01x02 - Central Park Slaying

[bunniefuu]

[ambient street noise]

[man 1] Friday night
of Memorial Day weekend,

we get a call for a missing person
at, uh, 115 Central Park West.

The building is known as the Majestic.

It's a very affluent building.

[man 2] The Majestic had
every amenity known to man.

Doormen, concierge,

everything that you need
to live in that stratosphere.

[man 1] We respond to the location.

We're met by Mr. Abdela,

who says his daughter, Daphne Abdela,
hasn't returned home.

[man 2] Lee Furman starts to interview
the father to find out what was going on.

And the doorman says, "She's not missing."

"She's back in the utility room
at the back of the lobby."

The doorman shows us where it is.

When Mr. Abdela opens the door,

we see a young girl, young boy,

in a bathtub, in water,
washing each other off.

This is Daphne Abdela
and her boyfriend, Chris.

I'm thinking, "They're fooling around.
They're in a bathtub."

As awkward as that scene must have been,

he noticed there was some blood.

[Furman] So I asked about the blood,
and Daphne said,

"I cut my head rollerblading."

It wasn't a lot of blood that we'd say,

"Something's going on.
Something happened."

It could have been a fall.

I noticed Chris also had
a cut over his eyebrow.

But again, small. Nothing significant.

I could tell
she was mad that we were there.

She yelled at her father,
"Why'd you call the cops?"

"I hate the pigs. I hate 5-0."

And then Daphne yells out,
"Get the f*ck out. Close the door."

At that point, Mr. Abdela said,

"I'm okay now. Everything's good.
I'll take them upstairs."

So we left.

Before Lee Furman
gets too far away from the Majestic,

he hears a job come over the radio

about somebody reporting
a dead body in Central Park,

and it's coming from the Majestic.

[disconcerting music playing]

[Furman] I came over the radio and said,
"We were just there. We'll respond."

And we return to the Majestic.

It ended up being Daphne Abdela
who called the police.

So she invites us inside.

I go in, and she said,

"There's a body in the lake."

"A body in the lake.
Really? What's the chances of that?"

[Butcher] This was an evil crime.

So over the top.

Who would destroy someone so brutally?

And why?

[low, menacing music playing]

[man 1] Every case
takes a piece out of your soul.

[Butcher] You cannot do this job
unless you really care.

[man 2] You want to find out the truth.

That's what detectives do.

[Parrino] I've always liked the peek
behind the curtain. What really happened?

[Rivera] It's so important for a family
to know who m*rder*d their relative.

That's my job.

[man 3] In New York City, the NYPD...

this is it.

[siren wailing]

[pensive synth music playing]

[ducks quacking]

Central Park is essential
to the heart of New York City.

[McNeely] It's not just a park
you would associate with...

Something with a great lawn,

maybe a couple ball fields,
and some playground area.

It's way more than that.

[Butcher] We all live in concrete.

We walk on concrete.

We live up in the air, far from nature.

So, Central Park, for a New Yorker,
is more than a backyard.

It's an oasis.

[disquieting undertones building]

[Butcher] But all New Yorkers
share Central Park.

Not just the good people,
but bad people too.

[suspenseful music playing]

Central Park was very dangerous
in the '70s and '80s.

I never would go there at night.

That's when we were having


A lot of them happened in Central Park.

[man] By the late 1990s,

the city was objectively getting safer.

Every single indicator
of crime, public safety,

was moving in the right direction.

When the city turned around
and things became better,

Central Park became better as well.

However, whenever there was a crime there,

it was all-hands-on-deck.

[man 2] Somebody gets a hangnail
in Central Park, it's like,

"Oh my God, everybody has to go
and figure out what's going on."

So when somebody gets m*rder*d,
it's a big deal.

[tense music playing]

[Plansky] On May 23rd, 1997,

I'm just starting my fifth year
as an assistant DA.

I'd just started riding along
with a more senior homicide assistant,

which means that I'm being trained
to investigate and prosecute homicides.

And somewhere
between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m...

[beeper beeping]

...I remember being awakened
to the sound of the beeper going off.

And because I'd just moved
into my legal sublet,

I did not have a phone line hooked up.

So I had to go out onto the street.

Found a pay phone
and I dialed the number on the beeper.

And the person on the other end said,

"There's some kind of brouhaha
in Central Park."

[chuckling] I thought that was
the understatement of the year.

[suspenseful music playing]

[man] It's early morning.

