Transcript of True Crime Vault: Divine Intervention

Welcome back to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

The Sheriff's office received a call of a body that had been found in rural Carver County. The murder of Earl O'Lander was a brutal, horrific crime. Earl O'Lander was a thriving independent, 90-year-old farmer.

Earl spent his entire life reaping corn. Clearly, they were looking for something.

Earl was in the living room. His hands were tied behind his back with duck tape. The house was in extreme disarray.

They left them there to die.

We had close to 90 pieces of evidence. There was a freshly baked blueberry pie on the counter. That is Dicks with. We assume that it was somebody from the area or somebody that Earle knew that had killed him.

Earle's closest friends were put under the microscope. It's upsetting to you, obviously.

For someone to say that my husband is the murderer? I mean, come on. I said, Do you think we're ever going to get this figured out? He said, Yes. They always leave something behind.

You felt like you needed a miracle.

We needed a miracle.

To solve this case.

I absolutely believe in divine intervention.

It all happened the way that it should have, and it all happened to identify Earle's killers.

I've had a 35-year career telling stories, and that's a lot of stories with a lot of heartache, a lot of triumph, things that make you smile and things that make you cry. When I first heard about what happened on this modest farm here in rural Minnesota, I just had to come here and see it for myself. What I've discovered is a remarkable story of terror, tragedy, and transcendence.

Carver County has a population of about 100,000 people in it. It's southwest of Minneapolis, about 30 miles. It's a Swedish community started out as.

We're in the Minnesota River Valley, so it's very beautiful, quite hilly. There's soy beans, there's corn crops. It's God's country, it's what it is.

It's quiet out where we are. So when you hear police cars coming with sirens going, you know something's wrong. There are cases that you remember over 32 years, and this is certainly one of those. The Sheriff's office received a call on April 11th, 2015, about seven o'clock at night, of a body that had been found in rural Carver County, and that it appeared to be a homicide. I went down there as soon as I found out about what had happened.

The body had been found inside a home on the farm of Earl Olander. I've spent years covering crime in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area. This is nowhere where you would ever expect a murder.

As we're looking at Earl's house, in the middle is a large picture window. That's the living room. And the living room is where we found Earl laying on the floor. Got his stomach.

I was coming in on the road, and there were flashing lights everywhere like I had never seen before.

His hands were bound with duct tape. His feet had been bound with duct tape as well, but he had worked that loose a little bit. There was a circular pattern of blood around Earle that was on the carpeting. It appeared that Earle had been alive for a while and had been trying to get up.

Earle Lohland O'Olander was born on this property in 1925. He spent his entire life here planting and growing, mainly seaweed and corn.

Earle O'Lander was a thriving, independent, 90-year-old farmer, and he was beloved by people that knew him, his community. He was a bachelor and lived on that farm for, I think, almost his entire life and still lived alone in that home, was self-sufficient. In the kitchen, there was a freshly baked Blueberry pie on the counter, and that sticks with you. He was going to eat this pie, and he'll never do that. Your hurt goes out to Earle in what he must have been thinking and how he must have suffered. I distinctly remember one of the police deputies coming out of Earle's house with his hand on his gun belt, and He looked very seriously at the other deputies that were there and said, We need to clear these buildings. The first thing we had to do was make sure there wasn't anybody still here or anybody else that was hurt. You can see all of these outbuildings, barns, and other buildings that were here. We had to clear all of those to go through to make sure we didn't have anybody else. We didn't really know what we had or how big our crime scene may have been.

So we walked along the ditches in the farm fields looking for anything that may have been related. We found some Gatorade bottles. We found a pipe. We found a bloody Kleenex outside along here that we collected, never knowing what may be important or where it might lead us. We did have a pair of gloves that were found at the end of the driveway, black rubber gloves that we assumed were involved in the case.

With the immense disarray inside the house, they'd have their work cut out for them.

As the state crime lab, we respond to homicides, death investigations, abductions, typically the higher-level types of scenes.

It was a very sad case, obviously, as an elderly man was killed in his home.

From the forensics perspective, we'll send out a team of three individuals from the lab and then one of our agents to assist with photography to evaluate the crime scene and collect evidence and then bring that back to the laboratory for testing.

The house had been ransacked.

Drawers had been taken out of the cabinets. We're looking for anything that is foreign to the scene that maybe was brought in and left, or we're looking for things that maybe the suspect would have touched.

There were about 90 items that were collected from the crime scene by the crime scene team.

There was a lot of sources where we thought they may have opened a drawer, opened a cabinet.

We actually unwrapped the duct tape, trying to find fingerprints that might have been within the duct tape. We did see some footprints in the kitchen. One was in a drawer, and then one was on a chair that was in the kitchen. It looked like somebody had stood up on the chair looking for something in cupboards or on top of the refrigerator. There's one that we found a step leading up into the kitchen from a sunroof.

With so many areas of the house ransacked, both investigators and locals were hopeful that the killers left behind DNA or fingerprints.

Finding out the truth about what happened to Earl O'Lander was important to me because this murder happened right in my own community. This is a very tight knit place where everybody knows everybody. His case quickly made headlines in the local news.

This is the original Olander Homestead, and it's where Earl was born 90 years ago.

And sadly, just a few yards from here, he died a violent death. I have seen that level of ransacking rarely. I've seen it a couple of times, but it doesn't happen that often. Most of the time, people want to get in and get out real fast. It was obvious that the individuals involved were looking for something. They were trying to find something.

Figuring out what that something was would become an uphill battle.

There is nobody alive who can tell us what was in the house, and so we don't know what to be looking for. The main road getting to his house was closed, so somebody had to have known how to get around that. There was a detour that was coming out of Carver on County Road 40, going south at Bevins Creek Bridge. They were doing reconstruction out of that. So the only way to get to this area was coming up from the south out of Belle Plain. You really had to know this area in order to find this place back at the time the murder. We made Detective Chris Wagner lead Detective for this.

For Chris, this crime was also personal.

Earl had lived about a mile away from my house at the time.

Wow. So this kid very close to you. Very close. Literally. What are some of the things you learned about Earl O'Lander?

Everyone said he was just a sweet man. How could anybody hurt him? He was just very kind.

Did he have any enemies?

Not that we're aware of. Everyone, like I said, loved Earl. We'd go to church every Sunday at the East Union Lutheran Church, where we are here. And very simple. Never had a cell phone, never had a credit card. He would pay with cash after a check. You could tell that the suspects had spent a significant amount of time in the house, going through all the drawers and cupboards.

