- 5/22/2025
Killer at the Crime Scene - Season 4 Episode 6 -
Raveesh Kumra
#CinemaJourney
Raveesh Kumra
#CinemaJourney
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00I got a call in the middle of the night, here was the dispatcher, they had a home invasion
00:07and possible homicide.
00:10Responding officers find a door that was open.
00:13Is it a talkative type?
00:16There's a seed inside to the Silicon Valley.
00:20It was finding some, in my opinion, bad habits.
00:23We're talking about drugs, we're talking about sex.
00:26The faces in the room were completely stunned, it was kind of a drop-mic moment.
00:31It's about power.
00:32How did they come into contact if he wasn't there?
00:37Our role as CSIAs is to find the evidence to catch the killer in the crime scene.
00:43You've got a community in fear, is this going to happen to them?
00:46Are they at risk?
00:48The science will tell the story, science doesn't lie.
01:26Police race to the scene of a violent robbery after a woman makes a frantic 911 call.
01:34One of the bad guys had gone into her bedroom, punched her in the face and then made her
01:40go out there with her husband where they bound her as well.
01:44The homeowners have been assaulted, tied up, gagged and blindfolded.
01:49And they pretty much ransacked the house.
01:51Once gone, the woman managed to break free and still blindfolded, desperately called
01:56for help.
01:58They found the female victim, cut the tape off of her eyes and continued searching for
02:04the other victim.
02:05They found him on the floor unresponsive.
02:08He had been bound by the wrists with a tablecloth, but they had used duct tape to tape around
02:17his head.
02:19Marine officers cut his bindings, rolled him over onto his back, started CPR and rescue
02:25breathing until the paramedics can come in.
02:28It's not clear at the initial outset whether the victim is alive or dead.
02:33The paramedics came in and checked him, put leads on him, oxygen sensor on him and declared
02:39him deceased.
02:42I was definitely shocked.
02:44I recognized him, I had met him before.
02:47It was Mr. Coomer.
02:50Mr. Coomer was definitely a very successful businessman and he knew a lot of people in
02:55the community.
02:56I didn't find anybody that disliked him.
03:02I had met him several times at different things, mostly at bars in town.
03:08He used to go to one that was called Last Call and that was mostly all locals.
03:16He always seemed to be sort of like the ambassador or the mayor of that group.
03:22Always happy, always nice, buying people drinks, everybody loved him.
03:29His wife is sent to hospital with facial injuries.
03:32When we talk about that world of criminality, unfortunately you have individuals that are
03:37prepared to do extreme things.
03:41Not only did they lose a family member, it's going to affect the living victim probably
03:47the rest of her life.
03:49It is a traumatic event, it is super traumatic.
03:55Investigators cordon off the scene and begin a forensic sweep.
04:00The house is an absolute state.
04:03Everything's been thrown everywhere.
04:05It's going to be a long and meticulous examination of items within that scene.
04:10You might get forensic evidence from.
04:12This property was huge.
04:14It was about seven acres in size.
04:17The house itself was about 7,000 square feet.
04:21You can't even really see the neighbor's house.
04:24Me and my sergeant, we talked about where should we be looking the most.
04:28Two crime lab people walk with us.
04:33What's important, what's not important?
04:35What needs doing urgently and what can take a little bit longer?
04:39So what are your quick hits?
04:40What are your fast track actions that are important in this investigation?
04:44DNA evidence was going to be our best evidence.
04:47The female homeowner tells officers there were multiple offenders.
04:52There was at least a suspect in the house and maybe one outside who was doing the driving.
04:59Where there's been more than one offender and more than one victim, you'll get mixed DNA profiles.
05:04That means DNA from two or more individuals.
05:08Sometimes you can separate them out.
05:10One of the first things you need to work out is how has the offender got in?
05:15The intruders have made off with expensive jewelry and over $30,000 in cash.
05:23I couldn't tell at that point if it was a targeted situation, but it was just a theory that we started with.
05:31You just passed 30 other houses with no gates.
05:35Why are they picking this house?
05:38There was no sign of forced entry.
05:40That makes me think that it's either someone that has got a key to get in or someone that's been let in.
05:46Or there's been an insecure door or window where they've climbed in or walked in quite freely.