We'd been notified
by nightwatch dispatcher.

He says, "We have a body floating
in Central Park Lake."

I was the commanding officer
of Manhattan Detective Nightwatch.

Our job was to establish the crime scene,

then hand off to the catching detective
who has the case.

I got to the scene

right on the west side of Central Park,
right next to Strawberry Fields.

We had a trail of blood,
maybe 40, 50 feet, going to the gazebo.

And we followed the blood trail.

And I walk up to the lake.

And there in the lake

is a human body floating head up.

[Plansky] When I first saw
the crime scene,

I couldn't help but feel
this incredible sense of dissonance.

That lake is in the center
of this beautiful park.

And yet what I was seeing
at this crime scene

was among the most brutal I've ever seen.

[suspenseful music playing]

I went to the death scene
to investigate the body in its setting,

in its circumstances.

Most crime scenes
are confined to one location.

In this case,
we had the path leading into the park

where there were blood drops,

the area by the gazebo
where the pool of blood was,

and the body in the lake.

And I looked at the edge of the water.

Just bobbing and floating among the reeds

was just this pale man,

what was left of a man.

And I stepped a little closer

and saw that his abdomen was ripped open,

and his intestines were
floating in the water.

I've seen hundreds of bodies
in my tenure in NYPD.

This was the only body
I ever saw with a floating intestine.

It remained with me.

[Butcher] His wrist was hacked.

His right hand, hanging, almost detached.

These multiple slashing,
gouging stab wounds.

You think "overkill."

What overkill means
is... is passion, anger, rage.

Every m*rder is horrible,
and every homicide crime scene

is upsetting and emotional
and hard to digest.

But there's definitely variation.

And homicides
that are committed with knives

tend to be the most brutal.

At this point in my career,

this was the second homicide crime scene
I'd ever been to.

To be exposed
to something like that so fast,

this was definitely a baptism of fire.

[music trails off]

[mysterious, intriguing music playing]

I was a third-grade detective investigator
working at Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

And I'd been there for almost four years.

Friday, May 23rd, 1997,
I was not scheduled to work a day tour.

I was coming in early
to go to a court appearance downtown.

I get to the office
at about eight o'clock in the morning.

The lieutenant looks at me and says,
"Look, there's a m*rder in the park."

"You gotta call downtown,
cancel your court case, and come with us."

[Plansky] I was told that somebody
from Manhattan North Homicide

was being assigned.

And then Rob Mooney shows up.

And the second he starts talking,

now I know who's in charge.

[funky, groovy music playing]

[Plansky] This guy is 6'5".

He's got an enormous head.

He's got '70s rock star kind of hair

with this '70s-style mustache.

Looks like one of the long-lost members
of the Allman Brothers Band.

And he always wore
a Grateful Dead pin on his lapel.

Big Deadhead. Loves the Grateful Dead.

[Mooney] I've probably seen the Dead
close to 300 times in my life.

The diversity in that community
gave me a serious advantage

in not being judgmental about people.

You don't judge a book by its cover.

And in this case,
it turned out to be true.

[low rumbling]

[Butcher] The victim didn't have a wallet,
but there were some papers we'd found.

And there was a name, Michael McMorrow.

[Plansky] We learned
that Michael was 44 years old.

He lived in Manhattan with his mom,

and he worked in a real estate company.

[reporter 1] Today,
mystery surrounds a gruesome m*rder

of a man in New York's Central Park.

[reporter 2] McMorrow was slashed
more than 50 times, his throat cut.

You could actually hear
the cavalry of the media,

'cause in New York City,

everything that happens
in Central Park is top billing.

[low, foreboding music playing]

When I see the size of the victim,
the guy was over six feet.

He was... Looked like
he was over 200 pounds.

So for someone to be able
to go out there and... and mutilate,

dismember someone like that,

there's more to the picture.
I couldn't really understand it.

The condition of the victim's body

and amount of violence
that attended to all these injuries

was a clear indication
this was not a random act of violence.

This was not a robbery that went bad.

And so the mystery then becomes
the mechanism of what happened.

[suspenseful, erratic music playing]

[Furman] So I'm inside the apartment.
Now it's two o'clock in the morning.

After Chris left,
that's when Daphne called us.

And she said, "I was afraid of Chris."

"I didn't want to say anything
while he was around."

Daphne said she was in the park
with her boyfriend, Chris.

They were hanging out,
they went for a walk,

and Chris went crazy.