Clearly, they were looking for something.

Yes. Money has always been in a lot of crimes that you're looking into.

How much money did he have?

Well, he didn't advertise, but he was worth several million dollars.

Finding out Earle had millions, that was a bombshell.

Who would have known that? And is that what put him in danger?

Finding out that Earle, this modest farmer, was a millionaire, was a big shock for a lot of people.

We found that out pretty quick. We went to his bank, I think, the next day.

I think that is always a motive. Earle's money came from all of his previous family members who had passed away and had in turn left him money.

Earl was also a profitable farmer in his own right. He even continued to sell hay at the age of 90. Here We have a farmer who spent his entire life reaped corn and strawberries on his farm and clearly, reaped the benefits of all that.

Yeah. If you would see his house, he lived very, very simply. I mean, you would never know. He didn't advertise it.

He wasn't a big spender. He had no credit cards, no electronic bank cards.

No, no cell phone. When his brother-in-law was trying to get a hold of him, it was a landline. We would later learn that that phone line had been cut during the home invasion so that he was unable to contact anybody.

Did Earl keep any money inside the house?

When we searched his home, we found about $900 in the basement in a little coffee can that he had hidden under the stairs.

$280 was also found on a dresser, perhaps missed by Earle's killers.

But there was not a lot of money around in the house.

The rest was in the bank.

Correct.

There's this idea in parts of the Midwest that farmers don't always trust banks and instead keep their money hidden inside their homes under mattresses. But this can make vulnerable, and nearby farmers had been murdered for money. And the fear of that happening again ran deep.

Last night, a neighbor discovered the bodies of Harry and Clarence Wundra, two elderly bachelors who had farmed here together for more than 30 years.

In 1985, in the county just 30 miles south of Earle, the Wundra brothers were murdered on their farm after a rumor circulated that they kept their money in cans used by dairy farmers to store cream and milk.

They believe the robbery was the motive as evidence by the house which had been ransacked.

The Sheriff says it appears the two were beaten because they wouldn't tell the killer or killers where their money was hidden.

It's been reported that large sums of money were stashed away.

Earle followed this case, and it scared him. Even after the man responsible for the Wondra murders, Virgil Lee Hutchinson, was convicted of both Clarence and Harry Wondra's murders.

He told someone he was scared.

It was another home invasion, and he had said, I hope nobody does that to me. We had over 90 pieces of evidence. The first set of evidence that we sent in were the clippings underneath Earle's fingernaails, the duct tape that was surrounding his wrists. We found a roll of duct tape in one of the bedrooms, and then those black gloves.

While they waited for the results of that first batch of evidence, Chris Wagner and her team canvas the neighborhood to learn everything they could about who Earle was and who would want to kill him.

My grandmother and Earle's dad, Art, were brother and sister, and they were born on this farm. He's half Norwegian, I think, and half Swedish. As a kid, we'd come up here and visit Earle My memories of Earle are when he was working hard like he always did. Just love farming, wanted to be like his dad and like everybody else around him. Many of the folks who live out there live there their whole lives, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years like Earle.

Earle even made the national news once in a story about the secret for living a long and healthy life.

No matter how cold, 73-year-old Earle Olander is up with the cows.

Never been to a doctor, never been to a hospital.

Never been to a doctor?

Well, I had something in my eye once. That 90-year-old was still active in farming, and he'd still like to bale hay and throw bales around. He could probably throw them better than I could. When I found out, his stomach just sunk.

While Earl didn't have many family members in the area, he was close to his neighbor's, the Bokers.

This one's probably Christmas. With Earl. We were the ones that got him on Christmas Eve. We'd have our parrogan and steak and twice baked potatoes. It was the same thing every year, and we looked forward to him coming over every year. The first year without him was very sad. One of my earliest memories is going over to his house. We would go into his barns and play on his hay bales and chase his stray cats. The first big event that Earl really missed was my wedding, and he was definitely on my mind that day.

He really was a role model.

He He's probably the most patient and kind person I knew.

Faith was the utmost important thing to him.

His life and legacy still impact this congregation today.

Earle invested his funds, financially speaking, here in the church. I think this was his beloved. Earle's body was found on April 11th, but it was critical to determine when he was murdered to help to figure out who might have killed him.

There's a lot of first things you want to do in a case like this. One of them is grabbing security footage. We came across San Francisco Township Hall. We found a camera up on the wall. This is about a mile, maybe a mile or so south of Earle's house. There was an SD card that was inside of there. Maybe we get a face, maybe we get a license plate, description of a car, something to help us with this case. Because of the detour, this is right along the route that we suppose that the people had taken to get to Earle's house. So this was key footage, and there isn't a lot of traffic along here.

How did you narrow down the time frame?

Friday and Saturday. It was a stand-in in the card games that he'd play with his cousins, and he was supposed to attend and never made it.

They always played 500, and they'd play so many rounds, and Earle wasn't there, so they finally tried to call him, and they couldn't get a hold of him.

The mystery grew when investigators also learned that Earle missed what I learned firsthand was He was off on the highlight of his week, The Hay Auction in Nearby Belle Plain. We have $1,300. Give it in, give it in, give it in.

30, 30, 30, 30.

You're on the front. That's $75.

Now, $33.

$75.

Now, $33.

$33. $33. $33.

$33. $33. $33. $33. $33. $33. $33. $33. Nice deal.

We have a hay auction and a livestock auction every Thursday.

Been doing it since 1957 when our family bought this place. For Earl, this was more than an auction.

Exactly. It was his day out.

He'd come here on every Thursday.

He had a spot on the seats where he sat. Didn't have a mean bowl in his body at all. Just to miss him.

I can still see him.

Earle always had a darker green cap, and that's where he was every Thursday.

It just hurts the way it went down.

Investigators were narrowing down the time frame. They figured Earl had to have been attacked before Thursday, but they needed evidence to point them toward suspects. Even with all they collected, clues were scarce.

I was excited thinking we would get evidence back on the gloves under his fingernails. Nothing.

We didn't find one positive connection to DNA or fingerprints or forensic value.

What was that like? Very, very frustrating.

Investigators had high hopes that the security camera footage taken from the town hall near Earle's home would reveal an image of Earle's killers.

And what we found was the last recording was from 2012. It was back to ground zero.

In the end, investigators had just one lead from the crime scene.

The shoe prints from the scene became important because we didn't get anything else. The shoe prints were the only evidence that we had tying the suspects to the scene.