05:53There was no broken doors, but there were a couple of unlocked doors.
05:57The sliding glass door that was just off of the family room where the TV was on
06:05and we figured that Mr. Coomer was watching, that door was unlocked.
06:11It looked like they had encountered him in that room, kind of struggled with him, taped him up and left him there.
06:18It seemed that they would have had to have had some sort of knowledge of the residents and of the people that were living there.
06:26If there's no signs of forced entry, that says to me that the offenders have really planned this out.
06:31Your first point of call would always be people that they know.
06:36Ravisha's wife tells police the man who assaulted her used his nickname Ravi, suggesting he might have known him.
06:45He could have done any house, so there had to be a reason.
06:48Homicides in Montecerino, I think that this homicide was probably the first one in 20 or more years.
07:02In California, the peaceful community of Montecerino has been rocked by the first murder in the neighborhood for decades.
07:12During a violent robbery at his home, Ravisha Kumar has died after being beaten and bound.
07:20Everybody in the neighborhood was super concerned.
07:22It's a very affluent area.
07:24A lot of CEOs and sports athletes and people like that live out there.
07:30Very quiet, very nice place to live.
07:35Silicon Valley, the home of the wealthy.
07:38We're talking about exclusivity.
07:40You know, we're talking about the super rich.
07:43In our area, we would see things mostly burglaries where people are breaking into cars.
07:50Burglaries where people are breaking into cars.
07:53In the downtown area where the shops were, we'd get a lot of theft during the day.
07:59When a crime of this magnitude happens within the local area, it sends the police force into a bit of a frenzy because the rich and the wealthy are going to want answers.
08:11An autopsy determines the cause of death is asphyxiation after being gagged with duct tape.
08:17The victim had been bound around his head and nasal passage, which has obviously restricted his breathing.
08:23There was also a huge amount of bruising on other areas of his body.
08:27He had succumbed to a vicious attack.
08:31The pathologist also finds that the 66-year-old had a heart condition, putting him more at risk.
08:38We know the wife of the victim was saying he's ill, you know, he's poorly,
08:44despite the fact that they may not have intended to kill, they were very prepared to engage in high levels of violence.
08:52It's Sergeant Erin Lunsford's first time leading a homicide investigation.
08:58It was definitely a little bit overwhelming. Everybody was looking at their video cameras.
09:02Unfortunately, anything we did get was super grainy.
09:06There's going to be a lot of pressure on the police to be able to solve this crime.
09:10At the crime scene, CSIs have identified a number of potential leads.
09:17One of the sinks within the property contained a number of latex gloves, about 21 separate gloves,
09:24and it appeared that these had maybe been washed, there was a lot of soap on them.
09:29As we searched, we found more gloves in some of the cabinets in the kitchen.
09:34They had used a white duct tape with black mustaches on it to tape around his head.
09:42We collected all the pieces of tape because we figured there's going to be some DNA on those.
09:49We even collected the empty tape roll.
09:57I'm just going to swab the end of the tape here.
09:59I'm just going to swab the end of the tape here.
10:03Potentially where it might have been held by the offender.
10:07There's a lot of contamination from the victim, but on the ends of the tape,
10:10there may well be fingerprint evidence in the sticky side, but there also may be DNA evidence.
10:16Twenty exhibits from the crime scene are sent off for DNA analysis.
10:21These things were left around and kind of suggested to me there may have been panic that had set in.
10:26Could it be that they watched and observed at the moment where Ravish was, you know, taking his last breaths,
10:32and maybe it's like, now I need to leave, without really thinking about the kind of evidence that they were leaving behind.
10:40Detectives are convinced the attackers were helped by someone close to the Kumhars.
10:45One of the theories that we were working on was that somebody who had been to the house
10:51had given the information to the suspects to be able to commit this crime.
10:59The fact that there's no forced entry to the property means that potentially it might be somebody that the victims know.
11:07The first people we look at are family members. You've got to look at them and talk to them,
11:10see if they have any idea of what happened.
11:14From there, then you go to employees or close friends.
11:17They hired a lot of people to work at the house. They had personal assistants, they had gardeners or handymen.
11:24Just trying to paint a picture of the life of the victims and where the bad guys would have contacted them or come into their lives.