He k*lled a guy.

And while Daphne's talking,
Mr. Abdela just walks away, like...

I'm looking at him. He walks away.
Like, "This is your daughter."

"You're not saying anything.
You're not stopping her from saying this."

Again, maybe he's just used to this.

So in my mind, I'm thinking,
"She's bullshitting me."

"You're 15 years old. You're young."

Maybe she got in trouble, so she wants
to cause problems for her father.

So I'm not asking her questions.
She's just divulging this information.

Then she went into,
"I tried to give him CPR."

That she tried to help
instead of being part of it.

She's saying,
"Chris did this. Chris did that."

Nothing "me," nothing "I did."

Until, while Chris was trying
to get rid of... rid of his body,

she told him, "Chris,
you should try to gut him and sink him."

"Try to cover it up."

To be around something like that
should be shocking to you.

But her demeanor was just,
like, normal, just very relaxed.

[Mooney] Lee Furman had some patrol cops
from the Central Park Precinct

go to the park,

who in fact discovered
the body floating in the lake.

[foreboding music intensifies]

So that changed the tenor
of everything going on in the apartment.

[intricate, dramatic music playing]

[Plansky] After Lee Furman responded
to the 911 call in Daphne's apartment,

we had, clearly, reason to believe
Christopher was directly involved in this.

So later that morning,
acting on that information,

detectives went
to Christopher Vasquez's apartment,

and they placed him under arrest
for the m*rder of Michael McMorrow.

He had to go to central booking.

And, uh, the lieutenant at the time
says to me,

"Fix your tie.
You gotta walk him out to the car."

When I first looked at Chris Vasquez,

I was kind of a little bit shocked,
'cause he looked like this little kid.

You know, I knew he was 15,
but he looked like he was 12.

And he clearly had injuries
on the side of his face and on his hands.

That impression only added to my concern

about how this actually occurred,

'cause it didn't seem likely to me

that he was gonna be
the sole responsible person

for all the mayhem
that occurred at this scene.

What we really didn't know
was what we had in Daphne.

So the way that she presented herself
was as a witness.

But most witnesses
to incredibly violent crimes

don't volunteer that they suggested
it would be a good idea to gut the victim

in order to sink his body in the lake.

So Daphne Abdela is arrested

at 12:30 in the afternoon on May 23rd.

And we went over
to try to get a statement from her.

We wanted to talk to her,

and the dad, on her behalf,

refused to speak to us.

The first time I saw Daphne Abdela,
she was a kid.

She was little.

In my brain, I'm having a hard time
connecting this person to this crime.

[camera shutters snapping]

We were informed
that they both asked for lawyers.

So there was no opportunity
to have an interrogation with them.

So that's a huge loss.

Any time that you don't get
that opportunity, um, that's a problem.

We had two 15-year-olds and Michael,

who's 30 years older than both of them.

So how in the world
did these people come together?

How did this become a m*rder?

[suspenseful, intriguing music playing]

Detectives looked at Daphne's family

and learned that her father
was a well-to-do businessman,

her mother a French model.

They had adopted her as a baby.

And she lived
a life of incredible privilege.

She had everything.

[woman] In the late '80s,

many moms would bring
their children to the park.

We'd all play in Strawberry Fields.

And then fast-forward about 13 years.

And one day we hear that somebody
has been arrested for m*rder.

And it was a girl named Daphne.

And as we learned more about it,

our friends all realize that
that little girl named Daphne

was one of the kids
who played almost every afternoon

with all of our kids.

When I heard about the m*rder,
I got so obsessed with it.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It was then that I wrote a proposal
to have a book done on it.

In writing this book,
I wanted to talk to anybody and everybody

who knew Daphne, who knew Christopher.

Daphne went to Columbia Grammar
when she started school.

And at first, she fit in pretty well,

but as the years went on,
she became more, uh, belligerent.

And finally, in eighth grade,
she was asked to leave Columbia Grammar,

which is not usual
for a private school in the city.

[Mooney] Daphne engaged
in a lot of self-destructive behavior,

i.e., booze and drugs.

And Daphne's family paid for her
to go to really expensive rehab,

I think, twice before this happened.

[Sands]
Daphne started high school at Loyola

after she was asked
to leave Columbia Grammar.

She was tough.
She was brash. She was arrogant.

Her attitude became worse and worse.

She just refused to follow any rules,
any curfew, any decent behavior.

[reporter] The other suspect
is 15-year-old Christopher Vasquez.