Those were the shoe prints of the killer. For 100 days, I'm going to cross the seven continents because the answers to everything in important are out there at the edges of our world. I'm stepping into the unknown. Where are we going? To see our planet. This is amazing. As it's never been seen before. From Pole to Pole. Pole to Pole with Will Smith from National Geographic, now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu.

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Premieres January 21st on FX, Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Murders in Carver County, Minnesota are exceedingly Rare. But with no DNA or fingerprints at the scene, investigators working to solve Earl Olander's murder had only one piece of evidence to work with: shoe prints.

We knew that we had two shoe prints that were found within the house. The third shoe print was outside of the house in the breezeway, and it was at a different angle coming in from the front of the home.

Police were not sure if that third print was connected connected to the case.

So we knew that we had at least two suspects.

What would be critical is to learn what brand of shoes left those prints.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension gave us a rare look at the process they used to determine that.

So these are photographs of the impressions that were at the scene. So this one here is from the stoop. This one is from the drawer, and then this one is from the chair. The impression in the drawer and the impression on the chair were both dusty impressions. I've set up a dusty impression on a piece of glass. So what we do is we look at it by lighting it from the side, and then the impression can become much more visible. I'm going to take this gel lifter, and I'm going to actually spread it across the impression and pull the impression off onto the adhesive. And I'm just going to roll this across to get out any bubbles, and then I'm going to slowly lift it off. So you can see that we have our impression now. I took a scan of this. That allows me to then go and create additional contrast and brightness and bring out that impression even more. I search it in this database called Soulmate. It's got 42,970 reference shoe prints that I can search against this one. I add the different features and this one here is very similar to the impression that we're seeing.

And lo and behold, investigators were able to narrow down those three shoe prints.

The impression in the drawer, that one was the Crocs. The impressions from the chair were Adidas. And the shoe print impression from the stuff was the Avia shoe.

The importance of shoe prints in this case cannot be overstated. It's all they had to link suspects to the scene of the crime. Based on where they were found at the house, it meant at least two or three killers.

It was extremely significant.

Finding the owners of those shoes would lead you to the killer.

Correct.

Detectives started taking notes of shoes worn by many of the people they talked to, even Earle's close friends. I sat down with Earle's neighbors, the Bokers, who remember that distinctly because it made them feel uncomfortable.

They had mentioned they wanted to see shoes.

I I think, took a picture of the bottom of my shoe. They had gone through my other shoes.

Did it make you feel like a suspect?

Yes and no.

But we knew we didn't do it.

The incident with Earle left both Maria and Bill Boker unnerved, especially after what they told authorities happened to them just months prior.

I remember that night when that happened, we had all the flashbacks of stuff that happened to us. We had had a burglary incident.

The Bokers had reported in January, $30,000 stolen out of their closet. They had a little safe that they kept money in.

30,000 dollars.

30,000 dollars in cash. Bill Boker, he was a painter in the area and had stored some of this money in his house prior to leaving on vacation. When he and his wife, Maria, returned, they found that the money was gone.

Because the Boker's burglary was only a couple months before Earle's murder, neighbors started thinking criminals may have been targeting not just him, but the whole neighborhood.

When Earle was killed just three months after that theft, alarm bells went off.

We called to say, Hey, we had just had a burglary incident that we had reported it, and these things might be tied together.

The Bokers told police that among the only people who had access to their home during the time that the money went missing were their own kids.

We asked if the kids had any parties.

The kids told investigators and their parents that they didn't know anything about the stolen money.

But there was also someone else who may have had access to their home. The Bokers told investigators about a man who had worked with Bill Boker, a painter named Reynol Vergara.

From the day I met him, he said, Everybody calls me Henry. Henry was great to work with. Super nice guy. Very pleasant. Henry worked at our house a lot, especially in a remodeling.

You mentioned the theft at your place. Did you think Henry might have done it?

No, but you never know.

Henry Vergara also denied involvement in the missing 30 grand, and he said he would never steal from his boss.

We had spoken with Rinal. We couldn't prove that Rinal had stolen the $30,000.

Was the case ever solved? No.

I think everybody in the area was wondering if these two cases could have been tied together. And if If they were tied together, what did that then mean? Were they going to hit other houses? What was going to happen? And there was a lot of angst and fear.

We didn't have any details. We didn't know at that point if this person was still in the neighborhood.

Next thing you know, locking the door.

I took a gun and just sat with the gun.

Then the woman who lived right next door to Earle came forward with A shocking report to the Carver County Sheriff's office. She wondered if she had actually seen one of Earle's killers. About a month before Earle's murder, at 10: 00 at night, I had witnessed somebody walking on our property line. I would wonder if that was the person who murdered Earle.

As Carver County investigators keep chasing leads Another one of Earle's neighbors reports something strange that she saw a month before his murder. That brings them back to the farm to investigate.

In 2015, we lived right next door to Earle.

We're the closest house to his property.

As I was out on my deck, it was about 10: 00, 10: 30 at night. I had turned the light on to come out, and that's when I saw somebody. There's nothing behind here. I mean, it's just acres acres of land.

I had witnessed somebody walking with a spotlight on his head.

I could see the light, and the person wasn't frightened. The person didn't change their behavior when they could obviously see that somebody was watching them. It was just really very scary.

They purposefully had walked out or gone around, possibly, Earle's property.

I didn't know if somebody had been stalking. So I just wanted them to have that information that how long somebody was plotting this or if that had anything to do with it.

We went out to the scene and couldn't find any tracks, and it had been weeks, and it had rained. And so a lot of that, if there was any, shoe prints were Probably destroyed by the weather at that time.

We worried a lot that was earl pipped. So we were always on guard that somebody had been stalking both houses, possibly, and we're just giving a little time before they struck and came back to our house.

It was very unnerving.

I ended up moving shortly after. What's also interesting about Kim's tip is that during roughly the same time frame, a second neighbor on an adjacent street also reported hearing what she thought was someone entering her home late at night. She said whoever it was left before she came down 15 minutes later to check it out. At first, she thought it was her husband, but it wasn't.

Folks must have been A little bit scared.

A little bit scared, yeah, really.

A killer among you. Among us.

They don't like that. They're right. They were a little concerned. Keep your house as locked. We had over 300 leads on this case. So we were going all over the place running all of these down. One of the leads that we had came up at the Doghouse Bar, which is right over there, which is an iconic bar, a cheers place. Everybody knows your name there. And the tip that came in was that there was a couple of guys in there that weren't regulars, that were causing some trouble, that raised red flags with them.