11:36Ravish moved to California from northern India in 1970 and went on to make his fortune in the mobile phone industry.
11:45He made a ton of money. From there, he took his money and bought a winery and a concert venue in Saratoga, California,
11:53just a little ways down the road. And he did that for a while until he sold that off.
11:58And I don't know what he was doing at the time besides being retired.
12:02This is a well-known member of the community. People would have seen him out and about at parties, at social events, spending money.
12:10So there may be individuals in the community that are familiar with this wealth and familiar with this success.
12:16We need to know what does he do every day? Who comes over to the house a lot? What are his habits? Who is he talking to?
12:24At the scene, investigators seize his laptop.
12:28His cell phone was actually found out in the middle of the street, all smashed up.
12:32So the laptop was definitely one of the most important pieces of evidence that we found.
12:40There's a huge amount of knowledge that can be obtained from a laptop.
12:45What websites have been looking at, any contact details of people.
12:49The police have to go through each one of those contacts to see where they were at the time.
12:53Do they have an alibi? Are they a potential suspect?
12:58As detectives look at Ravisha's contacts, forensic scientists examine the multiple latex gloves found at the scene.
13:07The gloves would be exhibited separately.
13:11It would be important to kind of look at whether these gloves have been worn.
13:16This glove looks like it's been taken off and pulled inside out.
13:20So therefore, you have to look at the best place to swab for DNA.
13:24The best place would be around the cuffs and also on the inside of the finger areas.
13:29So therefore you need to tease them open.
13:31There would be a lot of pressure on the police to investigate this quickly.
13:36And from a forensic perspective, you don't work quickly.
13:40You work slowly and meticulously and it takes as long as it takes.
13:44And sometimes that's quite hard to manage people's expectations.
13:49As scientists analyze each glove, police looking into Ravisha's lifestyle have a development.
13:56When I started looking into the backgrounds of the people that Mr. Kumra liked to hire,
14:02I was finding some, in my opinion, bad habits.
14:07It was determined that Mr. Kumra liked the company of sex workers.
14:14It was something that he did a lot of.
14:17And it was several women.
14:20So when we talk about offenders and the pool of offenders, that net starts to get wider and wider.
14:27Detectives look more closely at Ravisha's finances to trace the women.
14:32Meanwhile, forensics has a breakthrough.
14:36They've identified three suspects.
14:39Lucas Anderson, Javier Garcia, and Ravisha.
14:43Garcia's DNA has been found on one of the gloves in the sink.
14:47And Austin's is recovered from a piece of duct tape.
14:51D'Angelo Austin was living up in Oakland, California, an hour north of where we were at.
14:58We immediately focused on him.
15:01And because he was a young man, he didn't have a lot of money.
15:05He didn't have a lot of friends.
15:08An hour north of where we were at, we immediately focused on him and people that he hangs out with.
15:15We've got Silicon Valley, where Ravisha comes from, but hasn't seen a homicide in two decades.
15:21And then we've got Oakland, which has the highest crime rate in California.
15:25And even though the worlds are completely different,
15:28there's some common themes that bring them together and align them.
15:32Money.
15:33Austin and Garcia are identified as members of the notorious E.N.T. gang in the ghost town area of Oakland.
15:42You know this gang has a number of names.
15:45You've got E.N.T., you've got Stubby, you've got M.O.E.T., you know, Money Over Everything.
15:50This kind of highlights what the group is all about.
15:53Austin is considered one of the founding members of E.N.T.
15:57You know, he would hold so much status.
16:00He's an individual that would be well known.
16:02He grew up in an environment where these behaviors of criminality, violence, chaos even, would have desensitized him.
16:10The third suspect, Lucas Anderson, appears to have no connections to the gang.
16:16But the evidence against him is damning.
16:20So one of the samples we would take at a post-mortem stage would be fingernail scrapings and fingernail cuttings.
16:25This is to see if there's any DNA or any fibers or hairs that have been caught under somebody's fingernails.
16:32If someone's been putting up a fight or putting up, trying to protect themselves,
16:36there may well be DNA or fibers under their fingernails that would link back to the offender.
16:41Lucas Anderson's DNA is matched to a sample from Ravisha's fingernails.