He is described
as a former altar boy and a Boy Scout

who grew up
in a five-story walk-up in Spanish Harlem.

I learn that Chris Vasquez
was from a pretty good family.

He was an altar boy.

He lived right next to the church
on 97th Street.

He was such a good boy,
very helpful, very obedient.

[Butcher] He lived over in East Harlem.

Nothing fancy.

A very nice boy, very well dressed.

Um, he didn't hang out.
He wasn't a troublemaker.

Everybody's devastated by this.
We can't believe it.

[Butcher] Christopher's parents
were separated.

And his mother was raising him.

And she put him in a private school,
which is expensive.

So his parents worked hard
to give him a good life.

[Mooney] And he was a good kid,

but he was very introverted

and would get picked on a lot at school

because of his size
and his... and his introverted behavior.

[reporter] Chris was
someone the kids teased.

They called him a "herb,"
slang for a loser, a weakling.

-[kid 1] I dunno why he did it.
-[kid 2] He's a herb. He's a real herb.

[Sands] Both Christopher and Daphne
were excellent rollerbladers.

And they would go to the park
most afternoons.

They met each other there.

Neither Daphne nor Christopher
had many friends.

Daphne because she was so obnoxious,

and Christopher
because he was so withdrawn.

When they met up,
they struck up a bit of friendship,

then they started hanging out.

They hung out together

for about two or three months
before the m*rder.

[Butcher] Two 15-year-old children
from private schools,

and that made
an absolute circus of coverage.

A shocking crime that has led
to the arrest of two teenagers

for allegedly stabbing
a real estate agent and dumping the body.

One of them a millionaire's daughter.

When I first learned
what had happened to my uncle,

I was... I was in shock.

Especially since,
for me and for my sister,

we spent a good amount of time
with my uncle in Central Park.

That was a special place for all of us.

We knew it was a special place for him,

so for him
to have lost his life so tragically,

uh, in this place that was so special,

it was devastating.

It was very hard to, uh,
see my, you know, my mother,

and the grief that she was in.

And the fact that they lived together,

I think the loss
was felt by her more than anybody,

and I think she still felt like
she should have been his protector.

[somber, pensive music playing]

We grew up on the West Side of Manhattan,
a block from Central Park.

Michael was extremely likable.

Made a lot of friends
and had a lot of friends.

I didn't call him "Michael."
I never referred to him as "Mike."

I called him "Irish."
That was his nickname in the neighborhood.

He was quick to laugh.

And that's basically
what you saw of Irish,

was he was laughing most of the time,
cracking jokes.

He was just a guy.

Just a guy.

So why would someone
want to destroy him like this?

There's the mystery.

[mysterious, intriguing music playing]

[reporter 1] The two teenagers accused
in the brutal Central Park stabbing

of a Manhattan real estate agent
say they're innocent.

[reporter 2] Christopher Vasquez

and Vasquez's 15-year-old girlfriend
face an arraignment later today.

[Plansky] The arrest
is not the end of the story.

It's really the beginning of the story.

It's a pretty confusing situation.

We don't feel like we know
exactly what happened at this point.

[court official 1]
Defendant is charged 125.25.

First degree.

[court official 2]
This defendant, along with Chris,

referring to the co-defendant,

attempted to conceal
the identity of the victim.

[reporter] Fifteen-year-olds Daphne Abdela
and her boyfriend, Christopher Vasquez,

entered "not guilty" pleas
during an arraignment yesterday.

[Plansky] Under New York State law,
from the second that someone is arraigned,

you have 144 hours to file an indictment.

If you don't file an indictment
within that statutory time period,

then the defendants
must be released from custody.

So we had to assess pretty quickly
whether we felt we had enough evidence

to establish reasonable cause
that would get us to an indictment.

Now, the clock starts.

[mysterious, uneasy music playing]

[Butcher] This became
a wide-ranging investigation.

This required multiple crime scene teams

to go and collect evidence
from each of these locations.

And then, of course,
there was the team of detectives

interviewing the family members,
the witnesses.

They're waiting for evidence to come in.
That's how you build your case.

[Mooney] Because of things
Lee Furman observed at Daphne's apartment,

there was evidence
that needed to be collected.

Blood evidence on the clothing,
blood on her Rollerblades,

and there was blood on the watch
that she was wearing.

When NYPD gathers evidence,

they don't fool around.

It's not just a picture
of some blood in a bathtub.

