( creaking )
( gasping )
( screaming ): NO!
( sirens blaring ) ( indistinct radio transmission )
Excuse me. My name's Gil Grissom. I'm with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Please help us. I'll certainly try.
Is that the ransom note? Yeah. They don't even say how much money they want. They just say that they'll call us in six hours. Have you let anyone else touch this note? Police, a relative, anyone? N-no, just us. Why? Well, because the person who touched it before you has your son... and he's just left us the first piece of the puzzle. Captioning sponsored by PARAMOUNT PICTURES ♪ Who... are you? ♪ Who, who, who, who?
♪ Who... are you? ♪ Who, who, who, who? ♪ I really wanna know ♪ Who... are you? ♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪ Who... ♪ Come on, tell me who are you, you, you ♪ ♪ Oh, you!
Jim, Dispatch said this is a kidnapping? Divorce situation? No papers filed. College sweethearts. Neighbors say they're the salt of the earth. So this could have been legitimate? They have a security system. Never put it on. They say how come? They feel safe in the neighborhood. Check the premises? Attic, wine cellar, crawl space. No four-month-old baby.
Nice digs. Yeah, guy got rich off some dot-com outfit. Moved here from Oregon two years ago. Bet they wished they hadn't today. Are you sure he won't hear a click or something? He won't. And if he asks, you and your wife are alone. Question him about your son. Ask to hear him breathing. Anything to keep the guy talking. Understood? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Built my own business. I can handle any kind of pressure.
GRISSOM: Was this yours? Yeah. May I ask when you opened it? I don't know. Um, sometime after we called 911.
You mind if I, uh...? No. Go ahead.
You have any more of these? In the fridge. Thanks. WOMAN: Do my boys have to be here? I think this is hard enough for them without having to hear the facts. BRASS: I understand, but it's best for our investigation if we keep the whole family together. It's okay, Mom. You were saying, Mrs. Anderson? Um... I got up at 4:30, like I usually do to feed Zack. I'm still breast-feeding. And I went down to Zacky's room. I looked in his crib and he was gone. He wasn't there. And I felt around for him and that's when I found the letter saying that he had been taken and I... I don't know. I-I think I screamed... You screamed, Mom. I jumped out of bed and I went to her, and that's when we called 911 from the upstairs hallway. 911-1-1-1. Give me the phone, Robbie. Give me the phone. We're going to need a piece of the baby's clothing. Something from his hamper, if possible. We're going to use scent dogs throughout the neighborhood. I'll go see what I can find. No, I know what he wears. I'll go with you.
GRISSOM: I'd also like to get blood samples from each family member. Why? Well, the sooner we can eliminate the expected hairs and fibers from within the household we can begin looking for outsiders. Is it going to hurt? I hope not.
Sara. Yeah? Take this ransom note to Q.D. Typewritten ransom note? Kidnapper was organized. I think it's ink-jet not typewriter. I'll get it to Questioned Documents check for origination prints, the works. Take every computer and printer from the Anderson house with you. You think the suspect printed the ransom note from inside the house while they were sleeping? I'm not thinking anything yet. Nick. Yo. No, thanks, I'm an iced tea man. It's not a refreshment. It's an experiment. Now take this to the lab in a controlled space, 72 degrees Fahrenheit and open it. Keep this in the same room-temp space. Okay, then what? Process, Nick. Process.
Baby's bedroom window is open and the ladder's still out there. So canvass the whole grounds from outside to in. I'm all over it like a cheap suit.
You see this spiderweb? Damn, Warrick! I'm sorry. Your ticker okay?
What spiderweb? Right here. Kind of hard to get a baby out of a window climb onto a ladder without messing up this web, don't you think? Well, it could have happened after the abduction. Spiders can build one of these things in a few hours.
Warrick? What are you doing? Go around.
Oh, you're right on the golf course. That must be nice. Steve likes it. I never cared for the game. ( sighs ) That one's my favorite But Zacky, he, uh... he liked another one. Here it is. ( chuckles ) There's a little spit-up on it. He liked the way the fabric felt on his skin.