In 2015, I was working at the Dogg House in Carver. It's a very hometown, extremely blue collar. Typically, I always knew who was coming in on my Friday night. So on April 10th, it was just a typical normal Friday night. These two gentlemen had walked in that nobody had known. They were extremely loud. Most people don't come in carrying a large amount of money. The one gentleman, he had a wad of hundreds. I mean, probably a couple of thousands of dollars. He had no problem continuously pulling it out of his pocket and just flashing it around.

Here's a couple of people, got a lot of cash, you're outsiders. And relatively close proximity to when, time-wise, to when Earl had been murdered.

When this happened at the bar, Earl's body hadn't even been discovered yet. But when the news about the murder broke, what happened at the dog house really made some people think twice about these strangers.

Some of the customers within the bar felt that they possibly could have something to do with the murder. The whole room felt uncomfortable. They just gave you that creepy, eerie vibe. They were arguing. The one was hitting his fist on the bar, and then they started to throw the popcorn. They started to get a little bit more, as I like to call, energized, emotional, angry. My normal customers were like, Sarah, we don't feel right. I mean, my customers had said, Can you do anything about this? And I was like, Well, I'll kick him out. We didn't know them, but their behavior, the second they opened the door. It was just not a normal thing to witness. Nobody knew who these guys were, and they were just spending money and buying rounds of drinks. And so-Loud. Loud. And so we had looked into them.

And it turns out they were locals, although not regulars, right?

Correct.

And that turned out to be nothing.

Correct.

While small town distrust of strangers failed to generate a new lead, two new tips sent to investigators would be enough to trigger an undercover operation.

What a lot of people did not know was that we had somebody undercover at his funeral that had a camera and a mic on him.

Ten days after Earl O'Lander's murder, investigators are frustrated. The few leads they have go nowhere, so they decide to do something bold. They stage an undercover operation. On April 20th, 2015, at Earl O'Lander's funeral.

What a lot of people did not know was that we had somebody undercover at his funeral that had a camera and a mic on him. Just to get people's reactions and see who all was here and try to get a better handle on what was going on with this case. We had received a tip. I think it was about the day before the funeral, that we should take look at Bill Boker.

This is a big twist. Remember, by most accounts, Bill Boker and his wife, Maria, were like family to Earl.

They would often invite Earl over for Christmas, for Thanksgiving, and other holidays. There were some concerns about that the Bokers may have financial gain.

According to investigators, the tip they received was that Bill Boker, on more than one occasion, had approached Earl about selling them his farm or at least as part of his property.

They had wanted to buy Earle's land, so there was some suspicion if the Bokers had any connection with his death during our investigation.

We just mentioned to Earle, selling land.

If you ever want to sell, We would buy.

Did you want to build a dream home on his land?

There was no dream home. Said, Earle, sell us a chunk of land right next to you. We'll build and live right next to you. We'd take care of him. He was like a grandfather. Earl always said, No. When I'm dead, everything will get taken care of. That was always his answer to us.

Now, Earl was dead. Murder. And investigators needed to know why. So what did you do to investigate that?

Well, we spoke with the Bokers, and they obviously denied having any connection to it. They have the story wrong. They don't know us. They don't know how much we loved him. My faith is the only thing that got me through They want a DNA swab.

So you gave your DNA? Yes. But everyone was a suspect?

Yeah, that included us.

At about the same time, investigators were prepping for the undercover operation, they get another tip to look into someone else, the painter that Bill employed, Henry Vergara. It turns out Henry painted Earle's house less than a year before the murder.

One of the leads that we had received was out of concern on a paint crew that had painted Earle's home the year before in 2014. Earle had hired his neighbor, Bill Boker, and Bill Boker's employee, Rinal Vergara, whom they called Henry. Saying that he thought that Rinal was suspicious.

The guy that we knew, we had trusted in our house. He was my most requested employee. He was asked by name, I want Henry. I want Henry. Everybody trusted him.

Authority They collected DNA samples from both the Bokers and Henry. But remember, no DNA was ever recovered from the crime scene, so there was nothing to compare them to. You did something at Earle's funeral.

Part of any homicide is that we send detectives to the funeral to see if there's anything that looks suspicious. So we did go and send some detectives to the funeral and just peek around and see if there was anything unusual.

Wearing a hidden camera. Correct.

Well, you never know who you're going to talk to.

The funeral was well-attended. The church was packed, and there was a lot of people that were coming and going. We had put our officer at the entrance to the church so we could catch everybody that came in. He did see Bill Boker, and he did start up a conversation with him regarding Earle.

And they asked Bill Boker about Henry.

Correct.

What did he say?

That he had thought that he was a good person. He had worked for him for 10 to 12 years, but he was also suspicious of the money that had been missing and had thought that maybe he had something to do with it.

The undercover officer got a chance to talk to Bill Boker and other people at the funeral, but it failed to yield solid leads. But then, on April 29th, about two weeks after Earl was killed, another double murder happens on a Minnesota farm.

In LINE County, it's Southwestern Minnesota. It's about two and a half hours away from here. The son was driving by, saw his parents house on fire.

The farmhouse was owned by Jim and Kathy Hively. Both had been shot dead. Their house had been set on fire to cover up the evidence. And locals were shocked.

And two hours away. Yes.

We have contacted the Lyon County Sheriff's office and the detectives down in that area, and we're trying to get that information and compare it to our own case. Both homes were burglarized, and a rural farm family.

Investigators charged 20-year-old Derek Hexam, 18-year-old Theodore Como, and 21-year-old Kyle Wesling with the deaths.

The three men were later convicted of the Hively murders, but one more similarity in the two cases is striking. At a location investigated in connection with the crime, one of the suspects left a shoeprint behind, an Adidas shoeprint.

Whoever killed Earl Olander also wore Adidas shoes. Did you think that whoever killed the Hivelys could have also killed Earl?

We were looking into that prior to receiving our tip on May ninth. That would Openness cares wide open.

And call it chance, luck, or a miracle. Any Hively connection is ruled out when a man calls crime stoppers and sends the investigation in a whole new direction.

I was in the house a few days ago, and I ran across this Bible, and I saw the guy's name in the Bible. The name is O-L-A-N-D-R.

And that discovery, it wasn't even the last twist.

Second page for can't have the rest you needed for a medical.

That's Paisley Park, 7801 Autobahn Road.

My sergeant asked me to come out, and I said, That's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, Yeah.

