payday wouldn t have known that yet. and with great was of eager cash they chased a stake in what they hoped might be billions still in the ground. apparently, doug carlile was one of them. according to family, he got turned onto oil by a friend who knew a guy. he told us about north dakota. hey, it s booming there. you should go check things out and see what s happening. first, doug partnered in a trucking company that served north dakota s many oil rigs. an outfit called blackstone, started by the guy his friend introduced him to. and then opportunity knocked. one of those opportunities of a lifetime, ordained from above, according to doug. the whole thing kind of fell into his lap. and i think he thought that that was his calling from god, was to move forward in that lease. an oil lease, that is. a lease that would give doug and any partners he could bring in the exclusive right to drill for oil on 640 acres of land on the mha indian reservation.
mess emotionally. so when the trial began in federal court, no cameras allowed, the prosecutors held their breath. and suckow, back on his meds came through, and in court, he repeated just what he said here in his pretrial interviews, that he met deleo when they both worked for the company that owned the white van he drove the night he shot doug carlisle. a year before that job, he says, deleo told him he could make money for roughing up some guy in north dakota, but then the boss, that is james henrikson changed the plan. he started telling me about k.c., how he was threatening to leave the company, take some of the truckers with him. and that s when he asked me if i d kill him. so when k.c. showed up at james office before going on vacation, suckow was behind the door with a heavy truck jack. and i hit him in the back of the head, and he stumbled and fell. he tried to get up and i hit him about or four more times. he stopped moving. they ditched k.c. s truck in a nearby town
i want to go to my husband. they said they re working on him. and i said no, i want to go see him, please let me go to my husband. and they said no, you can t go down there. did you ever get to see him that night? no. no. now elberta found herself face-to-face with detective burbridge, trying to get limb to believe a story about a masked killer who stared right at her and yet left her alive to tell the tale. that sounds a little made up almost. yes, it does. sounds hollywood. have you ever heard of a case where someone laid eyes on a witness to him killing someone and didn t take any action? i ve never had that happen. so you would have expected something, yes. at least an attempt. but there was something in elberta s story that night that
oil field, but he just saw so much opportunity and money. he was like one day we ll get there. doug carlile liked james and sarah s entrepreneurial style a lot. so when the chance to buy an oil lease came up they went in on it together. james kicked in $600,000. doug only $40,000. they needed $2 million, remember. yet doug was saying he d be taking over. there were disputes, then, over control and money and accusations flew. in fact, said doug s son seth he basically said i m concerned with what james is going to try to do. that was serious. and he said that if anything happens to me, you know, it s james henrikson. but like the other partners, james henrikson was far away when doug was killed, 700 miles away in watford city, north dakota. detectives pinged his phone and confirmed it. and then something happened that seemed straight out of some noir detective novel. detective burbridge put out a plea for information from anybody who d done business with doug carlile, and wh
about a masked man killing her husband of 42 years. it almost seemed like it was rehearsed or like she thought about this and what could i say? rehearsed is a good word. it sounded that way to you? yes, it did. but you don t have to take it from the detective. we were able to arrange an interview with elberta, too. my whole life was over as i knew it. elberta told us that when she and her husband returned from church that evening they drove through the gate of their property as usual. he says i ll get the gate, you get the door. did everything look pretty much the same as when you left? no. no. it just didn t feel right. i started heading up the stairs and i got all the way to the top of the stairs and i started down the hall when i heard muffled voices. headed right down the stairs, i got back to the bottom of the stairs and i called out to doug, doug, is somebody here ? and i looked to my left. the man was standing right in