacker.
A trek inside the home provides police with a possible motive
for the shooter.
It appeared to be an obvious robbery that was in progress.
They were laying things out on the bed
in preparation of taking them.
NARRATOR: The robbery motive is bolstered when detectives
find ransacked drawers.
It looked as though the homeowners, then Xavier Giller
and his wife, Catherine Giller, had come home perhaps
a little earlier than these individuals had anticipated
and surprised them in the act.
NARRATOR: At least three guns are
reported stolen from the home.
Vandersloot is unable to track down the stolen guns
and is left with little in the way of physical evidence
at the crime scene.
Unfortunately, we had no fingerprints
whatsoever, identifiable fingerprints, in the house
or anywhere else.
NARRATOR: The best lead, it seems, comes from the victim's
wife, Catherine Giller, who narrowly escaped
death herself that night.
I went over to the light switch to turn it on,
and that's when this man stepped out of the dining
room, big, tall person.
His head almost touched the archway.
And he says, don't touch it, or I'll waste you right here.
NARRATOR: Catherine Giller was knocked unconscious,
but is able to provide police with a description
of her attackers.
Mrs. Giller told us that she saw two men, when she walked
into the house, bringing in groceries
through the back door, that there were
two men in her kitchen, a taller one, tall, skinny one
with a beard, and someone that she described
as a shorter individual.
I was told that he was bragging that he had a million dollars
in the safe at his house.
And the type of people that he worked with
and that associated with down at the cab company
were kind of the type of people that you might not want
to tell that information to.
NARRATOR: Vandersloot questions more
than 50 men before all leads are exhausted,
and the case goes cold.
It's been my experience over the years
that whenever there are two people or more involved,
sooner or later, one of them is going to tell somebody.
NARRATOR: On December 7, 2004, Bonnie Swoboda gets a call.
While the female caller mentions the name Gilliam,
details tell Bonnie the call is really about her father, Xavier
Giller.
She said, is this where Mr. Gilliam owned the company
and got shot, and he has a couple of sons?
And I says, no, actually, he has four sons and a daughter,
and I'm the daughter.
And I says, and you are?
She says, I have information regarding your dad's death
and that you're going to find out by Christmas.
NARRATOR: The caller tells Bonnie she lives in California,
but offers little more before hanging up.
Sergeant Cory Williams jumps on the lead.
He traces the call to a phone number in California
and dials it up.
I knew it was a matter of time they would find me.
NARRATOR: Sergeant Williams finds himself
on the line with a woman, who's nervous at first,
but ready to spill a story of murder.
She told me that she fell in love
with the cellmate of her brother's,
named Richard Mudica.
INFORMANT: And I promised him actually
that if he became a warrior on fire for God,
I would marry him.
I would leave everything.
I would walk away from everything I had, my marriage,
and just, I would marry him.
And but he had to show me that he was sincere.
NARRATOR: To do that, the woman asked Richard Mudica to come
clean about his past, including a murder he allegedly
bragged about committing.
NARRATOR: The woman tells Sergeant
Williams that Mudica replied in the form of a letter.
And I had her read the letter that Mudica wrote to her.
I had her read it to me over the phone.
In June or July of 1989, me and a friend
went on a robbery spree that lasted about two months.
During a robbery a house on the outskirts of Detroit,
things got out of control.
He had told her that he left California in the spring
of '89 to go on a robbery spree with
a guy named Richard Lawson.
NARRATOR: According to Mudica, Richard Lawson
was a former cab driver for Xavier Giller
and knew his old boss had money.
INFORMANT: Lawson felt that on specific days,
Mr. Gilliam would bring home the money of his cab company.
They planned this robbery spree specifically
to come to Detroit to rob Giller,
knowing that he has large amounts of cash
that he brings home from the cab company.
Early on that day, we believed that the money
was going to be brought home.
And he starts to describe the whole scene,
how they break into the house and they--
I guess the guy hit the woman that was screaming on the head.
NARRATOR: According to Richard Mudica,
the robbery ended in murder, but not at his hands.
With the shotgun level at the waist, I heard Lawson say,
hold it right there.
And less than a second later, I heard and saw
Lawson discharge the shotgun.
And almost at the same time, I heard
a secondary discharge of Mr. Gilliam's weapon, a handgun.
NARRATOR: Mudica may have thought the victim's name was
Gilliam, but the details of the crime
are without a doubt from the Giller homicide.
CORY WILLIAMS: When she started to go into the details
about the murder, as she told me,
it corroborated our evidence in the case.