This was one of the most intense murder cases we've had in decades. They attacked Earl, ducttaped him, beat him, left him for dead, and we don't have anybody in custody. It was so senseless. I think we had close to 90 pieces of evidence. We didn't find one positive connection to DNA or fingerprints. We didn't know who killed Meryl Olander. We really needed a good break in this case. The Bible gave us the leads that we needed to solve this case and bring her alt's death to justice.

I was in the house a few days ago and I ran across this Bible. You found a Bible with his name in it?

The Bible is just one twist in a case that's far from over.

Mr. O'olander's community, family, and friends deserve to know the actual truth, the real motive, the true story of his death.

The thrust of the investigation by that private investigator was to see whether you specifically were involved. Us?

I think divine intervention is God knows how everything is going to happen and play out. I still get chill sitting here. I'd said, Chill is down my spine.

We had a picture of Earle in our investigative unit with Justice for Earle, and it was the picture that he had in his church directory, and he was wearing a nice red dress shirt, and his hands were folded. And we would often look at him and I need a sign. We need to figure something out. We're not getting anywhere.

In the end, what is it that finally cracks this case?

Earle's Bible. On May ninth, 2015, we got a tip from a party who had been cleaning an apartment in Saint Paul for $23 in a bottle of vodka. And this scholar had said that he had found this Bible, and he described this Bible as very ornate and old and in some European language.

Saint Paul, Minnesota is a long way from where Earle lived, some 50 miles. So this is a big surprise.

I saw the guy's name in the Bible, and his name is Earle, O-L-A-N-D-E-R. Okay. The Norwegian Bible was the place that I was cleaning up. So yesterday, I opened the Bible up and... One thousand.

It was two $1,000 bonds in there with his name and address and everything on there.

And got to find out he was dead, I looked on it this morning and they said, murder.

He googled the name Earle O'Lander and saw that there was a reward in that Earle had been a victim of a homicide in Carver County. Initially, when we had put out a reward for information, we had started at $1,000. At a certain point, when we were not getting anywhere, we increased it to 7,500, and the tips started to come in a lot more.

Listening to the recording, you can tell that even the dispatcher knew this particular tip was a big deal. She calls her supervisor.

I have a guy calling saying he was cleaning a house in Saint Paul, and he found a Bible with a bonds in them with the name of the guy that died.

Seriously? Yeah.

So I feel like that's a big thing.

Yeah, it is a big thing.

It was a Sunday, so I was at home when I received the phone call that they had a Bible and had a very important big break in this case. We've got a break. We've got something we can go on. We've got the direction that we can go with this case and hopefully bring the murderers of Earle to justice.

Is this a case of divine intervention?

I believe it is. We didn't have anything until this Bible, and I think the significance of it is Earle's history and his faith was so important to him that this Bible is really what brought us to solving his murder.

I believe Earle got his Norwegian Bible as either a confirmation gift or was handed down through generations. Earle was Norwegian. His mother was Norwegian. We didn't hold that against him, us, Swedes. Faith was very important to him. It was from the late 1800s, early 1900s. The outside was leather, embossed. Inside was very beautiful paintings and lithographs and so on. And it's a beautiful, beautiful family Bible. I think divine intervention is God knows how everything is going to happen and play out.

So the first question is, why was Earle's Bible in this random apartment to begin with?

When we get the tip, my partners meet with Barry Kiles. He's the one who was cleaning the apartment. We found out that the people that had lived in that apartment was Edson Benides, Dominguez, and his wife. She said her husband had brought it home one evening and said that he got it from a friend. The Bible made her uncomfortable, and it creeped her out.

She thought it was creepy.

It was creepy. It made her uneasy. And so she left the Bible behind in the apartment.

In her interview with police, she said Edson, her husband, didn't even tell her that the Bible was stolen, and she didn't want to open it because it made her think of spirits.

Edson Benites is not a name that had ever been mentioned in relation to Earl Olander's unsolved murder. Sheriff's investigators knew nothing about him.

After speaking, my partners learned that Etsin Benites worked at Chili's. He was a cook and that he was currently working.

From a forensic standpoint, the shoe prints were the only evidence that we had.

And the first thing investigators want to know is what shoes Etsin Benites wears.

Everybody on the Sheriff's office wanted to solve this. Earl He was like everybody's grandfather. He was just a nice, older guy.

I would drive by Earle's farm on my way into the office every morning. It just felt very nerve-wracking.

There is a misperception the public has from watching these television shows that a crime is solved within hours or within days. From a forensic standpoint, the shoe prints were the only evidence that we had. Someone had pulled out all the drawers and just ransacked the kitchen looking for money or valuables. It was rather dusty in the kitchen, and so they got an excellent print inside this drawer, which you can read C-R-O-C-S, Crocs. So we knew somebody was wearing Crocs.

Now, investigators needed to know what shoes does Etsin Benites wear.

Etsin Benites worked at Chili's. He was a cook.

The police, they talked to him and said, Hey, we want to talk to you about this book that we found at your apartment.

As they approach, they noticed that Etsin was wearing crock-style shoes.

Etsin Benites was wearing the same type of shoes as one of Earle's killers.

That certainly did stand out to our detectives. After our detectives saw that we needed to have some more conversation with him.

Police have no idea who Edson Benitez is. They don't know what the connection to Earl could be. All they know is that he has a murdered man's stolen Bible. When they ask him about the Bible, what does Edson Benitez say?

He acknowledges that he had possession of the Bible, but he said that he had gotten it from his friend Hugo.

When authorities go to talk to Benites at Chilly's, they're recording everything, and we got a hold of that recording.

He said his friend Hugo gave him the A book in a bag with some stuff in. Where does Hugo live?

In Richfield. In Richfield?

Richfield is a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. This is nowhere near where Earle was killed in Carver County.

Is there a phone number for him? No, he went to Mexico. That was when he threw everything away.

He threw everything away and went back to Mexico?

He took, he went back to Mexico. When did he go back to Mexico? Last week.

Okay. Police press Edson Benitez for details on Hugo for several minutes, trying to get as much information as they can to track him down.

Did he go back by himself? He went by himself. What's that?

I don't know.

He went by himself. He was friends with him.

As they talk, investigators start to learn a little bit more about Benitez himself.

What can you tell me about him, Benitez?

Etsin came from Mexico. He attended high school for a couple years. He had been married for about six months. Their marriage was troubled. Etsin would spend a lot of time out at night and wouldn't come home till early in the morning. He was described as a pack rat. He was always bringing things home that he had found. Or that he had gotten from a friend.

Or so he said.

Or so he said.