They take the whole bathtub,

because it's got
blood of the perpetrators,

maybe blood of the victims.

We searched Daphne's bedroom.

In one of her drawers,

I found Michael McMorrow's wallet
with his ID and some money.

That's just another piece of evidence
that places her there with Michael,

with Chris at the scene.

[Plansky] The problem is that,
horrific as this crime scene was,

merely being present while
the crime's committed is not a crime.

It may be morally
and ethically indefensible,

but it's not a crime.

You have to prove
the elements of the crime

beyond a reasonable doubt, every element.

[Mooney] We learned
from Michael McMorrow's family

about Michael's regular behavior

and some of the people
he would spend time with in the park.

[Charles] Michael had
a group of people he knew in the park.

And after work, he'd go over there
with, you know, a six-pack or something.

He had his, you know, drinking buddies.

[Plansky] Michael struggled with alcohol.

He was just a regular guy
with regular problems.

Irish was trying to change himself.

You know, going to AA.

The one that Irish went to
was, uh, at the Y off Central Park West,

and that's where he met Daphne.

[taut, suspenseful music playing]

[Mooney] The investigation
was progressing as it should have.

People were being interviewed

that we discovered were present
prior to the m*rder in the park.

We discovered,
on the day of Michael McMorrow's m*rder,

Daphne and Chris agreed
now to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

They go rollerblading,
and she gets into all kinds of trouble.

She's picking fights
with older men in the park.

She's doing crazy things.

Allegedly making a statement to one,
"I'm gonna k*ll somebody tonight."

Prior to the m*rder, Daphne and Chris,
they had been drinking,

and they ran into
this group of people by Strawberry Fields,

one of which was Michael McMorrow.

Now, Chris is being the lapdog.
He's just following along.

Daphne is this much more "experienced,"
shall we say, child of the same age.

She was the genie in the bottle.

When Christopher found that bottle,
and opened that cork,

and she popped out,
she controlled everything with him.

[tense music pulsing]

[Mooney] During the search
at Chris Vasquez's apartment,

there was blood on his clothing,

and they recovered a knife.

We don't know at that point
whether or not it's the knife.

So we had to get DNA testing done.

[subdued, suspenseful music playing]

[Butcher] Mr. McMorrow
was taken down for autopsy.

He had a blood alcohol level
of .31 at autopsy,

which is about
more than three times the legal limit.

Would that make him impaired?

Probably, yes.

But he did have the ability
to walk from Strawberry Fields

down to the lake on his own two feet.

So we're trying
to establish what happened.

There was bruising
to the back of his legs.

It was a pattern bruise.

The destruction of his face

indicated this was
a very personal, very rageful attack.

On one side of his chest were
maybe eight or nine or ten stab wounds,

all grouped together,
that indicated he wasn't moving.

Now, you can see a man standing

and having his face hacked,

and his hands hacked
as he fought for his life.

Then he goes down.

And now his attacker stands over him
and brutally hacks at him.

Stabs him multiple times,
over and over and over.

The biggest question,
I think, that I had in my mind

about what actually occurred...

This is a big guy.

How did he end up down on the ground,

despite his level of intoxication,

that it allowed skinny little
Chris Vasquez to inflict all that damage?

And the answer is
Chris didn't do it by himself.

At least that's the supposition.

[somber music playing]

[Charles] When I did finally learn
what they did to the body,

that angered me.

I don't care if they're 15.
There should be some justice here.

[Matthew] My sister was 15 years old.

I was 17 years old.

We couldn't fathom how somebody our age
could... could do something like this.

Daphne Abdela will remain behind bars
until at least Wednesday.

That's when another court date
is scheduled.

At that time, some grand jury action
must have been taken,

or the 15-year-old goes free.

[tense music building]

[Plansky] The DNA analysis came in.

His pocketknife had a mixture of blood

on the blade and in the hilt.

And that mixture was his blood
and Michael McMorrow's blood.

[Mooney] It's the m*rder weapon.

That's a rock-crushing piece of evidence.

[Plansky] It was hard
to wrap your mind around the fact

that they were capable
of that sort of extreme violence.

But at the same time,
we knew that they were.

We knew that they've done this.

We felt at that point

that on the totality of the information
that we had at that moment,

that we had enough probable cause
to charge both of them.

The key piece of evidence for Chris
was the knife.

For Daphne, it was her statements.

Clearly, she had placed herself
in an active role

in terms of trying to dispose of the body.

