here s josh mankiewicz with the conclusion of in the middle of the night. more than 23 years after the rape and murder of angie samota, the man with that dna was finally identified. it was not, as we now know, russell buchanan. it was not lance, the ex-boyfriend. and it was not ben, the boyfriend who never asked police how angie died. the man whose dna was found in angie samota s body is donald andrew bess. not a name you had heard before? never. never hit the radar of the dallas police department. not someone she knew? never crossed paths. why was his dna on file in the national database. he had been arrested and convicted previously of two different rapes. donald bess had been out on patrol only seven months on a
angie and anita. no one could confirm he went to bed nobody can confirm where he was after that. did he ever move off that story? no. and russell said, there was nothing romantic about the evening. it was just a night out for three young people. he continued to insist that he didn t have any feelings for angie, that he didn t perceive that evening as a date and he wasn t romantically interested in her. correct. and i get the feeling no one believed that. nobody did. a lot of things weren t adding up. soon, police were questioning angie s friend anita about russell buchanan. was there some specific thing they wanted to know. was he romantically interested in angie? since he lived within walking distance, that he had committed the
remember this, don t you? because you did this. we think you did this. no! it wasn t, we think. it is you did this. you had sex with her, you killed her. you stabbed her 18 times. but russell continued to deny it. that steady drumbeat of accusation and denial ended only when russell hired the attorney and refused any further free trips downtown. and the murder of angie samota then went cold, for years. then in 2004, 20 years after the crime, angie s friend, sheila, by then living in nashville, decided to act on something she had thought about for a while. i actually had felt angie around me for a while, and then i was doing homework for a bible study class, and all of a
not only for angie, but for everyone else involved. there s an even bigger question for russell, what if he hadn t been able to hire a lawyer. he was, prosecutors say, an eye lash away from being arrested for angie s rape and murder. if you believe he was attracted to angie, he had motive, he had opportunity. he didn t have an alibi. now you add failing a polygraph. all the evidence pointed towards him. it was all circumstantial. correct. in the mid 80s, that was the kind of thing that got you locked up. got a lot of people locked up. so who was the man behind the dna match? and what story would he tell? angie s friends faced the accused killer in court. will they get the justice they have fought so hard to win? coming up i remember the air being sucked out of the room and the
not. you re going to tell me she chose to have sex with him? no one was there but angie samota and donald bess. and the defense did the same thing police did in the first hours after angie s murder. make her boyfriend, ben, a suspect. the man who made that calm 911 call that police found suspicious. to assume that a very intelligence young lady is going to throw the door open to a stranger at 1:30 in the morning to use the bathroom, but is so afraid of this person, that she picks up the phone and calls her boyfriend. and then hangs up the phone willingly, and yet this is supposed to be the one that kills her? it doesn t make sense. you find ben s actions suspicious? extremely suspicious. she and the others on the defense team didn t point their fingers only at ben. but also at ex-boyfriend lance, at russell, and at any other man who could have been invited by angie into her home. it almost seems as if she was overcome by someone she