Investigators then start questioning Benita's probing about where he goes.

We're from Carver County. Okay.

Do you know where that is? No. Okay. Do you ever go outside the Metro, Minneapolis, Saint Paul or anything?

No, only here, like Bloomington or Minneapolis. I don't go out. I don't know if I see this good.

They're trying to see if Edson will admit to being in Carver County, where Earl was murdered, but he doesn't. Then they switched to trying to figure out what shifts he works.

Do you work set days? No, I got my day off. Every day. My day off is only WednesdayIs that on Wednesday? On Wednesday? Your only day off is Wednesday? That's interesting.

Authorities believe Earl was killed on Wednesday, April eighth. So having Wednesdays off meant he likely wasn't working the night of the murder.

I need to detain your book, so I need you to turn around. Okay. Why don't we do a thing?

Well, the book is stolen, and I think you know a little bit more about that than you're probably telling me. But I'd like to give you opportunity to be honest with me.

Once he's in handcuffs and being brought in for questioning, his story of getting the Bible from an alleged friend named Hugo changes.

Benita admitted that that was a lie. He made it up.

We want to talk about that book and how you came into possession of that book. That's why we're here talking to you today. You understand that? Yeah. Okay.

Here's the thing, I don't think you got it from your friend.

No.

What?

I'm going to tell you the truth.

No one can anticipate what truths will emerge once Edson Benitez is inside the interrogation room and who he will name as Earl Olander's killer.

You threatened to kill him?

You're going to try Can you tell me where the money is?

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My lips are still Marvel Televisions' Wonder Mad, streaming January 27th on Disney+. We ended up detaining Etson and wanted to have some conversation with him. Go ahead and have a seat on your cell phone. That'll be great.

Bring us inside his interrogation.

It was myself and my partner who had interviewed him. And Etson was very personable. We're looking for your help in trying to figure out exactly what happened that night, and just for you to help piece together everything that had happened.

It's in this interrogation that they learn more about Benites' connection to Earl O'Lander.

He had said that He had helped a friend. He was contacted by a guy named Rinal Vergara. I would recognize that name as being Henry, the painter who had painted Earle's house the year before.

And worked with Boker.

And worked with Bill Boker, and was also a suspect of that theft of 30,000.

So remember, in January of 2015, just a few months before Earle's murder, the Bokers discovered $30,000 was missing from a lockbox in their closet. Vergara was one of the few people who had access to the house. They lived just down the street from Earle and always wondered if there was a connection between their theft and Earle's murder. Is Henry the one who organized this? Yeah.

He's been leaving his money to any dad.

He didn't have a lawyer, but he wanted. According to Benita, he was contacted the day before on April seventh by Vergara who had said that he wanted to do a job and that he had known of an old man who had lots of money that lived near his boss out in the country. What did he say about this old man? How did he know him?

He said he was painting because he was painting already. He knows him because the owner is painting. He knows really well who the owner is.

He didn't want to use his car because Fegara had said that people in the community recognized Vergara's car. And so he had asked Benita's if he had a car that he could use.

We made it halfway, and we were like, Oh, I started by 2000.

They had talked on the day of the eighth, on April eighth. They met at about nine o'clock in the evening, and they had driven out to Earle's place. Benita says that they saw that there was a light on in the living room.

Would you be agreeable to sketching it out on paper here? So how would you make?

Yeah. Edson drew them as sketch, which was a match to the layout of Earle's property. Then, he described approaching the house.

And they drove the car, which was Benita's car, back behind one of the barns in the property. According to Benita, he sat in the car while Vergara had collected a black duffle bag.

It had the duct tape, maybe the gloves, but it had the gun in it.

That gun is what would allegedly be used to beat Pearl.

What was Reinald's plan?

He went over there, and then came back. I'm going to get you. Okay?

Go.

He went over there, he went over there, and then he came.

Regarra returns to the car and says, Hey, I need your help. I can't find the money.

Did you go in the front door or the back? The door was back there. What did I say? He was in the hands, started to take him out. He made a noise, they take him out. Was he saying anything or was he just grunt? Got a ruck. Could you see his face? No, because he was covering him back there.

Bernice had said that Vergara was the one who had swung the gun, taking those blows or those heavy motions over his head and basically pummeled Earle down to the ground.

So brutal.

He's laying there with his hands tied. What did Reynald take you?

He wanted money.

At one point, Earle was trying to break free.

He said to that old man, you're going to die?

Yeah, you're going to die. You threatened to kill him?

You're going to die. You tell me where the money is?

The saddest part about this story is that Earle suffered. Earl endured this and would be left for dead.

Did you see the old man moving at all? Yeah, he was moving.

He was breathing and moving around?

Yeah. Okay. They left him, and they cut his phone line so he wasn't able to call anyone for help, and they left him there to die.

If you believe Benita's version of events, the case seems open and shut. But when it's Henry Vergara's turn to talk to police, he tells a very different story. He says he wasn't even there.

You and Eption went to her else.

You love it. Maybe.

Excellent. Me? I do not.

All of it leads to an emotional jail house confrontation.

If I were to preach to see you for confession, will you confess? No, not really. Will you confess?

Benedas had talked about Vergara, and Vergara's name certainly did pique our interest because we knew him. Everybody called him Henry. He had painted at Earle's house.

He had painted for the Bocers for approximately 10 to 12 years. Vergara was also from the same town in Mexico as Benedas.

At the time Earle was killed, Vergara had been arrested for traffic offenses, nothing like murder. Benites' criminal record was much the same, though he'd been charged with a burglary about a year before Earle's murder. But those charges were dismissed. Murder charges were a whole new ball game.

He said he was involved, but Edson wouldn't say that he hit Earle with the gun. He placed it all on Vergara.

We did a search warrant and located Vergara. Initially, Vergara denied having any involved movement. What we need to do is I need you to tell me what happened.

What happened?

When Earl got there. No, you don't mean?

But we do know. That's the thing.

For an hour, they question Vergara, and for an hour, he says he wasn't even there. Ultimately, it only ends one way. We're under arrest for murder.

There's one other key detail investigators notice before he's taken away. Can I see the bottom of your shoes, buddy? I think those are the shoes you wore the night the girl got hurt. What shoes was he wearing?

Adidas. And his shoe, actually, that he was wearing during his arrest matched the shoe print impression that was taken off with a kitchen chair.

Between Edson's Crocs and Vergara's Adidas, two of the three mysterious shoe prints found at Earle's house were now accounted for.