16:49It felt really good. It felt good.
16:51I felt like I was finally starting to get the evidence.
16:55We figured that we had three suspects and we had three good suspects.
16:59DNA found at the scene or on the body of the victim.
17:02They all had criminal histories.
17:05So I felt, man, we finally got this.
17:08But first, they need to find them.
17:11It was very frustrating.
17:13We could never pinpoint where D'Angelo Austin was at.
17:16He didn't really have a residence.
17:17He was couch surfing or the money he was getting from robbing people,
17:23he was using it to stay in hotels and just spending money everywhere.
17:28They're known to the police for a reason.
17:31They're criminals. They're not going to be easy to find.
17:35Lucas Anderson is the exception.
17:38I was able to find that Lucas was already in the county jail in custody on something else.
17:44He was arrested a few days after the attack on the Kumhars on unrelated burglary charges.
17:52I went down to the jail to do an interview.
17:55He came in to our interview room.
17:59He was acting nonchalant or like he didn't care.
18:06We are going to be charging you with a crime tonight.
18:09You're charging me with a crime?
18:11Yeah.
18:12You're charging me with a crime?
18:14Yeah.
18:16For what?
18:18I wonder.
18:20He was shown pictures of the victims.
18:24He said he didn't know them.
18:26He didn't know where Montessorino was.
18:28He had never been there in his life.
18:30Your DNA was found in our crime scene on our victim.
18:34It's starting to ring some bells.
18:36I don't know what you're going to tell me.
18:38I don't.
18:39And he just said, well, if you think I did it, like whatever.
18:44My DNA is there.
18:46He goes, I have no idea.
18:48I wasn't there.
18:50Never been there before.
18:52I don't know what you guys are talking about.
18:54With no alibi and his DNA on Ravisha's remains, Lucas Anderson is charged with first degree murder.
19:02Santa Clara County assigns him a public defender.
19:05Immediately, something doesn't add up for Kelly Paul.
19:10Lucas was pretty open when we first met.
19:13Not all clients are.
19:15You can imagine with histories that people can be guarded, he's not that person.
19:20Doing some kind of a sophisticated gang level crime did not fit who he was, nor did it fit his criminal history.
19:29Born on the streets, Lucas Anderson has a mental health condition.
19:33Alcohol addiction and brain trauma after being in a serious traffic accident.
19:39When we do a social history workup for a client, we're going to work to get to know Lucas, not as just in that crime, but who Lucas is as a person, how he grew up.
19:54You're looking at every aspect of someone's life that could be mitigating.
19:58That includes childhood trauma, that includes mental illness, it includes many things.
20:04But for Lucas in particular, we knew there had been a mental health history, so it required us to start pulling records.
20:12The first step for us was to just hit every county hospital because we knew that Lucas had grown up in the area.
20:20As Kelly's team hits the phones, police have a location on D'Angelo Austin.
20:28We've determined that he had a sister, Katrina Fritz, and that he was supposed to be staying with her because he was out on parole at the time.
20:38He was calling his sister and she was lending him a rental car, then we were able to work with them to get the GPS so that we were able to pinpoint him to a car and where it was going.
20:50Surveillance teams also locate Javier Garcia.
20:54Both are brought into custody on suspicion of murder.
20:58Guys like this who have been questioned by the cops a lot, they're just going to shut you down.
21:03Both of them denied everything and invoked their rights to an attorney.
21:08Based on the DNA evidence, they're charged with Revisha's murder and burglary.
21:15Sergeant Lunsford still needs to work out who provided them with information about the Coomras.
21:20Then it's my job to connect the dots more.
21:25So we obtained records for cell phones, we obtained records for calls and text messages.
21:31Another thing that we collect, the records from the cell towers.
21:36DNA is the big center block and then everything else is connecting the dots.
21:42The team's strongest forensic evidence is Lucas Anderson's DNA, found on Revisha's body.
21:49But after scouring through medical records, his defense team has made a case-shattering discovery.
21:56I think it was the investigator called and said, you've got to see these.
22:01The DA called me and said, hey, the defense attorney for Lucas wants to have a meeting, says that she has an alibi.
22:08And I said, well, that's interesting.
