[music playing]
NARRATOR: Inside room 722, 25-year-old Mona Lisa
Abney lies dead on the floor.
She was nude basically from the waist down.
She was kind of lying on her back.
Automatically, you would think she has been raped.
NARRATOR: The room appears to be ransacked.
And Mona's cash, jewelry, and credit cards are missing.
The main thing you're looking for is
fingerprints because back then, that was--
our DNA was fingerprint.
So the big emphasis--
hair, fingerprints, blood.
NARRATOR: Boatwright dusts for prints, bags the evidence,
and photographs the scene.
Then it hits him.
The ransacking is staged.
SCOTT BOATWRIGHT: The chair was turned over.
The lamps were just turned over but not
really damaged in any way.
Maybe someone did this just to make it appear that there
was a tremendous struggle.
You've killed this woman, and yet you
don't want to break the lamp.
NARRATOR: A medical examiner establishes the victim
was raped and strangled.
Semen is collected, as well as an unknown Caucasian hair.
Meanwhile, Investigator Ron Yeager
arrives at the Holiday Inn and begins to work the building
room by room, person by person.
Well, everybody's a suspect from management
right on down to the employees, guests, so on and so forth.
We went through the entire roster
of people that were there.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the phone in Mona's hotel room rings.
At the other end of the line, a man named Wilbert Abney.
RON YEAGER: He mentioned who he was, said he'd been trying
to reach his wife and couldn't.
And then I said, Mr. Abney, I said,
I can't tell you anything about it right now,
but your wife is deceased.
He wasn't emotional.
Wasn't emotional or anything like that.
NARRATOR: Abney drives two hours to Fairfax
County, IDs his wife's body, and gives a statement.
His cold demeanor is startling to investigators, as
well as to friends and family.
It was a Sunday evening, early Sunday evening,
that we got the call from him.
NARRATOR: Patricia Parker is Mona's friend.
PATRICIA PARKER: And it was Wilbert.
And I said, what's going on?
What's wrong?
He said, Mona's dead.
And I just lost it, you know?
I said, you know, you've got to be kidding.
No, no.
I just lost it.
And he said, no, Mona's dead.
He was so relaxed.
When he said it, it was like, she's dead.
NARRATOR: For Parker, the grief runs deep.
So, too, does the suspicion that somehow,
Wilbert Abney was involved.
It was no sadness.
No-- no sadness at all.
Just as if he's calling to say, it may rain tomorrow.
And as upset as I was, something just didn't sound right to me.
You have a question in your mind.
Is the husband involved?
Things don't look necessarily that way.
But is he involved in having somebody
else do the job for him?
NARRATOR: Still, Yeager's suspicions
are heightened when Abney tries to collect
an insurance policy taken out just a few weeks earlier.
I think it was 100,000 double identity,
so which set him up very well.
We learned who signed the policy.
It was a forgery.
His wife didn't sign the policy.
It tells me we have more motive now.
NARRATOR: Abney sues the insurance company for the funds
but loses the battle in court.
Meanwhile, Yeager unearths another red flag.
Abney was having an affair.
When Yeager interviews Abney's girlfriend,
she recalls a phone call from Abney
the morning Mona was found murdered.
RON YEAGER: It was about 9:30 that morning
that he called the lady and told her that his wife was deceased.
About an hour later, I get the call from him.
And that's when I tell him that she's deceased.
So he has knowledge of her death before he ever talks to me.
That's when I realized.
I said that this man is my man.
More and more fingers pointing in the right direction,
but you can't put the man in the room.
And if you can't put him in the room, you can't charge him.
NARRATOR: Abney passes a polygraph
and provides prints and hair samples.
None match up to the evidence.
So that's where we came up short all the time on things
that would get a conviction.
NARRATOR: On September 29, cold case
detectives find Wilbert Abney at home, living the quiet life.
That, however, is all about to change.
We knock on his door, and he answered immediately.
And Steve tells him what we're doing.
We're cold case homicide detectives.
We're going to reinvestigate the murder of his wife
from 28 years ago.
You know, typically, we expect to see a reaction of relief
or someone that's actually glad that we're doing this,
you know, thanking us for doing this.
And we got exactly the opposite from Abney.
His reaction was, well, why would you do that?
Why would you go back and work on a murder from 28 years ago?
And some bells and whistles started going off in our heads.
What an inappropriate reaction for somebody
who's reinvestigating your wife's murder.
NARRATOR: In 1978, Abney told police
he had never been inside the hotel where Mona was killed
and had not had sex with his wife in three weeks.
Cold case detectives ask for a sample of his DNA
to confirm the story.
He refused.
He said he didn't think he wanted to do that.
And at first, he said he wanted to call a lawyer.
NARRATOR: Abney balks at providing
the sample until the current Mrs.
Abney pulls her husband aside.
Well, Mrs. Abney stepped in.
His current wife stepped in and said, can we talk in private?
BOB MURPHY: And they're in the kitchen,
talking for a few minutes.
And I know what happened in that kitchen.
I know she told him, look, you had nothing to do with this.
You're innocent.
Give them the buccal swabs and help them.
So the pressure really was on him at that point.
So he came back in and he said, OK, I'll give it to you.
NARRATOR: Back at the crime lab, Mary
Green begins the comparison.