Back at the Carver County Jail, Vergara starts by denying even being at Earle's house, and then he changes his tune and points the finger at Benites.

Vergara blamed Benites for a lot of what had happened. There is no doubt that you were in Earle's house that night. He did everything. He said, You waited in the car when you did it. And said, And your footprints are in the house. And so it's looking like Everson's telling the truth.

He never threw his interview admitted to having any involvement in Earle's assault.

There was an awful lot of finger-pointing that was going on in this case.

And then there was still the open question of that third shoe print, the Avia, found on the step of where the killer or killers came in. Whose was it? Weren't there three shoe prints at the house?

There were.

We still had this shoe print, this Avia, that we had not identified as being to anybody's. That was found in the porch area.

My partner had mentioned to Vergara, Could there have been somebody else? It wasn't you. And Vergara took that and ran. Vergara said it was Benita and another guy that had gone into the house.

Who else was with you? He gave a hand and... Or the guy.

Another guy?

Yeah.

Who was this third person?

Vergara gave an identity of a person named Martine that was responsible.

That is her first name or last name.

Martine? Yeah. I don't know. I need this more for the... Is that her name, his name, or pick name?

As police try to chase down details of this alleged third person, murder charges are filed against the two men who can definitely be placed at the scene, Benites and Vergara.

Both defendants were charged with four counts of murder and looked at them as being equally culpable. I believe that Vergara set this up. He knew her all. He set it in motion. But for Vergara, the crime wouldn't have happened. I believe that Benitez was the one that went in and hit him over the head. They both ducttaped him. They both ran sacced the house. They both covered it up. They're equally culpable for brutal attack.

Investigators say that Reinal Vergara of Richfield was hired to paint 90-year-old Earl O'Lander's house. Unfortunately, the job didn't end there.

For anybody to go and take advantage of someone after having earned their trust, it's evil. One of the items they stole, a Bible written in a foreign language with two savings bonds inside.

That Bible is what led police to the pair of suspects. It's especially hard for Maria and Bill Boker to come to terms with the news. Remember, Vergara wasn't just any employee. He was someone Bill worked closely with and that the whole family trusted.

When you find out that Henry Vergara is one of those men arrested, did you feel a sense of betrayal?

At first, we didn't believe it.

Then once you find out they got the shoe print, he had the shoes on, when they arrested him, that we were in the house, and now we're like, Okay, now we've been lied to. Now the betrayal sets in.

Did you think that maybe the cops have the wrong guy? Oh, yeah.

From day one, I was totally miffed. Not the person we knew when he had done this. Maria went down to confront Henry at the jail, and she's like, Well, are you going? And I said, Why would I go? Whatever he tells me, how do I know it's true?

Did you know that your visit to see Henry Vergara was being recorded?

I didn't.

Prison visits and phone calls are often recorded. In fact, it's fairly customary.

Would you like Did you listen to the recording?

You know, part of me does and part of me doesn't. I'm curious to know what I said, but I know it's going to be hard.

I start out by playing Maria a clip in which Vergara suggests that there was a third person, a loop that investigators at the time were trying to close. This is the recording of your visit to see Vergara.

There was three of you?

Yes, there's three.

Who is this third guy? Maria went straight to an investigator Sheriff and said, That I knew. You're not done. He says there's a third person. You need to get him. Go find them. We loved her. We We love you.

Yeah. And you think 99% sure yesterday, but we sure 99% and we would never do this. And today, 99% she did.

If I were to preach to see you for confession. Will you confess?

You Baby, will you confess your part so that you can go to heaven?

I'm going to get you a brief.

And I want you to talk to him because more important to me is your soul.

Maria, what does it like to hear yourself confront him?

No, it's painful.

You seemed worried about Vergara's soul. Talk to me about that.

Well, we are very faith-filled, and Jesus died on the cross for us to forgive our and he wants everybody in heaven with him. He loves Henry just as much as he loves me.

Even a killer?

Yeah, even a killer. God loves all his children.

With charges filed and Benitez and Vergara heading to court, the investigators continued to build their case, paying particular attention to Benitez's allegations of a third suspect, someone who might have left that unidentified third shoe print.

It was then that investigators would be faced with a brand new challenge when someone else turns up dead on their watch, and not just anyone.

My sergeant said, I need your help on a death investigation at Paisley Park. It's like a page for a kid after if you needed for a medical at Paisley Park, 7801 Autobahn Road. I said, That's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, Yeah.

At a court hearing for Edson Benitez and Reynal Vergara, Sarah, Prince's death is about to steal the spotlight.

I was sitting in the back road. My sergeant had come in, and he had asked me to come out, and I had thought, right now, he said, I need your help on a death investigation. At Paisley Park.

Second page for 10, has the rest you needed for a medical at Paisley Park, 7801 out of on Road.

I said, That's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, Yeah.

Authority, stay at 9: 43, Thursday morning, Sheriff's deputies responded to the artist's home, where they found 57-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson unresponsive.

They have found Prince dead.

We went from investigating Earle's homicide to investigating Prince's death. I had to tell Earle's family that I wasn't able to stay and that they would soon learn why.

We are going to leave no stone unturned with this and make sure that the public knows what happened.

I remember all the mourners and all the fans coming out in celebration of his life. It would take two years to learn that he died after taking Vicodin laced with Fentanyl.

You have said that Earle's case, and not Prince's, crisis was the most impactful of your career.

It was. I think that it was very personal. Earle was well loved by everyone. This case was a very hard case to work. We had no evidence, and it was all solved by his Bible.

That Bible and dedicated detective work. Investigators needed to close the loop on whether a third person was really involved. Someone who might have left that third Avia shoe print. They found evidence to place Benitis and Vergara at the scene, but not anyone else.

We were able to identify that they had sent each other a text message. If those messages were never sent, we wouldn't have been able to get the cell tower pings to get them at Earle's home.

Investigators decided that mystery third shoe print likely wasn't from the night of Earle's murder.

We believe that shoe print had been there for some time.

Benitez and Vergara ended up accepting a plea deal.

The offer was, Plea guilty to secondary intentional murder and serve 37 and a half years in prison.

At the plea hearing, Benitez and Vergara have to face Earle O'Lander's family. What might happen to my uncle, Earle Lander, was pure evil.

Reynald Vergara sat in his orange jumpsuit, hands shackled, headphones on, listening to his interpreter.

He had a kind soul and a gentle spirit. A firm handshake with a calloused hand and lived a simple life with grace. It was an example to us all.