22:11In our world, alibis have to be perfect and it was an absolute, airtight, complete alibi.
22:18How did his DNA get there? It was on his person. So how did they come into contact if he wasn't there?
22:39Police investigating the death of Revisha Kumra have charged three men after forensically linking them to the crime scene.
22:47Lucas Anderson's DNA was found on Revisha's body, but his defense team is convinced he's innocent and have called an urgent meeting.
22:58So we went, me and the DA, on this side of the table and then Kelly, the defense attorney, and all of her people on the other side of the table.
23:07They hand out a binder and I start looking through it right away and saw that he had been in the hospital at the same time the crime was being committed.
23:21We learned that Lucas had been hospitalized from before the homicide happens until after it happens and that he's on literally 10 to 15 minute bed checks throughout the whole evening.
23:35The faces in the room were completely stunned. It was kind of a drop mic moment.
23:42They made no comment at the end and they said, we'd like to discuss this and we'll get back to you.
23:50As a crime scene manager, it makes you then question how his DNA actually got into that scene.
23:59Sometimes it's quite hard to timeline when that's been placed there.
24:02So just because you find someone's DNA in a crime scene doesn't mean to say that it was put there at the time of the offense.
24:09It could have been put there several days earlier or even potentially several weeks earlier.
24:14Lucas insists he can't remember anything from that night or ever meeting Revisha.
24:20Lucas struggles. He had significant mental health issues.
24:24He also had traumatic brain injury, which affected his ability to be a historian and his ability to communicate.
24:32He had a series of friends that also lived on the streets with him.
24:39We had walked the streets during the investigation to meet those individuals and they were very protective because of some of his deficits.
24:47You know, him being an individual that's just thinking about somewhere to sleep or just being able to, you know, have something to eat.
24:55If I was in that situation where I was told that my DNA scientifically was at a crime scene, I'd be feeling scared. I'd be thinking anxious.
25:05In California, anytime that someone's charged with a homicide, one of two things is possible.
25:10If convicted and those allegations are found true, a person is eligible for the death penalty or they may have life without the possibility of parole, meaning that they will never get out of prison.
25:22If he is innocent and he's sitting in jail because of me, I need to get him out.
25:26Lucas has already been in custody for several weeks. An inquiry into how his DNA was at the crime scene is launched.
25:35We knew we had an innocent person on our hands. It's like, oh, good Lord, now what?
25:42Because now we're fighting to get somebody out of custody and that's its own battle, in particular with, again, everybody's beliefs around DNA and that it's the gold standard of guilt.
25:56You really only had two options. One was lab error, contamination within the lab, or there was transfer.
26:05There's a potential that if I touch a surface that someone else has touched, I could pick their DNA up from that surface and move it somewhere else.
26:14Because it's so sensitive, you could have, like, secondary and tertiary transfer of DNA and that can become a massive problem.
26:21The first thing they did was they looked at the crime lab and they looked at cross-contamination.
26:26All the forensic scientists must have been seriously worried about where the contamination has come from.
26:32I think that was more of a stress point for me until they did their internal investigation and said, no, it wasn't at the lab.
26:41And once that happened, then it was like, okay, then I've got to figure out how this happened.
26:49Sergeant Lunsford looks at whether Lucas could have had any interaction with the Oakland gangs.
26:56We had no information of how they had tied Lucas as one of the perpetrators.
27:02For people that do have significant gang connections or gang crimes, you'll see a history over that from juvenile all the way through adulthood.
27:10There was none of that for Lucas.
27:11If you were some gangsters wanting to commit a crime, you're not really going to take Lucas along for the run.
27:18On Lucas, I struggled finding anything. I found more and more and more on the other suspects.
27:27The gang have a history of drug trafficking and committing residential burglaries.
27:33These home invasions are the typical ML for a lot of gangs because it's get in, get out.
27:38Intelligence has found the gang targets Asian heritage families.
27:43Some criminals target particular groups of people.
27:47And when we're talking about people from the South Asian community, we're talking about these stereotypes that they hold loads of gold and jewelry and cash within their households.
27:58They found to have posted a number of music videos bragging about money.
28:02Typical of many inner city gangs, you know, to talk about their lavish lifestyles, the things that they can attain through criminal activity.