I covered the phone with my hand at one point
and gave the guys behind me the thumbs up.
And I said, I think this is going to be it.
We knew where Richard Mudica was.
He was-- we identified him as being housed out in California
Department of Corrections.
He was in prison.
Lawson, we weren't sure what state he was in,
if he was even in the country.
All we had was the name, Richard Lawson.
NARRATOR: A 1989 arrest report out of Pennsylvania
provides investigators with a lead.
We knew we should put a call in there
to Pennsylvania to see if this is the right Richard Lawson.
We were pretty sure it was.
And sure enough, he was arrested with Richard Mudica.
We believed that Richard Lawson was
the one that pulled the trigger and planned this crime.
He knew Giller had money.
He knew the Giller house.
Richard Lawson planned this crime.
Mudica kind of stepped in and said,
well, I'll tell you what happened, but I need immunity.
NARRATOR: According to Mudica, when the Gillers arrived,
things got out of hand.
Mrs. Giller came in and Lawson confronted Mrs. Giller
in the kitchen and told her not to say anything
and to keep the lights off.
NARRATOR: Mudica says Lawson then slipped
outside to look for Mr. Giller.
NARRATOR: Xavier Giller dropped to the ground.
Mudica says he and Lawson panicked
and immediately fled the scene, leaving their victim for dead.
Mudica told me that as he ran by Mr. Giller,
he could hear him gasping for breath,
and he said he still thinks about it today.
He tried to put up I think the tough guy prison image,
but he broke down a little bit.
That was-- he was a kid.
It was a long time ago.
It was a traumatic event in his life.
He teared up a little bit while he was telling the story.
NARRATOR: Armed with Mudica's statement,
Sergeant Cory Williams prepares to arrest his suspected
triggerman, Richard Lawson.
He was in a probation office in downtown San Diego.
Introduced ourselves.
Said we're detectives from the Detroit area.
Told him he's under arrest for the murder of Xavier Giller.
NARRATOR: Richard Lawson denies knowing Xavier Giller,
but Sergeant Williams can prove otherwise.
CORY WILLIAMS: We pulled out the cab company card and said,
here's your picture on it right here.
You drove a cab for their company.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember them now.
And it all came back to him.
We got to a point in the conversation
where it started to get a little confrontational.
And I said to Lawson, did you shoot Xavier Giller?
And he said, I don't know.
NARRATOR: I don't know-- not an admission, yet, not a denial.
CORY WILLIAMS: What we're looking at here
is a map that was drawn by Richard Mudica
during our interview out in California
in Department of Corrections.
NARRATOR: The hand-drawn maps show the pond where
Richard Lawson allegedly dumped guns
stolen from the Giller home.
Now the chances are next to nothing
that we were going to find these guns.
NARRATOR: As it turns out, long shots
sometimes pay off big time.
I remember running down the shore,
and the divers were excited, too.
They said we found one.
We found another one.
This box is evidence from the Giller homicide case from 1989.
This evidence includes the four guns that were found
in the ponds out in New Jersey.
This was the second gun found.
And it's kind of corroded, but you can see the serial number
right there, right here.
The next gun we found was right here.
OK, this is actually the fourth gun we found.
This one was in the best condition of all of them.
NARRATOR: Three of the guns are identified as being stolen
from the Giller home in 1989.
None turn out to be the murder weapon.
But the recovery bolsters Richard Mudica's
credibility as a witness.
Finding these guns is what made our case,
made Mudica believable.
NARRATOR: Before trial begins, Moran
asks Mudica to testify at a preliminary hearing,
where Richard Lawson makes the prosecutor's job easier.
He fires his lawyer, and he--
at the start of the testimony.
And he actually asked questions of Mr. Mudica
at the preliminary exam.
It was kind of amusing in that, here,
Mr. Lawson thinks he's the smartest man in the courtroom
by acting as his own lawyer, and he made some terrible mistakes.
Instead of saying, what time did you arrive
with the other person, he would say, what time did
we arrive at the crime scene?
What time did we do this?
And what time did we do that?
The judge kept admonishing him.
You know, Mr. Lawson, you know, these-- you're making
admissions on the record.
NARRATOR: At one point, Lawson even
provides his own detail of an area adjacent to the Giller
crime scene.
That was an admission, in my opinion,
that Mr. Lawson was at the crime scene
because who would know that they were
building a house next to the Giller home
unless you were actually there?
NARRATOR: The jury is convinced and finds Richard
Lawson guilty of murder.
He is sentenced to life with no chance of parole.