Oh, God... It's okay. It used to happen to me with my daughter if I didn't get to her right on time. I can't believe that this is happening to us.
I'll get this to our guys.
What you got? Two hairs, separate and distinctive. Ah. The plot thickens.
You smell something? I smell these dirty diapers over here.
It's like a household cleanser. There's a pine smell. Probably used to clean that diaper pail. No, it's stronger than that.
It's emanating from this specific spot.
Baby was killed before it even left the house. Guy tried to cover his tracks. SIDLE: What do you mean you haven't checked for prints? It's a ransom letter. MAN: Everything in the proper order. You know that. I got five other tests I got to run on this paper before I try to isolate prints You got anything for me? Yeah. The paper's expensive. High rag count. I could have told you that. Can you explain these three small vertical dots? What? Where? It tells me that the printer that emitted this letter has a spot on the drum. A drum goes around three times to print one page.
So if the Andersons' printer was used... There'd be three small dots on any paper that comes out.
No vertical dots. And different paper than the ransom letter F.Y.I. Yeah, this mold I made of that shoe print matches the gardener's boot that I found in the shed over there. Yeah, well, we need to look for what's out of place. And a gardener's boot in a garden is not out of place. Well, the Andersons did say the guy's been out of town on vacation for the last three days. ( cell phone rings ) Grissom. Ransom note's not from the Anderson's printer or paper supply. You're breaking up. The Andersons are clear. Whoever wrote the letter did it from a different location and brought it with them. Are you standing next to the copy machine outside ballistics? You want me to check ballistics? No. I want you to move away from that machine. Look, check all the printers at Steve Anderson's company. ( dogs barking ) Get Q.D. to help you with a warrant. Target all immediate coworkers and disgruntled employees first. Are those our dogs? Grissom? Grissom! ( dogs barking frenetically )
Get those dogs back. Get them back!
Stand back. We got to have pictures. The coroner will be all over us. I'll get the pictures!
I'm going to take him.
My baby! Oh, my God! It's my baby!
My baby! My baby!
( no audio )
ANCHORWOMAN: The Andersons, who own a profitable Internet company in Las Vegas, are said to be devastated by the death of little Zachary. As for leads, the police will only say they have widened the investigation to include employees of Steve Anderson's company. Immediate coworkers are being asked to give DNA samples. By all accounts, the employees are complying voluntarily. One of them is quoted as saying "Anything to help Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in their time of grief." ROBBINS: I can't give you exact time of death, but I do know cause of death was asphyxiation. He was smothered. The retinal hemorrhages are the result of intercranial pressure from an edema. The edema was caused by an acute lack of oxygen. Smothered how? Did you find hand marks? Trauma around the mouth or nose? No.
He was in a blanket when I found him... wrapped pretty tight. Positional asphyxiation? Maybe. Abductor might have tried to protect him from the cold. Suffocated him by mistake. I'm going to run tests on a microscopic fiber I found in his throat.
But I don't think his death was benign, Gil. Or accidental. Sternum was cracked. X rays say the fracture is fresh. Manhandled and suffocated. This little guy didn't have a chance.
Are those from Anderson's company? Yeah. There's like 200 of them in that place. I'm going to test them against the ransom note, one by one. You got Homicide's list of disgruntled employees? Not yet. They're still working on it. You call Homicide back and tell them to get us that list now.
Hey. Hey. Where are we on those DNA samples? I got the hair samples from the baby's crib ready for comparison. Yeah? So answer my question. Well, DNA's jammed. Sanders says he'll get to the blood comparisons as soon as... I hear you're backlogged. 20 "Unknowns" from some drug shoot-out. FBI special request. Sheriff told me to clear it off my counter before I do anything else. These? Yeah. You can almost smell Quantico, you know?
There. Now they're off your counter. Zachary Anderson, date of birth 01-23-01. Date of death, three hours ago. Until we find out how and why... this is the only case you work on. Yes, sir.