28:10It glamorizes a particular lifestyle. Money is not just about what you hold. It's about power. It's about status. It's about respect.
28:19In one video, experts notice a chilling lyric.
28:23They mentioned duct tape, which really signifies that duct tape is definitely a tool that they utilize.
28:28Whenever they engage in these particular criminal behaviors.
28:32Convinced someone who knew the Kumaras helped them, the team tracks the men's movements on the night of the murder using phone data.
28:40All I had was DNA. I was just trying to make sure that I could show that with the evidence to show that my theory was correct.
28:50You can watch them on their phone traveling all the way down to our area and then back again.
28:56Cell site data is good, but it can't exactly pinpoint where someone's been.
29:01So although the offender's been in the area, they need further evidence to tie him to the actual crime scene.
29:08We obtained records for calls and text messages. So I was able to track the number of calls and text messages.
29:15We obtained records for calls and text messages. So I was able to track the number of calls and text messages.
29:20So I was able to go through the text messages and see who they were calling, what the conversations were about.
29:27As Sergeant Lunsford trawls through hundreds of hours of call and text logs, inquiries into Ravisha's finances reveal things aren't what they seem.
29:38With all of the spending and the luxury lifestyle that he lived, it comes to a point where the wealth starts to decline.
29:46He doesn't have as much money that he once had.
29:49Discovering that now starts to enable the investigation team to start thinking about, well, who are the potential suspects?
29:56Who did he owe money? Who has he been giving money?
30:00Ravisha has been giving several of the women he paid for sex large amounts of money and lavish gifts.
30:08He actually started families, had relationships with them, paying them to raise their children, his children and theirs.
30:17And we were trying to determine if any of the women that he had hired or had relationships with were involved.
30:23It was several women. We had to find an interview and see if there's somebody out there that maybe had not been able to get that extra money.
30:39One name stands out. Katrina Fritz, Austin's sister.
30:45When we started looking at D'Angelo, you're looking at who his family is. So that name popped up there.
30:50We found out that Mr. Coomer had been having a relationship with Katrina Fritz for probably around 10 years.
30:56Katrina has visited Ravisha at home hundreds of times.
31:01She was seen as the main girl. She would have been around Ravisha in some of his most intimate moments.
31:08She would have seen absolutely everything.
31:11She would have access to the residence. She would be able to know which doors are commonly going to be unlocked,
31:17what he's going to do at night, how the house is laid out.
31:21It was kind of putting it together to me that she could have been the inside guy.
31:28It was making me feel like, OK, I'm really getting this down now. I think I have.
31:33How Mr. Coomer was possibly targeted, how they were linked together and how they knew to go up to this house up on the mountain, up outside of town.
31:43It was enough for me to get an arrest warrant and they were able to find her and take her into custody.
31:51We interviewed her for probably two hours the first day.
31:55She tied some things together, all in regards to her relationship with Mr. Coomer.
32:02He had been paying her for sex. He was also just giving her money.
32:07What their plans had been, you know, trying to create a family.
32:13The beginning of their relationship was at a time when Ravisha was in the midst of his glitz and his glamour.
32:19We knew that a car was being brought and jewelry was given.
32:24On his laptop, detectives find he signed a letter agreeing to pay her $30,000 towards a down payment on a house.
32:32Then financial issues on his end was leading to less financial assistance for Katrina.
32:40So they just kind of drifted apart.
32:42We know that there was a decline in his money and not having the same amount that he once had.
32:47He may have got to a point where he didn't want to give as much money or give her the gifts or the things that he once was giving.
32:55She insists she doesn't know anything about the robbery.
32:59She insists she doesn't know anything about the robbery or her brother's movements.
33:05When we started talking about her brother, she just told us a bunch of stuff that was just lies and I knew were lies.
33:12Call data shows in the hours before the murder, they spoke four times.
33:18During the calls, Austin tells his sister he's outside the Coomer's home watching Ravisha.
33:25Confronted with the evidence, Katrina clams up.
33:30She ended up ending the conversation after about two hours.
33:33Katrina Fritz is also charged with murder.
33:38But although convinced they finally found the go-between, police believe there are more people involved.
33:46There is still unaccounted for DNA at the crime scene.