MARY GREEN: I did the same DNA process on that swab.
And I was able to obtain a DNA profile.
And it matched.
This was a very strong match.
The numbers were greater than the world population or greater
than 6 billion individuals.
NARRATOR: The pieces of murder are starting to come together.
STEVE MILEFSKY: And it's clear that the original detectives
thought that Abney was involved.
They just couldn't put Abney in Northern Virginia
during the time that Mona was killed.
And that's what DNA gave us.
That's-- we had the scientific advantage that they never had.
NARRATOR: DNA lays the foundation,
but cold case detectives need more.
In the Abney murder book, they find it--
a person no one has talked to in more than 25 years.
In January of 2005, a man named Michael Clark
entertains a knock on his door.
On the other side, two homicide detectives
looking for information about Clark's
former neighbor, Wilbert Abney.
BOB MURPHY: So we walk up to the door, knock on the door,
and sure enough, he opens the door.
And he says, I'm Michael Clark.
And he said something to the effect,
where have you guys been?
I've been waiting to talk to law enforcement
for 20 some years now.
MICHAEL CLARK: The phone rang early one Saturday morning.
It was Abney.
And he said to me, they found Mona dead.
Will you go with me to identify the body?
Well, he picks me up in this little white Corvette.
And he asked me to drive.
And I agreed to do that.
And before we got a mile from my home,
I had a very uncomfortable feeling.
But what I remember distinctly was his spending
the life insurance proceeds from his wife's death.
I remember specifically his talking
about buying 12 custom tailored suits, about buying a new Rolls
Royce, and a big house.
Abney is saying, I'm going to be a rich man.
I've got all these life insurance policies.
I'm going to be rich.
My gut says, this guy smells.
There's something very, very wrong.
And I was very uncomfortable being in the vehicle with him.
You know, Mr. Clark said his mouth was just hanging open.
He couldn't believe that this man was talking about.
This clearly was not the demeanor of a man
who just lost his wife.
MICHAEL CLARK: At this point, we're
about ready to enter the mouth of the Boulevard Bridge.
NARRATOR: Clark and Abney drive over the bridge on their way
to ID the body, when Wilbert Abney
rolls down a window in the car.
MICHAEL CLARK: Just as we got up to about this point,
as soon as we got over water, Abney rolled that window down,
took out what appeared to be latex glove,
and tossed them over that railing.
If Abney is able to do this to his wife, then my family--
I'm feeling that perhaps my family is being threatened.
If he's able to do that, what else is he capable of doing?
We just can't believe our good luck.
We just can't believe that we stumbled into a witness
of this importance.
NARRATOR: More than two months after taking Clark's statement,
cold case detectives walk into Wilbert Abney's house
and begin to ask some hard questions.
So we go back, and we sit in the living room.
And Steve tells them, we got the DNA results.
And he just looked at us.
And Steve said, it's your DNA.
He started lying.
He started telling us some things that we knew
were not true.
He's really a very narcissistic person.
I think he feels like he can control the situation.
He can manage it.
NARRATOR: Abney denies killing his wife
but offers no explanation for the DNA match.
Then he agrees to a polygraph.
So, from there, we went over to the local district
attorney's office, and he took the polygraph
and failed it miserably.
NARRATOR: After a month of back and forth,
Abney tells detectives he's ready to tell
his story, what really happened that night at the Holiday Inn.
BOB MURPHY: He said, I went there.
I went to the hotel that night.
So now we're getting a totally different story
that we haven't heard before.
I went into the room.
We engaged in consensual intercourse.
And I choked her with my belt, which we did on occasion,
that she asked me to do.
NARRATOR: According to Abney, Mona liked rough sex
and asked to be choked.
This time, however, she accidentally died.
STEVE MILEFSKY: There's a mark of the belt buckle on her neck.
I mean, that's how much force was used,
was that there was a belt buckle mark left on her neck.
So, clearly, this wasn't an accident.
We had finally backed him into a corner, where he realized
he couldn't maneuver anymore, and he
had to come up with some kind of an explanation.
This is the only thing he could come up with.
Yeah, OK, I was there.
OK, it is my DNA because we had consensual intercourse.
And, yes, I did cause my wife's death, but it was an accident.
NARRATOR: When detectives start asking questions,
Abney realizes he hasn't covered all his bases.
What about the fact that her credit cards were missing?
Her ring was missing.
Her keys were missing.
Her cash was missing, yeah, things like that.
What did he do with those things?
He'd forgotten about those.
And he just had that deer in the headlights look,
like, uh-oh, I didn't cover that one.
He was in the hot seat at that point.
And, yeah, we had him.
We had him.
In this case, you have the DNA that finally
put this defendant, Mr. Abney, in the hotel room
back in 1978 because up to that point,
he had denied being there, having sex with her.
He lied through his teeth back in 1978
that he hadn't been there, that he hadn't had sex with her.
And so he lied back then.
Why do you lie?
Because you're covering something up.
NARRATOR: The jury doesn't buy Abney's story.
WOMAN: Unfortunately, for Mr. Abney,
he had told different stories at various points in this case.
And then I think his credibility just didn't
weigh much with the jury.
NARRATOR: After four days of trial, he is found guilty
and sentenced to 28 years in prison.