Never seen him like this before.
Grissom? What? You told me a few weeks ago that nothing is personal. No victim should be special. Everyone follows your lead. Everyone didn't find that baby. I did. And that little boy is dead because someone lost their temper or screwed up, or God knows what. So, excuse me, but this victim is special. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson are calling. They want to know why you refuse to release the body for burial. They said that you gave the coroner strict instructions. ( sighs ) You better drive. Sure.
I'm very sorry, but we have to preserve the evidence in a case like this. And, as difficult as this sounds, Zachary is evidence. We need to refer to him as the case unfolds. Well, do you have any leads? Any idea who did this? Your child was found 500 yards from your back door, in clean clothes wrapped in a white blanket, laid carefully under a statuary. WILLOWS: A stranger wouldn't treat a victim like that. You think we had something to do with this? GRISSOM: The FBI tells us that you never received a call from the abductor. What kind of a kidnapper forgets to call the family?
A wealthy family. STEVE: My lawyer warned me that you were going to try this. You don't have a suspect so now you're going to come after us. But you have nothing to hide. You're damn right we don't! ( knocking ) I thought I'd deliver this in person. DNA came back on the entire family.
GRISSOM: The blood we found in the baby's room... belongs to your son Tyler.
I was playing ball in the backyard and I cracked Zacky's window. Dad had told me not to hit the ball towards the house. So I went up and replaced the window before anyone got home and I cut my finger on the glass. And you wiped up the blood with some type of pine cleanser. I thought I got it all. GRISSOM: Let's go back a second, Tyler. You said that you baby-sat for Robbie and Zack last night right? I told the police that this morning. We had a Homeowner's Association Vote meeting. It was just five doors up from our house. I had, uh... I had made dinner and then Steve and I walked up to the clubhouse. We were gone maybe 30 minutes, until 9:00. We contacted the Association. The story checks out. I also did a background search. Tyler has quite a temper on him, don't you, Ty? What? You were expelled from school twice last year for physical altercation. That was schoolyard stuff. CATHERINE: Beat up a 12-year-old in the school stairwell. He made fun of my mother.
I wasn't going to let him get away with that. Your brother Zack say something you didn't like you weren't going to let him get away with either? Don't talk about my brother that way, you bastard! STEVE: Sit down! Now. GWEN: He's, uh... he's upset. He is not usually like this.
People are calling us killers.
And I miss my little brother. That still doesn't mean you didn't kill him.
So what are we looking for? I don't know. Well, let's start up and work our way down.
Here's the father's bottle of cola-- here's the unknown. I duplicated conditions and monitored the pressure that escaped from the father's bottle which he told you had been open two hours against one I know was open two hours. Kept this log. Pressure released every quarter hour.
Good, Nick.
Did you find any ethanol on the lip of that bottle? Well, I've got Trace running tests now, but I did an unscientific whiff test. Picked up a hint of some kind of booze.
Call me when you get the results. See if they can find out what this green substance is on these nylons I found in Mr. Anderson's closet. I'll take a swatch, get it back to you ASAP.
GRISSOM: The mother's prints... the father's prints... and a set of unknowns. They're not unknown. I ran them against the employees of Steve Anderson's computer company disgruntled and otherwise. They belong to a Needra Fenway.
And who is Needra Fenway? Steve Anderson's secretary.
So, of course, I checked out her printer. As I'm sure you know, all printers have their own unique signature.
These three... tiny vertical dots from Needra's printer match the ransom note perfectly.
Thank you. Thank you for coming in. Anything I can do to help. You know, it's... it's just terrible what happened. BRASS: Maybe you can explain why your printer was used to create the ransom note found in the Anderson home. What? We have evidence that this came from your printer. There are 500 people who work in that office. Anyone could have used my printer. We also found a strand of hair. Our lab has matched it to you. From the Anderson home. I'm Steven's secretary. I go there. Do you go upstairs? 'Cause that's where we found this particular hair.