33:51When the crime lab was processing the DNA samples that we found, there were several partial DNA strands that they found.
34:02If it's a partial profile, it's really difficult to load that to any database because it could hit against hundreds of names.
34:09When you actually can identify who the suspect is, then you can match that suspect against that partial profile.
34:15To make their case watertight, the team needs to not only identify the other intruders, but solve the mystery of how Lucas's DNA was found at the crime scene.
34:26You need to ensure that no other DNA in that scene could be as a result of contamination.
34:33That actually for the defense team can be utilized as an opportunity to say, well, if there's doubt about that DNA, then there's also a potential doubt about the gloves, about the duct tape.
34:46During my trace of Mr. Coomer's last 24 hours, I looked to see, well, is there a place where he could have run into Lucas? And I couldn't find any of that.
34:56Lucas was living on the streets, kind of a four to eight block radius in downtown San Jose.
35:02So you kind of, if you are looking for Lucas, you know where to go look for him.
35:06I looked at it from both sides and I couldn't figure it out.
35:09What linked Lucas Anderson and his hospital trip to my victim?
35:16And in the end, I figured out how it happened.
35:26Police in California investigating the murder of tech entrepreneur Ravish Kumar believe they've solved the mystery of how Lucas Anderson's DNA appeared at the crime scene, despite him never being there.
35:42It was the paramedics.
35:44On the night of the murder, paramedics were called to treat Lucas after he was found blackout drunk outside a store in downtown San Jose.
35:56Two paramedics transported Lucas to the hospital.
36:01And an hour or so later were called to my crime scene.
36:04They treated Mr. Kumar, determined that he was deceased.
36:09So that was the common link between the two.
36:12I spoke to them and I said, well, how did you treat him?
36:15And they said, well, what we would do is we come in, put the leads on him, put a pulse oximeter on his finger.
36:21I mean, I can't 100% prove it, but logic says that they did not clean the equipment well enough.
36:27And that's how I believe it happened is their pulse oximeter transferred a little bit of DNA to the fingertip of Mr. Kumar.
36:34And that's how Lucas DNA got there.
36:38You're talking nothing.
36:41You're talking a few cells now that they're able to do a full profile on.
36:45So we're in a whole different world.
36:47It's quite scary to know that your DNA can be found at a crime scene.
36:51The fact that science has been developed so much in modern society, that mistakes don't happen.
36:59It really does make you question everything you do at a crime scene.
37:03This man could have been put into prison for the rest of his life for something that he hadn't done.
37:11After five months on remand, the charges against Lucas are dropped.
37:16It was a huge relief, I think, for everybody because it just wasn't fitting together.
37:21Custody is stressful on anybody, but in particular for those that suffer from mental illness.
37:28It exacerbates symptoms. It is not a good place for him.
37:31So it was good for us to get him out as soon as possible.
37:35Lucas's story sent shockwaves through the criminal justice community.
37:40This case was groundbreaking.
37:43It was the first criminal case in the United States of what we call direct transfer proven on a homicide case.
37:52And initially, I'll tell you, there was a lot of resistance, not only within the legal community, but within the scientific community.
37:59DNA evidence, however good it is, it's not going to be enough.
38:05DNA evidence, however good it is, it's also really important to check the provenance of that DNA.
38:11How has it got into that scene and how relevant is it?
38:16DNA evidence, when done properly, is solid evidence.
38:20But when we say things like, can we trust it?
38:24It's not, can we trust the science if science is done well?
38:28It's, can we trust juries and people to interpret it properly?
38:31I think a lot of us that participated, we all asked, now we know better, how do we do better?
38:38And so what Lucas's case taught us is, you got to check yourself on that bias.
38:44Because he's an individual that's coming from an impoverished background, the why and the hows can sometimes become a blur.
38:51And unfortunately, there's a lot of individuals that can't defend themselves in society.
38:55And unfortunately, there's a lot of individuals that can't defend themselves in society.
39:00A lot of individuals that probably don't have the finance in order to argue.
39:07I think that Lucas has a great deal of resilience to him. He's had childhood trauma.
39:12I mean, he was raised on the streets.
39:15But one of the reasons why he has always given me permission to talk about his case,
39:20is it broke his heart because on the news, they put his photograph up as a murderer.