We presented that evidence
to the grand jury.

The grand jury found it persuasive.

They returned indictments
for m*rder two against both of them.

Within the first few days
of this investigation,

we found out who the two defendants
had retained to represent them.

Christopher Vasquez
retained a man named Arnold Kriss,

a former assistant DA.

Clearly a formidable adversary.

Daphne and her family
retained Ben Brafman.

Ben is one of the most prominent
defense attorneys in New York

and probably in the country.

He's represented everybody
from mafioso to Wall Street people.

Ben had a portfolio that was diverse,

and usually with good results
for him and his clients.

It was, you know, kind of a stark reminder

of how much was at stake here
and how difficult this was gonna be.

[Mooney] Some detectives
might get a little bit intimidated

by the presence
of somebody like Ben Brafman.

My opinion was, "You have a law degree,

and you're dressed way nicer than I am,

but we both put our pants on
the same way this morning,

and I'm ready if you're ready."

"So let's do it."

[reporter 1] At this point,
I have more questions than answers.

Who was Mr. McMorrow,

and why was he in the park
drinking with children?

The media was shaping the narrative
to paint Irish as a pervert.

They're painting
an untruthful image of Michael.

[reporter 1] Why he apparently liked
to drink into the night in the park

with a mostly young crowd remains unclear.

What is clear
is that it cost him his life.

The most obvious explanation

if you see that a 44-year-old guy

is drinking with two 15-year-olds
at night in Central Park...

It's not that much of a leap
to try to paint that picture.

[reporter 2] McMorrow later met up
with the two teens near the lake

and may have made a pass at Abdela,

allegedly sending her boyfriend Vasquez
into a knife-wielding rage.

I think the speculation
was hurtful to my grandmother

and to my other family members
because they were not real.

We wanted to make sure

that he was remembered respectfully
and with dignity,

because that's what he deserved.

[Mooney] There wasn't one thing
we learned about him that indicated

he would've done anything bad to anybody.

He was, in fact, a kind person
that was good to everybody that he met,

to a fault.

And in... in this particular instance,

to describe him as being
in the wrong place at the wrong time

is absolutely right on...
right on the money.

The case against Chris
was always stronger 'cause of the knife.

That was the single best piece of evidence
we had in the case.

We knew that that knife
was the m*rder weapon.

We felt we were gonna be able to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt

that Christopher was the knife wielder.

We felt less confident
about the quantum of proof for Daphne.

While there was
a lot of circumstantial evidence

that clearly placed her
at the crime scene,

it requires the jury
to take a little bit of a leap.

It was a more difficult case
than the case against Christopher.

And then we got a pretty big surprise.

Mr. Brafman reached out
to the DA's office as Daphne's lawyer

and said,
"I've been interviewing my client,

and she would like to come in
under Queen for a Day."

Ben's rationale for this was,
"I think you guys got this wrong."

"She's really a witness here.
She's not a defendant."

"Let me bring her in
on a Queen for a Day."

That's an agreement

in which a defense attorney
can bring in his client,

and she can speak essentially freely.

[Mooney] Anything you say
cannot be used against you

unless you testify in court

and testify differently
from what you've talked about here.

So we brought her down to the DA's office.

Daphne explained that, that night,

she and Vasquez just happened
to skate into this group of people

Michael would spend his evenings with
who were drinking in the park.

Shortly after, a cop on a scooter
comes along and kinda disperses them.

And so they all scatter
in different directions.

Daphne and Chris had the beer,
so Michael followed the beer.

And they went down to the little gazebo
at the side of the lake.

And that's where they sat
drinking the rest of the beer.

And at some point,

Daphne and Chris...

decide that they're gonna
go skinny-dipping in the lake.

When they come out,
they're both freezing cold.

So her explanation was that...

Michael sees that she's shivering.

He puts his arm around her
to try to warm her up,

and Chris snapped.

[foreboding music playing]

Because he thought that Michael
was trying to make advances toward Daphne.

He pulled out his knife,
and then he started stabbing him.

She was saying, "Christopher did it.
He did everything."

"I'm a witness."

If this were true, she, in fact,
is an eyewitness to a m*rder.

Her indictment
would likely have been dismissed.

And that would've been
the end of it for her.

But I wasn't satisfied.

Daphne was born, practically,

thinking she's superior
to the rest of the world,

that she's the most important person
in any room that she would go into.

So she, I'm sure, thought that she was
gonna be smarter and be able to talk.