WILLOWS: You two were having an affair. We ended it. Because his wife got pregnant? I'm not going down this road. What? A new baby screw up the office romance? It was more than just an office romance, okay? Much more. Yeah. Well, a lot of women would understand if you went over there and... got rid of that baby. Sure. Quickest way to end a guy's marriage. Okay, I need a lawyer. Is that it? Is that what you're saying here?
( sighing ) Are these your nylons? I found these hidden in the back of Mr. Anderson's closet. So, did you come to him after you disposed of the baby and ask him to hide them for you? Talk to Steve. Steve asked her to do it to get out from underneath the obligation of a newborn? Geez, haven't these people ever heard of divorce?
Needra didn't kill Zack any more than I did. How do you explain her hair in the baby's crib?
We broke up the day that I learned that Gwen was pregnant with Zack. I love Needra but I love my family more. Needra asked if she could see Zack after he was born to help her kind of accept the reality. So, I had her in last Saturday to watch him sleep.
Gwen had the kids at skating. Needra was out of the house in 15 minutes.
You don't believe me. You've lied to me before. About what? You told me that you opened that cola bottle the morning you reported Zack missing. We had a test done. You opened that bottle six hours before you said you did-- the night before-- somewhere around 11:00 P.M. The lab is still testing it. I also believe that you cut it with alcohol. Rum and cola. What does that prove? Was Needra Fenway in your house that night? Did you catch her suffocating your son? ( baby crying ) What are you doing? What have you done? That's not how it happened. Well, why don't you tell me how it happened. ( glass shattering ) ( gasp ) GWEN: Robbie, what did you do? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. All right, I heard you. Do we have to have this conversation right now? Mr. Anderson? What? Yeah? I'm from the Las Vegas Post. How do you feel about these pictures your secretary sold to the Midnight Informer this afternoon?
Where did you get these? The tabloid's web site. Needra sold them to pay for her legal fees.
REPORTER: Mr. Anderson?
My only comment is that I love my wife very much.
REPORTER: Excuse me. I'm from the Las Vegas Post. Can I ask you a few questions? GWEN: No.
A wife kills her baby to get back at her husband over his affair. Come on. Any woman would go after the husband, not the baby. True. But, in some instances women have been known to kill their children as a way to pay back a spouse. Particularly if it's over an affair and particularly if the child was a male child. Well, I don't buy it. I just don't buy it, Doctor. She really loved that baby. Well, Catherine that's why she's in this much pain now. A guy cheats, but the wife commits murder. How come moms always end up the bad guy with you Freud types? That's because this mother is the bad guy. CNN just dug up a 13-year-old charge against Gwen Anderson. I heard it on the car radio. What kind of charge? It's called shaken baby syndrome. The oldest boy-- Tyler? When he was a newborn she shook him so hard they had to go to the hospital. She shook the kid unconscious. Is this authentic? Yeah. They were on the phone with the arresting officer from Oregon. He faxed me this report. Our grieving mother... her record for child abuse.
( crowd clamoring and camera shutters clicking ) MAN: Baby killer!
You should die! You call yourself a mother? You're the worst! Baby killer! Someone should take those other kids from you! Did you kill Zachary over your husband's affair? Did you act alone or did Tyler help? Baby killer! Bitch! You deserve to die! Gil Grissom! You found the baby. How hard is it for you to look at Gwen Anderson? Let me tell you something. People are presumed innocent... innocent until a court of law can examine all the evidence and prove otherwise. Until then everything else is... gossip. WOMAN: She deserves to be put in jail! Gil Grissom. Gil Grissom! Ice. I don't need this. Just do it.
That was quite a speech you made out there but between you me and the water fountain... you think that Gwen Anderson's innocent?
What? Are you changing teams now? You've been her biggest supporter. I still am. I'm just... taking your temperature. BRASS: Hey. We're up.