39:25And he was always concerned that his mother had seen that.
39:29And so he has always been a proponent of wanting his story to get out there,
39:34not just because he wants other people not to have what happened to him happen,
39:38but also that his mother would find out that he wasn't a killer.
39:43After almost jailing an innocent man, the case against the three other suspects must be bulletproof.
39:51So far, Javier Garcia, D'Angelo Austin and his sister, Katrina Fritz,
39:58have refused to speak to investigators about the fatal robbery.
40:02But then, Fritz unexpectedly asks to meet with police.
40:07Her attorney contacted the district attorney's office and said that she would like to speak with us again,
40:14talk about giving a statement.
40:16We transported her back to the police station, and we spent the rest of the day,
40:21it was probably a good five, six hours, doing an interview of her,
40:24and her just telling us everything.
40:26Katrina was quite instrumental in this home invasion.
40:30Because she knew it all.
40:32She had access.
40:34She created a map.
40:36And in that map, it showed what rooms were going to be open, where things may be.
40:41Things that these intruders could have utilized to execute their plan.
40:47She insists she didn't know the robbery would be so violent,
40:52and eventually agrees to a plea deal.
40:55She gave us the identity of a third guy that was there.
41:01It turned out he was a friend of D'Angelo Austin's, Marcellus Drummer.
41:06She gave us his phone number,
41:09and that phone number was traveling with D'Angelo Austin on that night to the scene and back.
41:17Drummer is part of the Oakland gangs.
41:21He's brought into custody.
41:23Searchers of his home turn up a bracelet stolen from the Kumras.
41:28His DNA is compared to outstanding profiles found at the scene.
41:32Partial DNA profile that matches the suspect can actually help to corroborate stories.
41:37A partial sample from Ravisha's right hand gets a match.
41:43The police are happy that she's telling the truth.
41:46Drummer is also charged with murder.
41:54Four years on from the fatal robbery, the trials begin.
41:58I always wondered why homicide trials took three to five years.
42:02It's because of all the laws and the buildup and everything.
42:05It's just a long process.
42:08Some of the family was there for the trial.
42:12I tried to make sure that they were okay.
42:14I can answer a lot of questions for them,
42:17try and help them come to some final decision in their mind on how things happened.
42:23I felt pretty good about the case that we had.
42:25If I'm going to try and put somebody away in jail for the rest of their life,
42:30I need to be 100% positive.
42:32And I was 100% positive.
42:34Austin and Garcia are brought before the courts.
42:38They just acted like it was a normal everyday thing.
42:41There was no remorse or anything.
42:43So you've got young people that live within these particular environments
42:47that unfortunately grow up where these things are normal,
42:51where criminality is normal, where violence is normal.
42:53Where homicide is normal, desensitizes human beings.
42:57As part of her plea deal, Fritz takes the stand to testify
43:02against her brother and his co-defendants.
43:05Where people may be getting sentenced for long periods of time,
43:09sometimes it's every man for themselves.
43:12After hearing the evidence, the jury retires to consider their verdicts.
43:18I was very nervous because if you have to go to jury trial,
43:21it's a 50-50 shot.
43:23The district attorney and I are both standing,
43:26and I think my palms were sweaty.
43:30It was such a relief when they came through with the guilty verdict.
43:34D'Angelo Austin, Javier Garcia, and Marcellus Drummer
43:39are sentenced to life without parole.
43:42Fritz is sentenced to 17 years for robbery and false imprisonment.
43:47I was happy that who I believed did it actually did do it,
43:52and I proved that forensically and through other evidence.
43:55I was equally, if not more, happy that I was able to prove
44:01that Lucas Anderson did not do it.
44:04On the other side of it, though, is you have to make sure
44:08that the family is taken care of.
44:11A home invasion is extremely traumatic.
44:14It's a violation of your privacy.
44:16Home is supposed to be a safe space.
44:19They've been victimized, and I think good cops have to remember
44:23to help the victims through the process.
44:25Crimes like these impact families a lot.
44:29Super hard for them.
44:41For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov
45:11For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov
Recommended
38:32
|
Up next
45:31
47:01
42:50
46:21
42:49
42:49
41:31
21:28