'Cause that's what they do. They all think
they're gonna talk their way out of it.

There's nothing that we like better.

"You keep talking. Go right ahead."

So I wanted to keep her on a string.

I said there's physical evidence
to corroborate what she said.

And so then I said,
"Well, I wonder if it would be okay

if you guys would let us
talk to her a few more times."

"I just want to clear up
one or two things."

Brafman was like, "Yeah, not a problem."

He thought this was a done deal.

We did the follow-up interviews with her.

He sent some junior associate
from his office.

[Butcher] Rob's got something about him.

Um, it's almost fatherly.

He's trustworthy, and people talk to him.

When Rob Mooney talked to Daphne Abdela,

they built a rapport.

He's brilliant at that.

[Mooney] I asked her,
"Well, I have a question."

"I'm concerned about these bruises."

And I took a picture
out of the... out of the file

that clearly showed this delineation
and these rounded bruises

on the back of his leg, and I said,

"What do... What do you think these are?"

And so she got a little coy for a moment
and was like, "Hmm."

She's turning the picture around,
looking at it, being hesitant about it.

This guy reached out,
tapped her on the shoulder, and said,

"It's okay. You can tell him."
And I'm thinking, "Oh, thanks, pal."

"You're really helping me out here."

Then I reached in the box,
take the Rollerblade out, and I say,

"Does this help jar your thought
about this at all?"

So then she began to demonstrate

part of her true, uh, behavior.

And said, "I thought
he was gonna hurt my friend,

so I kicked him."

I go, "Okay, I understand that,
but explain it to me."

"Well, I kicked him,
and then, you know... and he fell down."

"Then Chris jumped on him
and was stabbing him some more."

And I was like, "Okay."

And then the lawyer went,
"Okay, we're done."

She could no longer deny
that she had any involvement.

She assaulted Michael McMorrow.

She kicked Michael McMorrow.

She rendered him helpless.

And now we have the proof.

Perpetrator, not a witness.

A k*ller.

[frantic music pulsing]

[Plansky] We knew,
from the totality of the circumstances,

that she had to have helped Chris.

And now, for the first time,
she's telling us.

Shortly after that came out,

we worked out a plea deal
with Daphne Abdela.

Tonight, a teenager charged
with a vicious Central Park stabbing

has cut a deal with prosecutors
and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Sixteen-year-old Daphne Abdela
apologized for her role

in last year's m*rder
and mutilation of Michael McMorrow.

The deal does not require her

to testify against her former boyfriend,
Christopher Vasquez.

He is charged with the actual stabbing.

[Mooney] Daphne was gonna plead guilty,

and she was gonna take
the maximum sentence for the charge,

but would not be testifying in court
against Chris Vasquez.

We worked a lot with the DA's office,
and he basically said,

"This is the best we could get.
Because we had proof against him."

"We had a pretty solid case."

"But her, it was very late."

"If we took it to court, we're not sure
we could have gotten any conviction."

[lawyer] I also want to request...

In March of 1998, Daphne comes to court,

and she pleads guilty to a crime
called "manslaughter in the first degree."

Manslaughter in the first degree

is different from
m*rder in the second degree,

which is what
she was originally charged with,

because it doesn't require
an intent to k*ll.

What she pled guilty to was
an intent to cause serious physical injury

to Michael McMorrow.

She pled guilty
to manslaughter in the first degree.

She allocuted in open court
as to what she did

that made her guilty of that crime,

and she accepted a sentence
of three to nine years.

[siren squawking faintly]

[tense, jittery music playing]

[Plansky] November 1998,
we're starting this trial.

It was my first experience
putting Rob on the stand.

And Rob came to court.

He was wearing a sport jacket
and had a Grateful Dead pin on his lapel.

And me being
the young, uptight assistant DA,

said, "Rob, that's inappropriate."

"You need to take
that Grateful Dead pin off."

I was like, "Pft, not happening."

And I said, "Please take it off.
You don't do that in a court."

"You don't wear a skull
with a lightning bolt on the stand."

I go, "That's tough tarts.
I'm not taking the pin off."

And Rob said, "You have two choices here."

[tense drumroll]

"I can either testify with the pin

or I can not testify with the pin."

"But either way,
this story ends with me wearing that pin."

I thought about it for a second,
and I said, "How soon can you go on?"

[rim shot]

[curious, intriguing music playing]

[Plansky] The defense
that was put forward was,

"Three people went down to the lake.
Two people came back."