You didn't answer my question. You're right. I didn't. ( throws ice bag in trash can ) I never meant to hurt Tyler. You have to understand. You shook him unconscious. He was choking. All on his own? ATTORNEY: Change your tone or I'll end this right now. Well, it's a legitimate question. But I have to work on my tone. You're right. I'll try again.
All on his own?
Go ahead, Mrs. Anderson. He had gotten food in his windpipe. His face was... turning red. Steve was at work. So, I, I patted him on his back and-and on... and on his stomach and finally, I turned him upside down and I started shaking him to get the food out... to... to dislodge it, and I did. But I realized that I had hurt him, so I called 911. She was a new mother-- 23 years old. If she'd meant to harm her son why would she call 911? Did the E.R. find proof that there was food lodged in Tyler's throat? No. That's why the police were called in. And by the time my client went home and found the chewed food on the kitchen floor it was all too late. She was branded. It was a french fry he had grabbed from my plate. LEWIS: As for the death of little Zachary my client categorically denies any involvement. She's a victim of an intruder who entered her home and abducted and killed her child. Thank you all for your continued efforts to find the real killer. Did you know that your golf course paints its grass? Excuse me? It's actually a vegetable dye. Biodegradable. They've been using green dye on television tournaments for several years. What's your point? I found a pair of nylons in the back of your husband's closet. BRASS: We, uh we have a receipt that links them to your client. GRISSOM: The exact same dye from the golf course where Zachary was laid to rest is on your nylons. She belongs to the club. Grass stains. WILLOWS: But she doesn't play golf. Remember our conversation, Mrs. Anderson? It's not your game?
If you arrest her now... you have 48 hours to charge her. You really want to show your hand at the arraignment?
We'll be in touch. Look. Mommy, I want my Mommy. Hey. Can we just go, please? What's going on? Did you see that? A mother repelled by her young. She didn't seem like that type to me. All right, okay. Here, go to your brother. I'll catch you later. I want to hear that 911 tape. Hi. Hey. Grissom? The Coroner's been trying to reach you. Did he nail time of death? 9:00 P.M., but, uh, there's something else. He isolated the fiber found in Zachary Anderson's throat. It's a flame-retardant material-- generic name's Metaramid. From the baby's clothes? Fire-retardant infant's clothes are made out of vinyon. The fiber found in Zack's throat is a stronger chemical treatment. It's found in things that are made to be near fire and flames.
Hey. Hey, can I go with you?
Same color as the fiber in Zack's throat.
Okay, this is the 911 call from the Anderson house at 4:30 A.M. STEVE: Our baby has been kidnapped. 493 Fairmark. Please hurry. Mrs. Anderson wasn't there? You wouldn't think so but I went ahead and separated out any underlying voices. GWEN: What are we going to do?! She was standing, like, two meters from the phone. Yeah, well, it's a legitimate comment. Doesn't make her guilty of anything. I know, so I checked to see if she was, like, faking her concern. This program measures the stress level of the speakers. GWEN: Oh, God, what are we going to do?! The stress is real. Are you familiar with the JonBenet case? A little. Well, the police went back, and they found an earlier call that was placed from the home to 911 and the audio tests separated out the son's voice. Now, I'm not saying that Tyler's our guy, but... we need to check into every avenue. Well, I did backtrack and there were no other calls that night from the Anderson house-- from the land line, or from the cell phone. In the parents' name, but did you look under Tyler's? I mean, a rich kid like that's probably got a cell phone. Yeah. All right, I'll get into it. ( phone ringing ) Hello. GRISSOM: Anderson's attorney, 7:00 a.m. 7:00 A.M.? I'll be there. Bring all the evidence. Yeah. I'll bring it all. Thanks.
LEWIS: My colleagues, Messrs. Landry and Frank are representing Steve and Tyler Anderson respectively. Although we're not cocounsel in the strictest sense we've agreed the authorities should have no more than three questions to put to our clients each. After that, we'll accept written submissions only. Nice... what money can buy. My family is done being railroaded by you people so just ask your questions, and let's go. I don't have any questions. We know what happened in your house the night Zachary died. We've interpreted the evidence. WILLOWS: All right, let's work backwards starting with the cover-up. Sometime around 11:00 p.m. the night of the kidnapping you and Mr. Anderson had a drink-- rum and cola... and decided what to do with the body of Zachary.
