so there was the missing piece of the puzzle. and as francesca put it together, it all started because her concerned boyfriend had decided on his own that she, feeling crumby, needed a tlc sandwich to get back on her feet. well, he had mentioned to the girl at quizno s, my girlfriend is sick, i don t know what to get her, can you help me. and that s why he got two subs. reporter: two subs that started a three-day crime spree in the detroit suburbs. from the quiznos in east point on sunday afternoon, spreading ten miles to the flagstar bank in harrison township at high noon on monday and ending eight miles away at the walmart in roseville, midday on tuesday. bad news, bad patterns. but matt s family and friends were still clinging to a sliver of hope. okay, he s still alive somewhere, he s still alive somewhere. maybe he s just tied up. maybe he s just tied up. maybe he s just they re holding him at a crack house or something. maybe, maybe, maybe. reporter: you had a dream.
a local teenager and a look of terror that has gripped metro detroit in fear. reporter: just watching the news, like anyone else, was a police detective from roseville. lieutenant ray blarek. this was a vicious incident. huh? very vicious, yes, sir. reporter: the detective watched the security cam pics of the bandit in sunglasses, holding a gun to a young female customer. a bad crime, but still one he never expected to investigate. because it didn t have anything to do with the city of roseville, where i m in. it s a couple jurisdictions over. reporter: but by the next day, the detective would prove himself wrong. he would be thick in the bank robbery case, as well as the disappearance of matt landry. a missing person report he knew virtually nothing about. but dots were getting connected, and there was one more to come. coming up he s scared to death. could you get someone down here? another brazen attack on a bright afternoon. will it shed light on what might have
cops in another jurisdiction, roseville, some 13 miles south where francesca lived and where matt had last been seen. did you get the feeling you were being brushed off? yes. reporter: it was a nuisance case? yes. and he was like wait in the lobby. reporter: was the family frustrated? i think they were frustrated. reporter: but chesterfield detective scott blackwell was struck by doreen landry s unshakable belief in her son s integrity. i said the right person will be taking care of this. it will be taken care of. we re not going to leave you hanging. reporter: detective blackwell was especially interested to read doreen s printout of the suspicious atm withdrawals from matt s account. he said the first thing he s going to do is let s find out if this was matthew who did these withdrawals. reporter: so the detective, hoping to find an answer on the security cam video, went down to the sunoco in the crime-ridden streets and caught a break. i went to sam s club, and
issuing search warrants, pressuring gang members who may have known the suspect called ihop. i have a son. i have kids too. i had made a promise to doreen, i said even though it s not roseville s jurisdiction. i said, i will do whatever i can to help you find your son. reporter: helping, walking mean streets. more homes are abandoned than are occupied. and it s a rough neighborhood. reporter: that thursday morning, lieutenant blarek had teamed up with fellow roseville detective jim noblesdorff. we were just coming to dead ends, and we walked out of one of the houses, and there was a penny lying in the street and had the heads up. and i picked it up, i says, this is it. this is it. reporter: your luck is turned. yeah, my luck turned. a short time after that, we ended up going for a ride, and we ended up here. reporter: it was the first house they checked after blarek had found the lucky penny just minutes before. and how we got here, why we
were tossed away that ended when police zapped the man from a taser gun like this one. when the jolts wore off and the man was back on his feet, lieutenant blarek recognized a familiar face, someone he had seen just recently on tv. he was standing right there, right in front of me in the walmart lot when i said, that s the bank robber. reporter: the same ice-cold bandit who had held a gun to 19-year-old sarah maynard s head and demanded money. give me $50,000 or i ll kill her. a violent suspect, involved in two things that we know of, and who knows how many others. reporter: could one of those other things be a missing person? just that day, the detective had become aware that doreen landry had reported her son missing to the police in roseville, where matt s girlfriend lived and he had last been seen. and lieutenant blarek knew something else. detroit police had just found the young man s car abandoned in a bad neighborhood. he wondered, did the walmart suspect now in his ho