"Neither one of them is talking.
You don't know what happened at the lake."

'Cause if you're not sure

who was actually doing
the... the cutting, the fighting,

then you've got to have reasonable doubt
about this young man's guilt.

[Mooney] There's always concern
when people point the finger at each other

that this is going to result
in a stalemate,

and maybe the jury
is not going to be convinced either way.

[Plansky] The defense
did put the blame on Daphne,

that she may well have been
responsible for this,

but I think the overall strategy was,
"We just don't know."

"And if you don't know,
then you've got to acquit my client."

In every case, there's a moment

when the jury is able to visualize

the person sitting in front of them
doing the thing he's accused of doing.

I just had a hard time
believing that all 12 of those jurors

were gonna be able to see Chris Vasquez
committing that horrific crime.

[Matthew] When the jury
went out to deliberate,

we'd already been waiting

nearly a year and a half
or so for... for justice.

Um, our family was understandably nervous.

The longer it went on,

the more it seemed
they had doubts about Christopher's guilt.

[Plansky] They were out,
I believe, for two days.

And they came back
"not guilty" for m*rder two,

and "guilty" for manslaughter one.

Essentially, the exact same conviction
and sentence as Daphne Abdela.

It felt a little like a compromise to me.

[solemn music playing]

The jury was crying.

Crying.

'Cause they were looking
at Irish's family.

It hurt the McMorrows
'cause they knew how much he suffered,

and they didn't think they got justice.

[Charles] I was very angry
with that verdict.

Thirty-eight stab wounds
is not manslaughter.

[Plansky] I think the jury
didn't think that a kid that young

should bear the mark of m*rder*r
for the rest of his life.

I'm a big believer in following the law,

but the law is complicated
because humans are involved.

And when humans are involved,
emotions are involved.

[Butcher] Most of the cases
that fascinate us are mysteries.

"Who did this thing?"

In this case, that's not it at all.

We know who did it, but why?

Call it a folie à deux,

where the two of them
combined their insanity

to form one k*lling machine...

or just kicks.

Why? Why? Why?

That's the kind of thing
that drives you crazy.

[Mooney] There's no way
to know exactly what happened,

'cause there was three people,
and one's dead.

That's what happens. That's why I say,
when people go, "You solved that case,"

"Nah, that's a bad word."

Solving the case
that you actually know what happened,

and a lot of the time, you don't.

You certainly can suppose what happened.

You can look at what some of the evidence

will lead you to think
is the logical conclusion,

but without that narration,
there's no way.

[reporter] The so-called
"Baby-Faced K*llers of Central Park"

are out of prison tonight
after nearly seven years.

Abdela, now 21, was released Friday.

Her former boyfriend, 22-year-old Vasquez,
was released this morning.

As part of their parole, the two
are barred from seeing one another.

Yeah, my brother's life was worth
a lot more than six years in prison.

[Butcher] I don't feel like
justice was done.

I know, it's the system,
and that's the law, they were kids,

and that's what happens...

but it just doesn't feel fair.

Not fair at all.

Years later, Daphne,
when she was out on parole,

violated her parole.

[Mooney] She was in a halfway house

and assaulted one of
the other residents at that house.

And actually went back
and served the full term, nine years.

Chris got out after six years.

I'm not aware of him ever doing anything
to reoffend in any way

in all the years since then.

[understated, pensive music playing]

It was a really difficult experience
on both a personal and professional level.

You know, it was an unusual case,

an emotional case.

Those feelings linger.

One of the best things
that came out of that case

was that I got to know Rob Mooney.

And I didn't know it at the time,
but we were just getting warmed up.

[distorted audio warping]

[train car rumbling]

Eight o'clock in the morning,
the phones are ringing like crazy.

Everybody's talking
about a missing cleaning woman

in the financial district named Eridania.

Coworkers say that she always
has dinner with them during their shift,

but the last time they saw her
was around eight o'clock,

and she hasn't been seen since.

[McNeely] It's definitely
a daunting task to search that building

for anyone or anything,
because it goes up 26 floors.

She's not seen again on camera.

She's not seen getting off the elevator
at any other time.

And she's not seen leaving that building.

Where is she?

[Titus] We looked at every nook and cranny
of the building from top to bottom

and couldn't find her.

That means that instead of
just 2 Rector Street being the place

where all of the investigation
was gonna take place,

it now became New York City.

[dramatic outro music pulsing]