We have yet to determine whether or not his death was accidental or intentional. The Question Documents lab thinks that a parent wrote the ransom note because there's no money amount.
Too hard to put a price on your own son? Mrs. Anderson, while your husband was writing the ransom note, you wrapped Zachary's body in a blanket that you got from the upstairs linen closet.
You then laid his body to rest near a statue on the golf course.
( sobbing softly ) ( crying ) That's how you got the grass stains on your nylons.
You put down a plastic bag from the pantry so that he'd remain dry. Evidence of genuine care and concern. And Mr. Anderson you put up a ladder outside the window. The only shoe prints we found were yours and the gardener's and the gardener has been out of town. You then drove over to your office and cranked off a ransom note on the first available printer possibly thinking that if you used a printer from outside your house, we wouldn't be able to trace it. But these three dots... have given you away. This may prove cover-up. None of it proves they killed Zachary. You're right, Counselor. Zachary's life was taken much earlier in the evening. The coroner estimated time of death at 9:00 p.m. LEWIS: Estimated. It could be 8:30. Yes. While Robbie and Zachary were in Tyler's care.
You said that we could ask three questions each. Am I right? Stop. Ty didn't do this. LEWIS: Don't give them anything. No, no. It doesn't matter. We're already ruined. Look, they're just... They're just trying to protect me, all right? Please. And I can't go on. Mrs. Anderson. I killed him. I came home. Tyler h-h-hadn't put Zachary to bed because he... he was crying, and I wanted to hush him up and, and I just... I went too far. For the record my client made this statement against legal counsel. Would you tell us... how you killed him. I smothered him with a pot holder. And that's when Steve and I came up with the kidnap story.
It was the longest night of our lives. You had to wait till the morning to report him missing. So that it wouldn't look suspicious.
And you may not believe me, but I loved him. I loved him very, very much.
We're going to have to have them both arrested.
I was just coming to meet you guys. I thought you were at the Andersons. We're done. She copped. Guilty people do that What? when you corner them with evidence. Guys, the mother didn't do it. What? Listen.
TYLER: What did you do, Robbie?! What did you do?!
I was watching the boys. I had my eye on them; I did. ( baby cooing ) Yeah. But then you called your girlfriend. And we got to talking.
And I was kind of ignoring Zack and Robbie.
They were being quiet. They were behaving. I turned around, and I saw how still he was.
I ran to him, and he was dead.
And that's when you called 911.
( beeping ) ( audio indistinct ) But you must have dropped the phone to tend to Zack.
TYLER: What did you do, Robbie?! What did you do?! Then I guess, somehow, in the chaos you got disconnected.
Soon after that, your parents arrived.
Oh, my God.
What happened? One of you worked on him so hard that you cracked his sternum.
He was already blue.
I pushed. I tried to breathe air into him, but he was gone. We did everything that we could. Why didn't you just tell the truth? We wanted to protect Robbie.
We didn't want him to grow up with the stigma of... "The boy who killed his brother."
He's three. He's clinically unaware of his actions. No court would hold him accountable for that. But everybody else would know. It would follow him the rest of his life. And my wife... would rather go to prison than to have anybody know what Robbie did.
Mr. Anderson, we won't let that happen.
Now I know why you didn't want to hold Robbie when your husband handed him to you outside the police department.
I'm very sorry. ( sniffling ) I always, uh... I always tell them, "Gentle, gentle."
He didn't mean it. I know he didn't mean it. Of course he didn't.
You must think that we are awful people-- all this stuff that's come out. You're an average family burdened with a tragedy that put you under a microscope. That close, nobody can look good.
Your family's waiting for you. You ready?
Captioning sponsored by PARAMOUNT PICTURES a microscope.