When the defendant painted his house, my uncle offered him water and invited him into the house. The defendant even testified that my uncle was always kind to him and even brought him snacks from the store.

Both men apologized before being led away by deputies. I just want to apologize to the family. I'm sorry for doing this. I know it will be very difficult to forgive me.

Earl O'Lander's family would soon have more to ponder than forgiveness because of something Edson Benitez said at his sentencing on May 6, 2016. After the allegation of a third person had been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by authorities. It came up again in a big way. Benitez is on the record with a startling allegation that Vergara's boss orchestrated the whole thing.

Correct. Benitez came forth, and he thought that Bill Boker had something to do with it.

This was a major allegation coming very late in the game, and to this day, it's something the Boker Workers never knew.

Did you hear what Edson Benita said at his sentencing about you?

We don't know anything.

At the sentencing, Edson Benitez told the court. He said, I just know that he, Vergara, went to do that because his manager told him to, referring to you.

He wasn't working for Bill at the time.

Right. But he knew you had known him. That's what he said. He said that you put him up to it. Did you have anything to do with Earle's murder, Bill?

No, absolutely not. Zero. Zero knowledge, zero planning, zero inclination.

This is the first time we've heard. It's so shocking.

And it's upsetting to you, obviously.

For someone to say that my husband is the murderer? I mean, come on. He's a kind person. He would never hurt anybody. We get nothing from an Elstead.

Relationship with a grandfather figure, a mentor. And why would I want somebody like that out of my life?

He Even after Benites and Vergara pleaded guilty and were sentenced, two years after, in fact, some of Earle's surviving family members were still haunted by the case, and specifically by accusations against the Bokers.

Earle's family had hired a private investigator to look into the case. They had continued to believe that the Bokers had some involvement.

The thrust of the investigation by that private investigator was to see whether you specifically were involved. Us? Really? No. How does that make you feel?

It's upsetting because you have the guy. Obviously, you have the guy. We love Earle, and I don't know how else we can prove we love Earle.

Contained in the case file is an interview that the PI did with Benitez while he was in Minnesota's Stillwater Prison. Benitez said that Henry told him Bill Boker wanted Earl O'Lander dead because he wanted Earl's land to build a house on. This is years after there had been another other tip, alleging almost the same thing that the Bokers wanted Earl's land.

We always joke, Earl, we'd love to live next to you. We can come help you out. We always said that we would love to live next door to Earl, even as a caretaker.

Benitez also made other allegations about Bill helping out Vergara after he was charged with murder.

He thought it was the Bocers that were paying for Vergara's attorney.

There was nothing there involving the Bocers that we came up with that would indicate that they were involved.

Has Vergara ever implicated Bill or Maria Boker?

No, never. I had heard a visit that Maria Boker had done with Vergara, and she was extremely upset at him and was yelling at him, How could you do this? And it felt very real, in my opinion, and it was very emotional.

In the end, though, was there any credible evidence that either of the Bokers was involved in the killing of Earle?

No, there was not.

Just as things are getting back to normal for Earle's community, everything changes. Then there is the case of 90-year-old Earle O'Lander. Suddenly, Earle His murder is national news.

In the lead up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was campaigning for President.

Imagine everyone's surprise when he mentioned the murder of Earl Olander in a campaign speech. Then there is the case of 90-year-old Earl Olander, who was brutally beaten and left to bleed to death in his home, 90 years old and defenseless.

He had done a speech on immigration in Arizona. And during that speech, where he was talking about undocumented immigrants, he mentioned this case.

The perpetrators were illegal immigrants with criminal records a mile long. Earle's case was center stage in a game of political football. What did you think of that?

Some of the statements were inconsistent. He had said that the suspects had a criminal history a mile long. They didn't. They didn't have very much of a criminal history prior to the murder of Earle.

Edson Benitez and Reynal Vergara have now served six years in prison for Earle's murder. I reached out to them for their side of the story. Benitez wrote me back, and I shared that letter with Jim Olson. We got this letter, so I wanted to read it to you to see what you thought. But Benitez mailed that.

Okay. Yes.

I received your letter. Interesting. I reckon that you and your people have reasons to believe that there is more to the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Earle Olander than what you read in those case files. I I went on to read the entire letter in which Benitez never says what they stole, but he continues to suggest that not everyone involved in Earle's murder is currently behind bars. It was a better sale to the white establishment to exclusively vilify two men of color for the murder of an affluent white man, not another white man. When I read that to you, tell me what you think.

The Sheriff's office would always be open if there is additional information that Mr. Benitez has, especially if there is a third person that's involved. He should come forward and sit down and talk to us.

Edson Benitez refused to answer any more questions in subsequent letters and emails, and Vergara never did respond. The Carver County attorney issued a statement that said, After law enforcement exhaustively investigated the murder and followed up on every lead, there was no reliable or credible evidence that a third person was involved in the murder of Earl O'Lander.

Are you confident that all the guilty parties are now behind bars?

I am. I think that he's deflecting his involvement and that we did a thorough investigation.

For that Bible to end up being the way that crime was solved is so clearly, to me, a way that God intervened in the story to not only give some peace to his family and his loved ones, but also to this whole community that was really wracked in grief and rocked in fear and all those things, to just be able to let everybody rest and be at peace.

This is one of those cases that stick with you and actually even haunt you because of what happened to Earle. Moving on for us is never forgetting Earl. His stone has a tractor on it, and it's his Alice Chalmers WD tractor. That was pretty important to him, so that was a nice little tribute to him. It was just senseless and tragic how he died, and it was over basically nothing that they took from him.

What I've learned in this case is that Earle should and will never be forgotten. What also won't be forgotten is the way that his senseless murder was solved with what those who knew Earl best say, his divine intervention.

It's that tap on the shoulder, or it's that direction you pointed from somebody above. His murder being solved because of his family Bible was just incredible. To me, there are no coincidences. There's only God incidences. To me, that was the, I'm going to close this chapter for Earle.

I just think he would really, really love that you're here in his church. One of Earle's relatives took some of the wood from Earle's farm and fashioned it into this amazing table. Kind of like to think of it as if Earle from heaven is gathering us around, right? It's just this powerful way that even after his death, he still is a leader here.

That table is where decisions are made for the future of the church and where one of its most beloved members will never be forgotten.

Well, as for that case-breaking Bible, it's now in the hands of Earl O'Lander's family.

And his legacy and his farm continue on. It's still being worked by the same family that helped him farm the land for three generations.

Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. We hope you'll join us Friday nights at 9: 00 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes. See you then.